Geoffrey of Monmouth's Vita Merlini

Medieval Academy of America
Geoffrey of Monmouth's Vita Merlini Author(s): J. S. P. Tatlock Reviewed work(s): Source: Speculum, Vol. 18, No. 3 (Jul., 1943), pp. 265-287 Published by: Medieval Academy of America Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2853704 . Accessed: 25/02/2012 15:29
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SPECU
A JOURNAL OF MEDIAEVAL STUDIES
VOL. XVIII JULY, 1943 No. 3
GEOFFREY OF MONMOUTH'S VITA MERLINI

BY J. S. P. TATLOCK
THE little-read second work of one of the most influential literary men of the
entire middle ages, Vita Merlini at first reading seems incoherent, uncertain in mood, unaccountable, and its experienced manner makes its course and content at first more baffling. For this reason it will be more enlightening to defer any summary to a more pertinent position in this article; except to say that it tells of the aged Merlin running mad, his life in the Caledonian woods, his return now and again, and surprising exploits, - two-thirds of the poem being irrelevant discourses on this and that. Its unattractiveness as a whole no doubt is why it has been too little studied to be well understood. It has been referred to by moderns chiefly for the question as to its authorship, and for sources or derivatives of certain details or short episodes. The best and largest studies, also including the text, are that by J. J. Parry,' and especially that by E. Faral, who intends to show the content to be chiefly of Latin not Celtic origin. But with no surpassing merit, it is one of those works which when one scrutinizes, scales seem to fall from one's eyes, and one sees something in three dimensions and related to its surroundings. First I deal with certain inevitable matters on its history. All its recent and best students agree that it is by Geoffrey of Monmouth, as its last five lines in
1 The Vita Merlini (Univ. of Ill., 1925; includes an extremely literal translation), which has been used throughout this work, together with Faral's text in Lkgende Arthurienne, III, 307-352 (Paris, 1929), whose editorial study is in ii, 28-36, 341-385. This is the most valuable study of the whole subject, even if one must question much of his opinion and literary criticism. The chief other recent studies are by J. D. Bruce in Evol. of Arth. Rom. (Gittingen and Baltimore, 1923), I, 135-43, which summarizes some fact and opinion, but not always critically; and by Sir E. K. Chambers, Arthur of Britain (London, 1927), pp. 48-51. Good summaries of the Vita are in Faral, ii, 342-6; Bruce, i, 136-40; Chambers, 48-9. It has been accessible in the Cotton collection in the British Museum for over three centuries, and been printed six times beginning 1830 (see Parry, pp. 22-25). - The bibliography throughout this article is kept down to a minimum. For some references I am indebted to Dr Howard Stone. It would be hard to overstate my debt and thanks to Mrs Arthur J. Dempster of Chicago, her learning, enterprise, fresh ideas, and critical judgment. Only in order not to irritate the reader have I refrained from mentioning the debt as often as was due. America is regrettably less rich than England in highly competent people who pursue scholarship solely for the pleasure of it 265
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Geoffreyof Monmouth's Vita Merlini
effect state.1 Needless to rehearse all the evidence. The more familiar one is with the Historia Regum Britanniae the surer one is that the Vita too is by Geoffrey. Since none of the alleged evidence to the contrary is worth a thought, mostly showing unconsciousness as to how to estimate evidence, one need say no more,2
1 We have finished this poem (they say), and ask from the Britanni a laurel wreath for 'Gaufrido de Monumeta,' who has earlier sung of their wars and leaders, and written the book Gesta Britonum of their world-famous deeds. Possibly this alludes to some other repute of Geoffrey's as a poet. The self-confidence shown here smacks of him. The completest proof of his authorship is Faral's (Leg. Arth., II, 29-36), following the cautious and admirable discussion by H. L. D. Ward in 1883 (Catal. of Romancesin B. M., I, 279-286). 2 The latest argument against Geoffrey's authorship is a feeble one in 1927 by E. Brugger, Zt. f. frz. Spr. u. Lit., L, 368-378. Incredibly, he (p. 373) and some predecessors take a pl. neut. for a sing. masc. (1. 1529), and think the book, not the deeds, world-famous, though the former statement too would be near enough the facts. Any contradictions between the two works are unimportant; e.g., Vortegirnus' new wife as 'soror' not 'filia' to Hengistus (1. 1033; vi, 12) is merely because the former fitted the verse; no mediaeval writer would have hesitated at this. There is always danger of a careful modern making much of difficulties unnoticed by a mediaeval writer and his readers. No one but Dante (not quite always he) wrote with tight consistency. Cf. Speculum, xiv, 361-363. Even within the Historia there are inconsistencies; though perhaps they could be reconciled were this historical fact, they are actually mere heedlessness about trifles, e.g., matters about Arthur's family, viII, 20, ix, 2, 9. - Mrs Dempster points me to an evident echo in the Vita, 11.958-959, of Gildas' De Excidio, 23, a scarce book much used in the Historia (both speaking of the Saxons): 'non sic gens illa recedet Ut semel in uestris ungues infixerit ortis'; 'evectus, [the Saxon race] primum in orientali parte insulae . . . terribiles infixit ungues . . .' Gildas' celebrity as a teacher appears in the Vita, 687-8. She also points me to two probable echoes of Horace's Carmina (bk. III, 3 and 30), of which the very first line, I, 1) had been quoted by Geoffrey in the Historia (xII, 6). The Vita (1-2) opens with Fatidici uatis rabiem musamque iocosam Merlini cantare paro. Tu corrige carmen . . . Horace ends a serious poem Non hoc iocosae conveniet lyrae: Quo, Musa, tendis? . . . Geoffrey's lyric close along with other arrogances has 'Laurea serta date Gaufrido'; just so does Horace end a closing ode ('Exegi monumentum'), mihi Delphica Lauro cinge volens, Melpomene, comam. In both works Merlin evidently owes some of his prophetic power to astrology (V. M., 429-440, 55561; H. R. B., VIII, 15); but in both the author shows no sign of detailed knowledge of either astrology or magic. See p. 272 below. Further, both works are notablysecular in tone; the Vitahas relativelylittle Christian feeling, and some strikingly pagan (174, 736, etc.; and 375, where Merlin lets his wife wed another man), and in the Historia (vIII, 19) Merlin has no objection to abetting adultery. Without trying for completeness, or recording all of several dozen recurring names or all the most obvious echoes in the Vita to the Historia, the following may serve someone else's purposes: 11.51, 605, 773 (cuneus a favorite military term in H. R. B., vIII, 5, ix, 4, x, 4. 8; many of its favorite words are in V. M.) 1. 53: ix, 11, x, 9 138-140: viii, 10 275-276: i, 2 (echoing Gildas, 3) 438: vIII, 14-15 623: vII, 3 (early) 687-688: i, 1, 17, ii, 17, iiI, 5, iv, 20, vi, 13, xII, 6 969-970: vII, 3, 4 (panceltism; see SPECULUM, 136) ix, 1099: ix, 11. etc. (Daci, Dacia, for Danes, of course not confined to Geoffrey)
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except a little on title and date. The title has some bearing on the authorship. That in use now doubtless comes from the colophon at the end of the only complete MS., of the late thirteenth century, -'Explicit vita Merlini Calidonii per Galfridum Monemutensem';' any conceivable implication in 'Calidonii' that this Merlin is not the same as he of the Historia (on all which more presently), which could not possibly be attributed to Geoffrey, is offset by the fact that mediaeval authors' titles, even if they gave any, often were not retained exactly by them or others. No one can say whether Geoffrey ever chose a title, but 'Vita Merlini' serves well. As to the date, Bruce, Parry, Chambers and Faral, with whom one must fall in, agree on 1148 or shortly after,2 because the dedicatee, Robert de Chesney, had only recently (modo, 11.9, 12) ascended the throne of Lincoln, as he did in that year. In discussing the vogue of the Vita a little below (p. 272) we shall see evidence that it was known in Normandy at latest before 1154. A few words about the poetic form and style. They are not so good as in the seven fine distichs in the Historia at Diana's temple.3 But the Vita is a favorable specimen of mediaeval metrical verse, with relatively scarce false quantities,4 and as usual avoiding elision or hiatus,5 and rather though not to excess cultivating
1483-1504: vII, 4 end 1499: vII, 4 (Urgenius, Urianus a mountain) 1511-1512 vII, 3 (anti-Norman)
See also Faral,
II,
29.
1 Parry, p. 116; another copy, abridged, is headed (ib., p. 30; Ward, i, 290) 'ffata Merlini Siluestre' [sic], etc. 2 Dr Parry's argument (Mod. Philol., xxII, 413-415) for a date after 1150 is not convincing. A connection seems likely between the dedication of the Prophecies of Merlin in the Historia to Bishop Alexander of Lincoln, and that of the Vita to his immediate successor Robert. Whether Geoffrey wished to rouse or gratify his interest, or the churchman-poet was playing pickthank toward the new occupant of one of the greatest sees in England, or the bishop gave a 'command' for something light on Merlin (as Queen Elizabeth is said to have done as to Falstaff in love), Merlin's repute evidently flourished in Lincoln. At any rate the sensational earlier success of Merlin and his prophecies made him an attractive hero. 3 I, 11; deliberately classical, Virgilian or Ovidian in quality, including four elisions and hardly any false quantities (though dicabo with short ultima in 1. 6); Professor Hammer, working on the text of the Historia, tells me the best MSS have 'tibi sedes' (1. 11). 4 There are such in 11.57, 242, 333, 384 and 1159 and 1269, 426 and 885, 611, 712, 749, 756, 760, 1011, 1070, 1526. For most of these my thanks to Mrs Dempster. Mulieres, etc. (693, 783) in medieval verse regularly has a long penult (L. Traube, Vorles. u. Abhandl., II, 107). The author's scrupulousness is shown in the unparalleled spelling T(h)elgesinus, in order that the first syllable may always be long 'by position.' 6 See the rule laid down close to the end of the 12th century by the Norman Alexander de Villa Dei, dictio vocali finita vel m, sibi subdi versu vocalem nunquam permittit eodem (in his Doctrinale, 11.1603-04, ed. D. Reichling, Berlin, 1893). The same disapproval of hiatus and elision is in G. de Vinsauf's Poetria Nova, 11.1923-27, and l:vrard l'Allemand's Laborintus, 11.825826 (Faral, Arts Po(tiques, Paris, 1924, pp. 256, 365), both of the thirteenth century. These are worth citing for a subject which has had little attention, but needs it, like the rest of mediaeval Latin versification. Though of course some mediaeval verse like classical avoids hiatus and allows elision, it shows the vitality of mediaeval Latin poetry that it changed the classical rule to suit its own manner of speech. See Traube's sketchy treatment of the subject (n, 111-112), who gives some references;
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verbal jingles.' In the Historia no trait is more praiseworthy than its uniquely skilful structure, notably the alternation of picturesque detailed episodes with stretches of swift narrative summary, like a stream with rapids and quiet pools. Just so the Vita continually breaks up its heavy descriptions and expositions (in the latter half) with lively incidents. Lacking as the poem is in unity, Geoffrey stands out among mediaeval writers for skill in organization, and in avoidance of the plodding. He shows no extraordinary wide reading, nor ostentation about his reading, nor as much of the rhetorical as one might fear perhaps; he was a good Latinist, and a man of cultivation and good taste. II The best study of the sources, by Faral,2 should be reexamined, especially of those of the four highly entertaining marvels of divination by the mad Merlin: concerning his sister's adultery betrayed by a leaf in her hair (11.254 ff); a boy who he foretells will die of a fall from a high rock, in a tree, in a river, - and who does so;3 the beggar who in secret is rich; the foresighted man who buys new shoes and patches for mending them when worn out, but is shortly afterwards drowned (11. 490-532). The two latter divinations are of oriental connections and probably origin, with no known Celtic connections4 and need not be discussed. Adultery betrayed by leaf, at which Merlin laughs, is somewhat paralleled centuries earlier in India,5 and more closely in a Latin saint's legend from southwest Scotland in a MS. of the fifteenth century. The triple-death divination is in this latter, also in another legend in the same MS. Both legends are of a prophetic madman named Lailoken who is befriended by St. Kentigern of Glasgow (died 603), and whose story is so like Vita Merlini that they are certainly connected. Without going into detail, one merely may state the opinion that these two legends in their present form are later than and show the influence of the Vita.6 Professor Kenneth Jackson has practically proved that wherever Geoffrey got the three other divination-incidents, he got the triple-death one directly or indirectly from earlier Gaelic tradition.7
