Lambert writes:
At that time the Saxons increased in number and grew in Britain. On the death of Hengist, Octha his son came down from the northern part of Britain to the kingdom of the men of Kent, and from him are descended the kings of Kent. Then Arthur, leader of the Picts was ruling the kingdoms of the British interior. He was mighty in strength and a fearsome soldier. Seeing that England was being attacked in this way, and that wealth of the land was being despoiled and many people captured and ransomed and expelled from their inheritances, he attacked the Saxons in a ferocious assault, with the kings of the Britons, and rushing against them fought manfully, being dux bellorum twelve times as written above.
Lambert is alone among the Dark Age and medieval writers in reading the phrase ‘cum brittonum regibus’ not as ‘with the kings of the Britons’, i.e. that he was not a king, but as ‘with the kings of the Britons’ because he, though a king, is not British. Although Lambert may have had other, Kentish-derived material, saying Arthur was a Pict, Occam’s razor leads us to the conclusion that we already know what is his source – the Wonder of Arthur’s Palace in Pictland. It could be an inference from this alone that Arthur was a native of Pictland. Lambert may have had no idea where the regions of Buelt and Ercing were, but Pictland would have been comprehensible to him.
As far as we can ascertain, Lambert is the first writer to say that Arthur is the King of Britain. This is no longer a surprising image, as it has been the standard interpretation of Arthur’s position in fiction since the late twelfth century. However, for a historian in 1120 to make such a claim is remarkable.
Lambert’s view of Arthur, as a warleader against the Saxons and as King of Britain, is an extension of the historical line we have been following. The other ecclesiastical materials diverge in the same way as the Welsh vernacular ones. In them, Arthur inhabits a world of giants, monsters and miracles. His armies and royal allies are reduced to small bands of heroes, with Kei and Bedwyr named among them. A concentration on south-east Wales is in keeping with the Mirabilia, but is combined with a shift towards a later historical position as a contemporary of Maelgwn and Gildas.
Both strands of twelfth-century opinion are brought together in the major Arthurian work of the period, Geoffrey of Monmouth’s History of the Kings of Britain.
NINE
Early in the 1130s, Geoffrey of Monmouth was thinking about the history of Britain. It seemed strange to him that, apart from the brilliant works of Gildas and of Bede, so little had been written about the early kings of Britain, ‘or indeed about Arthur and all the others who followed on after the Incarnation’.
It was then that Walter, Archdeacon of Oxford, presented Geoffrey with a very ancient book in the British language, brought, according to some versions, ‘from Britannia’. This book ‘attractively composed to form a consecutive and orderly narrative, set out the deeds [of the Kings of Britain] from Brutus, the first king of the Britons down to Cadwallader son of Cadwallo’. At Walter’s request, Geoffrey of Monmouth translated the book into Latin. That was, according to him, the origin of the book Historia Regum Britanniae – ‘The History of the Kings of Britain’, which appeared under his name.
The book tells the story of ninety-nine British kings, the majority pre-Christian and, before Geoffrey, pre-historic. As the introduction hints, Arthur is the central figure in the History. The book was an instant hit. The historian, Henry of Huntingdon, seeing a copy for the first time in 1139, wrote approvingly to a colleague. At least fifty manuscripts survive from the twelfth century alone, outweighing all the manuscripts of all the earlier Arthurian sources put together. By the end of the century, translations into French, English and Welsh had spread Geoffrey’s version even further afield.
Later in the twelfth century, William of Newburgh wrote critically
In our own day, a writer of the opposite tendency [to the truthful Gildas] has emerged. To atone for these faults of the Britons he weaves a laughable web of fiction about them. . . . This man is called Geoffrey, and bears the soubriquet Arthur, because he has taken up the stories about Arthur from the old fictitious accounts of the Britons, has added to them himself and has cloaked them with the honourable title of history. . . . It is clear that Geoffrey’s entire narration about Arthur, his successors and his predecessors after Vortigern, was invented partly by himself and partly by others. The motive was either an uncontrolled passion for lying, or secondly a desire to please the Britons.
