Provocative new investigation into the shadowy figure of Gildas, his influence and representation.
Gildas is an essential witness to the Christian culture of the British Isles in the opaque period after the decline and fall of the western Roman empire. His criticisms in
De excidio Britanniae of the Britons in the context of spiritual and secular corruption and partition with pagan powers are a crucial source for understanding the transition to the medieval nations of England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland. But the ways in which this enigmatic ecclesiastical figure has been received over the centuries have shaped an ambivalent reputation. On the one hand, he is seen as a significant contributor to ecclesiastical reform; on the other, as a dour and unreliable chronicler lamenting an inevitable spiritual and political decline.
This book seeks to refine and recuperate the image of Gildas. It does so by examining his self-image as presented in select surviving works, and subsequent representations as developed by the reception of these works – the legacy of Gildas – by church luminaries such as Columbanus, Gregory the Great, and Bede; in exploring how Gildas influenced perceptions of authority in the British Isles and on the continent, it puts this legacy into a wider context. Overall, the volume argues that as one of the earliest authorities to define and defend Christian kingship Gildas deserves to be seen as a significant contributor to the political and ecclesiastical development of the early medieval West.
Table of Content
List of Figures
Preface and Acknowledgements
List of Abbreviations
Introduction
1. Narratives for Early Medieval Britain and Ireland
2. Images of Gildas
3. Gildas’s
De excidio – Authority and the Monastic Ideal
4. Columbanus and Gregory the Great
5. Gildas and the
Hibernensis
6. Bede and Gildas
Conclusion: The Legacy of Gildas
Appendix:
De communicatione Gildas
Bibliography
Index
About the author
Stephen J. Joyce is a Research Fellow on the ARC Discovery Project, Addressing Injustice in the Medieval Body Politic: From Complaint to Advice, based in the School of Philosophical, Historical, and International Studies at Monash University. His research focuses on the British Isles in the early medieval period.
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