Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Stephen Joyce
Monash University
Abstract
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.
Introduction
One of the few surviving texts from ‘Dark Age’ Britain is the De excidio
Britanniae by Gildas.1 Variously dated from the last quarter of the fifth
century to the second quarter of the sixth century, the text contains
a fierce denunciation of the sins of contemporary rulers and churchmen.2
An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Australian and New Zealand
Association for Medieval and Early Modern Studies conference in February 2013, and
draws heavily from chapter one of my dissertation. See S. Joyce, “Rome Burns Brightly
Still: Contextualising Gildas’s de excidio Britanniae” (Masters diss., Monash, 2013). I would
like to thank Prof. Constant Mews, Dr Rina Lahev, and Sara Amos for reading a draft of
this paper. Any errors are, of course, my own.
1 M. Winterbottom (ed. and trans.), Gildas: The Ruin of Britain and Other Works, History from
the Sources, Arthurian Period Sources, vol. 7 (Chichester: Phillimore, 1978). For brevity,
this paper will concentrate on book 1 (chapters 2–26).
2 C. Snyder, The Britons (Oxford: Blackwell, 2003), 123, notes various scholastic positions on
the dating of De excidio in a useful table: D.N. Dumville, “Gildas and Maelgwn: Problems
of Dating,” in M. Lapidge and D.N. Dumville (eds), Gildas: New Approaches (Woodbridge:
Boydell Press, 1984), 51–60 (c. 550); M. Lapidge, “Gildas’s Education and the Latin
Culture of Sub-Roman Britain,” in Lapidge and Dumville, Gildas: New Approaches, 27–50,
at 49 (pre-500); T.D. O’Sullivan, The De Excidio of Gildas: Its Authenticity and Date, Columbia
Studies in the Classical Tradition, vol. 7 (Leiden: Brill, 1978), 178–180 (c. 515–520); M.W.
Herren and S.A. Brown, Christ in Celtic Christianity: Britain and Ireland from the Fifth to the Tenth
JAEMA 9 (2013) 47–68 © the author and Australian Early Medieval Association
Journal of the Australian Early Medieval Association
Gildas, addressing a moral and political crisis in Britain, calls for the
spiritual and physical restoration of his divided patria through obedience
to God’s law. Written in the form of an epistola, De excidio is prefaced by a
brief history of Britain from the birth of Christ to Gildas’ present day,
a history that is structured to reinforce divine punishment for sin through
historical exempla and by overt comparison with the Old Testament
‘historia’ of God’s chosen people, Israel. This patriotic vision of Britain,
is the single surviving historical narrative describing Britain in the period
around the presumed withdrawal of the Roman army in the fifth
century—a time when Britain began to evolve away from being a
province of the Roman empire.
Gildas, whose education reflects his membership of the Romano-
British elite, describes a province divided: heathen Pictish aristocracies
have claimed British lands in the north up to Hadrian’s Wall; heathen
Germanic aristocracies (Saxons) have claimed British lands in the east;
Christian British aristocracies in the west were warring among themselves.
He presents a divortium or border, likely militarised, as existing between
British- and Saxon-controlled areas in the east and west, as defined by urbs
legionum (either Caerleon, Chester, or York) and Verulamium (St Albans),
and between Pictish- and British-controlled areas in the north and south,
as defined by Hadrian’s Wall.3 An ordained member of the clergy, Gildas
describes the Britain he knows as dominated by moral depravity and
material affluence: he names and shames five Christian reges or ‘tyrants’ for
their immorality and idolatry.4 He criticises the unnamed clergy of the
Century, Studies in Celtic History (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2002), 27–28 (c. 500);
N.J. Higham, The English Conquest: Gildas and Britain in the Fifth Century, (Manchester:
Manchester University Press, 1994), 137 (c. 479–484); and M.E. Jones, The End of Roman
Britain (New York: Cornell University Press, 1996), 45, n. 20(post-500). This lack of
consensus amongst specialists in early medieval Britain has tended to reinforce the more
traditional dating of De excidio to the second quarter of the sixth century, as supported by
reports for a figure called Gildas in the various Irish and Welsh annals. Accordingly, Snyder
dates it to c. 530.
