WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.859 Welcome back to the Deep Dive. Today, we are 00:00:02.859 --> 00:00:05.019 looking at a topic that, you know, it feels like 00:00:05.019 --> 00:00:07.620 it should be familiar. It's about knights and 00:00:07.620 --> 00:00:11.080 wizards and kings. But as soon as you peel back 00:00:11.080 --> 00:00:13.220 that first layer, you realize you're actually 00:00:13.220 --> 00:00:15.380 looking at one of the biggest literary mysteries 00:00:15.380 --> 00:00:18.039 in history. It really is. It's a mystery wrapped 00:00:18.039 --> 00:00:20.500 in a history book, wrapped in, well, a fantasy 00:00:20.500 --> 00:00:22.620 novel. We are talking about Geoffrey of Monmouth. 00:00:22.839 --> 00:00:25.219 Now, for anyone listening who might not know 00:00:25.219 --> 00:00:27.940 the name, Geoffrey is the guy who essentially 00:00:27.940 --> 00:00:32.140 gave us King Arthur. He is. If you've ever pictured 00:00:32.140 --> 00:00:35.240 Arthur pulling a sword from a stone or Merlin 00:00:35.240 --> 00:00:37.759 casting a spell or the Knights of the Round Table 00:00:37.759 --> 00:00:40.640 gathering for a feast, you are effectively living 00:00:40.640 --> 00:00:43.320 inside Geoffrey of Monmouth's imagination. Wow. 00:00:43.560 --> 00:00:46.229 He didn't just write a book. He built an entire 00:00:46.229 --> 00:00:48.630 world. But here is the hook that really grabbed 00:00:48.630 --> 00:00:50.170 me when I was going through the research packet. 00:00:50.369 --> 00:00:53.189 This guy wrote a book called the Historia Regum 00:00:53.189 --> 00:00:55.210 Britannia, the history of the kings of Britain 00:00:55.210 --> 00:00:57.969 in the, what, the 1130s? That's right. And for 00:00:57.969 --> 00:00:59.850 literally hundreds of years, people thought it 00:00:59.850 --> 00:01:02.409 was true. It was the history book. It was. Absolutely. 00:01:02.469 --> 00:01:04.909 For centuries, it was accepted as the standard 00:01:04.909 --> 00:01:07.370 historical record. But today, historians look 00:01:07.370 --> 00:01:09.579 at it and just say, this is a forgery. Or at 00:01:09.579 --> 00:01:12.799 least this is mostly fiction. So you have this 00:01:12.799 --> 00:01:16.219 incredible tension. Was Jeffrey a historian who 00:01:16.219 --> 00:01:19.680 had access to some kind of lost records? Or was 00:01:19.680 --> 00:01:22.000 he maybe the greatest con artist in literary 00:01:22.000 --> 00:01:24.519 history? That is the fundamental question. And 00:01:24.519 --> 00:01:26.920 I think to answer it, we have to move past that 00:01:26.920 --> 00:01:31.079 simple binary of liar or truth teller. Yeah. 00:01:31.180 --> 00:01:34.310 Jeffrey is something I think. Much more complicated. 00:01:34.469 --> 00:01:36.950 Okay. He's an architect of mythology. And what 00:01:36.950 --> 00:01:38.489 we're going to do today is look at how he built 00:01:38.489 --> 00:01:41.670 that mythology, where he came from, and crucially 00:01:41.670 --> 00:01:45.730 knew. research that suggests he might have been, 00:01:45.730 --> 00:01:47.609 well, telling the truth a little more than we 00:01:47.609 --> 00:01:49.629 realized. Yeah, we are absolutely going to dig 00:01:49.629 --> 00:01:52.049 into the Lost Voices of Celtic Britain project 00:01:52.049 --> 00:01:54.189 later, which is just fascinating stuff. It is. 00:01:54.269 --> 00:01:56.269 But let's start with the man himself, because 00:01:56.269 --> 00:01:58.150 I realized reading the prep notes, I have this, 00:01:58.170 --> 00:02:00.810 you know, this image of a medieval monk scribbling 00:02:00.810 --> 00:02:02.510 in a candlelit room, but I don't actually know 00:02:02.510 --> 00:02:04.950 who Geoffrey was. Well, the biographical picture 00:02:04.950 --> 00:02:07.030 is a bit like a mosaic with a lot of missing 00:02:07.030 --> 00:02:10.229 tiles. We have to infer a lot. But we know he 00:02:10.229 --> 00:02:14.800 was born roughly between say, 1090 and 1100. 00:02:14.919 --> 00:02:16.919 Okay, so let's place that in time. That is just 00:02:16.919 --> 00:02:20.340 a generation after 1066, the Norman conquest. 00:02:20.900 --> 00:02:22.979 Exactly. This is the post -conquest generation. 00:02:23.360 --> 00:02:26.479 The Normans, the French -speaking invaders, have 00:02:26.479 --> 00:02:29.259 taken control of England. The old Anglo -Saxon 00:02:29.259 --> 00:02:32.629 order is completely gone. The whole social hierarchy 00:02:32.629 --> 00:02:35.090 has been reset. Right. So Jeffrey's growing up 00:02:35.090 --> 00:02:37.430 in a world that is still very much in flux. And 00:02:37.430 --> 00:02:39.409 where is he growing up? His name is Jeffrey of 00:02:39.409 --> 00:02:41.449 Monmouth, so I'm assuming he's from Monmouth. 00:02:41.530 --> 00:02:43.430 All the evidence suggests he was likely born 00:02:43.430 --> 00:02:46.509 there or at least raised there. And this is vital 00:02:46.509 --> 00:02:49.030 for understanding him. Monmouth isn't deep in 00:02:49.030 --> 00:02:51.189 England, and it isn't deep in the Welsh mountains. 00:02:51.610 --> 00:02:54.129 It's in the Welsh marches. The marches. I've 00:02:54.129 --> 00:02:56.169 heard that term, but can you maybe paint a picture 00:02:56.169 --> 00:02:57.909 of what that actually means in the 12th century? 00:02:58.169 --> 00:03:01.219 Sure. It's a frontier zone. It's the borderlands 00:03:01.219 --> 00:03:03.699 between what was then Norman -controlled England 00:03:03.699 --> 00:03:07.120 and independent Wales. It was a highly militarized 00:03:07.120 --> 00:03:10.740 society ruled by these incredibly powerful Norman 00:03:10.740 --> 00:03:15.159 marcher lords who had a lot of autonomy to, well. 00:03:15.740 --> 00:03:17.819 to fate the welsh princes so it's a war zone 00:03:17.819 --> 00:03:20.379 basically it could be but it was also a melting 00:03:20.379 --> 00:03:22.219 pot you have to imagine you would have heard 00:03:22.219 --> 00:03:24.460 welsh spoken in the streets probably english 00:03:24.460 --> 00:03:26.960 spoken by the local peasantry and then definitely 00:03:26.960 --> 00:03:29.759 french spoken by the ruling elite in the castles 00:03:29.759 --> 00:03:33.419 so jeffrey is a product of this This cultural 00:03:33.419 --> 00:03:35.560 collision. He's a border creature. He understands 00:03:35.560 --> 00:03:38.240 the other, the Welsh, but he operates entirely 00:03:38.240 --> 00:03:40.860 within the Norman power structure. We know that 00:03:40.860 --> 00:03:43.960 later in his life, between about 1129 and 1151, 00:03:44.039 --> 00:03:46.780 he's in the Oxford area. Oxford, okay. And we 00:03:46.780 --> 00:03:49.080 see his name appearing as a witness on charters. 