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Vortigern and Aetius—a re-appraisal
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 January 2015
Extract
Vortigern of Gloucester is perhaps the most maligned figure of British history. There can be little doubt that his reign ended in widespread disaster, but that very fact may have made him a traditional scapegoat. Some at least of the charges against him can readily be disproved—for instance, he certainly was not the father of the British-born Gallic Bishop, Faustus, by his daughter or anyone else. Faustus and Vortigern must have been born within a very few years of each other. Perhaps the Gildasian epithet of infuustus tyrunnus, applied to Vortigern, served as a starting-point.
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- Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd 1946
References
1 Historia Brittonum, cap. 49. That Vortigern’s pedigree is traced to the eponymus of Gloucester would imply his family’s long connexion with the civitas of Glevum. This does not necessarily mean that his ancestors were pre-Roman kings.
2 Baring-Gould and Fisher, Lives of the British Saints, 11, art. S. Faustus.
3 Collingwood and Myres, Roman Britain, p. 315.
4 See the pedigrees collected by A. Anscombe in Y Cymmrodor, XXV, 75, and XXIX, 151. The probable source of ‘Severa’ is the Valle Crucis Pillar.
5 Hodgkin, History of the Anglo-Saxons, 11, 720.
6 Monumenta Germania Historiae, auct. ant. IX, 660, 661.
7 A hilly region, North of the Fens, is a logical deduction from the Vita Germani. But it may have been in the Chilterns.
8 The best sources for the Welsh genealogies are Anscombe (op. cit.), Baring-Gould and Fisher, op. cit. vol. 1, and E. W. B. Nicholson, The Dynasty of Cunedag, in Y Cymmrodor, XXII. For a critical discussion, see Chadwick, The Growth of Lit. i, 309.
9 Bede, 11, c. 5. Historia Brittonum, c. 58.
10 H.B., c. 31.
11 H.B, c. 66 (computus).
12 H.R.B., Book VI, CC. VI-X.
13 The Irish Bishop, Fortchern of Trim, baptized by a follower of Patrick, before 447, is a Goidelicized namesake of Vortigern.
14 H.B., c. 37. Cair Guoyrancgon is Worcester, ib. c. 7.
15 cc. 20, 21.
16 Hodgkin, 1, 58.
17 ibid. 1, 53. Collingwood and Myres, 302.
18 Hodgkin, 1, 113.
19 Hodgkin, 1, 109. Collingwood and Myres, 394.
20 D. Haigh, The Conquest of Britain by the Saxons (1861), 133. E. Foord, The Last Age of Roman Britain (1925), 142, 161.
21 Haigh, op. cit., 230.
22 Aetius was Consul for a fourth time in 454, and during his consulship was murdered by his puppet-Emperor, Valentinian in.
23 Gildas, c. ao.
24 H.B., e. 31.
25 Gildas, e. 22.
26 K. Malone, Widsith, 189, 197.
27 See the map in Hodgkin, 1, 5.
28 G. P. Baker, The Fighting Kings of Wessex (1931), 46. H.M. Chadwick, The Origin of the English Nation (1906) passim.
29 He is later attended by ‘elders of the Ongul (?) race’, H.B., c. 37.
30 Hodgkin, 1, 78.