The Isles of Scilly form an archipelago of five inhabited islands and numerous other small rocky islets (around 140 in total) lying 28 miles (45 km) off Land's End – the most southwesterly point of Great Britain. The Roman Scillonia insula islands may correspond to the Cassiterides ("Tin Isles") visited by the Phoenicians and mentioned by the Greeks. The five inhabited islands and their population in the 2001 census are St Mary's (1,666), Tresco (180), St Martin's (142), St Agnes and Bryher (population 165 between them); the total population was 2,153. There are many smaller uninhabited islands and rocky islets. It is not known at exactly which point the islands stopped speaking Cornish, but it seems to have gone into big decline during the Middle Ages, and lost the language before parts of Penwith. The islands thus appeared to have lost the old Celtic language before parts of the mainland, in contrast to the situation of Irish or Scottish Gaelic. During the English Civil War, the isles were a stronghold for the Royalists. It was during this period that the Three Hundred and Thirty Five Years' War started between the isles and the Netherlands. In June 1651, the isles were captured from the Royalists by Admiral Robert Blake for the Parliamentarians. Scilly is famous for its danger to shipping and its many shipwrecks. The wreck of Sir Cloudesley Shovell's ship, HMS Association, in 1707 off the Isles of Scilly due to inaccuracies in navigation led to the development of the method of lunar distances and to the invention of the chronometer by John Harrison, the first reliable methods of determining longitude at sea.
Armorica or Aremorica is the name given in ancient times to the part of Gaul that includes the Brittany peninsula and the territory between the Seine and Loire rivers, extending inland to an indeterminate point and down the Atlantic coast. It is based on the Gaulish phrase "are mori" "on/at [the] sea", made into the Gaulish place name Aremorica 'Place by the Sea'. In Breton (which with Welsh and Cornish are the living representatives of Gaulish), 'on [the] sea' is 'war vor' (Welsh 'ar for'), though the older form 'arvor' is used to refer to the coastal regions of Brittany, in contrast to 'argoad' (ar 'on/at', coad 'forest' [Welsh 'ar goed' ('coed' forest)] for the inland regions. This modern use suggests that the Romans first contacted coastal people in Britanny and assumed that the regional name Aremorica referred to the whole area, seaside and inland. The Irish form is 'ar mhuir', the Manx is 'er vooir', and the Scottish form 'air mhuir', however in these languages the phrase means 'on the sea', as opposed to 'ar thír' or 'ar thalamh/ar thalúin (er heer/er haloo, air thěr/air thalamh) 'on the land'.
Pliny the Elder, in his Natural History (2.17.105), claims that Armorica was the older name for Aquitania, stating Armorica's southern boundary extended to the Pyrénées. Taking into account the Gaulish origin of the name, this is perfectly correct and logical, as Aremorica is not a 'country name', but a word that describes a type of geographical region - a region that is by the sea. Pliny lists the following Celtic tribes as living in the Brittany peninsula: the Aedui and Carnuteni as having treaties with Rome; the Neldi and Secusiani as having some measure of independence; and the Boii, Senones, Aulerci (both the Eburovices and Cenomani), the Parisii, Tricases, Andicavi, Viducasses, Bodiocasses, Venelli, Coriosvelites, Diablinti, Rhedones, Turones, and the Atseui. Trade between Armorica and Britain, described by Diodorus Siculus and implied by Pliny was long-established. Because, even after the campaign of Crassus in 57 BC, continued resistance to Roman rule in Armorica was still being supported by Celtic aristocrats in Britain, Julius Caesar led two invasions of Britain in 55 and 54 in response.
When Caesar invaded Britain he had learned that British supplies were reaching the Veneti who were leading the Amorican resistance to the Romans. Their captial of Vannes was the largest population center in the land and an active port of trade. In other parts of Gaul, Latin culture appeared in the regions of Bordeaux and Autun. In Gauls, apostolic missions were legendary in the Middle Ages. At dates now unknown but not later than the early fifth century, bishoprics were established in at least three centers in eastern Armorica such as Nantes, Rennes, Vannes; areas which seem to bring the Gospel alongside apostolic missions to Rome when the relgion was a minority. The Briton's settlement in Armorica and the peninsula departed from Maximus Magnus before the fifth century. Thereafter there was no authority capable of organizing resistance to the Saxon and Germanic raiders who came by sea and left Gaul the same to the Franks and Visigoths. The migration to Armorica other than numerous expedition had connected with the visit of Germanus of Auxerre in 429. Armorica was called Britannia Minor by their new relatives. The latter were assimilated to the invaders and gradually gaining control of the eastern parts of the peninsula.
The complicated cultural web that bound Armorica and the Britanniae (the "Britains" of Pliny) is given by Caesar when he describes Diviciacus of the Suessiones, as "the most powerful ruler in the whole of Gaul, who had control not only over a large area of this region but also of Britain (De Bello Gallico ii.4). One of the few druids known to us by name is Divitiacus, brother of Dumnorix, a chief of the Aeduans, a powerful tribe in what was later Burgundy. Toward the Romans, the two brothers took different courses of action. After submission to Caesar, Dumnorix was slain and Divitiacus, was a greater danger to the tribe than Caesar's legions. Later in Italy he became known in the circle of Cicero, who in his De Divinatione refers to him as by the science of nature, the Greeks called "physiology" claiming power to predict events. Within the Roman Empire, druidism was virtually suppressed well before 100 AD. By the time Christ's ministry there were in the Roman Army legions that had been recruited in Gaul, but it is knot known that these were represented among the detachments stationed in Palestine.
