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Mauricio A. Sanchez
Leocundo Aguilar
Manuel Castañón-Puga
Antonio Rodríguez-Díaz Editors
Computer
Science and
Engineering—
Theory and
Applications
Studies in Systems, Decision and Control
Volume 143
Series editor
Janusz Kacprzyk, Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw, Poland
e-mail: [email protected]
The series “Studies in Systems, Decision and Control” (SSDC) covers both new
developments and advances, as well as the state of the art, in the various areas of
broadly perceived systems, decision making and control- quickly, up to date and
with a high quality. The intent is to cover the theory, applications, and perspectives
on the state of the art and future developments relevant to systems, decision
making, control, complex processes and related areas, as embedded in the fields of
engineering, computer science, physics, economics, social and life sciences, as well
as the paradigms and methodologies behind them. The series contains monographs,
textbooks, lecture notes and edited volumes in systems, decision making and
control spanning the areas of Cyber-Physical Systems, Autonomous Systems,
Sensor Networks, Control Systems, Energy Systems, Automotive Systems,
Biological Systems, Vehicular Networking and Connected Vehicles, Aerospace
Systems, Automation, Manufacturing, Smart Grids, Nonlinear Systems, Power
Systems, Robotics, Social Systems, Economic Systems and other. Of particular
value to both the contributors and the readership are the short publication timeframe
and the world-wide distribution and exposure which enable both a wide and rapid
dissemination of research output.
Editors
Computer Science
and Engineering—Theory
and Applications
123
Editors
Mauricio A. Sanchez Manuel Castañón-Puga
Calzada Universidad Calzada Universidad
Tijuana, Baja California Tijuana, Baja California
Mexico Mexico
This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer International Publishing AG part
of Springer Nature
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
Preface
The fields of computer science and computer engineering are rich within them-
selves such that they are comprised of a vast amount of areas, such that most books
decide to better separate their contents into specialized areas, ignoring the rest
of their field. But this book takes on a different point of view when compared to
most of existing literature, that is, to collect from different areas within these two
fields to demonstrate the great variety which exists, where by harboring different
contributed research chapters in a single book, instead of granular specialized areas,
the concept of the complete fields is once again grasped.
As computer science and computer engineering are two different fields, they
have more in common than differences; therefore, the objective of this book is to
convey their involvement in society by showing advances in theoretical practices,
new uses for existing concepts, and applications.
This book is intended as a reference for pre-graduate students who wish to know
more about advances in the fields of computer science and computer engineering, or
acquire ideas as to what types of areas can be researched, exploited, or applied; for
graduate students and researchers, who might need to know the current state of
included contributed research, as well as acquire ideas for their own research; and
for professionals, who would want to know the current state of their fields, get ideas
to solve problems at their workplace, or simply to get a sense of direction as to
where these fields are going.
The contents of this book traverse various areas in the fields of computer
science and computer engineering, such as software engineering, computational
intelligence, artificial intelligence, complex systems, systems, engineering, and
embedded systems.
v
vi Preface
Provided diversity in the contents of this book is the strength between its covers,
we hope that readers enjoy our book and find some utility within its covers. And
that they start seeing that the fields of computer science and computer engineering
can also be seen as complete and diverse fields, instead of only parts of them.
vii
viii Contents
1 Introduction
CARS are based on the idea that similar user in similar context will like similar
items, and that the user preferences for certain item change according to the con-
textual situation [4].
In the beginning, the research in CARS is leaned toward the development of
new, and optimizing the existing algorithms to support contextual information and
to generate better recommendation by improving the accuracy [5].
In recent years, researchers have become more aware of the fact that effective-
ness of recommender systems goes beyond recommendation accuracy. Thus,
research in the context and human factors has gained increased interest [6] as a
potential opportunity to increase the user satisfaction with the recommendation
results.
Despite the strong tie between the recommendation algorithms and the data
about user and context factors, both elements have been treated as separated
research problems. Because of this separation, to implement a CARS nowadays,
software developers, and architects must divide their efforts into 2 topics: (i) The
recommendation system topic to choose and implement the best algorithm for their
CARS domain; (ii) The second topic that also requires a significant amount of effort
is the user modeling. In the first topic, according to [7], the implementation of
recommendation algorithms can be a complicated task, especially for developers
who are not experts in the field [5]. As for the second topic, software architects need
to come up with a data model that is capable of holding all the needed information
for the algorithms to work, if the model designer has no experience with CARS
over what aspects to model for better recommendations, this can result in an
incomplete and overspecialized model [8], that can limit the functionality of the
recommendation algorithms.
A software framework to support the development of advanced, complex con-
textual recommender systems should provide the developer both main elements of a
CARS, implemented algorithms from different recommendation techniques so
developer can select the one that better work for CARS item domains (e.g. songs,
movies, etc.) [9], as well a data model structure generic enough to work with most
CARS domains and give developers the option to adapt it to suit the specific need
of the project. Such a framework is, to the best of our knowledge, currently no
available. Even when some framework and libraries proposals exist to help in the
creation of contextual recommender systems, they are focused on either modeling
the user and context information [10] and do not include recommendation features,
or focus only in the algorithms for recommendation (like Hybreed [5]) and don’t
considered modeling the user and context information and rely on the information
being in a dataset file, which is not practical for a real-world applications.
