King Arthur – According to Geoffrey of Monmouth

It’s time to start putting all this together.

I take the following information from the next written record of Arthur, “The History of the Kings of Britain” by Geoffrey of Monmouth, who lived and wrote in the 1100’s A.D., centuries after Arthur was supposed to have lived. He claims to have gotten his material from ‘a certain very ancient book written in the British language.’ (Introduction, pg. 11) They think the book was in Welsh. Here is a shortened, paraphrased version of the story.

In the year 410 A.D., the Visigoths, a barbarian tribe from Germany, coveting the lifestyle of the Romans, made their way to Rome and sacked it. That means they burned and pillaged and hauled away booty. This was the beginning of the decline of the Roman Empire. In order to protect itself, what was left of Rome called its border troops home. The Roman soldiers who had kept the peace in Britain withdrew to the mainland. The Pictish peoples of the north, always warlike and fearsome, spilled south and began to wreak havoc.

In this time of chaos and danger, the clergy took council and selected Guithilinus, an Archbishop, to travel to Brittany to get an army. He approaches King Aldroennus and offers him the kingship of Britain. King Aldroennus is not tempted. He likes being ruler in his own land which he rules in liberty. But he offers his brother, Constantine and two thousand troops. Constantine accepts, raises his army and goes to Britain with Guithelinus. The council there accepts him, places the crown on his head, and gives him a noble woman to marry. They have three sons, Constans, Aurelius Ambrosius and Uther Pendragon. Constans, as the firstborn, is given to the church. Aurelius and Uther are given to Guithilinus to be raised, or educated.

After serving as king for ten years, a Pict manages to assassinate Constantine. A disagreement arises about who to put on the throne. Constans is in a monastery. One faction is for putting Aurelius on the throne, another for putting Uther on the throne. But they are all very young. Still others are for putting some other member of the royal family on the throne.

Let’s stop here and take a look at what we have so far.

1. It is the clergy, the spiritual leader of the day, who goes in search of someone to be king and protect the people of the land from enemies which abound on all sides. Am I stretching things to suggest that this sounds like Samuel, the prophet and spiritual leader of his day, seeking out and anointing first Saul, and then David to be kings of Israel? We will see the same pattern with Merlin and Arthur.

2. The firstborn son, Constans, is sent to a monastery. This is just not Roman at all. In fact, it sounds very much like the ways of the tribes of Israel. All firstborn, especially sons, belonged to the Lord. However, once they left Egypt, the tribe of Levites and the sons of Aaron were chosen to serve as the priests and teachers for everyone. Of the rest of the tribes of Israel, they were to pay a ransom of 5 shekels to the priests and Levites, for their firstborns. But what do you do if you are a tribe of Israel without Levites among you to officiate? You go back to the original law. Your firstborn belong to the Lord, they belong to the church. Remember, at this time, no matter what Geoffrey of Monmouth says, the Church in Breton was not Roman. It is referred to as the Celtic Christian church by scholars.

3. What royal family? “Still others are for putting some other member of the royal family on the throne.” That’s what Goeffrey said. Perhaps the better question is, whose royal family? It would have to be the family of Constantine’s unnamed wife. Apparently, she wasn’t just noble, she was royal and that made her sons royal. So why the disagreement? Why not take one of the boys and plunk them on the throne and designate a regent? Perhaps it was because there was no sister, no throne princess, to give the boys a legitimate claim to the throne. Perhaps Roman ways – inheritances passing from father to son – was in conflict with Breton ways – the king was either the brother of the throne princess or married to her.

Out of this conflict rises Vortigern, leader of the Gewissei. He takes the direct Roman approach. He goes to the monastery where the first-born son Constans is living, removes him, dresses him up in royal robes and sits him on the throne. Poor boy, he’s only eight or nine years old. He’s been trained to be a churchman, not a ruler of government. He turns all the affairs of the kingdom over to Vortigern. According to Geoffrey of Monmouth, Vortigern delights in this and, plotting to get the kingship for himself, eventually has Constans assassinated by Picts and takes the throne for himself.

In the ensuing chaos, those who had the care of the two younger brothers, Aurelius and Uther, flee overseas to Brittany for their safety.

Uneasy lies the crown on the head of an usurper who has no inherited right to the throne, by birth or by marriage.

