ABSTRACT
Just how influential was its immediate political context to the ways in which Bede laid out and interpreted the past? This final chapter will explore the parameters within which we should view Bede’s EH as a text carrying contemporary messages and reflective of a particular set of political circumstances, and seek to balance this aspect of the work and its authorship against consideration of Bede as first and foremost a religious writer with a selfimposed mission to bring the leaders of the Northumbrians, and through them the whole people, to God.
