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Gildas (British History)
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Mick Harper
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As the story goes, Loth lived in the area around 518 B.C.

So how can his grandson be St Mungo, a Christian figure?

His travels took him to the west where he set up a monastery in the small village of Cathures, which was later to become Glasgow.

Alles klaar. This is an Edinburgh forgery showing how 'Lothian' is senior to Glasgow.
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Jorn



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Mick Harper wrote:
As the story goes, Loth lived in the area around 518 B.C.

So how can his grandson be St Mungo, a Christian figure?

If the grandson of Law was the holy monk, was the father named troth or something similar?

I looked it up:

Gawain has no friends but his horse and talks to no one but God.


Gawain = Godwin = Gods friend.

Win = personal friend
Friend = friend of the kin, allies

If it follows ON, Wins are won and friends are inherited, so Godwin is not perhaps equal to Godfrey.
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Mick Harper
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I am presently making the case that Gildas is a Norman forgery, so it is interesting to see what orthodoxy thinks of Gildas' authenticity overall. Here are some standard comments [with mine in square brackets underlined] Taken from this site http://www.vortigernstudies.org.uk/artsou/gildas.htm

Forgery

It has been argued for a long time that the DEB [Gildas' main work De Excidio et Conquestu Britanniae] was not one single document, or even a forgery, mostly dating it to the seventh century. [This is typically bizarre: historians supposing that a seventh century forgery of a sixth century document is likely!]

As early as the later middle ages authors such as John Bale (1557) had separated the Historia from the Epistola, thinking that it must have been written by two different authors. James Ussher [Oh, no, not him again] took this up, and declared (1639) that there were two authors, one datable to the fifth century and the second to the sixth (above). Especially the nineteenth century gave rise to a new revisionism that sprang up in the wake of ‘modern’ Christian theological debate. Authors interpreted Gildas’ anti-Roman (Catholic) criticism as anachronistic or even protestant (!)

They're nearly there! They can see that nobody in the sixth century would be concerned with this kind of theological wrangling. More later.
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Mick Harper
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Peter Roberts (1811) found the DEB too critical of the Celts or the Celtic church to be authentic. He proposed that it was a deliberate forgery; propaganda written by a Latin author to encourage the English, not to dishearten the Welsh. Roberts did, however, think of it as a whole, and he discarded the printed version of Gale (1691), which separated the Historia from the Epistola between chapters 26 and 27, as he thought both were forged by the same man. He dated it to the seventh century on the grounds of resembling the work of Aldhelm of Malmesbury.

Thomas Wright (1842) agreed to this dating and the authorship of Aldhelm.

This is fascinating. We are being authoritatively told that the work is a forgery and yet these people (and all other modern historians of the British Dark Age) use it as "our only source for Britain at this time". Of course we AE-ists know why -- it's all they've got so if they discard it, what the hell are they going to teach! Imagine an art historian lecturing on Leonardo even though he believes all works attributed to Leonardo are later forgeries.

From our point of view, we can add Aldhelm of Malmesbury.to the list of works composed four hundred years later by the Normans.
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Mick Harper
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Alfred Anscombe (1893-5) raised the issue again of the unity of the text. Both the editions of Gale and Stevenson (1838) had separated the text in two parts, but still presented it as written by one author; Anscombe doubted this. He made a distinction between a St Gildas, who according to him wrote the Historia in 499, while the Epistola was written by an anonymous monk in Gwynedd in 655, on the grounds of supposed internal evidence.

Well, 'internal evidence' (supposed or otherwise) is all we have since the original doesn't exist. But, it seems, this internal evidence is so subjective that one person thinks some of it can be written one hundred and fifty years after another bit. Or not, as the case may be. But note also that we are asked by modern historians to rely on Gildas because he is a contemporary of the events he is describing. So how are we to treat material that was written at least 150 years later?
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Mick Harper
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Arthur W. Wade-Evans (1904-52) was a disciple of Anscombe . Wade-Evans dated the Epistola to 502 or earlier, and attributed it to Gildas Sapiens. The Historia, however, he dated to much later. He called it the Excidium Britanniae, or later the De excidio Britanniae, but he meant chapters 2-26, as did others before him. The author was supposedly unknown, but he later called this ‘anonymous’ Auctor Badonicus, or later Gildas Badonicus.

Wade-Evans found numerous anachronisms (at least he thought so), such as the migration into Wales, anointing of kings and some others. He also combined a passage about a prophecy about 150 years of raiding with that of the 44-years since the siege of Badon. Gildas wrote 150 + 43 (and one month) = 193 years after the Adventus Saxonum.

But when was that? Wade-Evans interpreted the ‘Siege of Badon’ as the battle mentioned in the Annales Cambriae under year 221 (A.D. 665): Bellum Badonis secundo. Morcant moritur. This ‘proved’ to wade-Evans that Gildas Badonicus had been writing in 708, 43 years after the battle of Badon in 665, and that the Adventus Saxonum had taken place in 514, which was, conveniently enough, the landing of Cerdic.

