THE GHOST AMBROSIUS: READING THE 4TH CENTURY INTO THE 5TH

Ambrosius

Aurelius Ambrosius, said to be a Roman, is the most famous figure in Dark Age British history prior to Arthur. Why? Because he is credited with having united the Britons in a successful defense of the country against the Saxons, who from Vortigern’s time had, according to the traditional account, pillaged and conquered at will.

Ambrosius is important also because it has been fashionable to identify him with Arthur. As we shall see, such an identification is patently impossible.

To begin, Ambrosius was not a contemporary of Arthur. He was not, in fact, even a contemporary of Vortigern, who preceded Arthur by a century. And this is true despite the HB account, which brings Vortigern and Ambrosius (as the Welsh Emrys) together for a fabulous story that takes place at Dinas Emrys in northwestern Wales (see below).

There are major problems with accepting Ambrosius as a contemporary of Vortigern. First, he cannot have been a Roman and been in Britain during or after Vortigern’s rule. The withdrawal of the Romans is firmly dated at c. 409 CE. Vortigern’s ruling dates, depending on the sources consulted, are anywhere from twenty to forty years after the Roman withdrawal. If he were a Roman during or after Vortigern, then he came from the Continent and was not a native Briton. The argument could be made that ‘Romanized’ Britons continued to preserve the Roman way of life in southern England for a half century after the withdrawal of the troops. In this sense, a chieftain like Ambrosius might still consider himself to be ‘Roman’.

However, the HB tells us that Ambrosius fought a battle against a certain Vitalinus at a Guoloph or Wallop, thought to be the Hampshire Wallop. This Vitalinus is listed in the HB as the grandfather of Vortigern. This means that Ambrosius has wrongly been placed in the time of Vortigern. He actually belongs to the time of Vitalinus, who was probably of the 4th century.

The father of the famous 4th century St. Ambrose bore the name Aurelius Ambrosius. This man was, furthermore, the prefect or governor of Gaul (Gallia). Britain, Spain and Gaul were in the Gallic prefecture. So, we have here a historical figure named Aurelius Ambrosius who not only was a true ‘Roman’, but who could have had something to do with military operations carried out in Britain in the 4th century.

There is good reason to believe that St. Ambrose himself bore the name Aurelius. Jones' Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire gives no second name for the bishop of Milan and neither does Paulinus of Milan's Vita. Ambrose may have belonged to the gens Aurelia, as we know that he was related to Symmachus [Quintus Aurelius Symmachus]; an inscription refers to him as Aurelius Ambrosius. It is true that there is a debate over the Ambrose referred to in the inscription. Those who think it is Ambrose junior [St. Ambrose] point out that a dedication to St. Nazarius is involved. The point may be moot: if Ambrose senior belonged to the gens Aurelia, so did the son, and vice versa.  Incidentally, St. Ambrose’s Milan was anciently called Mediolanum and there was also a Roman town of this name in the British Cornovii tribal territory.  

One other factor strongly indicates that there is no good historical reason for accepting a 5th century Aurelius Ambrosius in Britain. Vortigern’s only interaction with Ambrosius, or Emrys Guletic (‘Prince Ambrosius’) as he is called in Welsh tradition, is in the Dinas Emrys folktale already alluded to above.

Other than Dinas Emrys, there appears to be no site in Britain which can be shown to contain the personal name Ambrosius. Still, this hero may even have been placed at Guoloph/Wallop because of the proximity of this stream to Amesbury. As Geoffrey of Monmouth did much later, Ambrosius's name was fancifully associated with Amesbury.

The town name does not, in fact, seem to contain the personal name Ambrosius. Its etymology is instead as follows:

Ambresbyrig, from a c.880 CE charter, then various spellings to Amblesberie in Domesday. Almost certainly a personal name Ambre or Aembre cognate with the Old German Ambri, hence Ambre's burgh, cf. Ombersley. All the early forms for Amesbury have the medial -b-, but no form has any extension that would justify derivation from Ambrosius.  See https://mistshadows.blogspot.com/2018/06/ambirix-as-name-preserved-in-place-name.html.

Ambrosius as a Latin adjective means “the Divine or Immortal One”. As such, it was at some point taken to be a title for the Welsh god Lleu. Welsh tradition made Lleu the ancient ruler of Gwynedd, and this is the rank granted to Emrys or Ambrosius in the HB. Hence Dinas Emrys in northwestern Wales, the ‘[Hill-] fort of the Divine or Immortal One’, is actually the Fort of Lleu.

