GILDAS or GILDUS (516?–S7o), the earliest of British historians (see CELTIC LITERATURE, "Welsh"), surnamed by some Sapiens, and by others Badonicus. Two short treatises exist, pur porting to be lives of Gildas, and ascribed respectively to the 1lth and 12th centuries; but they seem to confuse two, if not more, persons who had borne the name. Gildas was almost certainly an ecclesiastic. He went abroad, probably to France, in his 34th year, where after Io years of hesitation and preparation, he com posed the work bearing his name. His materials, he tells us, were collected from foreign rather than native sources. The Cambrian Annals give 570 as the year of his death.
The writings of Gildas have come down to us under the title of Gildae Sapientis de excidio et conquestu Britanniae. The work is now usually divided into three portions, —a preface, the history proper, and an epistle,—the last, largely made up of Scriptural passages brought together for the purpose of condemning the vices of his countrymen and their rulers, being the longest but least important. In the second he passes in brief review the his tory of Britain from its invasion by the Romans till his own times. Among other matters he refers to the persecution under Diocle tian, the election of Maximus as emperor by the legions in Britain, the final abandonment of the island by the Romans and the com ing of the Saxons under Vortigern. Unfortunately his state ments are vague and obscure. With one exception (the date of the battle of Mount Badon referred to in connection with the date of his own birth, see ARTHUR) no dates are given, and events are not always taken up in the order of their occurrence. These faults become serious when, as is the case from nearly the begin ning of the 5th century to the date of his death, Gildas's brief narrative is our only authority for most of what passes current as the history of England. Thus it is on his sole, though in this instance perhaps trustworthy, testimony that the famous letter rests, said to have been sent to Rome in 446 by the despairing Britons, commencing:—"To Agitius (Aetius), consul for the third time, the groans of the Britons." Gildas's treatise was first published in 1525 by Polydore Vergil, but with many avowed alterations and omissions. In 1568 John Josseline, secretary to Archbishop Parker, issued a more accurate edition; and in 1691 a still better edition appeared at Oxford by Thomas Gale. The next English edition described by Potthast as editio pessirna was published by the English Historical Society in 1838, and edited by the Rev. J. Stevenson. The text of Gildas founded on Gale's edition collated with two other mss., with elabo rate introductions, is included in the Monumenta Historica Britan nica, edited by Petrie and Sharpe (1848) . Another edition is in A. W. Haddan and W. Stubbs, Councils and Eccles. Documents relating to Great Britain (Oxford, 1869) ; see also Theodor Momm sen's edition in Monum. Germ. hist. acct. antiq. Clironica minora saeculorum iv.–vii. vol. iii. (1898) . For useful biblio graphical notes see C. Gross, Sources of English History (1915), and E. K. Chambers, Arthur of Britain (1927).