FROM DOT TO DOMESDAYRoman Britain
Addenda to: Beginning of the End?
 
King Lucius
In his ‘Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum’ (Ecclesiastical History of the English People), the Anglo-Saxon chronicler Bede writes that:
“In the year of our Lord's incarnation 156, Marcus Antoninus Verus, the fourteenth from Augustus, was made emperor, together with his brother, Aurelius Commodus.”
The emperors referred to in the above statement are usually known as Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus. Bede inherited the unfamiliar names from, his source for this sentence, Orosius. Bede, a pioneer in the use of use of Christ's incarnation as a method of dating, has calculated that their reign began in 156. They actually ruled jointly from 161 to 169.* Bede continues:
“In their time, whilst Eleutherus [Eleutherius], a holy man, presided over the Roman church, Lucius, king of the Britons, sent a letter to him, entreating, that by his command he might be made a Christian. He soon obtained the object of his pious request, and the Britons preserved the faith, which they had received, uncorrupted and entire, in peace and tranquillity until the time of the Emperor Diocletian.”
‘Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum’ Book I Chapter 4
In a recap at the end of the ‘Ecclesiastical History’, Bede states:
“In the year from the incarnation of our Lord 167, Eleutherius, being made bishop at Rome, governed the Church most gloriously fifteen years. Lucius, king of Britain, writing to him, requested to be made a Christian, and succeeded in obtaining his request.”*
‘Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum’ Book V Chapter 24
Eleutherius became pope, rather later than Bede reckoned, in about 174. Bede's are the earliest ‘domestic’ records of a British King Lucius. His source was evidently an, almost certainly erroneous, entry in a variation, made c.530, of the 'Liber Pontificalis' (Book of the Popes). There is a theory that the author of the error misread the word 'Britio' (referring to the fortress of Edessa, capital of Osroene, Mesopotamia), in his source, as 'Britannio'. The king being referred to, therefore, was Lucius Abgar (177–212) of Osroene – an identification which has the considerable advantage of being of someone who is known to have existed. At any rate, the (in all probability) non existent British Lucius' story was absorbed into history.
In the early 1120s, the respected historian William of Malmesbury, in his ‘Gesta Regum Anglorum’ (Deeds of the Kings of England), wrote:
“It is related in annals of good credit, that Lucius, king of the Britons, sent to Pope Eleutherius, thirteenth in succession from St.Peter, to entreat that he would dispel the darkness of Britain by the light of Christian instruction. This surely was the commendable deed of a magnanimous prince, eagerly to seek that faith, the mention of which had barely reached him, at a time when it was an object of persecution by almost every king and people to whom it was offered. In consequence, preachers, sent by Eleutherius, came into Britain, the effects of whose labours will remain forever, although the rust of antiquity may have obliterated their names. By these was built the ancient church of St.Mary of Glastonbury, as faithful tradition has handed down through decaying time.”
‘Gesta Regum Anglorum’ Book I Chapter 19
Around the same time that William issued his ‘Gesta Regum’ (i.e. about 1125), a compilation of materials pertaining to the diocese of Llandaff, the ‘Liber Landavensis’ (Book of Llandaff), was being written up by an anonymous hand. It avers that:
“In the year of our Lord 156, Lucius, King of the Britons, sent his ambassadors, Elfan and Medwy, to Eleutherius, who was the twelfth Pope of the apostolic see, imploring, according to his admonition, that he might be made a Christian, to which request he acceded; for giving thanks to God because that nation, which from the first inhabiting thereof by Brutus had been heathens, so ardently desired to embrace the faith of Christ, he with the advice of the elders of the Roman city, was pleased to cause the ambassadors to be baptized; and on their embracing the Catholic faith, Elfan was ordained a Bishop, and Medwy a Doctor. Through their eloquence, and the knowledge which they had in the Holy Scriptures, they returned preachers to Lucius in Britain; by whose holy preaching, Lucius, and the nobles of all Britain, received baptism; and according to the command of St.Eleutherius, the Pope, he constituted an ecclesiastical order, ordained bishops, and taught the way of leading a good life.”
‘Liber Landavensis’, ‘Of the First State of the Church of Llandaff’
According to lore – as recorded in the, early-9th century, ‘Historia Brittonum’ (History of the Britons) – Brutus, a Trojan, was the eponymous founder and first king of Britain. In the late 1130s, Geoffrey of Monmouth wrote his fanciful, but apparently very popular, ‘Historia Regum Britanniae’ (History of the Kings of Britain). Geoffrey took the traditional anecdotes of the ‘Historia Brittonum’ and worked them into a fully developed pseudo-history of Britain. It was the inventive Geoffrey who brought King Arthur to a wide audience.* King Lucius is but another of the historical shadows his imagination fleshed-out:
“Coillus had but one son, named Lucius, who, obtaining the crown after his father's decease, imitated all his acts of goodness, and seemed to his people to be no other than Coillus himself revived. As he had made so good a beginning, he was willing to make a better end: for which purpose he sent letters to pope Eleutherius, desiring to be instructed by him in the Christian religion. For the miracles which Christ's disciples performed in several nations wrought a conviction in his mind; so that being inflamed with an ardent love of the true faith, he obtained the accomplishment of his pious request. For that holy pope, upon receipt of this devout petition, sent to him two most religious doctors, Faganus and Duvanus, who, after they had preached concerning the incarnation of the word of God, administered baptism to him, and made him a proselyte to the Christian faith. Immediately upon this, people from all countries, assembling together, followed the king's example, and being washed in the same holy laver, were made partakers of the kingdom of heaven. The holy doctors, after they had almost extinguished paganism over the whole island, dedicated the temples, that had been founded in honour of many gods, to the one only God and his saints, and filled them with congregations of Christians. There were then in Britain eight and twenty flamens, as also three archflamens, to whose jurisdiction the other judges and enthusiasts were subject. These also, according to the apostolic command, they delivered from idolatry, and where there were flamens made them bishops, where archflamens, archbishops. The seats of the archflamens were at the three noblest cities, viz. London, York and the City of Legions [Caerleon], which its old walls and buildings show to have been situated upon the river Uske in Glamorganshire. To these three, now purified from superstition, were made subject twenty-eight bishops, with their dioceses...