00:03:49.219 --> 00:03:51.319 When you say witnessing charters, that's legal 00:03:51.319 --> 00:03:53.699 work, right? It's official. Yes. A charter is 00:03:53.699 --> 00:03:55.979 essentially a deed or a grant of rights or land. 00:03:56.300 --> 00:03:58.439 For his name to appear on that witness list, 00:03:58.580 --> 00:04:00.960 it means he was a person of some standing. And 00:04:00.960 --> 00:04:03.490 he's often styled as Majesty. Jeffrey. Magister. 00:04:04.310 --> 00:04:08.289 Master. Which implies he was a teacher. An academic. 00:04:08.610 --> 00:04:10.169 It implies he had a high level of education, 00:04:10.449 --> 00:04:12.469 yeah. Probably from one of the big cathedral 00:04:12.469 --> 00:04:15.409 schools, or, and this is a likely theory, he 00:04:15.409 --> 00:04:17.490 was teaching at St. George's College. which is 00:04:17.490 --> 00:04:20.069 right inside Oxford Castle. He was what's known 00:04:20.069 --> 00:04:22.509 as a secular canon. Help me out with secular 00:04:22.509 --> 00:04:25.050 canon. Does that mean he wasn't a monk shut away 00:04:25.050 --> 00:04:27.870 in a monastery? Correct. A monk lives in a monastery, 00:04:28.129 --> 00:04:30.610 cloistered from the world, following a strict 00:04:30.610 --> 00:04:33.769 rule like the Benedictine rule. A secular canon 00:04:33.769 --> 00:04:36.810 is a member of the clergy, but they live in the 00:04:36.810 --> 00:04:39.209 world. They might live in a house, own property, 00:04:39.370 --> 00:04:41.709 move in social circles. They are the intellectuals 00:04:41.709 --> 00:04:43.949 and the administrators of the church, not the 00:04:43.949 --> 00:04:46.279 hermits. Okay, so he's an ambitious academic. 00:04:46.399 --> 00:04:48.579 He's hanging out in Oxford. Now, I want to ask 00:04:48.579 --> 00:04:50.699 about his name. We call him Geoffrey of Monmouth. 00:04:50.860 --> 00:04:52.959 But in the notes, there's this fascinating detail 00:04:52.959 --> 00:04:56.839 that he is sometimes listed in documents as Galfritus 00:04:56.839 --> 00:05:00.079 Arturus, Geoffrey Arthur. This is a delicious 00:05:00.079 --> 00:05:01.800 little detail, isn't it? I mean, it feels too 00:05:01.800 --> 00:05:03.759 on the nose. The guy who writes the definitive 00:05:03.759 --> 00:05:06.980 King Arthur legend is named Arthur. What do we 00:05:06.980 --> 00:05:08.920 make of that? Well, there's a vigorous debate 00:05:08.920 --> 00:05:12.240 about this. The most, let's say, boring answer. 00:05:12.639 --> 00:05:15.180 is usually the right one in history. Right. Arthur 00:05:15.180 --> 00:05:18.500 was likely his father's name. In the Welsh naming 00:05:18.500 --> 00:05:21.879 convention, the patronymics, you would be Geoffrey, 00:05:21.899 --> 00:05:25.180 son of Arthur, or in Welsh, Gruffydd ap Arthur. 00:05:25.420 --> 00:05:27.220 Okay, that makes perfect sense. It's a patronym. 00:05:27.300 --> 00:05:31.379 It does, but historians love to speculate. And 00:05:31.379 --> 00:05:34.060 there is another theory that Arthur wasn't his 00:05:34.060 --> 00:05:36.459 father's name at all, but a nickname. A nickname, 00:05:36.680 --> 00:05:39.740 like a handle. Exactly. Imagine Geoffrey at Oxford. 00:05:40.220 --> 00:05:42.959 in the dining hall, constantly bending everyone's 00:05:42.959 --> 00:05:45.339 ear about these obscure British legends talking 00:05:45.339 --> 00:05:48.079 about this hero Arthur non -stop. Oh, I see. 00:05:48.360 --> 00:05:50.120 It's entirely possible his colleagues started 00:05:50.120 --> 00:05:52.360 calling him Jeffrey Arthur, in the same way you 00:05:52.360 --> 00:05:53.980 might call someone you know Scar Wars Steve, 00:05:54.120 --> 00:05:56.319 if they never ever stopped talking about the 00:05:56.319 --> 00:05:58.819 movies. That humanizes him so much. It paints 00:05:58.819 --> 00:06:01.240 him as this obsessed scholar even before he puts 00:06:01.240 --> 00:06:03.300 pen to paper. It suggests his whole identity 00:06:03.300 --> 00:06:05.720 was wrapped up in this figure. But this leads 00:06:05.720 --> 00:06:07.579 us to the bigger, more critical question of his 00:06:07.579 --> 00:06:10.589 identity. Was he Welsh? I just assumed he was. 00:06:10.649 --> 00:06:12.410 He's from Monmouth. He's writing about ancient 00:06:12.410 --> 00:06:16.029 British kings. Isn't he basically a Welsh patriot? 00:06:16.430 --> 00:06:18.649 That was the standard assumption for a very long 00:06:18.649 --> 00:06:21.269 time. For centuries, people read the Historia 00:06:21.269 --> 00:06:24.610 as a kind of nationalist text. A proud Welshman 00:06:24.610 --> 00:06:27.350 telling the Norman conquerors, hey, we used to 00:06:27.350 --> 00:06:29.569 rule this entire island and our kings were better 00:06:29.569 --> 00:06:32.649 than yours. But... The more recent research suggests 00:06:32.649 --> 00:06:35.009 otherwise. It's complicated. If you look at his 00:06:35.009 --> 00:06:38.050 linguistic skills, for instance, his knowledge 00:06:38.050 --> 00:06:42.050 of the Welsh language seems to be, well, patchy 00:06:42.050 --> 00:06:44.470 at best. Really? Yeah, he makes mistakes with 00:06:44.470 --> 00:06:47.110 Welsh place names, with etymologies. He just 00:06:47.110 --> 00:06:50.029 doesn't seem to have the deep native grasp of 00:06:50.029 --> 00:06:52.209 the language that you would expect from a genuine 00:06:52.209 --> 00:06:54.930 Welsh scholar of that era. So if he's not Welsh, 00:06:54.970 --> 00:06:57.209 then what is he? The leading counter theory, 00:06:57.370 --> 00:06:59.589 and it's a very compelling one, is the Breton 00:06:59.589 --> 00:07:02.129 theory. OK, break that down for us. Who were 00:07:02.129 --> 00:07:04.949 the Bretons in this context? The Bretons were 00:07:04.949 --> 00:07:07.149 people from Brittany, which is that peninsula 00:07:07.149 --> 00:07:10.449 in northwest France. Now, originally, their ancestors 00:07:10.449 --> 00:07:13.050 were Britons who fled England during the Anglo 00:07:13.050 --> 00:07:16.529 -Saxon invasions centuries earlier. So they were 00:07:16.529 --> 00:07:19.610 Celts, culturally related to the Welsh. They 00:07:19.610 --> 00:07:21.430 even spoke a language that was very similar to 00:07:21.430 --> 00:07:23.730 Welsh. But they were French. Politically, they 00:07:23.730 --> 00:07:25.810 were from France. Geographically and politically, 00:07:26.009 --> 00:07:29.569 yes. And crucially, they were major allies of 00:07:29.569 --> 00:07:32.110 William the Conqueror. A huge contingent of the 00:07:32.110 --> 00:07:35.110 army that invaded England in 1066 was Breton. 