AQATSA Update, No April Fools' Joke!

[inverarity]

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.

Comments

[fpb.livejournal.com]

You want a way to assess my scholarly credentials. I offer you one that does not entail your reading myHistory of Britain 407-597 (http://www.facesofarthur.org.uk/fabio/contents.htm) or chasing down my more obscure publications. You refuse to read them, and that incidentally are relevant to a lot of things you said. That does not suggest either an open mind or a willingness to expend any effort.

[inverarity.livejournal.com]

Okay, I'm trying to stay out of this (though you two really should take this to one of your own respective blogs), but I feel compelled to point out, fpb, that the point is valid: the fact that you've written a lot of articles, and even a book, is not very meaningful when you don't cite your sources, nor is there any evidence of peer review. (I looked at your History of Britain and I could not find a bibliography, and even your footnotes mostly refer simply to source materials whose lines you quote -- almost none of your arguments have any supporting citations.)

This is not meant to disparage your education, but seriously: you cannot call yourself a "scholar" just because you've read books and posted essays on the Internet. Actual scholarship requires citing your sources and being peer reviewed. Do you understand why it makes people skeptical when you try to play the "I am a scholar: respect my learnings!" card?

NOW I AM FURIOUS

[fpb.livejournal.com]

My books, in the plural, are thick with footnotes and references, not to mention closing bibliographies compiled by myself by hand without the help of editors or software. You must not claim to judge my scholarship when you give such solid evidence of never having read a fucking page.

EDITED IN: I notice for the first time that Robert Vermaat, who has the exclusive rights for my HoB online, does not seem to have published the bibliography I supplied him with. Nonetheless, each chapter is thick with footnotes quoting authorities, editions and place and time of publication, and you do not give any evidence of having done any serious reading if you retail the opposite as fact.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

And will you ever understand why I don't take any of your objections seriously when you never seem to respect even the actual work I have put in three years of HoB writing? Christ, do I treat your own writing work like that? No: to the contrary, I have often expressed admiration slightly tinged with jealousy. But when you don't bloody make the effort to read the damned footnotes when they are there for you to read, then I have to say that you keep speaking exactly like a close-minded, hostile, rude opponent - and one whose views of me, whatever else I may respect, I never will. Either do the damn work or shut up.

On scholarship and research

[inverarity.livejournal.com]

Fabio,

I am honestly, sincerely not trying to fight with or insult you here, nor were my previous comments meant to do so. I ask that you take a breath and read what I am saying here before you assume (as you often accuse me of doing) ill intent in my words. I don't see how anything I posted in this thread was hostile, close-minded, or rude.

First, you just admitted that you're furious because I didn't read a bibliography that isn't there. If the fellow in charge of publishing your book didn't include it, then you should be furious at him.

I do not disrespect the work you put into History of Britain. On the contrary, I respect enormously the time it must have taken to research and write it. It's clearly a subject you are passionate and knowledgeable about (and you'll notice I have not criticized the substance of what you wrote in it). I've even suggested to you more than once that you should pursue a self-publishing angle if you can't get an academic publisher to handle it. There are ways you could get it seen by more people than will currently find it on an obscure web site.

That said, the mere fact that someone spends a lot of time writing something is not reason in itself to give it credence; surely you know that.

No, I did not read History of Britain. I only skimmed a bit of it. I'm sorry -- that's not my area of interest, so I'm not going to read multiple self-published volumes on a subject I'm only vaguely interested in.

I did, however, observe that in the little I skimmed, whenever you made an assertion that appeared to be your own analysis (as opposed to a statement of documented fact) there is little to back up your opinion; you expect the reader to take your word for it. A representative sample I just picked at random:

Patrick, the great saint of Ulster, was a less likely subject, and it has been suggested that the book was part of a complex diplomatic manoeuvre to draw the still schismatic North into the Roman Catholic church by acknowledging the primacy of Armagh, the see of St.Patrick's successors and the North's greatest bishopric, in exchange for Armagh's adhesion to Rome. Anyway, Muirchu was an outsider rather than a member of the Armagh succession with its Patrician claims, and may have suffered less from the lust to glorify Patrick at all costs.

Those boldfaced portions are parts that on Wikipedia would get "[citation needed]" tags. I'm not saying your suppositions are right or wrong; I have no idea. I'm saying that even while reading scholarship on a subject I'm not familiar with, when I see claims made, I want to know if the author has reason to make them or if he's pulling them out of his ass; without citations or being an authority on the subject myself, I have no way of knowing which. This is something that would be pounded into your head if you went to grad school and did this for your thesis.

