Bede (673–735)

I don’t normally rate or review books that I give up reading but decided to do so in this case because I got beyond the halfway mark.

The earlier chapters I consider quite interesting, but the further into it I got, the harder I found it to keep my concentration. It feels repetitive in some respects, yet the aspect that made me stop reading was yet another vision being recounted as a historic fact. Some such visions occur when people are awake, while at least one happened during sleep, so in other words it was a dream.

The number of miracles recorded as facts are as tedious as they are unbelievable. For instance, the dust were Oswald, King of Northumbria, was slain was able to cure deadly illnesses, simply because Oswald was sainted.

Bede also declares that certain kings should have their names erased from history and their reigns forgotten because of their disbelief in the Christian faith. So, ‘cancel culture’ sadly existed in Anglo-Saxon times. Such omissions don’t make for good history.

This is a didactic and biased text by an early historian. I accept, of course, that the mindset of someone living in the eight century is worlds away from that of the present day. Despite this, it didn’t make this book any more enjoyable for me to read.… (mais)