De Excidio Research Articles

Le mythe de Troie en Irlande au Moyen Âge:Togail Troíet ses recensions

Even though the Irish did not claim to descend from the Trojans, they became so passionate about the Trojan War that Dares' De excidio Troiae was translated and adapted into Irish under the title Togail Troi probably as early as the eleventh century, long before the other vernacular translations. This translation-adaptation was so successful in Ireland that it was rewritten and amplified several times. Thus, at least three prose versions preserved in a total of eight manuscripts dating from the mid-twelfth to the sixteenth century and an adaptation in verse have survived. After a short presentation of the eight manuscripts containing the various versions of the Irish translation and adaptation of Dares' text and a recapitulation of the main results of previous work, the article analyzes which are the possible Latin sources of the initial genealogical and mythological presentation added by the Irish adapter in the Book of Leinster version, the oldest of the eight manuscripts.

Sur les traces de Darès le Phrygien dans l'Occident médiéval

This paper surveys the medieval dissemination of De Excidio Troiae, written by Pseudo-Dares Phrygius, in an attempt to identify some of the reasons for its success. The first section introduces this text, an alleged eye-witness account of the Trojan War. In the second part, the history of the manuscript tradition is presented, paying attention to the places where this text was copied. The reception of this work can be divided into three stages: first, before the Norman Conquest of England, Dares was diffused in the regions where the Carolingian Renaissance flourished. During the 12th and 13th centuries, Dares was present mainly in France and England. During the late Middle Ages, the De Excidio Troiae was criticized by Italian humanists, but this criticism did not prevent the dissemination of this work in contemporary Italy and Germany. The history of the manuscript tradition allows us to put forward a hypothesis: beyond its inherent qualities, the historia benefited from the ambiguity of its status and the multi-layered stratification of the sources about the Trojan War.

Rethinking Ethnicity and ›Otherness‹ in Early Anglo-Saxon England

This article considers a recent critical problematisation of the discussion of ›Otherness‹ in Merovingian archaeology, and extends this problematisation to the early mortuary archaeology of post-Roman/early Anglo-Saxon England. The article first examines the literary goals of Gildas’ De Excidio et Conquestu Britanniae, and especially its representation of military activity, to reject popular arguments that Gildas’ conceptual framework described the emergence of an authentic, ›post-colonial‹ British ethnic consciousness that was grounded in a conscious rejection of Romanness and separation from a ›Germanic‹, barbarian other. The article then examines the early Anglo-Saxon cemetery of Wasperton, Warwickshire, and rejects previous interpretations of the site, which argue that its inhabitants expressed in burial the ideological demarcation of Romanness from a Germanic ›Other‹. Drawing upon the distinctions made by Gildas between legitimate and illegitimate military authority and the clear use of symbols of military ideology present at the site, the article suggests that such sites instead offer evidence for the material expression of a new military ideology which, though deviant from the normative expectations of civic Romanness, was primarily drawn upon by the inhabitants of early Anglo-Saxon England to make appeals for the inclusion of the deceased as key members of their communities.

Words, Meanings, and Readings: Reconstructing the Use of Gildas's De excidio Britanniae at the Canterbury School

This article investigates the manner in which Gildas’s De excidio Britanniae was being read at the Canterbury school of Theodore and Hadrian in the seventh century. Beginning with a discussion of the historical milieu of the Canterbury school, the textual history of the De excidio, and the evidence of the text’s presence at this center, this article examines the glossae collectae preserved in the Leiden Glossary that have been identified as Gildasian in an effort to gain insight into the intellectual and cultural concerns of the Anglo-Saxon scholars working there. This study argues that Gildas’s text was likely used within a pedagogical context in support of the reform agenda undertaken by Theodore and that the glossae collectae in Leiden appear to be the result of multiple independent systematic readings of the text.

