De Situ Britanniae

De Situ Britanniae
By Richard of Cirencester (purportedly) or Charles Bertram (alleged)
Published in the 14th century (purportedly) or 1757 (alleged)
81 Pages
Thibault’s Score: 5/5

This is the strangest book review that I have ever written - so buckle up.

I was reading an early 19th century edition of a crusades Chronicle of Richard of Devizes. My edition included a reprint of another medieval text - De Situ Britanniae by Richard of Cirencester.

Without any context, I read Richard of Cirencester’s De Situ Britanniae. I will now tell you what De Situ Britanniae contains.

De Situ Britanniae is (supposedly) a medieval monk’s attempt at reconciling Roman place names with the medieval place names of his own day. It is mostly a geographical work that contains some crude maps. He also includes some ethnographic information which he supposedly gathered from various classical texts as well as interviews with Welsh bards.

De Situ Britanniae was a very interesting text. The first thing that struck me was how clearly written it was compared to other medieval texts. It includes one of the best descriptions of classical druids I had come across. It also includes some interesting scientific observations about the size of planet earth and Britain’s climate.

The edition I had was bilingual - it contained the original midieval Latin, as well as the English translation.

Then I sat down to write the book review. This is when things get really, really weird.

I pulled up the Wikipedia page to get some historical context. It turns out that the book was actually an 18th century forgery. My 19th century edition was printed before the forgery was uncovered, so does not mention this.

The allegation is that a British historian living in Denmark in the 1700s called Charles Bertram had an academic dispute with another historian. The two were debating some obscure geographical details. Then, Bertram “won” the debate by producing this book which he had found.

In 1838, the text was studied at length and many anomalies were discovered. Since 1838, the academic consensus is that the text is a forgery. However, because I was reading a reprint from before 1838, I had no clue of this.

One telltale sign is that the text quotes Tacitus. However, the version of Tacitus quotes came from a 16th century Venetian mistranslation, which had introduced mistakes into the text. Because Richard of Cirencester lived a century prior to this mistranslation, he couldn’t possibly have had access to this mistranslation. There were also many other geographic and linguistic errors.

But then, things get stranger. Later in the 19th century, other historians debunked the debunking. They argued that although Charles Bertram had altered parts of the text to win his historical argument, other parts were in fact authentic. Charles Bertram was a historian and had access to many authentic and obscure primary materials. He inserted many of these materials into his forgery.

Today, all historians accept that either all or the majority of De Situ Britanniae is a forgery. But there is still debate as to whether the forgery might contain bits and pieces of evidence from the 14th century.

Just because of the sheer strangeness of this book, I recommend at least reading the Wikipedia page.