The Vision of History in Early Britain by Robert W. Hanning

THE VISION OF HISTORY IN EARLY BRlTAlN The Vision of Hirtolly in Early Britain FROM GILDAS TO GEOFFREY OF MONMOUTH ROBERT W. HANNIhTG COLUMBIA UNIVERSIII'Y PRESS NEW YON< AND LONDON Robert IV. Hanning is Assistant Professor of English at Columbia University This study, prepnred under the G~adunteFaculties of Colz~nzbia U7~ivcrsity,wns selected by a connuittee of those Fnczdtics to receiuc one of the Clarke F. Amley awards given annz~ally by Colzmzbia U~zi~ersityPress. The drawing opposite the title page represents the liberation of I3ritain, 296 A.D. The Roman conqueror, Emperor Constantius Chlorus, is welcomed at the gates of London by a knceling woman symbolizing the grateful Eritons. (Adapted from Arethzne, Paris, Jan. 1924, Plate vii; Roman medallion at the Trksor $Arras, France.) Copyright @ 1966 by Columbia University Press Fint pri)ztiszg 1966 Second p~i/hg1969 SBN 23 1-028.6-1 1,il)rary of Congress Catalog Card Number: 66-17856 Printed in the United States of America History has been called a seamless garment; it can as aptly be considered a coat of many colors. The varying tinctures applied by men to the past reflect to a variable but definite extent the chief concerns or dominant ideas of the age in which they write. This is not to say that historical writing is merely or inevitably propaganda, or that the environmental spectacles through which the historian regards history render him unfit to speak responsibly or usefully of the past. Spectacles, after all, are not blinders; they serve to focus our vision, not to limit it. Philosophical "focusing" and its effects on historiography have been the objects of considerable scholarly interest in this century, as is fitting for an age which also possesses a heightened sensibil- ity of the factors controlling personal and social formation. The present study seeks a place among the many others in which twentieth-century scholars have recorded and explored the history of history. Some chapters of that fascinating story have indeed been written and rewritten, especially those dealing with the historiography of the Greeks and the Romans. Despite the masterly surveys of Collingwood, Thompson, and others, however, the art and imagination of the historians of medieval Europe have yet to receive their share of sympathetic attention. Accordingly, I have attempted in this study to redress the bal- ance a bit in favor of medieval historiography. This is not to say that the medieval explicators of the past have been entircly without astute analysts and even defenders in this century. It is now thirty-five years and more since Edmond Preface Faral, in La lkgende nl-thul-ieane,studied exhaustively the learned nance (if, indeed, the island of Britain, with all its palitical and materials and traditions which shaped the Arthurian legend and social changcs over a period of six centuries, can be c,llled a ((common provenance"). Specifically, it can cogently be argued other visions of the past in the early medieval centuries. More recently Charles W. Jones and Nora K. Chadwick have put a that I have spent too much time on explication and too little on generation of medievalists deeply in their debt by illuminating the study of sources. My reply to such an objection n~ustbe that the doctrinal and political contexts of medicval thought and the methods of this study reflect the primarily literary interests writing on the subject of history. These are considerable achieve- of its author. I have found the histories of Bede and Geoffrey of ments; there remains, however, a dearth of critical analysis at Monmouth, however different they may bc in all other respects, once wider in the scopc of material covered and more narrowly to be alike in the excitement which they generate, in reading concerned with the historian, his world view, and his artistic after reading, and I respectfully submit that if the craftsmanship presentation of the past. underlying this excitement yields its secrets at all, it docs so as It is with this last phenomenon-with what may be called the effectively under predominantly literary scrutiny as it does crcative imagination of the historian-that the following pages through the more respectable study of origins and sources. In arc primarily concerned. Insofar as the imaginative process ulti- addition (and perhaps more to the point), the basic research on mately defies rational analysis and categorization, my attempt the fall of Britain teats has been completed to the point where so to analyze and categorize will inevitably fall short of com- some attempt at synthesis seems both possible and appropriate. plete success. In examining and discussing the fall of Britain texts, Whether or not my contribution to the work of critical con- I have tried to keep before me the following questions, hoping solidation proves valid, I am not sorry to have labored at it, and thereby to render my quest as systematic and objective as pos- will count myself