Geoffrey Of Monmouth Quotes

I would have fought the forest fire, but it was a dragon-breathing forest fire, and I forgot my sword, my pen, and my Geoffrey of Monmouth tunic.

Britain, the best of islands, is situated in the Western Ocean, between France and Ireland.

When fatigue finally forced him to pause, he ordered the men who were left to have their hearts torn out and their carcasses burned

For whosoever seeks to snatch away from another those things that be his own, deserves to lose his own through him who he seeks to wrong.

Take heed, you bear in mind the piety you owe unto your country and unto your fellow countrymen, whose slaughter by the treachery of the Payneham shall be unto your disgrace everlasting. Unless you press hardily forward to defend them. Fight therefore for your country, and if it be that death overtake you, suffer it willingly for your country’s sake. For death itself is victory, and a healing unto the soul.

Woe unto the red dragon, for his extermination draws near; and his caverns shall be occupied of the white dragon that betokens the Saxons whom you have invited here. The red signifies the race of Briton, that shall be oppressed of the white. Therefore, shall the mountains and the valleys thereof be made level plane and the streams of the valley’s shall flow with blood. The rights of religion shall be done away, and the ruin of the churches be made manifest. At last, she that is oppressed shall prevail, and resist the cruelty of them that came from without. For the bore of Cornwall shall bring sucker and shall trample their necks beneath his feet. The islands of the ocean shall be subdued onto his power, and the forest of goal shall he possess. The house of Romulus shall dread the fierceness of his prowess, and doubtful shall be his end.

You men that be known from these others by your Christian profession. Take heed, you bear in mind the piety you owe unto your country and unto your fellow countrymen, whose slaughter by the treachery of the Payneham shall be unto your disgrace everlasting. Unless you press hardily forward to defend them. Fight therefore for your country, and if it be that death overtake you, suffer it willingly for your country’s sake. For death itself is victory, and a healing unto the soul. In as much as he that shall have died for his brethren offers himself as a living sacrifice unto God, nor is it doubtful that herein he follows in the footsteps of Christ, who distained not to lay down his own soul for his breatharian. Who therefore amongst you shall be slain in this battle, unto him shall that death be as full penance and absolution of all his sins, if so be he receive it willingly on this way.

On Wednesday 7th November 1917, Flinders Petrie, a renowned archaeologist of the day, addressed the assembled members of the British Academy. He was to present a paper to them entitled Neglected British History, in which he drew attention to the fact that a considerable body of historical documentary source-material was being overlooked if not willfully ignored by modern historians.1 He drew fleeting attention to the work of Geoffrey of Monmouth and then homed in on one particular record that shed much light upon Geoffrey's too-disparaged history. The ancient book to which he drew attention was known to him as the Tysilio Chronicle, which is listed today as Jesus College MS LXI and is lodged in the Bodleian Library, Oxford.2 It is written in medieval Welsh, and is, as its colophon reveals, a translation that was commissioned by the same Walter of Oxford who commissioned Geoffrey of Monmouth to translate a certain very ancient British book into Latin.

However, of added interest is the fact that both Geoffrey of Monmouth and the Welsh chronicle record the presence on the island of a ruined temple that was dedicated to the goddess Diana. There then follow the descriptions of a most complex ritual performed by Brutus and the nature and attributes of the goddess Diana that could only have come from a pagan source. But there is an added aspect to all this. Diana was considered to be the personification of the moon, and although there is no apparent trace remaining today of the temple of Diana on the island, there are the ruins of a temple to Diana's theological husband, the sun god Apollo. These ruins lie on a prominence some 230 feet above the sea, and: “... it was from here that the priests of Apollo would hurl themselves into space, buoyed up - so it was said - by live birds and feathered wings. The relationship between the ritual and the god seems obscure, although there was an early connection between Apollo and various birds. Ovid confirms that the virtues of the flight and the healing waters below the cliff had been known since the time of Deucalion, the Greek Noah.

But the history of the Britons as a distinct nation had its beginnings with the fall of Troy, and it is at this point that Geoffrey of Monmouth and the Welsh chronicles take up the story. Anchises, known to us from other histories, fled with his son, Aeneas, from the burning ruins of Troy, and they made their way to the land that is nowadays called Italy, settling with their people on the banks of the river Tiber around what was later to become Rome.

The recorded history of the early Britons was to remain in oblivion for the five hundred years that followed the massacre at Bangor. But then an incident occurred that ensured its revival and survival to the present day, even though that revival was itself to last only a matter of a further five hundred years or so. The incident, which occurred sometime in the 1130s, was the presentation of a certain book to a British (i.e. Welsh) monk by an archdeacon of Oxford. The monk's name was Geoffrey of Monmouth, the archdeacon was Walter of Oxford, and the book was a very ancient, possibly unique, copy of the recorded history of the early Britons, written in language so archaic that it needed to be translated quickly into Latin before either the book perished or the language was forgotten.