3 Gildas, De excidio 10.2 (Winterbottom, Gildas, 92): “… [Sanctorum martyrum] nunc
corporum sepulturae et passionum loca, si non lugubri divortio barbarorum quam
plurima ob scelera nostra civibus adimerentur, non minimum intuentium mentibus
ardorem divinae caritatis incuterent: sanctum Albanum Verolamiensem, Aaron
et Iulium Legionum urbis cives ceterosque utriusque sexus diversis in locis summa
magnanimitate in acie Christi perstantes dico.”; and 19.1 (Winterbottom, Gildas, 95):
“… tetri Scottorum Pictorumque greges … extremamque terrae partem pro indigenis
muro tenus capessunt.”
4 Gildas, De excidio 27.1(Winterbottom, Gildas, 99): “Reges habet Britannia, sed tyrannos.”
The tyrants are named as Constantine, Vortipor, Aurelius Caninus, Cunoglasus, and
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gildas and his prophecy for britain
British church for a lack of moral leadership, for fornication, greed and
corruption, and for illegitimacy and simony.5
The epistola is strikingly original within the Christian literature
tradition of post-Roman western Europe: it contains the first history of a
former Roman province (Britannia) as a nation, and Gildas is the first
post-Roman author to stake a national claim (as Britones) to the divine
legitimation of the chosen people of God.6 In investigating this novel
claim to the inheritance of Israel, this paper will argue that Gildas draws
on prophecy to legitimate his message of impending judgement for sin,
directly equating partitioned Britain with a divided biblical Israel just prior
to the fall of Judah and Jerusalem to the Babylonians. In doing so, Gildas
appears to legitimate his prophecy with cultural, literary, and religious
themes that are more appropriate to the late-fifth century than the mid-
sixth century.
Maglocunus. For a discussion of the named tyrants see O’Sullivan, The De Excidio of Gildas,
87–133; and Dumville, “Gildas and Maelgwn,” 51–60.
5 Gildas, De excidio 66.1 (Winterbottom, Gildas, 118): “Sacerdotes habet Britannia, sed
insipientes.”
6 E.A. Thompson, “Gildas and the History of Britain,” Britannia 10 (1979), 203–226, at
208, notes that Gildas was “the first man in the entire west to write a provincial
history.” Jones, The End of Roman Britain, 123, notes that this “must have been
a conscious rhetorical innovation.” D.R. Howlett, Insular Inscriptions (Dublin:
Four Courts Press, 2005), 29, notes that “[n]o-one before Gildas had identified
a single Christian people as praesens Israel, but that is what Gildas called the Britons,
and not in an argumentative passage, rather in an obiter dictum to those who already
believed themselves to be ‘the present Israel’. In the psychology of self-definition of
the Britons it would be hard to overstate the importance of this idea.” T. O’Loughlin,
Gildas and the Scriptures: Observing the World through a Biblical Lens, Studia Traditionis
Theologiae, vol. 12 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2012), 25, in his study on Gildas’ use of the
scriptures, also notes his originality: “The perception of his people as a distinct
baptised nation marks an important break in the history of theology. This focus on his
own populus in the DEB … means that we can treat Gildas as the first medieval
theologian.”
7 O’Loughlin makes a convincing case for Gildas as a deacon. See O’Loughlin, Gildas and the
Scriptures, 24-25.
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8 See Higham, The English Conquest, 67–69, and K. George, Gildas’s De Excidio Britonum and the
early British Church (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2009), 16–17 for a similar discussion of
Gildas’ pursuance of a single thread of argument using these selected texts from the Old
Testament.
9 Gildas, De excidio 1.3 (Winterbottom, Gildas, 87), with reference to Num. 20:12.
10 Ibid., 1.3–4 (Winterbottom, Gildas, 87), with reference to Lev. 10:1–2; Ex. 14:22; 16:15;
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13 Ibid., 26.1 (Winterbottom, Gildas, 98): “… ut in ista gente experiretur dominus solito more
prasesentum Israelem.”
14 Ibid., 1.2 (Winterbottom, Gildas, 87): “… silui, fateor, cum immenso cordis dolore, ut mihi
renum scrutator testis est dominus, spatio bilustri temporis vel eo amplius praetereuntis.”
