ABSTRACT
On 5 November Bede wrote a letter to Ecgberht, then the bishop of York. The nature of its occasion is explained in the opening section. A year earlier, Bede had travelled to York to visit Ecgberht for the purpose of study; the implication is that Ecgberht had once been Bede's student, and that the two still fostered such a relationship. They had planned to meet again, drawn by their common love of learning, but ill-health made the journey impossible for the ageing Bede. In the scope of the present volume, Bede's Epistola ad Ecgbertum is therefore vital; people must listen attentively for what it can tell us about the future as Bede imagined it. The indictment Bede levels here is, thanks to the detail he provides, easy enough to explain. Evidently villages throughout Northumbria, even the most remote and inaccessible, were rendering taxes Bede's word is tributa to their bishops in return for pastoral care.