In this paper, we introduce MoRe (Modeling and Recommendation framework),
a software framework designed to support the creation of CARS by proving
developers a set of state of the art contextual algorithms, and a generic user model
capable of structure and manage the information required by the CARS. We con-
sider MoRe to be a comprehensive framework, as in a single proposal, provides
means to solve both main problems developers encounter when implementing
CARS (i.e. data modeling and recommendation algorithms). MoRe provide
A Comprehensive Context-Aware Recommender System Framework 3
developers object-oriented classes and methods they can use to store, retrieve and
perform recommendation over the user, context and item data.
MoRe aims at serving as a tool for new CARS development, helping developers
in the algorithm implementation by providing ready to work algorithms from main
recommendation techniques for multidimensional data (transformation and adap-
tation). MoRe also helps in the creation of the data architecture by proving an
extensive class architecture capable of organizing, persisting and retrieving data
about the user, context, and items for most popular recommendation domains, like
movie, song, hotels, restaurants, and travel recommendation among others. For the
data structure, uses GUMORS, a General User Model for Recommender System
presented in our previous work [11].
The rest of this document is organized as follows: Sect. 2 describes the back-
ground and related work, Sect. 3 describes the MoRe framework, Sect. 4 present
some evaluation performed, and Sect. 5 present conclusion and future work.
Certainly, based on this definition of context, the user plays an important role,
the context of a user can include any information that describes his situation, like
his location and time, emotional, mental and physiological information, etc. The
amount and type of information to include in the contextualization of the user
depends on the system and the purpose of such information.
A system is considered to be context-aware if it can express aspects of the
environment and subsequently uses such information to adapt its functionality to
the context of use [14]. Therefore, context-awareness refers to the capability of an
application being aware of its physical environment or situation and responding
proactively and intelligently based on such awareness.
Context-aware systems aim at somehow gathering (through sensing, inferring or
directly asking for) human and environmental phenomena for later assisting users to
archive a desirable quality of living standards [15].
From an informational perspective, context provides information that systems
can use to form a contextual space, which virtually represents the situation of the
user [16].
From a software infrastructural perspective, context provides computing devices
with information about its environment as provided by other parts or modules of the
system (sensing module for example). As a consequence, different ‘types’ or ‘di-
mensions’ of context emerge, e.g. physical and computation dimensions.
There are several techniques that will allow a developer to represent the contextual
information inside a computational system, thus to be used in a CARS. Works like
[17–19] present extensive surveys on the difference of each technique. Next, we
describe and discuss the most commonly used representation techniques at
high-level, and present the main advantages and disadvantages of each one.
• Key-Value models. These models use pairs of a key and value to enumerate
attributes (key) and their values to describe the contextual and user information.
These models are the simplest data structure and are easy to manage, especially
when they have a small amount of data. However, key-value modeling is not
scalable and not suitable to represent complex data models [19]. This technique
is best suited to represent and store temporary information, therefore is
increasingly less used in recent contextual and user models.
• Markup scheme models. These models use a hierarchical data structure formed
by markup tags with attributes and content. To represent the user and context
aspect, markup models use a set of symbols and annotations inserted in a text
document that controls the structure, formatting, and relations among annota-
tions [20]. As markup languages do not provide advanced expressive capabil-
ities, reasoning over the data they represent is hard. Further, retrieval,
interoperability, and re-usability of the data over different models can be diffi-
cult, specifically if such models use different markup schemes [17].
A Comprehensive Context-Aware Recommender System Framework 5
implementation of these type of systems and compares how each of the presented
proposals relates to MoRe.
MyMediaLite [24] is a recommendation library implemented in C# and aimed
towards recommending items based on collaborative filtering recommendation
technique. Even when MyMediaLite was designed to work in traditional (2D)
recommendations, it has been used by [25] as a base-line recommender in
context-aware recommendation. MyMediaLite is similar to our proposal in the fact
that both provide the feature of 2D collaborative-filtering algorithms, but MoRe
goes far beyond providing nD recommendation algorithms.
Hybreed [5] is a Java-based recommendation framework designed specifically to
help developers in the creation CARS. Hybreed focuses on the integration of
external context to recommendation systems and the hybrid combination of dif-
ferent basic recommendation methods. A notable feature of Hybreed is its dynamic
contextualization approach that creates an in-memory temporal model of the user
containing his current situation. Hybreed and MoRe had in common the feature of
proving developers working ready algorithms to generate contextual prediction
based on filtering techniques. But unlike More, Hybreed do not provide recom-
mendation algorithms based on the context-modeling technique. In addition,
Hybreed stands behind in the data modeling technique, as it uses a limited
Key-Value pair, while MoRe uses a context-aware user model.
ConRec [1] is a context-aware recommendation framework focus on serving as a
tool for developers when implementing CARS, ConRec mainly focuses on a
temporal dynamic representation of context, which can automatically aggregate
different contextual features into a single one, so it can be easier for algorithms to
process. ConRec includes its own multi-dimensional recommendation algorithms
that works as an extension to Apache Mahout. This proposal does not describe how
user or context factors are considered into the framework, nor how they are stored.
Compared to MoRe, ConRec includes only one algorithm, that is not supported by
other literature, while MoRe contains implementation for various algorithms that
are well supported by previous research. Also, MoRe present an clear and
well-structured manner of managing the data, while ConRec only mentions that
uses it a user, item, rate and context format, and no information in how to take such
approach to implementation is described.
