SOURCE: Bertram Colgrave, "Historical Introduction," in Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People, edited by Bertram Colgrave and R. A. B. Mynors, 1969. Reprint by Oxford at the Clarendon Press, 1992, pp. xvii-xxxviii.

In the following excerpt written in 1969, Colgrave discusses the historical sources for Bede's Ecclesiastical History.

As Professor Levison has pointed out,¹ when Bede was writing his History, saints' Lives were being written everywhere, but other forms of historical writing were in decay. Bede was familiar with two histories, both of which may have served him as models, namely Rufinus' translation and adaptation of the Ecclesiastical History of Eusebius and Gregory of Tours' History of the Franks. But though Bede may have gained hints from both of these and possibly other works, he had one great aim. It was to tell the story of the development of God's plan for the conversion of the English people and the...