NENNIUS (fl. 796), a Welsh writer to whom we owe the Historia Britonum, wrote in Brecknock or Radnor. His work exists in 3o manuscripts, the earliest of which is not much earlier than the year i 000. All are defaced by interpolations which give to the work so confused a character that critics were long dis posed to treat it as an unskilful forgery. A new turn was given to the controversy by Heinrich Zimmer, who, in his Nennius vin dicatus (1893), traced the history of the work and, by a com parison of the manuscripts with the I 1 th-century translation of the Irish scholar, Gilla Coemgim (d. 1072), succeeded in stripping off the later accretions from the original nucleus of the Historia. Zimmer follows previous critics in rejecting the Prologus maior (§§ I, 2), the Capitula, or table of contents, and part of the Mirabilia of the concluding section. But he proves that Nennius is the compiler of the Historia proper (§§ 7-65). The only part of the Historia which deserves to be treated as a historical document is the section known as the Genealogiae Saxonum (§§ 57-65). This is merely a recension of a work composed c. 679 by a Briton of Strathclyde. The author's name is unknown; but he is, after
Gildas, our earliest authority for the English conquest of England. Nennius himself gives us the oldest legends relating to the vic tories of King Arthur; the value of the Historia from this point of view is admitted by the severest critics. The chief authorities whom Nennius followed were Gildas' De excidio Britonum, Euse bius, the Vita Patricii of Murichu Maccu Machtheni, the Collec tanea of Tirechan, the Liber occupationis (an Irish work on the settlement of Ireland), the Liber de sex aetatibus mundi, the chronicle of Prosper of Aquitaine, the Liber beati Germani. The sources for his notices of King Arthur (§ 56) are unknown.
See J. Stevenson's edition of the Historic Britonum (English Hist. Soc., 1838) , based on a careful study of the mss. ; A. de la Borderie, L'Historia Britonum (Paris and London, 1883), which summarizes the older negative criticism ; H. Zimmer, Nennius vindicates (Berlin, 1893) ; T. Mommsen in Neues Archiv der Gesellschaft fur dltere deutsche Geschichtskunde, xix. 283. (H. W. C. D.)