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On the Ruin of Britain
St Gildas, tr. Williams, 1899
When the dream of thy oppressive reign turned out according to thy wish, didst thou not, …
When the dream of thy oppressive reign turned out according to thy wish, didst thou not, drawn by the desire to return unto the right way, with the consciousness of thy sins probably biting days and nights during that period, first, largely meditating with thyself on the godly walk and the rules of monks, then, bringing them forward to the knowledge of open publicity, didst thou not vow thyself for ever a monk? Without any thought of unfaithfulness was it done, according to thy declaration, in the sight of God Almighty, before the face of angels and men. Thou hadst broken, as was thought, those big nets, by which fat bulls of thy class are wont to be entangled headlong, that is, thou hadst broken the nets of every kind of royalty, of gold and of silver, and what is mightier than these, of thine own imperious will. And thyself didst thou profitably snatch like a dove, from the raven, strongly cleaving the thin air in rustling flight, escaping the cruel claws of the speedy hawk with sinuous windings, to the caves of the saints1, sure retreats for thee, and places of refreshment. What gladness would there be for thy mother, the church, if the enemy of all mankind had not disastrously dragged thee off, in a way, from her bosom! What plentiful touchwood for heavenly hope would blaze in the hearts of men without hope, if thou didst persevere in good! What and how many rewards of the kingdom of Christ would wait thy soul in the day of judgment, if that crafty wolf, when from a wolf thou hadst become a lamb, had not snatched thee from the Lord’s fold (not greatly against thy will), to make thee a wolf from a lamb, like unto himself! What joy thy salvation, if secured, had furnished to the gracious Father2 and God of all saints, had not the wretched father of all the lost, like an eagle of mighty wings and claws—the devil, I mean—against every right, snatched thee away to the unhappy troop of his children!
Not to be tedious—thy conversion3 unto good fruit brought as much joy and pleasantness, both to heaven and earth, as now thy accursed reversion to thy fearful vomit like a sick dog, has caused of sorrow and lamentation. When this reversion had come to pass thy members are presented as weapons of unrighteousness unto sin and the devil, which ought to have been eagerly presented, with proper regard to good sense, as weapons of righteousness unto God. When the attention of thy ears has been caught, it is not the praises of God, in the tuneful voice of Christ’s followers, with its sweet rhythm, and the song of church melody4, that are heard, but thine own praises (which are nothing); the voice of the rascally crew yelling forth, like Bacchanalian revellers, full of lies and foaming phlegm, so as to besmear everyone near them. In this way the vessel, once prepared for the service of God, is changed into an instrument of Satan, and that which was deemed worthy of heavenly honour is, according to its desert, cast into the abyss of hell.
Notes
- It is interesting to find how the old accustomed phraseology repeats itself in Gildas’ language. Sanctorum speluncae refrigeriaque—the caves and places of refreshment of the saints—is a monk’s affectionate way of naming the monasteries. But speluncae and σπήλαια had long taken this special meaning, as insulae did in Wales (in hac insula being found for in hoc monasterio).—Vide Bornemann’s In Invest. Monachatus origine, p. 9 (1885), and Bingham’s Origines Eccl., iii.
- Pio: in the Vulgate pius is applied to God in the sense of gracious or compassionate: quoniam pius et misericors est Deus.—Ecclus., ii, 13.
- Conversio: the term is the technical one for becoming a monk.
- Neuma ecclesiasticae melodiae. Neuma is a word of unknown origin, supposed to be a form of pneuma, which like many other nouns in -a came to be treated as feminine. When regarded as = πνεῦμα, it meant originally the note or mark which suggested to the singer that he was to take his breath; then it was used for any musical note relating to modulation of voice, and finally for a set tune. “Die von Gregor gesammelten Gesänge wurden in Neumen notirt” (nota romana). Köstlin, Gesch. des chr. Gottesdienstes, 129. “At a very remote time, and which is undoubtedly that of the reconstitution of the antiphonary by St. Gregory the Great, the last Halleluja of the Gradual was followed by a series of joyous vocal notes (jubilee or neumae), which were sung without words on the last syllable a of the word Halleluja” (Gaudet, Oevres Poetique d’Adam de S. Victor, cxxvii). Words were subsequently written for these musical notes which bore the name numae, sequentiae, prosae—Vide Daniel, Thes. Hymn., v, 3, where we have an account of the rise of Sequences by Dr. Neale: “‘Jam inde ex antiquissimis temporibus id in usu Ecclesiae Latinae erat ut inter Epistolam et Evangelium, extra jejunia, Graduale cum Alleluia diceretur . . . . .’ Rubric Missalis Sarisburiensis. ‘Dum Alleluia canitur . . . . Dicto vero Graduali . . . . sequatur Alleluia. Chorus idem repetat et prosequatur cum pneumate.’” Gildas is older than Gregory the Great, and his words imply a fixed place for psalmody in the public service.