and especially E. Voigt, Ysengrimus (Halle, 1884), p. xxxi, many references. - Here I am indebted to Mrs Dempster. 1 'Regna regebat,' 27; 'rubeo ... rubetis,' 53; also 237, 1016, 1037, 1503-04.
2 , pp. 347-85. 4Faral
L1. 311, 321, 338, 391 ff. ii, 368-369; Parry, p. 120. For these and a partial and very conservative study of the connections of the Vita see L. A. Paton, PMLA, xxII, 234-277, especially 276-277. 6 L. A. Paton, PMLA, xxII, 241-242, 261. 6 The evidence may be put together from H. L. D. Ward, Catal. of Romances, I, 290-291; Romania, xxII, 504, 510, 513, 515 (top), 525 (middle); Faral, ii, 348-352, 355-356. Even as to some theoretical earlier forms of the Lailoken-narrative I see no evidence for the frequent opinion that it preceded the Vita; which it is true has no such conspicuous reason for a location in southwest Scotland as the other, but may have been there localized because Geoffrey knew the region (signs of this in the Historia, and wished some region other than familiar Wales for the highly romantic Vita. The Lailoken-legends, especially the first, do not seem to me primitive, but rather civilized and even sensitive. Much further might be said of them were it more relevant in the present article. 7 This is made abundantly clear in an important article which came to my attention only after the present one was in proof, 'The Motive of the Threefold Death,' Essays and Studies Presented to Pro-
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Besides the Gaelic origin of the triple-death divination, the Vita further undoubtedly shows strong Celtic elements. The main situation, a warrior going mad after a battle, shunning humanity, living in the wilds, recovering and relapsing, assuredly looks Celtic. In fact, as is familiar, all this is paralleled in a Middle Irish chantefable, the very good Buile Suibhne, along with more specific trifling likenesses; some sort of genetic connection will suggest itself to an attentive reader. But prophesyings in it are inconsiderable, and the Suibhne (though Suibhne and other details are earlier) is pronounced not earlier than 1200-1500.1 The likeliest conclusion seems that Suibhne and the Vita draw on a common fund of Celtic tradition, or perhaps some single tradition. And perhaps real life. The main outline, paralleled elsewhere, very probably reflects actual reality, especially Celtic. Just as today one may find eccentrics living alone in wild country, so doubtless no less in the middle ages. Probably some of the hermits (dare I add early Celtic 'saints'?) were little better, less deranged than the moderns because less shunned.2 Further, in the Vita S. Samsoni, a sixth century saint of Welsh origin, written probably in the eighth or ninth century in Brittany, we find the saint in Wales falling foul of a wild hag living in the woods for years, called 'theomacha' and 'malefica.'3 For other Celtic elements, there are certain traditional Briton personages.4But one must be wary of assuming that every authentic legendary or historical Briton name here reflects in the attached narrative
fessor Eoin MacNeill (Dublin, 1940), pp. 535-550. The considerable number of parallels from Ireland and Scotland in Gaelic and Latin begin with the late seventh century. Those from non-Celtic regions begin in the twelfth, with one (or two) formerly attributed to Hildebert (d. 1133) but now to Matthew of Vendome (probably after the Vita; see Faral, II, 366-367). Since only here and in the Vita does the victim die through catching his foot in a tree with his head under water (Jackson, pp. 535-536), these two are probably closely connected, and the Vita the source for the other. 1 P. 100. Parry gives a good summary in Philol. Qrly., iv, 199-201, with other illustration; so does Faral, pp. 347-348, 353-355, 357-358, 361-363. The text and translation are in J. G. O'Keeffe's edition (Irish Texts Soc., vol. xII, London, 1913); on dates of this text and the whole tradition, see his pp. xiii-xix. Some of the above-mentioned detail is also in Lailoken, but alone would prove no direct connection among the three. H. M. Chadwick (Growthof Literature, Cambridge, 1932, I, 113) mentions other Irish cases of going mad in battle. The essentials above are confirmed in Jackson's far fuller and more important treatment, found by me at the last moment, and di: ..ssed above. It 'ddened is imperfectly sorted out; see his pp. 536, 539, 542-544, 546, 549. The wild man in the . ,cotch in battle, sometimes with prophesyings, once or twice with the triple-death, was in tales before Geoffrey, much better exemplified in another Suibhne story, and elsewhere. In the Vita Geoffrey let loose an interest in Celtic folkish material of which he showed a little in the Historia. 2 Consider Elgar the hermit of Bardsey (SPECULUM, 145-149). XIII, 3 Ed. by R. Fawtier (Bibl. Ec. Hautes Et., vol. 197) tr. by Tho. Taylor (London, 1925), 26-27. See also Journ. Theolog. Stud. xxvII, 44-47. The scarce and vague word 'theomacha' seems from in Oeopu&xoLthe Greek Acts, v, 39, perhaps by way of Bede or Rufinus Aquileiensis' translation of Eusebius (I, 1; Basle, 1523, p. 5); meaning of course enemy of God, not necessarily witch. Perhaps there is a dissertation subject on wild people in the forest during some part of the middle ages. There is a starting-point in this article. I add that Mr Jackson is writing on it (p. 544). 4To disregard several who had appeared in the Historia, and perhaps others, there are Guennolous (1. 27), Rodarcus (1. 32, etc.; called 'Rodarcus Largus,' dating 730, meaning the same as 'Rhydderch Hael,' the Generous, of Welsh history), Telgesinus (685, etc.) On these see Parry, pp. 18-19; J. E. Lloyd, Hist. of Wales (N. Y., 1912), pp. 166-167, 169-170, and in Dict. Nat. Biogr. I disregard several dozen place and personal names recurring in the Historia; and see pp. 266-267 above.
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authentic tradition. Invented narrative attached to authentic names, belonging to the period concerned or other periods, is so common in the Historia as to be fairly called its formula. Further the interest, emphasis, as to insanity (may one say without being invidious?l) might be thought Celtic; assuredly it is neither earlier Latin, French nor English. Finally, without collecting parallels, one can hardly miss a Celtic, Welsh, tone in the wild and sylvan setting and spirit of the whole. No doubt enough Celtic parallels to this or that detail, element or spirit can be found to justify recognizing here much of the inspiration, the vitality, to be Briton, more than in the Historia.2 This conclusion should be completed by considering general aspect or silhouette, the kinds of earlier work which it approximates. It is so original that it is hard to point to any precedent, certainly not in 'mediaeval romance.' This is all later than the Vita, which also is without the love element.3 It is assuredly very unlike the Germanic epic, and equally unlike the chansons de geste, even the Pelerinage de Charlemagne;or the classical epic or Ovid's Metamorphosesand their mediaeval posterity. It is safe to believe that any general starting-point in the back of Geoffrey's mind for type, not matter, if any there was, would be Celtic, vastly more than in the Historia. For the rest as to sources one may be brief. Various familiar allusions without detail put the poem in the general swim of mediaeval tradition, and assume readers' knowledge of it. The Guielandus who modeled cups (235) is of course mere familiar early Germanic folktale, his name in a Latinized Romance form, because his tradition was much cultivated by the French.4 Barinthus, who knew
1 If one may not, I will merely quote from another eminent Celt (The Death of Dr Swift):
gave the little wealth he had build a house for fools and mad; shew, by one satyrick touch, nation wanted it so much. 2 Faral shows a striking likeness between Geoffrey's Maeldinus (1. 1452), maddened by (p. 362) poisoned fruit, and the Irish Mael Duin, in a work of about 1100 or before, thrown into a prolonged sleep by a strange fruit. But this sort of thing is often paralleled; see p. 280 below. Merlin riding a stag (11.452-455) recalls St Kentigern ploughing with a stag and a wolf in Jocelin's life, chap. 20, but this is later and might come from the Vita. - The woodland house built for Merlin by his sister (11.555-559) with 70 doors and 70 windows has a fantastic Celtic air. - Marvelous springs suddenly bursting out (1136 ff., 1254 if., 1434 ff.) do occur in Celtic literature (Spec., xiv, 358; and Parry, p. 123), but elsewhere too (Exodus, xvII, 6), and healing waters are everywhere (in the Vita itself, 1179-1253, from Isidor, recited by Telgesinus). - One may well see mere characteristic Welsh poetical hyperbole (11.1270-78), rather than an early Merlin-myth, where Merlin avers he saw the acorn drop from which sprang an oak now aged and rotted. Parry (pp. 123-4) has a late close analogue, and three-fourths through Kulhwch and Olwen, usually printed with the Mabinogion, there are four analogues, one of them close; but there is nothing else in the Merlin of the Vita which looks mythic or preternatural. - There is no indication of a wizard Merlin before Geoffrey in an Irish 'Melinus' wrongly mentioned by 'San Marte' (Sagen v. Merlin, p. 52), as in Jocelin of Furness' life of St Patrick, in Acta SS, vol. vm, 536-577. The name is not to be found there, though a similar anecdote is told there (pp. 545-546) of a 'magus' (druid of course) called Lochu, who flies on high and crashes because of the prayers of Patrick. (See also San-Marte, pp.51-52; and onthe incident, PMLA, xLv, 170, and H. R. B., II, 10.) If some later name 'Melinus' has any connection with 'Merlinus,' this is amply explained by imitation from the celebrated though very different wizard or prophet of Geoffrey. See Miss Paton's article cited above; Slover, Texas Stud. in Eng., vII, 90 on springs. 3 On the relation of the Vita to romance see the end of this article. 4 While Wayland Smith's forge produced mostly arms, he was a goldsmith also; see W. Grimm, He To To No
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well sea and stars, and is said by Telgesinus (930-1) to have conducted the wounded Arthur to Insula Pomorum, is of course the Barint(h)us who in the Brandan-legend starts the saint off on his voyage by telling him of a marvelous isle. He too whether or not originally from Celtic tradition was mediaeval common property.1 The pseudo-science to be spoken of later which occupies most of the second half of the poem (11.737-1386) comes from familiar mediaeval scholarship, such writers as Isidor (especially), Solinus, William of Conches, Rabanus Maurus, Bede, Pomponius Mela, even Ovid, one cannot always tell which.2Elsewhere Ovid, Virgil and probably Horace are to be recognized; and especially as we have seen, the chief source, Geoffrey's own Historia Regum Britanniae. All this and more, however much or little Celtic matter the poem contains, shows to what degree it belongs in the general mediaeval literary family, aimed not at Celts particularly but at a fairly cultivated general reader. III The Merlin of the Vita is meant as one and the same man as he of the Historia. Could there be the least doubt of this it would be settled by his being a South Welsh sage, who long before had prophesied under Vortigernus.3 Nor is there any shred of evidence or presumption that a Merlin-tradition existed in the north before Geoffrey. Though moderns have exclaimed and mediaevals been misled by some contrasts between the two, the former has merely become more human and touching, and has more nearly faded into the light of common day. Though still a diviner, he is no longer properly a magician, and has obviously inherited the kingship of Demetia from his mother's father in the Historia.4
Deutsche Heldensage (G6ttingen, 1829), pp. 29, 41; also G. B. Depping and Fr.-Michel, tr. by S. V. Singer, Wayland Smith (London, 1847), pp. xxxi, 1, 38; also H. M. Smyser and F. P. Magoun, Survivals in Old Norwegian (Baltimore, 1941), pp. 54-55, 62, 69, 70. This does not mean a clearly-defined saga of which we have only the leavings; it means a vague but vital saga to which anyone might add. An indication of its vitality in Geoffrey's day is in John of Marmoutier's Historiae Gaufredi (Bouquet, Recueil des Hist. des Gaules, xnI, 521), where in the splendid knightly equipment given by Henry I to his son-in-law Geoffrey of Anjou is an ancient sword from his own treasury wrought by Galannus, -'ad ultimum allatus est ei ensis de thesauro Regio ab antiquo ibidem signatus, in quo fabricando fabrorum superlativus Galannus multa opera et studio desudavit.' This latter form of the name would surprise no medievalist; Singer (preface) gives as French forms only 'Galans,' 'Galant.' 1 He may be from the Latin prose (mid-eleventh century) voyage of St Brandan, variously named by moderns; ed. by A. Jubinal, Legende Latine de S. Brandaines (Paris, 1836), pp. 1-2; and by C. Schroder, Sanct Brandan (Erlangen, 1871), p. 1; important study by H. Zimmer, Zt. f. deutsch. Altert., xxxIIi, 129 ff., 257 ff., esp. pp. 177, 319-20. He may as well be from the Norman poem (ed. Fr.-Michel, Voyages Merveill. de S. Brandan, Paris, 1878), where 'Barinz' does the same (11.75, 101); it was written about 1121, at any rate before 1151, for Henry I's queen Adeliza. 2 Lot in Romania, XLV, 1-15; Faral, ii, 373-384 (especially valuable on Latin influences); L. A. Paton, Fairy Mythol., pp. 41-44; Parry, pp. 20, 122; Chambers, p. 49; Mod. Philol., xxxI, 12-13. 3 L1. 19-20, 681; H. R. B., vi, 18-19, etc. 4 Vita, 21-22; Hist., vi, 17. The Vita develops, does not perceptibly contradict, the Merlin of the Historia. It simply denies the facts to say with H. M. Chadwick (Growthof Literature, i, 112), 'The second, however, owes nothing but the form of his name to Geoffrey.' But the earlier is the grander and more romantic figure, with his marvelous paternity, his complete sanity yet loneliness and the mystery in his abiding-places, his 'clarum ingenium,' his deep reverence for his own spirit of prophecy,
