In which we examine the transition from the treatment of Arthur as a primarily historical to a primarily literary figure in Geoffrey of Monmouth’s History of the Kings of Britain, and the resultant changes to the handling and implications of Arthur’s death
Show Notes:
1. Geoffrey of Monmouth, History of the Kings of Britain
Date: AD 1138
Causes of Arthur’s death:
Mordred’s betrayal: Arthur’s nephew, who is left in charge during Arthur’s Roman campaign, rebels and marries Guinevere
Civil war: Arthur dies fighting his fellow Britons and a collection of enemies, primarily Saxons, but also “Scots, Picts, Irish” and others
Aftermath:
Guinevere (Guanhumara) flees to a convent
Arthur “mortally wounded” and carried to the isle of Avallon to be cured
kinsman Constantine succeeds the throne, but a rapid succession of rivals replacing one another as well as civil war over the next ten years or so leads to the wasting of what is left to them and the domination of the Saxons
Beginnings of the subsequent shape of the “matter of Britain”:
Theme of freedom: Uther, on defeating the Saxons (leading his troops on a litter due to illness): “Victory to me half-dead is better than to be safe and sound and vanquished. For to die with honour is preferable to living with disgrace.”
Mordred’s betrayal, left in charge because he is Arthur’s kinsman (though here nephew, not son)
Guinevere’s infidelity (though with Mordred)
Single-combat between Arthur and Flollo looks a lot like a joust
Tournaments: three-day tournament at the coronation, with prizes given on the fourth, including: “The military men composed a kind of diversion in imitation of a fight on horseback; and the ladies, placed in a sportive manner darted their amorous glances at the courtiers, the more to encourage them.”
Civil war, which Geoffrey condemns: “Why foolish nation! oppressed with the weight of your abominable wickedness, why did you, in your insatiable thirst after civil wars, so weaken yourself by domestic confusions, that whereas formerly you brought distant kingdoms under your yoke, now, like a good vineyard degenerated and turned to bitterness, you cannot defend your country, your wives, and children, against your enemies?”
Geoffrey’s account, written in Latin and thus widely disseminated, was hugely popular and influential, but was not well received by all his contemporaries – or even by later critics, like C.S. Lewis.
William of Newburgh (c. 1196) condemns Geoffrey for weaving “ridiculous figments of imagination” around historical events recorded by the Venerable Bede and cloaked these old, British “fables about Arthur … with the honorable name of history by presenting them with the ornaments of the Latin tongue.” It is interesting that one of the possible motives he ascribes to Geoffrey for doing so is “to please the Britons, most of whom are known to be so primitive that they are said still to be awaiting the return of Arthur, and will not suffer themselves to hear that he is dead.” William wonders how “the old historians, to whom it was a matter of great concern that nothing worthy of memory should be omitted from what was written … could … have suppressed with silence Arthur and his acts, this king of the Britons who was nobler than Alexander the Great,” and further disparages Geoffrey for translating “the fallacious prophecies of a certain Merlin, to which he has in any event added many things himself” into Latin.
Gerald of Wales, who writes an account of the discovery of King Arthur’s body (more on that later), condemns Geoffrey’s History with the story of a man who could see demons: “When he was harrassed beyond endurance by these unclean spirits, Saint John’s Gospel was placed on his lap, and then they all vanished immediately, flying away like so many birds. If the Gospel were afterwards removed and the History of the Kings of Britain by Geoffrey of Monmouth put there in its place, just to see what would happen, the demons would alight all over his body, and on the book too, staying there longer than usual and being even more demanding.”
Lewis, on the other hand, condemns Geoffrey from a more modern, literary perspective: “Geoffrey is of course important for the historians of the Arthurian Legend; but since the interest of those historians has seldom lain chiefly in literature, they have not always remembered to tell us that he is an author of mediocre talent and no taste. In the Arthurian parts of his work the lion’s share falls to the insufferable rigamarole of Merlin’s prophecies and to the foreign conquests of Arthur. These latter are, of course, at once the least historical and the least mythical thing about Arthur. If there was a real Arthur he did not conquer Rome. … The annals of senseless and monotonously successful aggression are dreary enough reading even when true; when blatantly, stupidly false, they are unendurable.”
2. Intermediate sources I’m going to skip
Geoffrey’s influential History established Arthurian legend as the English ur-text, the “matter of Britain” and inspired a whole range of imaginative elaborations, most notably the addition of Lancelot by the French, writing in the “courtly love” tradition which Lewis engages with in his most important academic work, The Allegory of Love, as well as English works such as the alliterative Morte Arthure, which seems to have inspired the beginnings of Malory’s great Arthurian work.
