or affection to one's own countrymen, and (without detriment to
one's faith) to refuse due honour to those of higher dignity, to
cast off all regard to reason, human and divine, and, in contempt
of heaven and earth, to be guided by one's own sensual inventions?
I shall, therefore, omit those ancient errors common to all the
nations of the earth, in which, before Christ came in the flesh,
all mankind were bound; nor shall I enumerate those diabolical
idols of my country, which almost surpassed in number those of
Egypt, and of which we still see some mouldering away within or
without the deserted temples, with stiff and deformed features
as was customary. Nor will I call out upon the mountains, fountains,
or hills, or upon the rivers, which now are subservient to the
use of men, but once were an abomination and destruction to them,
and to which the blind people paid divine honour. I shall also
pass over the bygone times of our cruel tyrants, whose notoriety
was spread over to far distant countries; so that Porphyry, that
dog who in the east was always so fierce against the church, in
his mad and vain style added this also, that "Britain is a land
fertile in tyrants."* I will only endeavour to relate the
evils which Britain suffered in the times of the Roman emperors,
and also those which she caused to distant states; but so far as
lies in my power, I shall not follow the writings and records of
my own country, which (if there ever were any of them) have been
consumed in the fires of the enemy, or have accompanied my exiled
countrymen into distant lands, but be guided by the relations of
foreign writers, which, being broken and interrupted in many places
are therefore by no means clear.

* Gildas here confuses the modern idea of a tyrant with that
of an usurper. The latter is a sense in which Britain was said