Gerald of Wales and the prophet Merlin

GERALD OF WALES AND THE PROPHET MERLIN Ad Putter My subject is the remarkable role of the prophet Merlin in English politics from Henry II through to King John, as evidenced by the writer who outlived them both, Gerald of Wales.1 Gerald was born in 1146, just a few years after the publication of Geoffrey of Monmouth’s History of the Kings of Britain; he died in 1223, after a long retirement from a busy but ultimately disappointing life: he had been a student and master in Paris, a courtier and diplomat in the service of Henry II and his successor Richard, an archdeacon of Brecon, but his dream of becoming a distinguished bishop had come to nothing. Despite all his business, he was an extremely prolific writer. Below is an approximate chronology of Gerald’s works that are relevant to my argument (he in fact wrote much more).2 1 2 3 4 5 6 1 Topographia Hibernica (The Topography of Ireland). 1st recension 1187, dedicated to Henry II; 2nd recension 1189; 3rd recension early thirteenth century.3 Vaticinalis historia (The Prophetic History). There are two recensions: version a, 1189, dedicated to Count Richard; and version b, pre-dating 1218, entitled Expugnatio Hibernica (The Conquest of Ireland).4 Itinerarium Kambriae (The Journey through Wales). 1st edition 1191; 2nd edition 1197; 3rd edition 1214.5 Gemma ecclesiastica (The Jewel of the Church). 1197.6 De invectionibus. Begun 1200, completed 1216.7 De principis instructione. Book I, a Mirror for Princes, published 1192; books II–III, a scathing account of the Plantagenet kings, not released until 1217.8 This article began life as a plenary lecture for the XXIst International Arthurian Congress at the University of Utrecht, August 2005. I would like to thank the organizers of that conference, Bart Besamusca and Frank Brandsma, for the invitation, and Chris Lewis for giving me an opportunity to return to the topic at a memorable Battle Conference in July 2008. John Gillingham and Myra Stokes read a draft version; I am grateful to them for suggestions and corrections. 2 A full list of works with dates of composition is given in Robert Bartlett, Gerald of Wales, 1146– 1223, Oxford 1982, 213–21. 3 Giraldi Cambrensis Opera, ed. J. S. Brewer, James F. Dimock, and George F. Warner, 8 vols, RS 21, 1861–91 [hereafter Opera], V, 1–204. There is a translation of the 1st recension by John J. O’Meara, The History and Topography of Ireland, Harmondsworth 1982. This and Gerald’s other works will be quoted in English translation, with relevant Latin words in square brackets. 4 Expugnatio Hibernica: The Conquest of Ireland, ed. and trans. A. B. Scott and F. X. Martin, Dublin 1978. 5 Opera, VI, 1–152; trans. Lewis Thorpe, The Journey through Wales, Harmondsworth 1978. 6 Opera, II; trans. John J. Hagen, Gerald of Wales: The Jewel of the Church, Leiden 1979. 7 Ed. W. S. Davies, Y Cymmrodor 30, 1920. 8 Opera, VIII. Books II and III trans. Joseph Stevenson, On the Instruction of Princes, London 1858, reprinted Felinfach 1991. Gerald of Wales and Merlin 7 8 9 10 91 De jure et statu Menevensis ecclesiae. 1218.9 Retractiones. 1219.10 Speculum ecclesiae (A Mirror of the Church). 1220.11 Speculum duorum. 1222.12 It is important to note that Gerald produced multiple editions of many of his works: much of his writing was rewriting, and the how and why of his revisions are matters of considerable interest. Some of these listed works will be better known for their Arthurian content than others. The second redaction of The Journey through Wales contains the curious story of Meilyr, the soothsayer of Caerleon-on-Usk, who had dealings with demons: When he was harassed beyond endurance by these unclean spirits, Saint John’s Gospel was placed on his lap, and then they all vanished immediately, flying away like so many birds. If the Gospel was afterwards removed and the History of the Kings of Britain by Geoffrey of Monmouth [Historia Britonum a Galfrido Arthuro tractata] put there in its place, just to see what would happen, the demons would alight all over his body, and on the book, too, staying there longer than usual and being even more demanding.13 As St John’s gospel is good for exorcizing demons (the beginning of that gospel being especially effective as demon-repellent, as we learn from another of Gerald’s works14), so The History of the Kings of Britain by ‘Geoffrey Arthur’ attracts them. The story is as fantastical as anything invented by Geoffrey, and one wonders how the demons would have responded if the book placed on Meilyr’s lap had been Gerald’s own Journey through Wales. Speculum ecclesiae and De principis instructione contain Gerald’s account of the discovery of King Arthur and Queen Guinevere’s tomb at Glastonbury abbey.15 According to Gerald, Henry II had put the monks on the scent after hearing from a Welsh bard where Arthur lay buried; in 1191 they found Arthur and Guinevere buried in a hollow oak, conveniently marked with a cross inscribed with their names. Both the story of Meilyr and that of Glastonbury have been mulled over by critics and historians,16 and I do not wish to spend more time on them. They are often taken to exemplify two distinct phases in the history of the reception of Geoffrey’s British history. The first phase was one of disbelief: no one with any sense, least of all Gerald, took Geoffrey seriously, no one except for the Welsh and the Bretons who clung to the vain hope that Arthur would one day return to rid them of the English and the Normans. Then came the phase of belief: the discovery of Arthur’s grave showed not only that he was dead (and so not returnable to the Welsh and the Bretons) but also real: ‘Only now’, writes John Gillingham, ‘could the British 9 Opera, III, 99–373. Some extracts concerning Gerald’s embassy to the Roman curia (1199–1200) were translated by H. E. Butler, The Autobiography of Giraldus Cambrensis, London 1937, reissued (with a guide to further reading by John Gillingham) as The Autobiography of Gerald of Wales, Woodbridge 2005. 