Narrating the Matter of Britain: Geoffrey of Monmouth and the Norman Colonization of Wales

Narrating the Matter of Britain: Geoffrey of Monmouth and the Norman Colonization ofWalesAuthor(s): Michael A. FaletraSource: The Chaucer Review, Vol. 35, No. 1 (2000), pp. 60-85Published by: Penn State University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25096117Accessed: 16-05-2016 15:53 UTC

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NARRATING THE MATTER OF BRITAIN: GEOFFREY OF MONMOUTH AND THE NORMAN COLONIZATION OF WALES

by Michael A. Faletra

"Ac aruaethu awnaethant o gyntundep mynnv dileu yr holl Bryttannyeit o gwbyl hyt na choffeit Brytannyawl enw ynn tragy wydawl. Ac wrth hynny y kynnullawd Henry urenhin lu o'r holl ynys, o Bennryn Penngwaeth yg Kernyw hyt ym Pennryn Balathawon yn y Gogled, ynn erbyn Gwyned a Phowys [And they planned to exterminate all the Britons completely, so that the Britannic name should never more be remembered. And so king Henry gathered a host from the whole isle, from the promontory of Penwith in Cornwall to the promontory of Blathaon in the North, against Gwynedd and Powys]"

?The Bruty Tywysogyon1

After only eleven years on the throne, William the Conqueror accom plished what several centuries of Anglo-Saxons kings failed to do: he suc cessfully asserted sovereignty over Wales. The new king of England, shrewdly aware of his insular kingdom's unstable borders, had shortly after the Conquest appointed his ablest soldiers?powerful magnates such as William fitz Osbern, Hugh d'Avranches, and Roger of Montgomery? to fortify and defend the Welsh march. By 1081, the king not only felt secure enough to make a pilgrimage to St David's in the South Welsh kingdom of Deheubarth, but he also traveled with such a show of force that Rhys ap Tewdwr, the local king, agreed to pay ?40 in annual tribute, and it is likely that the Conqueror also established a garrison at Cardiff as a reminder of his presence.2 Throughout the rest of William's reign, his vassals made small but significant annexations of Welsh territories, and, by his death even a Welsh chronicle, the Bruty Tywysogyon, acknowl edges William I as "tywyssawc y Normanyeit a brenhin y Saeson a'r Brytanyeit a'r Albanwyr [prince of the Normans and king of the Saxons,

THE CHAUCER REVIEW, Vol. 35, No. 1, 2000. Copyright ? 2000 The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA


MICHAEL A. FALETRA 61

Britons, and Scots] ."3 William Rufus and Henry I continued their father's legacy, and Norman aristocrats began to colonize Wales even more exten sively during their reigns. Concurrent with, and, I shall argue, support ive of this Norman expansion in Wales is a renaissance in the writing of history. Orderic Vitalis, Dudo of St Quentin, Henry of Huntington, Guillaume de Poitiers, and William of Malmesbury are but a few of the historians active in the eleventh and early twelfth centuries who together created a series of texts that celebrate Norman achievements and pro vide a discursive foundation for the Norman conquest of Britain.4

Although William of Malmesbury of all the twelfth-century historians retains the healthiest respect among modern scholars, it is ironically his most wayward historiographical heir, Geoffrey of Monmouth, who sur passes him in fame and influence throughout the Middle Ages. In fact, the 215 extant MSS. of Geoffrey's Historia Regum Britanniae, in compari son to the thirty-five of William's Gesta Regum Anglorum or the twenty of his Gesta Pontificum Anglorum, bear witness to the eclipsing of William's preeminence as an historian throughout the later medieval period; com parison of the dates of their first printings?the Historia in 1508 and the Gesta Regum in 1596?also confirms their relative popularity.5 Like his eminent predecessor, Geoffrey of Monmouth writes during a period of great instability in regard to?among other things?the status of the Norman territories in Wales. With the death of Henry I in 1135, and the contested accession of the ineffective Stephen to the English throne, Norman expansion into Wales not only came to a halt but actually began to lose ground. As one historian puts it, Norman "penetration proved

much easier than control," and the loss of a few castles might swiftly have tipped the balance of power away from the Normans.6 Geoffrey of

Monmouth, like his eminent predecessor, necessarily takes a political stance on the affairs of Norman Wales. And, like William of Malmesbury, he too narrates the past of the isle of Britain in a way that ultimately legit imates Norman sovereignty. Despite the occasionally pro-Briton, and indeed pro-Celtic implications of Geoffrey's text, and despite the fact that he seems to glorify the kings and heroes of the ancient Britons, the Historia Regum Britanniae, though appearing to embrace the contradic tions of competing histories, finally supports the Normans in their tenure of an imperium over all of Britain.

Previous critics have been hesitant to ascribe to Geoffrey a direct complicity with the Norman power structure. One dominant view arises from J. S. P. Tatlock's theory that Geoffrey was a Breton patriot who, in glorifying the ancient Britons, was thereby also praising the virtues of his own people and of the Welsh, with whom he envisioned some form of a pan-Celtic alliance.7 This model of Geoffrey as the mouthpiece of the Celtic fringe has informed much subsequent scholarly work,


62 THE CHAUCER REVIEW

especially historically-oriented approaches to Geoffrey which attempt to show his accurate transcription of a very real Welsh or Breton histo riographical tradition. Acton Griscom, for instance, argues not only that Geoffrey of Monmouth probably used some kind of source-history written in Welsh, but also that his use of such a source precludes the possibility that he modified it for contemporary political purposes.8 And Geoffrey Ashe, finding evidence for a fifth-century British general who may well be the historical basis for King Arthur, falsely assumes that some other written historical source must exist for the Historia, and, in turn, that Geoffrey's use of this hypothetical source is therefore aligned politically with Celtic revivalism.9 In other words, much twentieth-cen tury scholarship, laden with the burden imposed by Matthew Arnold and Tatlock of seeking pro-Celtic political sympathies in Geoffrey's use of non-extant Celtic historical sources, has in fact ahistoricized the Historia Regum Britanniae, ignoring its implication within the network of Norman power. Only recently have scholars begun to explore the possibilities of more historical and political readings. Examining the Historia against the Welsh historical tradition, Brynley Roberts explores the idea that Geoffrey of Monmouth's political sympathies may not be entirely pro-Welsh.10 And although John Gillingam's study asserts that "Geoffrey was a Welshman whose object was to secure cultural respectability for his own nation," it nonetheless presents Geoffrey as keenly aware of the political situation in twelfth-century Britain.11 The work of Martin Shichtman and Laurie Finke perhaps best emphasizes Geoffrey's manipulations of and capitalizations upon his source mate rial in order to please specifically Norman patrons.12 In this essay I hope to combine Shichtman and Finke's attention to the material bases of Geoffrey's Historia with a synchronic examination of its purposes and functions within the context of twelfth-century Norman historiography. It is to William of Malmesbury's Gesta Regum Anglorum that the Historia, I believe, responds most directly, and it is in the proto-nationalist, pro Norman, anti-Welsh tradition of the Gesta Regum that Geoffrey's work should most appropriately be considered.

Many modern readers of the Historia Regum Britanniae will seize on the accounts of King Arthur or Lear or Brutus or Belinus as moments in which the glory of the Britons is celebrated and perhaps even romanti cally extended into the present. The evidence of subsequent literary his tory reveals similar impulses among writers as diverse as Chretien de Troyes, the Gawain-poet, Shakespeare, and Keats. However, if we briefly consider Edmund Spenser as representative of Geoffrey's admirers, we discern that many of the writers who engage with the "Matter of Britain" maintain a fundamental misunderstanding of the Historia, regarding it as the stuff of romance?digressive, individualistic, and essentially ahis



torical?rather than as Geoffrey conceives it: as an epic history marked, like other Anglo-Norman histories, by linearity and continuity. In a sim ilar vein, although some critics claim that Geoffrey composes a history that is distinctly revisionist, establishing itself in a fierce opposition with the Gesta Regum Anglorum,13 the Historia in fact continues William of

Malmesbury's project and shows how the Norman regime finds itself both in a position of dominance over the already-defeated Britons as well as at the culmination of a very linear historical sequence.