00:07:35.230 --> 00:07:38.449 Okay. And after the conquest, many of these Breton 00:07:38.449 --> 00:07:41.470 lords were given huge tracts of land in, you 00:07:41.470 --> 00:07:44.110 guessed it, the Walsh Marches. Ah, so Monmouth 00:07:44.110 --> 00:07:46.230 itself is actually run by Bretons. The lords 00:07:46.230 --> 00:07:48.550 of Monmouth were a Breton family. And what's 00:07:48.550 --> 00:07:51.089 more, the names Gelfridus, Geoffrey, and Arthur 00:07:51.089 --> 00:07:53.209 were actually quite common in Brittany at the 00:07:53.209 --> 00:07:55.449 time, much more so than they were in Wales. Wow. 00:07:55.610 --> 00:07:58.149 This flips the script entirely. If he's Breton, 00:07:58.149 --> 00:07:59.949 he's not an underdog fighting for the oppressed 00:07:59.949 --> 00:08:02.750 Welsh. He's part of the conquering elite. Precisely. 00:08:02.889 --> 00:08:05.350 And that changes the entire motivation for his 00:08:05.350 --> 00:08:08.110 book. If he is Breton, he's not writing a history 00:08:08.110 --> 00:08:10.930 to subvert. the Normans. He's writing a history 00:08:10.930 --> 00:08:13.649 of the ancient Britons to flatter his own people, 00:08:13.750 --> 00:08:16.170 the Bretons, and to show the Normans, look, we 00:08:16.170 --> 00:08:19.250 Bretons are your equals. Our ancestors were magnificent 00:08:19.250 --> 00:08:21.670 kings like Arthur. So the whole book becomes 00:08:21.670 --> 00:08:24.730 a tool for social climbing within the Anglo -Norman 00:08:24.730 --> 00:08:27.250 court rather than some kind of subversive Welsh 00:08:27.250 --> 00:08:29.750 text. Exactly. It's about securing a place for 00:08:29.750 --> 00:08:32.450 his people at the high table of the new Norman 00:08:32.450 --> 00:08:35.720 kingdom. And that makes so much sense given what 00:08:35.720 --> 00:08:37.460 happens to him later in life. He does eventually 00:08:37.460 --> 00:08:39.700 get a big promotion, right? He becomes a bishop. 00:08:39.759 --> 00:08:42.080 That's a very establishment role. He does. In 00:08:42.080 --> 00:08:45.240 1152, right at the end of his life, he is consecrated 00:08:45.240 --> 00:08:48.100 as the Bishop of St. Asaph. And St. Asaph is 00:08:48.100 --> 00:08:51.559 in North Wales. It is. But here is the tragic 00:08:51.559 --> 00:08:54.440 or perhaps just ironic twist in Jeffrey's life 00:08:54.440 --> 00:08:57.480 story. We have absolutely no evidence that he 00:08:57.480 --> 00:08:59.620 ever set foot in his own diocese. Wait, what? 00:08:59.759 --> 00:09:01.779 He's the bishop of a place he never even goes 00:09:01.779 --> 00:09:04.220 to? It happens more often than you'd think in 00:09:04.220 --> 00:09:06.759 the medieval church. But for Geoffrey, it was 00:09:06.759 --> 00:09:10.019 really a matter of personal safety. At that time, 00:09:10.179 --> 00:09:12.759 North Wales was under the control of Owain Gwynedd, 00:09:12.860 --> 00:09:16.059 a very powerful and very fierce Welsh prince 00:09:16.059 --> 00:09:19.220 who was at war with the English crown. So if 00:09:19.220 --> 00:09:21.259 Geoffrey, who is an appointee of the English 00:09:21.259 --> 00:09:24.399 king, had ridden into St. Asaph... He likely 00:09:24.399 --> 00:09:26.539 would have been killed or at the very least captured 00:09:26.539 --> 00:09:29.600 and held for a massive ransom. So he holds the 00:09:29.600 --> 00:09:32.379 title, he gets the prestige and probably some 00:09:32.379 --> 00:09:34.620 of the income, but he stays safely in London 00:09:34.620 --> 00:09:38.049 and Oxford. He is an absentee bishop. Yes. And 00:09:38.049 --> 00:09:40.490 it just reinforces that idea that while he wrote 00:09:40.490 --> 00:09:43.710 about Wales, he wasn't really of Wales in a political 00:09:43.710 --> 00:09:45.610 sense. He was always an outsider looking in. 00:09:45.750 --> 00:09:47.669 So let's turn to the work that made him famous, 00:09:47.830 --> 00:09:50.289 the Historia Regum Britannia. You said it was 00:09:50.289 --> 00:09:53.009 popular, but this book was a genuine blockbuster. 00:09:53.230 --> 00:09:55.350 It is hard to overstate how popular this book 00:09:55.350 --> 00:09:57.230 was. I mean, remember, this is the days before 00:09:57.230 --> 00:09:59.470 the printing press. Every single book had to 00:09:59.470 --> 00:10:01.909 be hand copied onto expensive vellum. It was 00:10:01.909 --> 00:10:05.649 slow, laborious, and incredibly expensive. And 00:10:05.649 --> 00:10:08.549 yet we have nearly 200 surviving manuscripts 00:10:08.549 --> 00:10:11.850 from the medieval period alone. That is an astronomical 00:10:11.850 --> 00:10:14.850 number for any text from that era. It was the 00:10:14.850 --> 00:10:16.710 Harry Potter of the 12th century. It was Harry 00:10:16.710 --> 00:10:19.210 Potter meets Hamilton. It was thrilling entertainment, 00:10:19.450 --> 00:10:21.950 but it was also profound national myth -making. 00:10:22.250 --> 00:10:25.190 And the book covers this massive span of time, 00:10:25.289 --> 00:10:27.690 something like 2 ,000 years. And it all starts 00:10:27.690 --> 00:10:30.590 way, way back with Brutus of Troy. I've always 00:10:30.590 --> 00:10:33.289 found this part completely fascinating. He claims 00:10:33.289 --> 00:10:36.750 Britain was founded by Trojans. Yes. He creates 00:10:36.750 --> 00:10:39.110 this whole narrative where Brutus, who he says 00:10:39.110 --> 00:10:41.389 is a great -grandson of Aeneas, the famous Trojan 00:10:41.389 --> 00:10:43.690 hero who fled the burning city of Troy and went 00:10:43.690 --> 00:10:46.309 on to found the line of Rome, was exiled from 00:10:46.309 --> 00:10:48.809 Italy. Okay. And after many adventures, he and 00:10:48.809 --> 00:10:50.769 his followers land on this island, which was 00:10:50.769 --> 00:10:53.370 then called Albion, and was only inhabited by 00:10:53.370 --> 00:10:56.350 a few giants. He defeats the giants and renames 00:10:56.350 --> 00:10:59.529 the island Britain after himself, Brutus. And 00:10:59.529 --> 00:11:02.149 his followers become the Britons. Why do that? 00:11:02.210 --> 00:11:03.870 Why go to all that trouble to connect Britain 00:11:03.870 --> 00:11:06.470 to Troy? What's the point? It's all about status. 