GILDAS: The Ruin of Britain and other works PDF
Preview GILDAS: The Ruin of Britain and other works
ABOUT THIS BOOK... GILDAS is by far the most important source we possess for the most obscure and extraordinary period in our history. In A.D. 410, the Roman Emperor had told Britain that the legions could no longer defend her and for the next two centuries the British struggled to maintain themselves in the face of the Saxon immigrations and insurrections. Though not primarily intended as a history, Gildas, a British monk, wrote The Ruin of Britain in about 540 and it remains the most vital record to have survived for this period; indeed, the only work that outlines a connected narrative of 5th- century British history. The only previous translation of the book has long been out of print and the extreme difficulty of the Latin, as well as current prices, make the original inaccessible to most students and their teachers. The present volume provides both a new translation, that benefits greatly from the latest post-classical Latin scholarship, and also a revised Latin text. Dr. Morris, the General Editor, has provided a Historical Introduction and Notes that clarify the historical background to Gildas’ narrative and catalogue of disasters. Readers familiar with John Morris’s The Age of Arthur (published in this series) will be aware both of the significance of Gildas as a source for that work and of its author’s competence to set Gildas in context. Whether it is regarded simply as a unique 6th-century British work, more a sermon than a history, or as a primary and unequalled historical source, if one to be interpreted with caution, for that dark period that followed the fall of Rome, there can be no doubt of the value to students and, indeed, the general reader, of this new inexpensive edition in both English and Latin. The book is surprisingly easy to read and may well be seen to have relevance to contemporary problems. GILDAS The Ruin of Britain and other works History from the Sources GILDAS The Ruin of Britain and other works edited and translated by MICHAEL WINTERBOTTOM Mistory from the Sources General Editor: John Morris PHILLIMORE 1978 Published by PHILLIMORE & CO. LTD. London and Chichester Head Office: Shopwyke Hall, Chichester, Sussex, England © Text and translation: Michael Winterbottom, 1978 History from the Sources series: Mrs. Susan Morris, 1978 ISBN 0 85033 295 8 (case) ISBN 0 85033 296 6 (limp) Printed and Bound in Great Britain by Hartnolls Limited, Bodmin, Cornwall. CONTENTS page HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION PREFACE THE RUIN OF BRITAIN .. 13 1 Preface .. 13 2-26 The History of Britain 16 The Land of Britain (3) 16 Roman Britain (4) 17 Independent Britain (14) 21 The Coming of the Saxons (22) 25 The Victory at Badon Hill (25) 27 27-65 The Complaint: Kings 29 The Five Tyrants (28) 29 The Words of the Prophets (37) 36 66-110 The Complaint: Clergy 52 A Pattern for the Better Priest (69) .. 34 Denunciation of Corrupt Priests (76) 60 A Prayer for the Good Pastors (110) 79 FRAGMENTS OF LOST LETTERS OF GILDAS .. 80 APPENDIX: THE ‘PENITENTIAL OF GILDAS’ or MONASTIC RULE 83 DE EXCIDIO BRITONUM 87 EPISTULARUM GILDAE DEPERDITARUM FRAGMENTA 143 DE POENITENTIA .. 146 NOTES .. 148 INDEX OF BIBLICAL QUOTATIONS 156 VARIANTS FROM MOMMSEN’S TEXT 160 INDEX OF PROPER NAMES 161 HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION Gildas wrote his main work, the ‘Ruin of Britain’, about 540 A.D. or just before, when he was forty three years old (26.1). It is a fierce denunciation of the rulers and churchmen of his day, prefaced by a brief explanation of how these evils came to be. This preface is the only surviving narrative history of fifth century Britain. But it was not written as history. Gildas names in the fifth century only one person, one place, and one date, which he misplaced (20.1 note). Just enough is known to make his narrative intelligible, two key dates from contem- porary Europe, and isolated detail from other sources, chief among them a collection of historical documents assembled about 800 A.D., known by the name of Nennius. At the beginning of the fifth century Britain had been a Roman province for nearly 400 years, and for 200 years all freeborn Britons had been Roman citizens; there was no more contrast between ‘native’ and ‘Roman’ than there is to-day between ‘Yorkshireman’ and ‘English- man’. Society was dominated by a landed nobility, whose splendid country mansions, abundant in the southern lowlands, were built and furnished on a scale not matched