SOURCE: “Geoffrey of Monmouth as a Historian,” in Church and Government in the Middle Ages, edited by C. N. L. Brooke et al., Cambridge University Press, 1976, pp. 77-91.

In the following essay, Brooke explores some possible motives and intentions of Geoffrey in writing The History of the Kings of Britain.

Geoffrey of Monmouth's History of the Kings of Britain¹ purports to be a history of the rulers of Britain from the foundation of the British race by Brutus, great-gradson of Aeneas, in the second half of the second millennium b.c. to Cadwalader in the seventh century a.d. It is a shapely, well-conceived book, written in Latin in the style of contemporary histories; its climax and centrepiece is the account of King Arthur, the greatest of the British Kings; its comparatively matter-of-fact approach is only once set aside for more than a moment, in the Prophecies of...