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leaders as a result of his letter would simply enhance the prestige of his
message.15
The potent combination of providential history, the Britons as the
chosen people of God and the personal role of the prophet within this
paradigm have clearly had a significant revelatory effect on Gildas and his
vision of Britain: he admits it has reshaped his view of the New
Testament:
I gazed on these things and many others in the Old Testament as
though on a mirror reflecting our own life; then I turned to the
New Testament also, and read there more clearly what had,
previously, perhaps, been dark to me: the shadow passed away,
and the truth shone more brightly.16
The New Testament passages that Gildas quotes in his preface, mainly
from Matthew, focus on the contrasting final judgements on those who
obey God’s law (the faithful) and those who disobey God’s law (the
faithless or the unfaithful) within a dramatic context of the possible
imminence of Christ’s return.17 These contrasting judgements are clearly
drawn back by Gildas into Jeremiah and then forward into his immediate
present: in declaring that he “saw how clearly the men of our day have
increasingly put care aside, as though there was nothing to fear,”18 Gildas
drew directly on the description of biblical Israel as laid out in Jeremiah 3:
6–11. Biblical Israel is divided into two kingdoms, Judah and Israel: these
two kingdoms are, in turn, unfaithful (poor Jews) and faithless (idolaters);
God instructed Jeremiah to warn unfaithful Judah but they ignored his
warnings, with God, preferring faithless Israel, abandoning and destroying
unfaithful Judah. The revelation for Gildas was clear: Britain, as praesens
Israel, was also divided into unfaithful Judah (as the ‘British west’) and
faithless Israel (as ‘Saxon east’ and ‘Pictish north’). If Gildas’ unfaithful
Britons did not mend their ways, God would abandon and destroy them.
15 Jeremiah was attacked by his own brothers (Jer. 12:6); beaten and put into the stocks
by a priest and false prophet (Jer. 20:1-4); imprisoned by the king (Jer. 37:18; 38:28);
threatened with death, (Jer. 38:4;) thrown into a cistern by Judah’s officials (Jer. 38:6);
and opposed by a false prophet (Jer. 28). O’Loughlin, Gildas and the Scriptures, 24–25,
also notes Gildas’ claim to prophecy.
16 Gildas, De excidio 1.7 (Winterbottom, Gildas, 88): “Ista ego et multa alia veluti speculum
quoddam vitae nostrae in scripturis veteribus intuens, convertebar etiam ad novas, et ibi
legebam clarius quae mihi forsitan antea obscura fuerant, cessante umbra ac veritate firmius
inlucescente.”
17 Matt. 15:24-26; 8:11–12; 23:13; 7:23; 25:10–12; and Luke 23:29.
18 Gildas, De excidio 1.12 (Winterbottom, Gildas, 88): “Videbam e regione quantum
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perhaps, significant in this context that Gildas, De excidio 31.1 (Winterbottom, Gildas, 101),
compares the tyrant Vortipor and his unnamed father to the reigning house of Judah in
Jeremiah, “Mannaseh son of Hezekiah”: “… boni regis nequam fili, ut Ezechiae Manasses,
Demetarum tyranne Vortipori.”
21 ‘Biblical style,’ as defined by D. Howlett, The Celtic Latin Tradition of Biblical Style (Dublin:
Four Corners Press, 1995), 1–28, is a structuring of Latin shaped by the chiastic structure
of Hebrew poetry.
22 It is significant that Gildas, De excidio 23.3 (Winterbottom, Gildas, 97), terms Latin as “
lingua … nostra.”
23 Lapidge, “Gildas’s Education,” 34–35.
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24 J. Morris, The Age of Arthur: A History of the British Isles from 350 to 650 (London: Weidenfeld
and Nicolson, 1973), 132: foederati (allies bound by treaty), annona (supplies), hospites (billeted
troops), praepositi (commanders), consilium (councils), consiliari (advisors), and cuneus
(formation).
25 Lapidge, “Gildas’s Education,” 46–47: testes (witness), respondio (evidence), and comprobo
3, that Gildas knew nothing of rhythm, notes that Gildas has composed his first two
sentences in alternating clausular and cursus rhythms.
