7. Literature. (Chapter 2. The Conversion of the Northern and Western Barbarians.) (History of the Christian Church) (Schaff, Philip)

I. Sources.

Gildas (Abbot of Bangor in Wales, the oldest British historian, in the sixth cent.): De excidio Britanniae conquestus, etc. A picture of the evils of Britain at the time. Best ed. by Joseph Stevenson, Lond., 1838. (English Historical Society's publications.)

Nennius (Abbot of Bangor about 620): Eulogium Britanniae, sive Historia Britonum. Ed. Stevenson, 1838.

The Works of Gildas and Nennius transl. from the Latin by J. A. Giles, London, 1841.

*Beda Venerabilis (d. 734): Historia Ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum; in the sixth vol. of Migne's ed. of Bedae Opera Omnia, also often separately published and translated into English. Best ed. by Stevenson, Lond., 1838; and by Giles, Lond., 1849. It is the only reliable church-history of the Anglo-Saxon period.

The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, from the time of Caesar to 1154. A work of several successive hands, ed. by Gibson with an Engl. translation, 1823, and by Giles, 1849 (in one vol. with Bede's Eccles. History).

See the Six Old English Chronicles, in Bohn's Antiquarian Library (1848); and Church Historians of England trans. by Jos. Stevenson, Lond. 1852-'56, 6 vols.

Sir. Henry Spelman (d. 1641): Concilia, decreta, leges, constitutiones in re ecclesiarum orbis Britannici, etc. Lond., 1639-'64, 2 vols. fol. (Vol. I. reaches to the Norman conquest; vol. ii. to Henry VIII).

David Wilkins (d. 1745): Concilia Magnae Britanniae et Hiberniae (from 446 to 1717), Lond., 1737, 4 vols. fol. (Vol. I. from 446 to 1265).

*Arthur West Haddan and William Stubbs: Councils and Ecclesiastical Documents relating to Great Britain and Ireland: edited after Spelman and Wilkins. Oxford (Clarendon Press), 1869 to '78. So far 3 vols. To be continued down to the Reformation.

The Penitentials of the Irish and Anglo-Saxon Churches are collected and edited by F. Kunstmann (Die Lat. Poenitentialbuecher der Angelsachsen, 1844); Wasserschleben (Die Bussordnungen der abendlaend. Kirche, 1851); Schmitz (Die Bussbuecher u. d. Bussdisciplin d. Kirche, 1883).