It is all too common to imagine that everything ‘Roman’ about Britain ended c. AD 410, when imperial rule collapsed. While much did change, the continuance of Roman-style education, Christian learning and correspondence reveals aristocrats still investing in traditional culture for several generations, much like their peers in Gaul. Indeed, more written by Britons survives from the fifth and sixth centuries than from the four preceding. These fragments shed much-needed light on a poorly understood era, when Roman Britain was transitioning into Wales and Anglo-Saxon England.
Much like other imperial dioceses, later-Roman Britain was run by externally appointed army officers and bureaucrats. Indeed, the latter proliferated in the fourth century, when provinces were divided and staffing increased. Of necessity, though, these incomers collaborated with the provincial aristocrats controlling local, civil government, the law courts and tax-collection, who asserted their cultural adhesion to the empire through their expenditure on villas and town houses.
In the 350s, though, Britain was on the losing side in a hard-fought civil war. Widespread appropriation of aristocratic estates resulted. Many were transferred to wealthy Continentals, who exploited their newly-gained, overseas assets through cadet members of their own families or land agents from among their own clients. The resulting shift to a more cosmopolitan landholding strata is illustrated by ‘Tolosanus of the British nation’, buried at Arles in 400-425 (the name parallels that of Roman Toulouse (Tolosa)), and Ambrosius Aurelianus, whom Gildas considered a Roman (note the Gallic Bishop Ambrose had the same name). That his parents had ‘worn the purple’, in Gildas’s words, suggests this was a Continental family with considerable British landed wealth.
The scenes from mythology featured on a large minority of the high-grade mosaics commissioned by many of Roman Britain’s landed elite during the period c. 275-350 reveal their interest in Mediterranean myths and legends (as spectacularly revealed by the ‘Trojan’ mosaic excavated near Ketton (Rutland)). This was a Classically-educated class, therefore, which valued (or at least wished to appear to value) traditional, Roman culture. A schooling in grammar and rhetoric was essential to their social status, and necessary preparation for any career in administration and/or advocacy in the law courts. Roman-style education was regulated by the late-Roman state. There is reason to believe such was available to those with the necessary means in fourth-century Britain.
Pelagius, as depicted in the Nuremberg Chronicle
Despite commissions for fresh mosaics faltering post-350 (some existing floors suffered damage or decay), individuals educated in Britain began breaking the glass ceiling which islanders had long experienced, excluding them from elite Roman society. The earliest example is Pelagius, a man generally considered of British origin (though Jerome thought him Irish) who established himself at Rome as a religious mentor to various aristocratic families prior to the city’s sack in 410. Although his teachings eventually fell foul of St. Augustine’s, leading to his being pronounced a heretic, he had been widely respected as a Christian thinker, and retained considerable support even thereafter. His few surviving works reveal his originality, clarity of thought and the fluency of his Latin.
The quality of education that he had apparently received in Britain is again apparent in the career of Faustus, who was born and educated there early in the fifth century but left to join the influential monastery at Lérins (near Marseilles). Having become its abbot, he was elected bishop of Riez (Alpes-de-Haute-Provence) in the 450s, in which role he was persuaded by his Gallic peers to pen a critique of Augustine’s doctrine of predestination. The resulting ‘Treatise on Grace’ offers weighty arguments on a problem central to Christian debate at this time. Again, less survives of Faustus’s work than one might wish (largely because his views were eventually condemned), but Sidonius Apollinaris, a fellow-bishop, judged one of his sermons so ‘morally exquisite and powerfully eloquent’ he instructed scribes to copy it for his own use.
Detail of an historiated initial ‘E'(n tel tens) of Patrick asleep on a knoll, with a figure on the right holding a book. British Library MS Royal 20 D.VI, f.213v
St Patrick provides our third example. Though best known for his work in Ireland, he, again, was British. Patrick’s chronology is debated but the notice of his death in Irish chronicles c. 493 is probably indicative. Capture by Irish slavers at the age of fifteen disrupted his education but he had clearly learned to read and write. His two surviving letters yield crude colloquialisms but also display an ability to articulate his thoughts in Latin (probably his first language) and develop a thesis. Again, he came from what seems to have been a wealthy, lowland, land-owning family. His assumption, clearly, was that there was a literate audience in Britain (where both letters were despatched) capable of appreciating his arguments. Indeed, he considered various clerical contemporaries well-trained in rhetoric and ‘learned in the Law’.
