ALLEGORY AND PROPHECY IN GILDAS’ DE EXCIDIO BRITANNIAE
Abstract
Gildas, a British author who wrote in Latin in the first half of the Sixth
Century, is known to specialists of British history for his impassioned work ‘The Ruin of
Britain’ (De excidio Britanniae). The themes that emerge in De excidio Britanniae will be
familiar to historians of Christianity, even if the text itself is not. So after introducing
Gildas and his writing, this paper will draw out some of those themes and consider the
ways in which Gildas links moral behaviour, orthodox belief and understanding of
Scripture to promote a coherently Christian social identity. Indeed, it is argued that only by
an appreciation of the theological concerns that Gildas expresses and the exegetical
techniques that he uses can we understand how Gildas casts himself in the role of a
Christian prophet calling a Christian people to fidelity to God.
References
Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:
a) Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
b) Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
c) Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (See The Effect of Open Access).