Wade-Evans later wrote that Gildas Badonicus had lived at Glastonbury
.

We're not exactly up against the cream of the crop.

Père Grosjean (1946-69) attributed the forgery of DEB first to Aldhelm of Malmesbury (7th-8th century), but later to the bishops Daniel of Winchester and Nothelm of Canterbury (8th century).

This is all very reminiscent of the 'dating of Beowulf' controversy that I came across earlier in my career. Back then I assumed that the confusion was because a lack of forensic-level evidence allowed subjectivity to flourish wholesale. Now I am inclined to believe that actual forgery, ie tracks being deliberately obfuscated, is the cause of this bran-tub approach -- otherwise peer-review would have enjoined a party-line by now.

Nobody is allowed to say, "We don't know." Why not, since that is acceptable by anybody's standards? Because the reason they don't know would expose the essential hollowness of their entire subject.

I will post up an insider's view of this situation later.
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Hatty
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This Wade-Evans also wades in re the dating of Armes Prydein Vawr, 'The Prophesy of Britain', described by Wiki as "an early 10th-century Welsh prophetic poem from the Book of Taliesin."

Arymes Prydein Vawr, a 200-line poem in the Book of Taliesin that Wade-Evans dates to the ninth century, may be the earliest surviving Welsh reference to the saint. It purports to predict the expulsion of the Saxons from Britain and mentions Dewi five times, as the ecclesiastical champion of the Welsh in this campaign.
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Mick Harper
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Dewi = David, who the Normans had chosen to be their Welsh Patron Saint. A very successful ploy since he still is. It might interest you to know that

Wade-Evans published many articles on the subject of early British history "on account of his sufferings as a ‘Kelt’ at the hands of the ‘Teutons’ as a young Welshman at Oxford". It never ceases to amaze me what bullying can lead to. The current academic feelings at Oxford at the time, that the Germans were the only productive race ever, and that England was more German than Germany, must have sourly wounded him as well.
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Mick Harper
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Conclusion

Today, the matter is still under discussion. Is DEB one text? Though it has been suggested that it consisted of two parts, the Historia (cc. 2-26) and the Epistola (cc. 1, 27-110), no conclusive arguments have proven that these were in fact written by two different authors. By AD 709, Aldhelm of Malmesbury knew both parts, while the Leyden Glossary (ca. 790-800) appears to be derived from a manuscript of the whole text. Though by far the most (if not all) historians accept the DEB as an authentic product of the sixth century, the possibility that some of the material (and most likely, if at all, from chapters 2-26) was interpolated at a later date, most probably during the seventh century, before Bede used it as a source. But the text shows no linguistical differences between both parts.

This is an excellent summation. Very measured. But now the commentator completely loses his bearings

If the DEB had been forged, however, the forger must have been diabolically clever; not only did he write in a perfect rhetorical Latin which was unusual for Gildas’ age, but he wrote an anti-English piece, even though he must have been English or pro-English himself! I feel this theory needs too many assumptions and should be rejected.

How is it diabolically clever to write perfect rhetorical Latin? It might be for Gildas -- as he points out -- but hardly for later bishops with presumably the best talent on hand. Unless nobody could write perfect rhetorical Latin in the British Dark Ages, in which case they must all be wrong!

This is perfect for us though since the Normans could indeed write perfect rhetorical Latin and were deliberately concocting an anti-English piece.
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aurelius



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Just a few additional points which appear in the more recent edition of the Dictionary of National Biography.

The author of the piece, Francois Kerlouegan, surmises

Gildas's Latin is unique, but most closely resembles that of Latin writers of late fifth-century Gaul like Ennodius of Pavia and Avitus of Vienne.


Bede called Gildas,

their [the Britons] own historian
(Bede, Hist. eccl. 1.22).

and Wiki adds,

Until about the year 418, Bede could choose between several historical sources and often followed the writings of Orosius. Following the end of Orosius' history, Bede apparently lacked other available sources and relied extensively on Gildas. Entries from this period tend to be close paraphrases of Gildas' account with mostly stylistic changes.


Gildas appears in the Irish martyrologies of c.800 and in the Anglo-Saxon calendars from the ninth century to the eleventh, in all of which his feast day is 29th January.

In a letter to Pope Gregory the Great written c.600, Columbanus refers to correspondence on points of monastic disclipine between Gildas and Uennianus.

