CHRISTOPHER A. SNYDER

The Britons

The transition from Armorica to Brittany, that is, the establishment of Britons in the peninsula, remains a little understood process. Britons had of course traveled to Gaul throughout the Roman period - in military, ecclesiastical, and (we may assume) commercial capacities - but there is no indication of large distinct groups of Britons on the continent until the 5th century.Sidonius Apollinaris, writing in c. 470, says that Britanni had settled north of the Loire, and that the Britanni answerable to the war leader Riothamus were enticing slaves away from a Gallic estate. Gildas was the first to describe the flight of Britons, in the wake of the Saxon invasions, for 'lands beyond the seas,' while Procopius was the first to apply the term Britannia to Armorica. Britannia became the standard Latin term for the Armorican peninsula by the late sixth century, as seen in the writings of Gregory of Tours, Venantius Fortunatis, and Marius of Avranches. Although Bretons seem to have developed a vernacular name for themselves - Letavii (old Breton Letau), from Letavia, a name probably brought over from Britain - Frankish writers did not differentiate between Bretons and insular Bretons, calling them both Brittones.

   There is also a legendary account, found in Geoffrey of Monmouth's History  of the Kings of Britain as well as in the Welsh Dream of Macsen Wledig, which describes British soldiers who followed Magnus Maximus to Gaul, staying behind after his death in 388, and founding a kingdom in Brittany (after marrying local women) under Conan Meriadec. Unfortunately there is no contemporary evidence for this, nor even for the existence of Conan, though he was a prominent royal figure in both Welsh and Breton traditions.

   A noticeable trend in Breton place-names is the large number of names borrowed directly from Devon and Cornwall. Dumnonia  Domnonée) in the north and Cornovia (Cornouaille) in the west are only the most obvious examples. Several British saints traveled from,Cornwall to Brittany in the sixth century. The linguistic similarities between Cornish and Breton  have led some to argue for a migration of Britons specifically southern Wales and southwestern Britain to Brittany from the late 5th century, Since Saxon expansion had not reached these areas of Britain so early, Chadwick believes that these British refugees were fleeing from Irish rather than Saxon raids and settlement.

In the sixth century our evidence is stronger for church than state. Gregory of Tours mentions several Breton clerics. The hagiography is filled with accounts of British saints who traveled to Brittany, founding churches and monastries and making an indelible impact on the landscape through dozens of placenames. In the ninth century Dol became the metropolis of an independent Breton church, which though disputed by Tours, served as a Breton archbishopric until the end of the twelfth century.

   Not in politics, but in language and literature do we see Brittonic culturebsurvive in Brittany in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. More than 500 years after the British migration to Armorica we can still see links to the insular Britons. For example, Old Breton in its earliest written form is insular in appearance and nearly identical to Old Welsh and Cornish. As Julia Smith points out, in the eleventh century at Llandaff Welsh and Bretons are described as 'of one language and one people, although geographically separate.' It is not until this point that Old Breton and Cornish begin to evolve separately and no longer share a common orthography. Yet even in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries a common cultural icon - Arthur - could raise hopes and passions among the Cornish and the Bretons.