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The Vita holds rather less closely than the Historia to historical consistency. The events happen in the reign of Conanus (11.1128-35), which according to the latter (xi, 2-5) would seem to be between the years 545-546 and 547-548, while the battle at the beginning of the Vita is recognized by critics as alluding to that of Arderydd, in the year 573 (according to the Annales Cambriae, in Y Cymmrodor, ix, 155; Rolls Ser., p. 5). But the moderns who aver that the Merlins of the two works are too unlike to have sprung from the same imagination overlook the fundamental difference between historical and imaginative writing; whether he of the Vita could actually have been he of the Historia grown old we need not discuss, but that Geoffrey after the lapse of ten or fifteen years could have conceived him to have been needs no discussion either. Some moderns too are slow to learn how indifferent the mediaevals were to consistency in unimportant detail. Indeed the whole Vita is not too strangely unlike the Historia. Both works are meant on the whole to seem matter-of-fact, if like the mediaevals we accept prophecy and divination and healing springs as veritable. But soon the various contrasts between the two figures produced a distinction, comparable one might say to 'Notre Dame de Lourdes' and 'de Guadalupe,' between 'Merlinus Ambrosius' and 'Merlinus Caledonius' or 'Silvester.' The earliest flat assertion to be found that there were two Merlins is by Gerald de Barri in Itinerarium Cambriae (of 1188-91),1 a highly intelligent man who thus put positiveness albeit false into haziness. But the distinction began more promptly, which shows not that the second Merlin existed in tradition before the Vita but rather how speedily among the well-informed grew a knowledge of the poem. In two contemporary library-catalogue descriptions of Geoffrey's Historia, one copied from the other in Normandy, we read... 'libri XII, in quorum septimo continentur prophetiae Mellini, non Silvestris, sed alterius, id est Mellini Ambrosii.' The second dates between early 1152 and 1154; the first rom very shortly earlier.2 Few are likely to doubt that these betray knowledge of the Vita; that Norman monks would allude to a second work by Geoffrey
- the gift would be destroyed by disrespect for it, he says, not by restored sanity as in the Vita (11. 1160-67; vIII, 10-11). His seeming magic is so evasive as to escape the odium which attached to serious magic in the middle ages (later at least, for civilization advanced in two centuries; see Kittredge Anniversary Papers, Boston, 1913, pp. 349-50; Tatlock, Scene of Frankl. T. (London, 1914), pp. 30-37; also pp. 266 above and 284 below). His easy removal of the rocks of Stonehenge (vIII, 12) seems in part due to some superfine engineering, and the transforming of Uther into Gorlois' figure (viii, 19) to 'medicamina.' Geoffrey's ideas will stand scrutiny less often than Chaucer's and Dante's. In the Historia there is no suggestion of madness (but Merlin's emotional weeping before prophesying shows Geoffrey's intelligence about abnormality, - vii, 3, viii, 15). His resorting to favorite springs in the valley of Galabes (viii, 10, vii, 4) is not for their curative power. In him of the Vita, on the other hand, there is nothing of the preternatural (unless his prophetic power), which is essential in him of the Historia. In his original in Nennius there is nothing except his divination, and no indication of its source unless his own marvelous origin. In the three works one sees a strengthening of Geoffrey's 1 Rolls. Ser., vi, 133, 196, v, 401. rationalism. 2 This one is with the Leyden MS. of the Historia (which is not later than 1138), but is prefixed to the whole volume (which contains much besides the Historia), and must be later than the Historia part. The allusion to the Vita confirms the date of the Vita as not much after 1148. See Delisle in Bibl. Xc. des Chartes,LXXI,506-509; Faral, II, 0-22.
Geoffrey of Monmouth's Vita Merlini
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rather than to some north-British tradition for the existence of which no evidence whatever exists. Another notable appearance of silvesterheads in a later hand the first Lailoken narrative above described, -'Vita Merlini siluestris';1 inappropriate as a heading to the ensuing anecdotes of Lailoken, it shows recognition of the resemblances between the two madmen's stories, and is plainly a reminiscence of the Vita; though it does not necessarily imply belief in two Merlins. Silvester was a natural label for Merlin of the Vita. To say nothing of his life in the forest, and of him as wild or insane (sauvage comes from silvaticus), near the beginning (1. 80) the poet says of him, 'Fit siluester homo.'2 The earliest appearance of Merlinus 'Caledonius' seems to be in the works of Gerald de Barri, who may have given this phrase and even the separate identity much of their later vogue.3 It comes of course straight from the Vita, where nemus, patulae, silvae Calidonis appear constantly4 as Merlin's resort, and is almost equivalent to Silvester, for Calidon in other passages is forested (275, 1281), and called by Merlin 'my Calidon' (1288). Though not a synonym for Scotland it is thereabouts,5 and of course was taken by Geoffrey from the Historia, - 'nemus Colidonis' or 'Calidonis,' a forested region vaguely in the north.6 'Caledonius' and 'Caledonia' and their various forms applied to Scotland are at the very
1 Romania, xxII, 514-515; Ward, Catal. of Rom., i, 290-291. The MS is of the 15th century. 2 The same phrase used of Lailoken (Romania, xxrI, 516),- Kentigern prays 'pro illo siluestri homine.' - The name Myrddin Wyllt is sometimes given the prophet in much later Welsh. See, with thanks to Dr T. P. Cross, J. G. Evans, Report on MSS in Welsh, II, i, 307-308, etc.; E. J. L. Jones, Mynegai i Farddoniaeth (Cardiff, 1928), pp. 210, 292. The (g)wyllt (savage, wild) shows nothing as to M. Silvester before Geoffrey, but is undoubtedly a mere translation of silvester: 'Wild Wales' is a very old phrase; see also Rolls ed. of Giraldus Cambr., i, ix. 3 Indexes to Gir. Cambr. in Rolls Ser., vols. v, vr, viii, list some three dozen occurrences of all the Merlins. See also Chambers, Arth. of Brit., p. 99; Bruce, Evol. of Arth. Rom., I, 143; Parry, p. 16 (with whom one must differ). Such a passage as vi, 199 (on Merlin's madness) is clearly based on V. M., which Gerald of course knew; for the different identity of M. A. and M. C. or S., see v, 279, 401-402, vi, 133, 196. The only possible instance of Gerald identifying the two Merlins found by Mrs Dempster after thorough search is vmII,216, probably due to Gerald's carelessness (cf. v, 374). The curious habit as late as the sixteenth century of nicknaming Gerald himself Silvester is found (as Mrs Dempster shows me) in Bale's Scriptorum ... Catalogus, R. Stanyhurst's De Rebus in Hibernia, S. White's Apologia pro Hibernia. Gerald denies (III, 206) that he is 'sylvester,' uncivilized, as his enemies call him, but admits he may be 'campester.' Who can decide whether this may have some connection with Gerald's frequent talk of Merlin Silvester, or is a mere gibe at his race and personality? Or whether Gerald used 'Caledonius' of Merlin to avoid suggesting the 'Sylvester,' which he had resented? One cannot over-state Gerald's humanness and vanity. There is no indication of any connection with Gerald's earlier French contemporary Bernardus Silvestris (unknown why so called). 4 L. 132, 241, 244-245, 250, 1255. 6 Scocia, Scoti, etc., in 11.27, 60, 605, 610, 613, 969, 1095. 6 VII, 4, early; ix, 3. Classical Latin lexicographers and other moderns suggest that Caled- is the Welsh celydd (pl. celyddon), found from the late twelfth century, and meaning a woody place, a retreat. 'Coed Keliton' (Forest of Keliton) occurs four times in the Black Book of Carmarthen of the late twelfth century, in a poem connected in some way with the Vita (see the index in J. G. Evans' edition, and Skene, Four Anc. Bks., i, 370-373; also elsewhere in Welsh). This phrase is obviously the same as silva or saltus Calidonius of Pliny, Florus and Martianus Capella; and as 'silva Celidonis,' 'Coit Celidon,' in 'Nennius' (56), the scene of one of Arthur's battles, whence it reached the Historia (ix, 3). See also Nitze in Mod. Philol., xxxix, 8; Loth in Rev. Celt., XLVII, 1-9. The location in
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least extremely scarce in the middle ages.' Various of the MSS of the Vita from the later thirteenth century on have one or other epithet in a colophon or the like.2 There is every reason to believe that they come only from the Vita, and not from some imagined tradition. Needless here to list all the occurrences of either word or both together, numerous to the sixteenth century, especially in prophecies.3 IV The preceding paragraphs contain abundant evidence for at least hearsay influence of the Vita, as well as for its originality. There is much evidence for more exact knowledge of its contents in the last half of the twelfth century and later; more than one might expect from a comparatively slim showing of MSS. First, though only one complete MS exists, this is of the late thirteenth century, which shows that some demand continued; and there are several partial MSS, and evidence of some now lost; which is not so bad for a poem (later outmoded as we shall see) of the mid-twelfth century.4 Nearly half the Vita (11. 1-1291 with
the above is vague, but in northern Britain. The word 'Caledonian' here (though connected) is not quite in the same line of tradition as Caledonia stern and wild, Meet nurse for a poetic child. 1 They are not in the mediaeval Latin dictionaries of Ducange and of J. H. Baxter and C. Johnson. Wide search in the more likely writers, mediaeval and modern, turns up nothing. They occur of course in classical writers from the first century. Only in Gerald de Barri and later writers do we find them, and applied only to Merlin (so I am assured by Mrs Dempster, who has carefully searched). These words never appear in Geoffrey's Historia; the country is Albania or sometimes Scotia, the people Scoti, twice Albani (v, 4, VII, 4). 2 Faral, II, 29; Ward, Catal. of Romances, I, 288, 290. (Strangely omitted in Faral's and Parry's editions.) Further, some of the condensed MSS of the Vita deliberately omit the verses 680-3 which make the identity of the two Merlins clear, as if the non-identity was by that time an article of belief (Parry, p. 70; U. of Ill. photostats). 3 With the vogue of prophecy in the later middle ages, a new father for it in a new Merlin was welcome. See Ward, Catal. of Romances,I, 288-317; Catal. of Addit. to MSS in B. M., 1916-20 (London, 1933), p. 284; M. R. James, Catal. of C. C. C. C. (Camb., 1911-2), ii, 117; James, Western MSS. of T. C. C. (Camb., 1900-2), ii, 154; Catal. Libr. MSS Angl. et Hib. (Oxf., 1697), pp. 78, 113, 337; Catal. Cott. Libr. B. M. (London, 1802), p. 614; MSS in LambethPalace (Camb., 1930), p. 288; J. J. Smith, MSS in Gonville and Caius (Camb., 1849), p. 132; Catal. of Ashmolean MSS (Oxf., 1845). Most or all of the above are in prophecies. Other occurrences of the epithets are in Higden, Polychron. (Rolls. Ser.), i, 418-421 (has no doubt of two different Merlins); Eulogium Hist. (Rolls. Ser.), II, 137-138; also Holinshed (see index); and seemingly Bale, and John Hardyng. Sometimes calling him of the Historia Merlinus Ambrosius may show acquaintance with M. Silv. or M. Cal.; but not necessarily, e.g., not in Ordericus Vitalis (Soc. Hist. France, vol. iv, 486), who merely takes this double name from Geoffrey's Historia itself (vi, 19; VII, 3, early). Further, anyone could see that Geoffrey's Merlinus is developed from Nennius' Ambrosius (42), Ordericus being familiar with 'Nennius.' Though his good editor le Prevost does not name the latter among the sources, 'Nennius' was doubtless bound up, as usually in the middle ages, with Gildas, whom the editor does name; and more, Ordericus got from 'Nennius' the spelling Guortigernus and his account of the red and white dragons interpreted by Merlin (iv, 486-489;Hist. Brit., 42-43, etc.). For modern works touching on Merlin Silv. and Caled. see W. E. Mead in Merlin (E. E. T. S., 1899), I, clxxxv ff.; and Miss M. E. Griffiths, Early Vaticination in Welsh (Cardiff, 1937), pp. 77 ff. (ill-judged). 4 See Parry, pp. 21-22. I have fully examined, through the good offices of the University of Illinois

