Geoffrey of Monmouth Introduction

The following is the introduction essay I gave my students who read Geoffrey of Monmouth's History of the Kings of Britain last year in the Christendom year.

We have read a lot of history so far this year. By now you may even be sick and tired of history. You may be thinking, “Where is the fun reading?” You may be thinking, “If everything were like Beowulf was, I’d have a lot more fun.” That may be true, but life is not always about having fun. Most people will tell you that school is not supposed to be fun. I disagree with that statement and think that as you grow into a more mature student and believer, you will learn to have fun and enjoy the labor of schoolwork because it stretches you and gives you perspective on the world you inhabit. That being said, you are not going to like everything you do in school and you are often going to ask why you have to learn something you will have no use for in the future. The answer is simple; education is about 20% content. The rest is process or method. You are not learning about medieval history so that you will all be medieval scholars. You are learning about medieval history so that you will be able to think like a medieval. Thinking in this way will help you understand some of the choices they made and how it has affected our world in the twenty-first century. Remember the number one goal here is to bring “every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ” (2 Cor 10:5).

Geoffrey of Monmouth was a pure medievalist. He recognized his place in the medieval world and that included understanding the heritage the ancient world had passed on to him and his generation. We’ll speak more about this later. We only have a range of possibilities for Geoffrey’s life. We are pretty sure he spent several years at Oxford around 1130 – 1150 ad. That gives us a twelfth century location for him historically. He wrote in Latin and claims he translated the History of the Kings of Britain from a very old text the archdeacon of Oxford gave him.

The text we are reading is rarely treated as real history anymore. Modern historians are even more suspect of this text than they are of more ancient historians like Herodotus. You will remember that our friend Herodotus believed in flying snakes and all sorts of odd things. Well, Geoffrey takes the cake by believing in magic of all things. His stories of Merlin and Arthur form some of the backbone to the fantastic canon of Arthurian lore that exists in the world today. A lot of British in more rural areas of the country still believe deep down that Arthur will return as he promised. As well as believing in Merlin and sorcery, Geoffrey clearly states that the British are descended from Trojans. This belief that most nations can be traced to a select group of people, whether they be Greeks or Hebrews, stands opposite the modern belief in a plenitude of independent and culturally relevant ethnic groups. The idea that all mankind came from one family is as heretical to modern historians and sociologists as the denial of the Trinity is to orthodox believers.

If modern historians accepted this idea it might make them have to at least accept that some of the biblical stories about the world (like the Table of Nations in Gen. 11) could be true. They don’t want to do that. Modern historians stand in direct antithesis to the biblical narratives of the founding of the world. It only makes sense that they would stand in the same position to Geoffrey, even though he does not try to spiritualize the founding of Britain. In Geoffrey’s case, it is just too simple. Modern historians, especially since the Enlightenment, have tended to view a simple explanation as an unlikely explanation. There are always too many reasons why something happens to account for them all or to fully understand an event. While this can be true (or partially true) sometimes, it is not always the case. For instance, the Bible tells that the children of Israel lost a major battle to the inhabitants of the city of Ai simply because one man got greedy (cf. Josh 7). We are told that all of David’s troubles in the later part of his rule stemmed form the sin he committed with Bathsheba (cf. 2 Sam 12:10-12). We are told that the city of Jerusalem was destroyed by the Romans in 70 ad because of their lack of faith in Christ and rejection of Him as the Messiah (cf. Matt 23:37 – 24:44). Our world is full of simple explanations. Sometimes there can be a lot more to an explanation than there appears. Of course Absalom was a devious man who wanted his father’s throne and the power that came with it. Of course the Jews rebelled against the Romans and brought the destruction of their entire kingdom upon themselves. One must make a careful distinction between causes and explanations.

A cause of something is one of the hundreds of things that took place prior to any event that gave it momentum. An explanation is the summary of why something happened when and where it did. If someone is playing with a brick and it flies out of their hands and breaks a window we could give multiple causes for that event; and all of them might be true. However, to explain the event we would merely say that the person had been acting foolishly.

What then is the cause and explanation for the British people? Geoffrey of Monmouth is here to explain this to us. He will do so with a grand display of stories. He will tell us about the fall of Troy and the travels of Brutus. He will tell us about the reigns of Julius and Claudius Caesar. He will tell us of King Cole, or merry-old-soul fame as well as King Lear, of Shakespeare fame. He will tell us of Merlin, of Arthur, of Utherpendragon, and of Mordred and the undoing of Britain. If we let him, he will tell us such a fantastical story that we will hardly be able to believe the story of Britain could be so simple; which is, of course, why the book is not read much anymore.

