This second volume completes our survey of the reception of Bede's writings in Anglo-Saxon England. Reading Bede through the works of his immediate followers makes us aware of how useful he was to them, providing the tools they needed to carry on, most prominently, recording history and spreading the faith through preaching. With its entries on the HISTORIA ECCLESIASTICA GENTIS ANGLORUM and the two chronicles that are part of DE TEMPORIBUS and DE TEMPORUM RATIONE, volume one focused on the first topic. With those on HOMILIES and on the EXTRACTS from the COMMENTARIES on Mark and Luke, which served the same purpose, volume two is dominated by the latter. There is much else in both, but in these areas, geography, hagiography, metrics, orthography, rhetoric, and science, Bede primarily taught.

Bede's theology is only occasionally a focus of the entries in this volume, in part because he chose not to accentuate doctrinal differences. This is not to say he avoided these issues when they arose. As Faith Wallis (2013) and Peter Darby (2012) have demonstrated, it appears to have been his interest in combatting eschatological speculation around the year 700 that led to both his De temporibus and the COMMENTARIUS IN APOCALYPSIM. Similarly, his unprecedented commentaries on the tabernacle and the temple demonstrate the degree to which Bede pursued topics that caught his interest. Here the study of Conor O’Brien (2015) breaks new ground in our understanding of Bede's developing thought. Passing over much other scholarship, we would finally note the work of Benedicta Ward (1995) and Sarah Foot (2014) on Bede's understanding of prayer, particularly as it applied to female monastic communities. There is much more to be learned in these areas; and yet, for the moment, it appears that Bede stood out from his contemporaries in having the time and inclination to read deeply in the Fathers and engage with their work in order to produce original commentaries on the Bible.

So we return to Bede the preacher to conclude this introduction.