27 Lapidge, “Gildas’s Education,” 41–42: exordium (author’s reasons), narratio (historia (history),
fabula (story), argumentum (argument) or iudicialis asserto (judicial assertion), propositio (a brief
statement of the case), argumentatio (the detailed argument of the case), anaphalaeosis (the
recapitulation of the case), and finally epilogus (inciting the audience to indignation or
mercy).
28 See Lapidge, ‘Gildas’s Education,” 27–28, for a discussion of the traditional system of
Roman education. He observes on 49 that schools in Gaul offering this type of classical
education did not survive the fifth century.
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29 George, Gildas’s De Excidio Britonum, 29-47. George devotes a chapter to discussing the
structuring of the DEB according to the ‘Biblical Style’ in the Book of Lamentations.
Parallelism is a statement followed by a restatement in identical order; chiasmus is a
statement followed by a restatement in reverse order.
30 Howlett, Celtic Latin Tradition of Biblical Style, pp. 72-81. George, Gildas’s De Excidio
Britonum, 46. The numbers relate directly to the verses in Winterbottom’s edition of
the DEB. For a caution on ‘Biblical Style’ as a methodology, see R. Flechner, review
of Gildas’s De Excidio Britonum and the Early British Church, by K. George, The Journal of
English and Germanic Philology, 109 (2010), 523–525. See also C.D. Eckhardt, review of
British Books in Biblical Style by D. Howlett, Speculum, 75 (2000), 700–702.
31 Gildas, De excidio 1.11 (Winterbottom, Gildas, 88): “Sciebam misericordiam domini, sed et
iudicium timebam; laudabam gratiam, sed redditionem unicuique secundum opera sua
verebar.”
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32 See also Ps. 61(62):13: “… et tibi, Domine, misericordia quia tu reddes unicuique iuxta
opera sua.” Also Rev. 22:12: “Ecce uenio cito, et merces mea mecum est, reddere
unicuique secundum opera sua.” The phrase of Rom. 2:6 is matched by a fuller quote
of Rom. 2:5–6 in De excidio 98.1 (Winterbottom, Gildas, 136); whether this is part of
any Biblical symmetry is, as yet, untested. Higham, The English Conquest, 27 and 83,
also notes the influence of Paul on Gildas.
33 Gildas, De excidio 1.10 (Winterbottom, Gildas, 88): Rom. 11:17–21; and Jer. 11:16. The
parallels between Rom. 11 and Jer. 11 have been noted by biblical scholars. See, for
instance, C.J. Collins, “Echoes of Aristotle in Romans 2:14–15: Or, Maybe Abimelech Was
Not So Bad After All,” Journal of Markets and Morality, 13 (2010), 123–173, at 132.
34 Salvian, De gub. 8.5.25 (Sources Chrétiennes [= SC] 220.526): “Iustus ergo est dominus et
iustum iudicium suum; quae enim, ut scriptum est, seminarunt, haec et metunt, ut uere uideatur
de improbitate illius gentis dixisse dominus: Reddite ei secundum opus suum [my
emphasis]; iuxta omnia quae fecit facite illi, quia contra dominum erecta est.” De gubernatione dei is
generally dated from internal evidence to the first half of the 440s. See D. Lambert, “The
Uses of Decay: History in Salvian’s De gubernatione dei,” Augustinian Studies 30 (1999), 115–
130, at 115, n. 1. Salvian is the only patristic author quoting this phrase from Jeremiah.
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35 See F.C. Burkitt, “The Bible of Gildas,” Revue Benedictine 46 (1934), 206–215.
In addition to this, E.S. Duckett, The Gateway to the Middle Ages (Ann Arbor: University
of Michigan Press, 1961), 113, believes that Gildas, in quoting from the Septuagint,
knew Greek. For a study of Gildas’ patristic influences see F. Kerlouégan, Le De
excidio Britanniae de Gildas: les destinées de la culture latine dans l'île de Bretagne au VIe siècle
(Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 1987). N. Wright, “Gildas’s Reading: A Survey,”
Sacris Erudiri, 32 (1991), 121–162, at 152, has a useful table. It is significant that none
of Gildas’ patristic influences detected to date lived beyond the fifth century.