The Welsh also appear to have identified the youthful god Mabon with Lleu. That this is so is demonstrated by the placement of the two gods in death at the same place. According to the Mabinogion tale Math Son of Mathonwy, Lleu is found as the death-eagle in the oak tree at Nantlle (Nant Lleu) in Snowdonia not far from Dinas Emrys. And one of the Stanzas of the Graves reads:

“The grave on Nantlle’s height, No one knows its attributes – Mabon son of Modron the Swift.”

In Chapter 6, we will discuss Emrys’s Campus Elleti, supposedly a site in southern Wales, in the context of Camelot. 

Geoffrey of Monmouth proceeded to further confuse the story of Ambrosius, a Roman governor of Gaul mistakenly identified with a Welsh god, by identifying both with the Northern Myrddin or Merlin. Hence we find Merlin or ‘Merlin Ambrosius’ in the Dinas Emrys story of Emrys/Lleu/Mabon.

In addition, Merlin is placed at the springs of Galabes, Geoffrey’s attempt at the Guoloph of the hero Ambrosius.

In conclusion, we can only say that there is no good reason for supposing that Vortigern and Ambrosius were contemporaries. Instead, the Ambrosius mentioned by Gildas as having military success in Britian must have been the 4th century Gallic governor of that name. This being the case, Ambrosius could not possibly have been the victor at the battle of Mount Badon, which is dated 516 CE. And, by extension, Ambrosius was not Arthur.

The Ghost Ambrosius or Why Arthur’s Predecessor Should be Stricken from the Annals of British History

Over the past several years, I've written a handful of articles on Ambrosius Aurelianus, a geographically and temporally dislocated figure in early British legend.  Yet despite the evidence I've presented, Arthurian scholars, professional and amateur alike, continue to mistake him for a real personage of 5th century Britain.  The idea that he might even be Arthur is still out there.  I feel, therefore, that it is time for a summary treatment of this supposed military hero.  The easiest way for me to do this is to itemize the points of my argument.

1) The name of A.A. matches perfectly that of the fourth century Governor of Gaul (whose territories included those of Britain) and his famous son, St. Ambrose.  Vortigern's grandfather Vitalinus is said to have fought A.A. at Wallop in Hampshire.  Such a battle reference puts A.A. well before Vortigern and negates the possibility that A.A. was a boy during Vortigern's reign.

2) St. Ambrose and his father lived at Trier on the Moselle.  The Campus Elleti in Wales where Vortigern's men are said to have found the boy A.A. comes from a Welsh place-name Maes Ilid (see modern Llanilid) and this may be a substitute for the Moselle (Mosella/Mosellae).  [For Llanilid as a scholarly error for the site, see https://mistshadows.blogspot.com/2020/06/the-red-herring-of-llanilid-uther.html.] We also have a Mediolanum in what is now Powys, a town whose name is identical with that of St. Ambrose of Milan. 

3) Dinas Emrys is a relocation for Amesbury, the latter thought (wrongly) to contain the name of Ambrosius.  Dinas Emrys was placed in Eryri because this mountain range was fancifully connected to the Welsh word for eagle, and both St. Ambrose and Magnus the Tyrant (easily confused with Vor-tigern) are known to have been at Aquileia, a place-name that could have been incorrectly linked with the Latin word for eagle. 

4) Trier was in Gallia Belgica, 'Gaul of the Belgae', and A.A.'s Wallop in Hampshire was in the ancient tribal territory of the British Belgae.  Gallia could be used in medieval sources for both Gaul and Wales.

5) A.A. is said to have been given Dinas Emrys and the western kingdoms of Britain by Vortigern. This is impossible, as Gwynedd belonged to Cunedda and his sons.  This is obviously a mistake for Amesbury, which was inside of what was to become Wessex, the kingdom of the WEST Saxons.

6) A.A appears to have been identified in folk belief with the god Lleu, styled Lord of Gwynedd,who was himself identified by the Welsh with the god Mabon.  The Campus Elleti ballgame story is paralleled in the Irish story of Mac Og, the 'Young Son', the Gaelic version of  Mabon. 

7) A.A. was further identified with Merlin (Myrddin), himself possibly a form of Lleu or an avatar of that god.

8) The whole exhuming by A.A. of the two vases containing dragons (read “chieftains” or “warriors”) has its prototype in St. Ambrosius’ exhuming of pairs of saints.  See https://mistshadows.blogspot.com/2018/01/st-ambrose-and-exhumation-of-saints.html.