In the Gesta Regum Anglorum, William of Malmesbury presents insular history in a manner that both foregrounds the Normans and legitimates them by repeatedly emphasizing the continuities between their regime and that of the Anglo-Saxons. He does so not merely in an adherence to genealogical legitimacy, but also?and much more systematically? through his strategic compilation of his sources in a way that emphasizes linear continuity throughout. Thus on one level, William can assert that the Conqueror claims the throne as the appointed heir of Edward the Confessor, while in a broader sense he has already prepared his audience for the coming of the Normans by his careful smoothing out of ruptures in the strict lineal succession throughout the history. He parenthesizes and abbreviates his narration of Cnut's reign, first suggesting it is some how illegitimate because Cnut declined trial by combat with Edmund Ironsides, then later appending an account of the Holy Roman Emperor in order to reemphasize holiness and legitimacy before describing the reign of Edmund the Confessor. William's legitimizing of the Normans showcases them as the culmination of a consistently linear narrative. However, he also invokes Orosius as an historiographical model in nar rating the inevitable passage of secular power, or imperium, from people to people throughout history. Orosius s Historia contra paganos outlines the transferences of this valorized imperium from Nebuchadnezzar's Babylon to Alexander's Hellenic Empire, and finally to ancient Rome. In turn, the Anglo-Saxons keep Orosian historiography alive, as Howe and Schrader have pointed out, by extending this series of translationes imperii into the British Isles, using it most probably as a discursive means of asserting authority over Celts and Danes alike.14

Read against the background of Orosian historiography, the Gesta Regum suggests that the Normans have legitimately?and, in fact, inevitably?inherited the imperium from the Anglo-Saxons. It is pointedly silent, however, regarding the existence of an insular imperium prior to the Anglo-Saxons. In fact, William of Malmesbury ignores the ancient Britons almost completely; their descendants, the Welsh, figure in his his tory only as a lawless, barbarian race, marginal to the linear progress of history and the translation of any divinely-ordained power.15 Such char acterizations, Gillingham points out, coincide with Norman expansionist



interests, but, even more importantly, this erasure of the history of the Britons establishes the arrival of the Saxons as the foundational event in

insular history, for English and Normans alike.16 As Hannah Arendt notes, all lineally-structured historical narratives posit a foundational point that legitimizes the entirety of the following sequence, serving also to substantiate contemporary claims to power.17 Thus does the Gesta Regum Anglorum provide the Normans with a history that, in looking back to the adventus Saxonum, not only emphasizes continuity with the Anglo Saxon regime, but which also, through its omission of the history of the ancient Britons, opens up a space at once discursive for and antagonis tic to the Norman colonization of Wales.

In many ways, Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae seems opposed to the Gesta Regum: where William of Malmesbury is scholarly, Geoffrey mocks such scholarship in his vague reference to his alleged bri tannici sermonis librum uetustissimum,18 where William recounts miracles

and carefully integrates saints' lives into his work, Geoffrey appears unapologetically secular; and where William offhandedly dismisses the history of the ancient Britons, Geoffrey dedicates his entire history to that subject. Most significantly, William of Malmesbury's Gesta Regum looks back to the adventus Saxonum for its foundational event, while Geoffrey of Monmouth in turn constructs in his history an adventus Brittonum. However, Geoffrey's Historia shares with the Gesta Regum a relentless sense of linearity based, again as in the Gesta Regum, primarily upon geneal ogy.19 Moreover, despite Spiegel's claim that" [g] enealogical histories are . . . narrative mimeses of the creation of life itself,"20 an idea which tends to naturalize linear structure, the genealogical progression that appears in Geoffrey's Historia has clear political implications in the legitimizing of Norman power. In terms of the continuation of British kingship, Geoffrey derives all the kings of Britain up to the incursion of the Romans from Brutus, who thus serves not just as a foundational figure but also as a revered ancestor. One can extend this trajectory in time both into the past and future of the history: Brutus, as we know, is a descen dant in turn of Aeneas and thus of the royal house of Troy, while the con tinuation of his line in post-Roman Britain is ensured by the House of Constantine's ties with the kings of Brittany, a cadet branch of Brutus's line. In sum, Brutus and his descendants rule in Britain?with a few notable exceptions?for a period of about seventeen hundred years.21 The occasional interruption of a notable personage onto the fabric of Geoffrey's British history seems the exception that proves the rule, for every Arthur or Leir finds his match in a series of more mundane kings such as Gorbonianus, Cherin, Eldol, Redon, Tenvantius, and Capoir, etc. The Historia maintains linearity despite the potential centrifugal force of many of its separate historical episodes.



Concomitant, however, with the Historia s linearity, is its evocation of the Aeneid at the very moment of Britain's foundation, thus implicating the subsequent history with what David Quint has identified as the patent imperialism of the Vergilian epic.22 Indeed, the main text of the Historia opens with an evocation of the Aeneid'with all its connotations of empire and glory: Eneas post Troianum bellum excidium urbis cum Ascanio filio suo diffugiens Italiam nauigio adiuit. Breaking in suddenly on Geoffrey's idyl lic prologue, the Trojan's flight provides a most abrupt transition from the pastoral description of Britain which preceded it.23 In true Vergilian fashion, history takes the place of idyll. For the imperial aspirations of both Vergil's Aeneas and Geoffrey's Brutus, the past is something that must be cast aside and superseded. The past holds too many ghosts: cling ing to it engenders the inglorious fate of repetition of one's mistakes and experiences.24 Moreover, as Lee Patterson's discussion of the Thebes leg end has shown, the twelfth-century imagination seems to have found the circularity of the vengeance-ridden Theban past threatening and focused instead on the progressive, the linear, the forward-looking.25 Thus Aeneas, urged by the gods towards an auspicious (and imperial) future, abandons Creusa and later Dido. Choosing Rome over Carthage, he embraces the nationalistic notion of history as linear progress and rejects the repeti tions and inescapable nostalgia implicit in the histories of Thebes, Carthage, and Troy. Geoffrey's Brutus similarly leaves his past behind, fleeing not only his crimes but also his lofty ancestry for something bet ter. Although he is a parricide, Brutus is no Oedipus, and he eschews involvement with the endless circle of blood and revenge so familiar to readers of the Oresteia or the Thebaid.

Most significant, however, is the linkage of these types of linear, future oriented histories with the foundation of nations. On finally arriving at his destined home of Albion, Brutus establishes his legitimate bloodline as the possessor of a foundational imperium, an act which Arendt would identify as crucial to the practical application of subsequent non-coer cive government.26 And furthermore, continuing their forefather's foun dational role, Brutus's immediate descendants build roads, codify laws, found cities, and map out their new land; in short, they develop all the trappings of civilization that the evocation of imperial Rome entails. Geoffrey, then, reworks the story of Brutus as he finds it in Nennius's Historia Brittonum to great effect. Where Nennius refers to the founding Trojan as Brutus the Hateful,27 Geoffrey of Monmouth transforms his hero from a mere Trojan to a new Aeneas,28 whose foundation of a new Rome at Trinovantum (London) would serve Britons, Saxons, and Normans alike as the seat of insular power.

This heroization of Brutus and the other British kings?despite their presumably shameful paganism?has led scholars to believe that Geoffrey



of Monmouth was either part Welsh or professed pro-Welsh or other pro Celtic sentiments.29 However, examination of the linear trajectory of the Historia Regum Britanniae, particularly as it finds a place for the adventus Saxonum and the downfall of the Britons, should help to clarify the nature of Geoffrey's political allegiances. Geoffrey's version of the coming of the Saxons illuminates the project of the Historia Regum Britanniae as a whole. Indeed, in its staging of this crucial moment of transition, it supports an Orosian historiography of translationes imperii', in emphasizing the wan ing of the Britons, it associatively legitimates the Norman present. After the withdrawal of the Roman legions under Maximianus, the Britons, besieged by Picts and Scots, send to Brittany for aid. At this point, Geoffrey cites Gildas' letter to Aetius: Nos mare ad barbams barbari ad mare repellunt. Interea oriuntur duo genera funerum. Aut enim submergimur aut iugu lamur [The sea drives us to the barbarians, the barbarians drive us to the sea. So there arise two types of death for us: either we drown or get our throats cut].30 Britain has indeed come upon bad times. William of

Malmesbury uses this situation to justify Vortigern's invitation of Saxon mercenaries to Britain. In Geoffrey's version, however, Vortigern himself proves more of a problem than the Picts and Scots, for the Saxons are brought on by his thirst for power. A true Machiavellian, Vortigern sets Constans up as a puppet king, has him craftily murdered by drunken Picts, and then bursts into tears at the sight of the victim's decapitated head. Most interesting, however, is the fact that, in contrast to the story as told by William of Malmesbury,31 Vortigern pointedly does not invite the foreigners: he cannot, since the famous three Saxon keolas had already landed on British soil. But Geoffrey's Vortigern, true to form, does manage to extract the greatest personal profit from a necessary evil:

Interea tres applicuerit ciuile quas longas naues dicimus in part ibus Canciae plene armatis militibus. Quibus duos fratres Horsus et Hengistus ducatum prerabant. Fuerunt tunc Vortigirnus Dorobernie que nunc Cantuaria dicitur ut consuetudo eum con duxerat ciuitatem illam sepissime uisitare. Cui cum retulissent nuntii ignotos uiros magneque stature homines in magnis nauibus applicuisse, dedit pacem ipsosque ad se conduci precepit.