(Walsh and Kennedy 1986)
This passage is often quoted to show how even contemporaries saw through Geoffrey’s fiction. This is misleading. William of Newburgh, writing forty years after Geoffrey, was in a minority in condemning everything in the book as a lie. Although most of the kings are unknown before Geoffrey, the bulk of the book is dedicated to characters such as Brutus, Brennius, Cassivelaunus, Constantine, Cadwallo and of course Arthur, who were already known from earlier sources.
That is not to say that we can take Geoffrey at face value. Much of his work is fiction, or at least fictionalised. One of the major distorting factors can be found in the title, ‘The History of the Kings of Britain’. All the major characters are made ‘kings of Britain’. As Geoffrey understands the term, they are actually kings of England and rightful overlords of Scotland, Wales and Cornwall, a concept derived from the aftermath of the Norse invasions. There is no question of it being a fifth/sixth-century reality. Thus Cadwallo, Gildas’s tyrants, Constantine the Great, Cassivelaunus and Brenn(i) us, the Celtic chieftain who sacked Rome, are all kings of Britain. It is no surprise, therefore, to find that Ambrosius and Arthur are kings of Britain too.
As Geoffrey begins his History with a claim to a unique source, it is reasonable to investigate this first. The idea of an orderly and consecutive narrative of kings immediately raises the possibility of a kings’ list or genealogy. The work is light on dates, pointing away from an annalistic or chronicle work. Piggott (1941) showed recurring patterns of names, suggesting several genealogies of related or supposedly related persons, similar to those in the Harleian Manuscript. He argued that a Welsh-style genealogy, ordered A, son of B, son of C, with A being the modern descendant of an ancestral C, has at some point been confused with a biblical-style genealogy, A begat B begat C, in which C is modern and A ancient. This simple mistake would transform a fairly conventional genealogy leading back to Caswallaun (perhaps Maelgwn Gwynedd’s ‘father’ from the Harleian Genealogies), into a bizarre list culminating in Julius Caesar’s 55 BC adversary Cassivelaunus and thus consisting of pre-Roman rulers.
This theory explains why we find Dark Age names such as Cunedagius, Urianus, Gerennus and his son Catellus (Gereint and Cadwy) in the story of ancient Britain. Such genealogies could have formed a framework by which a British author could have ordered a history.
Unfortunately, genealogies cannot form the basis of Geoffrey’s Arthurian section. This begins with Constantine, a scion of the Breton royal house, not immediately connected with the previous rulers of Britain. The succession goes to his eldest son Constans, then to Vortigern and his son, then back to two of Constantine’s sons, then to his grandson Arthur, then to the peripherally connected tyrants before ending in Cadwallo and Cadwallader. These are not treated as a genealogical succession, nor can they plausibly derive from one. The genealogy of Cadwallo, which does not include any of Geoffrey’s Dark Age kings except Malgo/Maelgwn, was long established. Cadwallo actually recites it in the book. The ‘kings’ of this period are all from known sources, but had never been connected before.
Geoffrey’s ‘Arthurian’ section incorporates material from various sources. He quotes directly from Gildas’s de Excidio, using the Latin version, not translating from a Welsh intermediary. This would imply that the ‘very ancient book’ did not offer a detailed context for the Arthurian period. The framing passages showing the period as following Agitius and preceding the tyrants of de Excidio must be Geoffrey’s editorial additions.
Without the material deri
ved from Gildas, the ‘very ancient book’ looks like a relatively disjointed history of Britain, with separate episodes about Dark Age kings, genealogies without historical context, and undated lists of events. Such a work is not hard to imagine: we have already encountered one, the Harleian Manuscript. Is it possible, therefore, that Geoffrey had such a composite work? The Harleian Manuscript has as its basis Historia Brittonum and it is obvious that Geoffrey has this too. Historia Brittonum, like Historia Regum Britanniae, is a history beginning with Brutus the first king, arriving at Cadwallo by way of Arthur.
