We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 July 2022
Gildas's inclusive approach to resolving the spiritual and political crisis in his Britannia is demonstrated in his final appeal to the proclamation of the watchman Ezekiel: that God did not desire the death of sinners, but that they should turn back and live. This inclusive attitude is reinforced by Gildas's subsequent approach to church discipline as represented by elements of his letter to Finnian, preserved as fragments within the Collectio canonum Hibernensis as well as in certain earlier versions of this hugely influential canon collection. Here, Gildas laid out his view that religious zeal and excessive censure should be eschewed in favour of moderation, that a Christian community should be tolerant and connected rather than judgmental and fragmented:
Noah did not wish to keep his son Ham, teacher of the magic art, away from the ark or from sharing his table. Abraham did not shrink from Aner and Eschcol when he was warring with the five kings. Lot did not curse the banquets of the Sodomites… Moses, too, lodged and banqueted in peace with Jethro. Our Lord Jesus Christ did not avoid eating with publicans, so as to save all sinners and whores.
At the same time, Gildas stressed the proper structuring of a Christian community to maintain stability, recalling the model of authority put forward in his De excidio:
‘Let each in God stay where he is called’: so that the chief should not be changed except at the choice of his subjects, nor the subject obtain the place of his superior without the advice of an elder… Therefore it is quite proper for bishops and abbots to judge those beneath them, for their blood will be required at their hands by the Lord if they do not rule them well. But those who disobey their fathers shall be as the heathen and publicans.
The acceptance of Gildas as a spiritual master on church discipline reveals an understanding that his criticisms of the secular and church leaders of Britannia in his De excidio were not polemical but constructive. It also implies that contemporaneous political and church structures may have been restored on the lines of Gildas's intervention, granting a stability that would make Columbanus's intervention on the continent both practically possible and confident in its message.
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.