The early Britons, from whom the modern Welsh are descended, provide us with our earliest surviving European accounts of reptilian monsters, one of whom killed and devoured king Morvidus (Morydd) in ca 336 BC. We are told in the account translated for us by Geoffrey of Monmouth, that the monster 'gulped down the body of Morvidus as a big fish swallows a little one.' Geoffrey described the animal as a Belua.3

Among the points he mentions is the account contained both in Geoffrey of Monmouth and the Welsh chronicles of the attempted invasions of these islands by Julius Caesar in 55 and 54 BC. Caesar, of course, has left us his own account of this, and it is tempting to think (and is often stated) that the Welsh chronicles (and hence Geoffrey of Monmouth) contain nothing more than a rehashed version of Caesar's account. But close examination reveals a different story. The account in Geoffrey and the Welsh chronicle turns out to be nothing less than the Julian invasion as seen through the eyes of the early Britons themselves. An eyewitness account in fact, which dates this part of the material to the middle of the 1st century BC. This, of course, is far too early for most modern scholars to accept for Celtic literacy, and it also sheds a somewhat unfavourable light upon Julius Caesar, himself the hero of many a modern book on the history of early Britain.

But perhaps the gathering of the Britons at the Kentish fort is one of the more telling aspects of the affair. The Welsh chronicle names the fort Doral, which Geoffrey of Monmouth transposes into Latin as Dorobellum.5 It was known to later Latin writers as Durolevum, and was a fortress that stood roughly midway between Rochester and Canterbury.

King Arthur’s story was pulled almost entirely out of Geoffrey of Monmouth’s ass. There were about six hundred fifty years separating the events themselves and the first written account of them that survived to the modern day. Plenty of time to screw everything up and fabricate large portions of it. What

A copy of Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia Regum Britanniae is likely to have accompanied her to Castile on her marriage and there was certainly an Occitan Arthurian romance, Jaufré, written at the contemporary court of Alfonso II of Aragon. The Arthurian tradition seems to have continued into Eleanor of Castile’s own generation; her eldest brother, Alfonso X, refers to Arthur, Merlin and Tristan in his own Galician-Portuguese poems, indicating a considerable familiarity with Arthurian romances. Eleanor of England also introduced to Castile the veneration of her family’s own martyr St Thomas Becket, endowing an altar in his memory at the cathedral of Toledo.9 Alfonso’s reign also saw a move towards cohesion in the states in the peninsula. Politically and militarily the Kingdom

Roots and branches shall change their places and the oddness of this will pass for a miracle.

Cyclical Models The pattern of rise and fall: this is the general shape of history outlined by both Herodotus and Thucydides that is generically common to practically all the other cyclical models. The degenerative cycle of the four ages: this is the Gold–Silver–Bronze–Iron model of Hesiod, the Zoroastrians, and the Hindu Yuga cycles in which a state of initial perfection degenerates by ages to a final barbarism before the cycle starts again. The Anacyclosis: this is the political pattern of constitutional cycles outlined by Polybius which follows the sequence monarchy, kingship, tyranny, aristocracy, oligarchy, democracy, and ochlocracy before a period of barbarianism resets the cycle. The providential cycle (judgement–retribution–restoration): this follows the pattern of the Book of Jeremiah and the ‘alternative’ Christian tradition of the Venerable Bede and Geoffrey of Monmouth. The Phoenix cycle (birth–death–rebirth): this is Petrarch’s model which posits a Dark Age between two better periods and in which the New Age will look to Antiquity for inspiration.

There looms, large, uncertain, dim but glittering, the legend of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. Somewhere in the Island a great captain gathered the forces of Roman Britain and fought the barbarian invaders to the death. Around him, around his name and his deeds, shine all that romance and poetry can bestow. Twelve battles, all located in scenes untraceable, with foes unknown, except that they were heathen, are punctiliously set forth in the Latin of Nennius. Other authorities say, “No Arthur; at least, no proof of any Arthur.” It was only when Geoffrey of Monmouth six hundred years later was praising the splendours of feudalism and martial aristocracy that chivalry, honour, the Christian faith, knights in steel and ladies bewitching, are enshrined in a glorious circle lit by victory. Later these tales would be retold and embellished by the genius of Mallory, Spenser, and Tennyson. True or false, they have gained an immortal hold upon the thoughts of men.