[About this time there landed in certain parts of Kent three vessels of the type we call longships. They were full of armed warriors and there were two brothers named Hengist and Horsa in command of them. At that moment Vortigern was at Durobernia, which is now called Canterbury, for it was his custom to visit that city very fre quently. When messengers reported to him that unknown men, and, what is more, men of huge stature had landed in enormous ships, Vortigern made peaceful overtures to them and ordered them to be led into his presence] ,32



Vortigern here significantly does not invite the Saxons to Britain in order to quell Pictish and Scottish aggression, as in both Nennius and William of Malmesbury. In Geoffrey's sources, Vortigern's action reveals a certain irresponsible lack of foresight and an unwise decision made in the face of great necessity, but his actions here are of an entirely different qual ity. Having just treacherously seized the throne, Vortigern is residing peacefully at Canterbury, and, in this light, his actions seem premedi tated. When Vortigern hears of the Saxons' pagan beliefs, he says, "De incredulitate uestra quepocius crudelitas did potest, vehementer doleo. De aduentu autem uestro gaudeo, quia in congruo tempore uos necessitati mee siue deus siue alius obtulerit [I am greatly grieved by your belief, which, indeed, can bet ter be called unbelief; but all the same I am delighted that you have come, for either God Himself, or someone else, has brought you here to help me at a most convenient moment] ."33 Vortigern enlists Hengist and Horsa despite their paganism. And furthermore, despite his own jeu de mots in this passage, he marries the heathen Rowena without hesitation. What strikes the reader most in such a depiction of Vortigern is the king's calculation and deliberateness. He bides his time for just the right moment to assassinate Constans, he enlists the Saxons after some thought, despite their paganism, and his later machinations seem less the des perate ruses of a beleaguered man than the Machiavellian wiles of a mas ter of Realpolitik. Geoffrey's depiction of Vortigern, in short, marks a return not to William of Malmesbury?with his broadly-sketched narra tion of Vortigern's impulsive wickedness?nor even to Nennius or Bede, who barely linger over the king. Geoffrey instead revives with his Vortigern the invectives of Gildas which are understood by Bede and other histo rians to constitute the justification of the downfall of Britain and the pas sage of imperium to the Saxons.

The ending of the Historia Regum Britanniae confirms the political tele ology that Geoffrey's linear, genealogical narration and his depiction of Vortigern and the adventus Saxonum indicates. But before assessing the implications of the ending upon his historiography, however, we must first acknowledge its significant variation in the various manuscripts. Most of the manuscripts of the so-called Vulgate Historia Regum Britanniae, including the Cambridge manuscript edited by Griscom in his influen tial edition, end the narrative with a description of the assaults that Yvor and Yni, the last kings of the Britons, make against the Saxons. Geoffrey notes the final failure of the Briton counteroffensive to reconquer Logres, and the subsequent establishment of a powerful English king ship there. Barbarie etiam, Geoffrey writes:

irrepente iam non vocabantur Britones, sed Gualenses, huiusmodi vocabulum sive a Gualone duce eorum sive a Galaes regina sive a barbarie trahentes. At Saxones sapientius agentes pacem &



concordiam inter se habentes, agros colentes, civitates & oppida reedificantes, & sic abiecto dominio Britonum iam toti Loegrie imperaverunt sub duce Adelstano qui primus inter eos diadema portavit. EXPLICIT.

[Impenitent of their barbarity, they were no longer called Britons but Welsh, a word deriving either from their leader Gualo or from Queen Galaes or from their barbarity. But the Saxons , acting more wisely, establishing peace and concord among themselves, tilling the fields, rebuilding the cities and towns, ruled under their chief Athelstan, who was the first among them to wear the crown] ,34

The vast sweep of the history of the Britons thus comes to an end not with a bang, but with a whimper. This conclusion establishes in no uncer tain terms the utter victory of the Saxons and the utter defeat of the Britons. The final two sentences even parallel one another in a way that emphasizes such differences. The Britons act irrepente, the Saxons sapi entius. Moreover, the main verb of the penultimate sentence, vocabantur, indicates the transformation of the Britons into something lesser, some thing else; the main verb of the final sentence, imperaverunt, contrasts this with the active power of the Saxons. Both sentences similarly elaborate their subjects with participial phrases which also serve to contrast the final states of the Britons and Saxons. Trahentes describes the origin of the Britons' new name of "Welsh," deriving it from the barbarity of their cus toms. Opposed to the Welsh barbarity is the Saxon sense of civilization, itself described in a series of participial phrases which hearken back to the progressive invention of civilization by the Briton kings of the earlier books of the Historia Regum Britanniae: the establishment of civil order, the cultivation of farmland, the building of cities. The Saxons at the end have assumed a foundational role in light of subsequent history, and, just as importantly, they have, despite their paganism, replaced the Britons as the possessors of imperium. The Historia, that is, closes in a manner that not only stresses the victory of the Saxons and the depravity of the Britons (or incipient Welshmen), but that also provides the very foundation of political authority which, as Arendt maintains, is so crucial to the main tenance of consensual modes of power.35

The version of the Historia s ending preserved in the Berne and Harlech MSS. makes the defeat of the Britons, and the futility of their attempts at resurgence even clearer:

Degenerati autem a Britannica nobilitate Gualenses, numquam postea monarchiam insulae recuperauerunt. Immo nunc sibi interdum Saxonibus ingrati consurgentes externas ac domesticas clades incessanter agebant.



[The Welsh, once they had degenerated from the noble state enjoyed by the Britons, never afterwards recovered the overlordship of the island. On the contrary, they went on quarreling with the Saxons and among themselves and remained in a perpetual state of either exter nal or civil warfare] .36

Geoffrey of Monmouth, in producing this text about the British past, is not merely conceding to the idea that "the 'meaning' of British history . . . is simply that Britain, like other nations, rises, flourishes, and falls."37 Such a reading ignores the historical situatedness of the Historia and places it above political concerns. Instead, the Historia generates a discourse about the British present?and, pointedly, the Welsh present?as well. Geoffrey's remark about the internecine warfare of the Welsh in Athelstan's day finds its echo in numerous twelfth-century comments regarding the essential quarrelsomeness of the Welsh, a trait which in turn justifies the extension of Norman administration over Wales.38 The Historia Regum Britanniae is hardly apolitical, but rather, as one of Geoffrey's uncompli mentary modern detractors has written, "a serious patriotic Tory pseudo history ... a latter-day propagandistic Aeneid designed to please the Anglo-Norman top-brass."39

The Historia, then, provides both a foundational basis and a linear tra jectory for Norman rule, while also conforming to many of the charac teristics of what Hanning refers to as "Norman historiography" in its evocation of Vergilian imperialism, its emphasis on individual historical agents, and its portrayal of the violent irruptions of peoples and the for tuitous overturning of power.40 In many senses, the Historia resembles

William of Malmesbury's Gesta Regum in its final affirmation of the legiti macy of the Norman regime in England and elsewhere. However, the remainder of this essay will demonstrate how, unlike the Gesta Regum, Geoffrey's Historia is an agonistic rather than an antagonistic text. In other words, it follows Huizinga's and Suleiman's development of these terms wherein an antagonistic text represents conflict polemically and aggres sively and an agonistic text represents conflict either symbolically or ideo logically, if at all.41 Where William of Malmesbury, then, sees the Britons as a defeated enemy, savage, separate, and completely unlike the more civ ilized Angles and Normans, Geoffrey of Monmouth actually glorifies the Britons, even if his text does ultimately depict their downfall: he certainly does not engage in the same type of vehement moralized Othering of the Britons as William does. William's insistently moral disdain of the Britons and Welsh renders his narrative antagonistic in a fashion that the Historia does not achieve, yet Geoffrey's history instead takes an agonistic stance towards the Britons, representing them less as the stigmatized Other than as the paradoxically glorified subjects of incipient colonization.