10 Opera, I, 425–7. 11 Opera, IV, 1–354. 12 Ed. Yves Lefèvre and R. B. C. Huygens, trans. Brian Dawson, University of Wales Board of Celtic Studies History and Law Series 27, Cardiff 1974. 13 Opera, VI, 58; trans. Thorpe, 117–18. 14 Opera, II, 129; trans. Hagen, 99: ‘[Scripture] is a good medicine for the laity and drives away ghosts, especially the beginning of the gospel according to John.’ 15 Opera, IV, 47–51; VIII, 126–9; trans. Thorpe, in Journey through Wales, 281–8. 16 e.g. Siân Echard, Arthurian Narrative in the Latin Tradition, Cambridge 1998, 70–5; and Robert Rouse and Cory Rushton, The Medieval Quest for Arthur, Stroud 2005, 76–80. 92 Ad Putter history be expropriated and made politically useful to the kings of England.’17 There is much truth in that position but some simplification also, for it strikes me that Gerald was ready from the first to believe in Geoffrey’s history and to turn it to political advantage. To substantiate this impression, I would like to consider some of Gerald’s forays into early British history, particularly his opinions about the prophet Merlin, which Arthurian scholars have rather neglected.18 Gerald’s most startling pronouncement on the subject is that there were two prophets by that name, one Merlin Ambrosius and the other Merlin Silvester (alias Celidon). Gerald’s theory complicates matters, but has the considerable merit of solving the niggling chronological problems inherent in Geoffrey’s singular treatment of the prophet. In Geoffrey’s Vita Merlini (c. 1150), Merlin recalls in the depths of the Celidonian forest how he once prophesied the future to King Vortigern. Vortigern reigned shortly after the arrival of the Saxons, c. 450 AD. Yet this same Merlin goes on to relate from personal memory what happened to Arthur and his successors Constantine and Conan, who ‘killed the king [i.e. Constantine] and seized the territories over which he now exercises a weak and witless control’ (lines 1133–5).19 This ‘now’ is c. 600, so Merlin is impossibly old. Geoffrey’s History, which explicitly refers to Merlin as Merlinus qui et Ambrosius dicebatur,20 reproduces this chronological conundrum in miniature. As in Vita Merlini, Merlin begins as Vortigern’s prophet, and it is therefore fitting that he never actually meets Arthur, who flourished two generations afterwards. Merlin’s last recorded act in the History is to preside over Arthur’s conception. Yet long after Arthur’s death, an angelic voice informs Cadwallader ‘that God did not want the Britons to rule over the island of Britain any longer, until the time came which Merlin had foretold to Arthur [Arturo]’.21 Suddenly Merlin is no longer Vortigern’s prophet but Arthur’s. The chronological slippage evidently troubled scribes and adapters of Geoffrey’s History, some of whom responded by omitting Arturo.22 Gerald dealt with it by positing two Merlins: There were two Merlins. The one called Ambrosius, who thus had two names, prophesied when Vortigern was King. He was the son of an incubus and he was discovered in Carmarthen, which means Merlin’s town, for it takes its name from the fact that he was found there. The second Merlin came from Scotland. He is called Celidonius because he prophesied in the Calidonian forest. He is also called Silvester, because once when he was fighting he looked up in the air and saw a terrible monster. He went mad as a result and fled to the forest where he passed the remainder of his life as a wild man of the woods. This second Merlin lived in the time of Arthur. He is said to have made more prophecies than his namesake.23 17 John Gillingham, ‘The Context and Purposes of Geoffrey of Monmouth’s History of the Kings of Britain’, ANS 13, 1991 for 1990, 99–118 at 103. 18 Two important exceptions are Julia C. Crick, ‘The British Past and the Welsh Future: Gerald of Wales, Geoffrey of Monmouth and Arthur of Britain’, Celtica 23, 1999, 60–75; and Barbara Lynn McCauley, ‘Giraldus “Silvester” of Wales and his Prophetic History of Ireland: Merlin’s Role in the Expugnatio Hibernica’, Quondam et Futurus 3.4, 1993, 41–62. 19 Life of Merlin, ed. and trans. Basil Clarke, Cardiff 1973, 113. 20 Geoffrey of Monmouth, The History of the Kings of Britain, ed. Michael D. Reeve, trans. Neil Wright, Woodbridge 2007, 140–1. All subsequent quotations are taken from this edition. 21 Ibid. 278–9. 22 See the variants listed in The Historia Regum Britannie of Geoffrey of Monmouth, II: The First Variant Version, ed. Neil Wright, Cambridge 1988, 190. 23 Itinerarium Kambriae, Opera, VI, 133; trans. Thorpe, 192–3. Gerald of Wales and Merlin 93 The modern solution to the inconsistencies in Geoffrey is to assume that he drew on different literary traditions which he did not quite manage to reconcile. From Nennius’ Historia Britonum, Geoffrey took the figure of Ambrosius, a child prodigy who preaches to Vortigern. And Geoffrey fused that Ambrosius with the Celtic bard Myrddin, who in the earliest Merlin poetry takes refuge in the forest of Celyddon. Gerald recognized the contradictions but addressed them in a very different spirit: they showed to his mind, not that the legend as we have it is a confused amalgamation of different sources, but that history itself is confusing. There were two Merlins, not one, and this complication accounts for the contradictions in the historical record. There is further evidence of Gerald’s faith in British history and the prophet Merlin in The Prophetic History. In this work Gerald tells how Dermot, prince of Leinster, is forced into exile and travels to England and Wales to drum up support for an invasion of Ireland. Richard Fitzstephen, Gerald’s uncle, sets off to Ireland, and more of Gerald’s relatives follow. Jealous of their success, Henry II gets involved and sends his son John to keep the marcher lords under royal control. John is accompanied by various knights and clerics: One of these, who had been specially sent with John by his father, was that careful investigator of natural history who, having spent a period of two years