A late ninth-century manuscript contains fragments from Gildas's letters, most of which were included in the Irish canon collection Collectio canonum Hibernensis, compiled c.700. Fragments 4 and 5 are parts of the letter to Finnian to which Columbanus refers.
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Mick Harper
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This sounds a formidable backstory but consider it more carefully

Bede called Gildas,

Bede is a forgery

Until about the year 418, Bede could choose between several historical sources and often followed the writings of Orosius. Following the end of Orosius' history, Bede apparently lacked other available sources and relied extensively on Gildas. Entries from this period tend to be close paraphrases of Gildas' account with mostly stylistic changes.

In other words, the people who wrote Bede's history were relying on Orosius (which we accept as genuine) then had nothing to go on because there was nothing. Rather strange that ... Gildas and only Gildas surviving. Shame.

Gildas appears in the Irish martyrologies of c.800 and in the Anglo-Saxon calendars from the ninth century to the eleventh, in all of which his feast day is 29th January.

These are forgeries. That Gildas sure gets about. He's in Ireland ... no, he's in England. He's on everybody's lips. For six hundred years no less. But only him.

In a letter to Pope Gregory the Great written c.600, Columbanus refers to correspondence on points of monastic disclipine between Gildas and Uennianus.

I will tell you about Papal sources in due time

A late ninth-century manuscript contains fragments from Gildas's letters, most of which were included in the Irish canon collection Collectio canonum Hibernensis, compiled c.700. Fragments 4 and 5 are parts of the letter to Finnian to which Columbanus refers.

These are forgeries. Don't you think that Gildas popping up all over the place in this form is suspicious. His letters survive but ... oh no, only in fragments. Shame.
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Mick Harper
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I realise this is a bit thin -- new theories always are to start with. So let us take a statistical approach and have a multiple-choice quiz to see whether you are up to speed:
Question 1: In the thousand years between 400 AD and 1400 AD how many realistic depictions of British persons were made? Is it a) none b) one c) not many d) quite a few. You'll probably know it's a) but if things had been a little different, it could have been c) or d). The only answer that would sound a false note is b). However b) is possible under the following conditions: the actual answer was c) but since c) would seem to pre-suppose that times were not conducive to the survival of art and 400 to 1400 is a long time ago, only one example has survived to come down to us.

Question two. In the years between 400 AD and 700 AD how many general history books about Britain were written? Was it a) none b) one c) not many d) quite a few. OK, it was b). However we have reason to believe that the times were not conducive to history book writing and therefore the true answer might well have been c) and since 400 - 700 is a very long time ago, it's not particularly surprising only Gildas has survived. Not quite. We know from Bede that Gildas was the only one to have survived and 400 - 700 AD is not a long time ago so far as Bede is concerned. In other words we can reasonably assume that Gildas is a genuine singularity, a true anomaly, very surprising. Though of course still possible.

Question Three:. how many general histories of Britain were written between 500 and 1100 AD? Is it a) none b) one c) not many d) quite a few. That's right, it was b) Bede. blah blah ... surprising, though of course still possible.

Do you remember what AE says about two unlikely events that are co-dependent? One is possible, the other is possible, but if they are co-dependent both are impossible. This is not strictly the case with Gildas and Bede but nearly so since a) Gildas's words are only known from later copies, it is the fact that Bede extensively paraphrases him that gives him authenticity and b) it is accepted that Bede relies wholly on Gildas's history for a large portion of his own history.

They don't quite fall together but this tale doesn't quite hang together either.
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Ishmael


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Mick Harper wrote:
They're nearly there! They can see that nobody in the sixth century would be concerned with this kind of theological wrangling. More later.


And that may prove that the document is in fact genuine. Forgers would avoid the anachronism. It is more likely then that this is a genuine, 16th century document, mis-dated to the 6th century.
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Ishmael


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AE says, "There are no special cases." According to this directive, any singular example is discounted out of hand. We are obligated to assume that both Gildas and Bede are forgeries, if indeed they are the only extant examples of their kind.
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Hatty
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Gildas doesn't seem to be a 'real' name, at any rate it never caught on so 'Gildas' might indicate a guild or trade. It is likely that forging would have been a group activity, just as orthodoxy says about manuscript copying.

A similar name, (St) Eremengild/ Hermenegild, suggests brotherhood [hermano means brother in Spanish], as, perhaps, does Willibrord ('g' substituted with 'w'), the 'Apostle of the Frisians'. Willibrord learnt his missionary trade in Ireland, in the Abbey of Rathmelsigi, which according to Wiki "was a centre of European learning in the 7th century" even though no-one knows where 'Rathmelsigi' is or was. In Bede's account the monks there were 'carried off by plague in 664'.

Willibrord's patron was(St) Irmina, or Iriminen, of Trier who in 698 donated lands to his abbey at Echternach, on the German-Luxembourg border, and famous for the Echternach Gospels, written in the 'Insular' manuscript. In fact the book is

Said to be written by the same scribe who wrote the Durham Gospels and thought to have been produced at Lindisfarne c. 690 but taken to Echternach Abbey in Luxembourg in the seventh century by Willibrord
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