The Search for the Historical King Arthur: Vortigern and Ambrosius
The Second Generation of the Brythonic Heroic Age Part One.
Most of the men within this entry have a floruit starting sometime roughly between 430 and 460 and some of the figures from my last piece are still around during this era, such as Cunedda, who kind of straddles the gap between this generation and Coel’s, but because of his interactions with figures like Coel, I included him in the last generation, it also gives more realistic regnal dates for his descendants like Maelgwyn, and Cynlas Goch, both contemporaries of Gildas. Vortigern, who we have quite a bit of information on, looms large during this period. That is not to say there isn’t still some mystery to him though, as it is unclear whether Vortigern was his name, a title, or a nickname given by Gildas originally and picked up by later writers. Much like the later composite Arthur, Vortigern himself may be a composite by the time of Nennius, and could even be a figure we’ve visited before, such as Cunedda. The next figure we’ll touch on here is the incredibly famous Ambrosius Aurelianus, the Roman Arthur, who seems to operate across the later part of this generation and first part of the next, supposedly handing off power to a young Arthur. These two figures are so intertwined that it’s almost impossible to not include them both within this entry. We will briefly visit Ceneu, and Garbanian, Coel’s progeny, as well as some of Cunedda’s children, and the mysterious Amlawdd Wledig. Most of these figures are descended matrilineally from the shadowy 4th century chieftain Eudaf Hen, who I have otherwise only mentioned in the first article in this series.
Vortigern the “superbo tyranno” of Gildas’ Writing
The first mentions of Vortigern by name are in two copies of Gildas, one as Uortigerno and the other as Gurthigerno. Gildas never calls him king, but usurper, or superbo tyranno. He appears as part of the council that decides to invite the Saxons to Britain. This is likely a continuation of the practice of using Foederati as the Romans did. This can be explored in more depth, but for the sake of brevity I will not tread there in this article. Gildas qualifies his usurper as "unlucky" in that his council's invitation to the Saxons then backfires.
Vortigern is then found in Bede, most likely drawn mainly from Gildas' account. This is where Hengist and Horsa first appear in the written record, as the Saxon brothers invited by Vortigern's council.
Things get less certain after this, however I think it’s still worth trying to make some connections here. Vortigern is said to be the grandson of Vitelinus, and the son of Vitalis, and if Vortigern is a title as has been surmised, it is likely his name was the same. This brings us to an issue, and confuses things a bit, as now we have potentially for these figures to have been conflated, and it is possible that some things that are attributed to Vortigern are in fact things his father or even grandfather did. An important part here is to try and develop a rough chronology like we have worked out for other figures. His grandson Cadell is key to this, as there are two fairly definitive ways we can date Cadell’s floruit, you can find this reasoning here in this article, as well as more info about Cadell himself.
Cadell’s chronology revolves around two things, whether it was St. Germanus or St. Garmon he actually encountered, and the fact that he was an adult when he encountered them. This gives us a rough 25 year floruit if it was Germanus of 445-470. If it was in fact St. Garmon instead it is more likely 470-495. These give rough birth dates of 420-430 or 440-450. Going from here we can get rough floruit’s for his predecessors.
St. Germanus based floruit
St. Garmon based floruit
This second chronology makes a little more sense overall, as Vortigern would have been absurdly long lived to have been both a contemporary of Magnus Maximus (albeit a generation younger), and Ambrosius, with his birth being somewhere around 375 and death around 450 making him around 75 during the time of his wars with Ambrosius, not impossible, but unlikely it would seem. This does bring him more in line with Severa, his supposed wife, the daughter of Magnus Maximus, but I find it more likely that she was his mother or grandmother, in the later Garmon based chronology.
The St. Garmon chronology gives us a birth of roughly 400, making him around 50 when he died, and bringing other figures dates a little more in line with what’s accepted such as Cadell’s likely grandson Brochwel who died sometime around 560-570. This would make Severa likely married to his father or grandfather, both who likely shared the same name with Vortigern, thus leading to the later conflation and the supposed extremely long reign of Vortigern.
This then leads us to Ambrosius Aurelianus, “The Roman Arthur”
Ambrosius Aurelianus: The Roman Arthur?
Much of what we known of Ambrosius comes from Gildas, and he holds the distinction of being one of the few people Gildas writes about that he obviously admires. Gildas refers to him as a "senior official" and "Gentleman"
take up arms and challenge their victors to battle under Ambrosius Aurelianus. He was a man of unassuming character, who, alone of the Roman race chanced to survive in the shock of such a storm (as his parents, people undoubtedly clad in the purple, had been killed in it)
Here Gildas gives us the impression that Ambrosius' father was at least a noble of a very senior position, possibly a governor of Consular rank, of which there were two in Britain in the early 5th century, Maxima Caesariensis and Valentia, though we have no records of their names. Ambrose, Bishop of Milan was known by the similar name of Aurelius Ambrosius, and his father, also Aurelius Ambrosius was a praetorian prefect of Gaul, and was the position that the vicarius of Britain reported to as well. If Ambrosius is related to this family then it makes sense that he makes a special point to emphasize his prestigious name.
Regardless of who his family was, we do know that under Ambrosius' leadership the Britons gained victory against the invading Saxons most likely in the 460s-470s, roughly one generation before Badon.
Now we come to Nennius, which proves problematic for Gildas description and our potential dating of Ambrosius, as Nennius says of Vortigern "He had cause for dread, not only from the Scots and Picts, but also from the Romans, and a dread of Ambrosius." Nennius also records a battle between Ambrosius and Vitalinus at Guoloph in 437 which further muddies the waters, as Vitalinus is said to be Vortigern's Grandfather, making him either extremely long lived or possibly Vortigern's actual name, being named after his grandfather. This also ties in with the earlier discuss of Vortigern’s chronology, but seemingly stretches Ambrosius even further.
Nennius also gives us the story of the young Ambrosius advising Vortigern on why he was having trouble building his citadel on a specific spot of land. This clearly seems to be the later Ambrosius we hear about in Gildas, so could Vortigern's feared rival Ambrosius be this boy's father?
From there we get to Geoffrey's account of Ambrosius, who records that in the eventual end of the conflict between the two that Ambrosius beseiged Vortigern in his fortress Cair Guorthigirn, and miraculously was struck by lightening and burnt Vortigern and his men inside. After Vortigern's death Ambrosius was generally fair in dealing with Vortigern's descendants specifically allowing Pasgen to keep his lands.
Ambrosius then according to Geoffrey fought Hengist and won a great victory, then after pursuit won another victory with the help of reinforcements from Brittany, capturing and beheading Hengist. Afterwards Ambrosius pardons Octa and Eosa, and gives them land in Scotland. Ambrosius was then poisoned by the Saxons at Winchester (Caer Guinntguic) and was buried at Stone Henge.
Regardless of whether Ambrosius was one man, or two, he certainly seemed to strike a chord with the people of Britain, being remembered as Emrys Wledig (Imperator Ambrose) and as a likely large contribution to the later Arthurian legend.
Pt 2. To Come Soon
This one I realized was getting rather long in the tooth, as Vortigern and Ambrosius are easy to get into the weeds with, and this article is going to be about twice as long as I intended. I tried my best here to not repeat myself, as like I said in the intro, Ambrosius and Vortigern’s stories are intertwined. Part two of this generation featuring Coel’s sons and Amlawdd Wledig, as well as some of Cunedda’s sons hopefully will be done later this week.