The impact of the History of the Kings of Britain
on later literature has been considerable, for to this
work we owe not only the vernacular Bruts of Wace,
La3amon, and several Welsh poets but also some of
the works of such distinguished writers as Chrétien
de Troyes, Malory, Spenser, Tennyson, Morris, Twain,
Swinburne, and E.A. Robinson. Much less infl uential
was Geoffrey’s last work, the Vita Merlini, or Life of
Merlin (ca. 1150), a Latin poem recounting the story
of Merlin’s going mad after a battle and retreating to
the forest of Calidon. He is visited there by his sister
Ganieda, the learned bard Taliesin, and the latter’s
friend Maeldinus. Merlin eventually regains his sanity,
whereupon he and his three visitors decide to end their
days in the forest, engaging themselves in the pursuit
of esoteric knowledge.
Because the central character of the Life is not the
Merlin Ambrosius of the History but the Celtic Merlin
Calidonius (or Silvester), Geoffrey’s tale of Merlin is
thought to have originated in the Welsh prophetic and
poetic traditions. Sources for the work, which contains
numerous contemporary political allusions and exten-
sive passages of learned or prophetic discourse, include
Bede, Isidore of Seville, and material from Geoffrey’s
own Prophecies of Merlin.
See also Bede the Venerable; Chrétien de Troyes;
La3amon or Layamon; Malory, Thomas
Further Reading
Primary Sources
Thorpe, Lewis, trans. The History of the Kings of Britain. Har-
mondsworth: Penguin, 1966
Clarke, Basil, ed. and trans. Life of Merlin: Vita Merlini. Cardiff:
University of Wales Press, 1973.
Secondary Sources
New CBEL 1:393–96, 478
Manual 1:41–42, 231–32; 46, 234–35
Curley, Michael J. Geoffrey of Monmouth. New York: Twayne,
1994
Leckie, R. William, Jr. The Passage of Dominion: Geoffrey
of Monmouth and the Periodization of Insular History in
the Twelfth Century. Toronto: University of Toronto Press,
1981
Parry, John J., and Robert A. Caldwell. “Geoffrey of Monmouth.”
In Arthurian Literature in the Middle Ages: A Collaborative
History, ed, Roger Sherman Loomis. Oxford: Clarendon,
1959, pp. 72–93
Reiss, Edmund, et al. Arthurian Legend and Literature: An
Annotated Bibliography. Vol. 1. New York, Garland, 1984,
pp. 66–68
Tatlock, John S.P. The Legendary History of Britain: Geoffrey
of Monmouth’s “Historia Regum Britanniae” and Its Early
Vernacular Versions. Berkeley: University of California Press,
1950.
James Noble
GERHOH OF REICHERSBERG
(1093–1169)
Bavarian canon, controversialist reformer, and cor-
respondent with emperors and popes, Gerhoh, provost
of Reichersberg, was a prolifi c writer and an important
fi gure in twelfth-century literature and religion. Gerhoh
was a strong advocate of continued reform of the church
and was a vocal critic of the worldliness and wealth of
the ecclesiastical hierarchy. Although critical of eccle-
siastical abuses, Gerhoh was equally critical of secular
abuses of power and was an important supporter of In-
nocent II in the papal schism of 1130 and a supporter,
after initial neutrality, of Alexander III during the schism
of that pope’s reign. Gerhoh was also a representative
of the new apostolic spirituality and the new urban mi-
lieu emerging in twelfth-century Europe. A canon and
active preacher, Gerhoh’s teaching offered an ideal of
radical reform rooted in Gregorian ideals of the world.
His defi nition of simony, the selling of indulgences,
threatened the prebendary (grant-giving) system of the
church and opened him to accusations of heresy in the
autumn of 1130. He was saved from a heretic’s fate only
by the protection of powerful reform-minded members
of the ecclesiastical hierarchy. But Gerhoh’s criticism
was not limited to the secular and religious elite; it
extended to the representatives of the “new learning”
including Peter Abelard, Gilbert de la Porée, and Peter
Lombard. Finally, Gerhoh was a theologian of some note
and author of a number of important treatises including
Liber de aedifi cio Dei (On God’s House) and Libellus
de ordine donorum Spiritus sancti (On the Order of the
Gifts of the Holy Spirit). His most interesting theological
work, however, can be found in his apocalyptic treatises,
De investigatione Antichristi (The Investigation of Anti-
christ) and De quarta vigilia noctis (The Fourth Watch
of the Night). In these works he develops a theology
of history that posits the imminent end of time in his
own day. He provides an outline of history based on the
church’s successful struggle against various antichrists
culminating in the age of Pope Gregory VII. It was in
the years following the reign of Gregory that the times
of trouble and turmoil—evident for Gerhoh in the ram-
pant simony and worldliness of many clerics and in the
struggles between the pope and the emperor, Frederick
Barbarossa—preceding the appearance of Antichrist oc-
curred. Indeed, Gerhoh’s work suggests that the biblical
prophecies forewarning of Antichrist had been fulfi lled
and that his coming was imminent.
See also Abélard, Peter; Gregory VII, Pope;
Peter LombardFurther Reading
Classen, Peter. “Res Gestae, Universal History, Apocalypse: Vi-
sions of Past and Future,” in Renaissance and Renewal in theGERHOH OF REICHERSBERG