El Liber Regum y la materia de Troya

This article offers a new evaluation of the textual tradition of the Libro de las generaciones y linajes de los reyes (or Liber regum) and specially the section devoted to Trojan history. Among the versions of this work, only the so-called Libro de las generaciones (c. 1256) was known to have this section. Here, it is presented a complete witness of a previous version, produced in Toledo (c. 1220), which contains also this part. It is argued that in fact the Trojan narrative was already present in the original Libro de las generaciones y linajes de los reyes (c. 1205), so this would be the first vernacular narrative on Troy written in the Iberian peninsula. The second part of the article is devoted to a version of the Libro de las generaciones y linajes de los reyes preserved in an incomplete manuscript, which contains an expanded narrative of the Trojan section. It is based on the De excidio Troiae and it is connected to a particular branch of the textual tradition. Arguments on its date and location are...

6 Ezra and The Apocalypse of Thomas. With a previously unedited “interpolated” text of Thomas

The earliest previously known quotations from 6 Ezra are in the De excidio Britanniae by the British writer Gildas, who was writing probably between 530 and 545. Hitherto unrecognized quotations occur, however, in the Longer (“Interpolated”) Version of The Apocalypse of Thomas, which dates from the second half of the fifth century. A series of “woe oracles” added in the Longer Version freely adapts a sequence of verses from 6 Ezra and bears witness to a stage of transmission of 6 Ezra prior to the traditional division into two recensions (the so-called “French” and “Spanish” recensions). One of the oracles that borrows wording from 6 Ezra - a warning that those who marry in the endtimes will beget children into captivity and famine - has sometimes been regarded as reflecting Priscillianist encratism, but is instead a traditional prophetic element. An appendix to this article provides a semi-diplomatic edition of a recently discovered Longer Version of Thomas in an eighth-century Kassel manuscript.

Gildas and the ‘grievous divorce from the barbarians’

This article examines a specific phrase from Chapter 10 of Gildas's De Excidio Britonum. It suggests that to date, this phrase (lugubre divortium barbarorum) has not been properly understood or translated. In a new interpretation, the article argues that it refers to the breaking of the treaty between the Britons and Saxons mentioned in Chapter 23 of De Excidio Britonum. This new interpretation expands our understanding of Gildas's attitude towards barbarians and the British church.

Gildas and his prophecy for Britain

In his De excidio Britanniae, Gildas systematically set out to admonish the morally corrupt secular and church leaders of partitioned fifth- or sixth-century Britain, calling for repentance, unity, and obedience to God's law in order to restore his beloved patria. Examining Gildas' use of rhetorical and biblical legitimations, this paper will argue that his warning of divine judgement for sin was inspired by a scriptural revelation that directly equated partitioned Britain with a divided biblical Israel just prior to the fall of Judah and Jerusalem to the Babylonians. In doing so, Gildas, drawing on both Jeremiah, prophet to the nations, and Paul, apostle to the nations, strikingly claimed prophecy. It will be argued that Gildas' unique prophecy for Britain, built on respect for romanitas, fear of de praesenti iudicio, and a singular providential claim to the inheritance of Israel, defined the political power of his natio not by gens but by obedience to God's law. In doing so, Gildas appears to draw on cultural, literary, and religious themes more appropriate to the late-fifth century than the mid-sixth century.

