Beschreibung:
<jats:p><jats:italic>The reform of the Northumbrian Church constitutes a predominant theme in much that Bede wrote in his later years. Recent analyses of his later biblical commentaries have confirmed this, although a tendency remains to treat his historiographic masterpiece, the</jats:italic>Ecclesiastical history of the English people, <jats:italic>completed in</jats:italic> c. <jats:italic>731, as only aloofly reformist in outlook. This article contests such a view through an analysis of the narrative and characters of book <jats:sc>iv</jats:sc>, which when scrutinised can be seen to amplify some of the key reform-oriented issues voiced in Bede's last and most openly reformist work, the</jats:italic>Letter to Egbert.</jats:p>