The relationship of Bede's letters to his other works is more complex than his statement in HISTORIA ECCLESIASTICA GENTIS ANGLORUM V.xxiv (ed. Lapidge 2010 2.482) that he placed five in a LIBER EPISTOLARUM suggests. While we could have limited this section to these five and to two more, the EPISTOLA AD ALBINUM and the EPISTOLA AD ECGBERCTUM, that also circulated independently, to do so would have been to overlook what even they indicate about the different ways that Bede used this genre. Instead we discuss these seven letters along with fourteen additional texts that, while serving as prefaces to other works and so considered primarily as such in these fascicles on Bede, either began as letters or follow epistolary conventions; we exclude, however, prefaces without these conventions. We also include two letters, the EPISTOLA AD NAITONUM (Nechtan mac Derile) and the EPISTOLA AD GREGORIUM PAPAM, which Bede wrote for successive abbots, CEOLFRITH and HWÆTBERHT, and then included in other works, the Historia ecclesiastica and the HISTORIA ABBATUM. As a group these letters reveal a surprising fluidity in Bede's manipulation of generic conventions. Moreover, on a practical level, considering them together helps us not only to assess the immediate reception of these texts but also to date much of Bede's corpus.

The survival of the original letter, datable to 704/5, from WEALDHERE, bishop of London, to BEORHTWALD, archbishop of Canterbury, provides a dramatic reminder that sending and receiving epistolae would have been a normal (and yet not constantly interrupting) part of Bede's life. From his reading, he would have understood that this experience was part of a much older practice, which we may recall here with a few examples that appear to have been significant to him. Both his COLLECTIO EX OPUSCULIS AUGUSTINI IN EPISTULAS PAULI and his COMMENTARIUS IN EPISTOLAS SEPTEM CATHOLICAS attest to the importance he placed on the New Testament Epistles. Indeed, the latter work begins with a comment about the Epistle of James that establishes a letter's ability to stand in for its author: “therefore, because he had been ordained an apostle for the circumcised, he took care both to teach those present from among the circumcised by speaking to them and also to encourage, instruct, rebuke, and correct the absent by letter” (trans. Hurst 1985 p 7).