The modern study of Gildas rests on the twin foundations of an edition and translation of his surviving works by Michael Winterbottom, published in 1978, and a collection of essays edited by Michael Lapidge and David Dumville in 1984, which mostly focus on his only complete work, the De Excidio Britanniae (DEB), treating it as a source capable of revealing historical insights to the Britain in which he wrote. Stephen Joyce is very conversant with this tradition and builds upon it. His approach is, though, refreshingly different, digging deeper into which writers most influenced Gildas’s own authorial voice, how he was perceived by contemporaries and how understandings of his works evolved across succeeding generations, with an end-point early in the eighth century.
Joyce begins with an introduction (1-11) which identifies Gildas’s works and establishes the route-map he will follow. His first chapter (13-28) then reviews how the story of the British Isles (and particularly the early British Church) in the period c. 450-600 has been told since Bede’s time (and under his influence) and the second (31-53) considers how Gildas was perceived by different communities, in different regions and at different times, down to the twelfth century (31-53). Thereafter the approach is broadly chronological. The third chapter (55-77) teases out the scale of his debt to earlier monastic writers (particularly Jerome and Cassian), the fourth (79-104) explores the uses which Columbanus made of his work in c. 600 and the possibility that, perhaps via this Irish intermediary, Gregory the Great might have been influenced by him. Then there is a chapter-length study (107-29) of the use made of Gildas’s works by the authors of the seventh/eighth-century Irish book of canon law known today as the Hibernensis, and then one devoted to the ways in which Bede’s treatment of the DEB evolved across his writing career, leading to a conclusion which sets out how each chapter fits a broader case for Christianity within the British Isles having long resisted fragmentation and remained in closer touch with the Continent across the period than many scholars today allow.
This book has considerable strengths which require it be taken seriously by those studying both Gildas and those who made use of his works. The most obvious of these lies in the close and detailed examination of texts in parallel, which reveal borrowings from Gildas in later works that (to the best of my knowledge) have previously gone unrecognized. We now have, therefore, in the Hibernensis, not just acknowledged fragments from the “Letter to Finnian” but the addition of several passages taken from the DEB to which his name was not attached. And recognition that Bede’s “Letter to Ecgberht” made considerable use of the same work is likewise a valuable insight, with implications for how and why Bede came to position himself as if another Old-Testament prophet in his last year of life. Additionally, there is a very welcome focus on context, with each work which made use of Gildas’s discussed against the historical moment when it was written. Potentially, at least, this provides a range of further insights, for example regarding why and when theHibernensis was written and why Bede’s attitude towards the Northumbrian Church changed so dramatically between 731 and 735. Joyce thereby opens useful windows onto the thought processes underlying well-known early-medieval texts, offering new interpretations and encouraging further discussion.
This is a valuable work, therefore, which deserves to be read across a broad spectrum of early-medieval scholarship. It does, though, have significant weaknesses. Some of these are minor. So, the way it is structured makes it unduly repetitive and the bibliography is idiosyncratic, with no effort made to place the works of any one author in date order. More important, though, is Joyce’s failure to engage with a fuller range of recent studies of Gildas himself, [1] of many of the later figures he deals with (including Bishop Wilfrid and several of his contemporaries) [2] and in related disciplines with a relevance to his own. He might, for example, have found considerable value in recent archaeological discussions of contact between churchmen in Britain and Gaul in the fifth century, which generally come to similar conclusions to his own. [3]
There is also the problem of dating the works of Gildas. The collection of papers published in 1984 enshrines a disagreement between those favouring an “early” figure who wrote DEB late in the fifth century and those who date authorship around the 540s, with the “Letter to Finnian” probably later still. The “early” option rests heavily on circumstantial evidence (including similarities between the DEB and works written in late-fifth-century Gaul), a concern that Classical education is likely to have collapsed in Britain before a “late” Gildas could have benefited therefrom, and a desire to assimilate Gildas’s account of the Saxon revolt to the entry for 441 in the “Gallic Chronicle of 452” regarding “Saxon rule” of several provinces. It requires, though, special pleading to avoid dating the “Appeal to Aëtius” to the period when he was thrice consul (446-54), given that Gildas noted that fact, or to distinguish the author of the DEB and “Letter” from a Gildas whose death in the third quarter of the sixth century was noted in Irish chronicles with some claim to near-contemporaneity. Given these difficulties it is unsurprising that the later date is today by far the more-widely accepted. Apparently unbeknown to Joyce, though, the growing consensus has found additional support in the recognition that Classical education continued in parts of Gaul through the sixth century (so why not Britain?), [4] and that different pulses of “Saxon” migration can be identified, [5] making it likelier that the “Gallic Chronicle” and DEB addressed different episodes of a long-running conflict. Joyce opts for the earlier dating of Gildas but neither provides better evidence than has long been available to support it nor offers an effective counter-argument to the “late” case. As one who, thirty years ago, likewise preferred an “early” date, my instinct is to approach his arguments with a deal of sympathy, but it must be said that the historical tide has now turned on this issue. It seems unfortunate, therefore, that Joyce concludes (158) that the DEB was written c. 483 x 5, the “Appeal to Aëtius” occurred in 426 x 429, and the Saxon revolt broke out in 440 x 442. While this preference for a widely-rejected “early” date is not fatal to many of Joyce’s arguments regarding Gildas’s self-perception and the ways in which his ideas later disseminated, it may discourage others active in the field from taking up the stronger elements of the arguments presented in what overall should be considered a valuable contribution to recent discussions of Gildas and his contribution to western thought.
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Notes:
1. Including Stefan J. Schustereder, Strategies of Identity Construction: The Writings of Gildas, Aneirin and Bede (Bonn, 2015).
2. As the papers in Nicholas J. Higham (ed.), Wilfrid: Abbot, Bishop, Saint, Papers from the 1300th Anniversary Conferences (Donington, 2013).
3. As David Petts, “Christianity and Cross-Channel Connectivity in Late and Sub-Roman Britain,” in F. K. Haarer (ed.), The History and Archaeology of Late and Post-Roman Britain (London, 2014), 73-86.
4. Ralph W. Mathisen, “Bishops, Barbarians, and the ‘Dark Ages’: The Fate of Late Roman Educational Institutions in Late Antique Gaul,” in R. B. Begley and J. W. Koterski (eds.), Medieval Education (New York, 2005), 3-19.
5. There have been several discussions in recent decades but now see Chris Scull, “The adventus saxonum from an Archaeological Point of View: How Many Phases were there?,” in K. Kazzazi, G. Waxenberger and J. Hines (eds.), Old English Runes: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Approaches and Methodologies (Berlin, 2023), 179-98.