Geoffrey of Monmouth

The Importance of Genealogy
in the Historia Regum Brittaniae

Geoffrey of Monmouth (ca. 1100-1155) was the author of the Historia Regum Brittaniae (1138). He is thought to have been from Monmouth in southeast Wales, and his father was named Arthur. His work was the first to provide a full history for King Arthur, and he is the first to write the wizard/prophet Merlin into the story. (Geoffrey would later go on to write his Vita Merlini in 1150). Among contemporaries, the Historia drew mixed reviews. Some took it as honest history, as Geoffrey seems to intend, and others called it a blatant forgery. His work is now largely considered to be part history, part legend, and part Geoffrey’s own imagination. Nennius was clearly an important inspiration for Geoffrey, especially when examining the work from a genealogical standpoint. Nennius’ Historia Brittonum (ca. 800) was important in that it provided the male descent from Noah down to Brutus, the founder of the British race. Geoffrey built on his work, giving the descent of the British kings down to Arthur, who is the highlight of the book, and then down to Cadwallader, the last British king when the Anglo-Saxons finally overwhelmed the island.

Genealogy as History

The importance of these genealogies should not be overlooked. The fact that substantial space is devoted to lineages should underscore the value Geoffrey placed on family history in legitimizing his work. But why was lineage such an important aspect of history? In modern times, anybody can grow up to be an important political figure. But until very recently, descent equaled power, and an illustrious family tree equaled the right to rule. The position one was born to was seen as God’s will, so the firstborn son of a nobleman was entitled to land and power by divine and legal right. In modern times, genealogy is seen as a fun way to learn personal history. In Geoffrey’s time, and to some extent even today, the personal history of the ruling class was the same thing as the history of the nation itself.

The Patriarchal nature of Medieval Genealogy

Women play a lesser role in Geoffrey’s genealogy. Historical tradition and timing are the major factors. Geoffrey was born shortly after the Norman Conquest, when woman’s status was worsened:

In Anglo-Saxon England men and women lived on terms of rough equality with each other. Great ladies took an active part in public affairs. Cyneruth, the tyrannical Queen of Mercia, had her portrait on a silver penny, and Aelfgifu, who bore Cnut two sons, ruled Norway as a regent . . . The rights of women were also respected: No woman was forced to marry a man she disliked . . . Nor was there any rule of primogeniture, by which the whole estate must descend to the eldest son. An examination of thirty-nine wills which have survived from Anglo-Saxon England show that no preference was given to sons over daughters; parents provided equally for both. (Roberts 77-78)

When the Normans arrived, everything changed. The patriarchal social order of Rome, rather than the egalitarian society of the Germanic people, was now the order of the day. Biblical and ecclesiastical tradition required medieval women to be submissive and obedient to their fathers and husbands. Legally, women fell under the coverture of men, meaning that they had no independent legal status. As with the Bible, the genealogies repeated by Geoffrey are mostly male. Only a handful of women appear in the Historia, and this is only when it becomes absolutely necessary to mention them. Most cases where women are mentioned involves a lack of male heirs, and thus the death of a direct male line.

The importance of a direct male descent is difficult for the modern mind to understand. However, it has only been within the last 100 years that women were understood to contribute anything genetically to their children. In the medieval period, as in all ages until well after the time of Gregor Mendel, the male “seed” was thought to contain the complete beginning of a human being. Women, in the manner of farmland, grew the child, but did not actually have a lineage to speak of. With this in mind, the need for a male heir is better understood. Without a son, a man’s descent stopped with him. Daughters could be used to continue the royal descent, but her children would be of her husband’s line, not her father’s.

Succession of the British Throne in Geoffrey’s time

It is important to consider these factors when looking at the historical environment that Geoffrey was writing in. The Historia was completed in 1138, a very tumultuous year in a tumultuous time in English history. Since the coming of William the Conqueror in 1066, the political situation in England had hardly been stable. William’s claim was shaky at best. He was illegitimate, so from an ecclesiastical point of view he was unfit to take the throne. He was also only distantly related to Edward the Confessor, as his first cousin once removed through a female line. William was a complete foreigner, with no English blood at all:

Family tree of the claimants to the throne of England in 1066 (click thumbnail)

In the 1130’s, William’s descendants were fighting among themselves for the throne of England. William I had left England to his son William Rufus, who abused the immense power a medieval king enjoyed. His brother Henry I later gained the throne with impressive promises of reform, but proved as tyrannical as his brother. On his death in 1135, there were no male heirs left to the Norman line. Only Matilda, Henry’s Daughter, and Stephen, grandson of William I through his daughter Adela. Matilda was a woman and Stephen was incompetent; both were not direct male line descendants, and both were more French than English. In the years during which Geoffrey’s work was completed, the cousins struggled for power. In 1138, the year that Geoffrey completed his work, Matilda and her French husband Geoffrey of Anjou made a bid to seize the throne from the popular but inept Stephen, and the country plunged into almost twenty years of civil war. (Roberts 51-52) A true British king was nowhere to be found, and England had in a mere sixty years been converted from a prosperous Anglo-Saxon nation into a playground for power and land hungry Frenchmen.

