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The Armorican provinces of Gaul, and the greatest part of Spain, were-thrown into a state of disorderly independence, by the confederations of the Bagaudæ; and the Imperial ministers pursued with proscriptive laws, and ineffectual arms, the rebels whom they had made.
Arthur and Charlemagne were the two heroes selected for this purpose. His genealogy was gradually carried up to an imaginary Brutus, and to the period of the Trojan war, and a sort of chronicle was composed in the Welsh, or Armorican language, which, under the pompous title of the "History of the Kings of Britain," was translated into Latin by Geoffrey of Monmouth, about the year 1150.
In the days of Gildas the Wise, intense silence always reigned at night through the dense oak forest of the Armorican country.
He was presented with the Earldom of Richmond, in Yorkshire; and as his son became afterward Duke of Brittany, this appanage frequently gave title to younger brothers in the old Armorican Duchy. That son was not born of Constance; she fell into a languishing state of health, and died, four years after her marriage.
It is the picture of these Christian institutions, quite distinct from those of the remainder of the West, of this sometimes strange worship, of these legends of the saints marked with so distinct a seal of nationality, that lends an interest to the ecclesiastical antiquities of Ireland, of Wales, and of Armorican Brittany.
It lies in the old county and diocese of Maine, in the modern department of Mayenne, on the road between the towns of Mayenne and Evron. The site was, as the local historian well points out, one admirably chosen for the site of a town, standing as it does at the point of junction of the roads from various parts of Central and Northern Gaul and from the Constantine and Armorican peninsulas.
Like enough, indeed, he had old Armorican blood in his veins, for many hundreds of Britons betook themselves to ancient Brittany when the Saxon invasion swept the West, and many afterward returned, with foreign wives, to the homes of their fathers.
Our Lady of HATRED! The most fiendish of human passions is supposed to be under the protection of Christ's religion! What is this but a fragment of pure and unmixed Paganism, unchanged except in the appellation of its idol, which has remained among these lineal descendants of the Armorican Druids for more than a thousand years after Christianity has become the professed religion of the country!
"And I suppose that once so brave region has undergone the fate of the others?" "There, as elsewhere, Kervan, the bishops undermined the mental virility of the people, besotted them, and rendered them submissive prey to the conquerors." "But here in our Armorican Gaul, both the Christian and the non-Christian druids preach to us the love of country and hatred for the oppressor."
Three considerable islands belong to it; one, on the south, opposite the Armorican shore, called Wight;* another between Ireland and Britain, called Eubonia or Man; and another directly north, beyond the Picts, named Orkney; and hence it was anciently a proverbial expression, in reference to its kings and rulers, "He reigned over Britain and its three islands." * Inis-gueith, or Gueith.
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