Talk:Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum

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[edit] Move discussion

Shouldn't this article be moved to Ecclesiastical History of the English People, since this is the English Wikipedia? I know the book was written in Latin, but the article about Euclid's Elements is located at Euclid's Elements, not Στοιχεία του Ευκλείδη.  –Benjamin  (talk)  01:40, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

Many Latin manuscipts on Wikipedia are called by the Latin name, but also many by the translation, there is no definitive rule. Probably comes down to most common and/or most professional use. --Stbalbach 02:51, 10 December 2005 (UTC)
I agree the article should be moved. In fact all articles with Latin titles should be moved, but at least this one should be. So do it! :) Wjhonson 22:56, 24 June 2006 (UTC)
I disagree. When a work is commonly known by a Latin name, that name should be preserved and used to reference the work. Species Plantarum (Linneaus) is always referred to as Species Plantarum. I have never heard it called anything else. This would also be applied to Systema Naturae. Changing these to English equivalents would create confusion rather than assuage it. The title of each work should be judged individually rather than appling a "blanket policy" to works written or titled in another language. Arx Fortis 05:09, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
I disagree also! the work was written in Latin (as mentioned above)and so should be kept in the original language. If it was transferred to English it would lose some of its feeling in the writing. and also it wourld have been written in Old English, something that we could not understand even if we tried. In the translation from Latin to English it would lose a lot (like i already said). —Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.65.164.254 (talk) 15:55, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Bede and footnoting

The claim here that Bede invented footnotes seems bizarre to me. I'm pretty certain that his _Historia ecclesiastica_ doesn't contain any, for a start! And I would have expected to have heard of this, since my professional research relates to Anglo-Saxon history. Does anyone know of any basis for this claim? Otherwise, I think it should be deleted.

It is bizarre, delete it. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. Wjhonson 22:56, 24 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Critics (cont.. edit note)

Sorry my edit note was cut off. I was saying, that criticizing Bede for not following professional historian standards is kinda anachronistic when it was standard practice by all historians of the period to simply make stuff up, lift entire passages from other works and copy them as their own etc.. "history" from the period is nothing like how history is defined today, it was akin to literature in form and function, written by people who were not part of a "historical profession" or had any standards of conduct. -- Stbalbach 01:40, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

This is discussed, in general, with references, at English historians in the Middle Ages. -- Stbalbach 01:49, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

Then link to that page possibly, but simply not stating it, gives people the impression that he was an accurate historian. You have to realize that every general reader reads these pages, not people *familiar* with the situation. Wjhonson 02:57, 25 June 2006 (UTC)
Fine. But it seems pretty silly to have to add a qualifier to every single article about every single author and work written before the 19th century, because of an assumption that the reader has an "impression" that they are an "accurate" history/historian. -- Stbalbach 05:12, 25 June 2006 (UTC)
The implication, in the article and on this talk poage, that modern historical writing is by definition accurate, reference-citing, non-plagiaristic and objective, is utterly misleading! Some of it meets these criteria, some of it doesn't.
But, yes, the criteria of Bede and other medieval historians were different from those of modern academic historicans. If Bede stands out from the others, that fact belongs here. To the extent that they were all alike, English historians in the Middle Ages seems the place for general information about their aims and methods. Andrew Dalby 12:03, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
  • I could understand the objection to specifically pointing out the nature of medieveal historical writing if this article was long enough to warrant trimming, but this is not the case. For now, it serves as a good caveat lector for people unfamiliar with the topic/time period. And I don't see anyone here claiming that "modern historical writing is by definition accurate, reference-citing, non-plagiaristic and objective." All that the article is pointing out is that that medieval historical writing is less accurate, less reference-citing, more plagiaristic and less objective than what many people expect (erronously or not) of "modern" historical writing.--Hraefen Talk 14:40, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
    • I derived my view from the following words in the article: "cannot be expected to have the same degree of objectivity as modern historical writings" and from the following on the present page: "it was standard practice by all historians of the period to simply make stuff up, lift entire passages from other works and copy them as their own etc ... 'history' from the period is nothing like how history is defined today ... written by people who were not part of a "historical profession" or had any standards of conduct [presumably meaning "had no standards of conduct"?]. And I don't see any caveats about "what many people expect (erronously or not)". But it's probably not worth arguing over! All the best Andrew Dalby 19:10, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
  • I agree that the wording is not the best and if you review my edit from June 26 2006 I think (hope) you'll agree that I removed a bit of bias and made it generally more readable. Please tweak the wording a little more if you feel you can improve it. There does still seem to be some undue respect paid to modern historians who are assumed to be free of bias (which is why I love Howard Zinn's acceptance of bias as inevitable). I am just opposed to the removal of the mention that Bede cannot be taken at face value, even if this is still true of modern historians (although less true, in my opinion).--Hraefen Talk 20:00, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Bede's References