again until the 18th century. The rents that sustained them were drawn from a vigorous agriculture and industry, whose output was distributed along an intricate road system. But in the highland regions of the south-west, of Wales and the North, there was little comparable prosperity; poorer farmers supported no wealthy gentry. Beyond the frontier, northern border kingdoms were still uneasy allies of Roman authority, and beyond the Clyde and Forth lived the hostile barbarian Picts, ready allies of the Scots, the late Roman name for the inhabitants of Ireland, who raided when they could, and had established a number of colonies on the western coasts of Britain. This sophisticated civilisation was destroyed long before Gildas was born. When he wrote, its realities were fast fading from men’s memor- ies; to Gildas, Romans were again foreigners, their empire a thing of the past. The Roman empire of the west was mortally wounded in 410, when the western Goths took Rome, though its ghost survived for two generations. The Goths obtained the right to settle in Roman territory under their own laws and rulers, with the status of federate allies, in 418. They were the first, but others soon followed, and when Gildas was young the western empire was divided between four Germanic kingdoms, in France, Spain, Italy and North Africa. Roman and German fused; German kings inherited the centralised authoritarian rule of Rome, and preserved the property and power of landlords. The British differed. In 410 the emperor in Italy instructed them to provide their own defence and government. At first they were outstandingly successful, and kept their society undamaged for a gener- ation. A strong sovereign emerged in the 420s (23.1 note) and survived for some 30 years. Later writers knew him by the name or title of Vortigern, which means ‘superior ruler’; Gildas’ word-play describes him as superbus tyrannus, proud tyrant. Invasion from Ireland and beyond the Forth, which had harassed previous Roman governments for centuries, was permanently ended; but to curb it he settled German federates. Romans, British and Irish called them Saxons, but in Britain they called themselves English; the two words mean the same people, in different languages. In or about 441 the English rebelled. Gildas (24 and notes) conden- ses nearly twenty years’ fighting, which ended with the destruction of a large part of the nobility of Britain, and the emigration of many of the survivors. The migration, to northern and central Gaul, is dated by contemporary Europeans (25.1 note) to 460, or a year or two before. At home, renewed resistance was begun under the leadership of Ambrosius Aurelianus (25.3 note) and continued, traditionally under the leadership of Arthur (26.3 note), for over thirty years until ‘the final victory of our fatherland’ (2.1), after the decisive battle at Badon Hill, probably near Bath (26.1 note), in the 490s. Gildas asserts that the victors maintained orderly government for a generation, but that in recent years power had passed to regional war- lords, whose mutual violence overrode law and convention and corrupt- ed the church. But the British had won the war. The English were beaten, though not expelled, and were confined to partitioned reserva- tions, chiefly in the east (10,2 note). Yet victory had come too late, at the cost of almost everything that the victors had striven to protect. Though Britain was ‘calm’ and ‘secure’, freed from ‘external wars’, Roman civilisation was destroyed. Industry and market agriculture perished as roads became unsafe; towns that lost their supplies became ‘ruinous and unkempt’; country mansions not built for defence were abandoned to wind and rain. After more than fifty years of war, peace could not revive a dead society. The skills of the builder, the potter, the tool-maker and other crafts were buried with old men who had trained no apprentices; more important, the rents and taxes that had paid for them could no longer be collected or paid. The war-lords could compel a self-sufficient agriculture to maintain their men and horses, but not to rebuild the past. They maintained their power throughout Gildas’ lifetime; but soon after his death the English rebelled again, and between 570 and 600 permanently subdued most of what is now England. But Gildas did not write in vain. On the contrary, few books have had a more immediate and far-reaching impact than his. He uttered what tens of thousands felt. His readers did not reform political society.
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