In conclusion, the Ambrosius Aurelianus who first appears in the pages of Gildas is a purely legendary figure, based on the known historical Ambrosii of the Continent.  He was mistakenly transferred to Britain during the normal course of folklore development, largely due to a confusion of place-names. There is no reason to believe that either Ambrosius - father or son - ever set foot on British soil.  To concoct some famous war-leader of the Britons who happened to have been named after one of the Ambrosii is to ignore points 1-7 above.

But What About Gildas’s Ambrosius?

Although I have shown to my satisfaction why Ambrosius Aurelianus was not only wrongly placed in Britain, but put there at the wrong time, I've been asked a very good question by some of my readers:  "That's all well and fine, if we're talking about the tradition recorded in Nennius and subsequent sources (like Geoffrey of Monmouth's pseudo-history).  But what about A.A.'s appearance in Gildas?  How do you account for that?"

As it happens, that is an excellent question.  And not an easy one to answer.  But I will take a stab at it, in any case.

A.A. was Prefect of Gaul (and thus of Britain as well) c. 337-340.  We do not know when he died, but his son St. Ambrose (with whom he was conflated in Welsh legend) moved to Rome with his mother not earlier than 353 (https://books.google.com/books?id=sc49DwAAQBAJ&pg=PA7&lpg=PA7&dq=st.+ambrose+and+his+mother+went+to+rome&source=bl&ots=7w4smM9os3&sig=ACfU3U0AuKyqO3hjZIrPlxdpBvQVvfCZ5g&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwi_hL-SzqnpAhUOsp4KHZLYANQQ6AEwDHoECAgQAQ#v=onepage&q=st.%20ambrose%20and%20his%20mother%20went%20to%20rome&f=false).  Some have thought A.A. may have fallen at the same time as his Emperor Constantine II, who died in 340. 

In 343, Constantine's brother Constans, the new Western Emperor, visited Britain.  It is not known precisely why (see http://www.roman-emperors.org/consi.htm#9), but the reason is hinted at in Ammianus:

Book XX

1 1 Lupicinus, master of arms, is sent with an army to Britain, to resist the inroads of the Scots and Picts.

Such was the course of events throughout Illyricum and the Orient. But in Britain in the tenth consulship of Constantius and the third of Julian raids of the savage tribes of the Scots and the Picts, who had broken the peace that had been agreed upon, were laying waste the regions near the frontiers, so that fear seized the provincials, wearied as they were by a mass of past calamities. And Julian, who was passing the winter in Paris and was distracted amid many cares, was afraid to go to the aid of those across the sea, as Constans once did (as I have told),1 

1 In one of the lost books; it was in 343.

Let us suppose, for the sake of argument, that A.A. did not perish with Constantine.  That although he was no longer serving as Prefect of Gaul, he accompanied Constans to Britain in some capacity.  This is certainly not out of the realm of the possible.  Granted, Constantine I/the Great had made the praetorian prefecture a civil, rather than a military post.  But A.A. could have been replaced by another prefect, and found himself in another role as part of a major military expedition to Britain.  It's also not inconceivable that A.A. fled to Britain after Constantine II's death, although had that been the case we would have expected him to take his family with him.  

However it happened, if A.A. were in Britain at the time, how do we account for the sequence of events in Gildas?

Rather easily, I suspect.  The problem has to do with a simple confusion of the two emperors named Constans - the one who was in Britain in 343 and the Constans II, son of the Constantine III who had been proclaimed emperor in Britain in 407.  

A very puzzling line in Gildas has not, to my knowledge, been analyzed.  It occurs in 25:2, and runs as follows:  "After a time, when the cruel plunderers had gone home, God gave strength to the survivors." These survivors, and those who flocked to them, had as their leader A.A.  On the surface, this would seem to be a nonsensical statement.  The Saxons invited in by Vortigern did not, in fact, go home.  Gildas had just previously told us that they had invited in more of their kind and proceeded to take over the island. We are told in Nennius that Vortimer pushed them to the Isle of Thanet, but that after he was slain they continued their depredations and conquest.  

So who went home when A.A. showed up on the scene?

I would propose that Gildas' account is here hopelessly confused.  The enemy that withdraws in this context was forced to do so by Constans I, accompanid by A.A., who may well have had the military command.  We are probably talking about Scots and Picts, not Saxons.  What we appear to have here is a simple jumbling of fourth and fifth century events.