Gruffudd ap Arthur (1095 - 1155)

Born 1095 in Monmouth, Wales

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Biography

Gruffudd ap Arthur is Notable.

British cleric and a major figure in the development of British historiography, known for The History of the Kings of Britain.

Name

Most often referred to as Geoffrey of Monmouth, the Latin version of his name was Galfridus Monemutensis or Galfridus Arturus, ^[1]with the Welsh version of his name being Gruffudd ap Arthur, Sieffre o Fynwy

To contemporaries, Geoffrey was known as Galfridus Artur(us) or variants thereof. Both Robert and Crick ^[2][3] note that the "Arthur" in these versions of his name may indicate the name of his father, or a nickname based on Geoffrey's scholarly interests. ^[3]

Birth

He was born in Wales or the Welsh Marches. He must have reached the age of majority by 1129, when he is recorded as witnessing a charter. ^[4]

Geoffrey was born at an undetermined date. J. C Crick states that "it seems likely that he was born within 10 years of 1100. ^[5] Crick's observation follows an earlier one by Idris Llewelyn Foster that "Geoffrey was born between 1090 and 1100. ^[1]

Welsh or Breton?

Brynley Roberts notes that in his Historia, Geoffrey refers to himself as Galfridus Monemutensis, "Geoffrey of Monmouth", which indicates a significant connection to Monmouth, Wales, and which may refer to his birthplace. ^[2]

Roberts notes that Geoffrey's works attest to some acquaintance with the place-names of the region. ^[2]

Crick observes that while earlier scholars assumed that Geoffrey was Welsh or at least spoke Welsh, Geoffrey's knowledge of the Welsh language appears to have been slight ^[3] Roberts recognizes that it is now recognised that there is no real evidence that Geoffrey was of either Welsh or Cambro-Norman descent, unlike for instance, Gerald of Wales. ^[2]

Crick adds that he may have sprung from the same French-speaking elite of the Welsh border country as the writers Gerald of Wales and Walter Map, and Robert, Earl of Gloucester, to whom Geoffrey dedicated versions of his History. ^[3] Roberts noted that it has been argued, by Frank Stenton among others, that Geoffrey's parents may have been among the many Bretons who took part in William I's conquest and settled in the southeast of Wales. ^[2] Monmouth had been in the hands of Breton lords since 1075 ^[2] or 1086 ^[3] and the names Galfridus and Arthur (if interpreted as a patronymic) were more common among the Bretons than the Welsh. ^[2]

Charles W. Dunn noted that Geoffrey may have served for a while in a Benedictine priory in Monmouth. ^[6]

St. George's College, Oxford

Geoffrey's name appears on six charters in the Oxford area between 1129 and 1151, someties styled magister ("teacher") ^[3] Crick believes that he was probably a secular canon of St. George's college since all the charters signed by Geoffrey are also signed by Walter, Archdeacon of Oxford, also a canon at that church. Another frequent co-signatory is Ralph of Monmouth, a canon of Lincoln. ^[3]

Bishop of St. Asaph

On 24 February 1152^[7] at Lambeth, Archbishop Theobald consecrated Geoffrey as Bishop of St Asaph, having ordained him a priest at Westminster 10 days before.

According to Lewis Thorpe, "There is no evidence that he ever visited his see, and indeed the wars of Owain Gwynedd make this most unlikely."^[8]

Death

Geoffrey appears to have died between 25 December 1154 and 24 December 1155, in 1155 according to Welsh chronicles, when his apparent successor, Richard, took office. ^[3]

Writings about Merlin

The earliest of Geoffrey's writings to appear was probably the Prophetiae Merlini (Prophecies of Merlin), which he wrote at some point before 1135, and which appears both independently and incorporated into The History of the Kings of Britain. It consists of a series of obscure prophetic utterances attributed to Merlin, which Geoffrey claimed to have translated from an unspecified language. ^[4]

"Geoffrey's structuring and reshaping of the Merlin and Arthur myths engendered the vast popularity of Merlin and Arthur myths in later literature, a popularity that lasts to this day; he is generally viewed by scholars as the major establisher of the Arthurian canon. ^[9]