many omissions), some 700 lines, is inserted at a suitable chronological point in four MSS of Higden's Polychronicon. Further, there are two very late MSS of extracts from the Vita prophecies. A considerable passage bearing on Avalon is quoted somewhere about 1400 by John of Glastonbury. John Leland quotes the Vita, from a copy which he found at Glastonbury, perhaps that used by John; and Leland's friend Sir John Price also quotes it.1 There is no reason for surprise at the scarcity of copies. The Historia multiplied because it was trusted as history, which Geoffrey deliberately disclaimed for the Vita in its opening words. Even the mid-thirteenth century Latin verse version of the Historia called Gesta Regum Britanniae is known in only three MSS.2 People who wished history found less value in poetic outgrowths. Later I discuss other reasons for loss of vogue by the Vita. There is no reason to doubt that plenty of MSS existed in its early years. But there is much other evidence of vogue.3 Further cases where the Vita has been thought to have been used for the location and description of Avalon are in the Gesta Regum Britanniae,4 in De Antiquitate Glaston. Eccl.,5 and in the poem Normannicus Draco by Stephen of Rouen.6 Other cases where the Vita may very probably have influenced ideas of Avalon and its queen and her marvelous powers of healing are in Chretien's and Hartmann's Erec, one of the Percival romances and La Mort le roi Artus,7 and in 'Layamon's Brut'8 (this last probably through hearsay). Further, the Briton poet Taliessin while probably early familiar to the
Library, photostats of the partial MSS, Cott. Vespasian E IV being the only complete one. In Harl. 655, Royal 13 E i, Cott. Jul. E VIII, and Cott. Titus A XIX, described above, the excerpting is not done with discrimination, - looks as if a dullard had merely meant to put in about a half. While disjudgment is shown in the circumstances by omitting much of the pseudoscientific and historical courses, some of the diverting incidents are also omitted, including the last 238 11.with the idyllic ending. The narrative is far from rounded out, nor even severely from the 'historic' part. Probably it was the reputation of the Historia as important history which produced this heedless selection from Geoffrey's second work. 1 Faral, II, 429-430; H. L. D. Ward, Catal. of Romances, I, 279, 287-288; J.Leland, Collectanea(Oxford, 1715), II, 16-17. Leland was not confined to the Polychronicon abridgement, since he quotes from the ending of V. M. 2 Ed. Fr.-Michel (Cambrian Archaeol. Assoc., 1862), pp. vii f.; Ward, Catal. of Romances, I, 274. 3 I disregard resemblances in Welsh poems in the Black Book of Carmarthen, owing to the uncertainty as to their dates and origins. On the possibility of their debt to the Vita see Faral, II, 371, 373; Bruce, I, 130; Lot, Annales de Bret., xv, 515-520; L. A. Paton, M. L. N., xvIII, 169. Without being a Celtist, I should favor this view. For the contrary opinion, Parry, V. M., p. 127, Philol. Quarterly, Iv, 197-198, 202-205. At any rate it is hard to believe that such highly conscious lyric poems would have been handed down for a long time by word of mouth. Possibly mediaeval English scholars have a grievance against Celtists for doing so little to establish the date of the language of these poems. Geoffrey may just as possibly as another, to say the least, have been the first to devise conversations between Merlin and Taliessin. 4 Ll. 4213-34; fully accepted by Faral, Chambers, less positively by R. H. Fletcher (Arth. Mater., p. 167); and see L. A. Paton (Fairy Mythol., pp. 45-47). 5 Faral, I, 429. 6 Mod. Philol., xxxI, 13, 15-16. 7 Lot, Romania, XLV,16-22; the last ed. by Sommer, Vulg. Rom., vi, 238, 381-382. 8 Better called Lawman's Historia Britonum (ed. Madden, ii and II, 11. 23067-73, 28610-17). Chambers (p. 105) agrees here; Bruce is not unfavorable (i, 33). Neither passage is in Wace, Lawman's source.
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Welsh appears in Latin only in 'Nennius' (merely named among five poets)1 before the Vita, where he is so prominent, and which is therefore the likeliest source for later general knowledge of him. There are other indications of influence. In the Annales Cambriae,in a MS of the thirteenth century but not in the earlier MS, we read 'Merlinus insanus effectus est'; we may well follow Lot and Parry in believing this due to the Vita;2 Merlin's sensational plight had become notorious. It is certain that Gerald de Barri knew the Vita; in view of seeming echoes, and of his opportunities, his wide curiosity and reading, his interest in the Welsh past, and his constant discrimination between the Merlin of the Historia and Merlin Silvester or Caledonius, we must agree in this with Paris, Lot and evidently Chambers.3 I disregard other and less convincing possibilities of influence, e.g., borrowings of mere proper names. Influence of the Vita on the later Arthur-romances4 is the most extensive and essential. Two of Merlin's marvelous divinations, about the shoe buying and the three-fold death (of which the former is not in Lailoken) are in two prose Merlinromances of the thirteenth century,5 and were probably in the lost portion of Robert de Boron's late twelfth-century romance of Merlin. One or two critics have not accepted the Vita as the source; yet since in all these works it is Merlin of whom the anecdotes are told, and unless one makes the gratuitous assumption that Geoffrey was using some now unknown but highly-developed Merlin-story, one must agree with Lot, Bruce and Chambers that the Vita is the source. This opinion is clinched by the appearance of many other resemblances here to the
1 Not in all texts, but in the good Harl. 3859 (11-12 cent.), 62, in the 'Saxon genealogies.' Thelesin, Teleusin (Wace, Brut, 4972-93 in de Lincy's ed., 4855-76 in Arnold's, reappearing as Teilesin in Lawman, 11.9090-9169) as a Briton prophet of Christ's coming, at the time of Christ, seems likeliest to be a negligent recollection of Geoffrey's Vita Merlini, in a work which is based on his Historia. This extraordinary mixture of chronology is due of course to sheer ignorance and heedlessness, which should surprise no one into elaborate surmise as to oral tradition, and is often paralleled; in the Merlin prose-romance edited by H. O. Sommer (Vulgate Romances, II, 281) Merlin leaves Arthur and goes to 'Romenie,' the emperor of which then is Julius Caesar. A personage in a late romance of the Tristan cycle is son of 'Fee Morghe' and Julius Caesar (Zt. rom. Philol., xxv, 653); in two poor texts of the Roman de Troie (11.8023-26) she is vainly in love with Hector, which shows scribes were not shocked by such chronology. - The reference to 'Thelesinus' falsely implied to be in Peter of Blois by de Lincy (Wace's Brut, II, 359), is from a note in de Goussainville's scarce edition which note has much on later mediaeval scholarly skepticism about Merlin as a prophet, and has things which show knowledge of the Vita among such writers. Peter himself makes curious remarks about Merlin (Migne, P. L., CCVII, 811, 1124). On Taliessin, J. M. Jones, Y Cymmrodor,xxxvIIm, 1-290. 2 H. Petrie, Mon. Histor. Brit., I, 831; Rolls Ser. ed., p. 5. For the scholars mentioned see Ann. de Bret., xv, 531-532; Philol. Quarterly, iv, 207. On Gerald de Barri's knowledge of Merlin's madness see p. 273 above. 3 Romania, xIr, 375-376; Ann. de Bret., xv, 334 (suggesting that Merlin's prophecies found by Gerald at Nevyn may have been those in the Vita or a derivative); Arth. of Brit., p. 99. Gerald would have seen the Vita at latest in 1192-98, when he was in Lincoln (Rolls. Ser ed., I, lvi); there would be a copy at the see-city of the dedicatee. We have seen above (p. 272) that in 1188-91 he states that there were two Merlins. 4 See above also on Avalon. I have mentioned above the possible origin in the Vita of a poem by Matthew of Vendome, and of the Lailoken narrative. 6 Ed. by G. Paris and J. Ulrich (Soc. Anc. T. Franc., 1886), I, 48-49, 80-84; Vulgate Romances, ed. Sommer, ii, 28-29, 45-47.
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Vita, especially the two other divinations (adultery detected by leaf, the secretly rich beggar), appearing later in the longer of these two prose Merlins.l Some critics seem unaware that all four Vita divinations are in the longer Merlin. I defer (to pp. 284 ff.) the probable influence of the madness of Merlin in the Vita upon that of others in later romance. For the matters mentioned in this and the preceding paragraphs some may appeal to 'a common source' in tradition or lost literature, but for this there is no hint of presumption or evidence, merely that a priori assumption in favor of oral tradition which was so common a generation or two ago, and mediaeval hazy notions (especially in Gerald de Barri) about the two Merlins which have been fully accounted for above. A second work during the vogue of the Historia would be bound to attract much notice immediately, though perhaps losing it later; one might say, like a second and inferior novel today by the author of a first novel which had proved a 'best-seller.' It is especially incredible that anyone would write a prodigious romance on Merlin without knowing a Life of Merlin by the eminent Geoffrey. Not in every case above must the writer have read the whole Vita; and the poem is sensational enough so that much of its gist and spicy detail would survive through hearsay. Its seeming relative lack of popularity was not so marked as the slim MS-tradition might suggest; the vogue of the poem began promptly owing to its authorship, originality and sensational timeliness, but owing to its incongruities, which moderns also feel, did not continue into the generations whence most mediaeval MSS have come down to us. Its lack of harmonious unity of spirit would not have baulked mediaeval readers as it baulks us. A full appraisal of the relation of the Vita to the whole Arthurian cycle of romance is still a desideratum. The plain conclusion must be that in its own day the Vita was well known. V We come now to closer quarters with the poem as a whole. King of the south Welsh and long a prophet, Merlin becomes violent and melancholy-mad because his three younger brothers are among many killed under him in battle against the Scots; he frantically takes to the Caledonian woods, and lives many months alone among the beasts.2 Drawn hopefully back to his grieving sister Ganieda's Scottish court by a skilled musician sent by her, he is maddened again in the concourse of people and only by force is restrained from flight. His divinations concerning her adultery follow, her tricks to discredit him, and his exposure of her tricks, which vindicates him later; also his rejection of his wife and permission for her to remarry, his flight again to his sad wild life in the woods, return in fantastic guise with remarkable gifts for his now remarried wife, his killing the husband, escape and recapture. Here come his two other divinations, and final return to the woods. Hence to the end (11.580-1529) there is mostly a series of