CoGrec [26] is a theoretical recommendation framework designed to gather
latent features of a group of users based on their social networks then uses such
gathered information to predict items that better suit the preferences of all the
individuals in the group. This proposal is described theoretical, and even when
some evaluation results are presented, no implementations details were given.
CoGrec differs from MoRe, on being a group-based recommendation only, while
MoRe is flexible in the target user(s). Also, MoRe is closer to implementation
providing a working-ready framework.
In [27] a context-aware architecture for mobile recommendation systems are
proposed. The architecture is designed to be generic enough to work in any CARS
domain, and focus on supporting the mobility of CARS, and the communication
between the mobile device and the server where the recommendation take place.
A Comprehensive Context-Aware Recommender System Framework 7
Based on related literature presented above, an in the work of [5, 15, 29, 30], this
section describes a series of high-level functional requirements any software
framework aimed to facilitate the creation of context-aware recommender systems
should fulfill.
First of all, such a framework should include recommendation algorithms from
the most relevant contextual recommendation techniques, which developers can set
up with a few lines of code, and be able to obtain the list of recommended items.
These algorithms should cover the main techniques existing nowadays, which
according to Adomavicius [31] are Contextual Filtering and Contextual Modeling.
To support contextual modeling recommendation, the framework should include
multi-dimensional recommendation algorithms, and to support contextual filtering,
traditional recommendation algorithms are needed as well. Apart from the imple-
mented and ready to work algorithms, the framework should support the integration
of custom techniques and new algorithms.
With regard to the data needed by CARS, the modeling of contextual infor-
mation has been treated separately from the recommendation functions, and none of
the currently existing frameworks support the management of the CARS data in the
same proposal as contextual recommendation algorithms. Therefore, a compre-
hensive contextual recommendation framework should provide a baseline data
structure that supports the data about the users of the system, their context, the items
that the CARS will recommend, and the relations among the different aspects. In
8 S. Inzunza and R. Juárez-Ramírez
this aspect, diversity has a great importance [6], as the framework should support
CARS from different items domains, i.e. the framework should be able to recom-
mend movies, as well as restaurants or pets.
Besides this specific requirements, a framework targeting developers should
meet general software engineering requirements, for example, the set of guidelines
for software architecture proposed by Microsoft Application Architecture Guide
[32]. Such a framework should make easy for developers to adapt existing and to
add new functionality.
According to [5], the expected solution is not as simple as combine all features
from different proposal that meets certain requirements to create a framework that
covers them all. The challenge is to select the most valuable concepts of all these
existing approaches, reduce their programming complexity and combine them, such
that the resulting framework coverts the described requirements with a rich set of
functionalities, and at the same time is easy to use and reduce development effort.
This section describes the MoRe (Modeling and Recommendation) framework that
was created to support the creation of context-aware recommender systems, by
providing a comprehensive class architecture that can model and manage the
information required for the CARS systems to work, and by incorporating a set of
state of the art recommender algorithms.
MoRe target, but is not limited to, the following users:
• Software developers who want to create a new CARS, either with or without
experienced creating this type of applications. To these users MoRe offers a data
modeling feature that developers can rely on to manage the information needed
by the recommender algorithms. MoRe also includes a set of state of the art that
with a few lines of code, developers can set up to generate the contextual
recommendations.
• Software architects who want to create a data architecture to support the user,
context and item information for a CARS. To these users MoRe presents an
extensible class structure that supports all this information, and they can extend
or user it straight into the system architecture.
• Researchers of recommendation systems area, who want to compare existing
recommendation algorithms with a new approach, as they can use load their
dataset(s) into MoRe data model and perform recommendations over it using the
contextual algorithms included. Or researchers who just want to put their
algorithms to test in a real scenario, and don’t want to spend time designing a
data model.
A Comprehensive Context-Aware Recommender System Framework 9
In our previous work [11] a Generic User Model for context-aware Recommender
System (GUMORS) was proposed to solve the problem of not existing an extensive
model that can be used as a reference to structure the user and context aspects inside
CARS. GUMORS provides a large set of user, context, and items working together
to create a CARS specific data model, that can be used into multiple CARS
domains. MoRe uses GUMORS as data structure to manage all the information
needed by prediction functions.
GUMORS organize the CARS information into 4 main top-level categories,
namely: User, Context, Item, and Activity information. Next, the four top-level
categories are briefly described, for a more detailed description please refer to [11].
10 S. Inzunza and R. Juárez-Ramírez
User aspects represent the user as a human being, which CARS can use to infer the
user preferences and behavior to better suit the recommendation results.
User aspects are categorized into Contact, Demographic, Physiological, Interest
and Preferences, Role, Personality, Emotion, and Mental information. Next Table 1
describes each category.
The activities information that can be useful for CARS are also modeled into
GUMORS. An activity relates information about the User that is performing it, in a
specified Context. A more specialized type of activity is called RatedActivity which
also includes information about the item consumed during the activity, and the
feedback (Rating) the user provided. The activity information is used for example
by Google Maps, to suggest the user navigation route according to his displacement
activity (walking, biking, driving, etc.). Spotify also uses activity information to
recommend users songs which rhythm matches his running speed. Next Table 3
shows the classes used by GUMORS to model the activity information.