This presents us with two possibilities. The first is that Geoffrey simply has a Latin copy of Historia Brittonum, which he uses along with de Excidio to supplement his ‘very ancient book’. If so, the ancient book would have contained very little indeed. Once Gildas, Historia Brittonum and other known Latin sources are removed, there is little potentially British-derived material, and none of that orderly and consecutive narrative. The second possibility is that the ‘very ancient book’ is a British translation of the Historia. This is by no means inconceivable, though no such work exists for comparison.
Another approach is to investigate just how ancient such a source book could be. At its earliest, it must post-date the late seventh-century reign of Cadwallader. If it incorporates Historia Brittonum, this brings it forward to the early ninth century. Some features, such as the use of the form ‘Urianus’ for the Historia’s ‘Urbgen’ point it forward from this, while others such as Camblan for the Annales’ Camlann, and the early names of Arthur’s equipment suggest something in the early tenth century. This is supported by the reference to Athelstan (reigned 924–40) as king of England at the end of the book.
The most generous hypothesis is that Geoffrey’s very ancient book is a tenth-century British manuscript, perhaps an expanded version of Historia Brittonum. Most commentators would not even grant this. It is possible that Geoffrey combined material from known (Latin) sources with disparate British legends unconnected before Historia Regum Britanniae. Geoffrey lets slip that these legends exist in unwritten form: ‘these deeds were handed down joyfully in oral tradition, just as if they had been committed to writing, by many peoples who had only their memory to go on.’
The ancient book is not cited throughout as a source. It appears in the introduction, and serves the purpose of validating the author’s work while at the same time distancing him from its content. Geoffrey might want to conceal his own authorial voice, given the dangerous times he lived in. The men to whom different manuscripts of Historia Regum Britanniae are dedicated were contenders in the Anarchy, the civil wars raging in England, and political points could easily be inferred from the book.
The principal dispute in the Anarchy was whether a woman could succeed to the throne or pass the throne to her son. This was unprecedented in the actual history of England, but Geoffrey shows it happening several times. Readers might also see Modred’s treachery to his uncle, Arthur, as reflecting the political situation. King Stephen had broken his oath to his uncle Henry I and usurped the kingdom of Queen Mathilda. In fact, Modred’s usurpation is the only point where Geoffrey cites the ancient book as his authority: ‘About this particular matter, most noble Duke, Geoffrey of Monmouth prefers to say nothing. He will, however, in his own poor style and without wasting words, describe the battle which our most famous king fought against his nephew . . . for that he found in the British treatise already referred to.’
Geoffrey’s obvious sources are not confined to British history. His Latin sources include Jerome and Bede for synchronism, Orosius for Roman history and Roman epics for stylistic and verbal features.
Geoffrey and Gildas
While Geoffrey cites the ‘very ancient book’ once, he makes frequent references to Gildas. Some of this is to the real Gildas of de Excidio, some to the writer of the Gildasian Recension. Most are less clear and may give another clue to his source. Geoffrey clearly knows Gildas’s de Excidio Britanniae. Cadwallo, while denouncing his countrymen, says ‘As the historian Gildas tells us . . .’ before quoting directly from it. This is the lone example of Geoffrey using Gildas’s name in connection with his actual work. Every other citation is problematic. When Geoffrey says that Gildas has said sufficient about the dispute between King Lud and his brother Nennius over the renaming of London, we may be invited to share his joke that Gildas says nothing about it. When we read that King Alfred’s Laws are only English translations of the prehistoric Laws of Dunwallo Molmutius, a character from the Harleian Genealogies, via a Latin translation by Gildas, this may derive from an impression that laws are the sort of thing Gildas wrote. However, Geoffrey’s other references to Gildas are not so explicable.
Geoffrey reports the evangelisation of Britain before AD 156, the death of the first Christian king, Lucius. This information is derived from Bede, who received a mistaken report to this effect from Rome. Faganus and Duvianus lead the missionary work, but are later accompanied by a great number of other religious men: ‘Their names and deeds can be found in the book which Gildas wrote about the victory of Aurelius Ambrosius. All this Gildas set out in a treatise which is so lucidly written that it seemed to me unnecessary that it should be described a second time in my more homely style’ (HRB IV.20, Thorpe 1966:125).