1 See Sommer, pp. 282-291; some of L. A. Paton's comments and reasoning (PMLA, xxII, 248268, esp. 266-268) will seem to some mechanical and unacceptable, and to beg the question. 2 With a mild suggestion of lycanthropy, as in the charming passage beginning 'Tu lupe care comes' (102-112); later a group of madmen behave 'more lupino' (1417-22). 'Lycanthropy' is vague; see, mentioned on pp. 281, 282 below, Zilboorg, pp. 105, 167, 169, and Oesterreich, Demon. Possess., p. 191.
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discourses. First are his prophecies as to wars and politics in the manner of those in book vII of the Historia; he is joined by the sage Telgesinus, and from the two come discourses on the constitution of the universe, strange fishes and their ways, islands and their denizens, more foretellings, history. He is permanently cured by drinking from a newly-erupted spring; which occasion Telgesinus improves by telling of many other springs and waters. Then arrive Merlin's princes with a request to resume his throne, whom he refuses, and regales with talk about birds wondrous in their habits. The pair are joined by another madman cured by the same spring, and by Merlin's now widowed and reformed sister, to whom the gift of prophecy passes after leaving Merlin; and the four continue to lead an enlightened, pious and comfortable life in the woodland. Such is the cheerful ending of this heterogeneous poem. What makes the Vita less unaccountable than it seems is that it was not meant seriously, as the very first line assures us, Fatidici uatis rabiemmusamqueiocosam Merlinicantareparo. This means a jeu d'esprit, jocus spiritus,l a light, entertaining poem on Merlin and his madness. Jocosus keeps recurring all though. Merlin addresses 'iocosis uerbis' the musician who restores him (201-2); his brother-in-law finds a treasure through his means, 'uatemque iocosus adorat' (532). The two sages capture a noisy violent madman, and make him sit with them, that his speech may excite their 'risusque iocosque loquendo' (1392). Notably there is a constant recurrence of smiles and laughter, and it abounds in grotesque ironical incidents. Merlin's frequent melancholy is merely a part of his transitory insanity, and the reader is kept in a genial frame of mind. The poet intends, as he warns us from the first and throughout, a very different work from the serious-seeming and ambitious Historia.2 The Last Years of Merlin were not like the first; the infirm grip and wavering step with which Geoffrey follows them allows one to guess (as suggested above) that we may have here something like a 'command performance,'3that we have not a spontaneous generation of Geoffrey's own brain. At all events, the phrase 'musamque iocosam' is the most significant thing in the poem for understanding it. The last two-thirds of the poem are political and racial prophecies, pseudohistory, and extravagant details about the wonders of nature, interspersed with short picturesque incidents. The first two partly repeat and have the same inter1 Consider joculator(jongleur), jocale,jocalia (jewels);also joc- in J. H. Baxter and C. Johnson's Med.Lat. Word-List (Oxford,1934).Jocosusdoes not meanhumorous. 2 But the Historiahas its lightertouches;witnessgiant Ritho and his fur of kings'beards,Brianus finalchaffat the historiansWilliamand Henry and his venisoncut fromhis ownthigh, and Geoffrey's
3 If we had not the dedicatee Robertde Chesneyto think of, we mighthavethe youngPlantagenet, chief patron,the bookish later Henry ii, who a few years beforehad been broughtup by Geoffrey's matEarl Robertof Gloucester, had and himselflikedscholars, goodreasonfor interestin Arthurian anothermatter-of-fact ters, and evidentlyencouraged religiousto try his unskilledhand at imaginathere. tion. See an articleon Stephenof Rouen,M. P., xxxI, esp. 124-195,and references
(x, 3; xnI, 4, 20).
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est as the like in the Historia. The incidents show Geoffrey's skill in narration (as we saw), shown already in the Historia, by breaking up the heavier by the lighter; the discourses being broken successively by the death of Ganieda's husband, the coming of Telgesinus, the freshly-erupting spring, its cure of Merlin, his refusal of his throne, its cure of another madman, and the final union of the four of them. Assuredly the wonders of nature which are the chief thing in the second half are meant as iocosa. As such a feature they are highly unusual in narration,' and are treated in a way equally unusual, conspicuous evasion of vouching for their truth. Such evasive statements as dicuntur, fertur, perhibentur,used in the Vita almost never elsewhere,2 are so plentifully sprinkled among the marvels3 as completely to shuffle off responsibility for truth, and to mark the aim as not instruction but entertainment. With such an attitude who would not have been interested in she-fish which reproduce by means of snakes (11. 830 ff.), goatwomen who in speed outstrip hares (898 f.), two islands which have gold and silver for common stones (900 f.)? Eleven marvels are qualified by such evasions between lines 803 and 900, with nearly three dozen in two or three hundred lines, so that the words become tiresome. Similar marvels with fertur, etc., are two Boeotian springs which make the drinker remember or forget (1194 f.) one in Epirus which will ignite a torch (1231 f.), one elsewhere too cold to approach by day and too hot by night (1233 ff.); ten such between 1185 and 1247. The Memnonides birds fly every fifth year to the tomb of Memnon to lament the death of this Trojan hero (1378 ff.); eight such between 1312 and 1378. All these marvels without the disclaimers of responsibility would be received by the most readers, not as by us with prompt fatigue, perhaps contempt, but with interest which raised little question between belief and disbelief. The mediaeval was far less prone than we to ask, - Is it true? He just listened, with his imagination. But by his evasions Geoffrey puts these marvels in a different class from other things; he belonged among and wrote for more critical people than most of us are aware were alive in the twelfth century. He meant the marvels ad narrandum non ad probandum,- as iocosa, like the rest of the poem.
1 Faral (ii, 377) encourages one to draw a slapdash parallel with the Roman de Thebesand Roman d'Eneas as to 'curiosities borrowed from natural history.' It is not correct that these romances are full of them; and they reject many chances for them. Occasionally merely the authors' misguided erudition led them to put in their very straightaway narration enough of these to make it more vivid and intelligible. See especially Eneas (Bibl. Normannica, no. iv), pp. lxviii f. Any suggestion of congeniality with the Vita is misleading. I find no contemporary parallel to the Vita here. The much earlier 'Nennius' (Historia Britonum, 67-75), from whose Ambrosius Geoffrey had got his Merlin, ends with the brief Mirabilia of Britain, a little like those in the Vita, but used in no such manner.Today there is an amusing parallel in the shrewd use of 'the wonders of nature' in The National Geographic Magazine, which has so wide an appeal, to make money for scientific research. 2 The only case I note is in 1110, - Arthur 'transire uolens ut fertur.' 3 L1. 803-940, 1179-1253, 1292-1386. Occasionally these words mean merely 'are reckoned as' (11.746, 859, 888). Such evasive words are often used in the chief source of the marvels, Isidor's Etymologiae, but Geoffrey much oftener uses them where Isidor does not than omits them where he does. And Geoffrey was never a dull plodding copyist, but very much aware.
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Geoffreyof Monmouth's Vita Merlini VI
One sign of the light mood of the poem is probably the insanity itself. Though it was an explanation of Merlin's prophetic powers which would appeal to the rationalistic Geoffrey, others were at hand, as we shall see. Not only is the madman met in the woods an occasion for laughter and sport,1 but Merlin's own madness is indicated in line 1 as the object of the 'musam iocosam.' The poet constantly has insanity on his mind. Various madmen appear,2 and among the wonders of nature a half-dozen times are causes and cures of insanity,3 some astonishing and even laughable. Later I show plenty of cases of a light attitude to insanity in the middle ages, which notoriously was usual later, and would be forced on us today for spiritual self-defence if insanity were a commoner sight; the 'emotional instability' as well as the delusions would inevitably be amusing to the tough-minded sane. Now as to background for the insanity, in literature and in fact. Besides a few similarities in Celtic already mentioned, in the experience of the mad Merlin there are scriptural reminiscences. Nebuchadnezzar like him abandons his kingdom, lives in the wilderness with beasts, till 'sensus meus redditus est mihi,' 'reversus est ad me,' and his lords seek him out to restore his kingdom to him, as in the Vita.4 King Saul5 prophesies through Spiritus Domini (though he has a malign spirit also, and at times himself is malign); so Merlin and his sister prophesy through a spiritus clearly not evil (1470, 1522). As Merlin is restored by music, - singing and the playing of a cithara, so is Saul by David playing a cithara.6 We cannot ignore technical medical literature mediaeval and modern. Insanity and its treatment were of course ill understood in the middle ages, though it was far more conspicuous than to-day because cases not dangerous to others were usually neglected and allowed at large.7 Such theory as there was came down from the ancients, and was liable to be muddled up with superstitions of pagan, Christian, and folk origin. The subject is very baffling, and no wonder the few modern historians of psychiatry contribute little to knowledge. Such men naturally are not familiar with mediaeval literary and historical writings, which give an idea of insanity as it was, and of how it was regarded and treated; but also