00:11:06.789 --> 00:11:10.190 It's about prestige. In the medieval mind, Rome 00:11:10.190 --> 00:11:13.850 was the absolute peak of civilization. Every 00:11:13.850 --> 00:11:16.409 emerging European power wanted to claim some 00:11:16.409 --> 00:11:18.950 kind of connection to the classical world. So 00:11:18.950 --> 00:11:21.049 it's a way of looking legitimate. It's a massive 00:11:21.049 --> 00:11:24.009 diplomatic flex by saying, our founder comes 00:11:24.009 --> 00:11:27.269 from Troy. Geoffrey is telling the world, the 00:11:27.269 --> 00:11:30.250 Britons are cousins to the Romans. We aren't 00:11:30.250 --> 00:11:32.149 just some barbarians at the foggy edge of the 00:11:32.149 --> 00:11:35.529 world. We have a classical pedigree. It puts 00:11:35.529 --> 00:11:38.330 the British kings on the same level as the Caesars. 00:11:38.429 --> 00:11:41.210 And then the book just powers through all these 00:11:41.210 --> 00:11:42.929 other kings. I saw King Lear in there, which 00:11:42.929 --> 00:11:44.970 is Shakespeare's King Lear. It is. Shakespeare 00:11:44.970 --> 00:11:46.830 got the story directly from a translation of 00:11:46.830 --> 00:11:49.429 Geoffrey, Cymbeline too. Right. And eventually 00:11:49.429 --> 00:11:51.470 this grand history leads up to the main event. 00:11:51.899 --> 00:11:54.759 Arthur. Arthur completely dominates the central 00:11:54.759 --> 00:11:56.759 section of the book. And you have to understand, 00:11:56.860 --> 00:11:59.340 the Arthur that Geoffrey presents is not just 00:11:59.340 --> 00:12:02.500 a local warlord fending off Saxons. He is an 00:12:02.500 --> 00:12:05.320 emperor, a world -conquering hero. Right, we 00:12:05.320 --> 00:12:07.159 mentioned this before. In Geoffrey's version, 00:12:07.379 --> 00:12:09.759 Arthur invades Europe. He doesn't just invade, 00:12:09.940 --> 00:12:13.220 he conquers. He takes Gaul, which is modern France. 00:12:13.519 --> 00:12:16.100 He defeats the Roman armies sent against him. 00:12:16.330 --> 00:12:19.110 He's on his way to be crowned emperor in Rome 00:12:19.110 --> 00:12:21.570 itself when he gets the news that his nephew, 00:12:21.730 --> 00:12:24.289 Mordred, has betrayed him back home. It's just 00:12:24.289 --> 00:12:26.909 an epic fantasy of dominance. For an audience 00:12:26.909 --> 00:12:30.649 in the 12th century, seeing a British king totally 00:12:30.649 --> 00:12:33.350 humble the Roman Empire must have been incredibly 00:12:33.350 --> 00:12:35.870 satisfying to read. Oh, absolutely. It's a validation 00:12:35.870 --> 00:12:39.389 narrative. But this brings us to the elephant 00:12:39.389 --> 00:12:42.399 in the room. The ancient book. Because in the 00:12:42.399 --> 00:12:44.580 preface, Geoffrey tells us exactly where he got 00:12:44.580 --> 00:12:46.500 all of this incredible information. He does. 00:12:46.620 --> 00:12:49.120 And this is probably the most debated sentence 00:12:49.120 --> 00:12:51.139 in the entire history of Arthurian scholarship. 00:12:51.820 --> 00:12:53.940 Geoffrey claims that his friend and superior, 00:12:54.220 --> 00:12:57.080 Walter, the archdeacon of Oxford, gave him a 00:12:57.080 --> 00:12:59.360 certain most ancient book in the British language. 00:12:59.659 --> 00:13:01.240 The British language, meaning Welsh or something 00:13:01.240 --> 00:13:03.720 like it? Yes. And he says this book set out the 00:13:03.720 --> 00:13:06.519 history of all these kings, from Brutus to Cadwallader, 00:13:06.639 --> 00:13:09.759 in perfect chronological order. And Jeffrey claims 00:13:09.759 --> 00:13:12.399 his role is just as the translator. He's saying, 00:13:12.480 --> 00:13:14.720 don't look at me. I'm just translating Walter's 00:13:14.720 --> 00:13:17.960 book. That's his defense. I have merely turned 00:13:17.960 --> 00:13:20.340 it into Latin at Archdeacon Walter's request. 00:13:20.700 --> 00:13:23.700 So the million dollar question. Did this ancient 00:13:23.700 --> 00:13:27.139 book actually exist? The short answer from pretty 00:13:27.139 --> 00:13:30.919 much every modern historian is no. Almost certainly 00:13:30.919 --> 00:13:33.980 not. Why are we so sure, though? I mean. Books 00:13:33.980 --> 00:13:36.580 get lost all the time. Libraries burn down. Is 00:13:36.580 --> 00:13:38.299 it totally impossible that there was a Welsh 00:13:38.299 --> 00:13:40.120 manuscript history that we just don't have anymore? 00:13:40.340 --> 00:13:42.179 It's not physically impossible that a book could 00:13:42.179 --> 00:13:44.980 be lost, but it is textually and historically 00:13:44.980 --> 00:13:48.519 highly, highly suspicious. First, the narrative 00:13:48.519 --> 00:13:50.820 Jeffrey produces fits the political and cultural 00:13:50.820 --> 00:13:53.539 concerns of the 12th century a little too perfectly. 00:13:53.960 --> 00:13:56.360 It addresses exactly the questions the Anglo 00:13:56.360 --> 00:13:58.539 -Normans were interested in. It's suspiciously 00:13:58.539 --> 00:14:01.580 convenient. Very. Secondly, no one else ever 00:14:01.580 --> 00:14:04.360 mentions seeing this book. No other Welsh scholar, 00:14:04.460 --> 00:14:07.200 no other English historian ever references this 00:14:07.200 --> 00:14:09.860 foundational text of British history. It appears 00:14:09.860 --> 00:14:11.480 in Geoffrey's preface and then vanishes from 00:14:11.480 --> 00:14:13.620 history. It's a bit like the my girlfriend goes 00:14:13.620 --> 00:14:16.720 to another school situation. Chuckles. That is 00:14:16.720 --> 00:14:18.879 a perfect analogy. You wouldn't know her. She 00:14:18.879 --> 00:14:22.100 lives in Canada. Yeah. The found manuscript is 00:14:22.100 --> 00:14:25.759 a classic literary trope. It's a device to give 00:14:25.759 --> 00:14:29.309 your work authority. It says, this isn't my invention, 00:14:29.470 --> 00:14:31.809 this is ancient wisdom that I have uncovered. 00:14:32.049 --> 00:14:33.710 Okay, but here is where I get a little stuck. 00:14:34.730 --> 00:14:38.019 Walter the Archdeacon was a real guy. A very 00:14:38.019 --> 00:14:41.100 respected, powerful figure. Very real. Yes. He 00:14:41.100 --> 00:14:43.100 was Jeffrey's superior in the church hierarchy. 00:14:43.580 --> 00:14:45.559 They witnessed charters together. Their names 00:14:45.559 --> 00:14:47.779 are on the same documents. So if I write a book 00:14:47.779 --> 00:14:50.159 and I say in the preface, my boss gave me the 00:14:50.159 --> 00:14:52.379 secret files and I'm just completely lying. Isn't 00:14:52.379 --> 00:14:54.360 my boss going to say something? Isn't Walter 00:14:54.360 --> 00:14:56.539 going to call him out and say, Jeffrey, I never 00:14:56.539 --> 00:14:59.080 gave you that book. And that is the crucial nuance. 