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On the Ruin of Britain
St Gildas, tr. Williams, 1899
64. Part IV
Part IV
The writer’s feelings with respect to the princes so severely censured in the preceding part. Motives as to intending attack upon the clergy.
So far, I have argued with the kings of my country no less by oracles of prophets than by my own words, desiring that they should know what the prophet had said: Flee from sins, he says, as from the face of a serpent; if thou draw nigh unto them, the teeth of a lion shall catch thee, their teeth that slay the souls of men. And again: How great is the mercy of the Lord, and His reconciliation unto them that turn unto Him. If I have not in me that apostolic word,1 that I should say, I could wish to be an anathema from Christ for my brethren, I could, nevertheless, say that word of the prophet with my whole heart: Alas! a soul perisheth.2 Again: Let us search and try our ways, and return unto the Lord; let us lift up our hearts with our hands unto God in heaven; but also that apostolic saying, We desire every one of you to be in the bowels of Christ.
Notes
- Et si non habemus . . . This sentence is a good instance of the vein of real modesty which runs through this work; it does not in any way impress us as the empty mannerism of conventional self-depreciation. Gildas halts with modest self-fear at the saying: “I could wish that I were anathema from Christ for my brethren’s sake;” but with a full heart (toto corde) he can use other words, such as those of the prophet Micah: “Alas! a soul is perishing.” There is earnest grief in these touching words of that prophet whose mission it was to rebuke the moral condition of both people and princes. The reality of modest affectionate sorrow, on the part of Gildas, for those addressed by him is clear, and it leads us to look at other words of his which will all the more be felt to have the same ring of sincerity. “Constrained by my own reasonings or by the pious entreaties of brethren, I now pay the debt long ago exacted. The work is indeed poor; but, as I think, it is faithful and friendly to every disciple of Christ, though weighty and hard to bear, for foolish apostates” (c. 1). We call to mind also his anxiety to help men to carry the burden he brings, by words of encouragement and consolation (consolatorio affatu) (c. 62). “Me, poor though I am, thou holdest of no moment, and yet I observe the prophet’s word with earnest affectionateness of soul” (c. 36). “Surely I shall put forth what I feel: the denunciation might, no doubt, be softer, but what boots it merely to touch the wound with the hand and smear it with ointment, when there is need of the branding iron, and the open treatment of fire.” I feel we have not read Gildas in the right way, if we do not perceive and appreciate his earnest moderation, as well as that something else, the fashion and temper of his time, which leads us to speak of him only as rhetorical or declamatory.
- Heu, quia anima perit. Mommsen’s edition (Mon. Germ. Hist.) refers these words to Jerem. iv, 10, where the Vulgate reads Heu, heu, heu, Domine Deus, ergone decepisti populum istum et Jerusalem. Micah, vii, 2, seems far nearer, as quoted again in c. 86: heu me; anima quia periit; they are a rude rendering of οἴμοι ψυχή ὅτι ἀπόλωλεν εὐσεβής, with the omission of εὐσεβής.