1 'Cogunt ut moueat risusque iocosque loquendo' (1392). 2 .1. 321, 1387, 1417-18. 3 1197, 1201, 1203, 1256-57, 1387, 1408-41. A parallel to the last case, a malady or bodily damage strangely caused and cured by eating or drinking something, is in H. Oesterley's Gesta Romanorum (Berlin, 1872), p. 468, and in Hilka's Hist. Sept. Sap. (Heidelberg, 1912-13), I, 13. In the long French prose romance of Lancelot, he is badly poisoned by a spring (Sommer, Vulgate Rom., v, 71-73). Also see 11.1145-53, and p. 270 above. Faral mentions a more remote Irish parallel (pp. 362-363), as well as classical ones. See also Bruce, Arth. Rom., I, 438; and especially L. A. Paton, 4 L1. 209, 115, 1160, 1259-63; Daniel, iv, 28-34. M. L. N., xvIII, 163-164. I Sam., x, 10-11, xix, 23. A modern diagnosis of these two cases is in J. R. Whitwell, 5 'Prophetare,' Historical Notes on Psychiatry (Phila., 1937), pp. 21-24. 6 L1. 166, 206, 226; called also lira, 204. And see I Sam., xvI, 23. 7 Dangerous cases were imprisoned; J. H. Baas, Outl. Hist. of Medicine of (tr. Handerson, N. Y., 1910), p. 347; Fosseyeux (below), p. 22; Neuburger (below), II, i. 116.
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(for whatever reason) they almost entirely neglect the numerous mediaeval Latin medical works, which give vastly more than theory, and which show some genuine perception. Intelligible though the fact may be, it is only fair to say that all modern accounts of mediaeval psychiatry are superficial and misleading.1 There is a rich though to some uninviting field for research, using all the records both medical, philosophical, historical and imaginative, on the mediaeval theory, treatment and attitude toward madness. Perhaps more system would come out of the confusion than appears now. At any rate everything shows that the mad were treated with more humanity and practical good sense than in some later centuries.2In fact this is the most cheerful part of the picture, for from the second to the nineteenth century psychiatry lagged behind the rest of medical science (not dropped out as some say), and made little progress of any kind. Good sense and mercy did better than misguided theory. Two main lines of tradition emerge and often merge in mediaeval ideas of
1 I suppose the least inadequate discussions are that by Th. Kirchhoff, Geschichted. Psychiatrie, in Handbuch d. Psychiatrie, ed. G. Aschaffenburg (Leipzig u. Wien, 1912), Allgem. Teil, Abt. 4, ppj 3-Q8 (extensive bibliography, pp. 3-6); and that by Gregory Zilboorg and G. W. Henry, History of Medical Psychology (N. Y., 1941). Dr Zilboorg ignores almost all the mediaeval Latin authorities, stating erroneously (p. 127) that they do not discuss mental diseases; his work is far from 'exhaustive, and his mediaeval chapters far from 'masterly,' as stated by a flattering review in The Saturday Review of Literature, 17 Jan., 1942. M. Fosseyeux, 'Cure balneaire et thaumaturgique des Alienes au moyenage,' in Bull. de la soc. franQ.d'hist. de la medecine,xxxIII, 21-32 (1939) is serviceable; he uses records and historical works. Bruno Cassinelli,'Storia della pazzia, 1936 (French tr., Paris, 1939), is misnamed, miscellaneous, undocumented and amateurish. L. S. Selling, Men against Madness, contributes nothing. Strangely enough the best starting point, which shows there is hope of important results for the history of psychiatry, is by a historian of literature, J. L. Lowes, in Mod. Philol., xi, 491-546, writing on madness due to love ('heroical love') as viewed by mediaeval authorities, and showing in what detail it and its treatment were discussed by a dozen or two mediaeval Latin and Arabic authorities (the latter in Latin translations). Doubtless one reason why these are almost ignored by modern historians of psychiatry is their inaccessibility, few or none printed since the sixteenth century. They show once more that mediaevals had far more sense and experience, even in science, than superficial moderns are disposed to realize. - The shorter general histories of medicine have almost nothing of importance, in the mediaeval part sometimes flying the danger-signal of a rhetorical style. Longer histories mention mediaeval medical writers who should be looked up; such histories are H. Haeser, Gesch. d. Medicin (Jena, 1875-81), and above all M. Neuburger and J. Pagel, Handbuch d. Gesch. d. Medizin (Jena, 1902), I, 447-756; see also Neuburger's Hist of Medicine (tr. E. Playfair, London, 1910- General histories 25), which drops a little on insanity, - I, 336, 386, II, i, 29, 75, 115-116, 118-135. of science have little on so unscientific a subject; see L. Thorndike, Hist. of Magic and Exper. Sci. (N. Y., 1923), II, 142-143, etc. - There is little discrimination between the half-witted ('courtfools' appear as far back as William I) and the insane, among either mediaeval writers or moderns, and rarely between various types of insanity; but the Arabs were more discriminating than the Christians (Zilboorg, p. 123; but see Lowes, pp. 495, 498, etc.). As to fools see E. Welsford, The Fool (N. Y., 1935 ?), esp. pp. 114, 125; Romania, xxII, 507); Jocelin's Vita Kentegerni, chap. 45. I have searched widely, in far more works than are mentioned in this article. I mention also H. E. Sigerist, Medical Lit. of Early M. A., in Bull. of Hist. of Med., II, 26-50; see also vIII, 781-782, on the extraordinary St Hildegard of Bingen's views on insanity. H. Crohns has written on 'amor hereos,' in ancient and especially mediaeval times, in Ofversigtaf Finska Vetenskaps SocietetensForhandlingar, XLIX, and Archivf. Kultur-Gesch., III, 66-86 (my thanks to Professor Archer Taylor).-It may be that social tolerance and sympathy encouraged the actual occurrence of love-madness in the later Middle Ages. 2 See, e.g., Zilboorg, p. 143.
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insanity, the classical and semi-scientific, and the mythological or religious (to ignore a vast amount of miscellaneous hocus-pocus). The former was bound up with the theory of the four humors, which (especially the black bile) were thought the cause of insanity, and the purgation of which might relieve it. Galen made this last claim.' Diet, bleeding, drugs, baths, soothing words, cheerful surroundings and music also were recommended.2The insane were admitted to 'hospitals' and religious houses;3 not all were abandoned to their fate. The mythological or religious tradition involved chiefly possession by spirits, evil spirits in the mediaeval view, though with characteristic vagueness not all the mad were thought to be possessed. This idea was bound up with supposed prophetic powers in the insane.4 Healing at holy wells or springs may de facto have had some vague connection with the semi-scientific purgation;5 and of course various religious rites were used, including invocations of special saints, and relics and pilgrimages.6 In mediaeval non-technical literature (mostly latish) there is here and there a lifelike picture of the light and the humane attitudes to the insane. St Romualdus, Italian abbot of the eleventh century, learning of a smart plan for murdering him to secure his body for relics, feigns madness and is thus spared, - 'corpus laedere dedignati sunt.'7 A compassionate and merciful attitude to the insane is shown by Gerald de Barri; also in Piers Plowman.8 In various versions of the Lailoken story the madman, though tormented by the ignorant, is treated kindly
1 Opera Omnia (Leipzig, 1821-33), vii, 202, xi, 341, xvii, ii, 624. See also Zilboorg, pp. 45, 50, 57, (Paris, 1930-32), I, 71, 92, 105, 114, etc.; R. Semelaigne, Les. pionniers de la psychiatrie frang... 10, 17; Cassinelli, p. 431; and A. O'Brien-Moore, Madness in Ancient Literature (Princeton diss., Weimar, 1924), p. 29. There is less light than might be expected in Robert Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy; but see I, i, 3; I, ii, 1, 2; I, ii, 3, 4; I, ii, 4, 7; II, ii, 6, 3; II, iv, 2. 2 Fosseyeux, pp. 22, 25, 32; Zilboorg, pp. 63, 124, 127, 137-138; J. R. Whitwell, Histor. Notes on Psychiatry (Phila., 1937), pp. 21-24, 37, 70 (ancients, very little on middle ages). 3 Fosseyeux, pp. 22-23, 25-26; Kirchhoff, p. 26. 4 T. K. Oesterreich, Possession Demonaical and Other(N. Y., 1930; tr. Ibberson from Die Besessenheit, 1921), esp. pp. 176, 186; Fosseyeux, pp. 28 f.; Zilboorg, p. 107. See also Gerald de Barri (Rolls Ser.), v, 130-131. The ancients believed the same, -see O'Brien-Moore, pp. 96 ff., 133, 160; F. Cumont, L'lgypte des Astrologues (Brussels, 1937), p. 168. So did the Irish; see Buile Suibhne (described above), pp. 105, 141, 145; also Welsford, The Fool, p. 97, who says also the Slavs, p. 77. As to the Bible, see Whitwell, pp. 21, 27. -'Prophecy' is ambiguous, may mean foretelling, or utterance which sounds impressive or mysterious. On the origin and reception of mediaeval political prophecy I venture to refer to 'Geoffrey of Monmouth and Regnum Scotorum' in SPECULUM, 138-139; and IX, on the attitude toward pseudo-science discussed above to Mod. Philol., xxxI, 5, 17-18, 123, and SPEC., VIII, 223. - Madness was associated with various supernatural powers, not only prophecy but magic; see Kirchhoff, pp. 24-25, and much other evidence. Therefore the mad Merlin of the Vita was a natural realistic development from the more mysterious prophet and (evasively) magician of the Historia. 5 See D. H. Tuke, Chaptersin Hist. of Insane in British Isles (London, 1882), pp. 11-19; Zilboorg, p. 42. 6 Cure of lunacy by saints and their relics, pilgrimages and the like was to be expected, and of course still is reputed to go on. See Jocelin's Vita Kentegerni, chaps. 34, 41, 44; the prose Lancelot (below); Gerald de Barri (Rolls Ser., vII, 127, 134); Adolph Franz, Kirchl. Benediktionen (Freiburg, 1909). I, 524-527, 540 ff., 551-586; Fosseyeux, pp. 22-23, 27; Kirchhoff, pp. 23, 26, 28. 7 Migne, Patrol. Lat., CXLIV, 966-967. 8 Giraldus (Rolls Ser.), II, 134; P. Pl. (ed. Skeat), C-text, x, 105-136.

