Talk:Lucius of Britain

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Are we talking about a real saint here that Geoffrey merged into his mythical royal line or is this Lucius entirely fanciful? I removed the bit about Septimius Severus as it doesn't fit in with the dating, or anything else for that matter. adamsan 17:52, 17 August 2005 (UTC)

It's hard to tell. He is mentioned in Bede and Liber Pontificalis, but these sources are not entirely reliable.

Lucius real or not

There's a long discussion of the historicity (or not) of King Lucius in the 'Pope Eleuterus' article - and it's not consistent with what is said here. Also, don't we need a ref to David Knight's recent book King Lucius of Britain - even if not convinced by his arguments? John O'London (talk) 10:37, 6 April 2013 (UTC)

This article seems to reflect current scholarly opinion on the matter, AFAIK. There is still some debate, of course. Cagwinn (talk) 15:20, 6 April 2013 (UTC)

Agreed. But it's a sad fate for anyone - to do a lot of research, publish a book, and then be ignored by wikipedia.

(As far as inconsistencies with the Eleuterus article go - I suppose what one particularly notices is that the discussion of the non-historicity of King Lucius is longer and more detailed in the Eleuterus article than it is in the Lucius of Britain article, where one would expect to find the more significant discussion - and tho' they come to similar conclusions, there seems little reason for the overlap.) John O'London (talk) 12:36, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

I took a look at the Eleutherius article and that seems to be fairly accurate - a lot of that section on Lucius could be integrated here. Cagwinn (talk) 14:36, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

It's more detailed but it's not sourced, unfortunately. The way to proceed will be to build up this article with sources. Looking at the Knight book, I think we could work it in; the author's got qualifications in the field and has obviously been published by a reliable publisher (Tempus/The History Press).[1] It can be included without removing or diminishing the current contents (which Knight appears to admit represent the consensus). Take a stab at it if you have the book, John.--Cúchullain ^t/c 15:25, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

The Eleuterus article has a lot of sources mentioned in the text (eg 'Oxford historian Felicity Heal notes Haddam and Stubbs's suggestion...'), they just aren't formalised and formatted as wiki sources. I get the impression the Eleuterus article was written for some other purpose and pasted in. (Most of the work on the article was done by user Gareth E Kegg in 2005.) I notice the same or similar text is widespread on the Web, and not all of them credit wikipedia as their source. I suppose the question is whether it is better to work on improving the existing Lucius of Britain article or to cannibalise the section from Eleuterus and add the sources to that.

Knight's book - no, I've other things on my plate at the moment. It's one of those books that gets you annoyed because it may be wrong but you can't say why immediately, and don't have time to do all the research to prove it's wrong at each point. - John O'London (talk) 16:22, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

The article was written back before inline citations were a requirement at Wikipedia, and parts of the text are copied from the public domain 1911 Britannica and the Catholic Encyclopedia. All things considered not a bad piece of work, I wrote a lot worse back then, but it hardly helps us out moving forward here when we need footnotes and page numbers. The thing to do here will be to collect the available reliable sources and expand the article from there.--Cúchullain ^t/c 17:57, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

Thanks - new to Wikipedia, I wasn't aware of the history behind this sort of variability. The Lucius section in the Eleuterus article reads very well as an essay, just not Wikipedia style - and in the wrong place, it should be in the Lucius of Britain article, not Eleuterus! John O'London (talk) 18:42, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

I don't really have the time right now to deal with this, but see the following for sources, etc.: T. M. Charles-Edwards, Wales and the Britons, 350-1064, p. 322ff. Cagwinn (talk) 19:34, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, Cagwinn. I've looked at Lucius before (tho' mostly the folklore aspects treated by Alan Smith - paid my respects at the tomb of King Lucius when I was last in Gloucester) so I think I know the sources. Whether I have time to do any work on the Wikipedia article is another matter. But the Charles-Edwards book looks very interesting - I must look at it. John O'London (talk) 09:05, 9 April 2013 (UTC)

Revisionist Theory

This entire section appears to be a singular and unchallenged theory from a Popular History book. I am unsure of the importance or reputation of this author, but to put this section first and without reference to better known theorists (such as Bishop Stubbs, who is not mentioned until the following section) is more than suggestive of self publicity, especially as an identical but older theory (Adolf von Harnack) is relegated to the "sources" section.

I would also argue for it's removal as this section is not encylopedic and is trivia at best. Cymrogogoch (talk) 15:55, 25 September 2019 (UTC)

I read Knight's book when it came out ten years ago. I found it (how can I put this) unconvincing. There was a bit of a flurry on the web at the time, but I've not seen any serious reviews of it, or any indication of acceptance of his theories in the wider historical world.

In any case the new section is very misleading and does no justice to Knight - as written, it seems to attribute to Knight the theory originally put forward by von Harneck in 1904 when in fact Knight spends a lot of time demolishing von Harneck's theory, before putting forward his own claims about the 'reality' of Lucius. Either the contributor misunderstood Knight's work or has expressed it very badly. It's certainly not self publicity!

Von Harneck's suggestion in 1904 that 'Lucius of Britain' was Lucius Abgar of Edessa/Britio may after all not be correct - that doesn't mean that we must therefore reinstate the whole 'traditional' history of this 'legendary' king of Britain as Knight does!

I've been reading Wikipedia's policy on 'fringe theories'.

I agree with Cymrogogoch that this 'revisionist theory' section should be deleted.

On a minor point, I don't think the appearance of a publisher's blurb on a Southampton University news website in 2008 (footnote 3), referring to the author as 'an archaeologist from the University of Southampton', should be taken to imply that the University or its archaeological department lends it authority to Knight's theories on early church history! John O'London (talk) 11:36, 26 September 2019 (UTC)