In this episode of Epochs, I am joined by Elizabeth Hatherin to discuss the history of King Arthur and the early kings of England, Geoffrey of Monmouth's The History of the Early Kings of England and King Arthur.
00:00:00.000Hello and welcome to this episode of Epochs where we shall be talking about Geoffrey of Monmouth,
00:00:18.280the history of the early kings of England and King Arthur and I am joined by returning guest
00:00:22.680Elizabeth Hatherin. How are you? Hello I'm doing well thank you. Good good. So first of all how did
00:00:28.420you first come across Geoffrey of Monmouth? I visited Tintagel Castle in Cornwall with my
00:00:34.480grandparents which is the birthplace of King Arthur. Allegedly. According to legend. When you're there
00:00:43.060you feel that there's something extremely enchanting about it and it has that same appeal that places
00:00:49.620like Stonehenge and Stone Circles have and in Glastonbury for example but I went into the
00:00:56.520bookstore. My granddad pointed out a book and it was the history of the kings of Britain and he
00:01:01.200said this is the man that popularized the legends of King Arthur but most people think he just made
00:01:07.080it up and so I bought his book and I wrote my dissertation at university on Historia Recyne
00:01:14.140Brittany talking about how I believe it was a moral exemplar created by well written down by Geoffrey of
00:01:25.460Monmouth in order to warn his Anglo-Norman Contributes about the dangers of infighting.
00:01:32.140Right okay. Yeah. That's interesting. I've never asked you what did you do at uni then? Did you do medieval history or?
00:01:37.460History and politics. Oh right. I ended up specializing in medieval history. Oh right. Okay, cool.
00:01:42.140Yeah. Interesting because most people, if you haven't studied it, even history nerds may well not even have heard of Geoffrey of Monmouth I think.
00:01:49.460Quite a lot of people would never have heard of him. So okay, before we get stuck into the Arthurian legend because I think that's the best bit isn't it?
00:01:58.460It's the most interesting bit, certainly the most famous bit. Let's just talk about him and the book in general a bit first.
00:02:06.140So I think it's fair to say, I wonder if you disagree and if you do to what extent, to say that it's a pseudo history.
00:02:15.140It's not firm history in the sense of, I don't know, St Charles Omar or something or even Bede or something like that.
00:02:25.140It's a pseudo history. I mean, people do argue about it and disagree whether it's largely reliable or complete fiction.
00:02:34.140I was listening to someone the other day that described it as a tissue of fables, they called it.
00:02:42.140So I think it's clearly, when you read it, to me anyway, it's clearly a mixture of real things, verifiable things and things that just aren't true or aren't correct.
00:02:54.140They cannot be. So it's a mixture of the two. What's your thoughts and feelings about it?
00:02:59.140I think it comes from a misunderstanding of how early medieval writers feud history.
00:03:05.140So just to stop you there, for anyone who doesn't know, Geoffrey of Monmouth states are, it's the 12th century, right?
00:03:10.140He's writing at some point between the 1130s to 1150s, sometime in there. So 12th century, first half of the 12th century.
00:03:33.140Yeah. And the half sister, sorry, half brother to Matilda.
00:03:40.140But people, we view history today as objective, as a factual truth of the past.
00:03:49.140But the way that medieval, early medieval historians viewed it was as a moral exemplar.
00:03:54.140I've got some quotes here, but by writers such as Henry of Huntington and William of Marsbury, who wrote during the same time as Geoffrey.
00:04:04.140And also dedicated their works to the same audience, such as Henry of Huntington to Matilda.
00:04:10.140He writes, the purpose of this work is so that the attentive reader will find what to emit and what to reject.
00:04:18.140And if by God's help, he became a better person for this, that will be for me the reward I most desire.
00:04:24.140So it was the way that early medieval historians viewed history was to provide us moral lessons.
00:04:32.140But when it comes to Geoffrey, what he's doing is he's putting on paper the oral traditions of the Britons, which has been passed down via the word of mouth.
00:04:46.140And he talks about this mysterious book he's found and he's given, which historians don't know what it is.
00:04:54.140Well, his work is filled with tons of references to Nennius, what Nennius wrote in his work in the ninth century.
00:05:02.140And it's also filled with tons of references to St. Gildas, who's also known as the, his book is also known as the complaining book,
00:05:11.140because it's this sermon talking about how the Britons have fallen from their glory and God has punished them for their sins.
00:05:17.140And Gareth Knight in his book, I've got his book here, The Secret Tradition in Arthurian Legend,
00:05:27.140which goes into the esoteric knowledge of King Arthur. He makes the point about Geoffrey, which I agree with,
00:05:33.140is that his work was translating stories that would have been told around the fireplace,
00:05:39.140would have been told in courts by bards of our early founding history, such as Brutus of Troy, which Nennius also makes reference to.
00:05:48.140So I believe that when people say that Geoffrey is making up his history,
00:05:54.140their misunderstanding that the history of the Britons was all a tradition and that therefore it was made mystical by them.
00:06:02.140They would have exaggerated their stories. They would have added esoteric elements,
00:06:07.140which you later see with the French adaptions of King Arthur when they had the Holy Grail and the sword and the stone and the lady of the lake.
00:07:51.140It's like something like the history of Robin Hood or something.
00:07:56.140It's wrong to say it's of no value or that it didn't mean something to people at the time, but it's not a firm historical foundation, right?
00:11:11.140A lot of what he's writing down would have came from the Britons themselves.
00:11:16.140But he may have actually had access to what Caesar also wrote down, which isn't mentioned in this prologue either.
00:11:22.140And also, before the Romans come and he mentions all the kings and queens of Britain, historians reckon that he had access to maybe a table of all these names which he wrote together.
00:11:35.140And that's the skill of Monomyth, is he weaves all the history together and fills in the gaps and makes it into one whole.
00:11:48.140While also, and this is my own theory, is the reason he wrote the work at the time he did, when Henry the First's legitimate son dies in the white ship, the Sosta,
00:12:04.140and tensions break out because there's no one to replace him apart from Matilda.
00:12:12.140He writes it as a warning to Anglo-Norman contemporaries about the dangers of infighting in his time.
00:12:19.140And the prophecies of Merlin is an example of that.
00:12:25.140And he writes that he was originally planning to publish his story before he published the prophecies of Merlin.
00:12:31.140But he says that rumours of Merlin started coming up from the Welsh and people started talking about what he said.
00:12:40.140So he decided to publish the prophecies of Merlin first.
00:12:43.140And the reason he did that was because the prophecies of Merlin is this massive warning to Normans that, hey, if you guys infight then the Britons will rise up and reclaim their land again.
00:13:00.140I've got a great quote. He actually, he actually says, Normandy will lose both islands and be stripped of its former honour.
00:13:08.140Then the natives will return to the island for strife.
00:16:01.140And it shows how mighty that British spirit is.
00:16:13.140It was in praise of them that the poet Lincoln described how Caesar in terror turned his back upon the Britons he had come to attack.
00:16:20.140And it shows how mighty that British spirit is.
00:16:25.140But the reason, and Joffrey argues that the reason the Britons actually fall and eventually defeated by Caesar is because after the victory of Caesar, they hold this mighty feast.
00:16:40.140And someone's head is cut off in a duel.
00:16:45.140And the king banishes the uncle of this person who's cut off this man's head.
00:16:52.140And in anger, he goes to the Romans and sides with them and ambushes the tribe.
00:17:00.140And that's how the Romans defeat the Britons.
00:17:04.140And so it shows that through their own vices of envy, they lead to their own downfall.
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