ABSTRACT
Bede’s eschatological perspective changed considerably over the course of his lifetime. It is possible to chart these changes in Bede’s outlook by paying careful attention to the chronological sequence of his works and examining their most notable eschatological passages in turn. At the start of his career, Bede offered neutral and non-literal interpretations of the eschatological material that he encountered in his scriptural commentaries and there is no evidence that he considered the end of time to be close before c. 710. Key passages in In Lucae evangelium expositio and In Genesim show that this view changed in the middle phase of Bede’s career. Occasionally, these works suggest that Bede was acutely aware of the approaching end of the world because they replicate the sentiments expressed at the end of Book 3 and beginning of Book 4 of In primam partem Samuhelis. Some key developments in Bede’s thoughts on salvation history are evident in Bede’s later commentaries, and this has implications for the content of his best-known and most studied work, the Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum. Bede constructed his historical masterpiece during the later years of his life, at a time when his thoughts on the present had evolved considerably from the position advanced in his earliest writings. Understanding when and how Bede’s eschatological perspective changed is crucial; it allows novel interpretations of key passages in the Historia ecclesiastica to be developed and it facilitates a new appreciation of the text’s didactic intentions.
