SOURCE: James Campbell, in an introduction to Bede: The Ecclesiastical History of the English People and Other Selections, edited by James Campbell, Washington Square Press, Inc., 1968, pp. vii-xxxiv.

In the following excerpt, Campbell provides an overview of Bede's work and concludes that, at least in part, Bede transmuted the past into his own creation which reflected mainly his own values.

Bede was born about 673 and died in 735. He entered the monastery of Monkwearmouth (Wearmouth), in Northumbria, at the age of seven, and the remainder of his life was spent there and in the sister monastery of Jarrow.¹ Today he is famous chiefly as the historian of the conversion of England. But he also wrote on almost every other branch of Christian learning; in his own day, and for long afterwards, his commentaries on the Bible and his treatises on chronology and other subjects were as much valued as...