On the Ruin of Britain 1

I. Gildas, surnamed the Wise, is reported to have been born in the year of Christ 493. For the author himself discloses that he was brought into the light in that very year, in these words: 「From that time... up to the year of the siege of Mount Badon... and this is the forty-fourth year, as I know, that begins, the first month already elapsed, which is also the month of my birth.」 From this passage Vossius argues that Gildas was born in that very year which we have just indicated. For the Saxons, he says, came into Britain in the year 449, as Bede testifies, whom the Britons crushed at Mount Badon; and so the 44th year from the first arrival of the Saxons rises to the year 493, which would have been the year of Gildas's birth, as he himself asserts.

Yet John Smith puts forward an interpretation of Gildas's words different from that of Vossius, in his notes to his excellent edition of Bede's Ecclesiastical History. For the learned man considers that the number of years given by Gildas regards rather the time of writing than the arrival of the Saxons: namely, that Gildas wrote in the 44th year from the Battle of Badon — a year especially notable to him, on which his birthday also fell. Mabillon had gone before into the same opinion of Smith in these words: 「The four and forty years which Gildas mentions did not intervene between the arrival of the Saxons and the siege of Badon... but between the siege and the writing of his little work. For he speaks of years whose last was still in flux while he was writing this:

『The forty-fourth year,』 he says, 『is beginning, one month having already elapsed.』」 Thus the most learned man. But in my judgment, at least, an interpretation of this sort seems alien to the very mind of Gildas — chiefly on this account, that the author was also called 「Badonicus,」 from the battle waged against the Saxons by the Britons at Mount Badon; that is, he obtained a surname of this kind because he had been brought into the light in that very year of the siege of Badon. II. Concerning the deeds of Gildas, the anonymous monk of Ruys handed down many things in literary monuments, in his Life of the same Gildas, which John du Bosc first published at Lyons in the year 1605, then Bollandus, and lastly Mabillon edited in a more complete form.

From it, then, we learn that our writer was a Briton by race, and a disciple of Hildutus; by whom he was first cultivated both in liberal letters and in the study of the divine Scriptures, then initiated into the sacred orders, and followed the monastic life, distinguished by many marks of virtue in the noble monastery of Bangor. He flourished at the time when five British petty kings held power over various lands — namely Constantine, Aurelius Conanus, Vortiporius, Cuneglassus, and Maglocunus. All of these, on account of their crimes and their ill administration of the commonwealth, he himself, being set beyond danger in Britain across the sea, bitterly assails. 「Furthermore, one of them,」 says Gale, 「our author is found to have recalled to soundness of mind:

for in a certain Welsh chronicle I have read concerning Constantine, whom Gildas rebuked: 『The conversion of Constantine to the Lord.』」 III. Being a man preeminent in faith and holiness, and likewise of the highest learning, at the request of the religious brethren who had come to him from the Britains, ten years after he had departed thence, he wrote an epistolary little book. These are the words of the monk of Ruys, who composed the Life of Gildas. And the work of this kind is entitled thus: On the Ruin of Britain, a plaintive book, divided into three parts: I. The History, II. The Epistle, III. The Rebuke against the Clergy. In the History he concludes much in few words. From there he proceeds more fully, both to rebuke the kings and the priests of that time.

That Gildas wrote this little work after the year 543 is gathered from the fact that he relates concerning Constantine, the tyrant of Dumnonia, who tore apart the sides of two royal boys and as many of their foster-fathers between the holy altars, with sword and spear in place of teeth: for Matthew of Westminster records that this same thing happened in the year 543. But if you listen to Ussher, Gildas published his writing in the year 564, and closed his last day in the year 570. Mabillon, however, holds otherwise: he is of the opinion that Gildas, already an octogenarian, departed from the living in the year 565. The authors of the French Literary History follow Mabillon. Furthermore, before all others Bede and Alcuin have made mention of Gildas and his little work, Alcuin calling Gildas the wisest of the Britons.

For the rest, as Smith observes, 「the book of Gildas On the Ruin of Britain is today fairly well known. Gildas the author is almost unknown — owing, that is, to too much distinguishing. Hence so many surnames: Albanius, the Wise, Badonicus, the Historian; whereas in truth there is one and the same Gildas」: out of whom three are fabricated and reported. On this matter Bollandus, Mabillon, and Fabricius treat at greater length — to pass over Cave and others. IV. The little book of Gildas first appeared at London in the year 1525, by the care of Polydore Vergil; whose copy, however, Leland says, is extant maimed, dislocated, and mutilated, so much so that, if the parent were now restored to life, he would scarcely recognize his offspring.

A weighty censure of this Vergilian edition was appended by John Joscelyn to his own edition of Gildas, likewise published at London in the year 1568. The earlier one of Polydore is presented by both the Basel Orthodoxographa, and by the Libraries of the Fathers of Paris, Cologne, and Lyons. Commelin in his Collection of British Writers followed the later one of Joscelyn. 「Yet these two editions,」 says Gale, 「whether of Polydore Vergil or of John Joscelyn, were so much at variance with each other that they withdrew all credit from their author, and one had still to seek Gildas within Gildas.

Wherefore I judged it most advisable to print him anew, making use of a manuscript codex which neither of the earlier editors had inspected, and which was free from the foul and absurd interpolation that had defamed the other copies. Nor did I rely on a single book alone in cleansing Gildas: I summoned aid for this matter from elsewhere too.」 Thus he: who worked out Part I of Gildas's little work, namely the History, from an ancient Cambridge manuscript codex; but the remaining two, namely the Epistle and the Rebuke against the Clergy, from a Cottonian codex. This edition, then — which the authors of the French Literary History just praised were unaware of, and which is assuredly the best and most accurate of all — was brought into the light at Oxford in the year 1691 by the diligence of Thomas Gale, at the threshold of the work inscribed thus:

「Fifteen Writers of British, Saxon, and Anglo-Danish History, edited from ancient manuscript codices, we have handed over to be struck off in type; augmented with various observations here and there, which, separately interwoven with the notes of the distinguished editor, we leave to the judgment of the learned.」