Authenticity, Antiquity, and Authority: Dares Phrygius in Early Modern Europe

Authenticity, Antiquity, and Authority: Dares Phrygius in Early Modern Europe Frederic Clark Dares Phrygius, “First Pagan Historiographer” In his Etymologies, Isidore of Seville—the seventh-century compiler whose cataloguing of classical erudition helped lay the groundwork for medieval and early modern encyclopedism—offered a seemingly straightforward definition of historiography, with clear antecedents in Cicero, Quintilian, and Servius.1 Before identifying historical writing as a component of the grammatical arts, and distinguishing histories from poetic fables, Isidore confirmed that “history is a narration of deeds [narratio rei gestae], through which things done in the past are discerned.”2 Thereafter, he equated historical writing with eyewitness observation, insisting that “among the [End Page 183] ancients, no one wrote history unless he had been present and seen those things to be recorded.”3 But Isidore’s further treatment of historiography grew more perplexing. Upon affirming that “among us, Moses first composed a history, on the beginning of the world,” he unexpectedly declared that “among the pagans, Dares Phrygius first composed a history, concerning Greeks and Trojans.”4 Only later did the encyclopedist mention more well-known Greek historians (to modern audiences at least) like Herodotus. 5 Isidore’s invocation of his “first pagan historiographer” referred most likely to the De excidio Troiae historia (henceforth DET), a fifth- or sixth-century Latin pseudo-history billed as an eyewitness account of the Trojan War. Conveyed in sparse, dry, and inelegant language, the DET was long thought to have been the war diary of one Dares Phrygius, purportedly a Trojan participant in the conflict.6 In reality, the Latin DET was a two-part forgery, as its spurious dedicatory epistle—supposedly from the Augustan-era biographer Cornelius Nepos to the historian Sallust—claimed that “Nepos” had discovered the work in an Athenian archive and rendered it “truly and simply” (vere et simpliciter) from Greek into Latin.7 While potentially derived from a Greek antecedent, perhaps composed as an anti-Homeric jeu d’esprit during the Second Sophistic, the Latin Dares was assuredly not an accurate and verbatim translation of any lost Greek original. 8 Notwithstanding its uncertain origins, Isidore’s pagan counterpart to Moses would go on to achieve canonical status in the medieval Latin West, and survives today in approximately 200 manuscripts. Moreover, Dares’s authority was extended through practices of compilation integral to medieval [End Page 184] textual culture.9 This compilatory impulse—which spawned countless multi-text anthologized codices and similarly animated Isidore’s encyclopedism—encouraged the Phrygian’s codicological pairing with numerous sources both ancient and medieval. Not only did the DET serve, codicologically, as a prologue to Trojan origin narratives like Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia regum Britanniae, but it was also integrated into the structure of universal history, utilized as a means of augmenting the Chronicon of Eusebius-Jerome.10 Throughout the Middle Ages, Dares served not only as a name to invoke, but also as a source to appropriate and rework: to insert into universal chronicles, append to Trojan genealogies, or render into epic verse. Moreover, the pseudo-author’s status as “first pagan historiographer” was hardly lost on medieval sources: for instance, when William of Malmesbury inserted the DET into his anthology of ancient Roman histories, he made sure to include Isidore’s endorsement directly before the text’s incipit.11 For nearly a millennium, Dares’s fabricated claims of antiquity and autopsy constituted airtight guarantors of textual auctoritas. Between Criticism and Credulity: Dares in Early Modern Scholarship But Dares did not remain undisturbed in the canon. Instead, the DET saw its first recorded challenge with the advent of the early Renaissance. Writing in 1400 in his De tyranno, the Florentine Chancellor Coluccio Salutati turned to the Phrygian when debating a favored subject of nascent Italian humanism—the history of early Rome. Here Salutati sought to counter the long-held claim, attested in the DET, that Aeneas was not a pious hero driven from Troy, but rather a duplicitous traitor who had himself betrayed the city to the Greeks.12 The Florentine Chancellor correctly acknowledged that Aeneas’s treason was alleged by “the most ancient historians Dares [End Page 185] Phrygius and Dictys Cretensis” (Dictys, another late antique...

Gildas’s De excidio Britonum and the Early British Church

Gildas’s De excidio Britonum and the Early British Church

Gildas's De Excidio Britonum and the Early British Church (review)

Gildas's De Excidio Britonum and the Early British Church (review)

Gildas and the Mystery Cloud of 536-7

The De Excidio Britonum by Gildas is conventionally dated to the second quarter of the sixth century. An apparent allusion at DEB 93.3 to the mysterious doud which obscured the sun and moon for a year or more in Europe in 536―7 suggests that he probably wrote in 536, while the occurrence of such a phenomenon may well explain what finally drove him to publish such a fierce call to repentance.

Reading the “First Pagan Historiographer”: Dares Phrygius and Medieval Genealogy

This article traces the medieval reception and transmission of pseudo-Dares Phrygius’s De excidio troiae historia, a late antique forgery long regarded as an eyewitness account of the Trojan War. By examining selected manuscripts of the De excidio, copied at the height of the text’s influence in twelfth-through fourteenth-century England, it considers the importance of codicological context in gauging the uses of spurious “ancient” materials in the Middle Ages. In particular, it examines how Dares served as a prologue to genealogical accounts of the “origins of peoples” or origines gentium, which chronicled the supposed Trojan antecedents of Franks, Britons, and other medieval gentes. Such codices speak to the varieties of classical historiography which flourished in the high and late medieval world, while highlighting how compilatory strategies fused hitherto disparate texts and traditions. Accordingly, this study explores how medieval genealogy repeatedly refashioned the classical tradition, both challenging and reaffirming its authority.

