The Legend of King Arthur With no certain proof that King Arthur ever existed, some historians have concluded he is only a legend. Yet if he never lived, why did people believe for so many centuries that Arthur was a real person? The answer begins with a book. Somewhere between 1135 and 1139, Geoffrey of Monmouth, and ecclesiastic and chronicler, published a Latin tome called Historia regum Britanniae (“The History of the Kings of Briton”). This mixture of fact and fancy portrays King Arthur as a monarch of truly heroic proportions. In its own time, the book was dismissed by the historian William de Newburgh, who called Geoffrey the “father of lies” and derided him for “cloak[ing] fables about Arthur under the honest name of history.” Despite William’s carping, there is archaeological support for some of Geoffrey’s stories.
Posted on: Thu, 11 Jul 2013 06:23:33 +0000
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