GUMORS also manages the information about the Items the CARS will recom-
mend. For this feature, GUMORS uses an Item super-class that developers can
further specialize through inheritance to fit their specific needs. GUMORS also
contains a series of Item specialization based on the most commonly used items in
CARS literature and considers the commonly used attributes for each item (as
shown in Fig. 2).
The data management module is in charge of persisting the data from the model to a
database and retrieving it back when asked. MoRe uses Entity Framework [33] for
the Object-Relational Mapping (ORM). The use of an ORM for the data persistence
12 S. Inzunza and R. Juárez-Ramírez
allows the framework to perform CRUD (Create, Read, Update and Delete) oper-
ations directly over the model classes that is automatically translated into the
database without the need to directly perform queries to the db.
MoRe uses a ModelEntity superclass that contains generic methods with the
logic for all the CRUD operations, using both, synchronous and asynchronous calls.
This superclass is inherited from all the model classes that should be mapped to
database, which inherits the CRUD operations, e.g. Find, FindAll, Save, Delete,
Get, GetAll, etc.
The dataset generator is responsible for collecting the data from the database and
organize it so recommendations algorithms can understand it, e.g. Comma
Separated Values (CSV) or Binarized format [34].
MoRe uses Data Annotations to annotate the classes and attributes that will be
part of the resulting dataset. Annotating classes and attributes work as rules that
latter the framework will use to automatically create the dataset, which can be read
by algorithms from memory. As MoRe is designed to work custom internal or
external algorithms, the dataset can also be exported to a file in the specified format,
so any existing algorithm can use the data to generate recommendations.
MoRe uses a large set of algorithms for both, traditional (2D) and contextual
(nD) recommendation. For this first iteration, MoRe uses the set of algorithms
implemented by [28] and a custom wrapper to execute them from C# as originally
the implementation were made under Java development language.
A Comprehensive Context-Aware Recommender System Framework 13
As the framework contained a large set of ready to use algorithms, it can be used
by developers who don’t want to spend too much time implementing existing
recommendation techniques, or by developers that have little experience imple-
menting this type of complex systems [5], the recommendation algorithms can be
used as a black-box, that need to fed whit a dataset (described in previous section),
and will yield a list of recommended item for the specified user.
The framework also allows for custom algorithms to be included, which makes
MoRe ideal for researchers who want to test their new algorithm or recommen-
dation approach against existing state of the art algorithms.
Next, the traditional and contextual recommendation algorithms are described.
In addition to the list of implemented and ready to work algorithms, MoRe allow
developers to implement their own algorithms o to create hybridizations combining
multiple of the included ones. To implement new algorithms, developers need to
implement the IRecommender or IContextualRecommender class for a new tradi-
tional or contextual algorithms respectively and implement the methods each
interface enforces.
Contextual Filtering Algorithms, try to pre- or post-process the information and
convert it from a multi-dimensional matrix to a 2-dimensional rating matrix that
contains only the user reference (Id), item reference, and rating. Then, this
two-dimensional matrix can be used in traditional algorithms to generate recom-
mendations. There exist many contextual filtering algorithms, one of the most
effective is the context-aware splitting [39]. MoRe includes the three main variants
of this algorithm:
– UserSplitting: From a user point of view, the preference for certain items may
vary depending on the context. User Splitting group items based on the context
and the rating the user gave to them, so when a user gives items good values in a
certain context (e.g. sunny weather) and gives bad rating in another context
situation (e.g. rainy weather), the user can be divided into two users based on
such context (weather in this example).
– ItemSplitting: Separate the item that was rated differently under different context
as being different items. Based on the same rules of UserSplitting to decide
when some instances should be divided, but this process divide items instead of
users.
– UserItemSplitting: Combines both previous separations, the result is that an item
rated by a user in different context, is converted into 2 items, and the user is also
divided into 2 users.
Contextual Modeling Algorithms, unlike splitting approaches, take into account
the influence of context all context aspect on the rating prediction model, which
required the development of new algorithms capable of processing multi-
dimensional matrix and produce a recommendation. The algorithms used for con-
textual modeling supported by MoRe are:
– Tensor Factorization (TF) [40] This algorithm is based on the Matrix
Factorization (MF) dimensional reduction technique which is used for 2D rec-
ommendations. TF consist of extending the two-dimensional MF problem into a
multi-dimensional version, where the rating tensor is converted into a
lower-dimensional vector space. Such that the interactions between users, items,
and contextual factors are represented by a latent factor vector.
– Context-Aware Matrix Factorization (CAMF) [41] is a more scalable (than TF)
contextual modeling approach based on MF. CAMF uses a contextual baseline
prediction function to represent the interactions of contextual information with
the items or users. Baltrunas et al. [42] proposed different variants of CAMF that
model the influence of contextual conditions at different granularities. CAMF-C
assumes that a context factor affects the user and items in the same way.
A Comprehensive Context-Aware Recommender System Framework 15
4 Evaluations
This section compares MoRe with other framework and libraries discussed in
Sect. 2 of this document.