Nennius tells us, what Gildas omits, the name of the British soldier who won the crowning mercy of Mount Badon, and that name takes us out of the mist of dimly remembered history into the daylight of romance. There looms, large, uncertain, dim but glittering, the legend of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. Somewhere in the Island a great captain gathered the forces of Roman Britain and fought the barbarian invaders to the death. Around him, around his name and his deeds, shine all that romance and poetry can bestow. Twelve battles, all located in scenes untraceable, with foes unknown, except that they were heathen, are punctiliously set forth in the Latin of Nennius. Other authorities say, “No Arthur; at least, no proof of any Arthur.” It was only when Geoffrey of Monmouth six hundred years later was praising the splendours of feudalism and martial aristocracy that chivalry, honour, the Christian faith, knights in steel and ladies bewitching, are enshrined in a glorious circle lit by victory. Later these tales would be retold and embellished by the genius of Mallory, Spenser, and Tennyson. True or false, they have gained an immortal hold upon the thoughts of men. It is difficult to believe it was all an invention of a Welsh writer. If it was he must have been a marvellous inventor. Modern research has not accepted the annihilation of Arthur. Timidly but resolutely the latest and best-informed writers unite to proclaim his reality. They cannot tell when in this dark period he lived, or where he held sway and fought his battles. They are ready to believe however that there was a great British warrior, who kept the light of civilisation burning against all the storms that beat, and that behind his sword there sheltered a faithful following of which the memory did not fail. All four groups of the Celtic tribes which dwelt in the tilted uplands of Britain cheered themselves with the Arthurian legend, and each claimed their own region as the scene of his exploits. From Cornwall to Cumberland a search for Arthur’s realm or sphere has been pursued.The reserve of modern assertions is sometimes pushed to extremes, in which the fear of being contradicted leads the writer to strip himself of almost all sense and meaning. One specimen of this method will suffice: "It is reasonably certain that a petty chieftain named Arthur did exist, probably in South Wales. It is possible that he may have held some military command uniting the tribal forces of the Celtic or highland zone or part of it against raiders and invaders (not all of them necessarily Teutonic). It is also possible that he may have engaged in all or some of the battles attributed to him; on the other hand, this attribution may belong to a later date." This is not much to show after so much toil and learning. Nonetheless, to have established a basis of fact for the story of Arthur is a service which should be respected. In this account we prefer to believe that the story with which Geoffrey delighted the fiction-loving Europe of the twelfth century is not all fancy. If we could see exactly what happened we should find ourselves in the presence of a theme as well founded, as inspired, and as inalienable from the inheritance of mankind as the Odyssey or the Old Testament. It is all true, or it ought to be; and more and better besides. And wherever men are fighting against barbarism, tyranny, and massacre, for freedom, law, and honour, let them remember that the fame of their deeds, even though they themselves be exterminated, may perhaps be celebrated as long as the world rolls round. Let us then declare that King Arthur and his noble knights, guarding the Sacred Flame of Christianity and the theme of a world order, sustained by valour, physical strength, and good horses and armour, slaughtered innumerable hosts of foul barbarians and set decent folk an example for all time.

When these things were represented to the king, he was mightily pleased, as being very unwilling to part with Hengist; and at last ordered his subjects and the Saxons to meet upon the kalends of May, which were now very near, at the monastery of Ambrius,[63] for the settling of the matters above mentioned.

But Hengist, hearing that Vortimer was dead, raised an army of not less than three hundred thousand men, and fitting out a fleet returned with them to Britain.

According to Bacon, the Prophetiae Merlini by Geoffrey of Monmouth had originally contained a section relating to the original foundation of St. Paul’s in circa AD 604 and, even more interestingly, the use of bells to either signal or usher in—the translation wasn’t clear—a change, or the fulfillment of a prophecy. A bell for ringing in the changes, Martin Chorley had called the bell in the Whitechapel foundry. Or maybe the fulfillment of a prophecy? A bell made with the help of ancient stones taken from pagan and Christian religious sites. Imbued with vestigia, perhaps.

The book’s final chapter argues that the various elements of fairy belief as we might recognise it, including belief in an underground otherworld inhabited by sometimes pygmy-sized otherworlders, the connection between fairies and fate and fairy sexuality, were brought together as a direct result of the Norman Conquest. The key role played in the Conquest by Breton nobles who felt a cultural affinity with the Cornish and Welsh, combined with the Normans’ desire to escape the English past, resulted in the crafting of a new ‘British’ identity for the whole island of Great Britain by authors with a Brittonic cultural background such as Geoffrey of Monmouth, Gerald of Wales and Walter Map. These authors united elements of English and Brittonic folklore to fashion a new fairy world that was subsequently adopted as the setting for literary romances. The fairies of romance soon took on a life of their own and fed back into popular culture as a source of fairy lore, creating a complex amalgam of belief that was not fully described until the early modern period.