Geoffrey of Monmouth

British writer and bishop

• Born: c. 1100
• Birthplace: Monmouth, Wales(?)
• Died: 1154
• Place of death: Llandaff, Wales(?)

Geoffrey wrote the Historia regum Britanniae, the work that introduced the legend of King Arthur to the European world.

Early Life

Not much is known about the early life of Geoffrey, who called himself Monemutensis, “of Monmouth” (MAWN-muhth) at least three times in his work, which suggests that he was born or brought up in Monmouth, Wales. It is known that he described himself as Brito (“a Briton”), but the term could mean that he was Breton, Welsh, or Cornish. Beginning in 1075, the town of Monmouth was under the control of a Breton lord, Wihenoc. Geoffrey’s family may have emigrated from Brittany to Wales during that period.

Geoffrey was in Oxford from 1129 to 1151, most likely as an Augustinian canon of the college of St. George, where he appeared as witness to a number of charters. There he signed himself Galfridus Arturus (“Geoffrey Arthur”). Some scholars have taken this to mean that Geoffrey was the son of a man named Arthur, but in such a case the word “Arturus” would most likely appear in a different form. It is more probable that the name “Arthur” was given to him, or adopted by him, in recognition of his role in disseminating the story of Arthur to the European world. It is also possible that Arturus was a given name and that he became interested in the story of Arthur because of his name, rather than vice versa.

Life’s Work

Geoffrey of Monmouth wrote three major surviving works, all in Latin and all concerning the history of the pre-Norman Britons and their prominent figures. The first of these works are presented as translations of ancient prophecies made by the legendary sage and magician Merlin. The prophecies, which concerned political developments of the past, present, and future, are titled Prophetiae Merlini (before 1135; The Prophecies of Merlin, 1966). They are allegorical and deliberately vague in nature, with lines such as “A man shall wrestle with a drunken Lion, and the gleam of gold will blind the eyes of the onlookers.”

The prophecies were subsequently incorporated into Geoffrey’s most influential work, the mostly fictional and the phenomenally successful Historia regum Britanniae (c. 1136; History of the Kings of Britain, 1718), but they were written earlier and also circulated separately from the History of the Kings of Britain, fueling a zeal for political prophecy that gathered force in the later Middle Ages. The History of the Kings of Britain traces the history of British kings and princes from the fall of Troy (the Trojan Brutus being regarded as Britain’s founding king, after whom Britain is named) to the final conquest of Britain by the Saxons. The Britons are represented as a proud and illustrious people finally brought low by internal strife and foolish choices.

Geoffrey’s audience was most likely Norman; the Normans, having recently conquered Britain, had a natural interest in the history of their new territory. Here Geoffrey had to tread a fine line, presenting the Britons as valorous enough to serve as worthy precursors to the Normans, but not so valorous as to suggest that subsequent conquests of Britain were unjust. The narrative combines the political with the wondrous, and the history of Britain is shown to be full of magic and marvels. The most prominent purveyor of such wonders was Merlin, the son of a virgin’s liaison with an incubus, who wielded extraordinary powers even as a boy. It was Merlin who was able to transform the appearance of the king, Uther Pendragon, into that of the husband of a noblewoman with whom the king was smitten. In the guise of her husband, Uther slept with the woman, bringing about the birth of Arthur. Thereafter, Merlin disappears from the story, so that in Geoffrey’s account the two figures do not actually overlap. Geoffrey took the figure of Merlin from Celtic legend, which features a similar figure named Myrddin, but the shape of the story, and Merlin’s connection with Arthur, are Geoffrey’s invention.

