Welsh Journals

SHORTER ARTICLE: STARTING TO WRITE HISTORY: GILDAS, BEDE AND 'NENNIUS'1 GILDAS, Bede, and the author of the Historia Brittonum were, each in his own way, pioneers. This means that when they addressed themselves to composing their very different histories, they had some problems to solve before they began to write. The primary problem is that a historical narrative is very different from historical materials, or even a collection of them. The writing of annals, chronicles, and pedigrees, of introductions to, or notes upon, documents, the listing of persons, events, or papers, develops the art of succinct episodic or anecdotal statement. The writing of a narrative history requires not only a command of such materials as are selected, and in an order or sequence of some kind, but also the conception and at least a silent definition of a unifying theme to which they are all related. When our three authors chose the ruin of Britain, the conversion of the English, and the formation of Wales as their unifying themes, each faced and solved for himself this primary problem. It is, of course, interesting to study how consistently each writer maintained the centrality of his chosen theme, or to consider alternatives he might have chosen. But these questions do not approach the root of the matter. A nearer question is: how did they know that such a choice had to be made? Although their work falls entirely within three centuries, in a single island, and is written in approximately the same learned language, they are very far from forming a single school. How then did they know that the need to choose a unifying theme differentiates history from its materials? We may consider another pioneer, the father of history, Herodotus himself. He called his work Historiai, 'Researches', and it begins: The Researches of Herodotus of Halicarnassus are published here, so that the achievements of men shall not fade with time, nor their deeds- great and astonishing whether of Greeks or of barbarians-lose their fame: and especially there shall be set out an explanation of their war.2 1 The original draft of this paper was read in the University Colleges at Swansea and Aberystwyth on 25 and 26 October 1976. I Hdt., i, 1.