Geoffrey asserts that Gildas writes about the deeds of the saints again: ‘It was at this time that St Germanus of Auxerre came and Lupus, Bishop of Troyes, with him, to preach the word of God to the Britons . . . through their agency God performed many wonders which Gildas has described with great literary skill.’ Here Geoffrey may have written ‘Gildas’ by mistake – it is Bede who covers the deeds of these two saints in detail. However, both references together suggest that Gildas produced hagiography. This is very strange. The account of the conversion of Britain is not found in any work attributed to Gildas, nor can any of his works be called ‘about the victory of Aurelius Ambrosius’. Geoffrey does not read de Excidio as ascribing victory to Ambrosius. Even if de Excidio were the work intended, it only names three saints, not a great number, not Faganus and Duvianus, and not as missionaries, but as martyrs. Whatever book Geoffrey is thinking of, it is not de Excidio.
On the other hand, Geoffrey clearly knows Historia Brittonum. The story of Vortigern and Vortimer derives directly from it. Geoffrey, however, never recognisably cites this work. If he knew it in the Gildasian Recension, the most common at the time, then he specifically distinguishes material therein from that found in the ancient book. Until he receives the book, he has hardly any British material ‘apart from such mention of them as Gildas and Bede had each made in a brilliant book on the subject’. As he only refers to one book by Gildas, and it must include de Excidio Britanniae, we can only assume that Geoffrey must be using a version of Gildas supplemented by hagiographical material and extended treatment of Ambrosius, and perhaps the whole of the Gildasian Historia Brittonum. If his ‘Gildas’ is extended in this way, then there is even less material additional to it which we would have to assign to the ‘very ancient book’.
There is one more factor in the equation, Geoffrey’s own contribution as author. To find out what this might have been, we need to consider him in relation to other historians of his own time.
Geoffrey and the Historians
It is about this Arthur that the Britons tell such trifling stories even today. Clearly he was a man more worthy to be extolled in true histories, as the leader who long preserved his tottering homeland and kindled an appetite for war in the shattered minds of his countrymen, than to be dreamed of in fallacious fables. (William of Malmesbury, The Deeds of the Kings of the English c. 1125.)
At the end of some manuscripts of the Historia Regum Britanniae, Geoffrey refers pompously to three historians. ‘The task of describing [the] kings who succeeded from that moment in Wales, I leave to my contemporary Caradoc of Llancarfan. The kings of the Saxons I leave to William of Malmesbury and Henry of Huntingdon. I recommend these last to say nothing at all about the kings of
the Britons, seeing that they do not have in their possession the book in the British language which Walter, Archdeacon of Oxford brought from Britannia’ (after Thorpe 1966).
Although William and Henry are told to avoid the Britons, this warning does not extend to Caradoc. But for the survival of his Life of Gildas, we would have no idea of Caradoc’s output and would have to take on trust that he was working on or capable of working on the history of Welsh rulers from the eighth century onwards. His surviving work, however, bears no affinity to Geoffrey’s. If Geoffrey knew of Caradoc’s work, we have to wonder why he does not incorporate anything of it in his book. The key Arthurian episode in the Life of Gildas, the abduction of Guenevere, does not appear in Geoffrey. Their works show that they have fundamental differences in approach. For Geoffrey, the churchmen of Britain are loyal subordinates of the kings. They are not, as Caradoc and the other saints’ Lives have it, mediators to whom the kings must turn for help or absolution. Geoffrey specifically says of the monk-king Constans (Arthur’s ‘uncle’), ‘What he learned in the cloister had nothing to do with how to rule a kingdom’.
The early twelfth century saw an upsurge of interest in national history. The Normans and the Angevins had their national histories. Henry of Huntingdon reports Henry I’s enquiries into the origins of the French and his discovery that they were descended from the Trojan Antenor. England was particularly well off for ancient, Anglo-Saxon, sources. The Laud Manuscript of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, for instance, was written 1121–54. These provided material for William of Malmesbury, who began his Gesta Regum Anglorum c. 1125 and Henry of Huntingdon, starting his Historia Anglorum in 1133. This is the background which inspired Geoffrey’s work.
The Reign of Arthur Page 24
