History Commons^™

The Reformist Exemplum Of The Monastic Bishop In Bede's Ecclesiastical History Of The English People, Christopher Kelm

Graduate College Dissertations and Theses

Throughout his Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum, Bede displays a recurring interest in and admiration for the lives of bishops who also live as monks. The reason for this is better understood in the context of Bede’s Letter to Egbert, written a few years after the completion of the Historia, and a few months before Bede’s death. In the Letter, Bede complains of contemporary Northumbrian bishops who lack any personal discipline and who fail to adequately provide pastoral care for their oversized dioceses, while they yet demand excessive tributes from the laity; he also laments the presence of “false monasteries,” which …