We cannot expect to understand any text outside the context in which it is
written, and the context within which Gildas is judged is a figment of
the Enlightenment imagination. Dark Age Britain is pictured as a world
apart, Gildas as a man of this dark era, knowing nothing beyond his own
small world. But the archaeological evidence proves extensive trade between
Britain and the eastern Roman Empire, and the plague which struck Constantinople
in 542 reached the British Isles scarcely a year later. It plainly did
not reach these parts by first traversing the continent of Europe: it arrived
by ship.
Gildas is not inhabiting some lost world of faerie, located outside normal
time and space. He is a man of his age, and that age is the age of Justinian,
the ultimate Restitutor Orbis.
Justinian’s reign officially dates from 527, though it is accepted he
was already effectively ruler of the Empire during the last years of his uncle,
Emperor Justin. He inherited a Roman dominion which had, in modern perspective,
shrunk to just its eastern half, but the eastern emperors still saw themselves
as rightful rulers of the west. The barbarian kings who held power there did
so only as Roman appointees, or as usurpers whose rule should ideally be overthrown.
Justinian began his restoration of Roman rule with an attack on Vandal Africa.
The story of Justinian’s wars is told by Procopius, private secretary
to general Belisarius, whom he accompanied on his campaigns to Africa, Italy
and Persia. Which is to say Procopius was not only of the right time, he was
in the right place. So for this period in history, at least as far as the Roman
Empire is concerned, we have the perfect historical source, not just a primary
source but an eye-witness account of the events described.
It was Belisarius who led the first campaign of Justinian’s restoration.
The invasion force sailed from Constantinople in 533 AD, around the time of
the summer solstice. Justinian had already taken the precaution of eliciting
the support of the Ostrogothic rulers of Italy for the invasion, so Belisarius
was able to land in Sicily, which island the Vandal king had unwisely ceded
to the Ostrogoths in return for an annual subsidy. And it was in Sicily that
Belisarius learnt - from the servant of a friend of Procopius - that the Vandal
fleet was then engaged in suppressing a revolt in Sardinia. The Vandal king,
Gelimer, actually had a choice of two revolts to deal with, both of them encouraged,
supported and financed by Justinian. With no Vandal fleet to oppose him, Belisarius
landed his army on African soil and within a week had taken control of Gelimer’s
capital, Carthage. The Vandal state, which had controlled North Africa for
ninety five years, collapsed in a matter of months, under the combined pressure
of Belisarius’ generalship and Justinian’s cunning diplomacy. Though
it was to be another fifteen years before the Berber tribes of the interior
were finally ‘pacified’, by April 534 a Roman administration was
once again established in North Africa, Gelimer was a pensioner of Justinian
and 2,000 Vandals were conscripted into the Imperial army.
This easy victory over the Vandals encouraged further attacks on the west
which ultimately bankrupted the eastern Empire, forced to fight on two
fronts when
the “Endless Peace” with Persia, which Justinian
bought at a cost of 11,000 pounds of gold, broke down
after only eight years. In 540 Shah Khusro
sacked Antioch, in the same year that Gildas penned his
warning to the British Tyrants, and Ravenna, capital
of the Ostrogothic kingdom of Italy, fell to
the Romans.
The Roman reconquest of Italy, begun in 535, initially appeared an easier prospect
than that of Vandal Africa, but the Goths recovered from the initial shock
of Justinian’s attack and fought back doggedly. In the eighteen years
of war which followed the civilized kingdom which Theodoric the Great had established,
with its dual legal system allowing Romans and Goths to live together in peace,
was obliterated. Plundering armies from both sides shattered the Italian economy.
The city of Rome itself changed hands repeatedly, and endured three sieges.
The final battle between the two forces took place in October of 553 and lasted,
according to Procopius, for two whole days: “they kept at it with the
fury of wild beasts by reason of their bitter hatred of each other.”1 The Empire’s victory left Italy a war-torn ruin, and reduced her ancient
capital city to little more than a village.
But if the restoration of Roman rule was not necessarily a Good Thing, it was
very real. Indeed it was the major feature of political life in the period.
By the time of Justinian’s death in 565 AD the Roman forces had recovered
Italy, Sicily, Sardinia, Corsica, the Balearic Islands, the coast of the Balkans,
North Africa and the southern coast of Spain, including the Pillars of Hercules.
The Mediterranean was once again a Roman lake. Inland, Rome’s allies
the Catholic kings of the Franks had expanded their power over the whole of
Gaul, conquering and absorbing both Arian German kingdoms and independent Gallic
regions and confining the once-mighty Visigoths to Spain and Septimania. The
crusade against the Arian Goths, which appeared such a dismal failure in the
time of Leo, was by the end of the sixth century brought to a satisfactory
conclusion, largely through the efforts of Justinian. In 589 AD the Spanish
king Recared, weakened by Imperial attacks from without and the fifth-column
activities of Roman churchmen from within his kingdom, was forced to abandon
the Arian faith of his ancestors and submit to Rome.