Why will Geoffrey tell us all of this? What is his purpose in writing? He tells us himself that his agenda is different from Bede. Bede wrote about church history. Geoffrey purposes to write about the kings of Britain. He does this because he felt compelled to explain who the British are. Why would anyone care who the British are? From our vantage point in the twenty-first century we have a pretty good reason to care who the British are. If they didn’t exist how different would our world be? For the most obvious example, our country is the product of British colonialism. Were there no Britain, there would be no United States of America. That is pretty significant. Let’s answer a better question. Why did Geoffrey care who the British were? In his mind, they were all but gone. He finishes his history at the lowest ebb of British history (roughly 7^th century ad). It is at this point that the Saxons begin to take over the island. The British are reduced to small clans living in Wales. His interest in the British is therefore one of nostalgia. He sees a time far gone as the golden age of the island and wants others to view it this way as well.

This is similar to the way Charlemagne and Otto used the Pax Romana to conjure images of the glory and prosperity of Rome. It is also similar to the way many modern evangelicals look to the 1950’s as a kind of golden age in America before the turbulence of the 1960’s took away all the good, clean family values in the world. Is this a misguided approach? Is this foolishness? Not necessarily. There is great worth in viewing the past with nostalgia, so long as we do not neglect the service of the present. The past will go nowhere, the present moves on. Our understanding of the past can help us monitor and move within the present. However, to dwell on the past blindly without acting in the present is also foolishness. The past is to be learned from (Rom 15:4) not just looked at with awe and a desire to see the present return to the former glory of a bygone era. Herodotus understood this. At the close of the Histories Herodotus tries to make a very specific application of his tale to his own Athenian nation. He closes the narrative with an episode from the life of Cyrus, king of Persia (with whom he opened his tale) and makes the point that a wise ruler known when he has enough land. The application to the Athenians at the close of the Fifth century bc is that they should be cautious in their expansion. Herodotus saw clearly that Athenian expansion could lead to problems with other Greek states. Athens ignored Herodotus’ warning and by 431 bc they were engaged in war with Sparta that would destroy Athens as a world power in the Mediterranean Sea forever. J.R.R. Tolkien understood this as well. A major theme of the Lord of the Rings is the industrialism that made World War I (which Tolkien fought in) and World War II the most destructive events in the Twentieth century. Tolkien saw how dangerous this could be and tried to warn us that we were destroying something more with our machines and warfare than just cities. Our ability to see and understand this is a major part of the process of teaching and learning history. To put it bluntly, it is what we learn history for.

Thus we read Geoffrey of Monmouth.

A Patrick Henry education

Patrick Henry (1736-1799)

Henry was a famous American politician and lawyer during the years of the American War for Independence. Perhaps his most famous speech, given before the Virginia House of Burgesses, declared that submission to the tyranny of George III was tantamount to slavery and at complete odds to the principles of liberty found in the English Constitution. He refused to live under slavery and declared that he would prefer “liberty or death.” After the war he became known as an anti-federalist for his opposition to the United States Constitution. He predicted several developments from adopting the constitution that have since become a reality, such as an income tax and government controlled education.

Henry is a perfect model for classical education. His father, who had been raised on atypical classical education, tutored him in math as well as ancient and modern history. According to biographer David Vaughan, “by the time Henry was fifteen, he could read Virgil and Livy in the original.” Henry also had an astonishing command of the English language as well as some French learning. Henry’s education was augmented by his natural and artistic studies as well. His love of nature led him to spend great amounts of time outdoors. His biographers report that he spent long hours in meditation in his youth. He was also an accomplished violinist. Vaughan reports that while recuperating from a broken collarbone at the age of twelve, he mastered the flute.

Patrick Henry’s education was not exceptional for the time in which he lived, it was quite normal. We would be well-served to have children educated like Henry today. If we did, we might have leaders like Henry tomorrow.

