1517 Geoffrey of Monmouth HISTORY OF BRITISH KINGS Arthur MERLIN Lear ARTHURIAN

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[Early Printing - Post-Incunabula - Paris] [Celts and Britons - History and Folklore] [King Arthur and Arthurian Romances - Sources] [Great Britain - History - Ancient - Kings and rulers] [Shakespeare's Plays - King Lear - Sources] [Merlin's Prophecies] Printed in Paris by Josse Badius Ascenius, 13 Sept. 1517. Text in the original Latin. Edited by Ivo Cavellatus, professor of the College of Quimper in Paris, from four manuscripts available in Paris. Includes Prophetiae Merlini, i.e. "The Prophecies of Merlin". Second Edition (first printed by Badius in 1508) of one of the most important documents of Anglo-Norman literature, and "one of the most popular and influential historical works of the middle ages" (ODNB). Geoffrey of Monmouth (c.1100-1154/5), bishop of St Asaph, completed his "History of British Kings" by 1139. Geoffrey's influential history introduced such figures as Arthur, Merlin, and King Lear to European reading public. "The fact that thereafter the Arthurian cycle was mediated primarily through the mid-fifteenth-century Morte d'Arthur of Sir Thomas Malory should not detract from the position of Geoffrey of Monmouth as its great originator." (op. cit.) The figure of King Leir [Lear] seems to have been Geoffrey's original creation, and arguably the most successful. "Indeed, Tatlock described the Leir story along with the vogue of Arthur as Geoffrey's greatest contribution to the world." (op. cit.) Shakespeare's play is based on various accounts of the semi-legendary Celtic figure, king Leir of Britain. Shakespeare's most immediate source was probably Raphael Holinshed's Chronicles . However, Holinshed himself found the story in the much earlier Historia Regum Britanniae by Geoffrey of Monmouth. Geoffrey's Historia makes Britain's foundation contiguous with classical myth, in the person of Brutus, a Trojan �migr�. It proceeds to an account of a series of royal dynasties, some of whose members enjoyed later fame, to the last glorious British kings, notably Uther Pendragon and Arthur, before the final victory of the Saxons. Geoffrey concludes his history in the seventh century AD, where Bede's Historia ecclesiastica begins. Geoffrey of Monmouth (Latin: Galfridus Monemutensis) was a Welsh cleric and one of the major figures in the development of British history and the popularization of tales of King Arthur. Geoffrey "is thought to have been a monk of the Benedictine abbey at Monmouth, and about 1140 was made archdeacon of Llandaff. He was consecrated bishop of St. Asaph Feb. 24, 1152, but seems to have died before he actually entered on his duties there. Geoffrey is famous for his Historia regum Britannia , which was highly popular in all lands during the Middle Ages, furnished Sir Thomas Malory the material for his Morte d'Arthur , and has been drawn upon by poets from Shakespeare to Tennyson. It is a skilful mixture of history, legend, and pure romance, beginning with the fall of Troy and the story of Brutus, a descendant of Aeneas, who is made the ancestor of the Britons, and ending with Cadwalader and the downfall of the Celtic power in Britain. The main source, Geoffrey states, was a "very old book" given him by Walter, archdeacon of Oxford, but he also used Gildas, Nennius, and Bede." ( The new Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of religious knowledge , vol.IV, p.454) Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae ("History of the Kings of Britain") relates the purported mythical history of Britain, from its first settlement by Brutus, a descendant of the Trojan hero Aeneas, to the death of Cadwallader in the 7th century, including Julius Caesar's invasions of Britain, two kings, Leir and Cymbeline, later immortalized by William Shakespeare, and one of the earliest developed narratives of King Arthur. Historia Regum Britanniae is now acknowledged as a literary work of national myth containing little reliable history. This has since led many modern scholars to agree with William of Newburgh, who wrote around 1190 that "it is quite cle... read more

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