Dark Age DatesInevitably the most important question, the one which has chiefly exercised historians, is the nature of the military crises of these two centuries. Both centuries are politically dark, and the sixth - it might seem - rather more so than the fifth.
David Dumville, 1977[1]The term ‘Dark Ages’ is not the innocent invention of conscientious academics, stumped for the want of a clearer term. It has always been used to impose a viewpoint and to suppress evidence.
John Morris, 1973[2]
“The
years of Arthur’s lifetime are the worst recorded in the history
of Britain”,[3] John
Morris reminds us. This absence of documentation is used to excuse the
pejorative name for this era, the Dark Ages. Once this term denounced all
the fallen centuries following the glorious rule of the Romans. Now, it
just refers to a brief period in British history, between Roman rule and
the foundation of England, and its advocates insist it should be retained
since this era genuinely is ‘dark’ from the historian’s
perspective, due to the absence of documentary evidence. Of course there's
no getting away from Badon, and no denying that the British themselves
gave the name Arthur to their victorious leader. But what was the significance
of the campaign he led, and what came after it, are questions which, for
the Dark Age historians, must remain forever in the realms of the unknown.
History must be written from the written record, and only one sixth century
insular document survives. Gildas, who does not name Arthur, is our prime,
indeed our only historical source for the first half of the sixth century.
The genuine political history of the post-Badon period is only what can
be extracted from his sermon, and the Dark Age historians haven't managed
to extract very much.
Before we examine our sources, David Dumville reminds us, we must have ready
the right questions to ask. The obvious question to ask first of Gildas is, when
exactly is he writing? We have some clues. Gildas himself tells us he is writing
43 years after Badon - “That was the year of my birth; as I know, one month
of the forty fourth year since then has already passed”[4] -
and ten years after some other event which could have provoked him to write but
didn’t - “And it was, I confess, with unmeasured grief at heart that
I kept silent (the Lord, scanner of consciences, is my witness) as the space
of ten years or more passed by.”[5] But
what was that event, and when was Badon?
Bede gives an approximate date for the battle. In his History of the English
Church and People he tells us Badon was fought about 44 years after the arrival
of the Saxon federates, and that that event occurred during the reign of Marcian,
who became emperor in 449 and ruled for seven years, which gives us a date for
the Saxon advent of between 449 and 456, and for Badon of between 493 and 500.
Marcian actually ruled from 450 to 457, so Bede is out by a year. But in any
case his dating here is clearly derived from Gildas. Further, he elsewhere dates
the Saxon Advent to 447, so we can't assume any definite knowledge on his part.
Fortunately we have a Dark Age British source which set out very deliberately
to put the record straight.
‘ Nennius’ gives a very different date for the Saxon advent, in chapter
66, a section known as the Computus. The sources of ‘Nennius’ are
largely known, and the source for the Computus is pretty certainly Victorius
of Aquitaine’s Cursus Paschalis, or Easter Tables, which in turn were based
on the consular list drawn up by his contemporary and countryman, Prosper. The
Cursus Paschalis correlates a number of Roman date calculations - the consular,
the Olympiads, the year since the foundation of Rome - with a Christian Easter
calculation beginning with the first Easter, Christ’s resurrection, as
Year One. This event Tertullian dated to the consulship of Rubellius and Fufius
Geminus, that is, to us, 29 AD. Victorius completed his tables in 457 AD, at
which point the consular list stops although the Easter calculations were continued
by others. This document was, Robert Vermaat tells us, “made official” by
a synod in Gaul in 541,[6] the
same
year in which the Emperor Justinian officially abolished the consulship.
The old Roman system of dating by the annual consuls - there were usually two
for each year - was ultimately replaced in the Empire by two different Christian
dating systems. The west eventually settled on the Anno Domini system which is
still with us, in which the supposed year of Christ’s birth becomes Year
One. The Greek east calculated from the beginning of the world, a date based
on the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Old Testament. The first reference
in the ‘Nennius’ Computus correlates Victorius’ table with
this Greek system. “From the beginning of the world to Constantinus and
Rufus are 5,658 years”. Constantinus and Rufus were consuls in 457 AD,
the last on Victorius’ list.
