ABSTRACT
This chapter explains the conflicting perspectives on what the future might hold for the Northumbrians: peace and prosperity could be signs of good things to come or they could be the beginning of the destruction of the people. It focuses on Bede's theological vision in commentaries and then demonstrates how he brought that theological vision to life in the Historia ecclesiastica. The British in the Historia ecclesiastica do accord with Higham's model. Bede, borrowing his moral from Gildas, recounted that so long as the British remembered the calamities that had befallen them, especially the Saxon scourge, the people remained orderly, but once the British had forgotten and a generation arose which knew only serenitas, then the British abandoned the path of righteousness. In all of this discussion of adversity, spiritual warfare and danger of worldliness it is easy to forget that Bede did have a positive role for prosperity in his theological vision and in the Historia.