36 Jerome, In Hier. 3.6–10 1.55.5 (Corpus Christianorum, series Latina [= CCL] 74.33:
“Secundum ἀναγωγὴν autem de hereticis prophetia est, qui, falsi nominis scientiam dum se
arbitrantur heretica subtilitate sectari, ascendunt montem superbiae et carnis huius
uoluptatibus deliniti ...” English translation in M. Graves (trans.) and C.A. Hall (ed.), Jerome:
Commentary on Jeremiah, Ancient Christian Texts (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press,
2011), 21.
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37 Origen, Hom. in Ier. 4.3.2 (Sources Chrétiennes [= SC] 232.266: “οἱ καταντῶντες ἐπὶ τὴν
ἐκλογὴν τοῦ θεοῦ” English translation in J.C. Smith (trans.), Origen: Homilies on Jeremiah,
Homily on 1 Kings 28, Fathers of the Church, vol. 97 (Washington, DC.: Catholic University
of America Press, 1998), 34. Matthew 22.14
38 Ibid., 4.4.1 (SC 232.266): “Ὅτε ἀναγινώσκονται τὰ τῷ Ἰσραὴλ συμβεβηκότα καὶ τὰ
πταίσματα <τὰ> περὶ ἐκεῖνον τὸν λαόν, δέον ἡμᾶς φοβεῖσθαι καὶ λέγειν· ‘Eἰ τῶν κατὰ φύσιν
κλάδων οὐκ ἐφείσατο πόσῳ πλέον οὐδὲ ἡμῶν φείσεται’· εἰ ἐκείνους τοὺς αὐχοῦντας εἶναι
καλλιέλαιον, τοὺς ἐρριζωμένους εἰς τὴν ῥίζαν τῶν πατριαρχῶν Ἀβραὰμ καὶ Ἰσαὰκ καὶ Ἰακὼβ
μὴ φεισάμενος ὁ χρηστὸς ἅμα καὶ φιλάνθρωπος θεὸς ἐξέκοψε, ‘πόσῳ πλέον ἡμῶν οὐ
φείσεται’.”
39 Gildas, De excidio 1.10 (Winterbottom, Gildas, 88).
40 Ibid., 1.12 (Winterbottom, Gildas, 88).
41 Ibid., 1.13 (Winterbottom, Gildas, 88): “Haec igitur et multo plura quae brevitatis causa
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gildas and his prophecy for britain
137. Significantly, Cassian is talking about the apostle Paul at this point. It is also, perhaps,
significant that Gildas describes Israel as the “primitive church” rather than its more
common usage as a descriptor of the early apostolic church.
42 See R. Weaver, Divine Grace and Human Agency: A Study of the Semi-Pelagian Controversy,
Patristic Monograph Series, vol. 15 (Macon, Ga.: Mercer University Press, 1996), 235–
238. Cassian is, perhaps, integral to the movement of Origenistic ideas to the West:
a student of the ascetic monk Evagrius and a refugee from the Origenistic
controversy in Alexandria c. 400, he fled first to the patriarch of Constantinople, John
Chrysostom, where he was ordained a deacon, and then, with the exile of
Chrysostom, he fled to Rome c. 404, where he presented himself to Pope Innocent I.
Sometime between 405 and 415 he founded two monasteries at Marseilles; it is,
perhaps, likely that he brought with him Origen’s works. See B.R. Rees, Pelagius: Life
and Letters (Rochester: Boydell Press, 1998), 105, for a brief account on Cassian. His
move to Gaul was crucial in restoring credibility to the ascetic movement there. See
C. Leyser, Authority and Asceticism from Augustine to Gregory the Great (Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 2000), 35; and R. Markus, The End of Ancient Christianity (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1990), 213, for an overview of the influence of Cassian on the
Gallican church.
