AURELIUS CANINUS (fl. 540) prince

Name: Aurelius Caninus
Gender: Male
Occupation: prince
Area of activity: Military; Politics, Government and Political Movements; Royalty and Society
Author: John Edward Lloyd

He is the second of the five contemporary British princes whom Gildas attacks in the De Excidio, the 'Lion's Whelp' of his group of wild beasts. No indication is given of the region in which he bore rule, but his position in the list suggests that it was perhaps; the Severn Valley. The name Aurelius points to Romanized ancestry; he may have belonged to the degenerate offspring of Ambrosius Aurelianus stigmatized earlier in the work. 'Caninus' may have been a jest of the author at the expense of the prince's Celtic name. Aurelius is held up to scorn as a man of unclean life, a murderer, a lover of civil war and plunder. His relatives are all dead and he stands alone, like a dry tree in an open field. The notice ends with a stern call to repentance.

In the deft hands of Geoffrey of Monmouth, he becomes Aurelius Conanus, who ruled the whole island for nearly three years.

The Welsh versions turn this into Cynan Wledig.

Author

Published date: 1959

Article Copyright: http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC-RUU/1.0/

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