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Hatty
Site Admin
In: Berkshire
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Pulp History wrote (some time ago): | Does Bede specifically mention Gildas as his source? Or is it assumed from the fact that Gildas generally agrees with Bede but predates him, therefore Bede copied Gildas...... I doubt if he wrote up his sources in a bibliography..... |
Bede didn't name any of his sources apparently though it's claimed he relied on Gildas among others for early accounts:
| For the greater part of Book I (cc. 1-22), which forms the introduction to his real subject, he depends on earlier authors. Here he does not specify his sources, but indicates them generally as priorum scripta. These authors are mainly Pliny, Solinus, Orosius, Eutropius, and the British historian Gildas. |
The reporting of actually occurring events - was this a combined effort or an individual's personal viewpoint and/or shaky memory? As for "bibliography" or addenda, we will never know since there is no trace of the original; the earliest Bede MSS are said to date from the eighth century but discrepancies exist between them, including the oldest copies (the Moore Bede and the Leningrad/St. Petersburg, both of which are said to be based on an older, parent version). In other words, none of the multiple versions is in fact the original Bede and with each successive translation alterations were made.
The Alfredian OE translation is also supposed to be based on the original work albeit with several omissions but the 'editio princeps' of the Historia Ecclesiastica was printed in Strassbourg around 1475.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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| The reporting of actually occurring events - was this a combined effort or an individual's personal viewpoint and/or shaky memory? |
If you have a look at British history it would appear that the writer (and we should always remember that each piece of prose is the work of a single individual) is almost never an eye-witness of anything at all. He must have access to written records of some kind (though Welsh, Irish and even early Anglo-Saxon historians appear to have faith in Bardic monologues).
Bede, like Herodotus, gets on his bike to access "memories" (which need not necessarily mean eye-witness accounts) for recentish events but we don't really know much about their working methods for the earlier stuff. Is Geoffrey of Monmouth just making it up? Is he repeating things he heard at his mother's knee. After all, I could write a pretty decent History of Britain without ever having seen a single historical document in my life!
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Komorikid
In: Gold Coast, Australia
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Hatty wrote:
| Bede didn't name any of his sources apparently though it's claimed he relied on Gildas among others for early accounts: |
This is not strictly correct. Bede refers to Gildas at least twice in his works that I am aware of. Both are references to earlier events than those of Bede's time. Events he prefaces by saying that Gildas was aware of.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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It would be handy to have these two examples to help us evaluate whether they appear in the main body of the work (which is almost certainly genuine) or the various little add-ons (which may not be).
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Komorikid
In: Gold Coast, Australia
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One of the references is below:
BOOK I
CHAPTER XXII
THE BRITONS, BEING FOR A TIME DELIVERED FROM FOREIGN INVASIONS, WASTED THEMSELVES BY CIVIL WARS, AND THEN GAVE THEMSELVES UP TO MORE HEINOUS CRIMES
....Among other most wicked actions, not to be expressed, which their own historian, Gildas, mournfully takes notice of, they added this that they never preached the faith to the Saxons, or English, who dwelt amongst them; however, the goodness of God did not forsake his people whom He foreknew, but sent to the aforesaid nation much more worthy preachers, to bring it to the faith.
There is also this reference to Prosper of Aquitaine a contemporary of Gildas.
BOOK I
CHAPTER X
HOW, IN THE REIGN OF ARCADIUS, PELAGIUS, A BRITON, INSOLENTLY IMPUGNED THE GRACE OF GOD
...their folly was rather increased by contradiction, and they refused to embrace the truth; which Prosper of Aquitaine, the rhetorician, has beautifully expressed thus in heroic verse
I remember reading two references to Gildas in writings from Bede. I'll try to find the second one if I can. It isn't in Ecclesiastical History
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Komorikid
In: Gold Coast, Australia
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There are some rather incongruous descriptions in Gildas' writings:
The island of Britain, situated on almost the utmost border of the earth, towards the south and west
From whose perspective is Britain South and West?
Certainly not Rome or Constantinople.
It is surrounded by the ocean, which forms winding bays, and is strongly defended by this ample, and, if I may so call it, impassable barrier, save on the south side, where the narrow sea affords a passage to Baltic Gaul.
I didn't know Brittany was formerly called Baltic Gaul. It sounds to me like there were Normans in Normandy long before everyone assumes. By the time of Bede it was known as Belgic Gaul.
nor shall I enumerate those diabolical idols of my country, which almost surpassed in number those of Egypt, and of which we still see some mouldering away within or without the deserted temples
Why reference Egypt if the former pagan state of Britain was Roman?
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Komorikid
In: Gold Coast, Australia
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Oops!
I double checked the Baltic Gaul reference and it appears to be a typo in the Medieval Sourcebook edition. The actual Latin is:
GALLIAM BELGICAM
Which is Belgic Gaul.
Sorry about the mistake.