in all in the island on this and on his previous visit, brought back with him, as the prize and reward for his industry, the materials for the Book of Prophecy and the Topography. Subsequently, on his return to Britain, he spent five years in sorting out and arranging this material, amid the preoccupations of the court, and completed the Topography after three years of work on it, and the Prophetic History after two years. Thus he furnished posterity with a work of literature, and his contemporaries with food for their envy.24 The ‘careful investigator’ is, of course, Gerald himself, ever modest, though even his presence could not help turn John’s campaign into a success. Unlike Gerald’s own superior race – who he says were part Anglo-Norman and part Trojan (through intermarriage with the Welsh, descendants of the Trojan refugee Brutus) – the Normans sent over with John were lazy and arrogant.25 John de Courcy proved a noble exception. With a small band of knights he led the invasion of Ulaid: So with twenty-two knights and about three hundred others, this brave knight boldly made an assault on Ulaid, a part of Ireland hitherto unknown to English arms. Then was fulfilled that famous prophecy of Silvester of Celidon [Tunc impletum est illud Celidonii Silvestris vaticinium; b version: Tunc impletum esse videtur illud Merlini Celidonii dictum, ut dici solet, quia nihil de Merlinorum dictis asserimus]: ‘A white knight, astride a white horse, bearing a device of birds on his shield, will be the first to enter Ulaid and overrun it with hostile intent.’26 ‘Silvester of Celidon’ is Merlin, whose prophecy is fulfilled in the person of John de Courcy, who rode on a white horse, had fair hair, ‘tending in fact towards white’, and a coat of arms featuring heraldic eagles. Indeed, so many other things uttered by Merlin and other prophets bore fruit in John’s deeds that he always carried with him, according to Gerald, a ‘book of prophecies, which is written in Irish … as a kind of mirror of his own deeds’.27 24 25 Expugnatio, 228–9. On Gerald’s ethnic identifications and prejudices, see John Gillingham, ‘ “Slaves of the Normans”? Gerald de Barri and Regnal Solidarity in Early Thirteenth-Century England’, in Law, Laity and Solidarities: Essays in Honour of Susan Reynolds, ed. Pauline Stafford, Janet L. Nelson, and Jane Martindale, Manchester 2001, 160–71. 26 Expugnatio, 174–5. 27 Ibid. 176–7. 94 Ad Putter More examples of Gerald’s deployment of prophecy occur when Henry II lands in Ireland and there receives the homage of the Irish princes. A plethora of riddles are meant to persuade us that this was bound to happen: Then was fulfilled that famous prophecy of Merlin Silvester: ‘A fiery ball will rise in the East and, as it circles the sky, will engulf Ireland’ [Igneus ab euro globus ascendet et Hiberniam in circuitu devorabit; b omits the entire sentence].28 And again three chapters later: So too the words of Merlin Silvester: ‘The birds of the island will flock to his lantern, and the larger among them, with their wings ablaze, will fall to the ground and be caught’ [Ad eius lucernam aves insule convolabunt, et maiores in illis, alis accensis, corruent in capturam] … Again, the commonly quoted prophecy of Merlin Ambrosius: ‘The five parts will be reduced to one, and the sixth will overthrow the walls of Ireland’ [b omits the prophecy of Merlin Silvester and qualifies the second, by Merlin Ambrosius: Tunc impletum videtur usitatum illud et vulgatum, quia de veritate nihil assevero, Merlini Ambrosii vaticinium].29 The prophecies that Gerald attributes to Merlin Ambrosius are invariably taken from Geoffrey of Monmouth; those attributed to Merlin Silvester are mostly drawn from a twelfth-century collection of prophecies known as The Prophecy of the Eagle, which circulated both in Welsh and in Latin and was often ascribed to Merlin.30 Below is an extract from the Latin version which contains the specific prophecies concerning the ‘fiery ball’ and the ‘birds of the island’ as well as a number of others that will become important later: Ex delicto genitoris geniti delinquent in genitorem & precedens delictum fiet causa sequentium delictorum. Filii insurgent in parentem & ob sceleris uindictam in uentrem uiscera coniurabunt … & miro mutationis modo gladius a sceptro separabitur. Propter fratrum discordiam regnabit ex transuerso ueniens … In ultimus diebus albi draconis semen eius triphariam spargetur: pars in apuliam tendens orientali gaza locupletabitur; pars in hyberniam descendens occidua temperie delectabitur; pars vero tercia in patria permanens uilis & uacua reperietur. Igneus ab euro globus ascendet & armoriam in circuitu deuorabit. Ad eius lucernam aues insule conuolabunt & majores in illis, alis accensis, corruent in capturam.31 As a result of the father’s transgression, the sons will transgress against the father and so the original sin will be the cause of subsequent ones. The sons will rebel against the father, and in order to avenge his wickedness the bowels will arise against the stomach … And by a strange mutation the sword will be separated from the sceptre. Because of the brothers’ discord, one coming from the other side will reign. In the final days of the white dragon, his seed will be scattered three ways: one part will go to Apulia and will enrich himself with treasures of the East; one part will descend into Ireland and will be content with the mildness of the West; however, the third part will remain in his homeland and will be accounted worthless and useless. A fiery ball will rise in the East and, as it circles the sky, will engulf Brittany. The birds of the island will 28 29 30 Ibid. 92–3. Ibid. 96–7. For the history and circulation of these prophecies see Anne F. Sutton and Livia Visser-Fuchs, ‘The Dark Dragon of the Normans: A Creation of Geoffrey of Monmouth, Stephen of Rouen, and Merlin Silvester’, Quondam et Futurus 2, 1992, 1–19. 