Bede's Reputation as an Historian in Medieval England

Abstract

The Hand-List of Bede Manuscripts by M. L. W. Laistner and H. H. King is not definitive, since it is based partly on the evidence of catalogues and other printed material and not on the manuscripts themselves. However, it provides a useful rough guide. It lists approximately 160 surviving manuscripts of the Historia Ecdesiastica . Laistner constructed a table showing the percentage of the total number copied in each century: