The search for King Arthur....Geoffrey Monmouth

In the search for Arthur there is one Welsh cleric that we simply cannot ignore. Geoffrey Monmouth. If you have been reading my blogs, you will have seen his name come up several times. Today, I want to look at the best-seller of the medieval period, Geoffrey Monmouth The History of the Kings of Britain.

Geoffrey stated that his work was based on a lost manuscript that only he alone had been able to examine. The lost manuscript remains lost. Whether it actually ever existed in the first place is doubtful.

A great deal of what we now think we know about Arthur comes from the ideas set down in Geoffrey's texts. He makes Arthur Pendragon, son of Uther Pendragon, into a hero. There is a wise prophet called Merlin who advises the young Arthur. Arthur becomes a king so great that he can stand up to the Romans and beat them. In fact he is so great, he is almost invincible. Arthur and his knights, according to the texts, spends most of their time riding up and down the country fighting in noble battles. He is, with out a doubt, according to Geoffrey, the greatest King that Britain has ever had.

But like all good stories of Kings, there always seems to be a hornet in the nest. Modred, his own nephew, and who was at one time trusted to look after Britain while Arthur went on a quest to save some poor young unfortunate girl who had been taken captive by a Spanish giant, betrays him.

They fight...Arthur wins....they fight again...Arthur wins, but this time he is fatally wounded.

'And even the renowned King Arthur himself was mortally wounded; and being carried thence to the isle of Avallon to be cured of his wounds, he gave up the crown of Britain to his kinsman Constantine, the son of Cador, duke of Cornwall, in the five hundred and forty-second year of our Lord's incarnation.'

So there we are. We have the principle players. We also have Avalon. The legend grows.

But, Geoffrey published his work at politically sensitive time. The Welsh revolts of the 1130's had claimed that "Arthur would rise again..." I am sure King Henry, had something to say about that.

"It is hardly surprising, then, that in this climate, given Arthur's rapidly growing status as folk hero, tourist draw and political rallying cry, the establishment should try and dig him up, to hit at least two birds with one stone: prove him dead and reinvent him as a tourist event."
Michael Wood In search of England.

And so the story continues.

I'll catch you later.

Mary xx

Historical fiction - the earliest account of Arthur

 No one said this would be easy.....

The earliest written documentation of Arthur is given to us by a 9th Century monk who went by the name of Nennius. Nennius wrote Historia Brittonum, The History of the Britons. It is not an easy read. Structure and organisation were two words Nennius chose to ignore. But it is worth persevering with his work, because there are some real gems in there. 

What I love about the work of Nennius is how he portrays Arthur. Think of a Dark Age version of Iron Man and you might be getting somewhere.  Strangely however, he does not describe Arthur as a king. See what you think?

"then Arthur fought against them in those days with the Kings of Briton, but he himself was leader of battles."

Has time and folk law turned a general into a King?

Maybe.

Nennius also describes a prophet called Ambrosius. Ambrosius and Arthur are often portrayed in later works as being one and the same. Nennius clearly states that they are not. They are two very different people.

So what does Nennius say about Arthur? First and foremost, he describes Arthur as a great warrior and lists the twelve battles which Arthur led. I am not going to describe all the battles here, but I am briefly going to look at the two most controversial.

 Battle number 8

"The eighth battle was in Fort Guinnion in which Arthur carried the image of St Mary, ever virgin, on his shoulder..."

With old text I think we have to be very careful as to how we translate them. And I believe that the translation here is wrong. I do not think that Arthur carried an image of St Mary on his shoulder. I think he carried the image on his shield, which would make slightly more sense. Ignoring the translation, it does tell us that Arthur was a Christian.

Battle number 12.

"The twelfth battle was at Mount Badon, in which nine hundred and sixty men fell in one day from one charge from Arthur, and no one overthrew them except himself alone."

Badon Hill

This is the most famous battle that Arthur fought in. It is generally accepted that this was Arthur's greatest triumph and he did hold back the Saxon invasion.  Did Arthur slay 960 men in a single charge without any help? Probably not. Was he a great military man? Almost certainly.

Arthur, whoever he was, had captured the imagination of a nation and in later works he became the hero that we all know and love.