3 - Origin Legends I: the Britons

Summary

As a strategy of distinction, the creation of a common past has much to recommend it. A gens is a gens because it has always been so. The history of a gens can be used to create a distinct space for its members, allegedly evidenced in the past but also an explanation of, or aspiration for, the present and future. Texts that seek to establish such national histories abound in the early middle ages. They are by no means objective records of past events. Historical writing was driven by present circumstances, whether unconsciously or by political necessity; these texts cannot be divorced from the intentions of the author and must be understood as products of a specific context. Committing the past to writing involved numerous choices. We might ask why a par-ticular version of the past was committed to memory at a specific time and place. And what role did a particular version of the past have in the construction, bolstering, and contesting of identities? The writing of history and its use as a strategy of distinction is the subject of the three remaining chapters in this book, beginning here with the treatment of origo gentis.

Many early medieval national histories begin with an origin legend that seeks to explain how a gens established itself. Such stories do more than simply satisfy curiosity about the origins of a gens: they set out the ancient shared past of its members. They construct an identity and offer an explanation – and in many cases legitimisation – of how the present situation came to be. This might appear straightforward, but there are certain hurdles to identifying and defining origin legends. An early medieval text might, for example, outline the origins of a gens before proceeding to recount their subsequent history. In such a context, how do we identify the beginning and end of the origin legend? Alheydis Plassmann further notes that key elements of an origin legend are frequently only explicable when read against the backdrop of the history of the gens more broadly. Historia Brittonum is a good example. It would be reasonable to identify its origin legend of the Britons as the account of their journey from Troy to Britain.