"Jo Walton - Kings Peace 02 - The King's Name" - читать интересную книгу автора (Walton Jo)

Church as being suited to idiots, her portraits of St. Gerthmol as a fool, St. Dewin as a manipulator and,
worst of all, St. Marchel as a short-tempered bigot, indicate an agenda of someone who disliked the Church.
Only in her treatment of St. Arvlid and St. Teilo do we see anything approaching the hagiographic work typical
of the period, and even there they are engagingly human saints, as Brother Ivor of Thanmarchel points out
about Arvlid (Sulien and the Early Insular Church, 2722), "This picture of the blessed martyr helping out in
childbirth and making honey is not the one the church gives us, but it is one the church should be very slow
to reject." Indeed the Church has been quick to claim the picture of life at Thansethan as "Sulien" shows it,
while rejecting other parts of this "eyewitness" account out of hand.
There are many parts of the text which show an intimate familiarity with the thirteenth century in which it is
purported to be set. Sulien always calls the islands Tir Tanagiri and Tir Isarnagiri, though these "Tir" prefixes
had ceased to be in use by the time of Gwyn Dariensson's Code of Laws, and the island was already the
familiar Tanager by the time of Alward. Yet she calls the islanders "Tanagans" and "Isar-nagans" and not
"Tirtanagans" as we find in the Vincan period, for example in Decius Manicius. This is precisely as we would
expect for the transition period. In many other ways—for example the description of the training of the alae
and the growth of villages—she has been vindicated by archaeology. Martinsson's (Proof of Forgery of the
Sulien Text, 2731) denunciation of the name of the otherwise unknown "Masarn" because the word "masarn,"
"a maple tree," was not in use until the discovery of maples in the Trans-Iarla lands in the twenty-second
century, must be dismissed. The book cannot have been tampered with since it came to Scatha and the
possession of the Hanver family a hundred years before the discovery of the New World. The name Masarn
must have some other origin. Hartley's ("A Possible Southern Connection" in Journal of Vincan Studies,
Summer 2745) fanciful coupling with the common Sifacian name "Massinissa" must regrettably be
dismissed, as, unless he had come, like Elhanen the Great, on an elephant across all the Vincan lands, how
could a Sifacian have been in Tan-ager at that time?
Yet to place against these historical accuracies we have typical miracle tales of the period. What are we to
make of a work which, on the one hand contains a detailed description of a stable block that has been
excavated precisely as described, and on the other repeats miracle stories like the three days' night and the
magical water on Foreth? Brother Ivor's comment that "She cannot even decide consistently which set of
Heathen Gods she worships" (Ivor, op. cit.) is unfair, but certainly the personal appearance of gods in the text
takes it out of the realm of history into that of fable.
We must regretfully dismiss the idea that this may be the famous "boke" on which Galfrid of Thanmarchel
claimed to have based his famous "The King and the Kingdom." For one thing, Galfrid states clearly that his
"boke" was written "in the ancient Tanagan language," whereas the Sulien text is in Vincan and certainly has
not been re-translated back into Vincan. There is also Kunnarsson's (The Sulien Text: A Reconsideration,
University of Stellanova Press, 2751) very well-considered point, "If the author of the Sulien text was
attempting to give us the history behind the myth, they made a mistake and gave us the wrong half,
explaining the things that nobody believed anyway and leaving out the plausible parts of the story most
beloved by the poets." I believe, with Prof. Kunnarsson, that these omissions are evidence for the genuine, or
at least very early, nature of the text.
The burden of proof that the work was not written by Sulien ap Gwien under the circumstances she states in
the text, lies with those who would suggest otherwise. Until we have permission to fulfill the late Prof. Kahn's
dream and excavate at Derwen, unless and until we discover the lead casket she says she wished to place in
the walls (and which her great-nephew says he had done to her desire), then we will have no proof either way.

—Prof. Estin Jonson,
Dept. of Sub-Vincan History, University of Dunidin,
2754 AUC.
Up to now they used to shiver every time they heard mention of the Romans' skill in warfare, but now they are
victorious, and we die, nobly, as befits brave men, but perishing all the same.
— Libanius, 378