Indeed, Geoffrey's obvious familiarity with Wales?many of the names in his history are Welsh, and scholars have long noted his interest in Caerleon-on-Usk42?suggests that he may well be aware of the mecha nisms, all too often violent, of Norman colonization there. In the Historia, however, his description of the original settlement of Britain imagines a process of colonization that does not displace other, previous popula tions. The Historia begins in the idyllic mode with a fairly lengthy descrip tion of the island of Britain. In one respect, this Britain with its prata sub aeriis montibus ameno situ uirentia where flores diuersorum colorum mella dis

tribuunt merely constitutes a commonplace rhetorical topos and partici pates in a tradition of such descriptions that extends back to Nennius, Bede, and, ultimately to Vergil's Georgicsand Eclogues.43 At the same time, Geoffrey's primeval Britain differs from that of his predecessors in that it is empty of man, devoid of any kind of cultural or social associations.

While Nennius's Historia Brittonum focuses on Britain's great rivers as trade routes, Bede commences by situating Britain in regard to other human kingdoms: Gaul, Belgic Gaul, Germany, Spain.44 Nennius and Bede both emphasize Britain's resources with regard to human com merce. Bede discusses specifically what types of fish and game can be caught in Britain, and he likewise notes the useful scarlet dye that can be extracted from British whelks. Geoffrey, in distinction to both, avoids such details, preferring to paint Britain as empty nature, devoid?for the time?of mortal life. His description of the pleasant features of the island is nearly twice as long as Bede's and nearly six times as long as Nennius s.

Much of what Geoffrey adds to his sources again involves the develop ment of this idyllic image which hearkens back to Vergil and Theocritus. Nature proffers her unexploited abundance.

The idea that the Britons are the original inhabitants of Britain, inso far as it is deliberate, is also ideological. In a certain sense, the idea of the Britons entering an empty Britain stands in itself as a foundational myth. Just as William of Malmesbury deemphasizes the importance of the Britons in the Gesta Regum, making them almost non-existent in order to render the adventus Saxonum as foundational, Geoffrey of Monmouth engages in a similar narrative strategy by positing the originality of the Britons, as his description of Brutus's exchange with the goddess Diana in the first book of the Historia makes clear. Brutus, desirous of leaving Greece, sacrifices to the goddess, invoking her in a manner that sets a suitable tone for the following exchange. "Divapotens," he prays, "nemo rum terror siluestribus acspesT The appellations with which Brutus addresses his goddess, with their emphasis on her relationship with the forests and empty space, foreshadow the nature of her reply. "Brute," she replies,

. . . sub occasu solis trans Gallica regna Insula in oceano est habitata gigantibus olim.



Nunc deserta quidem gentibus apta tuis. Ilia tibi fietque tuis locus aptus in aevum. Hec erit et natis altera Troia tuis.

Hie de prole tua reges nascentur.

[Brutus, beyond the setting of the sun, past the realms of Gaul, there is an island in the sea, once occupied by giants. Now it is empty and ready for your folk. Down the years this will prove an abode suited to you and your people; and for your descendants it will be a second Troy. A race of kings will be born from your stock there.]45

Not only is Diana's prophecy steeped in foundationalism, but it also con firms and extends the value of empty space. The Trojans, making this sac rifice from a deserted city somewhere in the Mediterranean which itself had been ab incursione piratarum vastata, are here encouraged to move even further away from the inhabited world of "civilization" to a land even more pristine, more ripe for settlement. However, on arriving upon the shores of Britain, the Trojans face the great contradiction of Diana's speech, a contradiction that reveals very real anxieties about settlement and which, more importantly, reveals as well a deep-seated anxiety about the possibility for the act of foundation itself.

Until this point in the narrative, Geoffrey has carefully prepared the audience for the pristine character of Britain. Yet Diana in her prophecy makes one crucial error: in referring to the aboriginal existence of giants upon the island, she should have said iam instead of olim, for, as the Trojans quickly learn, at least one giant enclave, that of the fearsome Gogmagog, still dwells in Albion. Brutus s companion Corineus makes quick work of Gogmagog, but his doing so does not completely erase the giants from the land. They remain at least topographically: the place of the giant's death becomes memorialized within the Historia as Gogmagog's Leap, which Tatlock places near Plymouth.46 But the exis tence of the giants also stands as a symbol of the fundamental bad faith of conquest. Despite Geoffrey's genuinely sincere attempts, he is unable to envision any part of the world as empty, a trait also found in the con temporary topos of gaainable ten? so prevalent in twelfth-century romances.47 Geoffrey's incapacity in the end to imagine any land as primevally empty reveals the Utopian impossibility of any kind of foundation or settlement without the concomitant displacement or domination of another previ ous group: "All culture," as Derrida notes, "is originarily colonial."48 While Jeffrey Cohen asserts that this episode encodes the Celts as the giants and the Germanic tribes as the Britons, his analysis fails to consider twelfth century colonial expansion into Wales as one of the Historia s primary contexts, nor does it consider William of Malmesbury's prior identifica tion of the Welsh as barbarians.49 The conquest of the giants by the



Trojans reflects instead a contradiction within the ideology of Geoffrey's Norman audience itself as it simultaneously affirms and denies the exis tence of a conquest?and thus of a conquered people.

Although this account of the originary settlement of Britain perhaps indicts Norman colonialist practices, it nonetheless also adheres to the idea that the Britons, if not themselves completely aboriginal, establish the trappings of civilization on the island and thus have some kind of claim to being foundational. Indeed, the very idea of narrating the his tory of the kings of Britain suggests an admiration for the subject and the desire to see in them some kind of continuity with the present. Already in the first quarter of the twelfth century, William of Malmesbury demon strates that a narrative about the ancient Britons which emphasizes both their rise and fall can ultimately serve as foundational to the Norman regime: he suggests in the Gesta Regum that the fall of the Britons?taken in reference to Orosius's history of the rise and fall of empires and the passage of imperium?constitutes a prototype for the decline of the Anglo Saxons and their replacement by the imperialistic Norman regime. In the figure of Arthur, however, such theories are put to the test. Geoffrey unmistakably portrays the king as a symbol of British strength at its pin nacle. Moreover, Arthur's blaze of glory stands in sharp contrast against the history of evils which Vortigern and others had called down upon Britain, and, most importantly, it invokes what must have been, to the Historia s Norman audiences, the quite dangerous and quite attainable notion of Briton or Welsh resurgence. Arthur's rightful claim to the throne, his ascent to power, his crushing defeats of the Saxons, his defi ance of the Romans, his crusades on the continent?all these events point to the fact that he is in some sense the restitutor orbis, the restorer of peace and prosperity and the redeemer of the waning British people. Indeed, in his ability to unite the entire quarreling nation under his ban ner, Arthur is, in fact, an anti-Vortigern.50

However, despite all this, Geoffrey constructs his story of Arthur very carefully, finally containing this British king par excellence within the boundaries of the past. Arthur's great deeds are always attributed, in proper Norman fashion, to his individual abilities and never to the gen eral goodwill of the Britons; Arthur's compatriots, in fact, revert to their wicked ways as soon as Arthur bows out, and the insurrection of Mordred also attests to the inherent evil of the Britons. John Gillingham, seizing upon the apparent glorification of the British king, argues that the Historia Regum Britanniae courts both Welsh and Norman audiences, attempting to bridge the gap between the two peoples.51 Geoffrey, he continues, pro vides a history for the Britons in order to prove to the Normans that the

Welsh could be worthy allies, and thus Arthur stands as an exemplar of Briton virtue. Though alliances with Welsh princes were not uncommon



during the eleventh and twelfth centuries, Welsh affairs were, from a broader perspective, going from bad to worse. Upon the death of Henry I, whom the Welsh greatly feared,52 the Welsh quickly began to gain ground again in their homeland, burning castles, capturing towns, and ousting the Norman aristocracy and settlers. By the mid-twelfth century, then, there is all the more reason for the Welsh to be demonized as bar barians (as in the Gesta Regum) or worse. And Arthur is the exception that proves the rule, since, in comparison with his reign, the subsequent his tory of the British race indeed appears lawless and decadent.

