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A Companion to Geoffrey of Monmouth Brill’S Companions to European History A Companion to Geoffrey of Monmouth Brill’s Companions to European History volume 22 The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/bceh A Companion to Geoffrey of Monmouth By Georgia Henley Joshua Byron Smith LEIDEN | BOSTON This is an open access title distributed under the terms of the CC BY-NC 4.0 license, which permits any non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author(s) and source are credited. Further information and the complete license text can be found at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by-nc/4.0/ The terms of the CC license apply only to the original material. The use of material from other sources (indicated by a reference) such as diagrams, illustrations, photos and text samples may require further permission from the respective copyright holder. An electronic version of this book is freely available, thanks to the support of libraries working with Knowledge Unlatched. More information about the initiative can be found at www .knowledgeunlatched.org. Cover illustration: © The British Library Board (Egerton MS 3028, f. 25r). Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Henley, Georgia, editor. | Byron-Smith, Joshua, editor. Title: A companion to Geoffrey of Monmouth / by Georgia Henley, Joshua Byron Smith. Other titles: Brill’s companions to European history ; v. 22. Description: Leiden ; Boston : Brill, 2020. | Series: Brill’s companions to European history, 22127410 ; volume 22 | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2019057692 (print) | LCCN 2019057693 (ebook) | ISBN 9789004405288 (hardback) | ISBN 9789004410398 (kindle edition) Subjects: LCSH: Geoffrey, of Monmouth, Bishop of St. Asaph, 1100?–1154. Historia regum Britanniae. | England—Historiography. Classification: LCC PA8310.G4 C66 2020 (print) | LCC PA8310.G4 (ebook) | DDC 936.2007202—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019057692 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019057693 Typeface for the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts: “Brill”. See and download: brill.com/brill-typeface. ISSN 2212-7410 ISBN 978-90-04-40528-8 (hardback) ISBN 978-90-04-41039-8 (e-book) Copyright 2020 The Authors. Published by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Hes & De Graaf, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Rodopi, Brill Sense, Hotei Publishing, mentis Verlag, Verlag Ferdinand Schöningh and Wilhelm Fink Verlag. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill NV provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change. This book is printed on acid-free paper and produced in a sustainable manner. Contents Acknowledgements IX A Note on Translations x List of Figures xI Abbreviations xiI Notes on Contributors xIV Introduction and Biography 1 Joshua Byron Smith Part 1 Sources 1 Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Welsh Sources 31 Ben Guy 2 Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Classical and Biblical Inheritance 67 Paul Russell 3 Geoffrey of Monmouth and the English Past 105 Rebecca Thomas 4 Riddling Words: the Prophetiae Merlini 129 Maud Burnett McInerney Part 2 Contemporary Contexts 5 Early Manuscript Dissemination 155 Jaakko Tahkokallio 6 Early Reactions to Geoffrey’s Work 181 Simon Meecham-Jones 7 The Latin Reception of the De gestis Britonum 209 Siân Echard vi Contents 8 Geoffrey of Monmouth’s De gestis Britonum and Twelfth-Century Romance 235 Françoise Le Saux 9 The Most Excellent Princes: Geoffrey of Monmouth and Medieval Welsh Historical Writing 257 Owain Wyn Jones 10 Geoffrey of Monmouth and the Conventions of History Writing in Early 12th-Century England 291 Georgia Henley Part 3 Approaches 11 Colonial Preoccupations in Geoffrey of Monmouth’s De gestis Britonum 317 Michael Faletra 12 Geoffrey and Gender: the Works of Geoffrey of Monmouth as Medieval “Feminism” 341 Fiona Tolhurst 13 Geoffrey of Monmouth and Race 369 Coral Lumbley 14 Religion and the Church in Geoffrey of Monmouth 397 Barry Lewis Part 4 Reception Introduction to Part 4: The Medieval Reception of Geoffrey of Monmouth 426 Georgia Henley and Joshua Byron Smith 15 Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Byzantine Reception 427 Thomas H. Crofts Contents vii 16 The De gestis Britonum in Castile 432 Paloma Gracia 17 The Reception of Geoffrey of Monmouth in the Crown of Aragon 437 Nahir I. Otaño Gracia 18 The Middle Dutch Reception of Geoffrey of Monmouth 442 David F. Johnson 19 The English Reception of Geoffrey of Monmouth 449 Elizabeth Bryan 20 The Anglo-Norman and Continental French Reception of Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Corpus from the 12th to the 15th Centuries 454 Jean Blacker 21 The German Reception of Geoffrey of Monmouth 467 Joshua Byron Smith 22 The Old Icelandic “Brut” 469 Hélène Tétrel 23 The Reception of Geoffrey of Monmouth in Ireland 475 Joshua Byron Smith 