Geoffrey Of Monmouth History Of The Kings Of Britain

Geoffrey Of Monmouth History Of The Kings Of Britain

The History of the Kings of Britain is a thirteen-book chronicle completed around 1136 by Geoffrey of Monmouth, a Welsh cleric who served as Bishop of Saint Asaph. It purports to translate a lost ancient British book written in the vernacular, but modern scholarship generally treats it as a work of inventive historiography. The text opens with Brutus of Troy and follows a continuous line of legendary British kings through to Cadwaladr, ending with the Saxon arrival in the fifth century. It is the primary source for the early Arthurian tradition and the figure of Merlin. If you are looking at a copy of Geoffrey Of Monmouth History Of The Kings Of Britain, you will notice almost immediately that the manuscript tradition is messy. There are over two hundred surviving manuscripts, which sounds impressive until you realize no two are identical and most contain significant interpolations or omissions. The standard edition used by scholars is the one edited by John Steven Evans, published in 1989 by Oxford University Press. That is the version I would point anyone toward first. There is also the older Murray edition from 1929, which is publicly available and fine for casual reading but unreliable for any serious citation. A second critical edition by Wright, published in 1838, is in the public domain and occasionally useful for tracing the Latin text before later editors made changes. The main variant you will run into involves the later books. Books eight through ten, which cover the Arthurian material, are sometimes present in abbreviated form in certain manuscript families, while other families contain expanded versions with additional episodes not found elsewhere. This is not a minor difference. The "standard" Vita Merlini and Historia Regum Britanniae conflate into a single tradition in many manuscripts, and the boundary between them becomes opaque after book nine in some copies. I ran into this specific problem a few years ago while tracking how the character of Blaise appears as Merlin's scribe in some later redactions. The answer was that a thirteenth-century interpolator added that detail in the Welsh Marches manuscripts, and it does not appear in the earliest recension at all. Once I cross-referenced Evans with the Cambridge manuscript MS Ff.1.17, the pattern became clear.

What the text actually contains

Book one establishes the Trojan founding myth. Brutus is the grandson of Aeneas, exiled after his father's death, and he founds a new Troy on an island in the western ocean. He names the island Britain and divides it among his three sons. This opening section is loosely based on the Historia Brittonum of Nennius and the Annales Cambriae, but Geoffrey expands and rearranges freely. Books two through seven cover the kings from Lear to Cador. The story of Lear and his daughters appears here centuries before Shakespeare. The Cordelia episode in Geoffrey is quite different from the later dramatic tradition. Cordelia marries an ally and dies grieving after her sisters' betrayals, but she does not kill herself. The moral structure is simpler than the later versions suggest. Books eight through ten focus on Arthur. This is the version that shaped the entire medieval romance tradition. Geoffrey presents Arthur as a military leader who defeats the Saxons and Roman Empire simultaneously, establishes a vast kingdom, and wages war in Scotland, Norway, Denmark, Gaul, and Italy. The character of Merlin originates here. Geoffrey combines multiple earlier traditions about the prophet Myrddin Wyllt and the court bard Taliesin into a single figure he calls Merlyn. The Merlin story in Geoffrey is more political than the later romances would make it. He is an advisor and strategist, not a wandering wildman, until the later redactions shift that emphasis.

Books eleven through thirteen continue through the kings after Arthur and end with the Saxon hegemony. The final section is closer to actual history than the earlier material. Cadwaladr is the last British king, and his exile in France sets up the eventual Norman conquest narrative that justifies William's claim.

