Historia Brittonum

Latin text written ca. a.d. 800 by Nennius, a Welsh historian. It is important in connection with the origins of Arthurian literature as he mentions Arthur’s twelve victories over the Anglo-Saxons.

Historia Regnum Britanniae

(ca. a.d. 1137.) A Latin prose chronicle in 12 books by Geoffrey of Monmouth, a Welshman of Breton origin who was a cleric at Oxford. It is considered the source book of subsequent Arthurian sagas and the source book for Holinshed’s Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland, ca. 1580. Geoffrey, in writing his Historia, says that he had only translated the work.

Walter, Archdeacon of Oxford, a man skilled in the art of public speaking and well informed about the history of foreign countries, presented me with a certain very ancient book written in the British language. The book, attractively composed to form a consecutive and orderly narrative, set out all the deeds of these men, from Brutus, the first King of the Britons, down to Cadwallader the son of Cadwallo. At Walter’s request I have taken the trouble to translate the book into Latin.

If we are to take Geoffrey’s word, then the book to which he refers is now lost. Indeed, many cynical scholars doubt whether such a book ever existed, believing it to be a figment of Geoffrey’s imagination. Though why Geoffrey also involves Walter, Archdeacon of Oxford, is curious. If it is a forgery, then Walter would have been a conspirator and party to it. Why should such a renowned churchman and scholar take part in the forgery?

The main reason to believe that the book was a forgery is that it has not survived and, as Sir John Lloyd points out: “No Welsh composition exists that can be reasonably looked upon as the original or even the groundwork of the History of the Kings of Britain.” But Geoffrey merely said it was written in “the British language.” That term could equally have meant Breton or Cornish as well as Welsh. And could it have been written in Cornish? The theory is not so farfetched when one considers a poem produced by John of Cornwall in the twelfth century in Latin hexameters, which he says he has translated from an old Cornish manuscript. John, to our gratitude, produces some glosses from the original text of