Returning to the Britains: Exploring Irish identity in the fifth, sixth, and seventh centuries

In his Church History of the English People, Bede made a unique space for Ireland, along with Britain, as a Biblical Eden. Further, his establishment of the Scotti as a Chosen
People among the chosen peoples of the island of Britain established the concept of a Greater Britannia. Whilst Bede refers descriptions of the fifth and sixth centuries to the
‘doleful’ historian Gildas and his narrative of political and ecclesiastical fragmentation, this paper looks at the profound ecclesiastical connections between Ireland and Britain in this period. It proposes that the question of a specifically Irish identity, as independent from an overarching British identity, was not forged until the seventh century.