Geoffrey also wrote a hexameter poem Vita Merlini ("Life of Merlin") in which Merlin, now known as Merlin of the Woods (Merlinus Sylvestris) or Scottish Merlin (Merlinus Caledonius), is portrayed as an old man living as a crazed and grief-stricken outcast in the forest who remembers previous dealings with Vortigern and Arthur. ^[4]

The History of the Kings of Britain

Geoffrey of Monmouth was one of the major figures in the development of British historiography and the popularity of tales of King Arthur. He is best known for his chronicle The History of the Kings of Britain (Latin: De gestis Britonum or Historia regum Britanniae)^[10]

The History of the Kings of Britain, the work best known to modern readers, relates the purported 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, taking in Julius Caesar's invasions of Britain, two kings, Leir and Cymbeline, later immortalised by William Shakespeare, and one of the earliest developed narratives of King Arthur. ^[4]

"Geoffrey claims in his dedication that the book is a translation of an "ancient book in the British language that told in orderly fashion the deeds of all the kings of Britain", given to him by Walter, Archdeacon of Oxford. Modern historians have dismissed this claim. ^[11] It is, however, likely that the Archdeacon furnished Geoffrey with some materials in the Welsh language that helped inspire his work, as Geoffrey's position and acquaintance with the Archdeacon would not have afforded him the luxury of fabricating such a claim outright."^[12]

"Much of it is based on the Historia Britonum, a 9th-century Welsh-Latin historical compilation, Bede's Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum and Gildas's 6th-century polemic De Excidio et Conquestu Britanniae expanded with material from Bardic oral tradition, genealogical tracts, and embellished by Geoffrey's own imagination. ^[13] In an exchange of manuscript material for their own histories, Robert of Torigny gave Henry of Huntingdon a copy of History, which both Robert and Henry used uncritically as authentic history and subsequently used in their own works." ^[14]

This work was widely popular in its day, being translated into various other languages from its original Latin. It was credited, uncritically, well into the 16th century, but is now considered historically unreliable.^[15]

"The History of the Kings of Britain is now usually 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 clear that everything this man wrote about Arthur and his successors, or indeed about his predecessors from Vortigern onwards, was made up, partly by himself and partly by others". ^[16]

History enjoyed a significant afterlife in a variety of forms, including translations/adaptations such as the Anglo-Norman Roman de Brut of Wace, the Middle English Brut of Layamon, and several anonymous Middle Welsh versions known as Brut y Brenhinedd ("Brut of the kings").where it was generally accepted as a true account. ^[17]

In 2017 the initial results of the Lost Voices of Celtic Britain Project established at Bournemouth University were published by the lead author Miles Russell.^[18]

The study concluded that despite being compiled many centuries after the period it describes, History appears to contain significant demonstrable archaeological fact, and that it appears that Geoffrey brought together a disparate mass of source material, including folklore, chronicles, king-lists, dynastic tables, oral tales and bardic praise poems, some of which was irrevocably garbled or corrupted. Geoffrey exercised considerable editorial control, massaging the information and smoothing out apparent inconsistencies in order to create a single grand narrative. ^[4]

The Lost Voices Project showed that much of Geoffrey's information could be shown to have derived from two discrete sources: first, the orally-transmitted, heroic tales of the Catuvellauni and Trinovantes, two essentially pro-Roman tribes inhabiting central south-eastern Britain at the very end of the Iron Age; and second, the the king-lists of important post-Roman dynasties ruling territories in western Britain. The Project also observed that Geoffrey stretched this source material out, chopping, changing and re-editing it in the process, as well as adding additional information culled from later Roman histories and also those of ‘Dark Age’ and early Medieval writers such as Gildas and Bede.^[19]

