User talk:Mark O'Sullivan

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[edit] Welcome

Hello Mark O'Sullivan, and welcome to Wikipedia. Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are a few good links for newcomers:

I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! By the way, you can sign your name on Talk and vote pages using three tildes, like this: ~~~. Four tildes (~~~~) produces your name and the current date. If you have any questions, see the help pages, add a question to the village pump or ask me on my talk page. Again, welcome! You (Talk) 21:11, Jun 15, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Provinces of Poland

Hey Mark, thanks for support in the discussion! Your comment gets exactly to the point. It was a big relief for me, I felt so lonely in this discussion. --Wahwah 16:56, 22 July 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Copyright

Hello Mark, welcome to Wikipedia. The article you added to Thins, which has since been moved to James Thin appears to be copied from the University of Edinburgh website. If you are the author of the original information and you are able to release it under the GFDL, please let me know. If the information has been copied from another website, it may be a copyright infringement. Wikipedia needs to be careful to avoid this, so the information will be removed if it is not compatible with the GFDL. Please see Wikipedia:Copyrights for further information. Even if this is a copyright infringement, we would still welcome any original contributions from you. Angela. 09:44, July 24, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Constantinople

I wanted to thank you for your improvement of the Constantinople article. I had not looked at the article for a couple weeks so thats why I'm just now telling you. Great Job. It has been greatly improved(mostly by you) since I nominated it for the improvement drive. Hopefully it wins eventually too... Thanks for the improvement. Osu8907 01:36, 27 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Early Britain

Hello Mark, your point about not trusting Gildas falls nicely within the bounds of historiographical criticism and for good reason. Every writer of history taints their version of the re-telling by ‘their understanding’.

Secondary sources, like primary sources, are no different and therefore no better (or worse) in this regard. As a general principle of history however, the closer you are to an event in terms of degrees of separation, the stronger the weight of the evidence. This is why archaeology is often so compelling despite the gaps in the interpretation it provides. Therefore, whether we like or not, we must always go back to primary sources as often as possible and re-assess the arguments that have been made about them as new evidence comes available.

Many modern secondary sources looking Christianity’s ingress into the British Isles seem to adopt the rather boring and somewhat plebian ‘party line’ that blames the Romans for Christianity being in Britain in the first place. This may or may not be true, but certainly looking at primary sources, one can see why many have made this argument (Christianity was certainly making ingress into the Roman Empire at the same time – why not?)

But the ‘party-line’ doesn’t fit nicely with ancient sources.

  1. Early Latin references (Dio Cassius, Martial, early Roman Saints etc) to Christian Britain suggest that Britain was exposed to Christianity at least as early as Rome, and the same references compliment what ever sources were used to compile the Mabinogion which clearly draws a like between some early Celtic kings and Christianity.
  2. Familiarity with these ancient references seem to help explain why many 19th Century scholars (Williams, J., Conybeare, W.) or earlier (James Ussher) believed this to be true un-reservedly. It also helps explains the existence of a “Celtic Catholic Church” until it was outlawed in the Synod of Whitby in 664 A.D.
  3. Recently literary sources have been uncovered between individuals indicating an established Christian community dating before 336 C.E. from a Christian man named Vinisius to a Christian woman named Nigra living in Bath.
  4. And we know that the early Christian Church in Britain used the customary diocesan system as evidenced from the records of the Council of Arles in Gaul, 314.6 C.E. Signatories include three bishops from Britain. These were Eborius of York, Restitutus of London, and Adelphius, so the early Church did exist – there is no doubt.
  5. 20th Century scholars have been the ones to formulate the counter argument that Rome brought with it Christianity, however 20th Century scholars also show a shocking lack of familiarity with ancient texts, and almost a complete reliance on secondary or tertiary sources. (How can you write about history, when you restrict your research almost completely, to the views of others who themselves are writing about history? Someone at sometime has to be looking at the evidence first hand.)
  6. For non-literary sources there is evidence such as the existence of Cornish, Welsh, and Kentish churches that were hundreds of years old in the 500 – 600 C.E. Few of which now stand, but whose existence is documented. At least one pre-Augustine church still stands, “Saint Martins”
  7. There is other less weighty but equally suggestive evidence that supports this view. The Roman Catholic Churches has been challenged three time in history as to the seniority of Catholic churches (by France, Italy, and Spain) and claimed all three times that the senior Roman Catholic Church is not the Church of France, Spain or Italy, but the Ecclesia Anglicana or English Church. This was last challenged (by Spain I believe) in 1927, and upheld by Pope Pius XI. Unfortunately, no Pope has explained why they uphold this ordering but they do. I would personally love to know what is in the Vatican library that supports this claim by the Popes.

I know that the evidence doesn’t add up to the main stream orthodoxy (or at least 20th century orthodoxy), but perhaps its time that we have our academic arrogance knocked back a notch and we formulate our theories to fit the evidence rather than the other way around. Thanks for asking for clarification. -- WikiRat 22:35, 26 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Copyvio articles

Hi Mark, I have flagged two articles you created as Copyright violations: Beaumont College and Bells of Ouseley, both of which are significantly derived from [1]. There are several reasons why we cannot accept this material at wikipedia, I suggest examing the material at Wikipedia:Five Pillars. Regards, Fawcett5 03:45, 27 September 2005 (UTC)


The person above arbitrarily destroyed two articles I had created containing a great deal of original work. Although they used sources, they were not copyright violations; and even if they had been, he would not have been justified in removing material which was patently entirely original. He has ignored my representations on the matter. I shall be making no further contributions to the Wiki project. Mark O'Sullivan