Britannia - Maxim Wledig and St Patrick

I have translated the title of Wledig as Over Lord.  Now, we need to be more precise. A Wledig or in its older form Guletic is an over lord of kings. Maxim Wledig then, was the over lord of kings. 

The term continues in use in Brythonic and early Welsh poetry. It is a precise and legal term.  Up and coming royal’s then on a roll often had their success qualified by the Bardic commentariat using the phrase ‘but he was no Guletic’.

The dynasties of Deheubarth, Dyfed, Gwynedd, Powys and Novantae in the Old North all claimed descent from Maxim Wledig.  It was he who they believed had established them in their kingdoms.

Gildas in his Historia attributes the rise of these Brythonic and Irish dynasties directly to Maxim Wledig.  He wrote “At length the tyrant thickets increased and were all but bursting into a savage forest.  The island was still Roman in name, but not by law and custom”.

He was describing something revolutionary.  Britannia, or at least significant parts of it, while still of Roman allegiance was operating under a non- Roman legal and social system. The tyrants (Celtic tigerna -lords or kings) were now in place.

When did this happen?  It may have been in the aftermath of Maxim’s defeat of another serious Irish and Pict incursion in 380 AD.  This was a major victory. Shortly afterwards in 383 AD Maxim was proclaimed by the Roman Army in Britain as the Roman Emperor  Flavius Magnus Maximus Augustus.

Or, it may have taken place earlier. Here, we must go to the Old North and consider Marwnad Cunedda.  This is an elegy composed, and no doubt performed, by the household bard of a man most of us today have known as Cunedda (in our period it would have been Cunedag).  The work is securely dated on linguistic grounds by J T Koch to 383 AD.  The internal evidence of Marwnad Cunedda gives us the whole ‘Heroic Age’ cultural package.  Importantly, Cunedda was based in and worked for the Empire.

It is in this period that we should look to trace the rise of the native dynasties of Britannia.  While the dynasty of Dyfed (and of its sibling Brycheiniog) was Irish and Gwynedd seems to have arisen as joint venture of Irish and Ordovices the rest are clearly native Britons.  In any case the cultural and social package was near identical.   

Uninhibited by any significant linguistic barrier ultimately the Irish dynasties became as British as their peers and competitors.  Christianity and the memory of Rome provided further cohesion.   

This process is evidenced by Gildas who calls Vortipor (of Dyfed) bad son of a good father. Clearly Gildas does not see them as an intrusive dynasty.  

 

We might also note that it was Irish kings who first took to naming their sons after that most Brythonic of heroes- Arthur.  Allow me to further whet your appetite by quoting Ken Dark on the subject:

"These data suggest that, in the late sixth century, there was a sudden burst of interest in the previously-unknown secular name ‘Arthur’.  ‘Arthur’ briefly became for some reason famous among Irish elites in western Britain and Ireland, especially (perhaps only) those with British connections.  ‘Arthur’ was acceptable to Christian rulers and Church alike, and is unlikely to have been derived from pagan religion.  However, this was not a saint's name-out of the hundreds of Celtic dedications from Britain and Ireland there is no ‘Arthur’."

There we have it - Arthur the Soldier ( As Historia Brittonum would have it) seems to have made quite an impression on the militarised Irish of Britannia.  We might return to this in another series.

Maxim died in 388 AD not before he had killed the Emperor Gratian.  His beneficiaries in Britannia venerated his memory and ensured he entered their pedigrees and became part of their legends.  Gildas took the opposite view correctly locating Maxim as the architect of everything he fulminated against in his famous Jeremiad.   

Gildas, no doubt, was further provoked by the knowledge that Maxim had two Bishops tried and executed for heresy. That he had their property confiscated would have salted the wound.  Yet we must note that Gildas was wrong to accuse Maxim of leaving Britannia defenceless.  It is a false charge.  

I’m minded to think that it was substituted for the killing of the Bishops.  The latter could not be fully exploited without conceding an embarrassing detail of who prosecuted the case.  That person, if J T Koch is correct in his surmise, was St Patrick.

We owe a huge debt St Patrick.  As a consequence of the success of his mission Ireland gained a literary vernacular.  It is this that gives us the early Irish Law texts.  Catalogued by Christians, fragmentary and much revised they never the less evidence of Druids (demoted) and Fénnid warriors (outlawed) and provide a schema for the society of our period in both Britain and Ireland. 

How did St Patrick succeed?

Quite simply he was able to harness the prestige of the Empire, his own personal connection with the renowned Maxim Wledig and a seemingly endless supply of money to win the slainte (it literally means ‘safety’ and should be read as 'protection') of the most militarised segment of Irish society. 

Any attempt on the life of St Patrick would have to first penetrate the body guard of extremely warlike sons of kings with whom he habitually traveled.  Any assault on them would have to paid for in blood and treasure by the attackers and their entire kindred.  No one seems to have fancied the odds.

None of this should be seen as detracting from the personal qualities that St Patrick must have possessed in order to achieve his mission.  That he had spent years in Ireland as a slave must have helped.  That he was a Briton who spoke Brythonic as his first language can have only aided his understanding of which socio-cultural buttons to press. His sincerity as a Nicene Christian would have been apparent to all. Yet the conversion must have  required highly developed political and oratorical skills and these are personal attributes. 

