For a work of twenty pages to create a new academic consensus almost overnight,
forcing upholders of the previous ‘orthodox view’ into hasty retraction
or academic oblivion you would think it would need to be, at a minimum, logically
argued and devoid of factual errors. This one isn't.
Sub-Roman Britain: History and Legend presents itself as a demand for a more
exacting study of those texts concerned with period in question, British history
in the fifth and sixth centuries - a period which Dumville defines as 'politically
dark', and as a transitional phase. Morris and Alcock, using Celtic texts to
write the history of this period of Celtic dominance - and in doing so "breaking
with the tradition of twentieth-century English historiography" - have
failed to understand the nature of their source material. Study of this material
is "still in its infancy". It must be subject to the most rigourous
scrutiny, "we need to understand the sources, motives, and technical terminology
of each of writers".[1] At the end of Dumville's analysis, however, there's
only one writer left to analyse. Having ruled out every other text as too late,
too ridiculous, or out of bounds to the historian, the only text remaining
from which to write a history of Arthur's period is, in Dumville's view, Gildas'
The Ruin of Britain.
Gildas, who doesn't mention Arthur, is the only British text surviving from
the period. There are a few Welsh poems which refer to Arthur, but historians
may not call upon their witness, Dumville tells us, because they were still
in the hands of the philologists, awaiting a ‘secure’ date.[2] This statement assumes historians can contribute nothing from their own discipline
to the dating of historical texts. It also tacitly admits the truth of Morris’ assertion,
that this period is ‘dark’ because it has not been studied. So
how is it possible to reach so firm a conclusion of the question of Arthur,
when what may be vital evidence is not yet in the hands of historians? Dumville
himself has already reached a verdict on the date of the poems, in advance
of the philologists pronouncement: They cannot be earlier than the later sixth
century.
The earliest ‘securely dated’ reference to Arthur is the ninth-century
Historia Brittonum, a work long attributed to ‘Nennius’ on the
strength of a preface which gives the author that name. Dumville regards this
as a mistake. The Nennius preface has no claim to be an original part of the
document and must be rejected, along with the forger's claim to have 'made
a heap of all that I have found' - a claim which deluded incompetent scholars
like Alcock and Morris into thinking that the Historia Brittonum preserved
unedited sources from a still earlier period. The nameless author of the Historia did have sources, sources which are still extant. Dumville lists them, and
concludes "I trust that the mere recital of these sources will suggest
their utter flimsiness as records of this obscure century of our history”.[3] This is not an argument. Dumville merely invites us to share his opinion.
And what of Gildas' sources? "Gildas", says Dumville, "is our
prime text for the outline history of the period from the end of Roman rule
to the mid-sixth-century", because "he alone seems to have had access
to contemporary sources for the fifth century and was an eye-witness to the
earlier sixth."[4] A prime text is not a primary source. Both words imply ‘chief’, ‘principal’, ‘most
important’, but speaking historiographically a primary source is one
not derived from any other, generally a contemporary witness. Gildas is not
a contemporary witness for the fifth century. Dumville says that he seems to
have access to contemporary sources, though in this case he does not list them.
If he knew what they were, then surely he would. Dumville does not in fact
know that Gildas had access to contemporary sources for the fifth century,
it only seems to him that this is so, and on the basis of this subjective judgement
of his we are invited to accept Gildas’ sermon as our prime text for
the century. But how do we know the sources Gildas might seem, to David Dumville,
to have had are any more reliable than sources the writer of the Historia actually
did have?
Of course Gildas’ is nearer in time to the fifth century than ‘Nennius’,
but Dumville himself rules that argument out of court in dismissing Bede's
contribution to sixth-century history. Bede's History of the English Church
and People contains very little information on sixth century history,
but the little it does contain is highly significant. This is our prime text
for
the Augustine mission at the end of the sixth century. "But
Bede",
Dumville warns, "is
not a primary source for later-sixth century history. ... Because his work
is a fine piece of scholarship, a mine of information, and written in a clear
Latin style, it does not follow that we should necessarily accept his view
of centuries for which he is at best a secondary authority as more reliable
than that of any modern scholar. The argument that Bede lived much nearer to
the fifth and sixth centuries than we do should not be allowed to cut any ice."[5] Bede
completed his history in 731, and dated Augustine’s mission to 596-7,
135 years before. About the same time period separates Gildas’ sermon
from the end of Roman Britain. So why should Gildas be regarded as more reliable,
over that distance, than Bede? Because his Latin is turgid?
And so to Arthur, the real object of Dumville's attack, to whom he devotes
a whole paragraph: "
We come, last in the fifth century and first in the
sixth, to Arthur, a man without position or ancestry in pre-Geoffrey Welsh
sources. I think we can dispose of him quite briefly. He owes his place in
our history books to a 'no smoke without fire' school of thought. What evidence
is there for his existence? Almost twenty years ago the late Professor Thomas
Jones gave us an admirably balanced account of the early evolution of the legend
of Arthur. Independently, and at almost the same time, Professor K H Jackson
published an excellent survey reaching remarkably similar conclusions. The
totality of the evidence, and it is remarkably slight until a very late date,
shows Arthur as a figure of legend (or even - as Sir John Rhys pointed out
last century - of mythology)."[6]
That two scholars who studied the Arthur legend found Arthur to be a figure
of legend is not significant, merely inevitable: if Arthur were not a figure
of legend they could not have studied his legend. Perhaps David Dumville meant
to say these two professors had show Arthur to be purely a figure of legend,
but that is not what he actually does say. As for Sir John Rhys, he said something
completely different. In Rhys view Arthur was historical. He argued that the
legend of Arthur arose from the confounding of a real man with a British deity
in consequence of the similarity, or identity, of their names. It is hard to
see how Dumville made this mistake, when he gives as his reference the very
publication - Studies in the Arthurian Legend, Oxford, 1891 - in which Rhys
puts forward his theory that Arthur was the last Roman military leader of Britain,
and was for that reason remembered as Yr Amherawdyr Arthur - ‘the Emperor
Arthur’.
What David Dumville actually proposes in Sub-Roman Britain, though in his
misrepresentation of John Rhys position he doesn't quite admit it, is that
Dark Age scholars
should tear up all previous academic study right back to the time when Celtic
studies first became an academic discipline, and start again from scratch,
this time with Arthur ruled out of bounds at the outset. And his fellow historians
have agreed to go along with this radical proposal, supposedly on the strength
of the arguments put forward in this article. I find this incredible, and would
like to suggest an alternative explanation. David Dumville’s article
only pronounced the sentence of hereticization against John Morris, it did
not provide the reason for it. The real cause of Morris’ denigration
is that peculiarity of Dark Age scholarship so sharply revealed in the saga
of Arthurian Tintagel.
Heretic Emperor: The Lost History of King Arthur
Copyright © V M Pickin 2005
1. David Dumville, Sub-Roman Britain: History and Legend, pp174, 173, 192
2. Ibid. p178
3. Ibid. p177
4. Ibid. p191
5. Ibid. p191
6. Ibid. p187