Cleric, writer, tale collator 1095-1155
Geoffrey of Monmouth, Galfridus Arturus as he was known in his day, was born on 1095 in Monmouth, Wales. He may have served at Monmouth Priory, then from 1129 he lived at Oxford where he was probably a secular canon at St George’s College.
He was ordained as a priest in 1152 in Westminster and 10 days later consecrated as Bishop of St Asaph (North Wales). He died in 1155.
Weaving together previous ecclesiastical histories of England, Welsh king lists, bardic tales from the oral tradition, and his own storytelling Monmouth wrote Historia Regnum Britanniae (The History of the Kings of Britain), originally called De Gestis Britonum (On the Deeds of the Britons) c1136. He claimed the book to be a history of Britain from its founding by Brutus till the 7th Century. Initially it was read as history and people believed its stories were fact, but then in the 16th Century it was accepted that many of the facts came from Geoffrey’s imagination, and that the book was partly myth story rather than history. Central to the book are the stories of King Arthur and his knights of the Round Table.
Stories bind communities together: Histories of the Kings of Britain was a unification myth to give post Norman Conquest Britain a shared history and identity, and a hero, Cornish hero, Arthur. He still lives on in our imaginations today.
Histories of the Kings of Britain, English translation by Sebastian Evans 1904
https://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/eng/gem/index.htm
Illustration from 14th Century manuscript of Historia Regnum Britanniae, showing Vortigen (King before Uther) and dragons
