De Situ Britanniae
Encyclopedia
De Situ Britanniae is a fictional description of the peoples and places of ancient Britain
. Purported to contain the account of a Roman
general preserved in the manuscript of a fourteenth century English
monk, it was considered the premier source of information on Roman Britain for more than a century after it was made available in 1749.
The forgery was created by Charles Bertram
, an eighteenth-century Englishman
then living in Copenhagen
. He first disclosed the existence of De Situ Britanniae in 1747 and made his copy of it available in London
in 1749, where it was kept in the Arundel Library of the Royal Society. The work was published by Bertram in 1757. De Situ Britanniae was not debunked as a forgery until the middle of the nineteenth century, by which time its misinformation had been incorporated into virtually every publication of ancient British history
.
Once it had been accepted as genuine, De Situ Britanniae exerted a profound effect upon subsequent theories, suppositions, and publications of history. It was the premier source of information (and sometimes the only source) for well over 100 years.
It contained 18 "iters" (of the type found in the legitimate Antonine Itinerary
), compiled from fragmentary accounts of a Roman general, adding over 60 new and previously unknown stations to those mentioned in the legitimate account. Best of all, it filled up the entire map of Scotland with descriptions and the names of peoples, the part of Britain about which the least was known with any certainty.
It would later be determined that it was actually a clever mosaic of information gleaned from the works of Caesar
, Tacitus
, William Camden
, John Horsley
, and others, enhanced with Bertram's own fictions.
s that had been introduced in the fifteenth century, and so could not be the work of a fourteenth century monk. His work was translated into English and printed by the Gentleman's Magazine in October 1846.
The final confirmation that De Situ Britanniae was spurious came in 1869, a quarter century after Wex's publication. The Speculum written by the real Richard of Cirencester
was examined between 1863 and 1869 by J. E. B. Mayor
, the librarian of the University of Cambridge
, and Mayor included a 90-page detailed condemnation of De Situ Britanniæ.
For example, the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica account which asserts that Thomas Reynolds (in his 1799 Iter Britanniarum) was "skeptical as to the value of Bertram's manuscript" is false or badly worded. Reynolds was skeptical of the quality of Richard of Cirencester's information, but did not express doubts about the validity of the manuscript.
Accounts of the debunking mentioning an 1838 comment by the English Historical Society fail to describe that 1838 comment. In that year, the English Historical Society felt compelled to justify the omission of De Situ Britanniae from the republication of ancient materials of English history. However, the justification states that this was on the grounds that a search for the original manuscript was pending, and was not for any stated reason relating to the validity of Bertram's copy.
In 1866 and 1867, Bernard Bolingbroke Woodward
, the librarian of Windsor Castle
, wrote a series of articles in the Gentleman's Magazine that challenged the validity of De Situ Britanniae. However, his characterisation of De Situ Britanniae as "plainly a clumsy forgery by an unpractised hand, not a tracing or copy from a genuine original" is curious, to say the least. This same document had been examined back in 1749 by Caseley, the keeper of the Cotton Library
, and as late as 1840 Sir F. Madden of the manuscript department of the British Museum
had not only expressed his belief in its validity, but had also criticised the English Historical Society for its 1838 omission of De Situ Britanniae in its list of important works.
, and he was (and often still is) held to be most responsible. However, Stukeley relied on the opinions of others more capable than himself to judge document validity. The messenger was assailed because the message that he carried was later found to be false.
The works of those who accepted and used the Bertram's fictions were disparaged, accompanied by charges of "antiquarianism" and sloppy scholarship. Edward Gibbon
is among the most notable to be so criticised, but he was never more than one person out of the entirety of the academic world that had accepted the forgery without criticism.
The first use of the name Pennines
to describe the English mountain range is from De Situ Britanniae. Quoting:
In 1853, Arthur Hussey listed several names in De Situ Britanniae that he could not trace to another source, and the Pennine Alps was one of them.
