Book
VIII: The lost Document "L"
This
book argues that there was a historical King
Arthur, who swept the remnants of Roman law and
statehood from Britain and Armorica, replacing it
with the Celtic culture that faces us in Gildas,
and offers dates for his life and death; it also
argues that the history of sixth-century Gaul as
we have it (from Gregory of Tours and Procopius
of Caesarea) is a pack of Frankish-inspired lies,
from which a whole epic of British intervention
has been removed - leaving, however, unmistakable
traces.
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Nennius, I
argue, had collected obscure or foreign notices
on British history, in order to complement an
already existing number of Welsh historical
documents including Gildas and the lost history
of the Saxon wars, "L". A significant
quotation proves that Nennius knew L. On the
other hand, Geoffrey had intended not to
supplement the existing Latin British documents,
but to synthetize them in one grand narrative;
and, I argue, he had included L into his
synthesis. The triumph of Geoffrey meant that the
documents he had used in his synthesis were no
longer copied and were lost. This chapter comes
to grips with the mendacity of the Frankish
sources, and argues that they covered up a period
of great British power in Gaul, connected with
the triumph of resurgent Celticism in Britain
itself, of which the new country of Brittany is
only a part.
A three-sided
comparison between Gildas, Nennius ch.56 and
Geoffrey establishes some facts about
Arthur’s career. A vigorous argument is made
for Geoffrey’s date of Arthur’s death,
542; it is argued that it coincides with
Gildas’ dating to an extent that cannot be
either coincidental or intended, since it is
impossible that my dating for Gildas’ The
Ruin of Britain could be reached by a
medieval author such as Geoffrey.
Geoffrey’s
account of King Arthur is compared with another
Celtic legend. The result is that, while Geoffrey
certainly includes a long and tolerably complete
mythical account of a great warrior king,
comparable in all its main points with other
Celtic legends, he also contains a large number
of notices which have nothing legendary about
them, and which contain definite historical
information including intervals between events.
Making ample use
of Welsh poetry and hagiography, I argue that
Arthur’s memory in Wales and North Britain
was at best ambiguous (unlike Brittany and
Cornwall, where he was regarded as a flawless
hero); he was cruel, he had fought many feuds,
and had oppressed the clergy; and there are clear
indications, and at least one clear statement,
that he had rebelled against a "Roman
Emperor" of Emrys’ (Ambrosius’)
blood, comparable with the Emperor Leo of
Geoffrey’s story. I argue that he was an
ambitious Northern warrior chief who started the
Saxon war that ended at Badon Hill to pay for the
expenses of a lavish court, and eventually
revolted against Roman law because he did not
want to pay tribute.
Geoffrey’s
circumstantial account, several Welsh documents,
and one half-forgotten Norse dynastic legend
mentioned by Saxo Grammaticus, show that Arthur
invaded Scandinavia at some point. I connect this
with the powerful seaborne Scandinavian armadas
that seem to have invaded the British Saxons and
the Franks (the raid of Hygelac/Chlochilaicus)
about 527, which I argue were set in motion by
Arthur against his present and potential enemies,
Franks and British Saxons.
From the 460s
and until 529, the Romano-British had some sort
of presence in North-West Gaul, ignored by
Gregory of Tours (whose account is shown to be
thoroughly mendacious). About 529, Arthur invaded
Armorica to finish off the power of his Ambrosiad
enemies, and found himself in conflict with the
Frankish king Lothar (Chlothochar); he was the
cause of the otherwise unexplained decline of
this king’s power and influence in the 530s,
that can be traced in the pages of Gregory of
Tours, and that was brusquely reversed after 544,
till he became the only lord of all the Franks.
From Gregory’s account of the episcopal
succession in Tours, it can be proved, a) that no
Frank was in power in Tours between 526 and 544;
b), that Lothar entered Tours in 544, but found
himself dangerously exposed to the power of the
local bishop Iniuriosus; c), that when Iniuriosus
kindly died, Lothar deliberately acted to destroy
the power of his diocese; d), that all his
actions towards Tours show distrust as to a nest
of disaffection and possible revolt. In other
words, when Arthur’s empire collapsed after
his death in 542, Lothar seized Tours, but did
not have the resource to push any further west,
which is why Brittany remained independent.
Arthur’s Gallic wars had at any rate
effectively come to an end by 537, when his chief
ally Cai and his son Llacheu had both died in
battle.
More material is
brought together to show the structure of the
empire of Arthur, its position in the
contemporary world, and the reason for its
eventual fall. The dynamics of its revolutionary
success and aggression is analyzed, particularly
as a complete breach with the Roman past, and its
ideological history is shown - like that of so
many revolutions - to have veered wildly in
several directions and eventually lost its own
moral underpinning.
History
of Britain, 407-597 is copyright © 2002, Fabio
P. Barbieri. Used with permission.
Comments
to: Fabio P.
Barbieri
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