Cunning Wit in the Odyssey

Crafty Odysseus is the fitting epithet given to Odysseus in the Iliad. In the Odyssey, he owns the title more often than in the Iliad. While it was Odysseus’ idea to go snooping around the enemy lines and the famous Trojan Horse was his plot as well, Odysseus does some very sneaky things in the Odyssey. The amount of fighting in the Odyssey versus the Iliad is significant. The only real fighting takes place near the end of the epic, when Odysseus slaughters the suitors. Until that time, Odysseus manages to work his way out of troubles with wit and subtle maneuvers. Disguises and tricks are more Odysseus’ modus operandi than swords and shields.

Homer wants us to understand that fighting is not the only way out of any and all situations. It may be necessary to resort to fighting in the end, as Odysseus must to get rid of the suitors or to make his way out of Polyphemus’ cave, but there are innumerable ways to avoid fighting as well.

Character History

History is fun. It goes through stages. Right now I'm not talking about "real" history, the actual events and people that make up history, but rather the process of history writing. The way people write history goes through stages. After taking a historiography course at Graduate school a couple of years ago, this really came home to me. One of things we did was read through various kinds of history books from different ages and look at how these folks actually wrote about history. We read everything from Herodotus and Eusebius to Thomas Carlyle and Simon Schama. It was fun. But that's the geek in me talking. What was really fun was to see how the writing of history went through stages and evolved. It was also interesting to see why we don't write the really good history books that guys like Herodotus or Carlyle wrote any more.
We have, in our deeply scientific modernity, forgotten that character drives history. Who a person is, how they act, why the act, is all part of the historical process. We moderns turn up our noses at this because we have been deceived by the egalitarian notion of "Dead White Men." During the Enlightenment, history writing began to shift away from the actions of those who lived in history and began to focus more on economic and social causal factors for wars and such. That is not all bad, as a good reading of Thucydides will tell you. However, by the nineteenth century history writing had become scientific and (since character is not scientifically objective) this trend became the gospel according to Ranke.
Character is one of the most important things to history. You can learn all day long that things happened and all the cultural, economic, and social causes about them. But until you get inside the head of the man standing at the top of the hill ordering the bayonet charge and know what he believes is true, good, and beautiful, you will not really know the history of that moment. This came home to me again while reading Michael Shaara's The Killer Angels with my Modernity class. Shaara does an excellent job of reminding us just how important character is to history. His book, about the Battle of Gettysburg (July 1-3, 1863) tells its story through the men who fought in the battle. He focuses on a select few (Joshua Chamberlain, James Longstreet, and Robert E. Lee) to really tell the story, but he does it in such a masterful way that it truly serves as a reminder about how important character is to history. Funny that a novelist reminded us of this.
I think that some historians are waking up to this notion. Donald Kagan's excellent work on the Peloponnesian War (which is a reworking of his five-volume scholarly work on the same subject) pays a great amount of attention to the character of Alcibiades and Cimon and Pericles. I think Thucydides would be proud of Kagan's work. I know I appreciate it.

A Lament for the Unborn

This is the anniversary of death. On January 22, 1973 the United States Supreme court handed down the famous (or infamous) Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion in this country. Since that time it is estimated that over 48,000,000 children have been slaughtered in the womb. This holocaust cannot go unnoticed by a holy God. We in America are surely just biding our time until the judgment of God falls on us with swiftness and severity.
Pray that we can elect leaders with the moral fiber to undo this evil among us. Pray that we can stop the mindless slaughter before we are all lost in the cataclysm that must surely fall.

The Nature of History according to Herodotus

"These are the researches of Herodotus of Halicarnassus, which he publishes, in the hope of thereby preserving from decay the remembrance of what men have done, and of preventing the great and wonderful actions of the Greeks and the Barbarians from losing their due meed of glory; and withal to put on record what were their grounds of feuds. According to the Persians best informed in history, the Phoenicians began to quarrel. " (Proem to Herodotus, The Histories)
In this passage, which begins the work of Herodotus, he sets out his own understanding of the nature of history. First, the word Herodotus uses to describe his work is the Greek word "historia" and is usually translated research. This tells us that Herodotus understood history to be the kind of thing that must be researched. Secondly, Herodotus clearly tells us he does this for the sake of preservation. History then, according to Herodotus, engages in actions of preservation. Next we see that Herodotus wants to preserve very specific things. Actions. But it is not just the actions of the Greeks he is concerned with. Rather he is equally concerned that the "great and wonderful actions of the Greeks and Barbarians" be preserved. This tells us that Herodotus considers history to be impartial to some extent. Finally Herodotus tells that history concerns itself with the causes of events, not simply the relation of events.