Whether the churches of Galatia to which Paul wrote an important epistle about 50 AD were situated in the Celtic northern area or in the southern cities of that wide province is still one unsettled in the New Testament. There is no mention in the epistle of any specific location. From the Book of Acts, whether before or after Galatians was written, the Apostle preached in the populous cities of the south. From the early centuries, the interpreters of the epistle associated it with the Celtic area- the stronghold had been Ancyra (Ankara) and in Paul's time, the capital of the Roman province. This missionary area and the mission field of the Crescens, mentioned in I Timothy as having gone into Galatia, or into Gaul, the latter in Western tradition made him the founder of the church of Lyons and Vienne. Archaeological sites along the south coast of England, notably at Hengistbury Head, show connections with Armorica as far east as the Solent. This 'prehistoric' connection of Cornwall and Brittany remained very close as long as Cornish (a dialect of Breton) was spoken. Still farther East, however, the typical Continental connections of the Britannic coast were with the lower Seine valley instead.
Paul intended to visit Spain and was martyred in Rome and similarly the Apostle James who saw the highlanders, through the seventh century legend for a period, preached in Spain and was martyred in Jerusalem. It was supposed that his Spanish mission was in the area of Galicia. In the north-western hill country of Spain, the Romans had encountered the Celtic Gallaci. Since Phoenician times, the region was open to the world through the busy port of Corunna, an entry there during apostolic times or the actual entrance of Christianity into Gaul was by way of Marseilles and the Rhone valley, where the population was largely Greek. Irenaeus for many years was active in southern Gaul until his death about 202 AD. He had been ordained by Bishop Pothinus before the time of the persecution at Lyons and Vienne in 177. In that yeare Irenaeus was in Rome. His successor was a native of Asia Minor and a friend of Polycarp of Smyrna, who had been a disciple of St. John.
Lyons had been an important center of Celtic paganism until the Romans made it an administrative capital and headquarters for the emperor cult. Its name "Lugdunum" means the stronghold of the god Lug. From Gregory of Tours, it appears that in about 250 AD, numerous bishoprics were established in Gaul. Gregory states that at the beginning of the regin of Decius, seven bishops were consecrated in Rome by Pope Fabian and severally commissioned to Tours, Arles, Narbonne, Toulouse, Paris, Auverne, and Limoges. Of these, Paris is the most northerly and Tours is nearest to Brittany- Celtic France. Gatianus was the frist bishop of Tours, during an episcopate of forty years but won enough converts to form a church, sometimes his namesake identified him with Dionysus, the Areopagite, Paul's Athenian convert (Acts 17:34). From the time of Charlemage, the French church places the history with one of antiquity. The Dionysus of 250 AD at Montmarte (St. Denis) may have been the founder of the epsicopate or else the first Christian there.
Under the Roman Empire, Armorica was administered as part of the province of Gallia Lugdunensis, which had its capital in Lyons. When the Roman provinces were reorganized in the 4th century, Armorica was placed under the second and third divisions of Lugdunensis. Roman Britain (43-410 AD) was roughly England and Wales, with a shifting fringe of southern Scotland, at its fullest expansion reached to the Forth and the Clyde.
Hadrian's wall stretching from the Tyne to the Solway, and the earthen Wall of Antonius Pius built in the 140s, extending from the Forth to the Clyde, made for more northern barrier than could be defended. In the fourth century a new chain of forts was established to protect the southeast coasts from Saxon invaders. After the legions retreated from Britannia (407) the local elite there expelled the civilian magistrates in the following year; Armorica too rebelled in the 430s and again in the 440s, throwing out the ruling officials, as the Romano-Britons had done. The "Brittany" peninsula came to be settled with Britons from Britain during the poorly documented period of the 5th-7th centuries. These settlers, whether refugees or not, made their presence felt in the naming of the westernmost, Atlantic-facing provinces of Armorica, Cornouaille ("Cornwall") and Domnonea ("Devon"). These settlements are associated with leaders like Saints Samson of Dol and Pol Aurelian, among the "founder saints" of Brittany.
St. Samson of Dol, the Welsh saint was probably over sixty when he reached Brittany. He had epsicopal orders while in Wales and in the ninth century his monastery of Dol gave rise to an episcopal see, referred to as the Bishop of Dol. The 610 AD anonymous writing of Life of Samson makes no other statement than Samson as abbot. The later abbot of Dol, Tigernomalus was also of episcopal rank with a troupe of fellow clerics Samson landed at the mouth of the Gouioult which flows into the Bay of St. Michel, and moving to higher ground, instituted the monastery of Dol. Many monasteries of the province of Devon extended through a great area of northeastern Brittany. When Judwal was imprisoned by King Childebert at Paris, the signatory Samson took upon himself of effecting Judwal's release and successfully attended the Third Council of Paris and founded the monastery at Pentale on the Seine. He set out on a mission in the Channel Islands of Jersey and Guernsey, extending to some of the Scilly Isles, where his name is also remembered but he ended his days at Dol.
St. Méen or Mehan of Gwent who, accompanied by his grandson Austel plunged into the great forest of Brocéliaande. The upland tract of northern Britany designated by the Synod of Whitby was a realm of nature and palaces of Breton kinglets. He founded a monastery near Gael toward the northeast edge of the forest. It was to flourish, the medieval Abbey of St. Méen and a healing fountain, which drew throngs of pilgrims for centuries. The era of Landevennec took on an Irish character. Among Breton monasteries, the patron saint Saint Patrick was joined by lives with relations in Irish monasticism. St. Winwaloe (Winnoc), Fracan, founded their the place for training of monks with the discipline in resemblance to that of Iona, based upon the rule of Columban and Luxeuil. The era of Landevennec ended with a Norman raid in 914 and had been restored as a Benedictine Abbey.