Next Table 5 presents a comparison between MoRe and other related
context-aware recommender frameworks. The Type section describes whether the
proposal is presented as a theory, a library or a framework; the Data section
describes if the proposal presents a way to structure the information about the user,
context, and items, and if it supports a temporal state profile which maintains a
sub-profile of the user with the current information so it can be quick and easily
accessible by the application. The Algorithm section describes the recommendation
techniques supported by each proposal, and finally, the last section describes the
programming language used by the proposal and if it is available as an open source
(OS), not disclosed (ND) or not available (NA).
16 S. Inzunza and R. Juárez-Ramírez
Part of the MoRe’s core is a data structure capable of modeling the users, context,
and items information that will be used by recommendation algorithm to generate
predictions. To test this feature, the LDOS CoMoDa [43] dataset was used loaded
into MoRe’s model. LDOS CoMoDa is a movie dataset that contains 2296
instances, and 32 attributes. The attributes are 9 corresponding to user information,
9 of contextual information and 14 attributes used to describe the items (movies).
Process
The process followed was to set up a new C# project in Visual Studio, and add
references to MoRe framework. As the dataset’s data is separated in 3 files, first the
Items information was loaded into the model by reading the itemsTitles and
itemsMetaData files, then the user, context and ratings information was loaded from
the LDOS-COMODA file. Next Table 6 show the user, context and items aspects
considered in the dataset and how they were mapped to MoRe data model.
Once the data was loaded into the model, and to test the ability of the framework
to serve the data, a dataset was creating using class annotation (as described in
Sect. 3.2) to configure the exportation behavior of the classes. Such recreated
dataset set was used in the next section of use case, where the functionality of the
recommendation algorithms is tested.
Results
The use case of loading data to MoRe’s model showed that the framework was
capable of supporting all LDOS CoMoDa dataset features, most of them (93%)
without the need of any adaptation to the model. Two features (Decision and
Interaction, the first refers to what motivate the user to watch the video, and the
latter refers to the number of interactions of the user with the video) were not
directly supported by the model as shipped with the framework.
To support these two features into the model, some adaptations were required,
the adaptations consisted of further specializing (through inheritance) the Video and
ModelORM classes, adding the required features to the new video (CoMoDaVideo)
class, then registering this CoMoDaVideo class to the specialized ModeORM class.
As the data structure has changed, a database migration was required to synchronize
the data structure with the database structure.
18 S. Inzunza and R. Juárez-Ramírez
Discussion
The selected dataset can be seen as having a small number of features (32), but most
of the existing dataset for CARS have fewer features (e.g. InCarMusic [41] as 18,
DePaul Movie [28] has 6, and Trip Advisor [39] has 9). Even though, being able to
use a bigger dataset is an interesting challenge that would allow us to test more
attributes of the model, having used LDOS CoMoDa dataset allow us to test the
ability of the model to store data, to maintain the relationship between the data
categories (user, context, and item), and the ability to serve back the stored data.
The age attribute contained in the dataset was considered supported even when it
was not stored directly as an integer, rather the model stores the birthday that which
can be easily converted into age with a little processing. Maybe such processing of
converting birthday into age should be directly included in the model in a future
release of MoRe. The emotions (endEmotion and dominantEmo) and mood are
considered as part of the user information, but as they are intended to reflect the
user’s state of mind in a specific situation, they are linked to the context, as the
A Comprehensive Context-Aware Recommender System Framework 19
splitting approach yield slightly better results, especially when paired with
ItemAverage baseline recommender.
The obtained results not necessary means that this will be the better performing
algorithms in all cases, as these results are specific to recommend movies, and
taking in consideration the specific characteristics of the LDOS CoMoDa dataset
(user and context aspects considered, the data sparsity, and the number of instan-
ces). When recommending other elements, and using other contextual information,
the algorithms will perform differently, fortunately, MoRe contains a large set of
algorithms so developers can use the better performing one in their specific CARS.
Touching their
Immunitie of the cleargie greater vnder idolatrie than vnder the gospell.
persons also they were exempt from all temporall seruices,
impositions, tributes, and exercises of the wars: which immunitie
caused the greater companies of scholers to flocke vnto them from
all places, & to learne their trades. Of these likewise, some remained
with them seuen, eight, ten, or twelue years, still learning the
secrets of those unwritten mysteries by heart, which were to be had
amongst them, and commonlie pronounced in verse. And this
policie, as I take it, they vsed onelie to preserue their religion from
contempt, whereinto it might easilie haue fallen, if any books thereof
had happened into the hands of the common sort. It helped also not
a little in the exercise of their memories, wherevnto bookes are vtter
enimies, insomuch as he that was skilfull in the Druiysh religion,
would not let readilie to rehearse manie hundreds of verses togither,
and not to faile in one tittle, in the whole processe of this his
laborious repetition. But as they dealt in this order for matters of
their religion, so in ciuill affairs, historicall treatises, and setting
downe of lawes, they vsed like order and letters almost with the
Grecians. Whereby it is easie to be séene, that they reteined this
kind of writing from Druiyus (the originall founder of their religion)
and that this Iland hath not béene void of letters and learned men,
euen sith it was first inhabited. I would ad some thing in particular
also of their apparell, but sith the dealing withall is nothing profitable
to the reader, I passe it ouer, signifieng neuerthelesse, that it was
distinguished by sundrie deuises from that of the common sort, and
of such estimation among the people, that whosoeuer ware the
Druiysh weed, might walke where he would without any harme or
annoiance. This honour was giuen also vnto the préests in Rome,
insomuch that when Volusius was exiled by the Triumuirate, and saw
himselfe in such danger, as that he could not escape the hardest, he
gat the wéed of a preest upon his backe, and begged his almes
therein, euen in the high waies as he trauelled, and so escaped the
danger and the furie of his aduersaries: but to proceed with other
things.
