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Appendix 8: Aegidius
and Arthur
Fabio P.
Barbieri
|
There is no record for post-Roman
Gaulish history but that of Gregory of Tours.
The author of the so-called Chronicle of Fredegar
reproduced, in essence, an abridgement of his
first six books, with a little extra material
here and there (e.g. he located the forest where
Lothar, assaulted by Childeric and Theudebert,
hid); and all subsequent historical traditions
reproduce, with embellishments and legendary
additions, Gregory and pseudo-Fredegar's
accounts. No trace of an alternative
account seems to exist.
Some of the traditions later
appended to Gregory's account do however seem to
have some claim to historicity. We know
that the Franks fought against Attila by the side
of Romans and Visigoth armies at the decisive
battle of the Campi Catalauni; and we know that
Childeric, father of Clovis, was the son of one
Meroveus, with whom the family began; we are not
therefore surprised to find Meroveus, in
post-Fredegar sources, at the Campi Catalauni,
playing as large a role in the defeat of the Huns
as national pride indubitably demanded. It
is probably a learned invention based on the
scrutiny of descent tables and chronologies, but
it is, if so, a highly likely one.
One such note, however, does seem
to have a connection, both unlikely and tempting,
with matters explored here. In about 1516,
Philippe de Vigneulles, from Metz, wrote a Chronicle
with the remarkable notice that Gillons le
Romains... olt... comme on dit, moult affaire au
roy Artus d'Angleterre: "Aegidius the
Roman... had... as they say, much to do with king
Arthur of England". This is inserted
in the Gregory-derived notice that, following a
revolt against Childeric, the same Gillons - that
is, Aegidius - was for eight years king of the
Franks. While we don't know what to make of
this particular Gregorian notice, which probably
amounts to no more than a Frankish decision to
align themselves to the Roman party in north Gaul
and throw out a particularly obstreperous chief; it certainly belongs to
the most ancient stratum of the material. But
Philippe de Vigneulles' addition to it certainly
does not: neither Gregory of Tours, nor any
writer, whether of history or of romance, in the
nine hundred years between Gregory and him, ever
so much as hints at a relationship between
Aegidius and Arthur.
Philippe himself, a charming man
and a writer of great honesty and attraction, was
in the habit of reproducing his sources virtually
unchanged. His editor tells us so, and I do not see any
reason to doubt his assessment. And as most
of his sources are in existence, we can check
what he did with them; and checking carefully
tells us a strange story.
The passage occurs at a point
where, having ceased to follow his principal
source - a writer called Jehan Lemaire le Belges
- he has turned to the account of Frankish
origins of Robert Gaguin or Gauguin, reproducing, among
other things, a chronological mistake of
Gaguin's. According to Gregory, the
Thuringian queen Basina was supposed to have left
her husband for Childeric as Childeric was still
in exile and friendless; according to Gaguin, she
did so when he had already returned and expelled
"Gillon". But here is the
rub: Philippe not only inserts his notice about
"Gillons le Romains" having much to do
with "le roy Arthus d'Angleterre", he
also edits out a whole passage of Gaguin's, and
by doing so he quite alters the weight and
meaning of the story.
Gregory and Fredegar both had
nothing more to say about the events than that
Childeric, when he was expelled, broke a coin in
two, gave half to an unnamed faithful friend, and
told him to send it to him when it was safe for
him to return. By the time the story
reached Gaguin, the faithful friend had gained a
name - the un-Frankish-sounding Guinemault
- and a legend of the "evil adviser"
type: Gaguin tells that he became the new king's
adviser and so misled Gillon (who sounds rather
thick) that Gillon started a savage period of
tyranny against the Frankish lords, at the end of
which they were only too glad to call Childeric
back. This was the story that Philippe
edited out of Gaguin's account, removing from
Gillon/Aegidius the taints both of stupidity and
of tyranny. In Philippe's story we are
simply not told how and why Childeric came back.
