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On the Ruin of Britain

St Gildas, tr. Williams, 1899

73. (b) Compared with New Testament examples

(b) Compared with New Testament examples

Why do we delay in ancient examples as if there were not any in the New Testament? Let those men, therefore, who think that without any hardship they can enter this narrow way of the Christian religion merely by claiming the name of priest, listen to me as I cull a few flowers, the chiefest in a way, from the extensive and pleasant meadow of the holy soldiery of the New Testament¹.

Which of you, who loll listlessly rather than sit in a legitimate way in the priestly chair², was cast out from the council of the wicked, and, like the holy apostles, gave thanks with full heart to the Trinity, after blows from diverse rods, that he was held worthy to suffer contumely for Christ, the true God³?

Who, through bearing true testimony to God, had his brains dashed out with a fuller’s club, and suffered bodily death, like James, though the first bishop in the New Testament⁴? Who among you was beheaded, by an unjust prince as James the brother of John? Who, like the first deacon and martyr of the gospel⁵, with no crime but this that he saw God, whom the unbelieving could not have seen, has been stoned by impious hands? Who, fixed to the cross-bar with feet up⁶ because of his reverence for Christ, whom he intended to honour no less by death than by life, breathed his last breath, like that fit keeper of the keys of the kingdom of heaven⁷? Who of you, as the chosen vessel and elect teacher of the gentiles, was beheaded by a stroke of the sword, for the confession of the Christ that spoke the truth, after prison chains⁸, shipwrecks at seas, blows with rods; after continuous perils of rivers, of robbers, of Gentiles, of Jews, of false apostles, after sufferings of famine, fasting, watchings, after constant anxiety for all the churches, after burning for them that cause stumbling, after weakness for the weak, after wonderful compassing of the world, almost, to preach the gospel of Christ?

Notes

Tironum. See the meaning of “Tirones,” p. 8.
Cf. c. 66.
Christo vero Deo. See p. 191, n. 1.
Iacobus . . . primus episcopus. This story respecting the death of “James, the brother of the Lord,” may have been derived by Gildas from the Latin version of Eusebius, H. E., ii, 23, by Rufinus, or from Jerome’s De viris illustribus, 2. As to the mode of death, we have a very early tradition preserved by Clement of Alexandria in his Hypotyposes, so Eusebius tells us, who may, according to Zahn’s conjecture, have found it in the “Gospel according to the Egyptians.” Almost the very words of Gildas may be read in the narrative of Jerome, which is taken from Hegesippus. The coincidence between Gildas and Jerome appears too marked to be quite accidental: fullonis fuste . . . . . in cerebro percussus interiit; such are the words of Jerome, corresponding exactly to those of Gildas, with the exception of fuste for vecte, which is also found in Rufinus, who writes: Et unus ex ipsis fullo, arrepto fuste, etc. That James was the first bishop of Jerusalem, or in any way bishop, is not mentioned in the New Testament, where he is only known as “apostle,” and, probably, an apostle holding some unique relation to that Church. Neither is this mentioned by Clement, as quoted by Eusebius; but Hegesippus, who about A.D. 156 travelled from Asia Minor by way of Corinth to Rome, and there devoted himself to draw up a list of the succession of bishops (Eus., H. E., iv, 22, 3), mentions the tradition. “Suscepit ecclesiam Hierosolymae post apostolos frater Domini, Iacobus, cognomento Justus” (Jerome, from Euseb., H. E., ii, 23, 4). Gildas, no doubt, records the universal belief of his own age.
Protominister. Koffmanne (Gesch. d. Kirchenlateins, 34) mentions a number of similar hybrid words, showing the influence of Greek upon ecclesiastical Latin, e.g., protoplastus, protolapsus, primigenes being an instance of a contrary direction: minister = diaconus.
Inversis pedibus. Gildas, in his mention of this mode of crucifixion, is following again the familiar belief of his time. He may have read of it in the De viris illustribus of Jerome, or in Rufinus.
Clavicularius ille. The use of this epithet almost leads one to the supposition that Gildas was acquainted with representations, mural or otherwise, of Peter bearing the keys. Krauss’s Real-Encycl. informs us that the oldest known were on mosaics in apses of churches—St. Paolo, for instance, built A.D. 441 by Leo the Great; the oldest statues belong to the end of the fourth or beginning of fifth century. In this way such representations may have been not uncommon in Britain. Nevertheless, the word expresses the idea that was universal when Gildas wrote: the chief of the apostles (princeps apostolorum) as he names him (c. 106), received the keys of the kingdom to be bestowed through him upon others: Claves solus Petrus accepit (Opt. Milet, i, 10, 12). But as such, the epithet applied to him is claviger regni coelorum. The Irish Liber Hymnorum, however, gives instances of clavicularius, as in the Hymn of Cummineus Longus in Laudem Apostolorum, vv. 3, 4, vol. i, 18.
“exultans memoria
Clauiculari Petri primi pastoris,
Piscium rete euangelii captoris.”
St. Cummain the Tall was born about thirty years after the death of Gildas, if we believe the Chronologies, which place it in 590, and his death in 661 or 662 (ibid., vol. ii, 109).
“Clavicularius Ambros. d. Joseph, 5: concederet munere clavicularius, (ἀρχιδεσμοφύλαζ), Genes. (39, 22), 6: commendati . . . ab ipso carceris claviculario (ib., 40, 4)”; Rönsch, Itala und Vulg., 134. Here it is used of the keeper of Joseph’s prison.
Post vincula carceris, etc. This passage is a series of allusions to II Cor. xi, 13, 23-29; and Rom. xii, 19; Acts ix, 15.