In his 2004 book Names and History: People, Places and Things, George Redmonds provided a modern assessment. He comments at length on the strange omission of the etymology
of the Pennines in the serious literature regarding that area of England
, including publications on place-name origins of Derbyshire
and Lancashire
by respected authors. He finally learns that the origin of the name is from De Situ Britanniae and that "nor do we know any name for the whole range before the eighteenth century." There follows a discussion of the forgery and the fact that a number of its inventions had found their way into the Ordnance Survey
maps; and that the true origin of the name was known by serious authors, most of whom simply chose not to speak of it. He also notes that the mountains had been called by various names in the past, and that there were allusional references to the mountains as "our Apennines" as early as the 1630s (and perhaps before that), so likely Bertram simply invented a name that was easy for people to accept as fact.
Roman Britain
Roman Britain was the part of the island of Great Britain controlled by the Roman Empire from AD 43 until ca. AD 410.The Romans referred to the imperial province as Britannia, which eventually comprised all of the island of Great Britain south of the fluid frontier with Caledonia...
. Purported to contain the account of a Roman
Roman Empire
The Roman Empire was the post-Republican period of the ancient Roman civilization, characterised by an autocratic form of government and large territorial holdings in Europe and around the Mediterranean....
general preserved in the manuscript of a fourteenth century English
English people
The English are a nation and ethnic group native to England, who speak English. The English identity is of early mediaeval origin, when they were known in Old English as the Anglecynn. England is now a country of the United Kingdom, and the majority of English people in England are British Citizens...
monk, it was considered the premier source of information on Roman Britain for more than a century after it was made available in 1749.
The forgery was created by Charles Bertram
Charles Bertram
Charles Bertram was the author of the forged manuscript De Situ Britanniae , a spurious history that was highly influential in the reconstruction of the history of Roman Britain for over a century. It had a similar impact on the explanation of Scottish history over the same period of time...
, an eighteenth-century Englishman
English people
The English are a nation and ethnic group native to England, who speak English. The English identity is of early mediaeval origin, when they were known in Old English as the Anglecynn. England is now a country of the United Kingdom, and the majority of English people in England are British Citizens...
then living in Copenhagen
Copenhagen
Copenhagen is the capital and largest city of Denmark, with an urban population of 1,199,224 and a metropolitan population of 1,930,260 . With the completion of the transnational Øresund Bridge in 2000, Copenhagen has become the centre of the increasingly integrating Øresund Region...
. He first disclosed the existence of De Situ Britanniae in 1747 and made his copy of it available in London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
in 1749, where it was kept in the Arundel Library of the Royal Society. The work was published by Bertram in 1757. De Situ Britanniae was not debunked as a forgery until the middle of the nineteenth century, by which time its misinformation had been incorporated into virtually every publication of ancient British history
History of the British Isles
The history of the British Isles has witnessed intermittent periods of competition and cooperation between the people that occupy the various parts of Great Britain, Ireland, and the smaller adjacent islands, which together make up the British Isles, as well as with France, Germany, the Low...
.
The forgery
It contained 18 "iters" (of the type found in the legitimate Antonine Itinerary
Antonine Itinerary
The Antonine Itinerary is a register of the stations and distances along the various roads of the Roman empire, containing directions how to get from one Roman settlement to another...
), compiled from fragmentary accounts of a Roman general, adding over 60 new and previously unknown stations to those mentioned in the legitimate account. Best of all, it filled up the entire map of Scotland with descriptions and the names of peoples, the part of Britain about which the least was known with any certainty.
It would later be determined that it was actually a clever mosaic of information gleaned from the works of Caesar
Julius Caesar
Gaius Julius Caesar was a Roman general and statesman and a distinguished writer of Latin prose. He played a critical role in the gradual transformation of the Roman Republic into the Roman Empire....
, Tacitus
Tacitus
Publius Cornelius Tacitus was a senator and a historian of the Roman Empire. The surviving portions of his two major works—the Annals and the Histories—examine the reigns of the Roman Emperors Tiberius, Claudius, Nero and those who reigned in the Year of the Four Emperors...
, William Camden
William Camden
William Camden was an English antiquarian, historian, topographer, and officer of arms. He wrote the first chorographical survey of the islands of Great Britain and Ireland and the first detailed historical account of the reign of Elizabeth I of England.- Early years :Camden was born in London...
, John Horsley
John Horsley
John Horsley was a British archaeologist and antiquarian famous for his book Britannia Romana. He was educated at the Royal Grammar School, Newcastle....
, and others, enhanced with Bertram's own fictions.