00:14:59.299 --> 00:15:01.019 You're absolutely right. Jeffrey couldn't have 00:15:01.019 --> 00:15:03.019 lied completely. If he had just invented the 00:15:03.019 --> 00:15:06.059 entire story about Walter out of thin air, Walter 00:15:06.059 --> 00:15:09.580 would have and should have exposed him as a fraud. 00:15:09.799 --> 00:15:11.899 So what's the middle ground? The middle ground 00:15:11.899 --> 00:15:14.019 and the theory most scholars lean towards is 00:15:14.019 --> 00:15:16.500 that Walter did give him something. Just not 00:15:16.500 --> 00:15:20.200 the one ancient book. Exactly. The theory is 00:15:20.200 --> 00:15:22.720 that Walter, who was an educated man with connections, 00:15:23.039 --> 00:15:26.139 probably gave Jeffrey a collection of materials. 00:15:26.830 --> 00:15:29.669 Maybe some Walsh genealogies, a few king lists, 00:15:29.929 --> 00:15:32.450 perhaps some scraps of oral poetry that had been 00:15:32.450 --> 00:15:35.110 written down. A disorganized pile of stuff. And 00:15:35.110 --> 00:15:37.529 Jeffrey took that pile of raw material and spun 00:15:37.529 --> 00:15:40.470 it into gold. He took the skeleton. that Walter 00:15:40.470 --> 00:15:43.289 provided, and he fleshed it out. He added the 00:15:43.289 --> 00:15:45.750 epic battles, the long speeches, the dramatic 00:15:45.750 --> 00:15:48.649 moments. He borrowed from Roman historians like 00:15:48.649 --> 00:15:51.309 Livy to describe battles. He essentially took 00:15:51.309 --> 00:15:54.090 a dozen different fragmented sources and wove 00:15:54.090 --> 00:15:56.990 them into one single seamless epic narrative. 00:15:57.250 --> 00:16:00.009 So the ancient book was a kind of polite fiction, 00:16:00.190 --> 00:16:03.419 a shield. It's a brilliant move. It allows him 00:16:03.419 --> 00:16:05.259 to have it both ways. He gets all the credit 00:16:05.259 --> 00:16:07.139 for the beautiful Latin style and the exciting 00:16:07.139 --> 00:16:09.419 story. But if anyone criticizes the historical 00:16:09.419 --> 00:16:11.159 content, he can just shrug and say, well, that's 00:16:11.159 --> 00:16:13.019 what was in the book Walter gave me. He blames 00:16:13.019 --> 00:16:14.840 his source material. It's a perfect defense. 00:16:15.200 --> 00:16:17.379 Speaking of criticism, not everyone bought this 00:16:17.379 --> 00:16:20.059 story, did they? Even back in the 1100s, there 00:16:20.059 --> 00:16:22.379 were some serious skeptics. Oh, the academic 00:16:22.379 --> 00:16:25.559 shade thrown at Jeffrey was intense. You have 00:16:25.559 --> 00:16:28.059 to remember, there were other very serious historians 00:16:28.059 --> 00:16:31.259 working at this time. men like William of Malmesbury 00:16:31.259 --> 00:16:34.100 and later William of Newburgh. And they were 00:16:34.100 --> 00:16:36.679 working from credible sources like the Venerable 00:16:36.679 --> 00:16:39.279 Bede or Roman accounts. And Jeffrey's story didn't 00:16:39.279 --> 00:16:41.879 line up? Not at all. William of Newburgh, writing 00:16:41.879 --> 00:16:45.080 around 1190, just did not hold back. He basically 00:16:45.080 --> 00:16:48.379 said, and I'm paraphrasing, it is vividly clear 00:16:48.379 --> 00:16:50.259 that everything this man wrote about Arthur and 00:16:50.259 --> 00:16:53.259 his successors is a lie, made up either by himself 00:16:53.259 --> 00:16:56.460 or by others. Wow. He pointed out, very logically, 00:16:56.659 --> 00:16:59.220 that if Arthur had really conquered most of Europe 00:16:59.220 --> 00:17:01.860 and defeated the Romans, surely some French or 00:17:01.860 --> 00:17:03.460 Roman or Italian writer would have mentioned 00:17:03.460 --> 00:17:05.299 it. That is a very solid point. It's hard to 00:17:05.299 --> 00:17:07.480 hide an emperor conquering your country. It is. 00:17:07.839 --> 00:17:10.140 But my absolute favorite critic is Gerald of 00:17:10.140 --> 00:17:12.160 Wales. We mentioned him earlier. Gerald was a 00:17:12.160 --> 00:17:14.660 prolific writer, a bit of a gossip, and he clearly 00:17:14.660 --> 00:17:17.119 had this love -hate relationship with Geoffrey's 00:17:17.119 --> 00:17:20.190 work. He tells an anecdote that is just. It's 00:17:20.190 --> 00:17:22.390 the 12th century equivalent of a savagely viral 00:17:22.390 --> 00:17:25.349 tweet. This is the demon story. I was hoping 00:17:25.349 --> 00:17:28.650 we'd get to this. It is. So Gerald tells us about 00:17:28.650 --> 00:17:31.329 a Welshman named Mylar who lived in the city 00:17:31.329 --> 00:17:34.329 of Caroleon. And Mylar was possessed by demons. 00:17:34.609 --> 00:17:38.470 As one is. Naturally. But these demons gave him 00:17:38.470 --> 00:17:42.089 a very specific and unusual power. They made 00:17:42.089 --> 00:17:45.349 him a human lie detector. He could see them apparently 00:17:45.349 --> 00:17:47.730 sitting on the shoulders of liars. Okay. And 00:17:47.730 --> 00:17:49.490 if he was in the presence of a lie or a book 00:17:49.490 --> 00:17:51.730 containing lies, the demons would get all excited 00:17:51.730 --> 00:17:53.730 and dance and celebrate. Right. But Gerald says 00:17:53.730 --> 00:17:56.890 if you place the Gospel of John on Mylar's chest, 00:17:57.150 --> 00:18:00.950 the demons would scream in agony and flee. They 00:18:00.950 --> 00:18:03.049 couldn't stand the absolute truth of the scripture. 00:18:03.289 --> 00:18:06.210 They would just vanish like birds. Standard exorcism 00:18:06.210 --> 00:18:09.710 rules. Holy book equals no demons. Got it. But 00:18:09.710 --> 00:18:12.930 then they decided to run an experiment. They 00:18:12.930 --> 00:18:15.470 took the gospel away and they replaced it with 00:18:15.470 --> 00:18:17.470 Geoffrey Monmouth's History of the Kings of Britain. 00:18:17.630 --> 00:18:19.710 I love where this is going. Gerald writes that 00:18:19.710 --> 00:18:22.470 the demons didn't just return, they swarmed. 00:18:22.710 --> 00:18:25.490 They came back in greater numbers than ever before, 00:18:25.609 --> 00:18:28.150 covering not just Myler's body but the book itself, 00:18:28.450 --> 00:18:30.829 hanging off it, sitting on it, rejoicing for 00:18:30.829 --> 00:18:33.390 longer and with more celebration than ever. That 00:18:33.390 --> 00:18:36.470 is absolutely brutal. It is the ultimate literary 00:18:36.470 --> 00:18:40.150 burn. He is saying, no uncertain terms, that 00:18:40.150 --> 00:18:43.029 Geoffrey's book is the anti -gospel. It is so 00:18:43.029 --> 00:18:45.950 full of lies that it acts as a magnet for the 00:18:45.950 --> 00:18:48.470 forces of hell. And yet, despite the demons, 00:18:48.650 --> 00:18:51.650 despite the academic critics, the book survived. 