by their betters; he causes amusement, in one version is a court-fool, is possessed by a devil, and is not cured. His prophecies come from Christ according to him, according to others from the devil. The account is realistic.' Tristan, suddenly appearing disguised as a thoroughly insane court-fool, though ill-used and ridiculed by townspeople, is good-naturedly laughed at but kindly treated by the better sort, who do not recognize him.2 In a debate as to the souls of suicides, though damned if the cause is 'sola tristitia et desperatio,' there is no doubt of their salvation if they are irrational 'furiosi et fatui,' provided they die in a state of charity.3 A short interesting article by E. A. Wright4 cites a number of French romances and plays, all later than the Vita, from the twelfth to the fourteenth century, mostly showing a realistic, reasonable, humane attitude, much as in the Vita, with cures mostly by kindness and rest, less by religious or 'scientific' means. A similar attitude in Arthurian romance I defer a little. The rational Geoffrey shows no interest in the hazy semi-science concerning insanity. The chief suggestion of it is in the cure of Merlin by drinking from the new spring, which purges his melancholy; this combines the semi-scientific treatment by purgation of humors5 with the very different religious and popular notion of cure by 'holy wells,' sacred to certain saints (though doubtless venerated long before Christianity). Indeed the whole incident looks like an after-thought development from Merlin in both Vita and Historia frequenting springs,6 a natural resort for a man living alone in the wilds. There is a like haziness in the three causes indicated for his prophetic powers. They are bound up with his madness, and when cured he prophesies no more,7 - a situation illustrated in his sister and Telgesinus; they are also due to a spirit, not evil;8 but also to astrology.9 Take your choice; nothing clean-cut here. Prophecy as a product of
1 Romania, xxII, 507, 515-517, 520-522. On the devil, and on the increase of the humors as the moon waxes, as causes of madness, Gerald de Barri, v, 79. Another case of demoniac possession in Lancelot (Vulgate Romances, Sommer, iv, 30). 2 Late twelfth-century Folie Tristan (ed. Bedier, Soc. Anc. T. Fr.), pp. 1, 25-36. I disregard genuine cases of court-fools. 3 Early thirteenth-century Caesarius of Heisterbach, Dial. Mirac., ed. J. Strange (Cologne, 1851), I, 212 (iv, or III, 44). 4 'Mediaeval Attitudes towards Mental Illness,' Bulletin of Hist. of Medicine, vII, 352-356. 5 Vtque per internos alui stomachique meatus Humor iit laticis subsedauitque uaporem Corporis interni. See 11.1136-53, 1434-41. 6 L1. 138-140, 1404; virl, 10. The combination is quite in Geoffrey's manner, like the evasive combination of magic and skilled engineering in Merlin moving the Chorea Gigantum in the Historia (viii, 12); with this last compare angels erecting for Kentigern a huge stone cross when others and their engines have failed (Lives of Ninian and Kentigern, ed. A. P. Forbes, p. 233). 7 L1. 1160-68, 1522. Telgesinus, who shows no sign of madness, though full of strange lore never prophesies, - in 1. 976 he merely guesses. Ganieda prophesies when 'rapiebat ad alta spiritus' (1468-69, - 'exaltation' rather than insanity). The mad Merlin prophesies with such frenzy that he would have seventy scribes at hand with waxed tablets (556-61) to record his words. 8 1470, 1522; clearly to a good spirit in the Historia (VII, 3, beginning; VIII, 10, 15), as of course in the Bible, and in ancient literature, but not in mediaeval; except in what the mad Lailoken says of himself (Romania, XXII,518-519), and in hazy legends of prophetic saints, and the like. 9 L1. 429-440, 555-561.
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madness we have seen to be often accepted in the middle ages, and may well be why the rationalistic Geoffrey turns Merlin into a madman. Astrology as source of extensive and marvelous prophecy is unparalleled in mediaeval literature, so far as I find, and here comes out of Geoffrey's matter-of-fact adoption of contemporary pseudo-science. He is unusual also in attributing these powers to a spirit not evil. There is nothing of any Christian explanation of insanity, such as demoniacal possession, or of cure by exorcism or relics. No exact theory lies behind. Rather Geoffrey shows some insight into the actual facts, the provocation of insanity by shock, grief, crowds and ordinary life, and its alleviation by solitude, rest, music and affection;1 and into the variability caused by feeling uncontrolled, as in Merlin's permission to his wife to remarry, fantastic gifts to her, and then killing the bridegroom.2 We have earlier seen much of all this paralleled elsewhere in the middle ages, and doubtless it was recognized by many enlightened people, but in Geoffrey's picture we should see a victory of humaneness and common-sense over theory. VII Earlier in this article there is a collection of probable reminiscences of details of the Vita in later literature, mostly pointed out by previous writers. We come now to resemblances and influence more far-reaching and no less probable. One matter is madness in Arthurian romances.3It did not exist in the earliest of them, not in Chretien's Charrette,and I shall mostly speak of his Yvain (not far from 1170), and the prose Tristan and Lancelot (both of the earlier thirteenth century). - Yvain goes mad for love, because his wife is severe with him; yet who could blame her? - evidently soon after marriage he has left her for fourteen months, and forgotten that he had promised to return at the end of twelve. He becomes violent, strips off his clothes, tears his own flesh, lives long in the woods on raw venison and on food supplied him by a hermit, who is afraid of him but kindly. A kindly tactful damsel rubs a certain ointment on his temples and whole body, and his rage and melancholy leave him, ashamed of his nakedness.4 There is so little attempt at plausibility as to the cause of the madness that one inclines to say that we have here a detailed picture of madness for its own sake and for romantic incident, assuredly not chiefly to prove the intensity of his love.Tristan becomes half-frantic, through groundless jealous resentment toward Iseut, and takes to the forest. Though temporarily benefited by music from an emissary sent for him, who finds him by a spring, he becomes quite mad; he is kindly used by some, maltreated by shepherds, used for amusement by both knights and varlets. He meets another knight who has become mad after being worsted in fight and losing his mistress. Tristan is cured by being let blood and 138 ff., 2i1 ff., 497-498, 534; 165-220, etc. 2 375-384, 464-470. 3 For further treatment, and non-Arthurian cases of love-madness, I refer to 'The Lunatic Lover,'
in Essays and Studies (Univ. of Calif., 1943), intended for other readers. 4 Christian v. Troyes, ed. W. Foerster (Halle, 1887), vol. ii, 11.2804-3023 (for relevant antecedents, 2148-55, 2566-99, 2677-2701).
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by Iseut.1 The most elaborate in all mediaeval imaginative literature is the account of Lancelot's madness,2 composed by a highly neurotic man (or woman) with an almost Freudian interest in symbolical dreams (whence come those in Malory). The unstablest and most intense of these emotional knights, Lancelot has no less than three or four attacks, only the last being caused by love. Military reverses and captivity drive him into "vne folie & vne rage' and extreme violence, which require putting him under restraint; when released it is some time before even Guenevere can cure him even transiently; relapsing soon again into raving madness, he is cured through anointing by his foster-mother the Lady of the Lake, and through bathing and long-deferred sleep. Later, grieved by losing his intimate Galehot, he runs away in drawers and shirt only, eats and sleeps little, and roams the country mad for nearly a year, till found in a forest by the same Lady, and nursed and cured by her. The last attack, the best-known, is the most lifelike and indeed pathetic of all, caused by love, and grief at Guenevere's undeserved jealousy. He becomes frantic, does not eat, takes to the woods, in a few days is quite demented and violent, and is a wild man for years; after various adventures (some fantastic), ridicule, pity and long nursing, he is cured by the Holy Grail. On his recovery he is deeply embarrassed over his former plight, and asks anxiously if anyone has recognized him. No one can miss the detailed resemblance here to the madness in the Vita, the alternation of violent frenzy and melancholy, taking to the forest, amusement in some, kindness from the better sort, cure mostly by rational methods, not to mention further details. It is true that this harmonizes vaguely also with what we have seen as to the frequent mediaeval attitude, and with the actual realities; and if any variety of insanity would appeal to writers, this the most dramatic and sensational might be the one. But why should any insanity appeal? Insanity is not and never was an attractive state for a fine man. As folk say in the Lancelot,3 'Co est grant damages que si beax hom a perdu lo sen.' After search and consideration I find it making no such striking and essential appearance anywhere at all in imaginative literature (except in Greek tragedy and a single case in the younger Seneca)4 before the Vita Merlini, and not at all prominent even in
