"[H]e, more than anyone else, inspired the idea of the English as one people, called into existence by the special favour of God... It was Bede who gave "Englishness" a manifesto of unique grace and power... Bede's Ecclesiastical History had some of the role in defining English national identity and English national destiny that the narrative books of the Old Testament had for Israel itself, or Homer for the Greeks, or Virgil (rather than Livy) for the Romans."