24 The Reception of Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Work in Italy 477 Fabrizio De Falco 25 Geoffrey of Monmouth in Portugal and Galicia 482 Santiago Gutiérrez García 26 The Scottish Reception of Geoffrey of Monmouth 487 Victoria Shirley 27 The Reception of Geoffrey of Monmouth in Wales 494 Ben Guy Bibliography 499 Manuscripts 552 General Index 555 Acknowledgements We would like to express our gratitude to acquisitions editor Dr. Kate Hammond whose guidance and patience saw this project through from beginning to end. Initially, she had asked for a companion to Gerald of Wales, and we are grateful to her for allowing our vision of a companion to Geoffrey of Monmouth to take precedence. We are also grateful to the anonymous reviewers whose time and expertise went into improving the volume, and to Irini Argirouli, Alessandra Giliberto, and the production team at Brill. We thank our contributors whose dedication, energy, and meticulous research made this volume possible. A Note on Translations All of our authors’ own translations from primary sources are marked as such. Otherwise, the translations used are always cited. Quotations from secondary sources in modern languages have also been translated, and in these instances the translations are the contributors’ own unless stated otherwise. In accor- dance with the series guidelines, we have translated the titles of works if they are in Latin, Welsh, Irish, or other lesser-known modern languages. However, in some cases in which a translated title would cause confusion, or would require a cumbersome equivalent, we have let the original stand. For exam- ple, we have opted not to translate the medieval Welsh titles Armes Prydein Vawr, Brenhinedd y Saesson, Brut y Brenhinedd, Brut Tysilio, Brut y Tywysogyon, and Ystorya Dared, since these texts rarely go by any other name, even in English-language scholarship. Moreover, some Latin titles that are transparent have been left to stand, as well as the Flores Historiarum and the Liber Floridus, both of which would require explanations of what flowers have to do with his- tory and rhetoric. Similarly, we have opted to leave the Historia Brittonum un- translated to avoid any confusion with Geoffrey’s own history. Figures 5.1 Cambridge, Gonville and Caius College, 406/627, fol. 1r 164 5.2 Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Pal. lat. 956, fol. 1v 177 5.3 Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, lat. 8501A, fol. 63v 179 5.4 Troyes, Bibliothèque municipale, 2391, fol. 34v 179 7.1 London, British Library, Arundel 237, fol. 47v 211 7.2 London, British Library, Arundel 319, fol. 89r 212 7.3 London, British Library, Harley 4003, fol. 86v 214 7.4 London, British Library, Royal 13 A. iii, fol. 14r 216 7.5 London, Lambeth Palace Library, 503, fol. 99r 217 7.6 London, British Library, Royal 13 D. v, fol. 24v 220 Abbreviations AL Arthurian Literature BAV Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana BBCS Bulletin of the Board of Celtic Studies Bern, ed. Wright Geoffrey of Monmouth, De gestis Britonum, ed. N. Wright, The Historia regum Britanniae of Geoffrey of Monmouth, vol. I: Bern, Burgerbibliothek, MS. 568, Woodbridge, 1984 BnF Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France BL London, British Library CMCS Cambridge Medieval Celtic Studies / Cambrian Medieval Celtic Studies DGB Geoffrey of Monmouth, De gestis Britonum, ed. M. Reeve and trans. N. Wright, Geoffrey of Monmouth, The History of the Kings of Britain: An Edition and Translation of De gestis Britonum [Historia Regum Britanniae], Woodbridge, 2007 Crick, DR J.C. Crick, The Historia regum Britannie of Geoffrey of Monmouth, vol. IV: Dissemination and Reception in the later Middle Ages, Woodbridge, 1991 DMLBS Dictionary of Medieval Latin from British Sources, ed. R.E. Latham, London, 1975– <http://logeion.uchicago.edu/> (accessed 16 July 2019) EHR English Historical Review Faral, LLA E. Faral, La légende arthurienne: Études et documents, 3 vols., Paris, 1929 First Variant Version, Geoffrey of Monmouth, De gestis Britonum, ed. Wright, The ed. Wright Historia regum Britannie of Geoffrey of Monmouth, vol. II: The First Variant Version: a critical edition, Woodbridge, 1988 JEGP Journal of English and Germanic Philology JMEMS Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies PM Geoffrey of Monmouth, Prophetiae Merlini, ed. M. Reeve and trans. N. Wright, Geoffrey of Monmouth, The History of the Kings of Britain: An Edition and Translation of De gestis Britonum [Historia Regum Britanniae], Woodbridge, 2007 Crick, SC J.C. Crick, The Historia regum Britannie of Geoffrey of Monmouth, vol. III: A Summary Catalogue of the Manuscripts, Woodbridge, 1989 Abbreviations xiii Tatlock, LHB J.S.P. Tatlock, The Legendary History of Britain: Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia regum Britanniae and Its Early Vernacular Versions, Berkeley, 1950 VM Geoffrey of Monmouth, Life of Merlin, ed.
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