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.