Only one aspect of Arthur's meteoric inclusion in the Historia Regum Britanniae should give us?as well as the Norman audiences?pause: the issue of Arthur's potential return. In the last glimpse that Geoffrey affords us of Arthur, the king, letaliter vulneratus, is carried off ad sananda uulnera sua in insula Auallonis.53 Geoffrey makes no explicit mention of Arthur's return at this juncture, the place in the text into which it would most log ically fit. Moreover, Geoffrey ignores the contradiction implicit in being healed of mortal wounds. The narrative instead hastens on to post Arthurian history. The only clue that the Historia in fact gives of Arthur's messianic return lies in the prophecy that the angelic voice makes to Cadwallader: Nolebat enim Deus Britones in insula Britannie diutius regnare & antequam tempus aduenniset quod Merlinus Arturo pmphetauerat.54 Merlin's use of diutius rather than numquam would open up an historical space for Briton resurgence. However, as straightforward as the prophecy seems, one searches in vain throughout the Historia Regum Britanniae to discover any instance of Merlin prophesying to Arthur. Furthermore, not even Merlin's prophecies to Vortigern, which refer very clearly to Arthur as the "Boar of Cornwall," make mention of the Boar's return. The

Historia, then, does not necessarily imply that Arthur will one day return. Despite the vagueness of the Arthur legend in this respect, many schol

ars, convinced of Geoffrey's pro-Celtic sentiments, have regarded the Historia as an almost messianic text that both glorifies the Briton past and promises a golden Briton future. R. W. Southern, typical of the more level-headed of such approaches, claims that Geoffrey "had seen in his own lifetime the Bretons return to England as Conquerors. As he looked back he saw some divinely ordained design behind the chaos of events? a destiny once before fulfilled in Arthur and once again to be fulfilled in the future."55 Yet we have seen how Geoffrey equivocates about the promise of Arthur's return, noting too that the Historia concludes very pessimistically with regard to Welsh or pan-Celtic resurgence. Moreover, Southern's reading also overlooks Geoffrey's implication in the com plexities of Norman power. Geoffrey's historical narration?linear, genealogical, and individualistic?participates in a wider Norman secu lar historiography that privileges the potentially limitless temporal and



spatial expansionism required for a colonial ideology.56 Geoffrey's patrons are, not surprisingly, all powerful Normans: Robert Earl of Gloucester, Bishop Alexander of Lincoln, Bishop Robert of Lincoln, Waleran Count of Mellent, and even King Stephen. And the palatable narrative of the glorious but decidedly complete history of the Britons eventually obtained for its creator the strategically important bishopric of St Asaph's in North Wales in 1151.57 In light of such information, it seems difficult to extricate Geoffrey from Norman power structures or to view the

Historia as an anti-Norman tract. Even if one maintains that Geoffrey of Monmouth harbors certain pro-Breton tendencies,58 such biases need not conflict with his much more fundamental pro-Norman stance. The nature of Geoffrey's loyalties, however, becomes even clearer when one examines the most puzzling, most apparently incendiary, and most con tradictory part of his work: the Prophetiae Merlini. These prophecies quickly became the subject of intense discussion, clarification, interpre tation, and dispute following their publication in 1136; but analysis of their highly varied reception again confirms the strong pro-Norman prej udice of both the Prophetiae Merlini and the Historia Regum Britanniae as a whole.

Book Seven of the Historia Regum Britanniae stands not only at the cen ter of the narrative, but also in the midst of the great transition between the waxing and waning of Briton power. Thus the Prophetiae Merlini per haps holds the key to interpreting the entire subsequent history. And indeed, in outlining, albeit obscurely and circuitously, the future history of the Britons, Geoffrey's Merlin in fact closes his people off to political action in the twelfth century. The Prophetiae Merlini, I believe, ultimately serve as the ludic core of the Historia, which, in the end only glorifies the Norman regime. Despite Southern's claim that prophecy disrupts the course of history and imposes new meaning upon it,59 the Prophetiae

Merlini further diminish the importance of the Britons and emphasize instead the near-eternal defeatedness of that people, ideologically but tressing Norman hegemony not only over England but over Wales as well. Geoffrey's placement of the prophecies in the center of his work indeed argues for their centrality to the history of the Britons, but, unfortunately, they are not central in the sympathetic way that Tatlock suggests.60 The prophecies do provide the interpretive key to the remainder of the Historia, just as the Sybil's prophecy in the Aeneid predetermines the interpretation of that work.61 However, if one considers the Historia, like the Aeneid, as a narrative of origins and a justification of imperialism, it becomes clear that the potentially subversive prophecies serve to facili tate the conquest of Wales rather than to kindle the hopes of the Britons.

Where the Aeneid and the Gesta Regum represent the conflict between Normans and Welsh antagonistically in ways that demonize the enemy,



Geoffrey's history opposes the Britons by agonistically and more surrep titiously, glorifying them only within the confines of a ludic structure that denies them meaningful action in the face of Norman hegemony.

Indeed, the Prophetiae Merlini, as noted above, function in one sense as a transition between the rising and falling fortunes of the Britons. Like

William of Malmesbury's strategic insertion of inherently interesting texts such as letters or charters in order to cover up gaps or to forge transi tions between disparate or unrelated material, Geoffrey's inclusion of the prophecies influences the way one reads the Historia. Because much of Merlin's prophecy concerns relations between the Britons and the Saxons?the Red Dragon and the White Dragon?one gets at least a gen eral impression that the prophecies champion Briton resurgence. Specifically, their references to an alliance between Conan and Cadwal lader suggest the continuation of Briton glory. However, in the end, the Prophetiae Merlini contain any such Welsh or pan-Celtic nationalism within a rhetoric that obfuscates more than it clarifies; in this way, the Prophetiae parallel the movement of the Historia in its entirety.

The Prophetiae Merlini are deliberately obscurantist. Although they do provide enough clear references to maintain internal consistency and to ground themselves at least to some extent in the real world, such con crete (or somewhat concrete) references also establish the tantalizing basis for a more comprehensive reading of the prophecies in all their vagaries. The German Worm, the Lion of Justice, the She-Lynx, the Eagle?all these not only seem transparently allegorical, but were inter preted as such?and fairly unanimously?by twelfth-century interpreters. The Lion of Justice is probably Henry I, the Eagle Empress Matilda, the German Worm the Saxons. The Thunderer?despite the pagan over tones of the term?seems clearly to refer to God. Similarly, a prophetic statement like " Venedotia shall be red with the blood of mothers and the

house of Corineus will slaughter six brothers," though to us perhaps slightly obscure, may have had a more precise meaning to twelfth-cen tury audiences: some kind of conflict will come to Gwynedd, and likewise Cornwall will face some kind of important murder or other calamity. And references to Conan and Cadwallader also seem to proffer a specific mes sage. For the most part, however, the prophecies insofar as they are inter pretable make their clearest references to events of the Norman dynasty. Geoffrey seems to revel in current affairs, recalling specific happenings in the reigns of the Norman kings from William the Conqueror to Stephen. And although they occasionally make clear references to some kind of pan-Celtic alliance or British resurgence, informed readers will realize that the exploits of the Boar of Cornwall or of Conan and Cadwallader belong to the closed off Briton past rather than to the Norman present. Even a seemingly pro-Celtic statement like "The



mountains of Armorica shall erupt and Armorica itself shall be crowned with Brutus's diadem" refers to events that will later transpire and pass within the text of the Historia itself. The Prophetia Merlini s implications for the return of Briton dominance are contained within the closed book of the Historia.

Geoffrey of Monmouth, then, offers the promise of Briton resurgence only to stifle it. At the same time, he clothes the Prophetiae Merlini with the highly charged and suggestive language of the apocalyptic. Hanning locates a certain continuity between the early, exegetical mode of Christian prophecy in Eusebius and later modes that include Geoffrey of Monmouth.62 All these prophecies, he claims, tend toward the eschato logical. Surely enough, Geoffrey does incorporate much material into the prophecies that echoes the Book of Revelation. Some of the strange details in the prophecies?the hybrid animals or the girl from Cnut's for est, for instance?have probable biblical parallels or sources, and Geoffrey thereby certainly evokes an air of the apocalyptic. However, in accord with the new secularity of Norman historiography, it seems that the prophecies, when examined more closely, avoid any concrete refer ences to the end of the world or to a Day of Judgment for the soul: after all, nationalism?even in its early, twelfth-century form?is much like the ego in being unable to imagine its own annihilation. So where Eusebius could speak openly of Rome as the New Jerusalem, Geoffrey does noth ing of the sort. In fact, the Prophetiae Merlini as they appear in the history are conspicuous in their lack of divine intervention. Merlin?however obscurely?speaks only of the affairs of this world. Indeed, many of the details of Merlin's prophecies have specific referents to certain locations in Britain or on the Continent. The prophet speaks of the rivers Amne and Periron, and of London, of Normandy, Armorica, and Wales. Although clothed in the language of the Christian apocalyptic, the Prophetiae Merlini remain rooted in the secular. Lacking any eschatologi cal purpose, then, Geoffrey's use of the apocalyptic appears more aes thetic than anything else. While it functions on the one hand to evoke an atmosphere of imminent doom and social turbulence, on the other hand it also stands as a call for exegesis. Geoffrey invites his audience to an elaborate parlor game in whose deliberate ludic obscurities the resur gence of the Britons is both promised and dismissed.