amply rewarded if my conclusions prompt others to revise or refine them. sible: (I) What precommitments to the past led the historian The debts I have incurred in completing this study are as to the subject of his history and guided him in writing it? (2) What traditions of espression and analysis did he find in his cul- difficult to discharge as they are pleasant to aclmowledge. As tural environment and utilize in his historiography? (3) What the work progressed from visionary glean? to Columbia Uni- historical, ideological, or ethical themes dominate and organize versity doctoral dissertation, and finally to publishable manu- the complete work? It is my hope that the answers to these script, I profited by turns from the knowledge, patience, en- questions, as set forth individually with regard to each fall of couragement, and (of special value) the sltepticism of many of Britain text, will provide a tentative guide to the characteristic lny colleagues on the faculty of Columbia University, notably modes of early medieval historical expression, and, more im- Professors Howard Schless, li.T. H. Jackson, Norman Cantor, portantly, will be available as a foundation for further, more and Joseph A. Alazzeo. Discussions with and suggestions from detailed, investigations. Professor A. Kent Hieatt, Professor Andrew Chiappe, Mon- There are, of course, many other and perhaps more profitable signor James E. Rea, and Dr. Leo Walsh defined and lightened ways in which I could have approached the problem of char- my task on many occasions. Mrs. Marian Maury proved a most acterizing early medieval historiography on the basis of a group lle!pfuland knon~ledgeableeditor; Miss Barbarn Henry prcpard of tests sharing a related subject matter and common prove- the nmuscript efficiently and intelligently. My parents have becn as enthusiastic and encouraging through this as they have been through every stage of my academic career. As to my wife, to whom this book is gratefully dedicated, suffice it to say that without the constant exercise of her editorial talents this study would neither have been legible to the typist, acceptable to the publisher, nor understandable to its readers. Contents Acknowledgment is gratefully made to The Catholic Uni- versity of America Press for permission to quote from the translation by R. J. Deferrari of Eusebius' Ecclesiastical History; and to Columbia University Press for permission to quote from the translation by I. W. Raymond of Orosius' History Against Preface vii the Pagans. ROBERT W. HANNING I The Formation of the Early Medieval Historical New York, N. Y. Imagination I February, I 966 I1 Gi1das7De excidio et co7zqvestzr Br.itnmiae: 111 Britain's Fall They Sinnkd All 44 111 Bede's Historia ecclesiastics gentis Aug1o~u.11~:Britm- nia Renovata 6 3 IV Historin BI-~~~O~ZU~IZ:Heroes and Villains versus Saints C and Sinners 9' V Geoffrey of Ailonmouth's Historin regzm Britnnninc: Great Men on a Great Wheel I2 I VI Conclusion: Metamorphosis of the Vision '73 Notes '77 Bibliography 249 Index 263 THE VISIOA~01: HISTORY IN EARLY RRlTAlhJ CHAPTER I The Fornation of the Early Medieval Hirto r ical Imagination The period of Western history which we characterize inade- quately as the Middle Ages was abundantly varied in its re- cording, understanding, and uses of the past. To medieval man "history" could mean the history of salvation, the history of Rome, the history of the Christian church, or the preconversion and postconversion history of a barbarian nation. The move- ments of history could be and were perceived scparately and individually; often, however-and especially during the early medieval centuries-they fell into place as semi-autonon~ous parts of a larger design, usually the design of God in history. It has often been claimed that medieval thought about history and its significance partakes more of theology, or possibly of philosophy, than of disciplines we recognize today as appropriate to the social sciences, and such claims are, for much medieval historiography, well founded. But whatever its speculative roots, medieval historical writing also reveals characteristic, though diverse, modes of expression-narrative conventions and tech- niques, themselves the products of interacting cultures and cul- tural traditions. In seeking to analyze the medieval view (or, more accurately, medieval views) of history, therefore, we must distinguish these component parts: the creed or system of the historian, and the methods he uses to embody it in history. A Christian historian of the early Middle Ages can express himself Enrly Medicvtll Histoi-icnl Z7mgkzntio~ 3 quite diffcrcntly in works written for different purposes, while (accurate or inaccurate) of history, which identifies that record a single set of narrative and rhetorical conventions can be used with the human condition, seen as a timeless 2nd continuing to illustrate several different and not necessarily compatible phenomcnon.

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