00:18:52.049 --> 00:18:55.430 It didn't just survive. It thrived. Because the 00:18:55.430 --> 00:18:57.730 people in power, the Norman and later Plantagenet 00:18:57.730 --> 00:19:00.589 kings of England, loved it. It gave them a historical 00:19:00.589 --> 00:19:03.369 precedent for ruling over the whole island of 00:19:03.369 --> 00:19:05.809 Britain. It became the official preferred version 00:19:05.809 --> 00:19:08.589 of history. So it was politically useful. Enormously. 00:19:08.630 --> 00:19:11.250 And it wasn't really until the Renaissance. with 00:19:11.250 --> 00:19:13.690 the rise of new humanist scholarship, that the 00:19:13.690 --> 00:19:16.049 bubble finally burst and people started to seriously 00:19:16.049 --> 00:19:19.230 say, OK, maybe Brutus of Troy wasn't a real person. 00:19:19.329 --> 00:19:22.029 So for 400 years, give or take, fiction became 00:19:22.029 --> 00:19:24.930 fact. Yes, for a very long time. But this brings 00:19:24.930 --> 00:19:27.329 us to the modern era. And usually this is the 00:19:27.329 --> 00:19:29.309 part of the deep dive where we say, so modern 00:19:29.309 --> 00:19:31.390 science and archaeology have proved it was all 00:19:31.390 --> 00:19:34.529 fake. But we have a twist. We do. And that twist 00:19:34.529 --> 00:19:37.369 is the Lost Voices of Celtic Britain project. 00:19:37.900 --> 00:19:41.059 This was a study from 2017 led by an archaeologist 00:19:41.059 --> 00:19:43.339 named Miles Russell at Bournemouth University. 00:19:43.819 --> 00:19:46.799 And their findings are fascinating because they 00:19:46.799 --> 00:19:49.660 suggest that Jeffrey wasn't just, you know, hallucinating 00:19:49.660 --> 00:19:51.859 in his study in Oxford. He was doing something 00:19:51.859 --> 00:19:54.460 more technical. Russell argues that Jeffrey was 00:19:54.460 --> 00:19:57.240 acting as a compiler. He wasn't just inventing 00:19:57.240 --> 00:19:59.599 names and events out of thin air. He was taking 00:19:59.599 --> 00:20:03.059 very old, very garbled, mostly oral traditions 00:20:03.059 --> 00:20:06.200 and trying to stitch them together into a coherent 00:20:06.200 --> 00:20:08.650 story. How did they even begin to figure that 00:20:08.650 --> 00:20:10.589 out? How can you prove something like that? They 00:20:10.589 --> 00:20:12.950 did a kind of forensic analysis. They took the 00:20:12.950 --> 00:20:15.529 names and events in Geoffrey's history, specifically 00:20:15.529 --> 00:20:17.869 from the pre -Roman section, and they compared 00:20:17.869 --> 00:20:20.289 them to the archaeological record of the British 00:20:20.289 --> 00:20:23.289 Iron Age. And they found some incredible matches. 00:20:23.630 --> 00:20:26.069 Give us an example. What matched up? Well, Geoffrey 00:20:26.069 --> 00:20:28.369 talks about a whole series of kings who supposedly 00:20:28.369 --> 00:20:30.910 ruled Britain long before the Romans ever showed 00:20:30.910 --> 00:20:34.160 up. For centuries, historians just assumed these 00:20:34.160 --> 00:20:35.920 names were completely made up, pure fantasy. 00:20:36.140 --> 00:20:38.619 But Russell's team compared Geoffrey's list of 00:20:38.619 --> 00:20:41.539 kings to the names that have been found stamped 00:20:41.539 --> 00:20:44.299 on Iron Age coins that archaeologists have dug 00:20:44.299 --> 00:20:46.440 up in southern England. Wait, actual physical 00:20:46.440 --> 00:20:49.579 coins from the first century BC? Yes, exactly. 00:20:49.819 --> 00:20:52.980 And the names matched. Geoffrey lists kings of 00:20:52.980 --> 00:20:56.119 the Kituvalani and the Trunavantes tribes. Let's 00:20:56.119 --> 00:20:58.700 pause on those tribes. Who were they? They sound 00:20:58.700 --> 00:21:01.019 important. They were the superpowers of pre -Roman 00:21:01.019 --> 00:21:03.359 Britain. They controlled most of the southeast, 00:21:03.599 --> 00:21:05.819 what is now modern -day London, Hertfordshire, 00:21:05.980 --> 00:21:08.420 Essex. These were the powerful kingdoms that 00:21:08.420 --> 00:21:10.480 actually fought Julius Caesar when he invaded. 00:21:10.720 --> 00:21:14.299 But after the full Roman conquest in 43 AD, their 00:21:14.299 --> 00:21:17.059 specific history, their king lists, were largely 00:21:17.059 --> 00:21:19.720 forgotten and overwritten by Roman history. But 00:21:19.720 --> 00:21:21.660 somehow, Geoffrey knew their names a thousand 00:21:21.660 --> 00:21:24.480 years later. He did. Which means he must have 00:21:24.480 --> 00:21:27.119 had access to sources, most likely oral traditions, 00:21:27.339 --> 00:21:30.000 bardic poems passed down for generations that 00:21:30.000 --> 00:21:32.740 preserve those names. That is an incredible, 00:21:32.839 --> 00:21:35.559 almost unbelievable thread of continuity. So 00:21:35.559 --> 00:21:38.059 Jeffrey was right. The book is true. Well, this 00:21:38.059 --> 00:21:39.880 is the crucial part. He was right about the names, 00:21:40.000 --> 00:21:42.710 but he was completely wrong about the time. And 00:21:42.710 --> 00:21:44.670 this is the key to understanding Geoffrey's method. 00:21:44.869 --> 00:21:47.430 He had all the puzzle pieces, but he didn't have 00:21:47.430 --> 00:21:49.650 the picture on the box lid. He didn't know the 00:21:49.650 --> 00:21:51.490 chronology. He didn't know what order they came 00:21:51.490 --> 00:21:54.410 in. Exactly. He has a story about a King Casalan 00:21:54.410 --> 00:21:57.349 who fights Julius Caesar. That matches perfectly 00:21:57.349 --> 00:21:59.890 with the historical Casalanus, who we know from 00:21:59.890 --> 00:22:02.730 Caesar's own writings, fought him. So, check. 00:22:03.089 --> 00:22:05.190 But then he has stories about other kings that 00:22:05.190 --> 00:22:07.269 archaeologists know, from coin distributions, 00:22:07.769 --> 00:22:10.509 belong in the 1st century AD or the 3rd century 00:22:10.509 --> 00:22:13.400 AD. He doesn't know where they fit. So what does 00:22:13.400 --> 00:22:15.980 he do with these names without a timeline? He 00:22:15.980 --> 00:22:19.240 smooths it. That's the term Russell uses. Jeffrey 00:22:19.240 --> 00:22:21.640 acts like a modern film editor with hours and 00:22:21.640 --> 00:22:24.500 hours of disjointed footage. He cuts and pastes. 