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.