inverarity | AQATSA Update, No April Fools' Joke!

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AQATSA Update, No April Fools' Joke!

I feel like staying off the Internet tomorrow. I know this makes me sound like a humorless grumpy-pants, but I hate April Fools' Day. Yes, it's just so cute when every web site covers their home page with monkeys, tells us they've been bought out by the Russian mafia, changes their color scheme to pink and chartreuse, announces that they've sold your personal information to a finance start-up company in Nigeria, or whatever other clever idea they come up with. Hah hah. So I have to spend all day going "WTF?" and then remembering "Oh yeah, it's April 1."

So anyway, I guarantee this post is 100% April Fools Free.

Current word count: 186,392.

Below is preliminary line art for the cover of Alexandra Quick and the Stars Above. I made a few change requests (like holding her wand in her right hand, and pointing out that Alexandra should be a little bit skinnier), but I like it and am looking forward to the full color painted version.

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http://www.facesofarthur.org.uk/fabio/book1.1.htm
Here. This is a link to the first chapter. Go there for five minutes and look at the footnotes. ONLY at the footnotes.

I did not read the foot-notes. I read the text.

You start well. (paraphrase) "In my view, the common opinion about GILDAS' prophetic writings is wrong." An academic work needs a list of proven facts with citations and reasonable guesses and a grand theory that arranges those facts into a pretty pattern and a fudge-factor to explain any facts that don't fit. It is ESSENTIAL to discriminate, between facts and guesses. "In my view" is on page one, you forgot to discriminate in the chapter on Muirchiu versus the Patriarch of Armagh.

Para 2)"De excidio et conquestu", you propose that the "conquestu" was added on later after the Saxons did indeed conquer Britain. WTF??? Para #1 calls him "prophetic". St. Gildas ranted against the corruption of the British kings and called down the wrath of God upon them in the form of Barbarian Invaders.

Is St. Gildas a prophet or not? Make up your mind.

I read Excidio because I love Excalibur and Arthur and Mabinogi. That is a book that needs footnotes.
St. Gildas expected his audience to know the kings he was denouncing. That is, I tried to read it. Even with the foot-notes, I couldn't get the point. Gildas is in a bad mood. Is That It?

So, you've got an radical new theory that St. Gildas has a point. I read page one and got exhausted. Excidio just goes on and on. Your essay about Excidio just goes on and on. This is NOT a criticism of your scholarship, it is a crticism of your writing style.

I have read a million books about Arthur, but I got bored when they re-hash the same old stuff. You hook me with the radical new improved theory that St. Gildas has a point but then you drop the theme just like all the interesting themes in HP.

For the record, I am a graduate in Greek and Hebrew with a minor in Celtic languages.

Gildas was no prophet. In his time, the Saxons were subdued. It was about 570, which is also his likely death date, that they started moving again, and conquered most of what is today southern England. The lands north of the Trent did not fall until 615, and Devon later still. Gildas lived in, and described, a world where the Saxons were defeated; if he proposed a crusade against them (using an anachronistic term), itr was because it was the only way he could see to unite the British kings. Plus, there is some indication that the British had already started to use Saxon mercenaries in their wars, which was one of the things that would eventually lead to Saxon triumph, and of course a crusade would change that.

Well, either you go on or you don't, it's your business. I swear before God that I tried every possible way to make my work shorter and less demanding, but there was no way I could do that without turning from a historical argument to a romance.

And to get back to your first question, I am certain that the whole title is an ex post facto addition, and I tried to say so. It not only shows knowledge of the Briotons' later sorry fate, it is not in keeping with the book's actual content, which would be better represented. for instance, by something like De Perfidiis et Tyrannide Brittonum

So why did you call St Gildas a prophet in the ery first sentence? That is a very emotive term.

Because he was correct, even more than he knew, in declaring that the behaviour of kings and bishops in his time could not but result in disaster.

But that is the Common Opinion of Saint Gildas, which you said is wrong. Gildas was ina bad mood about the corruption in the British state and guessed that it would all end in tears. Of all the people in 550 A.D. who guessed what would happen next, Saint Gildas is famous for guessing correctly.

