Gildas de excidio et conquestu britanniae: introduction

1: the preface (chapters 1 and 2)

2: the island of Britain (chapter 3)

3: Roman Britain (chapters 4-13)

4: Britain cast adrift (chapters 14-21)

5: the Saxons (chapters 22-23)

6: the war (chapters 24-26)

7: contemporary Britain: the tyrants (chapters 27-36)

8: oracles of the Prophets against the tyrants (chapters 37-65)

9: contemporary Britain: the priests (chapters 66-68)

10: great priests of the past (chapters 69-75)

11: oracles of the Prophets against wicked priests (chapters 76-110.2)

12: a parting prayer (chapter 110.3)

The following text is based on that of Theodore Mommsen in the Monumenta Germaniae Historia series. I have eschewed the use of capital letters on the grounds that Gildas would not have used them, and I have universally rendered Mommsen’s v as u, as would Gildas.

Some—but not all—of the paragraph divisions have been adapted from Michael Winterbottom’s text and translation (Chichester: Phillimore, 1978).

The broad divisions I have adopted are those suggested by the internal logic of the text but have no manuscript authority. Other divisions are possible!

Progress on typing up the text has not been as rapid as I would like. It all needs to be checked several times, and the details will (eventually) make their way into the metadata stored in the html headers. In the meantime, if there are any errors that really stand out, please let me know!