Because of the way this was written, Vortigern comes first, tracking his story through the sources: Gildas, Bede, Nennius, The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. Then the story of Hengist’s daughter follows on.
Vortigern
I’m not interested in whether or not Vortigern was ‘an historical figure’. I am interested in his role in ‘The Legendary History’ or ‘The Matter of Britain’, in particular the version of his story told by Laȝamon and how that story had developed.
Laȝamon's version, written sometime after 1155, is the earliest English version of what resembles a full life. The brief appearance of Vortigern’s name in two entries in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle has been developed into a complicated narrative that leads to the conception of Arthur: Vortigern first seizes power, then employs Hengist but is out-manoeuvred by him. He marries Hengist’s daughter, fights his own sons and brings Merlin into the Legendary History before burning to death in his tower.
Vortigern’s story seems to grow out of three traditions that might be separated purely for convenience. I'm particularly interested in the story before Geoffrey (1 and 2 below). There are other appearances: his name crops up in the triads, for example, but they add little to what follows.
1) Gildas, Bede, and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
2) Historia Brittonum (Nennius) and the The Pillar of Eliseg
3) Geoffrey of Monmouth, Wace and finally Laȝamon
1) is the ‘historical’ Vortigern. From a possible mistranslation/misreading of Gildas, he develops into the brief Chronicle entries for 449 and 455.
2) is ‘legendary’ and British. This version is not only ‘fuller’ but different to 1 in a number of significant ways. The inscription on the pillar of Eliseg seems to commemorate Vortigern, but as Higham (2002, p. 167) writes : it treats him ‘with great honour…as a figure of extraordinary repute to whom the current generation look back with proper reverence'. As such it may be the only positive treatment of Vortigern in any of the sources.
1
After four centuries of occupation the Romans withdraw. The Island of Britain suffers repeated raids. Gildas states that: ‘A council is held to deliberate what means ought to be determined upon, as the best and safest to repel such fatal and frequent irruptions and plunderings by the nations mentioned above.’
Members of this assembly, along with the ‘superbus tyrannus’, invite Saxons who arrive in three ships. It’s not clear whether superbus tyrannus is a title, a pun on a name, or a translation of a name.
The decision is damned as soon as it is mentioned: Nothing more hurtful, certainly, nothing more bitter, happened to the island than this. What utter depth of darkness of soul! What hopeless and cruel dullness of mind! The men whom, when absent, they feared more than death, were invited by them of their own accord, so to say, under the cover of one roof.
There’s no further interest in the Superbus Tyrannus, who may or may not be called Vortigern.
Gildas was writing at a time before the English had established their dominance of the Island, and his argument is that if only the British could repent and turn back to the Lord, they could reverse their fortunes and expel the English. For Gildas the British are a corrupt and sinful race and their destruction by the English is God’s punishment for their sins. He is describing events that are well within the three generational span of oral memory.
Vortigern in Bede
Obviously when Bede comes to write his version, possibly three centuries later, the context has changed dramatically. While happy to present the British as corrupt, the English Kingdoms are no longer tentative, and for Bede the English are God’s people. Vortigern, who is now named, is the unwitting instrument of God’s judgement. But again there is no interest in his motives, his character, his biography. He is simply the one who invites the Saxons.
So Vortigern is no longer just a name, but a King, and it is his decision to call in the Saxons: ‘For they [the Britons] consulted how they might obtain help to avoid or repel the frequent fierce attacks of their neighbours, and all agreed with the advice of their King, Vortigern, to call on the assistance of the Saxon peoples across the sea’ [my Italics].
Bede repeats this in his next chapter: they came ‘at the invitation of King Vortigern’. Bede also records that the first chieftains were brothers called Hengist and Horsa.
He says nothing more about Vortigern or the brothers but that’s not surprising. From the arrival of the three ships, which he dates around 449 to the arrival of the Augustine Mission in 596, he records nothing about the late fifth or most of the sixth century except a brief reference to a British victory at Mount Badon.
Vortigern in the ASC
Not surprisingly, for the writer of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, the English are neither ‘hated of God and men’ nor God’s chosen people/instrument of His punishment for the sinful Britons, nor limited to three hundred years in their rule of the Island. Vortigern is neither evil nor stupid, simply the remembered agent of the Anglo-Saxon arrival.
The ASC mentions Vortigern in only two entries; 449 and 455. The first names him as King of the Britons, and responsible for the invitation. The second, six years later, (there are no intervening entries) records laconically that he fought against Hengest and Horsa; Horsa was killed and after that Hengist became King with his son. There is no mention of what happens to Vortigern.
The genre of these three texts didn’t provide the opportunity for their writers to go into the who, why, how, of biography, even if the purpose behind them made that desirable, which it obviously didn’t. However, having made him into such a pivotal figure, it’s hardly surprising that stories would develop to answer those ‘biographical’ questions: who was this ‘Vortigern’? Why did he do that? What kind of man was he? What happened to him?
Vortigern becomes a character.
The Historia Bruttonum, was written or complied around the beginning of the ninth century (Possible dates are to the 820s, localised or at least connected to the court of Gwynedd in the reign of Merfyn Frych). It is the oldest surviving, developed Vortigern story.
Although the narrative is sometimes confused and self-contradictory, Vortigern has something approaching a biography. It is he who is responsible for the ruin of Britain. He is a weak and evil man. The external manifestation of his evil is sexual. He has a son by his daughter, and his infatuation with Hengist’s daughter, who appears here for the first time, allows Hengist to outwit him.
