ABSTRACT
Among the many important contributions Patrick made towards the elucidation of the thought-world of Bede and the history of England in the seventh and eighth centuries was his paper entitled ‘Bede, Bretwaldas and the origins of gens Anglorum’, which formed part of the volume he edited as tribute to one of his own mentors, Michael Wallace-Hadrill.1 It is a characteristically wide-ranging study and its last paragraph in particular preserves essence of Patrick; it begins with a quotation from Milton and ends with a reference to Napoleon. The paper, as its title suggests, was particularly concerned with a major Patrician theme, the origins of the English, and its conclusion was that ‘[s]ymbolically at least, Napoleon’s nation of shopkeepers began in Gregory’s market-place at Rome’,2 that is, that it was ultimately the Gregorian mission, rather than any Bretwaldan hegemony, which encouraged Bede and others to view the Anglo-Saxons ‘as a single people before God’ ‘known in Heaven as the “gens Anglorum”’.3 The paper has been recently reissued in a volume of Patrick’s collected essays, with additional commentary by him on relevant studies published since its completion.4
