Elafius information

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Elafius, alternately Elaphus and Elasius, was recorded as a British figure of the fifth century AD. Elafius is the name used by Bede, however, the best texts of Constantius of Lyon record the name as Elaphus and Elafus.^[1][2][3]

He is the only named British figure (apart from the martyr-saint Alban) in the Vita Germani (Life of Saint Germanus), written by Constantius of Lyon in the mid to late 5th century, which describes two visits to Britain by bishop Germanus of Auxerre. According to Constantius during Germanus's second visit to Britain (perhaps in c. AD 446-7) he met Elafius and miraculously cured his crippled son. This act served to demonstrate to the Britons that Catholicism was the true faith rather than Pelagianism.

Elafius is mentioned as being regionis illius primus' or 'leader of that region' in chapters 26 and 27 of Constantius of Lyon's hagiography of Germanus and also in Chapter XXI of Bede's Ecclesiastical History of England. Both sources mention that provincia tota or 'the whole province' followed him to witness the cure. This description can be taken to mean that Elafius was one of a number of local warlords rather than leader of all post-Roman Britain and might provide a small insight into the political situation in the area at the time. By means of comparison, a Briton Germanus is recorded as having met seventeen years earlier, in 429, is described by Constantius as being of tribunician rank. This remnant Roman term and the Romanised society it represents may therefore have been abandoned by Elafius' time as he is accorded no such title. On the other hand there may be little significance in the term if it is just being used as a general term for a civil official, while the fact that Elafius was a local leader need not necessarily imply he had the character of a 'warlord' or that there was not someone who was regarded as the dominant leader of the entire ex-province at the time (something, however, we can hardly know, one way or the other).

One might speculate that Elafius' court, or place of residence, may have been at St Albans, the former Roman city of Verulamium, since that was very probably the cult centre for Saint Alban, visited by Germanus on his first visit to Britain - or alternatively some other ex-Roman city of Southern Britain. If Elafius was a leader he may have played a role in the subsequent exile of the Pelagian preachers although this banishment is described as being decided through common consent rather than a warlord's orders or even a Roman legal process.

Elafius is a name of Greek origin (elaphos='deer') which in this period was best recorded from the South of Gaul.^[4]