Bede's plures de Scottorum regione: The Irish in the Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum

Abstract

The Irish are an integral element of the Venerable Bede's Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum as missionaries, teachers, and as Christian models. The Columban mission to Northumbria, in particular, was essential to the development of the Anglo-Saxon Church, but Bede ensures that the Irish permeate both the Church and the country of the Anglo-Saxons. This project explores the Irish of the text through a prosopography, individually discussing the Irishmen who people Bede's Historia Ecclesiastica as a means of interrogating the idea of 'the Irish' as it appears in the text. Forty-two individuals and nine discrete groups are examined; of these, five persons, and many individual members of the groups, remain unnamed. Their historical reality and purpose in the text for Bede are the focus of this project. The plures de Scottorum regione that Bede tells us came to Britain in the wake of Aidan, bishop of Lindisfarne, though specifically indicating those who came to Northumbria, are seen to speak for a host of Irish who arrived in Britain determined to live their lives in service to God as peregrini pro Christo. The Irish in the text are not limited to religious figures, but it is as evangelisers and Christian examples that they contribute most to the history Bede sets down. Bede, a deliberate and careful writer, took pains to preserve the presence and the influence of the Irish for posterity, and he depicts them as a vital component in the story of the gens Anglorum.