Interestingly, his works also reveal some awareness of monetary value, which implies continuance of some kind of market facility, including in land. And the British Churchmen reflected in this correspondence seem connected, learned and intent on exercising some oversight of the Irish mission, all of which required high levels of literacy and written communication. While Patrick’s works reveal little engagement with theology, he displayed a good working knowledge of the Bible, seeing himself as one called by God, in person, to follow in the footsteps of Christ’s apostles.
Every one of these authors had been named in the Classical tradition (Pelagius is Greek, the remainder Latin). So too were Patrick’s father and grandfather, whose names he supplied (Calpornius, Potitus), and many other of the fifth-century Britons whose names are recorded. Though archaeology struggles to locate these Roman-seeming families in fifth-century Britain, the surviving fragments of their literary output imply a well-established elite which retained power, residing in, and controlling, parts, at least, of the diocese’s lowlands. Despite imperial rule being in abeyance, and with that military protection, these landholding aristocrats were still using the traditional tools for managing late-Roman society – patronage, kinship, civil office, management of taxation and advocacy in the law courts – and were investing in the rhetorical training those roles required.
A folio from De Excidio et Conquestu Britanniae by Gildas – Cambridge University Library, Ff. i.27
The last of these witnesses provides our best evidence for this Christian, civil elite in post-Roman Britain and the latest, for Gildas was probably born late in the fifth century, wrote his best- known work c. 540 and died (again, according to Irish chroniclers), around 570. The work for which he is best remembered is the so-called ‘Ruin of Britain’ (De Excidio Britanniae), a letter, about 23,400 words long, in which he set out the difficulties facing his contemporaries, urging their reform, morally and spiritually, as the solution. His goal, clearly, was to recover God’s protection, thereby enabling his fellow-Britons to regain Britain from the ‘barbarians’ (Picts in the north, Saxons in the east) who had seized large parts thereof, and might take still more, should God’s anger persist. His arguments mirrored those of Jeremiah and Isaiah, the Old-Testament prophets demanding that the Israelites take comparable steps to regain God’s intervention versus the Babylonians and Assyrians.
Gildas’s complex style, the rhetorical structure of his arguments, the aptness of his few quotations from Virgil’s Aeneid and reliance on (and in some cases manipulation of) numerous biblical extracts displays his enormous erudition and educational attainment. Those addressed also needed considerable intellectual qualities and skills to grasp his argument. He clearly had access to a library, with Jerome’s Vulgate and an earlier version of the Bible alongside other works. This letter was his contribution to a debate carried on via correspondence among a highly-educated group who shared a particular, Christian perspective on events and their cause.
Occasional mention of others’ letters and opinions reveals Gildas did not open this discussion. Rather he was responding to opinions already circulated. Quotes from letters from Britain to the Roman general, Aëtius, in Gaul, c. 446-54, and mention of the education of a contemporary ruler, Maglocunus (previously a monk), by ‘the refined master of almost all Britain’ fill out this picture of a highly-literate, traditionally-educated elite still further.
Gildas’s principal, surviving work speaks, therefore, to elite, British networks functioning in the first half of the sixth century. Participants had experienced a traditional, Roman-style education, with a strong, Christian twist. They shared their opinions via letters circulating among themselves. Gildas’s audience was sufficiently dispersed to necessitate their debating involved writing, not just face-to-face discussion, implying each was resident on their own estate, or within a separate, religious community, but close enough for missives to be carried from one to another.
Survival of the kind of rhetorical training which traditionally prepared youths for careers in civil administration and the law courts implies that these either persisted, in some sense, or had only recently ended, with some expectation they might resume. This correspondence implies a sixth-century, civil aristocracy, therefore, comparable to that dominant within provincial society when emperors ruled Britain, before ’barbarians’ began seizing British lands.