Ireland was destined to become Christian and to play the leading role in the preservation of Latin literature in the West. Irish scholars enjoyed great prestige at the courts of the successor kingdoms of the Western Roman Empire. Despite this to the very end, over a thousand years later, Irish Law remained resolutely secular.  Clerics railed against it to no avail.  Gildas would have understood the situation perfectly.

As we have seen the Ogham Stones of Britannia were likely erected by military men. They represent a period when the Irish reached an accommodation with the Roman Empire that was to their liking. This rapprochement ultimately caused the displacement of a leading section of Irish society (Druids) and its replacement by Christians.  In term of personnel it is likely that the same families continued to supply the intellectuals required. Yet, it was a decisive break with the past and we should acknowledge it.

The events we have been looking at were very significant in their time. I hope you have enjoyed reading about them. Let's look again at the distribution of surviving Ogham Stones in Britannia and consider what they represented in light of what we have learned.

Britannia and the Attecotti

The shields above are those of four high status Roman infantry units as recorded in the Notitia Dignitatum.  All four are Auxilia Palatinum ,literally helpers from the palace or from the Imperial Presence.  Such units, there were many more of them, were the elite of the the Roman infantry.  The four above are all Irish units and Ireland, as we know, lay outside of the Empire.  They are listed as follows:

Atecotti
Atecotti Ioniores Gallicani 
Acecotti Honoriani Seniores
Atecotti Honoriani Ioniores

The designation Honorarii indicates a unit was either created or granted an honorific in the reign of Honorarius. He was named as co-Augustus in 393.  Honorarius was then 7 years old.  He became sole Augustus in 395.

Atecotti is not an Irish tribal name like the Coline (Holly People) or the Osraige (Deer People).  It is likely a Roman rendering of an Irish legal description (aithech-thúatha) meaning subject people.  That implies that some Irish potentate provided a levy of warriors from his tributary tribes to the Roman Army.  Roman units of this type were about 500, some say 600 strong.  Was someone in Ireland then, powerful enough to supply about two thousand soldiers to join the Roman Army?  What he might have received in return we can only guess at. 

There is an alternative, as Hagith Sivan noted: 

Procopius distinguished between the foederati of his own times men who after joining  the army  of their own accord, served in the cavalry and infantry under Roman commanders and as Roman soldiers, and foederati of an older sort, barbarian people who had entered the Empire not as slaves but on the basis of equality. 

It is possible that an Irish subject people weary of paying tribute and supplying warriors decided to take their chances within the Empire. Here, as Philip Rance did in his influential work on Irish Federates in Wales, we might recall the scéla The expulsion of the Déisi. Here is a link to the paper. 
 

 https://www.jstor.org/stable/526958?seq=1

Again, let us consider what Procopius wrote “barbarian people who had entered the Empire not as slaves but on the basis of equality”.  The journey was short, the motivation, for a subject tribe wishing to escape tributary status, clear and the the objective, with Roman permission, readily attainable.  As FJ Byrne reminds us “the name Déisi merely means vassals.”  That is to say they were aithech-thúatha.

What are we to make of this?  We can say that it was possible for non Roman peoples to enter the Empire "on the basis of equality".  Here we might think of the intent of the Ogham Stones that we looked at in part 1.

We can note that aithech-thúatha and Déisi mean the same thing - a people who pay tribute and provide military service to a more powerful entity. 

We can add that there is clear evidence for the existence of four elite Irish infantry units in the Roman Army while Ireland lay outside the Imperium. 

Finally, we recall the expulsion of the Déisi.  A pattern begins to form.  We will explore it shortly.  First let us turn to St Patrick who is widely credited with the successful conversion of the Irish.


St Patrick is normally placed in the 5th Century.  This has not been unproblematic.  At one stage scholars were reduced to suggesting three St Patrick's in an attempt to square the evidential circle. St Patrick was undoubtedly a real person. We have two of his letters both of which repay study. 

Recently J T Koch suggested we might better place St Patrick in the 4th Century.  As ever his logic is compelling.  He suggests we note the following:

We can identify only three men named Patricius in our period and geographical location.  

There was a  Patricius who evangalised the Irish.  A Patricius who held the post of Finance Officer to Maxim Wledig and a Patricius who left his name inscribed on the Ballinrees silver hoard. There is good reason to think that these three were one and the same man.

Should this be of further interest to you here is a link. https://www.academia.edu/7622048/The_Early_Chronology_for_St_Patrick_c._351_c._428_Some_New_Ideas_and_Possibilities

We will look at it again in the final installment of this series.  

For the moment let us return to Phillip Rance and his Irish Federates in Wales. In that paper he draws our attention to the fact that Roman sponsored settlement of the Irish did not result in any disruption to the local population specifically the local aristocracy remained undisturbed. This can only have been achieved by allocating the land resources of the Roman Military or of the Imperial Estate.  These resources were of course massive.  We can recall that they were a direct result of the Roman conquest of Britannia, later confiscations and desperate bequests.

For the local British their situation was now improved.  At no cost to themselves an additional military resource now defended their territory and was invested in its continuance.  

For the Irish warriors they now had new land for themselves and their families, no conflict with their new neighbours and a prestigious partnership with the Roman Army.  

Two additional consequences come to mind.  The Irish, as federate troops, were now able to access Roman Armories and also would have been under strong pressure to to become Christians.  That is because their soldier sponsor was an ardent Nicene Christian.  He is best known as Macsen Wledig and it is to him and St Patrick we turn to next.