Bardus. After the death of Druiyus, Bardus his sonne, and fift king of
the Celts, succéeded not onelie ouer the said kingdome, but also in
his fathers vertues, whereby it is verie likelie, that the winding and
wrapping vp of the said religion, after the afore remembred sort into
verse, was first deuised by him, for he was an excellent poet, and no
lesse indued with a singular skill in the practise and speculation of
musicke, of which two many suppose him to be the verie author and
Gen. 4. 21. beginner, although vniustlie, sith both poetrie and song
were in vse before the flood, as was also the harpe and pipe, which
Iubal inuented, and could neuer be performed without great skill in
musicke. But to procéed, as the cheefe estimation of the Druiydes
remained in the end among the Britons onelie, for their knowledge
in religion, so did the fame of the Bardes (which were so called of
this Bardus for their excellent skill in musicke, poetrie, and the
heroicall kind of song, which at the first conteined onelie the high
mysteries and secret points of their religion. There was little
difference also betwéene them and The Bards degenerate. the Druiydes,
till they so farre degenerated from their first institution, that they
became to be minstrels at feasts, droonken meetings, and
abhominable sacrifices of the idols: where they sang most
commonlie no diuinitie as before, but the puissant acts of valiant
princes, and fabulous narrations of the adulteries of the gods. Certes
in my time this fond vsage, and thereto the verie name of the
Bardes, are not yet extinguished among the Britons of Wales, where
they call their poets and musicians Barthes, as they doo also in
Ireland: which Sulpitius also writing to Lucane remembreth, where
he saith that the word Bardus is meere Celtike, and signifieth a
singer. Howbeit the Romans iudging all nations beside themselues to
be but rude and barbarous, and thereto misliking vtterlie the rough
musicke of the Bardes, entred so farre into the contemptuous
mockage of their melodie, that they ascribed the word Bardus vnto
their fooles and idiots, whereas contrariwise the Scythians and such
as dwell within the northweast part of Europe, did vse the same
word in verie honourable maner, calling their best poets and heroicall
singers, Singebardos; their couragious singers and capiteins that
delited in musicke, Albardos, Dagobardos, Rodtbardos, & one lame
musician Lambard aboue all other, of whose skilfull ditties Germanie
is not vnfurnished, as I heare vnto this daie. In Quizqueia or new
Spaine, an Iland of the Indies, they call such men Boitios, their rimes
Arcitos, and in steed of harps they sing vnto timbrels made of shels
such sonnets and ditties as either perteine vnto religion, prophane
loue, commendation of ancestrie, and inflammation of the mind vnto
Mars, whereby there appeareth to be small difference betwéene
their Boitios and our Bardes. Finallie of our sort, Lucane in his first
booke writeth thus, among other like saiengs well toward the latter
end;
Lucani. li. 1.
Thus we sée as in a glasse the state of religion, for a time, after the
first inhabitation of this Iland: but how long it continued in such
soundnesse, as the originall authors left it, in good sooth I cannot
say, yet this is most certeine, that after a time, when Albion arriued
here, the religion earst imbraced fell into great decaie. For whereas
Iaphet & Samothes with their children taught nothing else than such
doctrine as they had learned of Noah: Cham the great grandfather
of this our Albion, and his disciples vtterlie renouncing to follow their
steps, gaue their minds wholie to seduce and lead their hearers
headlong vnto all error. Whereby his posteritie not onelie corrupted
this our Iland, with most filthie trades and practises; but also all
mankind, generallie where they became, with vicious life, and most
vngodlie conuersation. What doctrine Cham and his disciples taught. For from
Cham and his successours procéeded at the first all sorcerie,
witchcraft, and the execution of vnlawful lust, without respect of sex,
age, consanguinitie, or kind: as branches from an odious and
abhominable root, or streames deriued from a most filthie and
horrible stinking puddle. Howbeit, & notwithstanding all these his
manifold lewdnesses, such was the follie of his Ægyptians (where he
first reigned and taught) that whilest he liued they alone had him in
great estimation (whereas other nations contemned and abhorred
him for his wickednesse, calling Chemesenua. him Chemesenua, that is,
the impudent, infamous and wicked Cham) and not
Chem Min.
Cham made a god. onelie builded a citie vnto him which they called
Chem Min, but also after his death reputed him for a god, calling the
highest of the seuen planets after his name, as they did the next
beneath it after Osyris his sonne, whom they likewise honored vnder
the name of Iupiter.
In like sort they had such another order among their daughters,
whom they married as yet commonlie vnto their brethren (God
himselfe permitting the same vnto them for a time) as before the
floud, to the end the earth might be thoroughlie replenished, and
the sooner furnished with inhabitants in euerie part therof. The sister
therefore and wife of Isis, Io and Iuno all one. euerie Saturne was called
Rhea, but of Iupiter, Iuno, Isis, or Io. Beyond these also there was
no latter Harold that would indeuour to deriue the petigree of any
prince, or potentate, but supposed his dutie to be sufficientlie
performed, when he had brought it orderlie vnto some Saturne or
other, wherat he might cease, and shut vp all his trauell. They had
likewise this opinion grounded amongst them, that heauen & earth
were onlie parents vnto Saturne and Rhea, not knowing out of
doubt, Cœlum or Cœlus.
