Goeffrey of Monmouth, d. 1154, Archdeacon of Monmouth, was made Bishop of St. Asaph in 1152, but afterwards returned to the monastery of Abingdon, where he was abbot. He wrote a Latin version of the prophecies, &c. of Merlin, Chronicon sive Historia Britonum (written about 1138?); and some other works are ascribed to him. His History became very popular, and there are few works of which so many MSS. are extant. Edits. in Latin, Paris, 1508, 4to. Aaron Thompson’s trans. into English was pub. Lon., 1718, 8vo. New ed., by J. A. Giles, LL.D., 1842, 8vo.
The manner in which the British History or Chronicle was published, was as follows:—At some period before the year 1147, Geoffrey of Monmouth became possessed of an ancient British Chronicle brought to him from Britany, which, if not the same as the Chronicle of Tysilio, preserved in Jesus College, appears to have been in all probability a varying copy of it. Walter Calenius, archdeacon of Oxford, by some supposed to be the same person as Walter de Mapes the poet, which is somewhat uncertain, brought it over. However, Geoffrey of Monmouth determined upon publishing it, and a copy of Merlin’s Prophecies coming also into his hands, he published both. He took a most unwise course, we may be justified in saying, latinizing the names, making various additions and embellishments of his own, and uniting Merlin’s Prophecy to his volume, which is to be regarded as having formed no part of the original. Having done this, and loaded the narrative already disguised by extravagant legends, with many additional fictions, he strongly protests its truth.
A certain writer has come up in our times to wipe out the blots on the Britons, weaving together ridiculous figments about them, and raising them with impudent vanity high above the virtue of the Macedonians and Romans. This man is named Geoffrey, and has the by-name of Arturus, because he cloaked with the honest name of history, coloured in Latin phrase, the fables about Arthur taken from the old tales of the Bretons, with increase of his own…. Moreover, in this book that he calls the History of the Britons, how saucily and how shamelessly he lies almost throughout, no one, unless ignorant of the old histories, when he falls upon that book, can doubt…. I omit how much of the acts of the Britons before Julius Cæsar that man invented, or wrote from the invention of others as if authentic.
He is the Welsh Herodotus, the father of ancient history and fables; for, he who will have the first must have the latter. Polydore Virgil accuseth him of many falsehoods; (so hard it is to halt before a cripple!) who, notwithstanding, by others is defended, because but a translator, and not the original reporter.
Camden disliked the British history of Geoffrey of Monmouth, and his authority drew others to treat it with absolute contempt. But, since his time, through the indefatigable labours of many industrious men, other ancient authors have been published, which plainly shew, that much true history is to be met with, even in that book, though embarrassed with fiction.
Notwithstanding this author has not been without his advocates, particularly the famous J. Leland, his history is now universally regarded in no other light than that of a romance.
We do not insert the “British History” in our series of Early English Records as a work containing an authentic narrative, nor do we wish to compare Geoffrey of Monmouth with Bede in point of veracity. But the fact of his having supplied our early poets so large a portion of their subjects, and the universal belief which at one time prevailed as to the authenticity of his history, make it in every respect a question whether he ought not to be preserved, whilst the ample allusions, and, if we may use the expression, the groundwork, on which many of the facts are based, enable us indubitably to introduce him into our series as an addition (though secondary in value) to materials which our readers will find not to be inexhaustible, respecting our early history.
One of the most remarkable writers of the twelfth century, both for the popular reputation which he has since continued to enjoy, and the influence he exercised over subsequent historians…. Geoffrey’s “History” soon became extensively popular, and within no long time after its publication the celebrity which he had given to the legendary king Arthur obtained for him the title of Galfridus Arturus. It is impossible to consider Geoffrey of Monmouth’s History of the British Kings in any other light than as a tissue of fables. Its author was either deceived by his materials, or he wished to deceive his readers. It is certain that, if he did not intentionally deceive, we must understand, by translating the Breton book, that he meant only working up the materials furnished by it into his history; for some parts of the latter work are mere compilations by himself from the old writers on British affairs then commonly referred to.
The Livy of the monkish historians…. His style is clear and simple, his narrative told in an effective manner, while his authenticity has found such eminent supporters as Leland and Usher.
But Geoffrey’s work sufficiently shows that he wrote, as he professed to write, from documents. He probably rationalized a little, tampered with genealogies, arranged dates, and in other ways did infinite mischief; but it would be monstrous to suppose that he invented the history he set forth. If he did, he ought to rank as one of the first artists in literature. But in fact nothing is more difficult than to invent a new story, let alone twenty; and the exploit becomes incredible, if we add the difficulty of palming the forgeries upon a nation as its own history. There can be no doubt that Geoffrey derived the bulk of his work from old traditions, and probably, as he himself states, from some old compilation.
A monument of stupendous delusion; but in which he seems to have been the deceiver rather than the deceived…. If there were many scholars who saw through this tissue of lies, the great mass were carried away by it. Men believed the stories presented with so much gravity by a Benedictine and a bishop, and they certainly found their contents most fascinating. The sense of the marvellous and the mysterious was nourished not less than the sense of the chivalric and heroic, or the love for the glitter and splendour of a kingly life; and Geoffrey’s rhetorical, even poetical, style brought to bear with their full force all these elements. The effect of the work was therefore tremendous. Geoffrey’s influence grew through the entire course of the Middle Ages, and spreading in a thousand channels, reached far into modern times, down to Shakspere, nay to Tennyson.
One of the most extraordinary works of art that the Middle Ages ever succeeded in producing. Of mythical tales and curious legends there was certainly no lack in those days; but the fabrication of a long consecutive history, to fill up a gap or form a prelude to the authentic annals of a nation, was something altogether new. Yet the story was so wonderfully told, the invention was so admirable, and the marvels related appealed so strongly to the imagination, that the world for ages after seems to have been at a loss what to make of it. It was not easy, even at the first, for a man of any judgment to be a thorough believer; but it required some boldness, even after centuries had passed away, to dispute the authority of fictions which owed their vitality in the first instance to Geoffrey’s imaginative pen.
Dear old Geoffrey of Monmouth, the wonderful Munchausen who in his Latin pages embalmed all the legends, and fed half the romances.
Monmouth’s chronicle was the book that, above all others, brought King Arthur home again out of Brittany to Britain…. In the literature of its time the book was as the ugly duck of the farmyard where not a fowl could recognise the future swan.
Geoffrey of Monmouth was at least fifty years of age when he was ordained priest in 1152. His literary career was already over, and its record is a brilliant one notwithstanding the charges made on one side that his Cymric scholarship was faulty, and on the other that his Latinity is of vulgar order. The metrical “Vita Merlini” has been considered too excellent a piece of composition for his pen, and therefore supposititious; but Mr. Ward gives good reason for believing it genuine. Indeed, the suggestion—however gratuitous—that Geoffrey was a Benedictine monk is almost a necessary one to account for the education evinced by his labours, not the most important part of them being the reduction of ancient British legends into respectable mediæval Latin history—a task accomplished with manifest literary skill and tact. His allusions to antecedent and contemporary writers are a proof that he was no mere monkish student eager to swallow wondrous stories, but a shrewd scholar equipped with all the learning of his age. “He was a man whose like could not be found for learning and knowledge,” says the “Gwentian Brut,” and had a charm of manner which made his society agreeable to men of high station.
The work must be regarded as an historical novel, in which the chief part is played by Arthur, whose deeds, however, form only the central chapters in a long account of struggles between the owners of the soil and foreign assailants: the interest is racial, rather than personal.
