Geoffrey of Monmouth
died 1155
medieval English chronicler and bishop of St.
Asaph (1152), whose major work, the Historia
regum Britanniae (History of the Kings of
Britain), brought the figure of Arthur into
European literature.
In three passages of the Historia Geoffrey
describes himself as “Galfridus Monemutensis,”
an indication that he probably came from
Monmouth. Possibly of Breton descent, he
appeared as witness to a number of documents in
Oxford during the period 1129–51. Geoffrey
alleges that the Historia was translated from a
“very old book in the British tongue” brought by
Walter, archdeacon of Oxford, from Brittany.
This seems a pure fabrication, but it is clear
that Geoffrey was for most of his life an Oxford
cleric, closely connected with Walter and
sharing with him a taste for letters. He may
have been an Augustinian canon in the secular
college of St. George, Oxford, of which Walter
was provost.
The Historia regum Britanniae, published
sometime between 1135 and 1139, was one of the
most popular books of the Middle Ages, although
its historical value is almost nil. The story
begins with the settlement of Britain by Brutus
the Trojan, great-grandson of Aeneas, and by the
Trojan Corineus, the eponymous founder of
Cornwall, who exterminate giants inhabiting
Britain. Then follow the reigns of the early
kings down to the Roman conquest; here are found
such well-known episodes as those of Locrine and
Sabrina, the founding of Bath by Bladud and of
Leicester by Leir (Lear), and the division of
Leir’s kingdom between the two ungrateful
daughters. The story of the Saxon infiltration
during the reign of the wicked usurper
Vortigern, of the successful resistance of the
Saxons by Vortimer, and of the restoration of
the rightful line, followed by the great reigns
of Aurelius and his brother Uther Pendragon,
leads up to the account of Arthur’s conquests,
the culminating point of the work. Chapters
106–111 introduce the enchanter Merlin, who
predicts, in an obscure and apocalyptic manner,
the future political history of Britain. These
chapters were first published separately, before
1136, and dedicated to Alexander, bishop of
Lincoln. They gave rise to the genre of
political prophecies attributed to Merlin.
Probably between 1148 and 1151, Geoffrey
produced a poem in ornate Latin hexameters, the
Vita Merlini, which portrays a Merlin whose
adventures are based on genuine Celtic material
about a madman with a gift for divination.
Denounced from the first by sober historians,
Geoffrey’s fictional history nevertheless had an
enormous influence on later chroniclers.
Romanticized versions in the vernacular, the
so-called Bruts, were in circulation from about
1150. Writers of the later Middle Ages gave the
material a wide currency; and indeed Geoffrey’s
influence was at its greatest after the
accession of the Tudors. The text, with an
English translation, was published in 1929 by
Acton Griscom and Robert Ellis Jones. J.J. Parry
produced an edition of the Vita Merlini in 1925.