Which leaves only one lost western province unaccounted for: Britain.
Britain was a distant and half-mythical island to Caesar’s contemporaries
and, it would seem, to Justinian’s. Procopius was so confused about its
geography he apparently thought it was two islands, one called Britannia and
one Brittia.2 But ignorant and parochial though he was, still Procopius is
not only a contemporary source, he is an eye-witness, living in close proximity
to the eastern Empire’s most powerful men. What he reports is what he
directly observed, on campaign with his master Belisarius and in the corridors
of power in Constantinople. With regard to Britain, what he reports is this:
1) Britain was never recovered after the overthrow of Constantine III but
continued to be ruled by ‘tyrants’.3 Tyrants
are illegitimate rulers, rulers not appointed by Rome. Thus Procopius testifies
that at a time when Rome was
engaged in the reconquest of lost provinces she still
regarded Britain as one such.
2) Justinian - whom Procopius cordially hated - drained the treasury by
lavishing money on barbarians, so that they came to him from all
quarters to receive his lavish presents: “as far as Britain, and
over all the inhabited earth; so that nations whose very names we had never
heard of, we now learned to know,
seeing their ambassadors for the first time.”4 Britain
may have been a dim and distant region to Procopius,
but Justinian’s gold, used to
further Roman objectives in areas not directly controlled
by him, was put to use here also.
3) Visitors from the island of Britain were present in one of the embassies
attending Justinian’s court, and for a very definite purpose: “The
island of Brittia is inhabited by three very numerous nations, each having
one king
over it. And the names of these nations are the Angili,
the Frissones and the Brittones, the last being named from the island itself.
And so great appears
to be the population of these nations that every year
they emigrate thence in large companies with their women and children and
go to the land of the
Franks. And the Franks allow them to settle in the part
of their land which appears to be more deserted, and by this means they
say that they are winning
over the island. Thus it actually happened that not long
ago the king of the Franks, in sending some of his intimates on an embassy
to the Emperor Justinian
in Byzantium, sent with them some of the Angili, thus
seeking to establish his claim that the island was ruled by him.”5 So,
while Justinian’s
gold was working away in Britain, a Frank king sent a
delegation to the Emperor which included Angles from the island of Britain,
in order to ‘establish
his claim’.
If the island was a lost Roman province, now ruled by tyrants, who would the
rightful ruler be, if Justinian endorsed the Frank king’s claim? Who
would a loyal son of the Church, such as Gildas, regard as the legitimate ruler
of Britain? Gildas, who in his address to the wicked priests states “One
of us is right to say: ‘we greatly desire that the enemies of the church
be our enemies also, with no kind of alliance, and that her friends and protectors
be not only our allies but our fathers and masters too’.”6
Gildas was one of a group of religious - he tells us himself that “by
their holy prayers they support my weakness from total collapse”7 Later
saints’ Lives claim Gildas was educated by St. Illtud, along with St.
Samson and St. Paul Aurelian,8 and that these three later crossed into Brittany,
where Paul and Samson had friendly dealings with the Frank kings. The Life
of Paul Aurelian says that Paul’s patron Victor was “a pious Christian
who ruled by authority of the Lord emperor Philibert”9, that is, Childebert
of Paris, who ruled from 511 to 558.10 The Life of Samson relates that saint’s
adventures at the court of ‘King Hiltbert’, believed to be the
same Childebert. But Dark Age historians do not like to take later saints’ Lives
into account when writing the political history of this dark era, so lets return
to Procopius.
In the spring of 537 AD the Ostrogoths laid siege to Belisarius in the city
of Rome. The siege lasted a year and nine days, and towards the end of it the
Goths, having failed to prevent the revictualling of the city, offered a peace
conference. Procopius reports the negotiations as if he was present, as he
may well have been. He says that the Goths offered to cede Sicily, and Belisarius
offered Britain in exchange. I’ll say that again: in 538 AD, according
to a contemporary authority, the Romans offered to give Britain to the Ostrogoths.
The decision was clearly Justinian’s, for when the Goths tried to include
Campania and Naples in the deal Belisarius refused to discuss the proposal
on the grounds that he had no authority to do so. Then clearly he did have
authority to cede “the whole island of Britain, which belongs to us from
of old and is far larger than Sicily.”11 These are the words Procopius
puts into Belisarius’ mouth, and they may have been the very words he
spoke. The island of Britain belonged to Rome of old and was still hers to
dispose of. Just two years before Gildas wrote The
Ruin of Britain, in which
he traces the origins of all his country’s woes to her wicked, heretical
rebellion against the Holy Romans, a Roman Emperor publicly proclaimed that
he had a perfect right to turn the long-lost province of Britannia over to
German rule.
