1 - Geoffrey of Monmouth's History of the Kings of Britain and the Twelfth-Century Renaissance

Summary

Charles Homer Haskins (1870–1937) bequeathed to Medieval Studies one of its pivotal concepts: that of the twelfth-century Renaissance. Since its publication in 1927, his book bearing this title has inspired numerous studies, which confirm this as a well-founded idea. Geoffrey of Monmouth (d. 1155) is one of the most characteristic writers of the decisive renewal of western literature from 1100 to 1200, a renewal to which Haskins was the first to draw attention. Indeed, Geoffrey is the most widely circulated historian of the Middle Ages: his History of the Kings of Britain (1136–8) exists in 217 medieval manuscripts, fifty-eight of them for the twelfth century alone, a number that has never been equaled for a work of history of that era. Oddly enough, Haskins seemed indifferent to this feat. In fact, in The Renaissance of the 12th Century, he makes only one very brief allusion to Geoffrey in a chapter not about writers but about courts and literary patrons, where the chronicler is erroneously identified as chaplain of earl Robert of Gloucester (d. 1147) and, perhaps accurately, as encouraged by this patron, a more important figure than Geoffrey himself in Haskins's book. Haskins certainly takes this opportunity to call History of the Kings of Britain ‘epochmaking’, but he shows no interest in this work, nor in its author, elsewhere in the book, for example in the chapter on ‘Historical Writing’, where Geoffrey deserves mention, if only because of his success.

It would be otiose to speculate about this silence, conscious or not, on Haskins's part. In his defense, we should note that he did not have access to catalogues of manuscripts such as the precise and complete ones we have today, allowing us recently to establish a ‘ranking’ of medieval historical works. Moreover, it is true that at least since William of Newburgh, Geoffrey has acquired a reputation as at best blithely insouciant, at worst a shameless forger.