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KeyWords:
King Arthur
Nennius
Historia Britonnum
David N.Dumville
Nicholas J. Higham
T. D. Reed
John Morris
Gildas
Battle of Mt. Badon
Dux British History Clubrum
High King
Dux Bellorum
KeySources:
Nennius
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Introduction
" I have made a heap of all that I have found", says the author of the "Historia Brittonum" (History of the Britons = HB) in his preface (other versions express the same sentiment, albeit somewhat differently). The comment seems to suggest that he imposed no order or organizational system on his ragbag of material and gives it to us just the way he found it. About himself and his sources he says,
". . . being dull in intellect and rude of speech, I have presumed to deliver these things in the Latin tongue, not trusting to my own learning, which is little or none at all, but partly from traditions of our ancestors, partly from writings and monuments of the ancient inhabitants of Britain, partly from the annals of the Romans, and the chronicles of the sacred fathers, Isidore, Hieronymus, Prosper, Eusebius and from the histories of the Scots and Saxons."
He goes on to say,
"But I bore about with me an inward wound, and I was indignant, that the name of my own people, formerly famous and distinguished, should sink into oblivion, and like smoke be dissipated."
So, it appears, our humble scribe's agenda went beyond mere transmission of information: to rehabilitate the good name of his people, the British (i.e. Celts), the defeated, dispossessed, downtrodden folk who occupied the land long before the Romans came and who, the author believed, were the rightful owners of the land, still.
But, however unskilled and inept the author may have been, personally, his HB was the founding document of the Arthurian legend which would become part the European cultural mainstream in the years to come, and which would accomplish its stated purpose to the point that thwarting it would be an important item on the "To Do" list of an English monarch almost a half millennium later. But, we are ahead of ourselves. Let's go back and see where the HB came from and how and why the author constructed it the way he did.
Authorship
The best modern scholarship dates the writing of the HB to 829/30 AD, the fourth year of King Merfyn of Gwynedd. Internal evidence may indicate that the HB was written for the King and may have been written at his court. The authorship has traditionally been attributed to one Nennius, monk of Bangor (Wales) and disciple of the mid-8th century Bishop of Bangor, Elbodug (or Elbotus), who was the first to introduce the Roman system of reckoning the date for Easter into the Welsh church*. Some (Dumville) have challenged Nennian authorship, ascribing the writing of the Preface to the 11th century. A 1998 book by one David Howlett disputes this, however, claiming that the preface is written in the same Cambro/Latin style as the main text, indicating that the same author wrote both. So, as no other name has emerged as a viable alternative and in the absence of any compelling reason to do otherwise, we will continue to use the name, Nennius, to refer to the author of the HB.
Fletcher, who originally wrote in 1905, states that a similar document pre-dated the HB (known as the Chartres MS, the document was destroyed in 1944), but was unfortunately a fragment, ending with Vortigern's romance with the daughter of Hengist. Citing the groundwork of a Professor Zimmer, he traced the original sources for Chartres to a Briton, said to be the son of Urbgen (or Urbgehen), who combined extracts from the Life of St. Germanus with British genealogical material (believed to be of southern origin), and to northern genealogies of the English kings and a history of northern events beginning c. 540 (perhaps a continuation of Gildas). He states that, although the date is uncertain, all this material had surely been combined by 796, when he believes the author of the HB began the project. Did this pre-Nennian version include any of the traditions about Arthur-as-warrior? According to Chambers, it is possible that it originated with Urbgen's son, but more than likely it began with Nennius.
There are several versions of the earliest surviving manuscript in common use (known as Harleian MS 3859, containing the HB, the Annales Cambriae and a set of Welsh genealogies): Mommsen and Lot's translations are most frequently seen but Stevenson's (1838) and Faral's (1929) are preferred.
The Structure of the "Historia Brittonum"
The HB is presented in sections describing the Ages of the World, the Island of Britain, the Peopling of Britain, Roman Rule of Britain, the History of Post-Roman Britain (concentrating on 2 individuals after Magnus Maximus [to Nennius, the endpoint of Roman Rule in Britain], Cunedda and Vortigern), Arthur and His Battles and several Appendices. There are certain similarities to Gildas' "De Excidio Britanniae", and it is probable that Nennius knew of it and may have been influenced by it, to some extent, but the HB is a completely independent document with different emphases and different goals. The author manages to avoid the excessive language that Gildas directs at the hated Saxons, but it is clear that he doesn't think they should be considered friends, even after several centuries, nor legitimate rulers of the Britons' land.
The HB adds to Gildas and our knowledge of what Nennius believed to be true 5th and 6th century history. He gave us much that we'd never had before: the proper name**, Vortigern (Gildas told us of a 'superbus tyrannus' which has been taken to be a reference to Vortigern), Hengist, Horsa, St. Germanus, Vortimer, Pascent, Octha, identification of the Saxons with Kent, particularly the Isle of Thanet and the idea that the Saxons weren't doing their job defending the Britons against the Picts. He replaces Gildas attribution of Ambrosius and his wars with the invaders with Vortimer, and changes Gildas' portrayal of Ambrosius as a noble Romano-British man who, out of civic spirit and national necessity, took up arms to defend his country against the marauding Saxons into a quasi-mythical high king of supernatural origins and powers (these strange powers would be transferred from Ambrosius to Merlin by Geoffrey of Monmouth in his monumental "History of the Kings of Britain", c. 1136). Some have suggested that this is due to Nennius' desire to present a purely British (i.e. Celtic) savior rather than Ambrosius, a man who was known to history as "the last of the Romans."
