In Folio: Rare Volumes in the Stanford University Libraries

St. Bede, the Venerable, 673-735.

Historiae Ecclesiasticae Gentis Anglorum ….

Cantabrigiae: Typis Academicis, 1722.

Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People is one of the most enduring histories ever written. Completed in 731, it influenced scholars in England and the Continent from the eighth century on. The Anglo Saxon Chronicle, a record of events in England from the start of the Christian era to 1154, borrows from Bede’s history. As such an important work, it was only natural that Bede’s would become one of the first histories printed, in about 1475.

Featuring the the text in Latin and Anglo-Saxon, this edition was the fine work of John Smith, Canon of Durham (1659-1715), who rigorously rejected modern manuscripts (into which had crept textual errors) in favor of the earlier, purer, more correct texts. By good fortune, John Moore, Bishop of Ely, acquired what is known even today as the “Moore manuscript” in time for Smith to use it; with the Moore manuscript and two early manuscripts from the famed library of Sir Robert Cotton (1571-1631), Smith produced a monumental work of scholarship, with variant readings supplied in footnotes, the Anglo-Saxon types having been cut specifically for this book. This edition contains the majority of Bede’s historical works in addition to the Ecclesiastical History, and stands as an enormous scholarly achievement in a great age of Anglo-Saxon learning.

 

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