SOURCE: J. N. Stephens, "Bede's Ecclesiastical History," in History: The Journal of the Historical Association, n. s. Vol. 62, No. 204, February, 1977, pp. 1-14.

In the following essay, Stephens explains that Bede differed from other historians in that the proper focus of the Ecclesiastical History is the English people, for it was Bede's intent to provide them with a new and fuller history.

Bede called his History 'The Ecclesiastical History of the English people' (Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum.) It is usually said to be a history of the church. According to Levison, Bede takes 'the history of the English Church as a united whole'¹; according to Stenton, it is 'devoted to the growth of the English Church'²; according to Campbell, 'his aim seems to have been to do for the history of the Church in England what Eusebius had done for the whole and he follows him in choice of...