Book
VII: Towards a reconstruction of the lost history
of Britain from Ambrosius to Saint Gildas
This
book takes the study from cultural analysis with
historical overtones to the fullness of
historical writing, proposing a historical
narrative of events from the Saxon revolt of 442
to the Letter to Lovocatus and Catihernus
(510).
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A summary of
what we have been able to learn about Vitalinus,
the man who became Vortigern, cast into a
historical form.
An account of
the Saxon revolt, its effects on Gaul and
Britain, Ambrosius war (which is dated to
some time before 468) and the British
intervention in the War of the Loire (Gaul, 468),
based mainly on Roman documents.
A series of
hypotheses on the early history of Britain,
including a suggestion that the Anglian/English
ethnic identity came about with the arrival of a
king Icel from Denmark some time after the
original settlement, and that the kings of East
Anglia and Kent are even later and have something
to with what seems to have been a wave of
Scandinavian invasion about 527.
The war in
question is that of Ambrosius against the Saxons
(and Vitalinus) and the ethnic and cultural
consequences are the settlement of considerable
numbers of Celtic tribesmen from beyond the Wall,
who had supported Ambrosius, in military colonies
in Britain and Gaul. From now till the English
conquest, Britain is a patchwork of
Latin-speaking, consciously Roman Britons, and of
Celtic-speaking military settlers from the north.
Two Celtic
priests from the British military settlements in
northern Gaul are shown, in a surviving document,
to be savagely at odds with their
Frankish-imposed bishops, and to follow cultual
practices that go back both to a Celtic tribal
world and to Eastern Mediterranean church
practices.
History
of Britain, 407-597 is copyright © 2002, Fabio
P. Barbieri. Used with permission.
Comments
to: Fabio P.
Barbieri
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