The most celebrated and influential chapters of the History of the Kings of Britain describe the reign of Arthur, presented as a glorious king who triumphs over the Saxons and Romans, but whose kingdom is finally brought down by perfidy. Although Arthur had been a figure in Celtic legend for many years before the History of the Kings of Britain, it was Geoffrey who brought the king to the attention of larger Europe and who set him in a particularly political context. The story as Geoffrey told it has many of the details that were to be repeated in Arthurian literature of later centuries: his magical conception; his wife, Guinevere; his retainers, including Gawain, Bedevere, and Kay; and his betrayal by his nephew Mordred, who is finally slain at the Battle of Camlann (537). Many of these details were ultimately derived from Welsh tradition, but made their way into the pan-European literature by way of Geoffrey. The figure of Lancelot and his betrayal of Arthur with Guinevere came from French literature in later centuries and does not appear in the History of the Kings of Britain. Geoffrey’s final summation of Arthur’s career also left the door open for legends that Arthur would return. The text never describes Arthur’s actual death, but said ambiguously, “Arthur himself, our renowned King, was mortally wounded and was carried off to the Isle of Avalon, so that his wounds might be attended to.”

The story of Arthur takes up a disproportionate section of the History of the Kings of Britain, but Geoffrey also told the stories of a host of other rulers, and in so doing gave rise to legends that also became important later in history, such as the story of King Lear and his three daughters. Geoffrey claimed that the History of the Kings of Britain was a translation of “a certain very ancient book written in the British language,” which Walter, archdeacon of Oxford, brought “ex Britannia.” The phrase “ex Britannia” is ambiguous; it might mean either “from Britanny” or “from Wales.” Walter was an actual person, and a friend of Geoffrey, but most scholars have cast doubt on Geoffrey’s story about a single “very ancient book.” Attributing a book to unverifiable older sources was a common ploy among medieval writers, used to convey an air of unimpeachable authority. Instead, it seems clear that Geoffrey confected his account from a variety of sources: texts, legends, chronicles, and his own imagination.

Geoffrey’s final work, the Vita Merlini (after 1140; Life of Merlin, 1973), is an equally complex and multifaceted work. Composed in Latin hexameter verse, it tells the story of Merlin, who, in Geoffrey’s account, is a Welsh king who goes mad on seeing noble young princes destroyed in battle. He flees to the woods, where he demonstrates a bleak affinity with nature, returning to human habitations only with reluctance or malice. His magical powers and ability to prophesy accurately are proven in a series of episodes. A second magical figure is also introduced: Taliesin the poet (fl. sixth century), a genuine historical poet credited with magical powers later in history, who describes the mysteries of nature and of the universe. The narrative is interrupted by lists of bodies of water with marvelous properties and other wonders of natural history and cosmology. For the Vita Merlini, Geoffrey drew on stories of the legendary Celtic prophet and wild man Myrddin, as well as the legend of Taliesin. Although the story is episodic and often disjointed, the poem as a whole is rich with wonders and imaginative power.

With the History of the Kings of Britain, Geoffrey said he intended to translate a book about the flight of the British clergy to Brittany after a catastrophe, but there is no evidence that he actually wrote this or any work other than the three known. He must have lost his position when the Oxford college of St. George was dissolved in 1149, but in 1151 he was elected bishop of St. Asaph in Wales and served until 1154.

The Welsh countryside was in political turmoil. Many bishops never saw their bishoprics, so it is unlikely that Geoffrey ever visited his diocese. A Welsh chronicle reports that he died in 1154.

Significance

Geoffrey’s works, in particular the History of the Kings of Britain, changed the face of European literature. Before the History of the Kings of Britain, Arthur was a leader celebrated only in the small Celtic enclaves of western Europe; when Geoffrey brought his story to a wider audience, writers and poets across Europe made the Arthurian legends one of the enduring staples of world literature. In Geoffrey’s own day, the History of the Kings of Britain was copied and read widely. More than 220 manuscripts an enormous quantity survive from the Middle Ages. A variant version, most likely revised by a different author, was quickly compiled, possibly within Geoffrey’s own lifetime, and influenced writers such as Wace, who based his Roman de Brut (1155) on the History of the Kings of Britain. Works derived from the History of the Kings of Britain soon began to appear in the vernacular languages. Chroniclers and historians also began to incorporate “facts” from the History of the Kings of Britain into their own historical works, testimony to the high regard with which they regarded Geoffrey’s powers as a historian.