By Nicholas J. Higham
It is all too common to imagine that everything ‘Roman’ about Britain ended c. AD 410, when imperial rule collapsed. While much did change, the continuance of Roman-style education, Christian learning and correspondence reveals aristocrats still investing in traditional culture for several generations, much like their peers in Gaul. Indeed, more written by Britons survives from the fifth and sixth centuries than from the four preceding. These fragments shed much-needed light on a poorly understood era, when Roman Britain was transitioning into Wales and Anglo-Saxon England.
What follows draws on research published in my new book How England Began: From Roman Britain to the Anglo-Saxons.
Much like other imperial dioceses, later-Roman Britain was run by externally appointed army officers and bureaucrats. Indeed, the latter proliferated in the fourth century, when provinces were divided and staffing increased. Of necessity, though, these incomers collaborated with the provincial aristocrats controlling local, civil government, the law courts and tax-collection, who asserted their cultural adhesion to the empire through their expenditure on villas and town houses.
In the 350s, though, Britain was on the losing side in a hard-fought civil war. Widespread appropriation of aristocratic estates resulted. Many were transferred to wealthy Continentals, who exploited their newly-gained, overseas assets through cadet members of their own families or land agents from among their own clients. The resulting shift to a more cosmopolitan landholding strata is illustrated by ‘Tolosanus of the British nation’, buried at Arles in 400-425 (the name parallels that of Roman Toulouse (Tolosa)), and Ambrosius Aurelianus, whom Gildas considered a Roman (note the Gallic Bishop Ambrose had the same name). That his parents had ‘worn the purple’, in Gildas’s words, suggests this was a Continental family with considerable British landed wealth.
The scenes from mythology featured on a large minority of the high-grade mosaics commissioned by many of Roman Britain’s landed elite during the period c. 275-350 reveal their interest in Mediterranean myths and legends (as spectacularly revealed by the ‘Trojan’ mosaic excavated near Ketton (Rutland)). This was a Classically-educated class, therefore, which valued (or at least wished to appear to value) traditional, Roman culture. A schooling in grammar and rhetoric was essential to their social status, and necessary preparation for any career in administration and/or advocacy in the law courts. Roman-style education was regulated by the late-Roman state. There is reason to believe such was available to those with the necessary means in fourth-century Britain.
Despite commissions for fresh mosaics faltering post-350 (some existing floors suffered damage or decay), individuals educated in Britain began breaking the glass ceiling which islanders had long experienced, excluding them from elite Roman society. The earliest example is Pelagius, a man generally considered of British origin (though Jerome thought him Irish) who established himself at Rome as a religious mentor to various aristocratic families prior to the city’s sack in 410. Although his teachings eventually fell foul of St. Augustine’s, leading to his being pronounced a heretic, he had been widely respected as a Christian thinker, and retained considerable support even thereafter. His few surviving works reveal his originality, clarity of thought and the fluency of his Latin.
The quality of education that he had apparently received in Britain is again apparent in the career of Faustus, who was born and educated there early in the fifth century but left to join the influential monastery at Lérins (near Marseilles). Having become its abbot, he was elected bishop of Riez (Alpes-de-Haute-Provence) in the 450s, in which role he was persuaded by his Gallic peers to pen a critique of Augustine’s doctrine of predestination. The resulting ‘Treatise on Grace’ offers weighty arguments on a problem central to Christian debate at this time. Again, less survives of Faustus’s work than one might wish (largely because his views were eventually condemned), but Sidonius Apollinaris, a fellow-bishop, judged one of his sermons so ‘morally exquisite and powerfully eloquent’ he instructed scribes to copy it for his own use.
St Patrick provides our third example. Though best known for his work in Ireland, he, again, was British. Patrick’s chronology is debated but the notice of his death in Irish chronicles c. 493 is probably indicative. Capture by Irish slavers at the age of fifteen disrupted his education but he had clearly learned to read and write. His two surviving letters yield crude colloquialisms but also display an ability to articulate his thoughts in Latin (probably his first language) and develop a thesis. Again, he came from what seems to have been a wealthy, lowland, land-owning family. His assumption, clearly, was that there was a literate audience in Britain (where both letters were despatched) capable of appreciating his arguments. Indeed, he considered various clerical contemporaries well-trained in rhetoric and ‘learned in the Law’.
