The Times of Bede: Studies in Early English Christian Society and Its Historian (review)

This collection of nine previously published essays was assembled by Patrick Wormald before his untimely death in 2004 and subsequently finalized and prepared for publication by Stephen Baxter. Although divided into two sections—"An Early Christian Culture and its Critic" and "The Impact of Bede's Critique"—there is in practice considerable overlap between the two and the chronological focus of both is the eighth and early-ninth centuries. The themes and issues of the papers are very much those that Wormald made his own: the aristocratic mores of the English Church, the emergence of a sense of cultural unity among the Anglo-Saxons, and Bede's relationship to his own times. The odd man out is the first essay of the second section, "Æthelwold and his Continental Counterparts: Contact, Comparison, Contrast," which, although demonstrating Æthelwold's debt to the writings of Bede, nevertheless feels out of place in a volume that has a fairly narrow focus in both chronology and theme. Most of the essays have additional notes (explicitly retractationes, not retractions) and more recent bibliography, although the lack of the detailed introduction that Wormald planned is sorely felt.

The 1984 Jarrow Lecture "Bede and the Conversion of England: the Charter Evidence" forms chapter 4 and is in many ways the standout piece of this collection. The complex and often daunting subjects of diplomatic and Anglo Saxon land tenure are introduced gently and eruditely and, as always with Wormald, with an eye to the Continent. That this essay remains the best introduction to these subjects despite a near-revolution in charter studies over the past two decades is an indication of the learning and insight that Wormald brought." Bede, Beowulf and the Conversion of the Anglo-Saxon Aristocracy" likewise continues to occupy a central place on many reading lists, and Wormald's basic thesis that Beowulf is a product of pre-Alfredian England and reflects the cultural environment of the secularized monasteries condemned by Bede remains persuasive, although not totally compelling. Recent work, in particular Mary Garrison's reconsideration of Alcuin's famous phrase "Quid Hinieldus cum Christo?," is likely to necessitate further nuancing of Wormald's ideas, and late-daters of Beowulf will no doubt remain unconvinced, but, again, this piece still has important things to say.

Other essays in the collection have unfortunately weathered less well. The opening chapter, "Bede and Benedict Biscop," originally published in 1976, sets out the Continental context for Wearmouth-Jarrow and the various influences operating upon Bede. Yet the cloistered, otherworldly Bede who emerges from this study is precisely the one who did not survive his encounter with Walter Goffart, and the additional notes at the end of the chapter are insufficient to take full account of the seismic shift initiated by The Narrators of Barbarian History (Princeton, 1988). The two essays that focus on the creation of a sense of English identity and unity, chapters 3 and 6, likewise engage with debates that have moved on considerably since the essays were first published, although here it is precisely because Wormald's interventions had such effect.

This collection is, then, something of a mixed bag. Some essays remain relevant to ongoing debates; others have predominantly historiographical interest. On display throughout, however, is Wormald's considerable intellect and erudition and in the earlier essays in particular an enviable familiarity with Continental scholarship. There are also occasional flashes of the theater that was a Wormald lecture. If there is one overriding impression, however, it is of a work unfinished and loose ends left untied. Baxter has done an admirable job of bringing this work to publication, but at the end the reader is left only with a sense of what might have been.