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very much older roots. His History was also based on an unnamed earlier British or Welsh work which he had seen and which is often assumed to have been the ‘source’ for his own considerable inventions. This famous ‘lost source’ has itself become a Holy Grail of modern Arthurian enthusiasts and theorists.²³ Geoffrey’s book was to prove enormously popular and influential, particularly as an inspiration for the later Arthurian literature in the medieval courtly tradition.

      In the previous chapter we saw how Geoffrey produced the Brutus legend to account for the origins of Britain; Arthur was by no means his only invention. Later in his life he wrote a less successful Latin epic poem about the life of the prophet Merlin, the Vita Merlini. Geoffrey was undoubtedly a very capable author, but like everyone else concerned with Arthur, he had his own motives for writing. He lived in very troubled times. England was in the throes of a civil war between the followers of King Stephen and those of Matilda, daughter of Henry I; the war started when Stephen seized the throne in December 1135, and ended when he died in 1154 and Henry II ascended the throne. During this period, generally known as the Anarchy, the country grew weary of warfare and strife. There was a widespread desire for peace, which may help to explain why Geoffrey’s largely fictional history met with such success both in Britain and on the Continent, where it provided the source for a rich tradition of medieval Arthurian romances.

      Geoffrey wrote his history in order to provide an honourable pedigree for the kingship of England that was then being fought over so keenly. He was writing for the benefit of the Anglo-Norman aristocratic élite, and he set out to show how their predecessor, King Arthur, had performed mighty deeds. Arthur had, according to Geoffrey, defeated the Roman Emperor and conquered all of Europe except Spain. That went down well with an audience of Norman knights whose families, friends and relations controlled not just England and Normandy, but large parts of Europe too.

      But Geoffrey’s work went further. Significantly, he made use of earlier sources to give the appearance of authenticity for those who possessed some historical knowledge. As Nicholas Higham puts it:

      It provided the new Anglo-Norman kings with a predecessor of heroic size, a great pan-British king in a long line of monarchs capable of countering pressures for decentralisation, as had occurred in France, and reinforcing claims of political superiority over the Celtic lands. Existing claims that the Normans were descended from the Trojans gelled easily with the descent of the Britons from the same stock…At the same time Arthur offered an Anglo-Norman counterbalance to…Charlemagne as an historical icon.²⁴

      Geoffrey’s account of Arthur and his exploits is both remarkably full and detailed, and hard to put down. These, however, are more than mere tales of adventure; there is something transcendent about them. It seems to me beyond doubt that Geoffrey intended to create this sense of ‘otherness’, of the stories being somehow close to the supernatural.

Most reviews of Arthurian history talk in terms of pre- and post-Galfridic sources.* Pre-Galfridic sources are seen as having more historical value than Geoffrey’s own work and those that followed him. All, however, are chronologically separated from the events in question by several centuries. All their authors, too, have their own motives for writing. Nicholas Higham was the first to point out that pre-Galfridic sources such as the Historia Brittonum or the Annales Cambriae should not ‘be treated very differently from, for example, Geoffrey’s Historia, or other later texts. All are highly imaginative works, none of whose authors saw their prime task as the reconstruction of what actually happened in the distant past. Rather, in all cases, then as now, the past was pressed into the service of the present and was subject to the immediate, and highly variable, purposes of political theology.’²⁵

      The story of Arthur’s conception at Tintagel Castle, which involves magical changes of identity, harks back to Biblical tradition and the miraculous conception of the Virgin Mary. As Pearsall and others have noted, there is more than a little of the British Christ to King Arthur. Even given the extraordinary power of Geoffrey’s writing, it is still remarkable just how rapidly the Arthurian tradition took off not in Britain alone, but in Europe too. This is largely down to two gifted translators of the original, and to a French writer whose literary skills were the equal of Geoffrey’s.

Geoffrey’s Historia Regum Britanniae was translated into French by Robert Wace, a churchman who was originally from Jersey, but who lived at Caen in Normandy. He called his translation the Geste des Bretons (History of the Britons), but it was renamed the Roman de Brut (a topical reference to Romance and Britain/Brutus) by the scribes who copied it out for a wider readership. The new title stuck. Wace’s was a very free translation, with many additions—Pearsall describes it as an ‘expanded adaptation’—but it was a very successful one. It was presented to Eleanor of Aquitaine, the imperious and flamboyant new queen of England’s Henry II, in 1155. This puts the work at the heart of European courtly culture, for the court of Henry II (1154-89)† and the glamorous divorcee Eleanor was the most exciting in Europe. Henry’s power extended over most of France as well as England, and the court and literary language of his kingdom was French.’²⁶ Wace added much new and important material to the Arthur story, including the Round Table, and he renamed Arthur’s magical sword—Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Caliburn—Excalibur.

      It was another author-cum-translator, a rural priest nearWorcester named Layamon (‘lawman’), who took the Arthurian tradition, or Brut as it was now known, and transferred it to Middle English verse around 1200. Layamon’s Brut stands as an extraordinary work of literature in its own right. It takes a different course from the courtly vision of Wace. Layamon was inspired by strong feelings of patriotism. He clearly loved traditional Anglo-Saxon battle poetry, heroism and what Pearsall calls ‘kingliness, steeped in religious awe’.²⁷ Pearsall sums up the differences between Wace and Layamon thus: ‘Throughout Wace is calm, practical, rational, with an eye for the realities of war and strategy; Layamon is aggressive, violent, heroic, ceremonial and ritualistic.’²⁸

      Post-Galfridian writers on Arthur take the romance forward wholly in the realms of fiction. Arthur was hugely popular in Anglo-Norman circles in France, where his exploits were further elaborated in verse by Chrétien de Troyes, a prolific author of Arthurian romance. Between 1160 and 1190 his works included Lancelot ou Le Chevalier de la charette, Yvain ou le Chevalier au lion, and the unfinished Percival ou Le conte del graal. Chrétien may have used Breton verbal sources in the composition of his works, which were important because they lifted Arthur and his court out of a narrowly British context.

      It was Chrétien who introduced the quest for the Holy Grail, but at this stage in the development of the story the Grail was still just the mystical chalice that had been used by Christ in the Last Supper. It had yet to acquire its connection with the Holy Blood, a fascinating process to which I will return later. Effectively, Chrétien made Arthur a figure of heroic romance who transcended nationality. Derek Pearsall notes: ‘Geoffrey of Monmouth gave shape and substance to the story of Arthur, but it was Chrétien who invented Arthurian romance and gave to it a high-toned sensibility, psychological acuteness, wit, irony and delicacy that were never surpassed.’²⁹

It is not my intention to provide a history of the Arthurian literature which thrived on both sides of the Channel in the medieval period,* nor can I attempt to cover the wealth of creative writing he has given rise to in more recent times, ranging from Tennyson’s cycle The Idylls of the King to T.H. White’s novel sequence The Once and Future King. However, one author, Sir Thomas Malory (d.1470), must be mentioned if we are to understand how the Arthurian legends were subsequently used in Britain.

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