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The Great Events by Famous Historians [Volumes 1-14]
- Автор: Gutenberg
- Год: 1905
- Язык: английский
- Жанр: История
Электронная книга - «The Great Events by Famous Historians [Volumes 1-14]». Краткое содержание книги:
The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 01
The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 02 / (From the Rise of Greece to the Christian Era)
The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03
The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 04
The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 05 / (From Charlemagne to Frederick Barbarossa)
The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 06 / (From Barbarossa to Dante)
The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07
The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 08 / The Later Renaissance: from Gutenberg to the Reformation
The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 09
The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 10
The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11
The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12
The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 13
The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 14
The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 17
The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 21 / The Recent Days (1910-1914)
That the representations of Gildas could only be partially true, as applied to some particular districts, is sufficiently proved, by the undoubted fact that within little more than twenty years from the date of these cowardly demonstrations Anthemius, the Emperor, solicited the aid of the Britons against the Visigoths; and twelve thousand men from this island, under one of the native chieftains, Rhiothimus, sailed up the Loire, and fought under the Roman command. They are described by a contemporary Roman writer as quick, well-armed; turbulent and contumacious from their bravery, their numbers, and their common agreement. These were not the people who were likely to have stood upon a wall to be pulled down by hooked weapons. They might have been the people who had clung, more than the other inhabitants of the Roman provinces, to their original language and customs; but it is not improbable that they would have been of the mixed races with whom Rome had been in more intimate relations, and to whom she continued to render offices of friendship after the separation of the island province from her empire.
Amid all this conflict of testimony there is the undoubted fact that out of the Roman municipal institutions had risen the establishment of separate sovereignties, as Procopius relates. Britain, according to St. Jerome, was "a province fertile in tyrants." The Roman municipal government was kept compact and uniform under a great centralizing power. It fell to pieces here, as in Gaul, when that power was withdrawn. It resolved itself into a number of local governments without any principle of cohesion. The vicar of the municipium became an independent ruler and head of a little republic; and that his authority was contested by some who had partaken of his delegated dignity may be reasonably inferred.
The difference of races would also promote the contests for command. If East Anglia contained a preponderance of one race of settlers, and Kent and Sussex of another, they might well quarrel for supremacy. But when all the settlers on the Saxon shore had lost the control and protection of the Count who once governed them, it may also be imagined that the more exclusively British districts would not readily coöperate for defence with those who were more strange to their kindred even than the Roman. All the European Continent was in a state of political dislocation; and we may safely conclude that when the great power was shattered that had so long held the government of the world, the more distant and subordinate branch of its empire would resolve itself into some of the separate elements of authority and of imperfect obedience by which a clan is distinguished from a nation.
Nor was the power of the Christian Church in Britain of a more united character than that of the civil rulers. No doubt a church had been formed and organized. There were bishops, so called, in the several cities; but their authority was little concentrated and their tenets were discordant. Pilgrimages were even made to the sacred places of Palestine; and at a very early period monasteries were founded. That of Bangor, or the Great Circle, seems to have had some relation to the ancient Druidical worship, upon which it was probably engrafted in that region where Druidism had long flourished. There were British versions of the Bible. But that the church had no sustaining power at the period when civil society was so wholly disorganized, may be inferred from circumstances which preceded the complete overthrow of Christian rites by Saxon heathendom.
Bede devotes several chapters of his Ecclesiastical History to the actions of St. Germanus, who came expressly to Britain to put down the Pelagian heresy; and, amid the multitude of miraculous circumstances, records how "the authors of the perverse notions lay hid, and, like the evil spirits, grieved for the loss of the people that was rescued from them. At length, after mature deliberation, they had the boldness to enter the lists, and appeared, being conspicuous for riches, glittering in apparel, and supported by the flatteries of many." The people, according to Bede, were the judges of this great controversy, and gave their voices for the orthodox belief.
Whether the Pelagians were expelled from Britain by reason or by force, it is evident that, in the middle of the fifth century, there was a strong element of religious disunion very generally prevailing; and that at a period when the congregations were in a great degree independent of each other, and therefore difficult of subjection to a common authority, the rich and the powerful had adopted a creed which was opposed to the centralizing rule of the Roman Church, and were arguing about points of faith as strongly as they were contesting for worldly supremacy. Dr. Lappenberg justly points out this celebrated controversy in our country as "indicating the weakness of that religious connection which was so soon to be totally annihilated." We may, in some degree, account for the reception of the doctrine of Pelagius by knowing that he was a Briton, whose plain unlatinized name was Morgan.
Macaulay has startled many a reader of the most familiar histories of England, in saying, "Hengist and Horsa, Vortigern and Rowena, Arthur and Mordred, are mythical persons, whose very existence may be questioned, and whose adventures must be classed with those of Hercules and Romulus." It is difficult to write of a period of which the same writer has said, "an age of fable completely separates two ages of truth." Yet no one knew better than this accomplished historian himself that an age of fable and an age of truth cannot be distinguished with absolute precision. It is not that what is presented to us through the haze of tradition must necessarily be unreal, any more than that what comes to us in an age of literature must be absolutely true. An historical fact, a real personage, may be handed down from a remote age in the songs of bards; but it is not therefore to be inferred that these national lyrics are founded upon pure invention. It is curious to observe that, wandering amid these traces of events and persons that have been shaped into history, how ready we are to walk in the footsteps of some half-fabulous records, and wholly to turn away from others which seem as strongly impressed upon the shifting sands of national existence.
We derive Hengist and Horsa from the old Anglo-Saxon authorities; and modern history generally adopts them. Arthur and Mordred have a Celtic origin, and they are as generally rejected as "mythical persons." It appears to us that it is as precipitate wholly to renounce the one as the other, because they are both surrounded with an atmosphere of the fabulous. Hengist and Horsa come to us encompassed with Gothic traditions that belong to other nations. Arthur presents himself with his attributes of the magician Merlin, and the knights of the Round Table. But are we therefore to deny altogether their historical existence? In following the ignis fatuus of tradition, the credulous annalists of the monastic age were lost in the treacherous ground over which it led them. The more patient research of a critical age sees in that doubtful light a friendly warning of what to avoid, and hence a guide to more stable pathways.
Hengist and Horsa—who, according to the Anglo-Saxon historians, landed in the year 449 on the shore which is called Ebbsfleet—were personages of more than common mark. "They were the sons of Wihtgils; Wihtgils son of Witta, Witta of Wecta, Wecta of Woden." So says the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, and adds, "From this Woden sprang all our royal families." These descendants, in the third generation from the great Saxon divinity, came over in three boats. They came by invitation of Wyrtgeone—Vortigern—King of the Britons. The King gave them land in the southeast of the country, on condition that they should fight against the Picts; and they did fight, and had the victory wheresoever they came. And then they sent for the Angles, and told them of the worthlessness of the people and the excellences of the land. This is the Saxon narrative. The seductive graces of Rowena, the daughter of Horsa, who corrupted the King of the Britons by love and wine, is an embellishment of the British traditions.