On the Ruin of Britain

Notes

1. Fucata et numquam profutura. This is an idea which Gildas elsewhere expresses: The priests who buy their office, not of apostles or successors of apostles, not even of a godly king, but of tyrants, cannot, in the exercise of their priestly functions, benefit anyone: they are not priests, barely even Christians: O inimici Dei et non sacerdotes . . . . . . traditores et non sanctorum apostolorum successores et non Christi ministri (108).
2. Cuilibet sancto sacerdote pioque regi. The words point out the personages to whom the offer of money might be made, to a bishop or a king. Below, we are told that the men drawn by ambition to simony were ordained by others who had obtained the priesthood in the same way.
3. Nicolaum. Gildas probably borrowed the baseless fiction implied in this place from Rufinus’ Latin translation of Eusebius (H. E., iii, 29). “The author of their sect (Nicolaitans) was Nicolaus, one of the deacons, who, with Stephen were appointed by the apostles for the purpose of ministering to the poor.” Apparently, all accounts go back to a conjecture made by Irenaeus (Adv. Haer., i, 26, 3), who probably knew no more about the Nicolaitans than he read in Rev. ii, 6, 15. He may have been the first to identify their founder with the Nicolaus of Acts vi. Clement of Alexandria, who was the recipient of many curious traditions respecting the men and facts of the Apostolic age. seems to have held a very different opinion (Strom., iii, 4, 25). A similar disinclination to connect Nicolaus with any such sect holding immoral tenets may be detected in Const. Apostolicae, vi, 8, οἱ νῦν ψευδώνομοι Νικολαίτα. By Gildas’ time, however, the false belief had become universal.
4. In parochiam = in parochia. We have already met with instances of in with accus. denoting place where, and referred to Rönsch, Itala u. Vulgata, 410, for a host of examples of the same. Parochia must mean see, or diocese, that is, church. In the previous section the utter neglect of those who obtained by money the priest’s chair, to undertake the charge symbolized in that throne, is described by the phrase that “they never sat therein” (qui ibidem nusquam sederunt). Now we have presented us the other picture, of bishops who, after similar pelf, would thrust themselves upon a church (parochia), but encounter opposition. The two terms parochia and dioecesis have had a curious history: both are originally abstract, but, like the equally abstract “circumcision” (ἡ περιτομὴ) in the New Testament, soon acquired a concrete meaning. The two also are originally Greek (παροικία, διοίκησις), but as we meet with them in Latin, they are applied, without distinction, both to a church under the oversight of a bishop and, at a later period, to a church of which a presbyter has charge, subject to the neighbouring bishop. Sulpicius Severus, writing of St. Martin of Tours, about 405, how, as bishop, he visited his churches, gives an interesting account of an incident that occurred, “when he had come to a certain church” (cum ad dioecesim quandam . . . . . . . . media fere hyeme Martinus venisset, Ep. 1). Can. 54, of the council of Agde, a.d. 506, orders a presbyter to keep a record of what is bought in the name of the church, dum dioecesim tenet. Until the eighth and ninth century, parochia held on its original meaning of a bishop’s “diocese,” whether an individual church or a group of churches, as many Capitularia of the Carolingian period show; though, by then, its application to the ecclesiae baptismales, in our modern sense (not territorial) of “parish,” is also common. When we look at the use of the word in British or English writers, we find from Beda’s narrative of the Council of Hertford (a.d. 673) that Canons 2 and 6 employ the word for a bishop’s diocese: Ut nullus episcoporum parrochiam alterius invadat, etc. Absque permissu episcopi in cuius parrochia esse cognoscitur. Even so late as the Book of Llandav (12th century), Dubricius is said by the writer, or compiler, to have founded churches and consecrated bishops, after having fixed their parochiae for them.
   How similar is the history of the Welsh word plwyf? As early as the Latin version of Origen, the church is defined as credentium plebs (Hom. 9 in Exod. 3), a congregation of believers; plebem fidelium is found in Beda with the same signification. Ducange mentions plebs and plebes as having the meaning of “church,” sometimes that of a bishop, sometimes of a presbyter, and particularly among people of Celtic descent. The Welsh plwyf is the derivative of this Latin term (plebem), having three meanings: (a) Congregation, as in a well-known passage of Buchedd Dewi Sant. Gildas is unable to preach because Dewi’s mother is present: she is requested to go out, and bid the congregation to come in (ac arch yr plwyf dyvot y mywn). All now being seated, Gildas is able to preach “clearly and loudly,” but the congregation are curious to know why he had become dumb and unable to preach (yna y govynnawd y plwyfidaw; paham na ellesit ti pregethu y ni gynheu). (b) The word is also met with as the equivalent of “diocese”—ac a hynny y bu terfysc dirfawr ym mhlwyf Teilaw (=parochia Teliaui). Brut y Tywysog., p. 28, in Arch. Camb., 3rd series, x; Haddan and Stubbs, i, 286: hyd onid aeth rhan fawr o blwyf Teilaw yn nawdd yr eglwysi; H. and S. i, 359. (c) The ordinary modern meaning of “parish,” is too well-known to need illustration. In Cornish, hebrenciat plui = presbyter. Ploue, in the Bretagne language, is found in many compound place-names. Vide, Loth, Les mots latins dans les langues brittoniques.
5. Fantasia. In the old Latin version this word stands for superbia, and thence came into ecclesiastical Latin.
6. Novatus Romae. The confusion of Novatus for Novatianus in so late a writer as Gildas is curious. The Roman presbyter who led the opposition against the bishop Cornelius, and caused a separation from the Church in the name of stricter discipline, was Novatian: from Africa there came to Rome the Carthaginian presbyter Novatus, who joined Novatian, and probably instigated him to his schismatic partition of the Church. (See Langen, Gesch. der Rom. Kirche, i, 293.) This may be the implication of Prosper’s words: Novatus presbyter Cypriani Romam veniens Novatianum et ceteros confessores s’ibi’ sociat, eo quod Cornelius paenitentes apostatas recepisset. (Chron. M. Germ,. H., s. 439.) Now Latin writers name Novatian as the leader of this separation, and call the schism by his name, but Eusebius and other Greek writers ascribe the movement to “the Roman presbyter Novatus.” Rufinus, in his Latin version of Eusebius (H. E., vi, 43), repeats the mistake of the original: Novatus Romanae ecclesiae presbyter. We have good reason to infer that Gildas was acquainted with Jerome’s works, the De viris illustribus in particular (which work gives: Novatianus Romanae urbis presbyter); his present agreement with Rufinus, therefore, leads us to infer that he is here borrowing from that writer’s Latin version of Eusebius.