There are in the island at present, following the number of the books in which the Divine Law was written, five languages of different nations employed in the study and confession of this knowledge, which is of highest truth and true sublimity: these languages are English, British, Scottish, Pictish, and Latin, the last having become common to all peoples by the study of the Scriptures. Britain, an island in the Atlantic, formerly called Albion, lies to the north-west, facing, though at a considerable distance, the coasts of Germany, France, and Spain, which form the greatest part of Europe. The following text was adapted by Michael Newton from the edition of Sellar, Bede’s Ecclesiastical History. Bede built on Gildas’s condemnation of British chieftains, depicting the Angli as God’s new chosen people whose invasion into Britain served as punishment for the sins of the Britons.86 Bede thus acts as a strong advocate on behalf of the English and their interests. Bede mentions all of the major ethnic groups then in Britain: Britons, Picts, Gaels, and Anglo-Saxons (whom he lumps together as Angli, thus facilitating a unified identity) and draws upon a wide variety of sources and traditions. He is now often considered the father of English history for his book Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum “Ecclesiastical History of the English People,” which he finished in 731. Bede (673-735) was an Anglo-Saxon monk based in Northumbria.
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