Ogyges.
Sol.
Pater what they themselues did meane, sith these
deorum.
denominations, Heauen, Ogyges, the Sunne, Pater Deorum, and
such like, were onelie ascribed vnto Noah: as *Terra, (the Earth)
Vesta, Aretia, the Moone, Mater * Tydea.
Vesta.
Terra.
Luna.
Aretia.
Deorum mater. deorum, and other the like were vnto Tydea his wife. So
that hereby we sée, how Saturne is reputed in euerie nation for their
oldest god, or first prince, Iupiter for the next, and Hercules for the
third. And therefore sith these names were dispersed in the
beginning ouer all, it is no maruell that there is such confusion in
ancient histories, and the dooings of one of them so mixed with
those of another, that it is now impossible to distinguish them in
sunder. This haue I spoken, to the end that all men may see what
gods the Pagans honored, & thereby what religion the posteritie of
Cham did bring ouer into Britaine. For vntill their comming, it is not
likelie that anie grosse idolatrie or superstition did enter in among
vs, as deifieng of mortall men, honoring of the starres, and erection
of huge images, beside sorcerie, witchcraft, and such like, whereof
the Chemminites are worthilie called the autors. Neither were these
errors anie thing amended, by the comming Frō whence Brute did learne his
religion. in of Brute, who no doubt added such deuises vnto the same,
as he and his companie had learned before in Græcia, from whence
also he brought Helenus the sonne of Priamus, (a man of excéeding
age) & made him his préest and bishop thorough out the new
conquest, that he had atchieued in Britaine.
After Brute, idolatrie and superstition still increased more and more
among vs, insomuch that beside the Druiysh and Bardike
ceremonies, and those also that came in with Albion and Brute
himselfe: our countriemen either brought hither from abroad, or
dailie inuented at home new religion and rites, whereby it came to
passe that in the stead of the onelie and immortall God (of whom
Samothes and his posteritie did preach Dis or Samothes made a god. in
times past) now they honored the said Samothes himselfe vnder the
name of Dis and Saturne: also Iupiter, Mars, Minerua, Mercurie,
Apollo, Diana; and finallie Hercules, vnto whome they dedicated the
gates and porches of their temples, entrances into their regions,
cities, townes and houses, with their limits and bounds (as the
papists did the gates of their cities and ports vnto Botulph & Giles)
bicause fortitude and wisedome are the cheefe vpholders and
bearers vp of common-wealths and kingdoms, both which they
ascribed to Hercules (forgetting God) and diuers other idols whose
names I now remember not. In lieu moreouer of sheepe and oxen,
Mela. Diodorus, Strab. 4. Plin. Cæsar. 5. they offred mankind also vnto some
of them, killing their offendors, prisoners, and oft such strangers as
came from farre vnto them, by shutting vp great numbers of them
togither in huge images made of wicker, réed, haie, or other light
matter: and then setting all on fire togither, they not onelie
consumed the miserable creatures to ashes (sometimes adding other
beasts vnto them) but also reputed it to be the most acceptable
sacrifice that could be made vnto their idols. From whence they had
this horrible custome, trulie I cannot tell, but that it was common to
most nations, not onlie to consume their strangers, captiues, &c; but
also their owne children with fire, in such maner of sacrifice: beside
the text of the Bible, the prophane histories doo generallie leaue it
euident, as a thing either of custome or of particular necessitie, of
which later Virgil saith;
But to procéed with our owne gods and idols, more pertinent to my
purpose than the rehersall of forreine demeanours: I find that huge
temples in like sort were builded vnto them, so that in the time of
Lucius, when the light of saluation began stronglie to shine in Ptol.
Lucensis. Britaine,thorough the preaching of the gospell, the christians
discouered 25. Flamines or idol-churches beside three Archflamines,
whose préests were then as our Archbishops are now, in that they
had superior charge of all the rest, the other being reputed as
inferiours, and subiect to their iurisdiction in cases of religion, and
superstitious ceremonies.
Hitherto yee haue heard of the time, wherein idolatrie reigned and
blinded the harts of such as dwelled in this Iland. Now let vs sée the
successe of the gospell, after the death and passion of Iesus Christ
our sauiour. And euen here would I begin with an allegation of
Theodoret. Theodoret, wherevpon some repose great assurance
(conceiuing yet more Sophronius. hope therein by the words of
Sophronius) that Paule the Apostle should preach the word of
saluation here, after his deliuerie out of captiuitie, which fell as I doo
read in the 57. of Christ. But sith I cannot verifie the same by the
words of Theodoret, to be spoken more of Paule than Peter, or the
rest, I will passe ouer this coniecture (so far as it is grounded vpon
Theodoret) and deale with other authorities, whereof we haue more
certeintie. First of all therfore let vs see what Fortunatus hath written
of Pauls comming into Britaine, and afterward what is to be found of
other by-writers in other points of more assurance. Certes for the
presence of Paule I read thus much:
I find in the Chronicles of Burton (vnder the yeare of Grace 141. and
time of Hadrian the emperour) that nine scholers or clerkes of
Grantha or Granta (now Cambridge) were baptised in Britaine, and
became preachers of the gospell there, but whether Taurinus bishop
or elder ouer the congregation at Yorke (who as Vincentius saith,
was executed Lib. 10. cap. 17.
