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It is difficult for a student of symbolism not to believe that there were Theosophical activities in fifth- and sixth-century Britain. Another glimpse of the feeling of the age you get in the two oldest Arthurian romances: The Dream of Rhonobwy, and Culhwch and Olwen.
Nash continues further: 'And the internal evidence even of the so-called historic poems themselves, is, in some instances at least, opposed to their claims to an origin in the sixth century, and leaves the matter there, and finishes his chapter, I say that is an unsatisfactory turn to give to the matter, and a lame and impotent conclusion to his chapter; because the one interesting, fruitful question here is, not in what instances the internal evidence opposes the claims of these poems to a sixth-century origin, but in what instances it supports them, and what these sixth-century remains, thus established, signify.
The next town along the coast, Parenzo, is celebrated for its fine sixth-century cathedral, the pride of the whole of Istria "the land of basilicas," and is the headquarters of the Istrian Archæological Society, several of whose members have devoted much time and money to the elucidation of the history, construction, and decoration of the building.
It would pass, long before the ten millenniums were over, into legend; and become that of a God or demigod, whose cult, also, would need reviving, in time, by some new avatar. The sixth-century Britons were reminded by one of their chieftains of some mighty king or God of prehistory; the two got mixed, and the mixture came down as the Arthur of the legend.
Sigismund was a good sound sixth-century saint of France who in the days of Gregory of Tours had frequently been invoked to ward off fever; his remains would therefore be a useful asset as complement to the limited knowledge of the art of healing in those days. Not that I attach much importance to the opinion of Gregory of Tours.
It grew darker and darker and blacker and blacker, while I struggled with those awkward sixth-century clothes. It got to be pitch dark, at last, and the multitude groaned with horror to feel the cold uncanny night breezes fan through the place and see the stars come out and twinkle in the sky.
Now if you see a wave rising in fourth-century Gaul, and a wave breaking into glorious foam in sixth- and seventh-century Ireland, what would you suspect? Why, naturally, that it was the same wave, and had flowed through the country that lies between: common sense would tell you to expect something of a Great Age in fifth- and early sixth-century Britain.
The sense of belonging to the Empire had not quite died out even in sixth-century Britain. Roman names continued to be used, not exclusively but freely enough, by Britons. Roman 'culture words' seem to occur in the later British language, and some at least of these may be traceable to the Roman occupation of the island. Roman military terms appear, if scantily.
Discussing the way in which letters first reached our distant island of the west and the causes which led to the proficiency of sixth-century Ireland in classical learning Zimmer and Meyer contend that the seeds of that literary culture, which flourished in Ireland of the sixth century, had been sown therein in the first and second decades of the preceding century by Gaulish scholars who had fled from their own country owing to invasion of the latter by Goths and other barbarians.
Close to the cistern is the reversed cover of an antique sarcophagus, and part of the front of another with a sixth-century cross. A curious custom still existing suggests a traditional memory of the site of the ancient cemetery. At one time there were twenty-one churches in the city. Those of S. Nicolò and S. Barbara are early.
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