Sources

1. ↑ ^{1.0 1.1} Foster, Idris Llewelyn (1959). "Geoffrey of Monmouth (1090?–1155), or Galfridus (Gaufridus) Artur, or Galfridus (Gaufridus) Monemutensis, bishop of S. Asaph and chronicler". The Dictionary of Welsh Biography down to 1940. London: The Honourable Society of Cymmrodorion. pp. 274–5. Cited by Wikipedia: Geoffrey of Monmouth Accessed November 20, 2018 jhd
2. ↑ ^{2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 2.6} Roberts, Brynley F. (1991). "Geoffrey of Monmouth, Historia Regum Britanniae and Brut y Brenhinedd". The Arthur of the Welsh: The Arthurian Legend in Medieval Welsh Literature. Cardiff: University of Wales Press. ISBN 0-7083-1307-8. p. 98. Cited by Wikipedia: Geoffrey of Monmouth Accessed November 20, 2018 jhd
3. ↑ ^{3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 3.6 3.7} J. C. Crick, "Monmouth, Geoffrey of (d. 1154/5)", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004, accessed 7 June 2009. Cited by Wikipedia: Geoffrey of Monmouth Accessed November 20, 2018 jhd
4. ↑ ^{4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4} Wikipedia: Geoffrey of Monmouth Accessed November 20, 2018 jhd
5. ↑ Crick, J. C. (2004). "Monmouth, Geoffrey of [Galfridus Arturus] (d. 1154/5)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/10530. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.) Cited by Wikipedia: Geoffrey of Monmouth Accessed November 20, 2018 jhd
6. ↑ Dunn, Charles W. (1958). Bibliographical Note to History of the Kings of Britain. E.P Dutton & Co. Cited by Wikipedia: Geoffrey of Monmouth Accessed November 20, 2018 jhd
7. ↑ Burton, Edwin Hubert. "Geoffrey of Monmouth". Catholic Encyclopedia (1913). 6. Cited by Wikipedia: Geoffrey of Monmouth Accessed November 20, 2018 jhd
8. ↑ From the introduction to his translation of The History of the Kings of Britain (London: Penguin Books, 1966), p. 12. Cited by Wikipedia: Geoffrey of Monmouth Accessed November 20, 2018 jhd
9. ↑ Thorpe, Kings of Britain, p. 20ff., particularly pp. 20–22 & 28–31.
10. ↑ Geoffrey of Monmouth. The history of the kings of Britain: an edition and translation of De gestis Britonum (Historia regum Britanniae). Arthurian studies. 69. Michael D. Reeve (ed.), Neil Wright (trans.). Woodbridge, Suffolk: Boydell Press. 2007. p. lix. ISBN 978-1-84383-206-5. Cited by Wikipedia: Geoffrey of Monmouth Accessed November 20, 2018 jhd
11. ↑ Richard M. Loomis, The Romance of Arthur. New York & London, Garland Publishing, Inc. 1994, pg. 59. Cited by Wikipedia: Geoffrey of Monmouth Accessed November 20, 2018 jhd
12. ↑ Curley, Michael (1994). Geoffrey of Monmouth. New York: Twayne Publishers. p. 12. Cited by Wikipedia: Geoffrey of Monmouth Accessed November 20, 2018 jhd
13. ↑ Thorpe, Kings of Britain pp. 14–19. Cited by Wikipedia: Geoffrey of Monmouth Accessed November 20, 2018 jhd
14. ↑ C. Warren Hollister, Henry I (Yale English Monarchs), 2001:11 note 44.Cited by Wikipedia: Geoffrey of Monmouth Accessed November 20, 2018 jhd
15. ↑ Polydore Vergil's sceptical reading of Geoffrey of Monmouth provoked at first a reaction of denial in England, "yet the seeds of doubt once sown" eventually replaced Geoffrey's romances with a new Renaissance historical approach, according to Hans Baron, "Fifteenth-century civilisation and the Renaissance", in The New Cambridge Modern history, vol. 1 1957:56. Cited by Wikipedia: Geoffrey of Monmouth Accessed November 20, 2018 jhd
16. ↑ Quoted by Thorpe, Kings of Britain, p. 17.Cited by Wikipedia: Geoffrey of Monmouth Accessed November 20, 2018 jhd
17. ↑ Thorpe, Kings of Britain p. 29
18. ↑ Russell, Miles (2017). Arthur and the Kings of Britain: the Historical Truth Behind the Myths. Stroud: Amberley. ISBN 978-1445662749. p. 297-300 Cited by Wikipedia: Geoffrey of Monmouth Accessed November 20, 2018 jhd
19. ↑ Lost Voices of Celtic Britain Project Cited by Wikipedia: Geoffrey of Monmouth Accessed November 20, 2018 jhd

See also:

• Space: Source List for Pre-Norman Britain
• Space:Resources_for_Ancient_Britain
• Geoffrey of Monmouth. History of the Kings of England
• Space:From_Beli_to_Byzantine