31 Brut y Brenhinedd: Cotton Cleopatra Version, ed. John Jay Parry, Cambridge MA 1937, 225–6. Parry’s edition is based on three thirteenth-century manuscripts; I have modernized punctuation and silently inserted variants from BL, Arundel MS 409, which correspond most closely with Gerald’s readings. Gerald of Wales and Merlin 95 flock to his lantern, and the larger among them, with their wings ablaze, will fall to the ground and be caught. This passage matches the prophecies of Merlin Silvester cited by Gerald word for word, except that in The Prophecy of the Eagle the land devoured by the fiery ball is not Ireland but Brittany. (The prophecy may be connected with Henry II’s successful campaign in Brittany in 1169.) All the manuscripts collated by the editor J. J. Parry agree on this point. Gerald seems to have doctored the original prophecy to suit the occasion. It will now also be clearer why Gerald called his book The Prophetic History. The title preferred by modern scholars, The Conquest of Ireland, represents Gerald’s second choice: it is the title as it appears in the b version, where the two incipits of the a version referring to Liber vaticinalis historia are deleted, and where the original explicit, Explicit liber secundus vaticinalis historie, is replaced by Explicit liber expugnacionis Hybernice. The original title is, I fear, something of an embarrassment to historians, for it betrays the fact that the basic premise of Gerald’s work is not what we would call ‘historical’ at all. Merlin’s old prophecies, which are encountered at every turning point in The Prophetic History, already contain the future, so that the conquest of Ireland is not a chronological progression of events but, to borrow Walter Benjamin’s phrase, a ‘Messianic cessation of happening’:32 various incidents are taken out of their immediate historical context and then imagined as providing answers to the riddles that Merlin posed many centuries before. The legitimizing value of such ‘restrospective’ use of prophecy has recently been illuminated by Paul Strohm, who draws attention to the exploitation of political prophecies by the Lancastrian regime following the deposition of Richard II. One of the ways in which Henry IV’s usurpation of the throne could be justified was by insisting that it was meant to be. Endorsed by prophecy, the Lancastrians could represent themselves as ‘fulfilling a venerable prophetic mandate’.33 Gerald of Wales performs the same kind of ideological work for the Plantagenets. Merlin’s prophecies show that Ireland was always meant to be conquered by Henry II. Or rather, to put Gerald’s case in its entirety, Ireland was always destined to be re-possessed. For in The Topography of Ireland, dedicated to Henry II, Gerald had already used Geoffrey’s History to argue that the English crown had an ancient right to Ireland. According to Geoffrey, Gurguint, the mythical king of Britain, had found a fleet of Spaniards sailing near the Orkneys in search of a land to live in; Gurguint gave them Ireland.34 From this, writes Gerald, ‘it is clear that Ireland can with some right be claimed by the kings of Britain, even though the claim be from olden times’.35 Gerald’s relationship to Merlin becomes even more interesting and involved when we consider some questions of fact: (1) When and where did Gerald get hold of the prophecies of Merlin that he deploys in The Prophetic History? (2) Why did he never deliver on his promise, preserved only in the first recension, that he would end The Prophetic History with a third book containing a collection of Merlin’s prophecies accompanied by Gerald’s glosses on them? Gerald was clever enough to provide his own answer to the first of these questions. 32 Walter Benjamin, ‘Theses on the Philosophy of History’, in Illuminations, ed. Hannah Arendt, trans. Harry Zohn, London 1970, 255–66 at 265. 33 England’s Empty Throne: Usurpation and the Language of Legitimation, 1399–1422, New Haven CT 1998, 12. 34 History of the Kings of Britain, 60–1. 35 Opera, V, 148–9; trans. O’Meara, 99. 96 Ad Putter In The Journey through Wales he tells us what happened to him when he was on his way to Bangor: That night, which was the eve of Palm Sunday [9 April 1188], we slept at Nefyn. There I myself, archdeacon of St David’s, discovered the works of Merlin Silvester [Ubi Merlinum Silvestrem … invenit; 3rd recension: dicitur invenisse], which I had long been looking for.36 In the a version of The Prophetic History Gerald embroidered the story. This version contains the opening pages of a third book (omitted in b) where Gerald remarks that, while the prophecies of Merlin Ambrosius have long been known in Latin translation (he thinks of course of Geoffrey of Monmouth), there was another Merlin, named Silvester, whose prophecies exist as yet only in the barbarous language of the Britons. Gerald, on learning that Henry II ‘urgently required an exposition of the prophecies of that Merlin’, made it his business to track down a copy, and discovered one in a remote corner of Wales. Assisted by experts in the Welsh language, he not only translated it but prepared a critical edition, excising the spurious interpolations of later bards: But in this no less than in other spheres the jealous profession of the bards has falsified nature, and added to the genuine prophecies many of their own invention. Therefore all those in which the style suggests that of more modern writings have been rejected, and the rough and unvarnished simplicity of the older idiom has been carefully distinguished from the rest …37 Scott and Martin take the story at face value, but we surely need to be on our guard. The claim of a newly discovered British source had by Gerald’s time become a cause célèbre, thanks to Geoffrey of Monmouth’s claim that Walter, archdeacon of Oxford, had discovered in Wales a British book, which Geoffrey had translated into Latin. There is also a curious problem of chronology. Gerald claims he discovered Merlin Silvester’s prophecies in 1188; as we have seen, they are largely based on The Prophecy of the Eagle. It is clear, however, that Gerald already knew of these