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On the Ruin of Britain

St Gildas, tr. Williams, 1899

12. Heresies

Thus when ten years of the violence referred to had scarcely passed, and when the abominable edicts were disappearing through the death of their authors, all the soldiers of Christ, with gladsome eyes, as if after a wintry and long night, take in the calm and the serene light of the celestial region.¹ They repair the churches,² ruined to the ground; they found, construct, and complete basilicae in honour of the holy martyrs, and set them forth in many places as emblems of victory; they celebrate feast days; the sacred offices they perform with clean heart and lip; all exult as children cherished in the bosom of their mother, the church.

Heresies

For this sweet harmony between Christ the head and the members continued, until the Arian unbelief³, fierce as a snake vomiting forth upon us its foreign poison, caused deadly separation between brethren dwelling together. In this way, as if a path were made across the sea, all manner of wild beasts began to inject with horrid mouth the fatal poison of every form of heresy, and to inflict the lethal wounds of their teeth upon a country always wishful to hear something new and, at all events, desiring nothing steadfastly.

Notes

Eus. (Ruf.), ix 10.
Renovant ecclesias . . . . basilicas sanctorum martyrum. Gildas in this chapter is, no doubt, describing the change which came after the cessation of persecution, in terms suggested to him by Eusebius through the Latin version of Rufinus: ecclesiae denotes the sacred edifices, the domus ecclesiae as they are elsewhere called, for public worship: basilicae is here employed, as frequently, for the chapels raised above the resting-place of a martyr. Basilica, as a new name for the place where the Christian assembly meets, makes its appearance in the fourth century. The word had a wide signification: “hall,” or a splendid edifice of any kind, but in Christian speech it implied a reference to the heavenly King or Basileus (βασιλέυς), and therefore was formed parallel with another less common appellation, dominicum, τὸ κυριακόν, i.e., the Lord’s house. Schultze (Archäologie der Altchristlichen Kunst, 1895) strongly insists upon the newer theory that the basilica of the Christians is derived from the ancient Roman house, not from the basilica as judgment-hall for forensic use (Section 7, Die Basilika). This theory renders it easier for us to understand how the meaning became differentiated so as to make basilica the peculiar name for churches or chapels raised over the graves of martyrs and saints to commemorate their life and death. The Sacram. Gelasianum (Cent. vii) contains a service to be used in dedicatione basilicae novae, where it is expressly called a “house of prayer,” and is said to be built “in honour of a certain saint” (in honorem sancti illius): we have also in the same service a benediction of the altar in such basilica. The Roman Martyrology calls these buildings concilia martyrum. Jerome, Ep. 60, 12, speaks of basilicas ecclesiae et martyrum conciliabula; but in Britain, as we have seen in a previous note, the name that prevailed was martyrium, still common in Welsh. Yet one place, apparently, has preserved basilica in Welsh. This is Bassalec (Bassaleg) in Glamorgan: see Index to Book of Llandaf, p. 273, Benedictus presbiter Bassalec; pp. 319, 323, 333, 344, ecclesia de Basselec. Dr. Kuno Meyer has kindly supplied me with several other instances where baslec stands for basilica. “It occurs twice in the Calendar of Oengus, November 19th and September 15th. In the Lebor Brecc, in the passion of Partholon (i.e., Bartholomew): ‘they made a great baslec for him and placed his body into it’ (p. 177a). In the Annals, edited by O’Grady, in Silva gadelica, p. 326, A.D. 643, is an obscure quatrain:
‘Iar mbreith ind rig do baislic’
After carrying the king to a basilica,
which means, after his burial. Baisleac is the name of a parish church in co. Roscommon, and Baisliocán (dimin.) is the name of a townland in the parish of Kilcronane, bar. of Dunkerron, co. Kerry (O’Don., Suppl. to O’Reilly).” Baslec, in O’Mulconry’s Glossary, is Irish for basilica (Archiv für Celt. Lexikogr., i, 240, 242).
Perfidia = unbelief or heresy, in ecclesiastical writers. “Ad quorum perfidiam coarguendam synhodus cccxviii episcoporum in Niciam urbem Bithyniae congregata omnes hereticorum machinas Homonsii oppositione deleuit.”—Hieron., Chron.; Paulus Diaconus has, Arriana perfidia (M. G. H., x, 374).