The next two calculations contain arithmetical errors: “From the two Gemini,
Fufius and Rubellius to Stilicho, 373 years” and “from Stilicho to
Valentinian, son of Placidia, and the reign of Vortigern, are 28 years.” The
first is out by two years, the second by three. Stilicho’s first consulship
was in 400 AD, actually 371 years after the consulship of the Gemini; Valentinian’s
first consulship was 25 years after Stilicho’s, in the first year of his
reign - emperors always were consuls in their first year. It was in 425 AD that
Valentinian III was joint consul with his cousin the eastern emperor Theodosius
II, and in that year, according to ‘Nennius’, Vortigern ‘held
empire in Britain’. And so we come to the date of the Saxon Advent. ‘Nennius’ tells
us the mercenaries were recruited in the fourth year of Vortigern’s reign,
during the consulship of Felix and Taurus, which on both counts gives 428 AD.
Though he also tells us that this was “in the 400th year from the incarnation
of Our Lord Jesus Christ”, this is clearly a mistake, quite possibly a
copyists error. The word ‘incarnation’ should read ‘passion’, ‘Nennius’ is
here counting from the original western Year Zero. The 400th year after the passion
of Christ, accepting Tertullian’s date, would again give us 428 AD.
Nennius’ final calculation, on the surface, makes no sense. “From
the year when the Saxons came to Britain and were welcomed by Vortigern to Decius
and Valerian are 69 years.” The names Decius and Valerian are linked
in Christian history; they were borne by two emperors of the mid-third century
whose wicked persecution of the Christians brought divine wrath down on their
heads.[7] But there is no joint consulship of these two names in the fifth century,
or indeed anywhere else, in any extant list. Counting
69 years from consulship of Felix and Taurus, what we come to is second consulship
of Emperor Anastasius, which in 497 he held alone.
Robert Vermaat suggests a solution: “Though no Decius and Valerian occur
together anywhere, there is a Valerian (or Valerius) in A D 521 (A P 494). This
may be the explanation for this error,”[8] but
then admits “why this year would have been important to 'Nennius' is not
clear.” It becomes clear if we simply dismiss these two names as a later
addition and a deliberate red herring, and treat the entire Computus as a correction
of Bede, of which this is the conclusion. Bede tells us the Saxons came to Britain
at the invitation of King Vortigern in the time of Marcian, and that Badon was
fought about 44
years after their arrival. ‘Nennius’, elaborately, dates Vortigern’s
accession to 425 AD, the Saxon federates to 428 AD and then 69 years after that
... what? I suggest this is originally the date ‘Nennius’ gave to
Badon.
In confirmation, Badon occurs in year 72 in the Welsh Annals. It is a later calculation
which equates ‘year 72’ with 516 AD. This would make the Annals ‘year
zero’ 444 AD, a date with no obvious significance in Welsh history. Seventy
two years before 497 AD, on the other hand, is 425 AD - the year of Vortigern’s
accession.
Our solitary sixth-century source can now be dated precisely. The Ruin of Britain
was written in the 44th year after Badon, in 540 AD. Then we can deduce what
event, just over ten years previously, almost provoked Gildas into writing an
earlier denunciation of his countrymen. In 529 AD the Council of Orange condemned
Pelagius and the semi-Pelagians of Gaul. The Pelagians had always protested that
their condemnation by Imperial decree, and without a hearing, was invalid. Pope
Zosimus had agreed with them. They struggled for years to have their case reopened,
and heard properly, in the time-honoured Christian tradition, in a synod. Finally,
a century late, the Council of Orange had validated Pelagius’ hereticisation.
Yet Gildas’ Pelagian contemporaries still clung to the error and maintained
their wicked separation from the Church of the Empire. At the time he then held
his peace, but he can do so no longer.
Obviously, despite his claims and his calling on God as his witness, it was not
the synod over a decade previously which provoked Gildas into writing his sermon
in 540. And neither was it the violence of the British tyrants.
Heretic Emperor: The Lost History of King Arthur
Copyright © V M Pickin 2008
1 Sub-Roman Britain, p174
2 The Age of Arthur, p507
3 John Morris, The Age of Arthur, p 87
4 Gildas, The Ruin of Britain, 26.1
5 Gildas, The Ruin of Britain, 1.2
6 Robert Vermaat, Victorius of Aquitaine - Cursus Paschalis annorum DXXXII
7 They were uniquely disgraced: Decius was the first Roman Emperor to be killed by the enemy on the field of battle, and Valerian was the first to be taken captive by the enemy (the Goths and the Persians respectively). The Christian rhetorician Lactantius puts them fourth and fifth in his list of wicked persectutors who suffered God’s vengeance, De Mortibus Persecutorum.
8 Robert Vermaat, Victorius of Aquitaine - Cursus Paschalis annorum DXXXII