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.

History from Loss challenges the common thought that "history is written by the winners" and explores how history-makers in different times and places across the globe have written histories from loss, even when this has come at the threat to their own safety. A distinguished group of historians from around the globe offer an introduction to different history-makers’ lives and ideas, and important extracts from their works which highlight various meanings of loss: from physical ailments to social ostracism, exile to imprisonment, and from dispossession to potential execution. Throughout the volume consideration of the information "bubbles" of different times and places helps to show how information has been weaponized to cause harm. In this way, the text helps to put current debates about the biases and weaponization of platforms such as social media into global and historical perspectives. In combination, the chapters build a picture of history from loss which is global, sustained, and anything but a simple mirror of history made by victors. The volume also includes an Introduction and Afterword, which draw out the key meanings of history from loss and which offer ideas for further exploration. History from Loss provides an invaluable resource for students, teachers, and general readers who wish to put current debates on bias, the politicization of history, and threats to history-makers into global and historical perspectives. The Open Access version of this book, available at www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.

Gildas is the earliest insular writer who has left us a substantial legacy of theological writing. He is usually, however, not seen as a theological writer but as an historical source for 'dark age' Britain at the time of the Germanic invasions in the mid-sixth century. Yet the deacon Gildas saw himself as a prophet charged by God to call the rulers and clergy of his society back to being a chosen people of the covenant. The form this call took was that of an indictment of those groups based on the testimonia of the Christian scriptures. This book is a study both of Gildas's use of the scriptures (his text, his canon, his exegetical strategies) and of how, from the way he interprets sacred history, he created a distinctive theology of the church and of salvation.

This book is one of Gildas' most important works. It is a sermon condemning the secular and religious behavior of his contemporaries. The author Saint Gildas is an outstanding member of the British Celtic Christian Church. His famous knowledge and literary style earned him the title of Gildas the Wise.

Uncover the story of Scotland with Alistair Moffat's history collection. From the Ice Age to the modern day, this bundle leaves no stone unturned. Journey through the long-lost kingdoms of Roman times and the Dark Ages, uncover the bloodshed wrought by the Border Reivers for two centuries, track down the true King Arthur, and learn the true story of how Scotland became the nation it is today. 'Moffat plunders the facts and fables to create a richly-detailed and comprehensive analysis of a nation's past' – Scots Magazine Titles included in this bundle are: The Faded Map Arthur and the Lost Kingdoms The Reivers Scotland: A History From Earliest Times

History writing in the Middle Ages did not belong to any particular genre, language or class of texts. Its remit was wide, embracing the events of antiquity; the deeds of saints, rulers and abbots; archival practices; and contemporary reportage. This volume addresses the challenges presented by medieval historiography by using the diverse methodologies of medieval studies: legal and literary history, art history, religious studies, codicology, the history of the emotions, gender studies and critical race theory. Spanning one thousand years of historiography in England, Wales, Ireland and Scotland, the essays map historical thinking across literary genres and expose the rich veins of national mythmaking tapped into by medieval writers. Additionally, they attend to the ways in which medieval histories crossed linguistic and geographical borders. Together, they trace multiple temporalities and productive anachronisms that fuelled some of the most innovative medieval writing.

Prophecy, Fate and Memory in the Early and Medieval Celtic World brings together a collection of studies that closely explore aspects of culture and history of Celtic-speaking nations. Non-narrative sources and cross-disciplinary approaches shed new light on traditional questions concerning commemoration,sources of political authority, and the nature of religious identity. Leading scholars and early-career researchers bring to bear hermeneutics from studies of religion and literary criticism alongside more traditional philological and historical methodologies. All the studies in this book bring to their particular tasks an acknowledgement of the importance of religion in the worldview of antiquity and the Middle Ages. Their approaches reflect a critical turn in Celtic studies that has proved immensely productive across the last two decades.

The Legacy of Boadicea explores the construction of personal and national identities in early modern England. It highlights the problems and anxieties of national identity in a nation with no native classical past. Written in an accessible style, The Legacy of Boadicea: * offers powerful new readings of the ancient British past in Shakespeare's King Lear and Cymbeline * persuasively illuminates a 'Boadicean' heritage in royal iconography, drama, and the social symptoms of religious dissent * articulates parallels between the eventual domestication of Britain's warrior queen in Restoration drama, and the social, political and legal decline in the status of women.

The Historical Arthur and The Gawain Poet: Studies on Arthurian and Other Traditions delves into the origins of Arthur and reveals the author of the famous Gawain Manuscript. Its first part contains evidence for the Arthur of film and legend as a real person, a Celtic commander (not a king) who fought battles in North Britain during the terrible volcanic winter of 536-7, before dying a hero's death in a conflict on Hadrian's Wall. Its second part moves on to Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, an Arthurian poem on magic, near-death, and near-seduction. Its author has always been unknown, but Dr. Breeze uses arguments of the US scholar Ann W. Astell to date the text to 1387 and name the poet as Sir John Stanley (d. 1414), a Cheshire and Lancashire grandee. He can now be recognized as an artist of genius, comparable to Chaucer himself. What is said in this book on John Stanley and his circle thus allows the greatest advance in Arthurian Studies since 1934, when Walter Oakeshott discovered the Winchester Malory amongst manuscripts of an English school library.

King Arthur and the Battle for Britannia is the last in a series of three books. The first, King Arthur: Man or Myth, weighed the evidence for and against a historical figure. The second, The Battles of King Arthur, looked in detail at the famous battle list from the Historia Brittonum. Having looked at the questions of whether and where, this final book takes on the different question of who was Arthur? The book is intended to save readers time and money wading through the scores of competing theories. It explains the problems with many of these theories to date, their failure to gain widespread support and why many historians remain sceptical about the existence of a historical Arthur. There is however a reasonable consistency in medieval genealogies and a good reason why Arthur does not appear in any of the list of kings of early kingdoms. Instead he is placed in the context of a fragmenting post-Roman provincial structure, alongside the emergence of petty kingdoms with new cultural identities. A heroic Brythonic culture in the west and north and a Germanic culture in the east and south. The book looks at the evolution of the legend comparing the chivalric French Romances with the Arthur of the darker Welsh tradition. A mythical figure may have emerged from the mead halls and war band culture of the sixth century. However the book describes how a historical figure may have been mythologised and who such a warrior may have been.