Legendary Histories of England and Geoffrey of Monmouth

Literature is the most conclusive way to gauge the past: peoples are laid low, the grandest of monuments will crumble but literature preserves the unblemished mindset of a people long since gone. But even then literature can be lost: their houses are burned or pillaged, their pages decay and language changes. It is often a sad fate that we are left with only a few remaining pieces of a past era, the only works preserved through the ages, those translated and passed down. It is our duty then to decipher these to make out the minds of our ancestors. Such is the condition of British literature. We look at the composite piece and see works such as the Venerable Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People (731 A.D.), The Dream of Rood (anonymous author, unknown date), Beowulf (ca. 750 A.D.), and The History of the Kings of Britain (ca. 1135-38 A.D.). Now these, of course are only a part of the entirety of early English literature, for an example it will perform masterfully in examining the progression of English religious tendencies.

Around the seventh century A.D. the English people were largely converted to Catholicism although their beliefs and traditions still remained largely estranged for several centuries after. Interestingly enough, one of the earliest pieces of British history—The Dream of Rood is written with a very Catholic feeling, both in doctrine and in style. Though arguably theologically unsound, the poem does not seem to have a strong pagan influence. Another, similar work, though without nearly so strong a catholic style, is Cædmon’s Hymn (Bede), possessing the same doctrinal ideas, but containing little to no obvious pagan influences. Of course The Dream of Rood was an earlier work but they both are from early English Catholicism.

The next step in the progression seems to be Beowulf, drawing from mythologies and various pagan sources but still containing a strong Christian backing. Though this work was merely twenty years after the pious Catholic works aforementioned, it seems to be a noticeable step toward English paganism.

And finally we come to Geoffrey of Monmouth, writing his History of the Kings of Britain four-hundred years later for the purpose of advancement in the church. In this work one cannot help but observe the references to the origins of British inhabitants coming from Troy (as related in Homers Iliad)—which very well may have some truth in it—and praying to the goddess Diana who guides them to Britain.