prophecies and their fulfilment in 1187, when he wrote the first version of The Topography of Ireland, a copy of which he presented to Archbishop Baldwin at the beginning of their tour of Wales. The first recension of The Topography concludes with a passage addressed directly to Henry II: If you bid me, I shall attempt to describe the manner in which the Irish world has been added to your titles and triumphs … how the princes of the West immediately flew to your command as little birds to a light, when they were amazed and dazzled by the light of your coming, how the entrails as it were unnaturally and shamefully conspired against the belly …38 If this sounds familiar it is because Gerald is alluding to the same prophecies that he later deploys in The Prophetic History. Again they correspond with The Prophecy of the Eagle, and again they have been adapted to flatter Henry. Thus the entrails conspire against the belly not ‘in order to avenge the father’s wickedness’ but ‘unnaturally and shamefully’. I deduce from this that Gerald already knew Merlin Silvester’s prophecies in 1187, more than a year before he allegedly ‘discovered’ them at Nefyn. 36 37 38 Opera, VI, 124; trans. Thorpe, 183. Expugnatio, 256–7. Opera, V, 190; trans. O’Meara, 124–5. Gerald of Wales and Merlin 97 King Arthur had had Merlin Silvester as his prophet, and Gerald appears to have promoted himself to the post of King Henry II’s prophet. This seems to be the implication of Gerald’s address to Henry in his preface to The Topography, which is headed: Illustri Anglorum regi Henrico secundo suus Siluester [3rd recension: suus Giraldus/Girardus].39 Presumably Gerald intended by this cognomen to associate himself with Merlin (just as Geoffrey of Monmouth’s cognomen Arthurus may have signalled the latter’s association with King Arthur). This association was evidently a point of pride for Gerald, who was not amused when his enemies used his name against him by construing it as a slur on his origins in the wilderness (silva) of Wales. In a letter to Geoffrey Fitzpeter, earl of Essex, Gerald put the record straight: ‘I am not “Silvester” in the way that my adversaries allege, for I know myself to be at this time and place a “flatlander” [campester].’ The campa are the fields of Oxford, from where Gerald sent the letter.40 I come now to the second and controversial question: what happened to the third book of The Prophetic History: why did Gerald abandon it? Henry II’s death in 1189 must have been a setback for Gerald as he imagined himself in the role of his prophet and his interpreter of Merlin Silvester. The Prophetic History, which Gerald was then finishing, now had to be dedicated to Richard, who is still addressed in the preface as count of Poitou. Gerald must therefore have stopped his work in the interval between the death of one monarch (6 July 1189) and the coronation of another, Richard I (1 September 1189). Although Richard had already been appointed as Henry’s successor, he had also pledged to take the cross, and left England on crusade in 1190. In this climate of uncertainty, prophecy took on a very different complexion. The use of retrospective prophecy to legitimize events that have already happened suits those in power, and this may have encouraged the Plantagenets to make Merlin their ‘house prophet’.41 But when the throne is empty, prophecy turns its face anxiously to the future and becomes disturbing. The beginning of Gerald’s third book comes to an abrupt end: The Britons relate the story, and the ancient historians tell us, etc. But enough of this. For, wiser counsel having prevailed, the publication of the third book and the new interpretation of the prophecies must wait until the right time has arrived. For it is better that the truth should be suppressed and concealed for a time, even though it is in itself most useful, and indeed desirable, than that it should burst forth prematurely and perilously into the light of day, thereby offending those in power.42 Being a prophet at the wrong time is a risky business and Gerald seems to have thought better of it. Even more tantalizing is the clean-up operation that Gerald undertook during the reign of King John, whom Gerald in De principis instructione (released c. 1217) was to describe as ‘that dog and tyrant sprung from tyrants the most cruel and of all tyrants himself the most tyrannical’.43 What first drew my attention to Gerald’s programme of revision was Lewis Thorpe’s note to a textual variant in Gerald’s account of his discovery of Merlin’s Prophecies: ‘In Version III Gerald wrote 39 40 41 Opera, V, 20. De jure, Opera, III, 206. The phrase is Nicholas Vincent’s, ‘The Strange Case of the Missing Biographies: The Lives of the Plantagenet Kings of England, 1154–1272’, in Writing Medieval Biography, 750–1250: Essays in Honour of Professor Frank Barlow, ed. David Bates, Julia Crick, and Sarah Hamilton, Woodbridge 2006, 237–57 at 248. 42 Expugnatio, 256–7. 43 Opera, VIII, 328; trans. Stevenson, 114. 98 Ad Putter “dicitur invenisse”; in Versions I and II he had written “invenit”. I do not understand the purpose of the change.’44 The mystery deepens when we consider the changes he made in the b version of The Prophetic History. The date of this version is uncertain; we know it must pre-date 1218, since he refers to a corrected copy in a letter sent to the canons of Hereford that year. But he also makes reference to an emended edition in a letter of 1209 to King John in which he dedicates the work to the king. A. B. Scott and F. X. Martin plausibly suggest that the emended version mentioned in this letter is in fact the b text.45 In the b text he changed the original title Vaticinalis historia to Expugnatio Hibernica; he deleted the fragment of book III, introducing the prophecies of Merlin, together with his statement at the end of book II that such a book would follow. As we have already seen (above, pp. 93–4), he systematically excised Merlin’s prophecies except for a few which he introduced with formulas of scepticism. Thus ‘So is fulfilled the prophecy of Silvester of Celidon’ (referring to John de Courcy’s conquest) became ‘So the saying of Merlin of Celidon seems to be fulfilled, or so it is often said, because we make no comments regarding Merlin’s sayings’; and a later reference to Merlin Ambrosius, Tunc impletum est illud Merlini Ambrosii, was muted to Tunc impletum esse videtur. The Topography of Ireland shows similar patterns of revision: Gerald’s reference to himself as ‘your Silvester’ becomes ‘your Gerald’; and it is intriguing that Merlin Ambrosius’ prophecy (taken from Geoffrey’s History) of the lion’s cub whose ‘beginning will be weakened by uncertain desires but [whose] end shall ascend to heaven’,46 only enters The Topography after the third recension, where it is taken to refer to Prince John. Perhaps it was a later scribal addition, but the prophecy is entirely in Gerald’s style, and the hope the prophecy holds out for John’s future hardly implies a late addition. I think it more likely that the late manuscripts preserve an original reading which Gerald had earlier suppressed as best he could. These changes and revisions form a consistent pattern of censorship and equivocation which strongly suggests Gerald did not wish to be a Silvester to King John. Robert Bartlett is right, I think, to suggest that Gerald’s evasions may have been political in nature.47 As he observes, Gerald had personal reasons to be nervous. His own nephew, Gerald claims in Speculum duorum, had duped him by reneging on an agreement by which Gerald would hand over to him the archdeaconry of Brecon in return for a share in its revenues; once installed as archdeacon, the nephew kept the proceeds for himself, and when Gerald threatened to expose him, he and his tutor copied in their notebooks all those passages in Gerald’s writings that might get him into trouble. This made him fear that ‘they would denounce us for treason [maiestas] to the powers temporal and ecclesiastical, as they have often threatened and still do’.48 If genuine, these threats were made sometime between 1208 and 1214. Another context that sheds light on Gerald’s discomfort with prophecies is that King John, an obvious target for prophets of doom, became touchy about prophecies, which were wielded against him in political propaganda. A few examples of anti-John prophecies must suffice. The first is from the Anglo-Norman outlaw romance Fouke le Fitz Waryn, which concerns a young knight who tries to regain his patrimony, including his ancestral home of Whittington, which King John, ‘who 44 45 46 47 48 Thorpe, 183 note 346. Expugnatio, pp. lxxi–lxxiii. Opera, V, 201; cf. History of the Kings of Britain, 148–9. Bartlett, Gerald of Wales, 66–7. Speculum duorum, 144–5. Gerald of Wales and Merlin 99 the whole of his life was wicked, contrarious, and envious’,49 has given away to a Norman baron. The verse sections of Fouke are generally thought to go back to a thirteenth-century Anglo-Norman poem; one begins as follows: Merlin says that: In Great Britain A wolf shall come from the Blaunche Lande. Twelve sharp teeth shall he have, Six below and six above. He shall have such a fierce look, That he shall chase the Leopard From the Blaunche Lande, Such strength and great power shall he have. But now we know that Merlin Said this about Fouke Fitz Waryn; For each of you know well That in the time of King Arthur The place called Blaunche Lande Is now called Blauncheville [Whittington].50 The interpretation of this prophecy depends on heraldry: the wolf is Fouke, whose shield was indented; the leopard is John, whose shield had golden leopards. Ralph of Coggeshall reports in his chronicle (c. 1225) that many people used to say of John that he was the ‘worthless and useless part’ (pars vilis et inanis); as Lesley Coote has noted, the wording echoes the riddle from The Prophecy of the Eagle that ‘the third part will remain in his homeland and will be accounted worthless and useless’.51 Coote wonders whether Ralph knew the text or was merely reporting hearsay. I think he must have known it, for it was again on his mind when he reported John’s disastrous loss of Normandy to the French: ‘In this year, according to Merlin’s prophecy, “The sword was separated from the sceptre”, i.e. the duchy of Normandy from the realm of England.’52 Again the source is The Prophecy of the Eagle: ‘and by a strange kind of mutation, the sword will be separated from the sceptre. Because of the brothers’ discord one coming from the other side will reign.’ By this ruler ‘coming from the other side’, John’s subjects might well have understood King Philip Augustus or his son Louis, who were serious contestants for the throne. This prophesied arrival of a foreign ruler is worth remembering in connection with Ralph of Coggeshall’s grim entry for the year 1213, when Philip was preparing his troops to invade England: ‘Peter of Pontefract, who had prophesied that the king would one day no longer reign, was hanged on the king’s own orders.’53 The story of Peter of Pontefract is told more fully in the chronicles of Roger of Wendover and his successor Matthew Paris: In those days [1212] there lived in the province of York a hermit called Peter, who was called a sage because he had predicted the future to many. Amongst others, there was one thing he had seen after being touched by the spirit of prophecy, concerning King 49 I cite the translation in The Legend of Fulk Fitz-Warin, ed. J. Stevenson, RS 66, 1875, 277–415 at 324. There is a modern edition of the Anglo-Norman text, Fouke le Fitz Waryn, ed. E. J. Hathaway and others, Anglo-Norman Text Society 26–8, Oxford 1975. 50 Adapted from the translation in Legend, ed. Stevenson, 412. 51 Lesley A. Coote, Prophecy and Public Affairs in Later Medieval England, York 2000, 63. 52 Ralph of Coggeshall, Chronicon Anglicanum, ed. J. Stevenson, RS 66, 1875, 1–208 at 146. 53 Ibid. 167. 