Next time: The Rise of Merlin

Matrilineal Rights of Inheritance in Britain

Well, that’s a title for you. It took a bit of practice before I could even pronounce Matrilineal without tripping over my tongue.

Reading between the lines and trying to strip away Roman influence from the writings about the ancient Bretons, I began to develop a theory about what kind of culture these people lived. I started by combing the internet, searching under “Matriarch” and “Matrilineal.” I knew there were islands in the pacific where the women had great influence. They were the wise ones and often, if not battle commanders, they were at least held in great respect. So I wondered where else I might find woman centered cultures. To my surprise, one of the first sites to pop up pointed me to…

EGYPT!

According to an article by Nancy Luomala, “Matrilineal Reinterpretation of Some Egyptian Sacred Cows,” (http://www.arthistory.sbc.edu/imageswomen/luomala.html ), rights of inheritance to the throne of Egypt came through the female line. The eldest daughter of the queen would be the Throne Princess. Her brother or husband would serve as king – or Pharoah.

Remember the movie, “The Ten Commandments,” with Charlton Heston and Yul Brynner? They were both vying for the hand of Nefertiri, the throne princess. Whoever married her would be the next Pharoah! What do you know! Hollywood actually got something right for a change.

The more I studied, the more convinced I became that my theory was correct. I found matrilineal cultures everywhere: the Pacific Islands, the Middle East, among the Indian tribes of the Americas. Everywhere! So why not Scotland and Wales?

Why would the mother be so important? Well, think about it. In a culture based on rights of inheritance, where you had to be sure about bloodlines and knowing your tribe and rights, the lineage of a child to a mother is absolute. No DNA tests are required. If your mother belongs to the Wolf Tribe, so do you. If your mother is of royal birth, from a royal mother, so are you. Did you know that even today, if your mother is Jewish, you are Jewish? If your father is Jewish, but your mother a Gentile, guess what, you are Gentile too.

In the Americas, many native aboriginal tribes are also matriarchal such as the Huron, Hopi, Navajo, Iroquois Confederacy, Cherokee and others. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matrilineality)Though it was a man who sat in councils as a chief, it was the wise woman of the tribe who sat behind him and made sure he was following the agreed upon counsel. When you are born, you are of your father’s tribe, but you belong to your mother’s tribe. It is considered incestuous to marry within your mother’s tribe, even to the 6th, 7th, 8th cousin removed. But if you marry your first cousin on your father’s side, it’s OK!

Let’s get back to ancient Egypt. It is true that many Pharoahs married their throne princess sisters, but according to Nancy Luomala, these relationships were not incestuous.
“There is no evidence that the queen would have sexual relations with her brother-king. The sister and brother of the ruling pair could each have a consort or consorts for sexual relations, but these spouses were not included in the possession and transmission of property. The queen did have intercourse with her consort-king and the resulting female progeny constituted the royal line, earning the title of ‘Royal Mother’ by right of birth.” (http://www.arthistory.sbc.edu/imageswomen/luomala.html)
In other words, the only thing that was important was having a baby daughter to be the next throne princess. That sounds like the Pictish people! Or do the Picts sound like Egyptians!

The most interesting find was an actual, living matrilineal culture that was flourishing in Indonesia. They are the Minangkabau peoples, an extensive and influential ethnic group. Here’s how they function.

All property is owned by the women and is passed on from mother to daughter, with the expectation that the oldest daughter who inherits the house, will take care of her parents in their old age. When a couple marry, the young man leaves his parents house and moves in with his bride’s family.

Though the property is owned by the women, they appoint a male relative, usually a maternal nephew, to run the business. If they do not like how he is managing their affairs, they will fire him and hire another male relative to run the business or oversee the property. The young men are expected to get an education so they can run these businesses effectively. Other young men are educated to become their priests and teachers. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minangkabau) This is how they have meshed well with Islam. Most Minangs are Muslim, a very patriarchal religion. The women own the property, but the men run it.

As I’ve pointed out before, our western civilization was and still is heavily influenced by the strongly patriarchal Greeks and Romans. Therefore, you and I may have difficulty in understanding this very different culture. But if we can – if we can open our minds to these ideas of Matriarchy and Matrilineal Rights of Inheritance, the world of King Arthur may become more understandable, more reachable. We may be able to move the stories of King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table from the realm of mere myth and legend into the world of probably reality.