1 See summary of this enormous unpublished romance by E. Loseth, Roman en Prose de Tristan (Paris, 1890), pp. 64-69, 83-86. Later (p. 376) he feigns madness, as in Folie Tristan. - The deservedly little-known fourteenth or fifteenth-century prose Ysaye le Triste (tedious resum6 by J. Zeidler, Zt. f. rom. Philol., xxv, 175 ff., 472 ff., 641 ff., without even guidance by brief summary) is attached to the Arthur-cycle; Ysaye is son of Tristan and the Irish Iseut. This highly sentimental romance has at least one case, of Ysaye's son (quaintly bearing the wronged husband's name Marc), mad for four months after staying in a bewitched room, cured by religious means (pp. 473-474). 2 TVulgate Arthurian Romances, ed. Sommer, III, 412-419, iv, 154-155, v, 380-381, 393-401 (esp. 3 Sommer, v, 399. 394-396). 4 In his tragedy Hercules Furens in a brief episode toward the end Hercules through Juno's wrath goes mad, with delusions and murderous mania, but shortly is cured by sleep. This is nothing like the cases above. Seneca's tragedies were not specially familiar in the middle ages; though the thirteenth-century John of Garland does recommend reading them (J. G. Sandys, Hist. of Class. Schol., Cambridge, 1921, I, 550), and Dante mentions 'Senecam in suis Tragoediis' (Epist., x, 10). Ajax in Ovid (Met., xIII) is passionate and suicidal, but not mad, as in the Greeks; nor is he in Dictys or Dares.
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mediaeval medical writings till after the dates involved here. The rationalistic explanation which I have shown for Geoffrey's adoption of insanity as explaining Merlin's gift of prophecy does not exist in these romances. It is highly probable that Geoffrey's extremely original and striking poem, together with mediaeval freedom from modern mysterious horror of insanity, started the vogue of the hero as madman sympathetically regarded; not that all the later writers had studied the Vita, but that its most striking theme lived on of its own vitality. It will be noted that half the cases described are not of love-madness just as Merlin's is not. But about half are, and these are the most interesting. At just the time of these romances the new literary romantic love was culminating in the extreme form which we call 'Courtly Love,' with its exaggerated abasement of the male and exaltation of the lady.' Though most mediaevals found sufficient relish in sane emotion, which they were adept at enlarging on, why not exaggerate still more? 'L'art c'est l'exageration a propos,' - why not flatter patrician women by exhibiting the mighty warrior turned actual maniac for love? The emotionality of romantic love caught at the extreme form in melancholia and frenzy, the utmost of power becoming the utmost of helplessness, and all for love. It is highly significant that (so far as I find) madness from love is always in men, never in women, though there are deeply touching cases of women suffering and even dying from unreturned love.2 One need not now undertake to prove, but it is probable that this whole motif with its distinguished history was born of two things, the Vita Merlini and 'Courtly Love.' I said its distinguished history. For Tristan and Lancelot started something vital for centuries, which proceeds from Arthurian romance, culminates with a far lighter tone in Charlemagne romance in one of the greatest of Italian poems Ariosto's OrlandoFurioso, and in the seventeenth century is finally laughed out of court in Cervantes' Don Quixote. It had appealed more to women than men, never to the most critical, and finally the whole world grew beyond it. Since Geoffrey's Historia is to say the least in the basis of later romance, one should not be surprised if the Vita his later and equally original creation is there too. It is as if we could detect the fossilized footprints of a vanished dinosaur in this and the other marks left on literary history by the imperfectly successful Vita before it lapsed into obscurity. The Vita Merlini was a stumbling step toward mediaeval romance in general, which followed within the generation, and expressed the same impulse. In contrast with the unique condensation and organization of the Historia and its serious factual claims, the Vita is loose and rambling, states in its very first line that it is to be entertaining, and with its irresponsibility and freedom from tendency throughout, is as good as its word. Above all, it is inventive. These are the traits of romance for centuries, and must have been so recognized by its intelligent
1 May I refer to a review of Parry's translation of Andreas Capellanus' De Arte Honeste Amandi,
SPECULUM, XVII, 305-308?
2 Beside Isolt of Brittany, there is the 'damoisele descalot' in the prose Mort Artus (ed. Sommer, Vulg. Rom., vi, 226-227, 242-243, 256-259) and in Malory's Morte d'Arthur (Eleyne), bk. xvIII, 920. Even in Latin literature we have pathetic thwarted women like Oenone (and others in Ovid's Heroides).
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writers and readers, in spite of its partial annexation by the church, and the occasional pretence of historic truth in order to produce temporary suspension of disbelief. 'Musa iocosa" means almost 'a romantic poem' in the sense of mediaeval romance, and shows a literary self-consciousness rare in the middle ages. Geoffrey's fumbling attempt, that of a germinal mind in a germinal century, is comparable to Richard Steele's in The Conscious Lovers with sentimental drama, and still more to Horace Walpole's in The Castle of Otrantowith the gothic novel; and the Vita fell out of sight as these did. Its originality is just what makes it, as said at my beginning, uncertain and baffling. It conforms to no earlier-made pattern. Though it contributed certainly matter and probably inspiration to Arthurian romance, it is impossible to estimate exactly how much it contributed to romance in general. Geoffrey was very intelligent, but not intuitive, and did not anticipate all the newer directions of French literature, so primatial in the later middle ages. The Vita has no characterization, no love, little feeling and instinctive human truth. Though sometimes touching in situations, it shows less observation and insight into insanity even than the romances which followed it. Merlin himself here is a digression from the unique and imposing development of the Merlin of the Historia to him of the vast romances. The Vita had not even a decision of silhouette which might have maintained its vogue even when it was not followed. The fact that it is in Latin makes its alignment in the genealogy of romance less inevitable, along with the earliest chansons de geste, even though it is a product of the same time-spirit. It is less harmonious with French taste than with Celtic, in its moments of grotesqueness and its relish for woodland life.' Yet for these last it is none the worse, to our way of thinking. Most of all in the calm idyllic ending,- the aged prophet, fighter and king too old to reign again, and the second madman, who have both won sanity and peace, Merlin's sister after her checquered life, the old sage Telgesinus, living together in tranquility without hardship, remote in the wild forest in a vague distant region. Sleepeafter toyle, port after stormieseas, Ease after warre,death after life, does greatlyplease. The ending is full of honest sentiment. There is hardly such appreciation of life in the wilds elsewhere in the middle ages, unless in the Tristan romances. Geoffrey himself was getting along in years, and his Celtic side found a voice.
THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA.
1 On madness in early Irish tradition I refer to A. C. L. Brown's learned and sensible Origin of the Grail Legend (1943), pp. 10, 19, 111, 122; J. R. Reinhard's searching Amadas et Ydonne (1927; I regret not seeing it before), 11.98-123, 157-8, 170, 190; The Lunatic Lover (p. 284 above), p. 47; C. H. Slover's thorough and critical work in Texas Studies in English, vi, 5-52, vnI, 5-111, on the intimacy of Ireland and Britain time out of mind. Undoubtedly through many channels (including monks, slaves, wives) incidents, situations and conceptions were adopted from one people by the other when they suited contemporary taste, and these became attached to native sagas. This explains elements found in Irish tradition echoing in British and French Arthurian story. No searcher of Celtic matters has found any love-madness unless in a few lines at the end of The Sickbed of Cuchulainn, more ferocious than that discussed above. But as one source Irish interest in madness perhaps passed into British tales and thence into the romances.

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Geoffreyof Monmouth's Vita Merlini

Geoffreyof Monmouth's Vita Merlini

Geoffreyof Monmouth's Vita Merlini

Geoffreyof Monmouth's Vita Merlini

Geoffreyof Monmouth's Vita Merlini

Geoffreyof Monmouth's Vita Merlini

Geoffreyof Monmouth's Vita Merlini

Geoffrey of Monmouth's Vita Merlini

Geoffreyof Monmouth's Vita Merlini

Geoffreyof Monmouth's Vita Merlini

Geoffreyof Monmouth's Vita Merlini

Geoffreyof Monmouth's Vita Merlini

Geoffreyof Monmouth's Vita Merlini

(x, 3; xnI, 4, 20).

Geoffreyof Monmouth's Vita Merlini

Geoffreyof Monmouth's Vita Merlini VI

Geoffreyof Monmouth's Vita Merlini

Geoffreyof Monmouth's Vita Merlini

Geoffreyof Monmouth's Vita Merlini

Geoffreyof Monmouth's Vita Merlini

Geoffreyof Monmouth's Vita Merlini

Geoffreyof Monmouth's Vita Merlini

Geoffreyof Monmouth's Vita Merlini

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Geoffrey of Monmouth's Vita Merlini - Tatlock

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