Gildas's De Excidio Britonum and the Early British Church. By KAREN GEORGE.

Gildas's De Excidio Britonum and the Early British Church. By KAREN GEORGE.

Arthur’s Battles

Arthur’s Battles P.J.C. Field (bio) A handful of early documents bearing on the question of Arthur’s existence look like serious efforts to preserve historical information. If read properly, they can, among other things, answer the question of whether or not Arthur really existed. (PJCF) ‘It is the mark of an educated mind to expect the amount of exactness in each kind that the nature of the particular subject admits. It is equally unreasonable to accept merely probable conclusions from a mathematician and to demand strict demonstration from an orator.’ Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics 1.3 It has been said that although there may have been an historical Arthur, historians can say nothing of value about him.1 That is not true. The problem is with Arthur’s existence.2 If he existed, he will not have been a bishop, a Saxon, a cripple, a peasant, or a nun. He will have been the outstandingly successful British military commander in an eight-hundred-year-long war in which nearly all British commanders were losers, and it would be hard not to attribute to him the outstanding British military victory that we know of in the period: the Battle of Badon.3 That would be something worthwhile for an historian to say. If anything at all can be discovered about a man who may have been the most successful military commander of his day, it is likely to be about his battles. Although they have been much discussed,4 I suggest that there may be discoveries still to be made in the handful of documents that appear to tell us something about them. (Those passages are given in an appendix at the end of this essay.) My first contention will be that three of those documents taken together can answer the most disputed question of all, that of Arthur’s existence. The earliest of these documents is Gildas’s De excidio Britanniae (‘The Ruin of Britain’), a sermon denouncing the vices of its age.5 It begins by summarizing the history of Britain from the Roman conquest until Gildas’s [End Page 3] own time. This summary must be as accurate as Gildas was able to make it. Only if he told his audience the truth about mundane matters of which they had direct knowledge would they have believed him on the subject he really cared about—The Wrath to Come. His little history is wildly inaccurate for earlier times. He puts the building of Hadrian’s Wall and the Antonine Wall (a.d. 122–26 and 142 respectively), for instance, in the wrong order, and both after the usurpation of Magnus Maximus (a.d. 383).6 That tells us a good deal about the quality of historical information available when Gildas wrote. Nevertheless, we must believe him when he speaks about events members of his audience would have known about, and what he says about what later authors were to call Arthur’s greatest victory is such an event: he says that it happened in the year of his birth.7 It is the Battle of Badon, which Gildas calls more precisely the siege of Mount Badon (or Badon Hill). The siege of a hill might be surprising, because hills usually have water-supply problems, but as it happens there is evidence that hill-top sites were being fortified and re-fortified in Britain and on the continental mainland in this period.8 The battle was plainly a decisive engagement: Gildas says that the Saxon attacks had not been renewed when he wrote, forty-three years and one month later. The decisiveness is also attested by Gildas’s calling it a strages, a ‘slaughter.’9 The two factors together suggest massive Saxon casualties. It is hard to go beyond this. It is usually assumed that Gildas wrote about a.d. 540; if so, the battle was fought about a.d. 497 (give or take perhaps ten years in both cases).10 Gildas does not tell us where Badon is, and no combination of history and place-name studies has been able to locate it. Like many places in modern Britain, it may have an Anglo-Saxon name now...

Imtheachta Aeniasa: Virgil's "Aeneid" in Medieval Ireland

Some time during the Middle Ages, perhaps in the twelfth century or slightly earlier, an Irish scholar set out to translate Virgil's Aeneid into his native tongue ? according to Stanford (1970: 37) this is the earliest vernacular translation in existence. The Irish redactor was probably motivated by the Aeneid's importance as a text book of the medieval schools and by a desire to integrate the Roman origin legend ? a popular genre in medieval Irish textual culture ? into a growing body of texts in Irish about significant events in classical antiquity, such as Togail Troi, the Irish version of De Excidio Troiae Historia attributed to Dares, or the compilation about the life and deeds of Alexander. The Latin Aeneid was well-known in Ireland from the early Middle Ages onwards, probably in a combination of text and commentary (Hoftnan 1988). The project of the Irish translator of the Aeneid was strikingly different from that of a modern translator, of Virgil or of any other author: Whereas the modern translator will