However, Philippe has not actually
gone back to Gregory's original. Gregory,
who did not bring Childeric's friend anywhere
near Aegidius, did give a reason for Childeric's
recall: over a period of eight years, he says,
the friend had carried out a quiet, dogged work
of propaganda and slowly won the Frankish
nobility back to their own king. What is
more, in eliminating Gaguin's version of the
story, he has also lost the Gregorian chronology:
with him, it does not take Childeric eight years
to come back - ne demourait guerre que ledit
Childeric, par le conseille et aide de son ami
Guinemault... retournait arrier et fut remis et
restitués en son royaulme et seigneurie:
"it was not long before the said Childeric,
thanks to the help and advice of his friend
Guinemault... came back and was put back and
restored in his realm and lordship". Finally,
Philippe retains from Gaguin the idea of a final
battle for the Frankish lordship between Gillons
and Childeric, fought at Bar-le-Duc, or possibly
Bois-le-Duc; which, of course, is neither in
Gregory nor in pseudo-Fredegar. In other
words, Philippe has not gone back to Gregory or
Fredegar: his account is still dependent on
Gaguin’s, except that he modifies it to make
Aegidius look neither stupid nor criminal - only rather unlucky
– and to give him a grand last battle
against Childeric. The association with
Arthur must be part of this editorial
intervention.
Philippe de Vigneulles believed in
the truth of chivalrous romances and actually
incorporated the romance of Garin the Lorrainer
into his Chronicle, taking that legendary
hero for a prominent Metz figure and wondering
aloud why previous historians had said so little
about him; and therefore, if Aegidius, Gilles,
Gillons, had been a prominent Arthurian figure,
we could easily understand the reason for his
wholly untypical editorial assault on Gaguin.
Only he is not. In neither of two reference
works I have consulted does a Giles, Gillon or
Aegidius turn up, except for mention of –
exactly – Philippe’s statement. Given
the huge size of the material, I cannot speak
with absolute confidence, but it does seem safe
to say that nobody by that name plays any notable
or even noticeable part in the romances.
From my point of view, it is of
course impossible that Aegidius – who died
in 468– should have had molt,
or even little, affaire with king Arthur,
who dates to a couple of generations later; but
it would be very helpful to my theories if I
could allow myself to trust, however little,
Philippe's notice. It could, at least, be
taken as evidence of close relations with
Britain, such as I postulated in discussing him
and his son Syagrius. Only I don't think I
can. Where would such a notice have come
from? Philippe could not read Latin, and
any reference to Aegidius and Arthur he could
have met would have been in French; therefore we
would have to postulate a notice that survived
only after having been translated into the
vernacular, and which, in spite of dealing with
the origins of the nation (always a favourite
subject) and involving famous names of ancient
history and legend, would have passed unnoticed
by all the writers whom we do possess (except for
one - of whom more anon) until it reached this
Metz merchant, who, though pleasant and
intellectually lively, was no giant of
scholarship to track down obscure references
no-one else had noticed!
And let us remember that this is
Lorraine we are talking about. This is not,
as in the case of isolated Welsh, Breton or
Scottish monasteries, a matter of an isolated
centre of learning carrying on its own highly
individual traditions which both the rugged
geography of the country and the isolation caused
by a pugnacious warrior nobility always out to
damage each other may have deprived of contact
with other centres, so that wholly unique
accounts may survive without being known
elsewhere: this is a land of traffic and culture,
the heartland of the old Frankish kingdom,
densely settled and dense with monasteries, one
of those areas which preserved a thread of
learning even in such infamous centuries as the
seventh, eighth and tenth. How likely is it
exactly, when even some of the condemned writings
of the heretic Gottschalck have survived, that
such an item would remain so obscure that only
one Renaissance chronicler - and not the most
learned of them - would pick it up?
Philippe himself does not
encourage us to trust him. Usually the most
scrupulous of men in the matter of sources, not
only copying them word for word but carefully
mentioning their names, here he says nothing else
than comme on dit - "as they
say". This suggests a vague rumour,
probably verbal rather than written in origin -
such a misunderstanding as may be born in the
schoolroom between students who have forgotten
some of their lesson or got two of them mixed
together. We even have the possible reason
for contamination: apparently, one Jean de Guise,
in the previous century, had said that Aegidius
and Arthur had been contemporaries. This is
no more than the kind of standard chronological
guesswork one meets dozens of times in medieval
and renaissance historiography; but if Jean was a
de Guise, then he was probably from Lorraine
himself, and his notice may well have strayed, to
become, in the loose talk of the only partly
educated, an idea that Arthur - whom everybody
knew had invaded France - had been connected with
what was thought to be his Roman contemporary.
I do not reject Philippe de
Vigneulles' notice, but I think that it must be
regarded as very dubious.
Notes
History
of Britain, 407-597 is copyright © 2002, Fabio
P. Barbieri. Used with permission.
Comments
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Barbieri
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