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On the Ruin of Britain

St Gildas, tr. Williams, 1899

ITEM.—It is better for co-bishops and co-abbots, as well as fellow-subjects, not to …

ITEM.¹—It is better for co-bishops and co-abbots², as well as fellow-subjects, not to judge. As to men of evil odour in anything bad, let men, however, in no way make fully clear that they think of them by report, but gently rebuke them with patience. These men, as far as they can conscientiously do it, they ought to avoid as men suspected (but without excommunicating them as really guilty and excluding them from their table, or from church communion) when some cause, arising from necessity, or agreement, or public speaking, demands it. Let them reprove those men that they do not act rightly, because we cannot pass condemnation upon them for this. While they communicate unworthily, it may be that we, by our evil thoughts, are communicating with demons. But those whom we know without any doubt to be fornicators, unless they do penance in the regular way³, we exclude from communion and table, to whatever order they have belonged by rule. As that saying is, If any man is named a brother and is a fornicator, etc. It is on account of well-proved cases of great sins,⁴ for no other reason, that we ought to exclude brethren from the communion of the altar and of our table⁵, when the time demands it.

Notes

Hibernensis, i, 16, under the heading: “That none ought to judge bishops,” from Conepiscopos to melius est.
Conepiscopos . . . . conabbates. There does not seem to be implied here any kind of authority on the part of bishops over abbots, or of abbots over bishops. We have simply words dissuasive of overhasty judgment as between bishops, or abbots, among themselves, contained at first, probably, in some short sermon.
Hinschius mentions that the common use of excommunicatio becomes frequent in Frankish times, though the verb appears in the works of Augustine. (Kirchenrecht, iv, 702, compared with ib. 797). Speaking of the time of Cyprian Koffman says, excommunicare ist in diesem ersten Periode sehr selten (s. 73). Gildas recommends that men over whom even grave suspicion hangs, without proof of guilt, should not be subjected to excommunication. His words imply that there was in Britain no common authority over individual bishops or abbots; still the implication of excommunication is the same in Britain as among the churches of the continent. There is exclusion from pax, peace, a word that from the time of the Novatian controversy has a technical meaning; it means “church communion,” or, as found lower in this extract, “communion of the altar;” neminem putamus a fructu satisfactionis et spe pacis arcendum. Cyprian, Ep. 55. Besides ecclesiastical exclusion from the Eucharist, there was also the exclusion of excommunicate persons “from all entertainments of the faithful.” Bingham gives numerous examples of conciliar decisions to this effect (vol. vii, p. 98), which explains the excommunicare et mensa vel pace of this extract.
Legitimo ordine paeniteant. One is almost led to understand this phrase of the peculiar system of penance which prevailed in the Celtic Churches, by the use of “Penitentials,” as explained in the notes to Appendix B. However, the place assigned to the first words of the extract in the Hibernensis, as well as the inclusion of bishops in the directions given, would lead us to understand the words as referring to ordinary ecclesiastical discipline. The expression, or similar ones, could not be rare in this sense: Canon 28 of the Council of Orange (A.D. 441) has per poenitentiam legitimam.
Principalium vitiorum. The fourth of the Instructiones of Columbanus treats of “The eight leading vices” (De octo vitiis principalibus). Octo sunt vitia principalia, quae mergunt hominem in interitum; gula, fornicatio, cupiditas, ira, tristitia, accedia (ἀκηδῖα, in old English accidie), vana gloria, superbia; that is, gluttony, fornication, covetousness, anger, dejection, bitterness, vain glory, pride. The list is first met with in Cassian’s Institutes, bk. v, i, and Collat., v, 2, which formed the basis for all similar lists current in the Celtic Churches. We have the same also in the Regula of Columbanus, c, 8.
Communicatione altaris et mensae; communicatio (=fellowship) seems to be a survival of an old word that had, elsewhere, gone out of use in this connection, yielding its place to communio. Hartel’s Index shows how it, and not communio, is the common word in Cyprian’s writings for Christian fellowship or communion. It may be that Augustine is also unconsciously using the old African word in Confess., v, 2: et sic communicatio Dominici corporis illic celebraretur. See Koffmanne, Gesch. des Kirchenlateins, 73.