If the proliferation of interpretations of the Prophetiae Merlini in the generation or two after its first appearance can serve as an index, then Geoffrey's call to play was taken quite seriously.63 Etienne de Rouen's chronicle Draco Normannicus,M composed for Henry II about 1169, does not attempt a line for line explication of the Prophetiae Merlini per se, but its awareness of the fictiveness of the prophecies?and perhaps of the

Historia as a whole?functions as a commentary on the Galfridian tradi



tion and ultimately serves Norman foundational ideologies. In short, it aims at a concise history of the English throne only in terms of what it regards as the genealogical sources of its power and prestige, namely the duchy of Normandy and the county of Anjou. In this light, Etienne has little interest in tracing translationes imperii', any overtures toward an Orosian historiography such as William of Malmesbury traces in the Gesta Regum, or even as Geoffrey does in his insistence upon Cadwallader's fail ure and the transformation of the powerful Britons into the powerless Welsh, are foreign to Etienne's project. Instead, the genealogy of power he traces limits itself only to those institutions which have an immediate connection to the contemporary power of the English throne. If Etienne does delineate the history of the dukes of Normandy or of the civil war of King Stephen's reign, it is not due to the recognition of any antiquar ian value or to the need to depict a linear and continuous transition of power. In fact, his text is decidedly?almost systematically?nonlinear, eschewing any type of systematic order. Instead, Etienne's main goal lies in validating his patron Henry II through a summation of the real polit ical and military aspects of his rise to and tenure of power.

Despite the pervasive utilitarianism of the Draco Normannicus, Etienne nevertheless maintains a vibrant awareness of Geoffrey of Monmouth and perhaps of the incipient tradition of rival prophecies and interpretations which Geoffrey's Prophetiae Merlini engendered. Acknowledging this tra dition in one way by making occasional references to the prophecies of Merlin throughout his work, Etienne notes, for example, how the prophecy of the nesting Eagle is fulfilled with the union of the Empress Matilda and Geoffrey Plantagenet (1.172-75), or how the sinking of the White Ship likewise fulfills yet another of Merlin's prophecies (I, 231-34). Unlike Geoffrey of Monmouth's use of prophecy, Etienne's citations of Merlin serve no consistent ideological objective: they neither contribute to the very weak sense of linearity within the narrative, nor disrupt the text in such a way as to pave the road for new institutional beginnings. They are digressions, haphazard and comparable almost to footnotes or to random authorly asides.

If such citation of Geoffrey of Monmouth seems almost too trifling to be worthy of attention, then Etienne's more elaborate allusion to his pre decessor's work certainly reverses this pattern. Toward the end of the sec ond book, while describing Henry II's intended attack on a rebellious Brittany, Etienne inserts into his narrative an exchange of letters between King Henry II and none other than King Arthur. Far from treating inter pretations of Geoffrey's history or prophecies seriously, these letters? through their sheer outrageousness if nothing else?reveal that, in the end, condescension and ridicule were the most fitting words to describe the Norman attitudes toward a glorious Briton past and toward the pos



sibility of national resurgence among the subjugated Welsh. Moreover, they seem to confirm the playful spirit of Geoffrey of Monmouth's prophe cies. The first of the Arthur letters breaks upon the scene of Etienne's narrative during Henry II's imminent occupation of Brittany. Roland, a rebellious Breton lord described as Arturi dapifer,65 petitions the legendary king in a brief letter to send reinforcements (II, 945). Even the tone of the narration here reveals the ridiculousness of the situation: Haec legit Arturus, frendet, furit, aestuat ira, the Draco Normannicus reports offhand edly (11,953). Through its unsettling abruptness, the notable lack of intro duction signals that the author has entered the realm of the comic, employing understatement to great effect. King Arthur's reply to Roland and his subsequent letter to Henry II continue in this vein. Arturus Rollando, the first letter tersely begins, again ridiculing with its sense of familiarity. But Arthur's letter to Henry raises this sense of the ridiculous to new levels as Arthur first chides Henry for his neglect of proper diplo

matic form, then reminds the Angevin king of his great military prowess, and ends by threatening a counterattack. The epistle concludes with a direct threat: Simeajussa times et amas, etpronus obedis, /Jam valeas; si non, nuntio bella tibi [if you fear and love my authority and obey me humbly, then may you prosper; if not, I shall declare war on you] (II, 1215-16).

However, Henry's fictive response confirms the spirit in which these letters are to be understood. As one critic explains, "Etienne mocks the Breton hope by taking it seriously," as does Henry II.66 On reading the letter to his vassals, Henry, subridens (II, 1218), summarizes Arthur's points and composes a similarly humorous?if patronizing?reply that expresses both his feigned awe of the British king and his claim to the realm of Brittany. " Arturo magno," Henry begins, " fatorum lege perenni, /

Henricus juvenis, cum feritate modum (II, 1251-2) He ironically compares his own lack of refinement (feritate) with Arthur's great probitas while at the same time emphasizing his own inexperience and youth (though Henry II was actually about thirty-six and king for fourteen years at the date of composition). Although the Angevin king indeed claims sover eignty over Brittany through his ancestor Rollo, the first duke of Normandy, he finally concedes Brittany to Arthur on account of his mother the Empress Matilda's recent death, while at the same time asking Arthur's permission to be guardian of the contested territory while the legendary king is absent. In Etienne's words:

Cedo sed ad tempus; nam tota Britannica tellus Turn mihi turn natis est referenda meis.

Hanc sub jure tuo, sub pace tua teneamus; Jus tibi, pax nobis, totque terra simul. Haec quia concedis, valeat tua vita perennis, Nam mea sub Christi jure perennis erit.



[I give up for now; for all the land of Britain should be restored to me and my heirs. Let us hold under your law and your peace: the law will be yours, the peace ours, and the land itself for us all. Since you concede these things, may you live forever, and may I live ever under the law of Christ everlasting] (II. 1277-82).

Henry's words here again underscore the ludic nature of this exchange of letters. In fact, in the autumn of 1167 Henry Plantagenet did indeed enter Brittany and captured a few rebelling castles; he returned in July of 1173 to finish the job, and in 1181 he established his son Geoffrey as Duke of Brittany.67 The quelling of any Breton nationalism was thus largely a fait accompli at the time that Etienne composed the Draco

Normannicus, a fact which renders Henry's feigned obeisance to Arthur even more ridiculous. Yet if the epistolary exchange in the end stands as a courtly joke on the part of Etienne and Henry, the manner in which the Draco Normannicus makes use of the Geoffrey of Monmouth traditions reveals even more clearly the attitude of such texts toward the British past. The Historia Regum Britanniae, written for Norman audiences by a cleric who would later obtain from the Norman regime the important appointment to the bishopric of St Asaph's in North Wales, seems to have posed no threat to Henry II and other Norman contemporaries. Instead, if the Draco Normannicus is any indicator, the history of the British past was closed, and, where it did seem of pertinence to the present, becomes the object of genteel ridicule.

The derisive attitude manifested in the Draco Normannicus confirms the

ludic fictiveness of Geoffrey's Prophetiae Merlini, and, by extension, of the Historia as a whole. Having effectively closed off the Britons in the past, Geoffrey devises through the cryptic prophecies a line of conjecture about whether the Britons will regain control of the kingdom, secure in the knowledge that their resurgence has already come and gone. Yet Geoffrey's last work, the enigmatic Vita Merlini, yields its author's final word on the past and future of the Britons. In many ways, the Vita Merlini reprises much of the Historia, emphasizing what either Geoffrey or his audience considered its most important points. In the Vita, Merlin and Taliesin recount to one another the history of Britain; they discuss the coming and departure of the Romans, the coming of the Saxons, and the reign and death of Arthur. Indeed, the two prophets talk about his tory in many of the same cryptic terms of the Prophetiae. For example, they refer to Arthur once more as the Boar of Cornwall, and make other references to the Boar of Brittany. This cross-referencing to the Historia is not merely an example of twelfth-century intertextuality, but it also con firms Geoffrey's own awareness of the deep impenetrability of his Prophetiae through its proclivity toward explication, recapitulation, and amplification. In other words, Taliesin and Merlin do not only narrate



the history of Britain; they, like Etienne de Rouen, interpret the Active possibilities of the British future as well.