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DPCrisp
In: Bedfordshire
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| THE BRITONS... WASTED THEMSELVES BY CIVIL WARS... which their own historian, Gildas, mournfully takes notice of |
(I/we found before) Gildas was a Celt and "they, the Britons" are evidently the them to Bede's us. 'Course, "their historian" can only have been literate, which rules out the English in general and lends nothing to the 'Britons = general population before the Saxons' assumption, though orthodoxy will read it that way.
| they never preached the faith to the Saxons, or English, who dwelt amongst them; |
"The English who dwelt amongst the Britons"? Sounds too good to be true, but I can't see any (direct) way to stop it being read as "the Saxons or Angles who dwelt amongst the British/English".
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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| I remember reading two references to Gildas in writings from Bede. I'll try to find the second one if I can. It isn't in Ecclesiastical History |
You are clearly implying that there is but one reference in the entirety of Bede's Ecclesiastical History. Which given that Gildas is Bede's single authority for several hundred years of that history is a quite impossible situation.
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DPCrisp
In: Bedfordshire
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Why? If he'd said "the whole of Volume 1 is based on Gildas", he'd only have mentioned him once.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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Good point, if that's what Bede said. But according to Komori, he's mentioned strictly as a throwaway viz
| Among other most wicked actions, not to be expressed, which their own historian, Gildas, mournfully takes notice of, they added... | |
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DPCrisp
In: Bedfordshire
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Hatty quoted: "Here he does not specify his sources, but indicates them generally as priorum scripta"; which sounds more like "I got some of this stuff from Pliny and Gildas..." than "he said... she said..."
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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For those of you saps who supposed that Gildas never existed, the noble Laurence Gardner in The Grail Enigma informs us that there were three:
Gildas I Albanius
Gildas II Sapiens
Gildas III Badonicus
Get burrowing!
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Ishmael
In: Toronto
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| Mick Harper wrote: | Gildas I Albanius
Gildas II Sapiens
Gildas III Badonicus
Get burrowing! |
I wonder what Fomenko has to say about this. What are the dates for these fellers?
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Regarding The Waste Land (of the Matter of Britain): Is it real? What's it about?
I apologize for just dumping this Topic in, but the 'Gildas' thread seems more courteous than invoking a New Topic.
In the Arthurian tales, there are recurring references to The Waste Land (also to the Fisher King).
And Gildas speaks of the Yellow Pestilence, the Vad Velen, which, by the description, appears to have been toxic atmosphere that poisoned all creatures which breathed it. (The wise-and-lucky skedaddled to Brittany (Armorica) until the air cleared.)
I've not yet perused (translations of) the chronicles on this matter, but, if such happened, I suspect there'd be mentions. (And for decades I've intended to go back into the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles etc, to see when they say 'Dragons were very bad this year.')
Mike Baillie, a noted dendrochronologist, thinks he can partially answer this question: To wit: (*) An extraterrestrial object impacted or broke up, in c.536 (and affected all the tree-rings on record, for Ireland, and indeed all NW Europe--they got Very Bad Weather, lasting for more than just a few years); (*) Part of it, or all of it, hit/glanced over The Isles (you-all); (*) It perhaps-splashed down in the Irish Sea, rather than on land; (*) It caused havoc. (*) Not just because of the physical effects of an impact (or even a near-miss air-burst), which could have been substantial, depending on the impactor's mass and other factors, BUT because comets, in particular, are laced with aromatic hydrocarbons and other nasty matter, which can be extremely lethal in atmospheric suspension. (An ugly form of panspermia.)
(Mike Baillie, a very respected dendrochronolist at the University of Belfast, UK, has written several books well worth a look: 'From Exodus to Arthur', and 'New Light on the Black Death'. He's an academic heavy, and of course recognizes the preferment dangers if he wanders off the reservation. I attend to him when he proposes theories and reconstructions: he does his homework, and is scrupulous.)
SO, I proffer several questions to youall, especially the Brits: (*) Do you have any info on the veracity of The Waste Land? (*) Have you ever run across evidence (literary or forensic or deduced) for a plague induced by 'bad air' in the 'Arthurian' times? Are Gildas and the other guys recording something medical? (*) Have any possible impact sites of extraterrestrial origin turned up in the Isles, for the English 'Dark Ages'? (Say, AD 408--800.) (And just pretend the conventional chronology is essentially correct, for this part of the thread.)
(OR, if you think The Waste Land is just a literary trope (and so think the forgoing is based on bogus assumptions), do you also reject King Arthur as some kind of historical fact?
(And, if you've accepted Fomenko and gone yet further, what would you say as an answer? -- My library has loaned me his first 2 books, but I've only begun to examine them, and then mainly only because Ishmael says the man's premises have a transforming effect on him--tho' one which has hurt his historian's happiness; so perhaps the correct adjective would be 'malforming'.)
I ask these questions because in Wisconsin we get hot new British archaeological news kinda late, when the souffle is already becoming yesterday's treat; and because you Brits probably have friends who hear heretical stuff (just as I do for the Upper Midwest) which can take a decade to become generally cited.
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