Gildas

Gildas, surnamed by some Sapiens, by others Badonicus, the earliest native British historian, flourished in the 6th century, and wrote in Armorica (about 550-560) his famous treatise De Excidio Britanniae Liber Quercus. This was first printed at London in 1525, again in Gale's Scriptores XV. (1691), where it was first divided into two works, the History and the Epistle. The treatise falls naturally into two distinct portions: from the invasion of Britain by the Romans to the revolt of Maximin at the beginning of the 4th century, and from the close of the 4th century to the writer's own time. It is Gildas who narrates the story of the famous letter sent to Rome in 446 by the despairing Britons, commencing: 'To Ægidius (Ætius) consul for the third time, the groans of the Britons.' Gildas is a weak and wordy writer, and the value of his historical work has been assailed by Sir T. D. Hardy and others, but is vigorously defended by Dr Guest; and it must be remembered that its latter portion was adopted without hesitation by Bede. Gibbon has described him in a single sentence as 'a monk, who, in the profound ignorance of human life, has presumed to exercise the office of historian, strangely disfigures the state of Britain at the time of its separation from the Roman empire.' An edition of Gildas, edited by Joseph Stevenson, was published by the Historical Society in 1838; a new translation by J. A. Giles in 1841.