Taurinus. about this time for his faith) were one of them or not, as yet
I do not certeinlie find; but rather the contrarie, which is that he was
no Britaine at all, but Episcopus Ebroicensis, for which such as
perceiue not the easie corruption of the word, may soone write
Eboracensis as certeinlie mine author out of whom I alledge this
authoritie hath done before me. For Vincentius saith flat otherwise,
and therefore the Chronologie if it speake of anie Taurinus bishop of
Yorke is to be reformed in that behalfe. Diuers other also imbraced
the religion of Christ verie zealouslie before these men. Howbeit, all
this notwithstanding, the glad tidings of the gospell had neuer free
and open passage here, vntill the time of Lucius, in which the verie
enimies of the word became the apparent meanes (contrarie to their
owne minds) to haue it set foorth amongst vs. For when Antoninus
the emperour had giuen out a decrée, that the Druiysh religion
should euerie where be abolished, Lucius the king (whose surname
is now perished) tooke aduise of his councell what was best to be
doone, & wrote in this behalfe. And this did Lucius, bicause he knew
it *impossible for man to liue long * This is contrarie to the common talke of our
Atheists who say, Let vs liue here in wealth, credit and authoritie vpon earth, and let God
without any
take heauen and his religion to himselfe to doo withall what he listeth.
religion at all: finallie finding his Nobilitie & subiects vtter enemies to
the Romane deuotiō (for that they made so many gods as they
listed, & some to haue the regiment euen of their dirt & dung) and
thervnto being pricked forwards by such christians as were
conuersant about him, to choose the seruice of the true God that
liueth for euer, rather than the slauish seruitude of any pagan idoll:
he fullie resolued with himselfe in the end, to receiue and imbrace
the gospell of Christ. He sent also two of his best learned and
greatest Lucius openeth his ears to good counsell, as one desirous to serue God & not
prefer the world. philosophers to Rome, vnto Eleutherus then bishop
there in the 177. of Christ, not to promise any subiection to his sea,
which then was not required, but to say with such as were pricked in
mind, Acts. 2. verse. 37. "Quid faciemus viri fratres?" I meane that
they were sent to be perfectlie instructed, and with farther
commission, to make earnest request vnto him and the congregation
there, that a competent number of preachers might be sent ouer
from thence, by whose diligent aduise and trauell, the foundation of
the gospell might surelie be laid ouer all the portion of the Ile, which
conteined his kingdome, according to his mind.
When
The purpose of Lucius opened vnto the congregation at Rome by Eleutherus.
Eleutherus vnderstood these things, he reioiced not a little for the
great goodnesse, which the Lord had shewed vpon this our Ile and
countrie. Afterwards calling the brethren togither, they agréed to
ordeine, euen those two for bishops, whom Lucius as you haue
heard, had directed ouer vnto them. Finallie after they had
thoroughlie catechized them, making generall praier vnto God and
earnest supplication for the good successe of these men, they sent
them home againe with no small charge, that they should be diligent
in their function, and carefull ouer the flocke committed to their
custodie.
The first of these was called Eluanus Aualonius, a man borne in the
Ile of Aualon, and brought up there vnder those godlie pastours and
their disciples, whom Philip sent ouer at the first for the conuersion
of the Britons. The other hight Medguinus, and was thereto
surnamed Belga, bicause he was of the towne of Welles, which then
was called Belga. This man was trained vp also in one schoole with
Eluanus, both of them being ornaments to their horie ages, and men
of such grauitie and godlinesse, that Eleutherus supposed none
more worthie to support this charge, than they: after whose
comming home also, it was not long yer Lucius and all A zealous prince
maketh feruent subiects. his houshold with diuers of the Nobilitie were
baptised, beside infinit numbers of the common people, which dailie
resorted vnto them, and voluntarilie renounced all their idolatrie and
paganisme.
For this cause therefore did Lucius send to Rome, the second time,
for a copie of such politike orders as were then vsed there, in their
regiment The wisedome of Eleutherus. of the church. But Eleutherus
considering with himselfe, how that all nations are not of like
condition, and therefore those constitutions that are beneficiall to
one, may now and then be preiudiciall to another: and séeing also
that beside the word no rites and orders can long continue, or be so
perfect in all points, but that as time serueth, they will require
alteration: he thought it best not to laie any more vpon the necks of
the new conuerts of Britaine as yet, than Christ and his apostles had
alreadie set downe vnto all men. In returning therefore his
messengers, he sent letters by them vnto Lucius and his Nobilitie,
dated in the consulships of Commodus and Vespronius, wherein he
told them that Christ had left sufficient order in the Scriptures for the
gouernment of his church alreadie in his word, and not for that
onlie, but also for the regiment of his whole *kingdome, if he would
submit himselfe, to yéeld and follow that rule. The epistle it selfe is
partlie * Though most princes canot heare on that side. extant, and partlie
perished, yet such as it is, and as I haue faithfullie translated it out
of sundrie verie ancient copies, I doo deliuer it here, to the end I will
not defraud the reader of anie thing that may turne to the glorie of
God, and his commoditie, in the historie of our nation.
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