It is in imaginative literature, however, that Geoffrey’s influence was most significant, appearing in the works of many of the major writers of medieval Europe. In France, the “matter of Britain,” as the Arthurian legends were known, appeared in the lays of Marie de France and the verse romances of Chrétien de Troyes, among others. In Germany, Wolfram von Eschenbach and Hartmann von Aue recast the legends of the knights of Arthur’s court. England saw the creation of the important anonymous poem “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight” (c. late fourteenth century) as well as the influential prose tales of Thomas Malory’ Le Morte d’Arthur (1485). Even the Welsh brought the European Arthur back into their own vernacular stories. Later centuries saw little abatement of Geoffrey’s influence. William Shakespeare’s Cymbeline (pr. c. 1609-1610) and King Lear (pr. c. 1605-1606) were both based on stories in the History of the Kings of Britain. John Milton considered writing an Arthurian epic before he decided on more theological material in Paradise Lost (1667), and John Dryden, William Wordsworth, and Alfred Tennyson wrote poems founded on Arthurian material. The twentieth century saw an explosion of literature about Arthur, from the highly literary novels of Peter Vansittart to more popular retellings such as Marion Zimmer Bradley’s The Mists of Avalon (1983). The story of Arthur also has appeared in numerous film versions. Once Geoffrey’s depiction of Arthur caught fire, it lit a passion for Arthur yet to be extinguished.

Major Works by Geoffrey of Monmouth

Date

• Work

Before 1135

• Prophetiae Merlini

c. 1136

• Historia regum Britanniae (History of the Kings of Britain)

After 1140

• Vita Merlini (Life of Merlin)

Bibliography

Bromwich, Rachel, A. O. H. Jarman, and Brynley F. Roberts, eds. The Arthur of the Welsh: The Arthurian Legend in Medieval Welsh Literature. Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1991. A collection of essays exploring the Welsh foundations of the Arthurian legend and setting Geoffrey’s Arthur in context. Topics include the Welsh tradition of prophecy literature, the early character of Arthur, and Geoffrey.

Clarke, Basil, ed. and trans. The Life of Merlin. Vita Merlini. Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1974. The introduction to this edition of Geoffrey’s Life of Merlin provides a full analysis of Geoffrey’s sources and of the meaning of this complex text.

Curley, Michael J. Geoffrey of Monmouth. New York: Twayne, 1994. A popular introduction to Geoffrey’s life and work.

Echard, Siân. Arthurian Narrative in the Latin Tradition. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Discusses Geoffrey’s Historia and Vita Merlini, as well as Latin Arthurian literature in the context of medieval literature.

Gentrup, William F., ed. Reinventing the Middle Ages and the Renaissance: Constructions of the Medieval and Early Modern Periods. Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 1998. Looks at how medieval literature, including Geoffrey’s work, reinterprets and re-presents historical events.

Geoffrey of Monmouth. The History of the Kings of Britain. Translated by Lewis Thorpe. New York: Penguin Books, 1984. The introduction to Geoffrey’s classic work provides a good compact overview of Geoffrey’s life, achievements, and influence.

Heng, Geraldine. Empire of Magic: Medieval Romance and the Politics of Cultural Fantasy. New York: Columbia University Press, 2003. Includes a chapter on Geoffrey’s History of the Kings of Britain, its place in romance literature, and the role of magic in the work.

Loomis, Roger Sherman. Arthurian Literature in the Middle Ages: A Collaborative History. New York: Clarendon Press, 1967. A clear and accessible survey of Arthurian literature throughout the Middle Ages, establishing a context for Geoffrey’s achievements.

Wright, Neil, ed. The Historia Regum Britanniae of Geoffrey of Monmouth. Rochester, N.Y.: D. S. Brewer, 1985. A comprehensive summary of modern scholarly views about Geoffrey’s life and aims.