43 The base point for this subtle split in emphasis was, arguably, the Origenist controversy at
the end of the fourth century fuelled, perhaps, by the translations of his works from Greek
into Latin by Rufinus. Origen’s translated works, for instance, influenced Pelagius. For
a discussion of Pelagius’ reception of Origen’s writings see T.A. Scheck, Origen and the
History of Justification: The Legacy of Origen’s Commentary on Romans (Notre Dame: University of
Notre Dame Press, 2008), 83–85.
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priest of Marseilles, Salvian, and his critique of secular and church leaders,
De gubernatione Dei, which provides the closest literary parallel to Gildas.
As O’Sullivan notes:
It is clear, considering the likenesses of matter and manner, that
the De excidio must be closely bracketed with the De gubernatione
Dei of Salvian by the literary historian. 44
Salvian, like Gildas, emphasised de praesenti iudicio—judgement in the
here and now. He, like Gildas, also considered that the punishments of
his praesens Israel, the Roman empire, are predicated by sin.45 For Salvian,
however, hope lay with those external to a corrupt Roman empire: the
heretic and heathen barbarians. For Gildas, the destructive barbarians, as
represented by the heathen Saxons and Picts, are clearly not the answer.
Hope can only be found from within a corrupted Israel, significantly, a
corrupted Britain herself. In order to convince his audience that Britain is
praesens Israel, Gildas sets out to present conclusive evidence from
providential history.
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1966), 20–43, discusses the evolution of the
Roman Christian historiographical tradition.
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47 J.R. Morris, “Literary evidence,” in M.W. Barley and R.P.C. Hanson (eds), Christianity
in Britain 300–700 (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1968), 63, reinforces the
importance of historical legitimacy: “[Gildas] may talk nonsense about Magnus
Maximus or the date of the Roman walls in innocence, for these lay outside living
memory; but when he complains that the generation who won the war has died out,
so that the country is now run by a generation ignorant of past troubles, that has only
known present security, he cannot be wrong because his readers knew ... so when he
says that the Britain of his day is governed by important rectores and overmighty duces,
who assume the style of reges, by duly consecrated bishops and ordained priests, that
the island is partitioned but has been at peace for more than a generation, we have to
believe him because his audience would.”
48 Gildas, De excidio 4.4 (Winterbottom, Gildas, 90): “quantum tamen potuero, non tam ex
scriptis patriae scriptorumve monimentis, quippe quae, vel si qua fuerint, aut ignibus
hostium exusta aut civium exilii classe longius deportata non compareant, quam
transmarina relatione, quae crebris inrupta intercapedinibus non satis claret.”
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49 For a discussion of the problems dating Gildas’ narrative from the time of Magnus
Maximus onwards, see D.N. Dumville, “The Chronology of De Excidio Britanniae, Book I,”
in Lapidge and Dumville, Gildas: New Approaches, 61–84.
50 Gildas, De excidio 2 (Winterbottom, Gildas, 89). The cause and effect scheme is my own, and
Scriptures, 94-97.
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53 George, Gildas’s De Excidio Britonum, 31–32. Some phrases have been adjusted. George does
not detail her methodology, aside from indicating that the paired words are some 100
words apart. Some occur too frequently in the praefatio to be considered anything but
problematic: these have been marked with a question mark. The numbering system is for
presentation only. The 11-paired phrases have been referenced to the sources that have
been detected to date using Winterbottom’s list of biblical and patristic quotes (Gildas, 156–
159) and Wright’s survey of Gildas’ reading (‘Gildas’s Reading: A Survey,’ 121–152).
George, Gildas’s De Excidio Britonum, 38–40, has also noted a pattern of Gildas pairing
secular events with biblical quotations within his accusations of the tyrants.
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54 Gildas, De excidio 44.1 (Winterbottom, Gildas, 109) (die iudicii) and 104.1 (Winterbottom,
Gildas, 138) (nouissimis diebus), refers to the imminence of the last judgement. Gildas reports
that the heresy of Arianism impacted Britain at De excidio 12.3 (Winterbottom, Gildas, 93):
“… donec Arriana perfidia, atrox ceu anguis, transmarina nobis evomens venena fratres in
unum habitantes exitiabiliter faceret seiungi.”
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56 M. Leuchter, Josiah’s Reform and Jeremiah’s Scroll: Historical Calamity and Prophetic
Response (Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2006), 15.
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