Digital Commons Network^™

Give Me That Old Time Religion: Nostalgia, Memory And The Rhetoric Of Loss In Bede's Historical Ecclesiastica Gentus Anglorum, John T.R. Terry

Inquiry: The University of Arkansas Undergraduate Research Journal

Bede 's Ecclesiastical History of the English People was composed by a monk of northeastern England around AD 731. It is a tome of nearly unparalleled prominence to this day in English church history. Many Bedan scholars have hitherto been concerned with common themes in Bede's works: biblical typology and exegesis, influences, sources, politics and even the nature of Bede's own mysterious life. This paper, however, seeks to add a definite human component to Bede and the times in which he lived where most studies have not, simply by using modern studies of nostalgia in a universal sense.