Gildas did not have magical powers, he guessed correctly and all the people who guessed wrongly ain't famous.

But that is the Common Opinion about St. Gildas and you said it's wrong.

I skimmed through "de Excidio" a million years ago. You hae studied it thoroughly, so answer me this:

Did Gildas prophecy generic doom and gloom upon the Kings or did he specifically threaten Barbarian invasion?

Did Gildas assert precise dates for the Apocalypse?

Did you notice the pune in sentence #2. "St Gildas was Ina bad mood," referring to King Ina, one of the Saxon tyrants My punes are more infallible than pope Gregory's.

I would rather you read the books, rather than ask for a summary. However:
1) Gildas was not merely "in a bad mood" about his contemporaries. All his most dreadful charges are confirmed by Gregory of Tours' independent evidence of British princes' behaviour in Brittany, and some specific charges by the decrees of the Council of Tours (567 AD)
2) Gildas did not foresee Saxon invasion, but he was quite clear that if there was no moral renewal in society, something dreadful WOULD happen. He thought this would be a Byzantine invasion, and in fact I give evidence that Justinian I had been thinking of using Ostrogoth armies to invade Britain. Considering the war-fighting methods of Justinian and his generals Belisarius and Narses, a Byzantine invasion would certainly have been an apocalyptic event.
3) However, when the British system of kings and kinglets started collapsing just about at the time Gildas died, his warnings were taken to have been prophetic in that specific sense. Both Bede and Wolfstan describe him as a prophet - Wulfstan as a thiodhvita, a seer of the people/nation.
4) However, the relationship between Gildas' warnings and the eventual catastrophe is less than casual. The disastrous in-fighting and incapacity to sustain any kind of permanent order which he denounced, and which contemporary Gaulish evidence confirms, did in fact lead to the sudden and unstoppable English break-out from the "reservations" of east Anglia and possibly Kent to which they had been confined since Badon. In other words, the Britons would have done themselves a world of good if they had listened to their thiodhvita.

St. Gildas Correctly guessed that corruption in the British state and church would lead to Doom. He Incorrectly guessed the specifics of that Doom.

He guessed Civilized invasion from Byzantium, we got Barbarian invasion. And with the benefit of hindsight and dialectics, we think that Barbarian invasion is inevitable.

Gildas did NOT have the benefit of hindsight. He earned his saint points by Correctly prophecying Doom even though it was the exact opposite Doom than he expected.

And who was the British dux Bellorum at Badon? Nennius and Geoffrey of Monmouth say Arthur; Gildas and Giraldus say it was Arthur's uncle Aurelius.

READ THE BOOKS. Gildas very carefully does NOT say that Ambrosius was the victor at Badon. 'Ambrosius started the cycle of wars of which Badon was the climax. But to establish a chronology and a history I was forced to write half a million words, and there is a limit to how much I can impart in a few answers like these.

I have READ THE BOOKS and the Books say the same thing over and over again, that Nothing was written about Arthur in 600 AD. Arthur got a few mentions by 800 AD and by 1200 AD, the whole world consisted of squeeing Arthur fan-boys.

The BOOKS state that we know the square root of bugger all about the Dark Ages, who do what it says on the can.

It is a proven fact that Gildas does NOT say that Arthur was Dux at Badon. I thought Gildas stood up on his hind legs and deliberately said that Ambrosius was Dux at Badon.

Gildas was Vague about the Dux.
I wanna believe the Vita even though it was written centuries later. I wanna believe in Arthur. I wanna believe that Saint Gildas was an unreliable narrator. That's logical, Captein.

Well, it all depends on what you want. You might find that Arthur existed and was a major figure, but then you might find that he was not much like the man in the romances....

And another thing, how do you judge Gildas' hagiography?

Gildas was contemporary with Arthur, he occasional mentioned Aurelius, Arthur's uncle, but he never mentioned Arthur himself.

Vita resolves the paradox because Gildas' brother was a pirate king hanged by Arthur so Gildas burnt all the pro-Arthur books.

I am a squeeing Arthur fan-boy, I want to believe the Vita. But it was written centuries later.

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AQATSA Update, No April Fools' Joke!

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