100 Ad Putter John of England, and he had said openly and publicly to all bystanders and all those willing to hear, that by Ascension Day next year John would be king no longer. This claim came to the king’s attention and on his command Peter was led before him, and the king asked him whether on that day he would die or be deprived of his sole title to the crown in some other way. Peter replied: ‘You should know for certain that you will not be king, and if I should be proved a liar you can do with me what you like.’ To which the King replied, ‘It shall be according to your word’. [John proceeds to imprison Peter in Corfe castle, and anxiously awaits the outcome of his prophecy.] The news quickly spread to the furthest reaches of the land, and almost all who heard it gave credence to his words, as if his prophecy had come from heaven. On top of this turmoil there were many barons in England who grumbled as the king abused their wives and daughters; others whom he had reduced to extreme poverty with unjust exactions, some whose parents and relatives he had exiled, appropriating for his own use their inheritances. Thus it came about that the king had as many enemies as he had magnates. So at that time, when they knew themselves to be released from their pledge of fidelity, they felt relieved, and if the story is to be believed they sent a letter to the king of France confirmed with each of their seals, that he should come to England where he would be received honourably and crowned.54 Regnabit ex transuerso ueniens: ‘One coming from the other side will reign.’ According to the chroniclers, Peter’s prophecy had John seriously worried, but John survived the fateful Ascension Day, and because Peter had said he could do with him what he liked if the prophecy did not come true, John ordered him to be dragged through the streets of Warham by horses and then hanged. Was the tale supposed to be a lesson not to believe in prophetic mumbo-jumbo? The chroniclers thought the opposite; as they note, on the eve of Ascension Day, John submitted to the pope, placing England and Ireland under his overlordship. Peter’s prophecy had after all come true: John lost sovereignty, and both Roger Wendover and Matthew Paris conclude: ‘If the events described above are construed subtly, it is demonstrable that the prophet did not lie.’55 In the reign of King John, prophecy was a dangerous game to play, and Gerald’s programme of revision makes sense in this context, particularly given the likelihood that the b version of The Conquest of Ireland (as The Prophetic History was now called) was presented to John. Admittedly, not everyone has been convinced by Gerald’s suggestion that it was fear ‘of offending those in power’ that held him back from publishing the third book of The Prophetic History. James Dimock found it hard to reconcile Gerald’s apparent caution with his outspoken attack on King John in De instructione principis,56 and his argument has more recently been taken up by Scott and Martin, who think it ‘unlikely that the man who described John as catulum tyrannicum … would have felt any need to continue suppressing this third book’.57 Yet the circumstances surrounding the publication of the last two books of De instructione, where that criticism is voiced, actually strengthen my case. Gerald delayed the publication of these books until John was dead, and in John’s lifetime released only book I, a harmless Mirror for Princes, which like The Prophetic History breaks off with some dark words by Gerald implying that publication of the rest of the work would be unwise. Moreover, Dimock’s alternative explanation, that Gerald came to realize that Merlin’s prophecies were nonsense, is untenable, for in 54 Matthew of Paris, Chronica majora, ed. Henry Richards Luard, 7 vols, RS 57, 1872–83, II, 535; cf. Roger of Wendover, Flores historiarum, ed. Henry G. Hewlett, 3 vols, RS 84, 1886–9, II, 62–3. 55 Chronica majora, II, 547; Flores historiarum, II, 77. 56 Opera, V, p. xlv. 57 Expugatio, p. lxiii. Gerald of Wales and Merlin 101 the last two books of The Instruction of Princes Gerald is back to his prophetic best. When referring to The Conquest of Ireland he is happy to revert to its original name, The Prophetic History.58 The Constitutions of Clarendon, which extorted concessions from Thomas Becket and his allies, are presented as the fulfilment of ‘that prophecy of Sylvester Merlin, “And the tongues of the bulls shall be cut off ” ’.59 This same prophecy had earlier been revised by Gerald in the b version of The Conquest of Ireland to the weasel-worded ‘so seems to be fulfilled’.60 In De instructione Gerald threw caution to the wind and left out the qualification. If he had really come to doubt Merlin’s prophetic powers it is odd that he regained his confidence in them once John was dead. Gerald’s unwavering faith in Merlin’s prophecies is apparent, finally, in the use he made of them in the campaign that occupied him during the last decades of his life: his campaign to restore St David’s to its ‘ancient dignity’ as an archbishopric. What does St David’s have to do with Merlin? The answer lies in this prophecy by Merlin Ambrosius from Geoffrey of Monmouth’s History: ‘Religion will be destroyed again and archbishoprics will be displaced. London’s honour will adorn Canterbury, and the seventh pastor of York [= Samson?] will dwell in the kingdom of Armorica [Brittany]. St David’s will wear the pallium of Caerleon.’61 This prophecy is obviously relevant to Geoffrey’s later description of Dubricius as archbishop of Caerleon and primate of Britain; when Dubricius retired to become a hermit, ‘his place was taken by the king’s uncle David’, and ‘Archbishop Samson of Dol was replaced by Teliaus, a distinguished priest of Llandaff.’62 The vivid interest these remarks excited is comprehensible in the light of current controversies surrounding the ecclesiastical pecking order in England and Wales.63 While England had two primates, of York and Canterbury, the Welsh Church (subject since the time of Henry I to the English) had none, and all its bishops were subject to the archbishop of Canterbury. At the time that Geoffrey was