Do you see what I am trying to say here? It is not "fpb is an ignoramus and doesn't know what he's talking about." It's "fpb makes assertions of fact and then flips out when people don't automatically defer to his claimed authority on the subject."

I posted all of the above as calmly and reasonably as I could, taking it on faith that you'd make an effort to read this without just blowing up at me. Please don't disappoint me.

Re: On scholarship and research

[fpb.livejournal.com]

Are you serious? The first bolded passage is not only irrelevant to the main course of the argument, it is unproven and unprovable; and the second is my own suggestion about the significance of Muirchu's undoubted Southern origin on his attitude to Patrick and to Armagh! As for Armagh's claims over Patrick, that is part of a monstrously complex set of problems which I have elsewhere called "brain-boiling", but that Armagh did make such a claim is not in doubt and I described the fact (with quotations) elsewhere, as well as adding an appendix (heavily sourced) on a later, political use of the legend. I swear that I don't even understand your criticism here: should I not publish my own interpretation of facts unless every sentence starts with "I think""?

Re: On scholarship and research

[fpb.livejournal.com]

No, I did not read History of Britain. I only skimmed a bit of it. I'm sorry -- that's not my area of interest, so I'm not going to read multiple self-published volumes on a subject I'm only vaguely interested in.

But you ARE going to reach polemical views of it and propagate them without visible self-doubt. What was it you said last time about pseudo-scholarship?

Re: On scholarship and research

[inverarity.livejournal.com]

In most fields, saying "it has been suggested" without saying who suggested it will get serious side-eyes from reviewers. Have you ever asked someone in this field to look at your work? Do you think academic peer reviewers would be gentler on you than I have been?

I haven't said anything polemical about your work. I've said it's not peer-reviewed and of questionable academic merit since you haven't been through the process that teaches you to write scholarship that will stand up to challenge, as is evidenced by the angry and uncomprehending way you respond to challenges.

Sigh. You're doing that multiple-posts thing again. I can only assume you're not taking a breath and collecting your thoughts, but dashing off angry notes as quickly as you think of them.

Re: On scholarship and research

[inverarity.livejournal.com]

Dude, I'm not the one digging myself into a hole, nor the one with a stack of apologies owed.

But you clearly don't even understand what "peer review" means. Literally. You don't.

Also, your HTML is borked.

Re: On scholarship and research

[fpb.livejournal.com]

I know exactly what peer review means, and I pointed you at two publications, including one book, from very respectable learned societies. Dig, dig, dig, dig diggety dig...

Re: On scholarship and research

[fpb.livejournal.com]

You have taken a passage that was actually intended as a side-glance, of little importance and no evidential value, and not even paid attention to the meaning of the "Anyway" that starts the second part. In English, "Anyway" at the start of a phrase or sentence implies that, whatever side issue or unprovable fancy we had been pursuing up to there, we are now going back to more solid ground; "Anyway, Nixon was President and ought to have known"; "Anyway, they scored and won the game, whether or not the ref was on their side." As for your fanciful claim that I did not subject my work to peer review, I will not even ask you to take it back - submission to sixty or so publishers ought to be enough, and publishing on the internet hardly means hiding it away - but I will tell you that your view of me would greatly have surprised the Belgian Society for Celtic Studies, who published my first book (http://www.sbec.be/index.php/publications/memoires.html), or Dublin's Institute for Advanced Studies (http://www.dias.ie/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=596%3Ationol-2003&catid=23&Itemid=153&lang=en), not to mention any amount of more informal groupings in Oxford and elsewhere. And where is it written that to publish something on the Internet is to remove it from peer review? I can point you to at least one peer-reviewed magazine (Aarhus University's Classica et Medievalia) who didn't think so. I don't expect an apology from you when I've never had one however often you may have been wrong about me; but I remind you of the good old proverb that when you are in a hole, the best thing you could do is to stop digging.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

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.

Rhemus de excidio

[(Anonymous)]

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.

Re: Rhemus de excidio

[fpb.livejournal.com]

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.

Re: Rhemus de excidio

[fpb.livejournal.com]

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.

Re: Rhemus de excidio

[fpb.livejournal.com]

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

Re: Rhemus de excidio

[(Anonymous)]

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

Re: Rhemus de excidio

[fpb.livejournal.com]

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.

Re: Rhemus de excidio

[(Anonymous)]

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.

Re: Rhemus de excidio

[fpb.livejournal.com]

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.

Re: Rhemus de excidio

[(Anonymous)]

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.

Re: Rhemus de excidio

[fpb.livejournal.com]

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.

Re: Rhemus de excidio

[(Anonymous)]

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.

Re: Rhemus de excidio

[(Anonymous)]

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.