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On the Ruin of Britain
St Gildas, tr. Williams, 1899
This single testimony might fully suffice to confute all those that are without shame. …
This single testimony might fully suffice to confute all those that are without shame. But in order that by still more manifest attestations, that is by the words of Christ, it may be proved by what unbearable burdens of crimes these false priests weight themselves, some words must be annexed. For there follows: Ye are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hid, nor do men light a lamp and put it under a bushel, but on the stand, that it may shine unto all that are in the house. Who, then, of the priests of this time, thus possessed by the blindness of ignorance, as the light of a clear lamp, will shine in any house to all those sitting by night with the torch of both learning and good works? Who is regarded such a safe, public, and conspicuous refuge for all the sons of the church, that he is what a strong city placed upon the summit of a high hill is for its citizens. But as to that which follows: So let your light shine before men that they may see your good works and magnify your Father which is in Heaven: Which of them can fulfil it even for a single day? Nay rather a certain thick mist and black night of their offences sit upon the whole island, so that it draws away almost everyone from the right path, and causes them to err by impassable and obstructed paths of crimes; by these men’s works the heavenly Father is so far from being praised that he is unbearably blasphemed. I could indeed wish that these testimonies of Holy Scripture inserted in this epistle, or to be inserted, as far as my mean power1 would be able, should all be interpreted in a historical or moral sense2.
Notes
- Nostra mediocritas = “my humble self,” is common in epistolary Latin of church writers. “Probant epistolae meae mediocritatis et libri rustico licet sermone descripti.” Lucif. Cal., De non parc., 274. Cf. Cypr., Ad. Fort, p. 317.
- Historico vel morali sensu. These terms are very old, and show how the thoughts of Gildas, as we have found in another note, are running in a stream of tradition. He is the inheritor of a leading principle of exegesis as introduced by Origen: “triplicem in scripturis divinis intelligentiae inveniri saepe diximus modum, historicum, moralem, et mysticum.” Hom., v, 5, in Levit. “Of this moral sense he says that it is everywhere to be met with in Holy Scripture, and explains that it is the less difficult to find.” Redepenning’s Origenes, i, 309—der moralische Sinn.
It would seem that vel, as we found in the note to c. 65 where other instances are noticed, must be taken here as equivalent to et. These two senses are alternative; of the two, the latter is certainly the more important in the eyes of Gildas, as when he explains words of the Sermon on the Mount to be spoken to “crafty teachers” and “depraved bishops.” He is now correcting or restraining himself, so as not any further to mix his own words with those of Scripture, and so extend the length of his booklet (opusculum), for the readers he has in view. The work, which he modestly called in c. i an admoniuncula, is, with the same implication, now termed a “letter” (epistola), and the epithet used of the contents of cc. 27-36, viz.: “the tearful and plaintive narrative of the evils of this age” (flebilis querelaque malorum aevi huius historia), serves aptly to connect the supposed two parts, thus making the whole one book.