Gildas, writing in 540, is expecting something other than a heavenly host to
reinforce his faction in the war against the Pelagians, a war to be waged initially
by a group so small that the holy mother doesn’t even see her remaining
sons; a group which, he warns, will also be swept away if it does not prosecute
this conflict with sufficient zeal. He is writing at a time when a contemporary
witness testifies that Justinian claimed Britain was rightfully part of the
Empire, that it was in his power to select who should rule it. He is writing
during the reign of the Frank king Theudebert, whom Justinian paid to attack
the Ostrogoths in Italy. He is writing within two years of Belisarius’ proposal
to the Ostrogoths that they should cede Sicily in exchange for Britain. Britain
was within Justinian’s sights but not within his grasp. Operating this
far north he would need to use proxies. What Gildas is surely expecting is
a Frankish force crossing the channel or a fleet of displaced Arians arriving
from the Mediterranean, or possibly both.
It never materialised. In the 540s the tide of history turned against the Restitutor
Orbis. A deadly plague hit the Empire, killing around a quarter of its inhabitants,
with disastrous effects on its tax revenues. The war in Italy dragged on throughout
that decade and beyond, the Frank king proved an unreliable ally and the collapse
of the Endless Peace with the Persians forced Justinian to divert resources
to the defence of his eastern frontiers. But at the very start of the decade,
when he wrote The Ruin of Britain, Gildas could not have foreseen this, and
nor could any of his addressees.
To the Dark Age historians, the sixth century is an obscure period of British
history. Lacking the contemporary sources from which alone a history can be
written they are forced to conclude that what happened in this transitional
period, when Independent Britain finally disintegrated and the ground was laid
for the foundation of England, is simply unknowable. Yet they are quite sure
they know who is to blame. The same sub-Roman Britons who failed to leave us
a written record also failed to create a viable state. Deprived of the light
of Roman civilization, incapable of maintaining the fruits of progress and
discipline, the ruling class of Britain dissolved into warring factions and
so allowed the Saxons to take over their land.
Dark Age historians may convince themselves this is a conclusion arrived at
from a study of the allowable evidence, but actually it is merely a variant
of Bede’s propaganda history of the foundation of England. After the
God-given Roman victory of Badon, Bede tells us, the wicked Britons abandoned
truth and justice to the point their very existence was forgotten and gave
themselves up to unspeakable crimes. So God abandoned them, and chose a new
race to inhabit their beautiful island. A hundred years later Pope Gregory,
motivated by nothing more than a concern for Saxon souls, sent Bishop Augustine
to Kent.
Geoffrey tells an entirely different story. Badon was Arthur’s victory,
Rome had nothing to do with it. It was only after Arthur had defeated the Saxons
and established his dominion over the whole of northern Europe that Rome reappeared
on the scene. Her challenge to Arthur’s rule led ultimately to Camlann,
but Independent Britain did not collapse at this point. It was the rule of
the treacherous and worthless Keredic which opened Britain to her enemies.
The Saxons were the ultimate beneficiaries, but it was not God who gave them
the land. Britain fell to the combined forces of the Franks under Isembard,
nephew of King Louis, and an African fleet under Gormund.
Geoffrey invented nothing, so where did he get this from? Irish tradition recalled
an African invasion of Ireland, long before the Roman period. But the name
Gormund is Germanic, and Geoffrey sets his story in the sixth century, when
North Africa actually was inhabited by a Germanic people who maintained a powerful
fleet.
Of course Geoffrey’s story is fantastic, as is Bede’s. But Geoffrey’s
is a fantasy of an entirely different order. In The
History of the Kings of Britain there is no intention to deceive. Geoffrey openly demonstrates how
his narrative is constructed. He constantly invites the reader to refer to
his sources. His entertaining story is not designed to disguise the truth,
but rather, to illuminate it. No historian now suggests that sixth century
Britain actually was invaded by a Frankish force from the Continent or a Germanic
fleet from the Mediterranean, but the surviving record clearly reveals that
this is exactly what Justinian and his allies were laying plans for in 540
AD, when Gildas wrote his sermon.
Heretic Emperor: The Lost History of King Arthur
Copyright © V M Pickin 2009
1 Procopius, History of the Wars, VIII, 35.32
2 Procopius, History of the Wars, VIII.20.1-5
3 Procopius, History of the Wars, III.2.38
4 Procopius, Secret History, 19
5 Procopius, History of the Wars, VIII.20.6-10
6 Gildas, The Ruin of Britain, 92.3
7 Gildas, The Ruin of Britain, 26.4
8 see John Morris, Arthurian Period Sources, Vol. 3, p73
9 John Morris, The Age of Arthur, p253
10 see John Morris, The Age of Arthur, p253
11 Procopius, History of the Wars, VI, 6.27-32