French prose cycle: Lancelot, Quest for the Grail, Mort Artu (Malory’s “French book”)
In which we begin our in-depth engagement with “The Deaths of Arthur” by examining the historical context and sources for Arthur and the significance of his death.
Show Notes:
Historical Context: Roman Britain, AD 43 – AD 410
conquest began 43-47 with four legions sent by Claudius, conquering the southeast (SE of Fosse Way)
continued 77-84, conquering as far north as Caledonia/north-Scotland (up to the Antonine Wall)
road network completed around AD 150
Emperor Honorius, himself under siege at Ravenna at the time, tells the Roman Britons they are on their own AD 410
1. Annals of Wales
Date: c. 12 C copy of 10th C original Year
Main quote re Arthur:
72 [c. AD 516] The Battle of Badon, in which Arthur carried the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ on his shoulders for three days and three nights and the Britons were victors.
Year 93 [c. 537] The Strife of Camlann in which Arthur and Medraut (Mordred) fell and there was death in Britain and in Ireland.
Notes:
The words for “shoulder” and “shield” were, however, easily confused in Old Welsh – scuit “shield” versus scuid “shoulder” – and Geoffrey of Monmouth played upon this dual tradition, describing Arthur bearing “on his shoulders a shield” emblazoned with the Virgin.
Alternate dates for the Battle of Badon, sometime between AD 430 and 516: 493 or 501. Or maybe 490.
2. Gildas, “On the Ruin and Conquest of Britain”
Date: c. AD 526/560
Homily on the ruin of Britain by someone who would be a contemporary of Arthur
Fascinating description of the ruin of Roman Britain by one who personally witnessed the final stages of the dissolution of the remnants of the Roman state: “A council is held, to deliberate what means ought to be determined upon, as the best and safest to repel such fatal and frequent irruptions and plunderings by the [Scots and the Picts]. At that time all members of the assembly, along with the proud tyrant, are blinded; such is the protection they find for their country (it was, in fact, its destruction) that those wild Saxons, of accursed name, hated by God and men, should be admitted into the island, like wolves into folds, in order to repel the northern nations. … They sailed out, and at the directions of the unlucky tyrant, first fixed their dreadful talons in the eastern part of the island, as men intending to fight for the country, but more truly to assail it. To these the mother of the brood, finding that success had attended the first contingent, sends out also a larger raft-full of accomplices and curs, which sails over and joins itself to their bastard comrades. From that source, the seed of iniquity, the root of bitterness, grows as a poisonous plant, worthy of our deserts, in our own soil, furnished with rugged branches and leaves. Thus the barbarians, admitted into the island, succeed in having provisions supplied them, as if they were soldiers and about to encounter, as they falsely averred, great hardships for their kind hosts. These provisions, acquired for a length of time, closed, as the saying is, the dog’s maw. They complain, again, that their monthly supplies were not copiously contributed to them, intentionally colouring their opportunities, and declare that, if larger munificence were not piled upon them, they would break the treaty and lay waste the whole of the island. They made no delay to follow up their threats with deeds. … In this way were all the settlements brought low with the frequent shocks of the battering rams; the inhabitants, along with the bishops of the church, both priests and people, whilst swords gleamed on every side and flames crackled, were together mown down to the ground, and, sad sight! there were seen in the midst of streets, the bottom stones of towers with tall beam cast down, and of high walls, sacred altars, fragments of bodies covered with clots, as if coagulated, of red blood, in confusion as in a kind of horrible wine press: there was no sepulture of any kind save the ruins of houses, or the entrails of wild beasts and birds in the open, I say it with reverence to their holy souls (if in fact there were many to be found holy), that would be carried by holy angels to the heights of heaven. For the vineyard, at one time good, had then so far degenerated to bitter fruit, that rarely could be seen, according to the prophet, any cluster of grapes or ear of corn, as it were, behind the back of the vintagers or reapers. Some of the wretched remnant were consequently captured on the mountains and killed in heaps. Others, overcome by hunger, came and yielded themselves to the enemies, to be their slaves for ever, if they were not instantly slain, which was equivalent to the highest service. Others repaired to parts beyond the sea, with strong lamentation… Others, trusting their lives, always with apprehension of mind, to high hills, overhanging, precipitous, and fortified, and to dense forests and rocks of the sea, remained in their native land, though with fear. After a certain length of time the cruel robbers returned to their home. A remnant, to whom wretched citizens flock from different places on every side, as eagerly as a hive of bees when a storm is threatening, praying at the same time unto Him with their whole heart, and, as is said, “Burdening the air with unnumbered prayers,” that they should not be utterly destroyed, take up arms and challenge their victors to battle under Ambrosius Aurelianus. He was a man of unassuming character, who, alone of the Roman race chanced to survive in the shock of such a storm (as his parents, people undoubtedly clad in the purple, had been killed in it), whose offspring in our days have greatly degenerated from their ancestral nobleness. To these men, by the Lord’s favour, there came victory.” [source]
Mentions the Battle of Badon (“obsessionis Badonici montis” = seige of Badon Hill):
“From that time, the citizens were sometimes victorious, sometimes the enemy, in order that the Lord, according to His wont, might try in this nation the Israel of today, whether it loves Him or not. This continued up to the year of the siege of Badon Hill, and of almost the last great slaughter inflicted upon the rascally crew. And this commences, a fact I know, as the forty-fourth year, with one month now elapsed; it is also the year of my birth.”