However, by the ninth century, there were competing versions of the story: a Good King Vortigern and the HB’s Bad King.
Early Welsh Genealogies preserve Vortigern’s name as an honoured ancestor who adds lustre and legitimacy to the royal dynasties, even claiming him as the eponymous founder of a Welsh Kingdom.
Neither Arthur nor Ambrosius appear in the genealogies. Vortigern’s presence not only suggests that he was considered historical at the time, but also proves the HB’s version of his life was not the only one in circulation. David Dumville pointed out, a long time ago, that Vortigern disappears from the genealogies after the tenth century, suggesting that the Bad King version proved the stronger.
The ‘Biography’.
In the HB, Vortigern is now ‘King of the Britons’. He doesn’t invite the Saxons. Hengist and Horsa have been exiled from Germany. Vortigern gives them Thanet and in return for food and clothing they offer Vortigern their services in his wars against the Picts. As they become more of a threat, Vortigern is outmaneuvered by Hengist who uses his daughter, as a bargaining tool. The devil enters Vortigern's heart and he is so besotted he is prepared to give up half his kingdom for the girl.
However, Vortigern is also in an incestuous relationship with his own daughter, and they produce a son. Confronted and humiliated by Saint Germanus, Vortigern flees with his wizards. He meets Ambrosius, a boy without a father, who advises him, and makes a prediction about the British and Saxons based on some worms they find in a pond. Given that this is written in a Welsh context, it’s hardly surprising the prophecy ends with a prediction that the British will eventually expel the English.
In his absence, Vortimer, Vortigern’s eldest son, fights against the Anglo-Saxons, but although victorious at first, dies. Hengist comes back and treacherously slays the leading Britons. Vortigern dies.
In outline, and in some of the details, this is the story Geoffrey of Monmouth will use. But there are at least three centuries between Gildas and the Historia Bruttonum and that is really all that needs to be said about the historical value of the HB’s account.
The Medieval approach to the past.
It is obvious that the storytellers have been at work. The story of Ambrosius, the boy without a father but with the gift of prophecy (a story which Geoffrey will elaborate and shift to Merlin) is straight out of a folk tale. The HB also records three versions of Vortigern’s death or two deaths and a variation. He is burnt to death ‘with his wives’ as a result of St Germanus’ prayers. He wanders alone and forgotten and dies of heartbreak. The earth swallows him up ‘on the night when his fortress was burnt’. .
It’s difficult for modern readers to understand how different the early medieval attitude towards ‘history’ was to the thing we learn in school or at the library. The medieval tolerance for obvious inconsistency within a single text can be astonishing.
The HB contains the miraculous, the marvellous and is internally inconsistent. The whole point of the story of Ambrosius is that Vortigern has to find a boy who has no father. But after he’s prophesized, Vortigern asks him: ’What family do you come from?’ and the boy replies ‘My father is one of the consuls of the Roman people’. You could try and rationalize this but you’d be missing the point.
The idea of establishing facts, sorted into a chronological sequence that could be dated, or critically evaluating available sources, rejecting alternative narratives to establish which is the most likely, was not wide spread medieval practice. Even when it was attempted, the attempt was complicated by the difficulty of dating anything outside living memory.
The HB for example uses at least three different dating methods: from the Incarnation, which we have inherited as BC/AD, from the Passion, and the Roman way of dating by naming the consuls in the year.
Bede’s date for the Adventus was nothing more than an educated guess. The HB gives two dates for the arrival of Hengist and Horsa and makes no attempt to reconcile them. The first is 347 years after the Passion, which puts the date somewhere around 370-380.
Later, the HB uses consulships to date the reign of Vortigern to 425, claiming the English came in the fourth year of his reign, which would be 428/9, ‘four hundred years after the Passion’.
The difference between modern and medieval thinking can be swiftly demonstrated by using the inscription on the Pillar of Eisleg. There Vortigern is named as the father of a line of kings, friend of St Germanus and son-in-law of Magnus Maximus. This is the Good King version.
We know from other sources that Magnus Maximus was an historical character, a soldier of Spanish descent who took troops from Britain to invade Europe, was briefly Western Emperor until he was executed in 388.
We know daughters were used to extend family influence and establish alliances. When Magnus was on the rise, he would have chosen her husband carefully: someone with enough power to be attractive as an ally. On the other hand, she would have had no value to anyone in the aftermath of his defeat.
So, if Vortigern married her, it’s likely he did so before 388 and it’s also likely that he would have been an adult and a significant player in the political landscape by that date. How old would that make him in 449?
On the other hand….
But such thinking is not medieval. In the Annales Cambraie the entry immediately before the famous reference to the battle of Badon records the death of Bishop Ebur at the age of 350. The writer saw nothing odd about this.
And therefore
The value of these stories as ‘historical evidence’ may be negligible. Watching anyone trying to tease out some historical ‘facts’ from the tangled mess is an entertaining spectator sport, but the activity is ultimately futile. The Historia Bruttonum and the Pillar of Eisleg, the early Welsh Genealogies, Bede, and the Anglo-Saxon chronicle tell us little or nothing about the historical reality of the fifth century, but reveal a great deal about what Peter Hanning called ‘the historical imagination’ of their tellers.
In the imaginations of the storytellers, Vortigern, who may never have existed, moves towards his role as the national villain in Laȝamon's Brut (where all these post have been heading.) The last steps in the process are the adjustments Geoffrey of Monmouth had to make to fit him into a coherent chronology and tidy up the narrative's loose ends.
But to follow that it’s easier to track the story of Hengist’s daughter.