00:22:24.759 --> 00:22:27.500 If he has a 50 -year gap in his timeline and 00:22:27.500 --> 00:22:29.380 he has a random King story that doesn't have 00:22:29.380 --> 00:22:31.779 a date attached to it, he just slots that King 00:22:31.779 --> 00:22:34.480 into the gap to make the story flow. He remixes 00:22:34.480 --> 00:22:37.720 history to create a single linear narrative. 00:22:38.259 --> 00:22:41.150 Precisely. He creates a kind of Frankenstein's 00:22:41.150 --> 00:22:44.269 monster of history. The limbs are real. They're 00:22:44.269 --> 00:22:46.970 based on real historical figures. But he has 00:22:46.970 --> 00:22:49.589 sewn them together in an order and a shape that 00:22:49.589 --> 00:22:52.049 never actually existed in reality. This completely 00:22:52.049 --> 00:22:54.529 changes how I see him. He's not a liar in that 00:22:54.529 --> 00:22:57.170 case. He's a preserver. I mean, if he hadn't 00:22:57.170 --> 00:22:59.309 done this smoothing, if he hadn't turned it into 00:22:59.309 --> 00:23:02.650 this epic blockbuster story, those names, the 00:23:02.650 --> 00:23:05.150 Ketuvallani Kings, they would have been lost 00:23:05.150 --> 00:23:07.829 forever, wouldn't they? That is the great paradox 00:23:07.829 --> 00:23:10.750 of Geoffrey of Monmouth. By corrupting the history, 00:23:10.910 --> 00:23:14.430 he saved it. A dry, confusing list of names would 00:23:14.430 --> 00:23:16.369 have been copied maybe once and then rotted in 00:23:16.369 --> 00:23:19.150 a library. A grand, sweeping saga about King 00:23:19.150 --> 00:23:22.210 Arthur and Merlin gets copied 200 times and translated 00:23:22.210 --> 00:23:24.430 into every language in Europe. Let's talk about 00:23:24.430 --> 00:23:26.430 one specific character where we can really see 00:23:26.430 --> 00:23:28.670 this remixing happening in real time. Merlin. 00:23:29.049 --> 00:23:32.089 Ah, Merlin. This is arguably Jeffrey's greatest 00:23:32.089 --> 00:23:35.069 singular creation. Before Jeffrey, there wasn't 00:23:35.069 --> 00:23:37.329 really a unified character called Merlin. There 00:23:37.329 --> 00:23:39.450 were Welsh legends about a prophet named Merlin, 00:23:39.569 --> 00:23:41.589 and there were other legends about wild men of 00:23:41.589 --> 00:23:43.609 the woods, but Jeffrey is the one who combines 00:23:43.609 --> 00:23:45.609 them. And he didn't just write about him in one 00:23:45.609 --> 00:23:47.569 book. He actually wrote three different works, 00:23:47.670 --> 00:23:50.109 and Merlin is central to at least two of them. 00:23:50.509 --> 00:23:52.890 That's right. He wrote the Prophetiae Merlini, 00:23:53.049 --> 00:23:55.990 the Prophecies of Merlin first, probably before 00:23:55.990 --> 00:24:00.450 1135. And he often inserted this book right into 00:24:00.450 --> 00:24:02.569 the middle of his main history. And what are 00:24:02.569 --> 00:24:05.809 these prophecies like? They are wild. They are 00:24:05.809 --> 00:24:09.430 just a series of obscure, cryptic, almost psychedelic 00:24:09.430 --> 00:24:12.349 images. The boar of Cornwall shall give his aid. 00:24:12.589 --> 00:24:15.329 The dragon of the West shall rise and bite the 00:24:15.329 --> 00:24:17.710 tail of the bear. That kind of thing. So like 00:24:17.710 --> 00:24:19.809 a Nostradamus prediction, vague enough to mean 00:24:19.809 --> 00:24:22.410 anything. Exactly like a political horoscope. 00:24:22.589 --> 00:24:24.569 They were incredibly popular because they were 00:24:24.569 --> 00:24:26.190 so vague you could apply them to any current 00:24:26.190 --> 00:24:28.900 event you wanted. But then years later, around 00:24:28.900 --> 00:24:32.480 1150, Jeffrey writes a long poem called the Vita 00:24:32.480 --> 00:24:35.180 Merlini, The Life of Merlin. OK. And the Merlin 00:24:35.180 --> 00:24:37.519 in this poem is a completely different person 00:24:37.519 --> 00:24:39.859 from the Merlin in the King Arthur story. Right. 00:24:39.920 --> 00:24:42.339 In the Arthur story, the Historia, Merlin is 00:24:42.339 --> 00:24:44.700 the court wizard. He's the political advisor, 00:24:44.880 --> 00:24:47.299 the master strategist, the magical engineer who 00:24:47.299 --> 00:24:50.640 builds Stonehenge. Yes. He's a high status political 00:24:50.640 --> 00:24:53.519 operator. He's at the center of power. But in 00:24:53.519 --> 00:24:56.839 the Vita Merlini. The character is called Merlinus 00:24:56.839 --> 00:24:59.299 Silvestris Merlin of the Woods. The wild man. 00:24:59.460 --> 00:25:01.940 The wild man. He's a crazed, grief -stricken 00:25:01.940 --> 00:25:04.920 old man who lives as an outcast in the Caledonian 00:25:04.920 --> 00:25:07.920 forest in Scotland. He's not building castles. 00:25:07.980 --> 00:25:10.220 He's talking to wolves and weeping about the 00:25:10.220 --> 00:25:13.519 futility of war. He has basically gone mad from 00:25:13.519 --> 00:25:15.359 the trauma of what he's seen on the battlefield. 00:25:15.680 --> 00:25:19.819 That is a much darker, much more human character. 00:25:20.099 --> 00:25:22.599 Why the discrepancy? Why would he write two completely 00:25:22.599 --> 00:25:25.230 different versions? It seems that in the years 00:25:25.230 --> 00:25:27.970 between writing the Historia and the Vita, Geoffrey 00:25:27.970 --> 00:25:30.509 discovered new source material. He likely came 00:25:30.509 --> 00:25:33.009 across the separate northern British traditions 00:25:33.009 --> 00:25:36.730 of a wild prophet named Laeloken or Merdenweldt 00:25:36.730 --> 00:25:39.210 in Welsh. And he realized his first version was 00:25:39.210 --> 00:25:41.509 incomplete. He realized, uh -oh, there is this 00:25:41.509 --> 00:25:43.809 whole other major tradition about a prophet, 00:25:43.869 --> 00:25:46.009 but it doesn't match the powerful court wizard 00:25:46.009 --> 00:25:48.190 I wrote about in my bestseller. He found a continuity 00:25:48.190 --> 00:25:51.200 error in his own literary universe. Exactly. 00:25:51.200 --> 00:25:54.099 So the Vita Merlini is his attempt to fix it. 00:25:54.119 --> 00:25:56.559 It's a synchronization effort. He writes this 00:25:56.559 --> 00:25:58.660 new story where he tries to explain that the 00:25:58.660 --> 00:26:01.180 wild man of the woods is just the court wizard 00:26:01.180 --> 00:26:03.240 later in his life after he suffered a breakdown. 