King Arthur: Myth-Making and History by N.J. Higham (review)

REVIEWS117 The next three chapters form the real core of Higham's study. Chapter II, 'The Genesis ofArthur,' examines the political and ideological context of'Britishness' in the centuries immediately following the Roman withdrawal from Britain. This chapter deals with both Gildas's text and the possible historic origins of Arthur. Chapter III, 'Contested Histories: Anglo-Saxons and Britons c. 730-830,' likewise examines Bede's Historia Ecclesiastica and the Historia Brittonum, noting how their portrayals of fifth- and sixth- century Britain (and Britons) are conditioned by the immediate political contexts of their composition. Chapter IV, 'Text in Context: TheAnnaUs Cambriaec. 954,' applies this approach in the tenth century and usefully compares the historical treatment of Arthur with the references to him in Welsh heroic poetry. The discussions ofall three chapters are detailed and wide-ranging, as Higham brings historical, archeological, and textual evidence to bear in his analyses of his central texts. Though one might quibble with details of the argument (I'm not sure I hear, with his certainty, all the echoes of borrowed language Higham hears between his central texts), his notion that Gildas's De Excidio, the Historia Brittonum, and the AnnaUs Cambriae are modelled on or influenced by biblical narrative, and that, for example, parallels between Arthur and Joshua may well account for the title dux belbrum, as well as other details, is well argued and generally convincing. By insisting on viewing these early texts as rhetorical expressions with particular social and political concerns, Higham minimizes their worth as sources for historical information concerning Arthur. Chapter V, 'The Rise and Fall of the "Historical" Arthur,' studies the cultural uses of the historical Arthur beginning with Geoffrey of Monmouth and on into the twentieth century. This useful chapter nicely complements the opening one and rounds out Higham's study. The final chapter, Chapter VI, 'Postscript: The Rhetorical Arthur,' is really one final conclusion, summarizing the main points of Higham's book-long argument. The book is well constructed; each chapter is divided into clearly titled and demarcated sub-sections, and each chapter has a brief conclusion which summarizes its argument. The discussion is handsomely advanced by 39 maps, diagrams, and photographs, and supported with an extensive bibliography and index. All Arthurians should take an interest in this study; even those not specializing in the seventh to tenth centuries may take advantage of the layout ofthe book and the chapter conclusions to glean a good deal ofinsight into the evolution ofthe figure ofArthur. KEVIN T. GRIMM Oakland University n.J. higham, King Arthur: Myth-Making and History. London and New York: Routledge, 2002. Pp. xi, 303. isbn: 0-415-21305-3. $27.95 Around the year 1200 the eminent English historian William of Newburgh wrote Historia Rerum Anglicarum, in part at least to decry the 'wanton and shameless lying' of Geoffrey of Monmouth, perpetrated, claimed William, to provide the ignoble Britons with a noble—albeit fabricated—past. William has found a worthy successor in Nicholas Higham, whose latest book provides similar criticism to Il8ARTHURIANA Geoffrey's two most important Arthurian sources, the Historia Brittonum (c.830, hereafter HB ) and the AnnaUs Cambriae (c.950, hereafter AC). The Welsh authors ofthese works, claims Higham, 'historicized' Arthur (here a figure offolklore, not history) and invented his victories over the Saxons in order to counter the Britons' proverbial reputation for cowardice and duplicity. Like William's Historia, Higham's book is a thorough and blistering attack on popular assumptions about Arthur and Arthurian writers. Higham's study begins with a survey ofthe historiography ofthe historical Arthur debate, from the mid-nineteenth century to the present. Higham covers all of the major scholarly works, gives the reader a glimpse at some of the many popular 'historical Arthur' theories in current circulation, and rightly criticizes 'academic skeptics' for not engaging the 'laity' in this debate (pp. 3 and 35). But the heart of this new study, chapters two through four, concentrate on what Higham calls 'contested histories,' namely Gildas, Bede, the Historia Brittonum, and the AnnaUs Cambriae. According to Higham, Gildas and Bede set up the framework of fifth/ sixth century British history, as well as the notion that God punished the...