The debunking
The end did not come until 1845. In that year the German writer Karl Wex effectively challenged the authority of De Situ Britanniae in the Rheinisches Museum. He simply noted that De Situ Britanniae contained impossible and improbable technical errors, such as its inclusion of transcription errorTranscription error
A transcription error is a specific type of data entry error that is commonly made by human operators or by optical character recognition programs . Human transcription errors are commonly the result of typographical mistakes, putting fingers in the wrong place during touch typing is the easiest...
s that had been introduced in the fifteenth century, and so could not be the work of a fourteenth century monk. His work was translated into English and printed by the Gentleman's Magazine in October 1846.
Acceptance of the debunking
Further evidence of the falsity of De Situ Britanniae came out in the following years, until no serious effort could be made in defense of the document. However, British scholars were slow to accept the truth both out of embarrassment (the same information that Wex used had been available to them all along), and because they now knew that their accounts of history had been based on a fiction rather than legitimate information.The final confirmation that De Situ Britanniae was spurious came in 1869, a quarter century after Wex's publication. The Speculum written by the real Richard of Cirencester
Richard of Cirencester
Richard of Cirencester , historical writer, was a member of the Benedictine abbey at Westminster, and his name first appears on the chamberlain's list of the monks of that foundation drawn up in the year 1355....
was examined between 1863 and 1869 by J. E. B. Mayor
John Eyton Bickersteth Mayor
John Eyton Bickersteth Mayor was an English classical scholar.He was born at Baddegama, Sri Lanka , and returned to England to be educated at Shrewsbury School and St John's College, Cambridge....
, the librarian of the University of Cambridge
University of Cambridge
The University of Cambridge is a public research university located in Cambridge, United Kingdom. It is the second-oldest university in both the United Kingdom and the English-speaking world , and the seventh-oldest globally...
, and Mayor included a 90-page detailed condemnation of De Situ Britanniæ.
Other accounts of the debunking
Accounts of the debunking claiming that there were serious doubts about De Situ Britanniae prior to Wex are somewhat less than accurate. Similarly, accounts that date the debunking to efforts subsequent to Wex are less than completely forthcoming.For example, the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica account which asserts that Thomas Reynolds (in his 1799 Iter Britanniarum) was "skeptical as to the value of Bertram's manuscript" is false or badly worded. Reynolds was skeptical of the quality of Richard of Cirencester's information, but did not express doubts about the validity of the manuscript.
Accounts of the debunking mentioning an 1838 comment by the English Historical Society fail to describe that 1838 comment. In that year, the English Historical Society felt compelled to justify the omission of De Situ Britanniae from the republication of ancient materials of English history. However, the justification states that this was on the grounds that a search for the original manuscript was pending, and was not for any stated reason relating to the validity of Bertram's copy.
In 1866 and 1867, Bernard Bolingbroke Woodward
Bernard Bolingbroke Woodward
Bernard Bolingbroke Woodward was an English nonconformist minister, antiquarian, and royal librarian at Windsor Castle.-Life:The eldest son of Samuel Woodward the geologist, he was born at Norwich on 2 May 1816; Samuel Pickworth Woodward was his younger brother...
, the librarian of Windsor Castle
Windsor Castle
Windsor Castle is a medieval castle and royal residence in Windsor in the English county of Berkshire, notable for its long association with the British royal family and its architecture. The original castle was built after the Norman invasion by William the Conqueror. Since the time of Henry I it...
, wrote a series of articles in the Gentleman's Magazine that challenged the validity of De Situ Britanniae. However, his characterisation of De Situ Britanniae as "plainly a clumsy forgery by an unpractised hand, not a tracing or copy from a genuine original" is curious, to say the least. This same document had been examined back in 1749 by Caseley, the keeper of the Cotton Library
Cotton library
The Cotton or Cottonian library was collected privately by Sir Robert Bruce Cotton M.P. , an antiquarian and bibliophile, and was the basis of the British Library...
, and as late as 1840 Sir F. Madden of the manuscript department of the British Museum
British Museum
The British Museum is a museum of human history and culture in London. Its collections, which number more than seven million objects, are amongst the largest and most comprehensive in the world and originate from all continents, illustrating and documenting the story of human culture from its...
had not only expressed his belief in its validity, but had also criticised the English Historical Society for its 1838 omission of De Situ Britanniae in its list of important works.