Mentions Ambrosius Aurelianus, but not Arthur
Arthur ahistorical? assumed? not relevant to homiletical purpose? But if Ambrosius is mentioned to contrast ancient heroism with modern corruption, why not Arthur?
Alternate explanation offered by Gildas’ 12th C hagiographer:
“That Arthur had gone unmentioned by Gildas, ostensibly the source closest to his own time, was noticed at least as early as a 12th-century hagiography of Gildas which claims that Gildas had praised Arthur extensively but then excised him completely after Arthur killed the saint’s brother, Hueil mab Caw.” [Wikipedia]
3. Nennius, The History of the Britons
Date: c. AD 828 (Nennius’ “Preface” dates itself 858)
Motive: to preserve in Latin the history of his own people, compiled “partly from writings and monuments of the ancient inhabitants of Britain, partly from the annals of the Romans, and the chronicles of the sacred fathers, Isidore, Hieronymus, Prosper, Eusebius, and from the histories of the Scots and Saxons, although our enemies, not following my own inclinations, but, to the best of my ability, obeying the commands of my seniors” because he was “indignant, that the name of my own people, formerly famous and distinguished, should sink into oblivion” and would “rather … be the historian of the Britons than nobody”.
Nennius’ “Apology” adds also “our ancient traditions” to the list of sources.
Nennius notes that after the death of St. Germanus, “the Saxons greatly increased in Britain, both in strength and numbers.”
Main quote re Arthur: “Then it was, that the magnanimous Arthur, with all the kings and military force of Britain, fought against the Saxons. And though there were many more noble than himself, yet he was twelve times chosen their commander, and was as often conqueror. [list of battles] The eighth was near Gurnion castle, where Arthur bore the image of the Holy Virgin, mother of God, upon his shoulders, and through the power of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the holy Mary, put the Saxons to flight, and pursued them the whole day with great slaughter. … The twelfth was a most severe contest, when Arthur penetrated to the hill of Badon. In this engagement, nine hundred and forty fell by his hand alone, no one but the Lord affording him assistance. In all these engagements the Britons were successful. For no strength can avail against the will of the Almighty.”
Aftermath: “The more the Saxons were vanquished, the more they sought for new supplies of Saxons from Germany; so that kings, commanders, and military bands were invited over from almost every province.”
4. William of Malmsbury, _History of the Kings of England
Date: AD 1125, 2nd edition 1127
Main quote re Arthur: “Vortimer, who had been the instigator of the war, and differed far from the indolence of his father, perished prematurely, or he would have governed the kingdom in a noble manner, had God permitted. When he died, the British strength decayed, and all hope fled from them; and they would soon have perished altogether, had not Ambrosius, the sole survivor of the Romans, who became monarch after Vortigern, quelled the presumptuous barbarians by the powerful aid of warlike Arthur. It is of this Arthur that the Britons fondly tell so many fables, even to the present day; a man worthy to be celebrated, not by idle fictions, but by authentic history. He long upheld the sinking state, and roused the broken spirit of his countrymen to war. Finally, at the siege of Mount Badon, relying on an image of the Virgin, which he had affixed to his armor, he engaged nine hundred of the enemy, single-handed, and dispersed them with incredible slaughter.” [source]