Women in the Odyssey

Women play a more vibrant role in the Odyssey than they do in the Iliad. From the Iliad, one might get the impression that women were simply property. The Odyssey appears to portray women as powerful agents in the world of men, however. From the beginning of the epic, Kalypso exercises power over Odysseus. While she is a goddess, this does not mean that her power cannot be resisted. Often the desires of the gods are resisted by mortals, and yet Odysseus is powerless to resist Kalypso. Later in the poem we find Odysseus’ men trapped and transformed by Circe. The Sirens are often portrayed as seductive females, though Greek pottery often pictured them as winged bird-like creatures. In short, the women of the Odyssey appear to have a seductive and physical control over men in that poem. This is also consistent with the picture of women from other Greek authors, such as Euripides or Aristophanes.
However, the picture of women is not confined to these goddesses and creatures. Penelope and Helen also present vivid pictures of femininity to the readers of the Odyssey. When Telemachos visits Menelaus in Sparta, Helen sits at his side, but does not shrink from making an address in the meeting. The details of war and death are not hidden from her ears, nor is she silenced from talking in the presence of men. In like manner, Penelope flashes across the epic as a model of feminine virtue and strength. While she does not take up arms against her suitors (she is no feminist) she does what she can with what she has to delay and wait for her husband to return home.

Snow Day!

There is nothing like a snow day. I don't remember getting one last year. I think we did, but it wasn't this pretty. It started last night and snowed until nearly midnight. Got some great pictures of the kids at play and the pretty scenery. I will confess I haven't done much today. Built a great fire. Tried to decide on my favorite snow poem for this post. Dickinson has some as does Robert Frost. Everyone knows "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening", but none of them really captured what I was looking for. That made me sad. It made me realize that I know so little poetry. I read it in college. I enjoy teaching the poetry that I teach in my Humanities classes, but I know so little beyond that.
Maybe that's what I'll do with some of my day. Read some poetry. That would be fitting.
I hope you enjoy the snow as much as our family did.
Here are a few pictures.

This is great!

I found this on YouTube looking for classical Christian schools. I am sorry I missed this when it was first aired. I especially like the part where Roy Atwood talks about the students preparation for the job market. In a world where the major questions parents ask have to do with computer classes, it is refreshing to see that a Liberal Arts education (which includes, in my opinion, a strong curriculum in math and science) is paying off for the students at Logos and New St. Andrews.

Hosptality in the Odyssey

The Homeric ideal of hospitality is very much a central figure of the Odyssey. Hospitality is a lost art in our modern individualistic society. While we think we are being hospitable if we lay some crackers and cheese out for guests or make sure we have clean sheets on the bed, we find a much more colorful sense of hospitality in the Homeric epics. When Telemachos visits Menelaus and Nestor, he is greeted warmly, given rich gifts and fed with succulent food – and all of this is before anyone even asks his name or his business. When Odysseus is stranded naked on Phaiacia, he is treated to clothes, a warm fire and a meal. Again no one even knows who he is when this takes place. Even Eumaios, the swineherd, knows it is his duty to be hospitable. When Odysseus, disguised as a old beggar, shows up at Eumaios’ home he feeds him, bringing in “the best of the pigs” (Hom. Od. xiv.414) and giving Odysseus the best portion of the feast “in honor” (xiv.437).

By obvious contrast we see the lack of hospitality in the cave of Polyphemus and the behavior of the suitors. Polyphemus locks his visitors in the cave and devours them one by one even after Odysseus has pleaded with him to be hospitable and “give us guest presence or otherwise / some gift of grace, for such is the right of strangers” (ix.267-268). Polyphemus declares he has no concern for the traditions of the gods or men. In like manner, the suitors treat Odysseus, disguised as a beggar, badly and shun him at the hearth rather than making him comfortable.

On Reading Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

Are you hot-tempered? Do you flare up at the slightest offense and do everything in your power to maintain your honor, or someone else’s? If so, you are not alone. You have a lot of company in that particular Venn diagram. Among the people in that category would be King Arthur’s nephew Gawain. We met him reading Geoffrey of Monmouth and got a little sense of his hot-headedness there. If you remember, he was sent on the journey to meet envoys from Rome near the end of the book. He allowed himself to be provoked by the Romans and ended up cutting off the head of a Roman officer (an action he seems to repeat from time-to-time). His zeal for the honor of Arthur and Camelot led to the sacking of Rome by Arthur.