Family tree of the claimants to the throne of England in the 1130’s (click thumbnail)

It is, of course, impossible to prove what Geoffrey’s intentions were when he wrote the Historia Regum Britanniae. However, it is interesting to consider the possibilities. Was Geoffrey angry over the invasion of Britain by foreigners and seeking to revive a legend of a time when the British were able to throw off the shackles of their would-be conquerors? Was he lamenting the absence of a “True King” in Britain during the disastrous years of Matilda and Stephen’s reign? If so, was he waiting for an “Arthur” to appear and run the French out of the country? Was he indifferent to London politics and merely seeking to preserve the history and legends of his own race?

Michael A. Faletra has summarized the modern view that Geoffrey may very well have been trying to revive his culture and compatriots in a period of political turmoil and malaise:

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. This model of Geoffrey as the mouthpiece of the Celtic fringe has informed much subsequent scholarly work, especially historically-oriented approaches to Geoffrey which attempt to show his accurate transcription of a very real Welsh or Breton historiographical 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. 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. (Faletra 61-62)

The Illustrious British Race

With this historical context in mind, it is easy to see why Geoffrey of Monmouth would be eager to bring back the noble days of yore, when the illustrious British race was governed with wisdom and temperance, rather than tossed around by the whims of foreigners. Whether fact, fiction, or an amalgamation of both, the family tree presented in the Historia Regum Brittaniae gives the British much to be proud of. If connected to the genealogy given in Nennius, and from there to the Old Testament, the British race can trace its descent back to Adam himself:

Family tree of the descent of the British race from Adam to Brutus, according to Nennius (click thumbnail)

Geoffrey took the tale one step further. Not only would the Britons be able to trace backwards through the most important members of the human family, but its descent would be even more impressive. The bulk of the Historia Regum Brittaniae is the lengthy family history of the descendants of Brutus, recast as a Trojan, and adding Aeneas (and therefore Aphrodite herself) to his pedigree. Brutus wed a Greek princess, thus adding royal blood from both sides of the Trojan War to the mix. The bulk of the tale provided an illustrious genealogical backdrop for the true star of the show: Arthur. The family tree is sprinkled with famous characters: Leir and Cymbeline (whom Shakespeare would write about), and Old King Cole. The national history of the Kings of Britain can be divided into several segments:

From the fall of Troy to the Civil War (click thumbnail)

From the time of the coming of the Romans to the death of Lucius (click thumbnail)

On the death of Lucius, the country was again plunged into civil war, with invading Romans and native Britons squabbling for power. It is here that the connection to the Norman power struggle is most obvious. Severus, a Roman legate, seizes power on the death of the pious Lucius, who, like Edward the Confessor, devoted so much time to his faith that he never left an heir. Severus is able to get his son Bassanius by a British woman to succeed, but he is killed by Carausius, a Briton, who is in turn killed by Allectus, a Roman. Aesclipiodotus and Coel, Duke of Kaelcolim ( Colchester), two Britons, follow in the pattern of regicide, but a more peaceful ending comes when Coel’s daughter, Helen, weds Constantius, a man of Roman descent. His son is Constantine, the father of Uther Pendragon, the father of – at long last – King Arthur. Finally, after turmoil, war, and instability, God’s chosen king has come to the throne. Peace and prosperity comes to Britain, and although the glory days are lost once Arthur is dead, the line of British kings lives on in Cadwallader, the last independent British monarch after the Anglo-Saxon invasion.

The ongoing legacy of the British pedigree

The legacy of Geoffrey’s work was to create a proud and royal lineage that the British could claim as their own, equal to (and often superior to) any other European race. Both Henry VII and Queen Elizabeth I herself would invoke descent from Cadwallader through their Welsh Tudor blood to help put some polish on the pedigree when questions of legitimacy arose. Henry VIII made a very conscious attempt to re-create a bit of Camelot in his own time, naming his first son Arthur and ordering the “Round Table” at Winchester to be painted up with a Tudor Rose.

The purpose of including these genealogies in Geoffrey’s work is clear, even if their authenticity is not. The British, in being able to literally trace their descent through superior men all the way back to Adam, now have a national identity that places them as equals, if not superiors, to most of the races in Europe—even the Romans. At a time when British national identity and cultural heritage was threatened, Geoffrey of Monmouth sought to preserve the honor and status of his race.

Print Bibliography:

Geoffrey of Monmouth. The History of the Kings of Britain. Translated by Lewis Thorpe. London: Penguin Books, 1968.

The most commonly used translation of Geoffrey of Monmouth, and the most widely available.

Faletra, Michael A. “Narrating the Matter of Britain: Geoffrey of Monmouth and the Norman Colonization of Wales.” Chaucer Review 35.1 (2000): 60-85.

A scholarly article summarizing and exploring the widely held modern belief that the History of the Kings of Britain was a mainly fictional work designed to repair what Geoffrey saw as a dwindling British identity in the face of the Norman invasion.

Roberts, Clayton, and Roberts, David. A History of England: Prehistory to 1714. New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1991.

A university level textbook providing an overview of England from prehistory to the end of the Stuarts. Literary figures are mentioned only briefly, but the work is highly useful for gaining a broad understanding of British history.

Webliography

University of Rochester: Arthurian portions of the History of the Kings of Britain

Yale University: Full text of the Historia Brittonum of Nennius

PDF version of the Historia Brittonum

Timeless Myths: Arthurian family trees

Rootsweb: Modern Genealogists try to sort out Arthur's descent