St. Medard
The Cams, Hampshire
West and East Wittering
A bit of a bombshell here, which may or may not be well-received by the Arthurian community.
I now am, for the first time, not only fairly confident that I know who Medraut was, but also where Camlan was located.
How did I come to these realizations?
Well, it was during my comparison of the Annals Cambriae entry for the year 537 with entries in the Irish Annals that I noticed something peculiar. Where the AC has Arthur and Medraut perish in Camlan during a year that saw plague in Britain and Ireland, the corresponding year entry in the Ulster Annals had the death of Comgall son of Domangart, King of Dalriada. Yes, the same Dalriada that later saw an Arthur in its royal family. A later Domangart, billed as this Arthur's brother, dies with him.
That got me sidetracked for awhile. But only the other day I more thoroughly investigated the strange fact that there is no plague mentioned in the Irish Annal for 537. Instead, that source duplicates the death of Comgall son of Domangart in 545, and it is there that we are told about the plague.
T537.2 [538 in Ulster]
Comgall son of Domongort, king of Scotland died in the 35th year of his reign.
U545.1
The first mortality called bléfed, in which Mo-Bí Clárainech died.
U545.2
Death of Comgall son of Domangart, as some say.
I asked myself this question: what if we run with 545 instead of 537 and see what happens?
What happened is something so strange I find it difficult to assign merely to coincidence.
In 545, in Gaul, the famous St. Medard died. Medard was bishop of Noviomagus, modern Noyen. Alarm bells started going off in my head, for I knew there were other places named Noviomagus - and two were in Britain!
And not only were they in Britain, they were in the extreme SE, where fighting was going on (according to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle) between the Britons and the Saxons during Arthur's floruit.
The two sites in question are Chichester, which was the capital of the old Regni kingdom in Sussex. The other was Crayford in Kent. Here are their respective listings from Rivet and Smith's The Place-Names of Roman Britain:
Now, after looking at all this, I believe Medraut - from an earlier Medrad - represents St. Medard. -ard to -rad is a simple metathesis, easily performed by a copying scribe. The famous bishop was wrongly transferred through the usual folkloristic processes from the Gallic Noviomagus to a British one.
Which one - Chichester or Crayford?
Definitely the former. I had long ago discussed two important sites near Chichester. The first was the ASC's Cymensora, once a contender for Arthur's Camlan. I later dispensed with this site in favor of The Cams or Cams Shore near Portchester. For more on these two sites, please see the following old blog posts:
As Medard of Noviomagus in Gaul was related to the Noviomagus that was Chichester, we might be tempted to favor Cymensora, i.e. Wittering, on Selsey Bill, which is very close to the Romano-British city.
However, I still think we must factor in the death of Cerdic of Wessex in 534 just after he gives the Isle of Wight to his nephews. Cerdic of Wessex = Ceredig son of Cunedda, and in one my theories on the "true identity" of Uther, I utilized the Pen Kawell ("chief basket") epithet of Uther to identify him with Ceawlin (AS ceawl = "basket")/Cunedda. My entire book THE BEAR KING was full of arguments (some quite good, if I say so myself!) in support of the Gewissei originally being champions of the British who had been co-opted by the Victorious English by being converted into the founders of Wessex(see historian Barbara Yorke's discussion of this possibility). Cerdic, given the Bear Water in his kingdom of Ceredigion, and the three bear-names among his immediate descedents, was the obvious candidate for Arthur.
If earlier scholars were correct in allowing for the Elafius of St. Germanus' Life being Elesa of the ASC - the same Elesa who, as an intrusion into the Wessex genealogy from that of Bernicia, is incorrectly listed as the father of Cerdic - then I was right about the son of Elafius being Arthur. I had based this idea on the nature of the son's knee joint disability, which might well have been concocted by the Latin hagiographer as an aetiological tale designed to explain the meaning of the name Arthur from L. artus and derivatives.
There is a chronological problem with Elafius, of course. St. Germanus was in Britain in 429. A son of that time would have been quite old in 516 (Badon), and could not have died in 537 (Camlan). But... we are dealing with hagiography here and have no way of knowing how accurate the dates assigned to events might actually be.
I had once flirted with the idea that Elafius, called regionis illius primus in the Germanus Life, might actually be the primus of the Regni. But given the connection between Cunedda/Ceawlin/Uther and Arthur/Cerdic, I think this highly unlikely.
So how do we read this Camlan entry, if I have it right?
I would make the case of Arthur = Cerdic of Wessex/Ceredig son of Cunedda falling in battle at The Cams against the English. What the precise date of this fateful battle was, well, who can say? The ASC, once again, has Cerdic die in 534. The AC has Arthur die 3 years later. If we go by the plague date, the earliest listed in the Irish Annals are for the years 540, 541 and 545 (see https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.3318/priac.2018.118.04).
Cerdic as Arthur is the only candidate who would explain why all subsequent Arthurs belonged to Irish-founded dynasties in Britain. For Cunedda was Irish, from Drumanagh, not Manau Gododdin. Cerdic, is actually related to Cunedda, would be Hiberno-British. If merely British, he was still Gewissei under the leadership, originally, of Cunedda.
We cannot account for the later "Irish" Arthurs if Arthur were an opponent of Cunedda and the Gewissei.
The mixing in of Medard as Medrad may well have been accidental - indeed, I think it unnecessary to propose intentional creativity in this instance. Once Medard's Noviomagus was wronly associated with Chichester, it would have been an easy matter to combine annal entries. We might imagine original multiple entries for the same year, something like -
Year X Arthur perishes at Camlan. Blessed Medard rests. And there was plague in Britain and Ireland.
A copyist at some point merely assumed Medard died with Arthur at Camlan and shortened the entry.
Or sucessive entries -
Year Xa Arthur perishes at Camlan.
Year Xb Blessed Medard rests.
Year Xc Plague in Britain and Ireland.
Again, combined to read like the AC entry we now possess.
It seems to me this adequately explains the significance of the Camlan entry, and incidentally provides us with the most likely location for Arthur's last battle.
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