Geoffrey of Monmouth is not the only place we can hear stories of Gawain. In a lot of the medieval Arthur stories, Gawain is pictured quite often, and typically as a model of knighthood. This may strike us as odd; especially when we see the mess he gets himself into in the book we are about to read, but the medievals liked Gawain a lot and sung about him often. The stories that we are likely most familiar with about Arthur, those of Sir Thomas Malory and Alfred Lord Tennyson, do not picture Gawain as the model of the knight. Rather they tend to picture him as a scoundrel and a traitor. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight lets us see a little of the alternate tradition that pictured Gawain as a true hero.

We know that Sir Gawain and the Green Knight was written in the fourteenth century but we do not know who wrote it. This may be because the author did not want to be known (out of a sense of humility) or because the name was accidentally lost. Oftentimes, tales told in the medieval world were more about preserving the deeds of the hero than the fame of the author. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight was also a poem. It was written in a style known as alliterative poetry. We typically think of poetry as rhyming lines. Some poetry does rhyme, but by far most poetry in the world does not work like this. This can make poetry a little inaccessible to some people unless they read a lot of it. We are going to be reading a prose rendition of the poem. It preserves the story, but some details are necessarily lost. A very good verse translation exists by J.R.R. Tolkien (of Lord of the Rings fame).

Some of the features of the story of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight are worth examining a little by way of preview. Gawain is a knight and is bound by a code of chivalry. Chivalry essentially meant honorable conduct. It originally meant honorable conduct between warriors, but as Europe turned into what some scholars call Christendom (a concept we’ll deal with in a minute) this code of chivalrous behavior began to reflect the values of Christianity and the ethics it demanded of believers. This gives us a picture of Gawain in which honor, virtue, and truth are very important. Courtly romances, like Sir Gawain, often played up the situations that this code could bring into existence if all the aspects were not kept in their proper place.

A well-balanced worldview is like a clean room. Everything has a place and stays in its place. If it is left out of its place, the room is no longer clean and distortions are bound to occur (like leaving a school picture someone gave you out when everyone else’s is put neatly away, thus creating the distortion that you have feelings for this person when you do not). Courtly romances tended to capitalize on the distortions that could take place when honor or truth take a higher place than they deserved and at the expense of other components of the worldview. Sir Gawain shows us what can happen when honor is taken too far and at the expense of virtue or truthfulness.

Europe began as an influx of pagan Germanic tribes into Christian Roman territory. As time went on, many of these tribes converted to Christianity and began to establish legitimate kingdoms based, in part, on Christian teachings of morality and justice. By the time of Charlemagne (800 ad) most of Europe could have been called Christian. The invasions of the Vikings in the ninth and tenth centuries disrupted this general tendency, but even they were eventually won over by the power of the Gospel. Scholars often call this general saturation of European culture and society with Christianity, Christendom. Christendom means that the structure of society in Europe was Christian. The kings swore allegiance to the pope in many cases, and were often crowned by priests or had coronation ceremonies in churches. Sir Gawain gives us an accurate picture of the effect of Christendom on literature and folklore in Europe. The Church is always in the background of everything that is done. Masses are said every day, more than that in the castle Gawain stays at over Christmas. Lords often have their own private priests and chapels to have mass said in. Gawain visits the chapel often, as do most other characters in the story. Holy days and portions of the ecclesiastical calendar, like Michaelmas and All Hallows Day, are an essential part of how the passing of time is told in the story. We may object that masses are said but we must remember that Roman Catholicism was the only version of Christianity open to England, France and most of Western Europe at that time. The influence of Christianity in creating a Christian state, or Christendom, is monumental and this story exhibits it front and center in a very unapologetic way.

Finally we will notice that Sir Gawain takes a particular view of masculinity and femininity. The lord and his band go out hunting all day while the ladies remain at home and do feminine tasks. This may strike us as sexist or chauvinistic in our modern culture. Before we write Sir Gawain off, we should consider whether our notions are wrong. Medieval civilization attached some very definite roles to men and women that we have discarded for some poor reasons. Nonetheless, we do not have to accept the roles attached to the sexes in this story simply because they are medieval. As always, our standard should be Scripture and its teaching on the subject. We will find, for instance, that the picture of women as constantly trying to woo or be wooed by a knight, even if they are married, is a very unbiblical role.

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is a work of lasting beauty and creativity. It is short and fun to read. Enjoy!