00:26:03.559 --> 00:26:06.079 He's retconning the folklore to make it all fit 00:26:06.079 --> 00:26:08.839 into one single biography. It shows he really 00:26:08.839 --> 00:26:11.000 cared about the canon. He wasn't just throwing 00:26:11.000 --> 00:26:12.779 random stories at the wall. He was trying to 00:26:12.779 --> 00:26:15.380 create a unified field theory of British legend. 00:26:15.660 --> 00:26:18.660 He wanted it to be consistent. And he succeeded 00:26:18.660 --> 00:26:21.839 in the long run. The Merlin we have today, the 00:26:21.839 --> 00:26:23.440 one in T .H. White's The Once and Future King, 00:26:23.599 --> 00:26:25.980 the one in Disney's The Sword in the Stone, is 00:26:25.980 --> 00:26:29.160 a blend of Jeffrey's two distinct versions, the 00:26:29.160 --> 00:26:31.859 wise political tutor and the eccentric nature 00:26:31.859 --> 00:26:34.200 -loving wizard. Speaking of pop culture, the 00:26:34.200 --> 00:26:36.680 legacy here is just immense. We've touched on 00:26:36.680 --> 00:26:38.720 it, but it's worth restating it clearly. Without 00:26:38.720 --> 00:26:41.019 Geoffrey of Monmouth, do we even have King Arthur? 00:26:41.200 --> 00:26:43.579 Not in any form we would recognize. We might 00:26:43.579 --> 00:26:45.900 have had a few obscure references to a soldier 00:26:45.900 --> 00:26:49.420 or warlord named Arthur in some old Welsh poetry, 00:26:49.640 --> 00:26:52.329 but we would not have the king. We wouldn't have 00:26:52.329 --> 00:26:54.829 the grand court, the European conquest, the epic 00:26:54.829 --> 00:26:58.049 romance. He provides the entire narrative framework. 00:26:58.430 --> 00:27:00.829 And the chain reaction from that is just incredible. 00:27:01.190 --> 00:27:04.450 Geoffrey writes his Latin history. Then a poet 00:27:04.450 --> 00:27:07.170 named Weiss translates it into Norman French 00:27:07.170 --> 00:27:09.710 and adds the round table. Right. The round table 00:27:09.710 --> 00:27:11.710 isn't even in Geoffrey's original. Then another 00:27:11.710 --> 00:27:14.430 poet, Leamon, translates that into Middle English. 00:27:14.609 --> 00:27:17.250 Then centuries later, Sir Thomas Mallory compiles 00:27:17.250 --> 00:27:19.750 all these stories into Le Morte d 'Arthur. Then 00:27:19.750 --> 00:27:22.279 in the 20th century, T. E .H. White writes The 00:27:22.279 --> 00:27:24.720 Once and Future King. It is a direct literary 00:27:24.720 --> 00:27:26.660 lineage, and you can argue it goes even further. 00:27:26.759 --> 00:27:29.240 A show like Game of Thrones, the whole idea of 00:27:29.240 --> 00:27:31.980 a complex pseudo -historical struggle for a throne 00:27:31.980 --> 00:27:34.380 that involves magic, prophecies, and dragons, 00:27:34.579 --> 00:27:37.420 that narrative DNA goes straight back to Geoffrey 00:27:37.420 --> 00:27:39.140 of Monmouth. There is even a brilliant little 00:27:39.140 --> 00:27:42.220 nod to him in the BBC series Merlin from a few 00:27:42.220 --> 00:27:45.259 years back, isn't there? Yes. The character Geoffrey 00:27:45.259 --> 00:27:47.380 of Monmouth is the court librarian and historian 00:27:47.380 --> 00:27:51.240 in Camelot. It's a lovely, very clever meta joke 00:27:51.240 --> 00:27:54.339 by the writers, acknowledging that he is, in 00:27:54.339 --> 00:27:57.059 essence, the keeper of all these stories. So 00:27:57.059 --> 00:27:59.619 as we wrap this up, I'm left thinking about the 00:27:59.619 --> 00:28:02.240 nature of history itself. We started this deep 00:28:02.240 --> 00:28:04.779 dive by asking if he was a liar or a historian. 00:28:05.180 --> 00:28:06.779 And I think we found he is a bit of both and 00:28:06.779 --> 00:28:09.369 maybe something else entirely. He's a storyteller. 00:28:09.470 --> 00:28:11.589 I mean, we live in an age now where we have access 00:28:11.589 --> 00:28:14.650 to so much data. We can look up the carbon dating 00:28:14.650 --> 00:28:17.670 of an Iron Age hill fort. We can see the truth 00:28:17.670 --> 00:28:20.430 in its driest, most fragmented form. We can. 00:28:20.549 --> 00:28:22.569 We know the raw facts better than Jeffrey ever 00:28:22.569 --> 00:28:24.289 could have. But Jeffrey offered something that 00:28:24.289 --> 00:28:26.869 raw facts can't offer. He offered a narrative. 00:28:27.009 --> 00:28:29.930 He connected the dots and created a single, powerful 00:28:29.930 --> 00:28:33.190 story. That is the enduring power of the Historia. 00:28:33.369 --> 00:28:36.619 A list of dates is just data. A story about a 00:28:36.619 --> 00:28:39.579 noble king who rises, unites his people, conquers 00:28:39.579 --> 00:28:42.059 his enemies, and then tragically falls. That 00:28:42.059 --> 00:28:44.299 is meaning. Geoffrey understood that nations 00:28:44.299 --> 00:28:46.759 need meaning. They need a story to tell themselves 00:28:46.759 --> 00:28:48.880 about where they come from, even if that origin 00:28:48.880 --> 00:28:51.980 story is partly invented. He gave Britain a soul, 00:28:52.160 --> 00:28:54.480 in a way, even if he had to borrow that soul 00:28:54.480 --> 00:28:56.900 from ancient Troy. He held up a mirror to the 00:28:56.900 --> 00:28:59.700 people of 12th century Britain. And even though 00:28:59.700 --> 00:29:02.019 the reflection was enhanced, you know, made taller, 00:29:02.140 --> 00:29:04.579 stronger, more heroic than reality, they looked 00:29:04.579 --> 00:29:06.940 into it and they liked what they saw. They decided 00:29:06.940 --> 00:29:09.140 to believe the story because the story made them 00:29:09.140 --> 00:29:12.059 feel like they mattered on the world stage. So 00:29:12.059 --> 00:29:13.960 the final provocative thought for you to take 00:29:13.960 --> 00:29:17.400 away today is this. In your own life, or in how 00:29:17.400 --> 00:29:20.019 you view the world, how much do you value the 00:29:20.019 --> 00:29:24.019 messy, broken, unconnected facts? And how much 00:29:24.019 --> 00:29:27.599 do you crave that smooth narrative? the story 00:29:27.599 --> 00:29:30.500 that makes sense of it all, even if, like Jeffrey's 00:29:30.500 --> 00:29:32.900 ancient book, some of the connections are a little 00:29:32.900 --> 00:29:35.619 bit creative. It's the age -old choice between 00:29:35.619 --> 00:29:38.059 the truth and the legend. As they say in that 00:29:38.059 --> 00:29:40.640 old John Ford Western, the man who shot Liberty 00:29:40.640 --> 00:29:43.740 Valance, when legend becomes fact, print the 00:29:43.740 --> 00:29:46.339 legend. Jeffrey of Monmouth printed the legend. 00:29:46.339 --> 00:29:48.559 He certainly did. Thanks for diving deep with 00:29:48.559 --> 00:29:50.160 us today. My pleasure. We'll catch you on the 00:29:50.160 --> 00:29:50.460 next one.