The Coming of Arthur
In addition to all that, Nennius also gave us Arthur, his 12 battles and made him the victor of the decisive Battle of Mt. Badon (Gildas mentioned Mt. Badon as being a significant victory for the British forces, but, maddeningly enough, didn't name a victor, directly, although he gives the impression that it may have been Ambrosius). Because the original (i.e. pre-Nennian) version of the HB and its components are now lost to us, it is not known if Arthur was part of an earlier British tradition, but as it stands, there is no earlier mention, in history or literature, of Arthur before Nennius. True, there is a poem attributed to the 7th century Welsh bard, Aneirin, that mentions an Arthur being a warrior of great prowess and hints at an already legendary tradition surrounding him, but the only extant copy of that poem dates to the 13th century when the Arthurian legend was in full flower and extraordinary efforts were being made to give him a traceable history.
The "Arthurian" section of the HB is rather modest in size and scope. Contrary to his popular image, today, the HB didn't make Arthur a king and doesn't give us any details of his birth or earlier life. Nennius would leave the incredible inflation and aggrandizement of Arthur's name and reputation to future writers. The author styles Arthur dux bellorum or Duke of Wars (or Battles). The HB says that the kings of the Britons willingly deferred to Arthur's well-known expertise in the arts of war, and made him the commander of the British forces, subordinating themselves out of desperate national need.
"Then Arthur fought against them (the Saxons) in those days, together with the kings of the British; but he was their leader in battle.."
Arthur may have held a vestigial post-Roman military post known as Dux (or Comes; i.e. Duke or Count) British History Clubrum and would have been the logical one to get the nod when the need arose. Whatever the case, he was definitely not a king until Geoffrey made him one three hundred years later.
Purpose and Goals of the "Historia Brittonum"
The HB has been called a "synchronising history", a mode of writing common in Ireland at this time, which attempts to combine all available sources, no matter how wildly contradictory, into a harmonius whole, resulting in a synthesis of real history and non-historical material. Such histories were normally purpose-built and had definite goals in mind. In the case of the HB, several concurrent political, religious and ethnic purposes can be identified:
1) the validation of Merfyn's tenuous grip on the kingship of Gwynedd (see Higham, p. 117-8),
2) since the equation of the Britons with Israel had already been accomplished by Gildas, the equation of Arthur with Joshua of the Old Testament (see Higham, p. 141-4), with the idea of establishing the Britons as God's people and further securing their place in salvation history,
3) building the esteem of the Britons (see quote above) with the implied goal of the eventual expulsion of the hated occupiers of their land.
The Historical Reliability of the "Historia Brittonum"
In 1936, J.N.L. Myres said of the HB,
"...it is not from such material as this that a satisfactory history of the time can be made..."
and said that Nennius and the HB were characterized by ""ignorance and stupidity." A few years later (1943), Sir Frank Stenton wrote in his classic "Anglo Saxon England",
"no section of his (Nennius') work should be used without extreme caution and many reservations."
Linguistic scholar, Kenneth Jackson, called Nennius,
"a dim-witted and muddle-headed person."
All this has led David Dumville, a leading HB scholar, to ask why, if Nennius is so stupid and obtuse and if his work is so deficient, is the HB used so widely for details of 5th and 6th century history? He makes the case (Dumville, VII, p.9) for the existence of a historical horizon of record, beyond which little or nothing can be accurately known due to paucity of reliable source material and suggests that this period of Britain's history is outside that boundary. If we accept this standard, then, the HB must be discounted as anything more than a reflection of older British (i.e. Celtic) oral traditions, which may or may not be based on actual history, or as a tool of Celtic propaganda.
According to Higham, the HB is "an idealogical and rhetorical tract which has been written both for and against particular ideas and specific groups," and whatever else it might be, it should not be considered a reliable historical account of the time it purports to cover.
For Analysis of Other Arthurian Sources:
 Geoffrey of Monmouth' "Historia Regum Britanniae"
Gildas' "De Excidio Britanniae"
The Welsh Annals "Annales Cambriae"
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* The Roman Catholic missionaries who had been sent by Gregory the Great to convert the "English" to Christianity, discovered that the Celtic church observed Easter at a different time than was dictated by Rome. A synod was held at Whitby in 664 to debate and decide the issue. The Roman view prevailed, officially, but failed to win the hearts and minds of all parties involved.
** It may be that Vortigern is not a proper name at all, but a title meaning something like high king. His son, Vortimer also carries the 'Vorti' prefix, but the significance of this is unknown..
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Bibliography:
Chambers, E. K., "Arthur of Britain", Speculum Historiale, Cambridge, 1964 (original published in 1927
Dumville, David N., "Histories and Pseudo-histories of the Insular Middle Ages", Variorum, Aldershot, England, 1990
Fletcher, Robert Huntington, "The Arthurian Material in the Chronicles", Burt Franklin, New York, 1966 (2nd edition, original published in 1905)
Higham, N. J., "King Arthur: Myth-making and History" Routledge, London, 2002
Morrris, John, ed., "Nennius: Arthurian Period Sources", History from the Sources, Volume 8, Phillimore, Chichester, 1980
Reed, Trelawney Dayrell, "Battle for Britain in the Fifth Century", Methuen, London, 1944
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