How reliable is this as a source

Depends on what you are using it for. For the period before the fifth century, Geoffrey is almost entirely unreliable as a historical source. The Bronze Age and Iron Age settings are fictional. The Roman period material borrows from Bede and Gildas but rearranges events chronologically to serve a narrative arc. For the fifth and sixth centuries, there is enough overlap with archaeological and documentary evidence that some historians treat the later books as a distorted but partially useful framework. The Arthurian section sits in a gray zone. There may be a historical nucleus, but Geoffrey's version is shaped by twelfth-century political concerns and literary conventions, not by accurate memory. A counter-intuitive point that beginners miss is that Geoffrey was not simply making things up. He was working within a tradition of British patriotism that had real political purpose. Henry I's court needed a narrative that connected the Normans to an ancient, prestigious British past. Geoffrey provided exactly that. The text functions as propaganda, but it is sophisticated propaganda built on selective use of genuine sources. The confusion arises when later readers treat the propaganda as history rather than as a deliberate fabrication. The more significant problem is that Geoffrey's inventions became accepted history for centuries. The Tudor dynasty traced its lineage back to Brutus through Geoffrey's framework. Shakespeare used it. The matter of Britain became a distinct literary cycle separate from the matter of Rome and the matter of France. This is why the text matters even though the history is largely invented.

Where to get a readable version

The Lewis Thorpe translation, published by Penguin in 1966, is the standard English version. It is complete, readable, and includes the Key to Britanny section that Thorpe added. For academic work, you want the Latin text from Evans. The Project Gutenberg version of the 1842 English translation by Thomas Wright is free online and adequate for general reading. The Loeb Classical Library edition edited by Chris L. Roberts appeared in 2007 and provides the Latin with facing English translation. It is more expensive but useful if you need to check specific passages against the original. The text is also available through the Perseus Digital Library and the Latin Library. Both are free. The Perseus version includes interlinear notes and is reasonably accurate for casual reference. The Latin Library version is a plain text dump and useful for searching but lacks editorial apparatus.

What most people get wrong about this text

The biggest misconception is that Geoffrey invented the Arthur legend. He did not. The early Arthur appears in the Annales Cambriae and the Historia Brittonum, both of which predate him by roughly a century. What Geoffrey did was create the first sustained narrative about Arthur as a king with a court, a complex backstory, and a wide range of adventures. He gave Arthur the character of Mordred as a nephew who betrays him. He gave him Guinevere, who in earlier sources is barely mentioned. He created the tournament at Kaerloyon. These are his contributions, not fabrications from nothing. Another misconception involves the Merlin character. Geoffrey drew on the Myrddin of the Welsh tradition, but he transformed him significantly. The original Myrddin is a madman who lives in the forest after the Battle of Arfderydd. Geoffrey merges that figure with elements from other prophetic traditions and creates a court advisor who is born naturally, not through magic. This is a deliberate choice that serves Geoffrey's narrative structure. Merlin needs to be present at the beginning of Arthur's story and absent from its end, and the madman version does not fit that requirement. The Cadmon gloss in some manuscripts is another area of confusion. Several copies include a passage that identifies Geoffrey as the translator of an ancient British book. Modern scholars have determined that this is almost certainly a later addition, possibly by Geoffrey himself or by a subsequent editor. The claim of a source text has no independent corroboration and should be treated as a literary device rather than an assertion of fact.

Practical advice for working with the text

If you are reading it for pleasure, use Thorpe and stop worrying about the historical accuracy. If you are doing research, you need to know which manuscript family you are working from and which edition matches it. The Evans edition is based primarily on the Lambeth Palace MS 561 and the Cambridge MS Ff.1.17, but neither represents the full tradition. Be aware that some passages appear in one family and not the other, and the differences can be substantial. The dating of the composition is also contested. 1136 is the traditional date, but some scholars argue for 1135 or even 1138. The work was clearly written during the anarchy of Stephen's reign, and the political context shapes the content. The emphasis on legitimate succession and the dangers of civil war reflects contemporary concerns more than ancient British history. For the Arthurian sections specifically, you should cross-reference with the Welsh triads, the Mabinogion tales, and the Anglo-Norman lais. Geoffrey's version is one branch of a much larger tradition. Reading it in isolation gives you a distorted picture of where the Arthur story was at that point in time.