SELIM 18.indb Andrew Breeze, SELIM 18 (2011): 165–168ISSN: 1132–631X OROSIUS’S ORMESTA AND JOHN CAPGRAVE Replete with quaint and sometimes bizarre learning, Abbreuiacion of Cronicles by John Capgrave (1393–1464) owes many details to its compiler (Gray 2008: 167– 168). Discussing late antiquity, he says for example that Orosius, “messagere betwix Jerom and Augustin,” wrote “a book onto Seynt Augustin: it is clepid Ormesta Mundi.” Capgrave’s editor notes that the title is not in Capgrave’s source, by Martinus Polonus or Marcin z Oprawy (c. 1208–1278/9); identifi es Orosius’s work as Historia adversus Paganos and dates it to 417; and explains Ormesta Mundi as perhaps \ om Or[osii] m[undi] ist[ori]a (+Mundi), the last word repeated in error (Lucas 1983: 65, 266, 396). This etymology is not credible. Ormesta, used of works by Orosius in the fi j h century and Gildas in the sixth, is not a dubious Latin acronym but Breton, or Breton Latin. Yet, as authorities disagree on its origin, a \ esh account is needed. It begins with a ninth-century Latin life of St Pol (fi rst bishop of Léon in Brittany) by the Breton monk Wrmonoc, who remarked that Gildas in a book “which they call Ormesta Britanniae” wrote de ipsius insulae situ atque miseriis (we shall return to those “miseries”). Ormesta here was explained by Cuissard in 1883 as \ om a Breton cognate of Welsh gormes “oppression,” with -ta perhaps “added to Latinize the word,” a view accepted by later scholars (Williams 1899–1901: 319, 417). Another approach was, however, initiated by Sir Ifor Williams, in relating early Welsh armes “prophecy, prediction; calamity, tribulation, loss” to Middle Irish airdmes “act of calculating; estimate, opinion” (Williams 1922–1924: 23–36). Two derivations are the result. One takes early Irish forbas, forbais, forfess “oppression, siege,” Welsh gormes “oppression,” and Old-Breton Latin ormesta “misery” as of the same origin (Pedersen & Lewis 1937: 47). In fl at contradiction is the other, that Ormesta 166 Andrew Breeze SELIM 18 (2011) Britanniae (another name for De excidio Britanniae) contains a Breton cognate of Middle Irish airdmes “act of calculating; estimate” and Welsh armes “prophecy; calamity, loss” (GPC s.v.). It is certainly not strange that Orosius’s book should have a Breton name. Like Gildas, he was read in Breton schools, and several manuscripts of him have Old Breton glosses (Jackson 1953: 62, 65). As for his subject, this was brilliantly summed up in a passage too long to quote in full, but beginning “Orosius taught, as no other historian, that the past was horrible,” and continuing, “he holds that humanity always did suff er and always will; that the condition of its existence is war, plague, famine, and fi re;” and that “the human tragedy can only be seen for what it is if we discard the notion of an ideal and heroic past” (Wallace-Hadrill 1971: 145). No surprise, then, if Ormesta mundi as a title for his history in a manuscript 3 om Fleury (near Orleans) should parallel that of De miseria hominum elsewhere. Ifor Williams cited the last, as also Wrmonoc on Gildas as writing de ipsius insulae situ atque miseriis, as evidence that Ormesta is 3 om the Breton cognate, not of Welsh gormes “oppression by an alien race or conqueror, tyranny, violence; encroachment, intrusion, attack,” but of Welsh armes “prophecy; calamity, tribulation.” The senses “calamity, tribulation” go better with miseria than does that of “oppression by aliens” (Williams 1972: xlv–ix). Yet medieval Latinists take no notice. Although citing ormesta as a title for Gildas’s work in Cambridge, Pembroke College, MS 25, and as one for Orosius’s in texts by Ordericus Vitalis, Roger Bacon, and Ranulf Higden, they still derive ormesta 3 om a Old Breton cognate of Welsh gormes (Howlett 2003). They repeat what Cuissard proposed back in 1883. So we say again that, while Welsh gormes “oppression by aliens” does not suit Orosius’s polemical intent, Welsh armes “tribulation” does. A4 er Romans blamed Christians for the Empire’s fall, Orosius wrote to show how disaster had ever been, even in the good old days of paganism. That is why one Breton called his catalogue of woe Ormesta mundi “calamity of the world,” when another referred 167 Orosius’s Ormesta and John Capgrave SELIM 18 (2011) to Gildas’s treatise de ipsius insulae situ atque miseriis as de Ormesta Britanniae “calamity of Britain.” The use of Celtic-Latin Ormesta for Orosius’s book is not remarkable. He was known to Britons and Bretons alike. This writer has shown that (even though Anglo- Saxonists pass it over) a Cornishman dictated the Old English Orosius to a West Saxon scribe (Breeze 2007: 367–368, Godden & Irvine 2009: 5, 136–137). Orosius was read too in Wales, where one bard embellished his verses with Orosian place-names in regions 0 om Turkey to Bangladesh (Haycock 2007: 409). The Celtic aspects of Orosius’s Ormesta are hence clear, just as they are for Gildas (here owing much to the prophet Jeremiah; George 2009: 20–25). When, therefore, Capgrave referred to Ormesta mundi, he cited a Breton-Latin form meaning “calamity of the world,” not “oppression of the world;” and certainly not Or[osii] m[undi] ist[ori]a (+Mundi). Andrew Breeze University of Navarre, Pamplona References GPC = Geiriadur Pri! sgol Cymru. Caerdydd, University of Wales Press. Breeze, A. 2007: The Old Cornish Gloss on Boethius. Notes and Queries 252: 367–368. George, K. 2009: Gildas’s “De Excidio Britonum” and the Early British Church Woodbridge, The Boydell Press. Godden M. & S. Irvine eds. 2009: The Old English Boethius. Oxford, Oxford University Press. Gray, D. 2008: Later Medieval English Literature. Oxford, Oxford University Press. Haycock, M. ed. 2007: Legendary Poems " om the Book of Taliesin. Aberystwyth, CMCS. 168 Andrew Breeze SELIM 18 (2011) Howlett, D. 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