writing his history, both the bishops of Llandaff and St David’s were arguing that their sees had once been archbishoprics. In the case of St David’s the claim went even further: it had formerly been a metropolitan see, its archbishop answerable only to Rome. Because the hierarchical organization of the twelfth-century Church was a comparatively recent phenomenon, such claims to primacy or metropolitan status necessarily lacked genuine historical evidence. But where evidence did not exist, it could be fabricated, and Geoffrey’s History offered Gerald considerable help. Encouraged by Merlin’s prophecy, he travelled to Rome in 1199 to present his case to the pope, taking him back to the times when Britain had become Christian: So Britain was organized … in such a way that in the western part of this island now called ‘Wales’ (a misnomer, for it is more properly Kambria after Kamber, Brutus’ son), Caerleon was the metropolitan see, with twelve suffragan bishops … Dubricius, archbishop of Caerleon, ceded the honour to David, who transferred the metropolitan 58 59 60 61 e.g. Opera, VIII, 159, 161; trans. Stevenson, 13–14. Opera, VIII, 216; trans. Stevenson, 50. Expugnatio, 218–19. History of the Kings of Britain, 144–5. 62 Ibid. 208–15, quotations at 214–15. 63 My discussion relies heavily on Christopher Brooke, ‘The Archbishops of St David’s, Llandaff and Caerleon-on-Usk’, in Nora K. Chadwick and others, Studies in the Early British Church, Cambridge 1958, 201–42. See also his ‘Geoffrey of Monmouth as a Historian’, in Church and Government in the Middle Ages: Essays presented to C. R. Cheney on his 70th Birthday, ed. C. N. L. Brooke and others, Cambridge 1976, 77–91; Michael Richter, Giraldus Cambrensis: The Growth of the Welsh Nation, Aberystwyth 1972, 23–58, 87–127; and Crick, ‘British Past’. 102 Ad Putter see to St David’s, as foretold by our prophet Merlin long ago as follows: ‘St David’s will wear the pallium of Caerleon.’ Now, we had at St David’s twenty-five archbishops in succession, of whom the first was David and the last Samson, who sailed to Brittany, taking the pallium with him.64 In all this madness readers will recognize the influence of Geoffrey of Monmouth. The etymology of Kambria is his, and Gerald’s claim that St David’s was once a metropolitan see is supported with reference to the primacy of Dubricius. His successor David then transferred the pallium to St David’s, thereby fulfilling Merlin’s prophecy. To explain how St David’s lost the pallium, Gerald needs Samson, who is mentioned as the archbishop of Dol in Geoffrey’s Historia but who, according to Celtic tradition, had been a native of Wales. Did anyone find Gerald’s mythical history credible? Gerald’s adversaries, the archbishop of Canterbury and his agents, dismissed Gerald’s history of St David’s as an outrageous fiction, leaving Gerald to retort that it was ‘neither a fictional or frivolous story, nor a fable of Arthur as my opponents mockingly say, but an account supported by the truth’.65 However, the papal response to Gerald’s mythical history was more encouraging. The one objection the pope raised was how Samson could have been archbishop of St David’s when it was common knowledge that he had been archbishop of York. Gerald faced the objection squarely: ‘And Gerald replied: “No, with respect father, the chronicles of Dol confirm that this Samson was ours and not another’s … The people of York have been misled by the identical name, for they too once had an archbishop called Samson.” ’66 If the pope’s response is genuine, he, too, may have been reading Geoffrey of Monmouth, for Samson’s status as archbishop of York is duly recorded in Geoffrey’s history, as are his flight from York and subsequent reappearance as archbishop of Dol. The fact that authorities contradicted each other – Geoffrey of Monmouth and the pope making Samson archbishop of York, the chronicles of Dol and Gerald making him archbishop of St David’s – did not deter Gerald, for where authorities were in conflict, personalities could be multiplied. Just as there were two Merlins, so there were two Samsons, one of York, the other of St David’s; and it was the second, not the first, who transferred the pallium to Dol. Again Gerald’s response to contradictions in his historical theory was not to jettison it but to complicate it until the confusions of the present became explicable with reference to it. In conclusion, Gerald was prepared to take Merlin and Geoffrey of Monmouth very seriously, at least when it suited him. Those who credit him with proto-modern scientific rigour have set much store by his dismissal of the legend that St Patrick banished the snakes from Ireland in The Topography of Ireland,67 but it is worth noting that he recounts the same legend as if it were true in the Gemma ecclesiastica.68 There are moments when it suits us to believe things and moments when it doesn’t, and this applies to Gerald too. For this reason, his dig at Geoffrey’s History in the story of Meilyr and the demons from The Journey through Wales is only superficially at odds with his reliance on it elsewhere. He knew Geoffrey was suspect, and in his Retractions he shrewdly refused to vouch for the truth of his own historical enquiries into early British history except for such details as were 64 65 66 67 68 De jure, Opera, III, 170–1. De invectionibus, 167. De jure, Opera, III, 166–7. See e.g. U. T. Holmes, ‘Gerald the Naturalist’, Speculum 11, 1936, 110–21. Opera, II, 161; trans. Hagen, 123. Gerald of Wales and Merlin 103 based on Bede: ‘All those things which happened a long time before the coming of the Saxons to Britain are based on popular repute and opinion rather than on the certainty of any proper history.’69 In this grey area between fact and fiction belonged Geoffrey’s History, Merlin’s prophecies, the story of Gerald’s discovery of them at Nefyn, and his mythical history of St David’s. How firmly he believed in them is ultimately unknowable, but there is much evidence he found them believable. 69 Opera, I, 426.