Interestingly, his works also reveal some awareness of monetary value, which implies continuance of some kind of market facility, including in land. And the British Churchmen reflected in this correspondence seem connected, learned and intent on exercising some oversight of the Irish mission, all of which required high levels of literacy and written communication. While Patrick’s works reveal little engagement with theology, he displayed a good working knowledge of the Bible, seeing himself as one called by God, in person, to follow in the footsteps of Christ’s apostles.
Every one of these authors had been named in the Classical tradition (Pelagius is Greek, the remainder Latin). So too were Patrick’s father and grandfather, whose names he supplied (Calpornius, Potitus), and many other of the fifth-century Britons whose names are recorded. Though archaeology struggles to locate these Roman-seeming families in fifth-century Britain, the surviving fragments of their literary output imply a well-established elite which retained power, residing in, and controlling, parts, at least, of the diocese’s lowlands. Despite imperial rule being in abeyance, and with that military protection, these landholding aristocrats were still using the traditional tools for managing late-Roman society – patronage, kinship, civil office, management of taxation and advocacy in the law courts – and were investing in the rhetorical training those roles required.
The last of these witnesses provides our best evidence for this Christian, civil elite in post-Roman Britain and the latest, for Gildas was probably born late in the fifth century, wrote his best- known work c. 540 and died (again, according to Irish chroniclers), around 570. The work for which he is best remembered is the so-called ‘Ruin of Britain’ (De Excidio Britanniae), a letter, about 23,400 words long, in which he set out the difficulties facing his contemporaries, urging their reform, morally and spiritually, as the solution. His goal, clearly, was to recover God’s protection, thereby enabling his fellow-Britons to regain Britain from the ‘barbarians’ (Picts in the north, Saxons in the east) who had seized large parts thereof, and might take still more, should God’s anger persist. His arguments mirrored those of Jeremiah and Isaiah, the Old-Testament prophets demanding that the Israelites take comparable steps to regain God’s intervention versus the Babylonians and Assyrians.
Gildas’s complex style, the rhetorical structure of his arguments, the aptness of his few quotations from Virgil’s Aeneid and reliance on (and in some cases manipulation of) numerous biblical extracts displays his enormous erudition and educational attainment. Those addressed also needed considerable intellectual qualities and skills to grasp his argument. He clearly had access to a library, with Jerome’s Vulgate and an earlier version of the Bible alongside other works. This letter was his contribution to a debate carried on via correspondence among a highly-educated group who shared a particular, Christian perspective on events and their cause.
Occasional mention of others’ letters and opinions reveals Gildas did not open this discussion. Rather he was responding to opinions already circulated. Quotes from letters from Britain to the Roman general, Aëtius, in Gaul, c. 446-54, and mention of the education of a contemporary ruler, Maglocunus (previously a monk), by ‘the refined master of almost all Britain’ fill out this picture of a highly-literate, traditionally-educated elite still further.
Gildas’s principal, surviving work speaks, therefore, to elite, British networks functioning in the first half of the sixth century. Participants had experienced a traditional, Roman-style education, with a strong, Christian twist. They shared their opinions via letters circulating among themselves. Gildas’s audience was sufficiently dispersed to necessitate their debating involved writing, not just face-to-face discussion, implying each was resident on their own estate, or within a separate, religious community, but close enough for missives to be carried from one to another.
Survival of the kind of rhetorical training which traditionally prepared youths for careers in civil administration and the law courts implies that these either persisted, in some sense, or had only recently ended, with some expectation they might resume. This correspondence implies a sixth-century, civil aristocracy, therefore, comparable to that dominant within provincial society when emperors ruled Britain, before ’barbarians’ began seizing British lands.
Nicholas J. Higham specialises on the Roman/medieval interface. His new book, How England Began: From Roman Britain to the Anglo-Saxons, is published by Yale University Press.
Top Image: Statue of Gildas – Photo by Romary / Wikimedia Commons
Subscribe to Medievalverse
Related Posts