ABSTRACT
This Chapter collects all Bede’s sources for the Gregorian Mission to Kent in the Historia ecclesiastica (Ecclesiastical History) identified in the earlier Chapters and organises them thematically, providing a clearer view of the material from which Bede was working. Each source is analysed and as far as possible reconstructed. The Chapter also examines the implications of Bede’s possession of certain ‘archival’ sources for our understanding of early Anglo-Saxon libraries, suggesting more pragmatic purposes for them than has tended to be assumed. The Chapter concludes by demonstrating that Canterbury had preserved almost no sources dating from the period of the Gregorian Mission and explaining why this was the case.