At last, when they had made an entire reformation here, the two prelates returned to Rome, and desired the pope confirm what they had done. As soon as they had obtained a confirmation, they returned again to Britain, accompanied with many others, by whose doctrine the British nation was in a short time strengthened in the faith...
In the meantime, the glorious king Lucius highly rejoiced at the great progress which the true faith and worship had made in his kingdom, and permitted the possessions and territories which formerly belonged to the temples of the gods, to be converted to a better use, and appropriated to, Christian churches. And because a greater honour was due to them than to the others, he made large additions of lands and manor houses, and all kinds of privileges to them. Amidst these and other acts of his great piety, he departed this life in the city of Gloucester, and was honourably buried in the cathedral church, in the hundred and fifty-sixth year after our Lord's incarnation. He had no issue to succeed him so that after his decease there arose a dissension among the Britons, and the Roman power was much weakened.”
‘Historia Regum Britanniae’ Book IV Chapters 19 & 20, Book V Chapter 1
 
Translations:
‘Liber Landavensis’ by W.J. Rees
Bede 'Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum' by J.A. Giles
William of Newburgh ‘Historia Rerum Anglicarum’ by Joseph Stevenson
Orosius ‘Seven Books of History Against the Pagans’ translator unknown
Geoffrey of Monmouth 'Historia Regum Britanniae' by Aaron Thompson, revised by J.A. Giles
William of Malmesbury 'Gesta Regum Anglorum' by John Sharpe, revised by Joseph Stevenson
Paulus Orosius wrote his ‘Seven Books of History Against the Pagans’, at the request of St.Augustine of Hippo, in about 417.
“During the nine hundred and eleventh year of the City, Marcus Antoninus Verus, the fourteenth emperor in succession from Augustus, came to the throne with his brother Aurelius Commodus. They occupied it jointly for nineteen years and were the first to govern the state on terms of equal authority.”
‘Seven Books of History Against the Pagans’ Book VII Chapter 15
Orosius excluded Otho and Vitellius (both of whom ruled in 69, the Year of the Four Emperors) from his list, hence Marcus Aurelius (“Marcus Antoninus Verus”) is the 14th emperor. Marcus Aurelius ruled until 180, thus Orosius' nineteen years, but Lucius Verus (“Aurelius Commodus”) shared power only until 169 (in which year he died). Bede calculated that their rule began in AD156. Orosius' “nine hundred and eleventh year of the City [of Rome]” (i.e. 911 ‘ab urbe condita’, usually abbreviated to AUC) is now seen to equate to AD158. Incidentally, Orosius places the year of Christ's birth at 752AUC, which equates to 2BC.
In the so-called ‘Greater Chronicle’ (not actually a stand-alone work, but a component of ‘On the Reckoning of Time’), written in 725 (which is, of course, before the ‘Ecclesiastical History’), Bede places Lucius' letter to Eleutherius against the year 4131 from the creation of the world. Bede calculated that ‘the first day’, the day God began his work, was on the 18th March, and that Christ was born in the year 3952. By this reckoning, therefore, Lucius wrote his letter in AD180.
Geoffrey claimed to have taken his material from:
“... a very ancient book in the British tongue, which, in a continued regular story and elegant style, related the actions of them all, from Brutus the first king of the Britons, down to Cadwallader the son of Cadwallo.”
‘Historia Regum Britanniae’ Book I Chapter 1
But even in the 12th century there were those who suspected that Geoffrey's History owed more to his imagination than any “very ancient book”. William of Newburgh began his ‘Historia Rerum Anglicarum’ (History of English Affairs) – the work ends rather abruptly in 1198, presumably William died in that year – with a coruscating attack on Geoffrey:
“... a writer in our times has started up and invented the most ridiculous fictions concerning them [the Britons] ... having given, in a Latin version, the fabulous exploits of Arthur (drawn from the traditional fictions of the Britons, with additions of his own), and endeavoured to dignify them with the name of authentic history; moreover, he has unscrupulously promulgated the mendacious predictions of one Merlin, as if they were genuine prophecies, corroborated by indubitable truth, to which also he has himself considerably added during the process of translating them into Latin... no one but a person ignorant of ancient history, when he meets with that book which he calls the History of the Britons, can for a moment doubt how impertinently and impudently he falsifies in every respect... Since, therefore, the ancient historians make not the slightest mention of these matters, it is plain that whatever this man published of Arthur and of Merlin are mendacious fictions, invented to gratify the curiosity of the undiscerning... Therefore, let Bede, of whose wisdom and integrity none can doubt, possess our unbounded confidence, and let this fabler, with his fictions, be instantly rejected by all.”
‘Historia Rerum Anglicarum’ Preface
Including St.Peter, thirteenth.