An interpolation in the text of Gildas’s De excidio Britanniae

Following rigorous debate in the mid twentieth century the essential integrity of De excidio Britanniae, attributed to Gildas, was established. This paper seeks to suggest that one short, but nevertheless significant, passage may indeed be an interpolation. Possibly originating as a gloss in the period c.672–747 this passage, dealing with the prophecy relating to the floruit of Saxon power in Britain, has been hitherto regarded as integral to the text.

"Sur les traces d'un 'éditeur' médiéval. À propos d'une famille anglaise ou galloise des manuscrits de Darès Ie Phrygien"

The De excidio Troiae, written at the end of the fifth or at the beginning of the sixth century attributed to Dares Phrygius, was widely diffused during the Middle Ages. Many variant versions exist -a very interesting example is provided by an English or Welsh family of the text.

St. Alban and the End of Roman Britain

The following is the first of a series of articles seeking to explain the sub-Roman cult of St. Alban in terms of the syncretic adapatation of pagan traditions, associated both with 'Albion' as the earliest recorded name for Britain and divine names in 'Albio- or 'Alb-' from a broad swathe of the Indo-European languages. It suggests the cult was in some sense a response to political pressures, associated both with the aspirations of Verulamium to a pan-British dominance, and, allied to that, the fostering of a pan-British identity. As well as antecedents from the Indo-European tradition, derivatives of our cult-figure are identified in the medieval Celtic tradition (especially 'Elen of the hosts', Part II), suggestive of a likely role for the cult in the sub-Roman period as a focus for unity amongst the Britons in their struggles with invaders. In Part III, parallel cults (especially St. Alban of Mainz) from the continent are explored while part IV seeks to analyse the etymon 'albho-' in terms of 'al= plus '-bho ', thus helping to explain the conflation in an early medieval cult context of 'elv-' from 'albio-' with 'el= from 'al-. On this basis saints and heroes in 'Ei ' are interpreted as derivative, or at least influenced by, the cult of St. Alban and its likely role in the sub-Roman period (Part V). Part VI examines the implications of this hypothesis about the cult for sub-Roman history, together with other evidence for the achievement of, or aspirations towards, some degree of political unity by the Britons of that period. Part 1 The Sub-Roman Cult of St. Alban The cult of St. Alban is the earliest recorded cult of a Christian saint in Britain, and he is one out of only three recorded British martyrs from the Roman era. His martyrdom would seem to constitute one of the very few facts that we have about Christianity in Britain during the Roman period, while the existence of his cult is one of the few things we know about Christianity - or anything else -in Britain of the immediately post-Roman period. The earliest record of his cult comes from Constantius's Life (Levison 1920) of St. Germanus of about 480, but this suggests the cult was well established, by at least 429. The earliest native record comes in the De Excidio of Gildas (Winterbottom 1978) from probably the second quarter of the sixth century while the earliest Passio from Gaul seems to date back to the early sixth century (Meyer 1904). Arguably, the one most significant fact that we have about this cult is that it was associated with the city of Verulamium, (on the edge of the modern St. Albans). Gildas is the first to supply us with this information directly but the Continental Passios seem to show knowledge of local Verulamium topography (Levison 1941: 347) and so reinforce the martyr's link with this place. It is this fact, anyway, that we will focus on here. The way that the cult of St. Alban figures so uniquely in our early sources is clearly not fortuitous but reflects the importance of the cult at the time. We might ask whether the association of such a cult with the city of Verulamium is likely to have been rather less than purely fortuitous, also. The old 'capital' of the province, or vicariate, of 'Britannia' was, of course, London, and it might not be unreasonable to expect something of that status to have been carried over into the immediate 'post-Roman' period. However there are quite good reasons why London might have lost its dominance subsequent to the Roman withdrawal, too. London had originally been highly dependant for its importance and success on trade and other links with the continental Empire, although as these declined during the later Roman period it will probably have become more and more dependant on the actual presence of the Roman military and administrative elite. Obviously the latter will have disappeared in 409 while there is not likely to have been very much of the former, subsequent to that date, either. …