Credit and blame
Blame for the acceptance of the forgery fell hardest on the reputation of William StukeleyWilliam Stukeley
William Stukeley FRS, FRCP, FSA was an English antiquarian who pioneered the archaeological investigation of the prehistoric monuments of Stonehenge and Avebury, work for which he has been remembered as "probably... the most important of the early forerunners of the discipline of archaeology"...
, and he was (and often still is) held to be most responsible. However, Stukeley relied on the opinions of others more capable than himself to judge document validity. The messenger was assailed because the message that he carried was later found to be false.
The works of those who accepted and used the Bertram's fictions were disparaged, accompanied by charges of "antiquarianism" and sloppy scholarship. Edward Gibbon
Edward Gibbon
Edward Gibbon was an English historian and Member of Parliament...
is among the most notable to be so criticised, but he was never more than one person out of the entirety of the academic world that had accepted the forgery without criticism.
Modern impact
There has not been a focused effort to root out Bertram's fictions from actual history, even to the modern day. Disagreements over history are often contentious, particularly when professional, ethnic, or national pride are involved. Modern historians are likely to ignore the impact of De Situ Britanniae on their own work (assuming that they are even aware of it), and just as likely to ignore its impact on their competitors' works, lest claims and counter-claims lead to the disrepute of everyone's work. However, for the sake of illustrating that De Situ Britanniae remains as an influence to the modern day, a rather trivial example is provided:Pennines
The Pennines are a low-rising mountain range, separating the North West of England from Yorkshire and the North East.Often described as the "backbone of England", they form a more-or-less continuous range stretching from the Peak District in Derbyshire, around the northern and eastern edges of...
to describe the English mountain range is from De Situ Britanniae. Quoting:
- This province is divided into two equal parts by a chain of mountains called the Pennine Alps, which rising on the confines of the IceniIceniThe Iceni or Eceni were a British tribe who inhabited an area of East Anglia corresponding roughly to the modern-day county of Norfolk between the 1st century BC and the 1st century AD...
and Carnabii, near the river Trivona [ TrentRiver TrentThe River Trent is one of the major rivers of England. Its source is in Staffordshire on the southern edge of Biddulph Moor. It flows through the Midlands until it joins the River Ouse at Trent Falls to form the Humber Estuary, which empties into the North Sea below Hull and Immingham.The Trent...
], extend towards the north in a continued series of fifty miles.
In 1853, Arthur Hussey listed several names in De Situ Britanniae that he could not trace to another source, and the Pennine Alps was one of them.
In his 2004 book Names and History: People, Places and Things, George Redmonds provided a modern assessment. He comments at length on the strange omission of the etymology
Etymology
Etymology is the study of the history of words, their origins, and how their form and meaning have changed over time.For languages with a long written history, etymologists make use of texts in these languages and texts about the languages to gather knowledge about how words were used during...
of the Pennines in the serious literature regarding that area of England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
, including publications on place-name origins of Derbyshire
Derbyshire
Derbyshire is a county in the East Midlands of England. A substantial portion of the Peak District National Park lies within Derbyshire. The northern part of Derbyshire overlaps with the Pennines, a famous chain of hills and mountains. The county contains within its boundary of approx...
and Lancashire
Lancashire
Lancashire is a non-metropolitan county of historic origin in the North West of England. It takes its name from the city of Lancaster, and is sometimes known as the County of Lancaster. Although Lancaster is still considered to be the county town, Lancashire County Council is based in Preston...
by respected authors. He finally learns that the origin of the name is from De Situ Britanniae and that "nor do we know any name for the whole range before the eighteenth century." There follows a discussion of the forgery and the fact that a number of its inventions had found their way into the Ordnance Survey
Ordnance Survey
Ordnance Survey , an executive agency and non-ministerial government department of the Government of the United Kingdom, is the national mapping agency for Great Britain, producing maps of Great Britain , and one of the world's largest producers of maps.The name reflects its creation together with...
maps; and that the true origin of the name was known by serious authors, most of whom simply chose not to speak of it. He also notes that the mountains had been called by various names in the past, and that there were allusional references to the mountains as "our Apennines" as early as the 1630s (and perhaps before that), so likely Bertram simply invented a name that was easy for people to accept as fact.