The 4th paragraph states Beed cited his references. The 5th paragraph states Bede did not provide refernces. Which is true?...or am I mis-reading something here?

Perhaps sometimes he did and sometimes he didn't (much like Wikipedia heheh).

Either way, neither of these assertions have their own references. Not really sure what should be done here, but perhaps someone knowledgeable can clarify and clean it up? Arx Fortis 05:27, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

I removed both references. That he did, or that he didnt, seems to be in conflict and so should have a citation itself instead of just being a bald statement. Wjhonson 04:55, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for clarifying. Arx Fortis 05:27, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Requested move

The following discussion is an archived discussion of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.


I propose that we move this page to Ecclesiastical History of the English People. I see from a discussion above that this is likely to be controversial, so I am listing it using the "Requesting potentially controversial moves" method at WP:RM.

I checked eleven secondary sources; I will give very abbreviated bibliographic info for them here but I can provide more if needed. Page numbers are exemplary to make it easy to check a ref; the uses are throughout as far as I checked.

Books using "Ecclesiastical History of the English People", "Ecclesiastical History of the English Nation", or "Ecclesiastical History":

  • Swanton, Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, p.129 n. 12
  • Campbell, The Anglo-Saxon State, per index and p. 43
  • Abels, Alfred the Great, xi (though he uses HE as the abbreviation, a relic of the Latin)
  • Farmer/Sherley-Price, Bede's Ecclesiastical History etc.; throughout
  • Keynes & Lapidge, Asser's Alfred the Great, generally, e.g. p.40, though the index itself gives the Latin first
  • Fletcher, Who's Who in Roman Britain and Anglo-Saxon England, p. 70
  • Campbell et al., The Anglo-Saxons, p. 29
  • Hunter Blair, Roman Britain and Early England, p. 3
  • Hunter Blair, An Introduction to Anglo-Saxon England, p. 322

Books using "Historia Ecclesiastica":

  • Stenton, Anglo-Saxon England, p. 8
  • Kirby, The Earliest English Kings, p. 25 n. 24; Kirby actually uses both forms, but the Latin is cited first.

I think this establishes that the English form is now more current in the secondary literature.

Where the Latin form is used, it's actually cited as "Historia Ecclesiastica", which is currently a dab, rather than the full form of "Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum". I would think there's a case to be made for making this article the target and putting a dab note at the top saying "for other uses of "Historia Ecclesiastica", see "Historia Ecclesiastica (disambiguation)". I'll refrain from making that move proposal now in case it confuses the issue, but anyone who comments on this proposal might comment on that too. Mike Christie (talk) 20:05, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

  • Alternate suggestion: Merge back to Bede. Section redirects are possible; if you insert <span id="Section title">, #REDIRECT [[Pagetitle#Section title]] will redirect to it. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 22:54, 31 May 2007 (UTC)
There's currently not enough separate information in the two articles to justify a split, it's true. In the somewhat parallel case of Asser, who is really only notable for the work he wrote, the man and his work are both covered in a single article. However, in Bede's case, I think there is a great deal to say about the Ecclesiastical History; the manuscript history itself could take quite a bit of coverage; and Bede is important for other reasons than just EH. Hence I think I'd prefer to keep them separate. Mike Christie (talk) 00:55, 1 June 2007 (UTC)
Then the English is probably better, I agree. And if you do intend to expand this article, it should not be merged. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 02:41, 1 June 2007 (UTC)
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The consensus view seems to be that the article should be merged into Bede, making any page moves redundant. It was requested that this article be renamed but there was no consensus for it be moved. --Stemonitis 11:45, 6 June 2007 (UTC)