In many respects, such narration adds little to the actual content of the Historia. On Arthur's final fate, however, the Vita Merlini offers tan talizing new information. After the Battle of Camlann, it seems, Arthur was brought to the Isle of Avalon to be healed by his sister Morgan. As Taliesin explains,

Illuc [to Avalon] post bellum Camblani vulnere lesum duximus Arcturum nos conducente Barintho, equora cui fuerant et celi sydera nota inque suis talamis posuit super aurea regem fulcra manuque sibi detexit vulnus honesta inspexitque diu, tandemque redire salutem posse sibi dixit, si secum tempore longo esset et ipsius vellet medicamine fungi. Gaudentes igitur regem commisimus illi et dedimus ventis redeundo vela secundis.

[It was there we took Arthur after the battle of Camlann, where he had been wounded. Barinthus was the steersman because of his knowledge of the seas and the stars of heaven. With him at the tiller of the ship, we arrived there with the prince; and Morgan received us with due honor. She put the king on a golden bed, uncovered his wound with her noble hand and looked long at it. At length she said he could be cured if only he stayed with her a long time and accepted her treatment. We therefore happily committed the king to her care and spread our sails to favorable winds on our return journey] ,68

This narrative expands greatly on Arthur's cryptic disappearance in the Historia. Interestingly enough, the Vita never suggests that Arthur will return to Britain after the healing of his wounds, nor does it make any claim that Arthur will somehow magically become immortal. What it does precisely is to leave the question unanswered. Such is Geoffrey's method in the Prophetiae Merlini and the Historia Regum Britanniae, and so it is here too: through deliberate mystification, he removes Arthur's return from the arena of the polemic and confines it to mere speculation. Reading the Vita in conjunction with the Historia provides in the end no revela tions, no promises regarding the fate of the Britons or of their twelfth century descendants, the Welsh. Instead, the Vita Merlini continues the

Historia s exploration of the Arthurian past in terms that anticipate romance, and, in doing so, marks the narrative difference of such mate rial from the stuff of history.

In addition to not elucidating the mystery of Arthur's return, the Vita Merlini also denies the prospect of a more general Briton resurgence. As



Merlin and Taliesin continue their dialogue, it becomes clear that the prophecies of future Briton control of the island offered in the Prophetiae in fact refer specifically to Cadwallader. Cadwallader is, in a certain sense, a reborn Arthur, and his alliance with Conan of Brittany precipitates a new and fairly successful offensive against the Saxons. Again, however, Geoffrey places the fulfillment of this prophecy in the past; the fateful day in which the Germen albi draconis ex ortulis nostris abradetur has already come to pass.69 As Merlin explains to Taliesin:

Set non perficient quia sic sententia summi judicis existit, Britones ut nobile regnum temporibus multis ammitant debilitate, donee ab Armorica veniet temone Conanus et Cadualadrus Cambrorum dux venerandus, qui pariter Scotos Cambros et Cornubienses Armoricosque viros sociabunt federe firmo amissumque suis reddent diadema colonis, hostibus expulsis renovato tempore Bruti.

[It is the will of the most high Judge that the British shall be without their kingdom for many years and remain weak, until Conan in his chariot arrive from Brittany, and that revered leader of the Welsh, Cadwallader. They will create an alliance, a firm league of the Scots, the Welsh, the Cornish and the men of Brittany. Then they will restore to the natives the crown that had been lost. The enemy will be driven out and the time of Brutus will be back once more] .70

Merlin says no more at this point other than to note that these resurgent Britons will make an attempt (cer famine) to subjugate other realms. But audiences of the Historia already know that Cadwallader's efforts are doomed to failure, and that he will end his days not as king of Britain, but as a pilgrim in Rome. By having Merlin here offer forth the possibil ity of Cadwallader's success without really meaning it, Geoffrey, though perhaps affecting a certain melancholy, is once again playing games, tri fling with the history of a people who he hopes will have no recourse to action in the present. In short, like Etienne de Rouen, Geoffrey mocks the promise of Briton renewal by taking it seriously within the confines of his fiction.

The Historia Regum Britanniae contains the ancient Britons within the past, closing them off from agency in the twelfth-century present on two levels. On the one hand, the Historia is a ludic work, conceived in play fulness and open, like the more unproblematically fictional works of Chretien de Troyes, to a multiplicity of interpretations. From its pastoral beginning to its elaborate allusive center in the Prophetiae Merlini, to its fabulous treatment of the Arthur legend, to its richly intertextual last few



pages with their rich references to unspecified ancient books and sybil lic prophecies,71 the Historia is a work that announces its fictionality?its very constructedness as a text?to the knowing reader at every turn. And, as the Draco Normannicus of Etienne de Rouen would suggest, the final object of the Historia s ludic ambiguity is the maintenance of Norman power in England, its colonialist expansion over the rest of Britain. In fact, in its co-opting of Arthur as a locus not of resistance but of humor, it reveals the influence of the Galfridian legacy over subsequent medieval treatments of the matter of Britain. On another level, however, Geoffrey of Monmouth provides, through the implication that the British resur gence under Cadwallader is the fulfillment of Merlin's prophecies, a means of resolving the potentially anti-Norman ambiguities of the text while at the same time affirming the congruence of his history of the Britons with mainstream Norman historiographies. No less an ideologi cally-motivated historian than William of Malmesbury, Geoffrey agonis tically glorifies the Britons, but in doing so reaffirms the Orosianism of the Gesta Regum which would validate Norman imperium over all of Britain, England and Wales alike. Despite, then, its apparent method ological and narrative opposition to the Gesta Regum, the Historia accom plishes much the same purpose through its strategic use of polysemicity as the Gesta does through its investigative thoroughness: they both legit imate Norman colonization of Wales by creating and perpetuating tex tual myths of the innate defeatedness?and the inevitable defeatability

?of the British people.

1. Bruty Tywysogyon or Chronicle of the Princes: Red Book ofHergest Version, ed. Thomas Jones (Cardiff, 1955), 78-79.

2. David Walker, The Normans in Britain (Oxford, 1995), 56-57. 3. Bruty Tywysogyon, 30. 4. In "The 'Gens Normannorum': Myth or Reality?" Anglo-Norman Studies 4 (1982), G.

A. Loud argues that it is precisely these historians who promulgated the idea of the Normans as a unified gens with its own manifest destiny. See also Antonia Gransden, Historical Writing in England, Volume 1: 550-1066 (London, 1974), esp. 150-62.

5. For information on the ms. tradition of the works of William of Malmesbury, see Hugh Farmer, "William of Malmesbury's Life and Works," Journal of Ecclesiastical History 13 (1962): 43n. The extant mss. of Geoffrey of Monmouth have been recently catalogued by Julia Crick in The Historia Regum Britannie of Geoffrey of Monmouth Vol. 3: Summary Catalogue of the MSS. (Cambridge, Engl., 1991).

6. R. R. Davies, Conquest, Coexistence, and Change in Wales: 1063-1272 (Oxford, 1987), 94. 7. All of Tatlock's magisterial work, in fact, is an attempt to explain the novelty of the

Historia in terms of its sources, mostly hypothetical. See The Legendary History of Britain: Geoffrey's "Historia Regum Britanniae" and Its Early Vernacular Versions (Berkeley, 1950).

8. Such is Acton Griscom's discussion in the introduction to his impressive edition of the Cambridge ms. of the Historia. See The Historia Regum Britanniae of Geoffrey of

Monmouth (New York, 1929). 9. Geoffrey Ashe, "'A Certain Very Ancient Book': Traces of an Arthurian Source in

Geoffrey of Monmouth's History," Speculum 56 (1981): 301-23. 10. Brynley Roberts, "Geoffrey of Monmouth and the Welsh Historical Tradition," in

Nottingham Mediaeval Studies 20 (1976): 29-40.



11. John Gillingham, "The Context and Purposes of Geoffrey of Monmouth's History of the Kings of Britain,'' in Anglo-Norman Studies 13 (1990): 100.