The Puzzle of Prince Modred

If there is little contemporary source material relating to Arthur, there is none about Mordred, the crown prince who was to come after Arthur. It’s Geoffrey of Monmouth in his History of the Kings of Great Britain, written in the twelfth century A.D., who brings king Modred to light, and it’s not a very nice light. All we can truly say is that Modred died at the battle of Camblan, the same battle where Arthur is mortally wounded. According to Norma Lorre Goodrich in her book, King Arthur, she says, “Regarding Modred, the voices of the Scots, raised in protest over the centuries, were drowned in contumely. ‘Modred was no traitor, nor a murderer,’ they argued during the Renaissance. ‘He was our beloved king.’” He becomes a puzzle.

So here’s how the Hollywood version of the story goes. Ygrain, Arthur’s mother, had two to four daughters before she gave birth to Arthur. Once she married Uther, she had one more daughter called, by some accounts, Anne. Legend tells us that one of Ygrain’s older daughters is the notorious Morgause or Morgan la Fey, a woman learned in the arts of enchantment. It is said she ensorcelled Arthur and forced her to lay with him. From this ‘incestuous’ union came the child Mordred who was raised to hate his father. He is pictured as power hungry and a scoundrel. Through treachery, he helped bring about the downfall of Arthur’s kingdom.

Other legends tell us that Arthur and Guinevere had at least one son named Lohot. So why was Modred, the supposed illegitimate child of an incestuous relationship, designated the crown prince and not Lohot? It was a puzzle.

In the meantime, as I read from various books and sources, other questions began to arise. For the important person Merlin was, we only know his mother’s name – Nun. The same is true for Saint David, that patron saint of Wales. His mother’s name is, interestingly enough, St. Non. But we do not know the father’s names for either of these very important men. In fact, as you go through the list of saints in Scotland and Wales, the mother’s names are most often noted, but not the father’s.

In fact, within the legends women play extremely powerful roles, so powerful, the authors of the old histories make them quite villainous in some cases.

1. Guithelinus, a father of the church in Briton, seeing the desperate cause of the Bretons after the collapse of Rome and the removal of its troops from the islands, goes to Brittany on the mainland seeking a battle commander. He offers him the marriage of a landed and wealthy princess. This sets the whole Arthurian legend in motion.
2. The lovely Ygrain. Men fought and died because of her. She is the mother of at least two very prominent children, Arthur and Morgause, and seems to be the matriarch of a vast royal lineage and household.
3. Guinevere, Arthur’s queen, is more than just an ornament to the crown and someone to provide an heir to the throne. She was a battle queen in her own right and had lands and wealth that were her own.
4. And then there’s Morgause, or Morgan la Fey. I believe they are one and the same person. Whoever she really was, she was very powerful, insomuch that later ages feared her.
5. Nimue is the woman who is said to have tricked Merlin into trapping himself into a cave at a critical point of the story of Camalot.

Now, let me add to this puzzle another intriguing piece. Centuries before Arthur, a band of displaced Scandinavians sail to the shores of Ireland. First off, they abduct the women, looking for wives. The local men chase after them and find them before they can take off with their bootie. The locals agree that the Scandinavians may choose wives from among their daughters, however, they must agree that all wealth and property belongs to the women and is to be inherited by their firstborn daughters. This is agreed to and the Scandinavians depart with the women who agree to go with them. They sail to northern Scotland. This is the origin of the Picts, a people fearless in battle and so wild, the Romans could only build a wall in some vain effort to control them – the wall of Hadrian, which parts of can still be seen today in Scotland.


Now, the Picts eventually got around this injunction that all property was inherited through the women. They would marry, then wait until a daughter was born, then murder their wives and become regents to the property, controlling it until their daughters were of age. Hmmm.

Well, my curiosity was piqued. Remember, histories are written by the conquerors. The British Isles may not have been fully conquered by the state of Rome, but it was fully conquered by the Roman Catholic Church, which was immersed in Roman ideology, values and virtues. Rome was highly patriarchal, monogamous, steeped in Greek philosophy and very anti-Semetic. These are the people who wrote the histories of Great Britain.

I wondered what I would find if I could strip away the Roman view. What kind of culture would emerge among the Bretons? What I found not only startled me – it made the Bible split wide open.

Happy 80th Birthday to my Dad, July 13, 2010.