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On the Ruin of Britain
St Gildas, tr. Williams, 1899
32. Cuneglasus
Why dost thou, also, wallow in the old filth of thy wickedness, from the years of thy youth, thou bear, rider of many, and driver of a chariot belonging to a bear’s den, despiser of God and contemner of His decree, thou Cuneglas1 (meaning in the Roman tongue, thou tawny butcher)? Why dost thou maintain such strife against both men and God? Against men, thine own countrymen, to wit, by arms special to thyself; against God, by crimes without number? Why, in addition to innumerable lapses, dost thou, having driven away thy wife, cast thine eyes upon her dastardly sister, who is under a vow to God of the perpetual chastity of widowhood, that is as the poet says, of the highest tenderness of heavenly nymphs, with the full reverence, or rather bluntness, of her mind, against the apostle’s prohibition when he says that adulterers cannot be citizens of the kingdom of heaven? Why dost thou provoke, by thy repeated injuries, the groans and sighs of saints, who on thy account are living in the body, as if they were the teeth of a huge lioness that shall some day break thy bones? Cease, I pray, from anger, as the prophet says, and forsake the deadly wrath that shall torment thyself, which thou breathest against heaven and earth, that is, against God and His flock. Rather change thy life and cause them to pray for thee, to whom is given the power to bind above the world, when they have bound guilty men in the world, and to loose, when they have absolved the penitent.2 Be not, as the apostle says, high-minded, nor have thy hope set on the uncertainty of riches, but in God who giveth thee many things richly, that by an amendment of life, thou mayest lay in store for thyself a good foundation against the time to come, and mayest have the true life; that is, of course, the eternal life, not that which passeth away. Otherwise thou shalt know and see, even in this world, how evil and bitter it is to have abandoned the Lord thy God, and that His fear is not with thee, and that in the world to come thou shalt be burnt in the hideous mass of eternal fires, without, however, in any way dying. For the souls of sinners are as immortal for never-ending fire as those of the saints are for joy.
Notes
- Cuneglase. This name and the whole passage, present many difficulties. Gune-glasus may have had an older form, Cuno-glasus, found in many names, e.g., Cuno-maglus ( = Cynfael), Cuno-valus (Cynwal), Cuno-belinus (Cynfelyn), etc. The first element of the compound is connected either with cuno- in the sense of high or noble, as cun, a top, or summit, cynnu, to raise, or with cu, gen. cunos, a. dog. Maglo-cunus may have the same root, with the meaning of “great lord.” (See Holder, Alt-Celtisches Sprachschatz, Rhys’ Celtic Britain, p. 286, The Academy, October 12th and 19th, 1895). The meaning dog would connect itself better with butcher, but glas is an odd addition in the sense of fulvus — deep reddish-yellow, or tawny; the green grass, the blue sea, the gray mare, are each termedglas in modern Welsh, but we find it impossible to connect the adjective with a colour that comprises red and yellow. It has been proposed to take cunus as fulvus, i.e., honey-coloured, and glas as lanio: this hardly removes the difficulty, while the order is decidedly unfavourable to it. I feel that Gildas must have fallen into a mistake, in the heat of his desire to fasten an ugly nickname upon Cuneglasus.
Later, the name took the form Cun-glas or Conglas; in the Genealogies it appears as Cinglas, and may perhaps be found in Cynlas (Y Cymmrodor, ix, 172). Cinglas map Eugein dant gwin, map Enniaun girt, map Cuneda,” may be compared with “Mailcun map Catgolan lauhir, map Ennian girt, map Cuneda;” so that we find Cinlas and Mailcun (Maglocunus of next section) to be both descended from Cunedda, and both grandsons of Enniaun. With this suggestion it seems fair to conclude that the kingdoms of the two were contiguous. Zimmer places that of Cinglas in the district between the Teifi and the Dee, where descendants of Cunnedda are known to have ruled.
I have ventured to print urse and ursi, instead of Urse, Ursi, as other editions do. The word appears to me to be employed by Gildas as an epithet, parallel with the animal names—catulus for the king of Damnonia, catulus leoninus for Aurelius Caninus, pardo for Vortiporius, and draco for Maglocunus. An attempt has been made to connect Ursus with arth in the Welsh name Arthur, which is Welsh for Arturius (Arcturius). (Academy, October 12th, 1895.)
Were we to adopt the reading cesor of A, we should find a meaning closely allied with lanio, i.e., hewer of many, one who mangles or tears in pieces. Auriga currus receptaculi ursi describes, probably, well-known habits of this prince; he drives a chariot, but in the eyes of Gildas, that chariot is but the mean appanage of a bear’s ugly den, his place of retreat: hence the singular term, receptaculum. - The “authority to bind and loose” is, we see, a settled, part of British ideas respecting Church discipline and life in the sixth century. According to c. 109, it is given to “Peter and his successors,” i.e., the bishops, but Gildas draws a definite distinction; the priest must be a holy priest: the promise is made omni sancto sacerdoti. Such men as he is writing against, though ordained bishops, have by their unholy lives, he adds (c. 109), forfeited this authority. They are barely Christians (c. 92).