12. Martin Shichtman and Laurie Finke, "Profiting from the Past: History as Symbolic Capital in the Historia regum Britanniae," Arthurian Literature 12 (1993): 1-35. Michelle R. Warren demonstrates some of the implications of Shichtman and Finke's argument in "Making Contact: Postcolonial Perspectives through Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia regum Britannie," Arthuriana8 (1998): 115-34.

13. John Gillingham, "Context and Purposes," 100. 14. See Nicholas Howe, Migration andMythmaking in Anglo-Saxon England (New Haven,

1989); and Richard J. Schrader, Old English Poetry and the Genealogy of Events (East Lansing, 1993).

15. On the perceived barbarity of the Welsh in William of Malmesbury, see John Gillingham, "The Beginnings of English Imperialism," Journal of Historical Sociology 5 (1992): 1-17.

16. John Gillingham, "Conquering the Barbarians: War and Chivalry in Twelfth-Century Britain," Haskins SocietyJournalA (1993): 82.

17. Hannah Arendt, Between Past and Future: Eight Exercises in Political Thought (Harmon dsworth, 1977), 120-23.

18. Historia Regum Britanniae, 219.1 shall be quoting throughout from Acton Griscom's edition (hereafter HRB), op. cit; translations are from Lewis Thorpe, trans., History of the Kings of Britain (Harmondsworth, 1966).

19. Francis Ingledew notes this important structural element in "The Book of Troy and the Genealogical Construction of History: The Case of Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia regum Britanniae," Speculum 69 (1994): 665-704.

20. Gabrielle Spiegel, "Genealogy: Form and Function in Medieval Historical Narratives," History and Theory 22 (1983): 52.

21. See the appendix in Lewis Thorpe's translation, 286-88. 22. David Quint, Epic and Empire: Politics and Generic Form from Virgil to Milton (Princeton,

1993), chapter two, esp. 50. 23. The transition is, in fact, so abrupt that one Welsh translation, ms. Jesus College

LXI, even provides a transition sentence announcing the end of the prologue. See Acton Griscom's edition, 222.

24. Quint, 64-65. 25. See Lee Patterson, "'Thirled with the Poynt of Remembraunce': The Theban

Writing of Anelida and Arcite," chapter 1 of Chaucer and the Subject of History (Madison, 1991), 47-83.

26. Arendt, 120. 27. Nennius, British History and the Welsh Annals, ed. and trans. John Morris (Totowa, N.

J., 1980), 19. 28. Michael J. Curley, Geoffrey of Monmouth (New York, 1994), 17. 29. Tatlock, 432. 30. HRB, 357. 31. William of Malmesbury, Gesta Regum Anglorum, ed. W. Stubbs, Rolls Series 90

(London, 1887), 8. 32. HRB, 366. 33. HRB, 368. 34. HRB, 535. The translation here is mine, since Thorpe, whose translation I usually

follow, omits the important word "barbarity," rendering it instead as "the foreign element," 284.1 think it crucial here to note that the word "barbarie" appears twice in this sentence, further underscoring the degeneracy of the Britons. The use of the word also participates in the tradition of calling the Welsh barbarians that William of Malmesbury revives in the

Historia Regum Anglorum. See also John Gillingham, "English Imperialism," 3-4. 35. Arendt, 121-22. 36. HRB, 535-36. 37. Robert W. Hanning, The Vision of History in Early Britain (New York, 1966), 171. 38. For a most famous and vivid example, see Gerald of Wales's discussions of the Welsh

character in his Descriptio Kambriae, specifically Book II, chapter 6, trans. Lewis Thorpe (Harmondsworth, 1978), 260-61.



39. Charles W. Moorman, The Celtic Literature of Defeat: An Extraordinary Assortment of Irregularities (Lewiston, N. J., 1993), 82.

40. Hanning, 130. 41. See Johann Huizinga, Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play Element of Culture (Boston,

1950), 89-90; and Susan Suleiman, Authoritarian Fictions: The Ideological Novel as a Literary Genre (New York, 1983), 12-14.

42. See Shichtman and Finke, 14, for a recent example. 43. HRB, 221. Ernst Curtius discusses the widespread use of the topos of the locus

amcenus in European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages, trans. William R. Trask (New York, 1953), 183-202.

44. Nennius, 60; Bede, Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People, ed. & trans. Bertram Colgrave and R. A. B. Mynors (Oxford, 1978), 1-2.

45. HRB, 239. 46. Tatlock, 53. 47. Monika Otter, Inventiones: Fiction and Referentiality in Twelfth-Century English Historical

Writing (Chapel Hill, 1996), 60. 48. Jacques Derrida, Monolinguism of the Other, or the Prosthesis of Origin, trans. Patrick

Mensah (Stanford, 1998), 39. 49. Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, On Giants: Sex, Monsters, and the Middle Ages (Minneapolis,

1999), esp. chapter two, "Monstrous Origin: Body, Nation, Family," 29-61. 50. Cohen, 40, claims that Arthur in fact "materializes Britain" and that Britain "did not

exist as a continuous, corporate community until he was invented." His argument, though, fails to accomodate the fact that an ardently patriotic Welsh prophetic tradition existing from at least the tenth century, had already envisioned Britain as such an "imaginable com munity." See, for example, the Armes Prydein, ed. Ifor Williams (Cardiff, 1955).

51. Gillingham, "Context," 116. 52. See, for example, the Bruty Tywysogyon, 78-79. 53. HRB, 501. 54. HRB, 533. 55. Southern, 195. 56. See especially Hanning, 130, and Ingledew, 703. 57. Curley, 5. 58. Southern, 194-95. For a more thorough discussion see Tatlock, chapter XVIII,

422-32. 59. Southern, 194. 60. Tatlock, 405. 61. Tatlock, 403. 62. Hanning, 26. 63. See Alain de Lille, Prophetia Anglicana Merlini Ambrosii Britanni una cum septem libris

explanationum in eandempmphetiam (Frankfurt, 1603); Jacob Hammer, ed., "A Commentary on the Prophetia Merlini (Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia regum Britanniae, Book VII)," Speculum 10 (1935): 3-30; Jacob Hammer, ed., "Bref commentaire de la Prophetia Merlini du ms. 3514 de la Bibliotheque de la Cathedrale d'Exeter," in Hommages a Joseph Bidez et a Franz Cumont (Brussels, 1949), 111-19; Caroline Eckhardt, "The Date of the Prophetia Merlini Commentary in MSS. Cotton Claudius B VII and Bibliotheque Nationale Fonds Latin 6233," Notes and Queries (1976): 33-35; John of Cornwall, "A New Edition of the Prophetia Merlini," ed. Michael Curley, Speculum 57 (1982): 217-49; and Gerald of Wales, Itinerarium Kambriae, in Giraldi Cambrensis Opera, ed. J. S. Brewer, Rolls Series 21 (London, 1861-91), 5:287-88. For an example of Scandinavian interest, see the Merlinusspa by

Gunnlaugr Leifsson, ed. Finnur Jbnsson in Hauksbok, udgiven efter de Arnamagnceanske himd skrifter No. 371, 544 og 675, 4 samt forskellige papirMndskrifter (Copenhagen: Det kongelige nordiske Oldskrift-Selskab, 1892-96), 271-83.

64. Etienne de Rouen, Draco Normannicus, in Chronicles of the Reigns of Stephen, Henry II and Richard I, ed. Richard Howlett, Rolls Series 82 (London, 1884-89), I, 172-75.

65. Howlett, 696n, suggests that this lord was Roland de Dinan, keeper of the castle of Becherel. Henry captured the castle and despoiled the baron's lands. See also James H. Ramsay, The Angevin Empire (New York, 1903).



66. Mildred Ann Leake Day, "The Letter from King Arthur to Henry II: Political Use of the Arthurian Legend in Draco Normannicus," in The Spirit of the Court, ed. Glyn S. Burgess and Robert A. Taylor (Cambridge, Engl., 1985), 154.

67. For a discussion of the history, see Day 154, and Ramsay, 92, 171. 68. Geoffrey of Monmouth, Life of Merlin: Vita Merlini, ed. and trans. Basil Clarke

(Cardiff, 1973), 102-03. 69. HRB, 387. 70. Vita Merlini, 104-05. 71. The final pages of the Historia seem again to stress the textual constructedness of

the work, referring to unspecified ancient books and sybillic prophecies. See HRB, 534.


Narrating the Matter of Britain: Geoffrey of Monmouth and the Norman Colonization of Wales

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