Somewhere between historical fact and myth, a supposed Celtic chieftain, perhaps Romanized, continues to occupy a privileged place in the memory of our civilization. At the same level as other important historically certified figures, such as Julius Caesar or Alexander the Great, King Arthur stands out on his own, illuminating the past of different cultures.
Mainly the Celtic, which has raised its figure to the maximum exponent, perhaps to give significance to one of the darkest times in its history. And it is that myths can help to blur the memory of uncomfortable realities.
In the case of the British Celts subjugated by the Anglo-Saxons, fantasy contributed to enlarge the figure of Arthur as the insurmountable warrior, guide of the resistance against the invaders, whom he would have defeated in twelve consecutive battles. And although the bitter reality was quite another, no one can doubt that the myth of King Arthur, in addition to rivers of ink, has inspired countless young idealists.
After three centuries of Roman domination, the barbarian peoples began to pose serious problems. In the last third of the 4th century, the province began to receive attacks from the Celts from Ireland, the Picts from Scotland, and the Saxons, Angles, and Jutes from Denmark and northern present-day Germany. The protection of Rome should be enough to repel the attacks, but the Empire already had problems in its own territory and could not effectively help the rest of its provinces in need.
In 406, the invasion of the Italian peninsula by the Germanic Visigoths represented the beginning of the end of Roman England. And it is that, in a desperate attempt to defend Rome, Emperor Honorius ordered the withdrawal of most of his troops from the island, which was left unprotected against the barbarian attacks. Despite this measure, the Visigoth Alaric sacked the Roman capital in 410. The Empire then withdrew the remaining troops from Britain and continued to fight, but its collapse was already inevitable.
Rome tried to maintain some presence on the island. However, shortly thereafter he relinquished the province, granting it independence and authority, which was vested in the ancient Celtic tribal chiefs. The seeds of conflict had been sown, and England was exposed to bloody combat for control of her lands. It is in this context when the legend of the savior king begins to take shape.
The historical figure of Arthur as a victorious fifth-century warrior leading the Britons in battle against the invading Saxons has hitherto been unconfirmed. But from that century onwards we began to find some references to its possible existence.
The first appears in the work The Ruin of Great Britain, by the British monk and historian Gildas, written in the mid-sixth century, where a leader named Ambrose Aurelian is quoted as having apparently united the Britons against the Saxons. According to the author, Aureliano descended from Romans and commanded a kind of revolt that fueled his hopes of victory. Could Ambrosio Aureliano be Arthur himself?
A century and a half later, another late medieval monk named Bede mentions him again, even going so far as to suggest that he was the one who led the British to victory in the great battle of Mount Badon, which, if true , could become the historical base of King Arthur.
The next to swell the fame of the invincible monarch was a writer named Nennius, who in 830 wrote his History of the Britons. In this work, Arthur appears as a heroic British general and Christian warrior who, during the tumultuous end of the fifth century, fought against the Anglo-Saxon tribes who were attacking England. But the exaggerated number of battles in which he places him makes it difficult to believe in the verisimilitude of the narrative.
Later, in some lives of saints from the 11th and 12th centuries, we find new, albeit brief, mentions of Arthur's adventures, accompanied by some loyal vassals such as Cei and Bedwir, which certifies the survival of the character in English popular culture.
Following the Norman invasion of Britain in 1066, Celtic literature flourished with renewed energy. A flurry of new stories jumped into the literary arena, introducing Norman into Celtic culture and past. Normans and Celts needed a great protagonist, a hero to unite them. And who better than Arthur.
At the beginning of the twelfth century his name was already much more famous as a hero of oral tradition stories spread among the British than as a real person. From a remote British warlord who perhaps led a horde of Welsh and Bretons in some battle against the Anglo-Saxon invaders, literature built a magnanimous sovereign, and of his companions courteous gentlemen, all surrounded by wizards and sorcerers in a fantastic world. of adventures. One of the main people responsible for this happening was the Welsh writer Geoffrey de Monmouth.
The History of the Kings of Britain, the work that Monmouth wrote in Latin in 1136, was supposedly based on a lost Celtic manuscript that only he had been able to secretly examine. The Welshman brought new pieces to the Arthurian puzzle and gave it an almost definitive shape, thanks to the detailed account of his most extraordinary feats. For the first time, Arturo's life was narrated from beginning to end.
The book, of which more than two hundred manuscripts are still preserved, caused a great impact both in England and in the rest of Europe, a success that ended up giving credibility to what was nothing more than a skilful mix of true and fantastic data.
Far from the bleak reality that must have surrounded a late fifth-century warlord, Monmouth imagines Arthur as a powerful monarch living in a typically feudal world, amidst tournaments, battles, and courtships. Thanks to his powerful imagination, he places on stage for the first time essential characters from the future Arthurian mythology, such as Merlin, Guinevere and Mordred.
At the same time, in the Celtic territories of northern France, new stories about Arthur began to surface. After the marriage of Henry II of England and Eleanor of Aquitaine, the French and English literary worlds had intermingled, and Gallic poets and troubadours also made the legend their own.
Roman de Brut, written in 1155 by Robert Wace, adds another ingredient to the legend: the Round Table, the Camelot table around which Arthur and his knights sat to discuss matters crucial to the safety of the kingdom.
The most important of the French medieval writers dedicated to the Arthurian romances would, however, be Chrétien de Troyes. He was responsible for the introduction of the spiritual quest and one of its most captivating elements: the Holy Grail. It appears in his unfinished poem Perceval or the Grail Story, written at the end of the 12th century. With this, the legend of King Arthur settled definitively in the realm of the mythological.
But the work that would transform him into a lasting literary figure remained to appear. Published in 1486, The Death of Arthur, by Sir Thomas Malory, rearranged and adapted the Arthurian-themed works, bringing together the main characters and events that we associate today with the legend. Malory's book was a huge success and had an enormous influence on subsequent literature.
Already in the 19th century, in the Great Britain of the great transformations born of the Industrial Revolution, doubts and anxiety seized a large part of society, which was unable to digest changes of enormous magnitude. In an attempt to recover that firm spirit that surrounded the adventures of the immortal king, Arthur returned to the fore to come to the rescue of his people.
Queen Victoria decided to decorate one of the most important rooms in Parliament with illustrations based on Malory's work, and poems such as Tennyson's The Idylls of the King or William Morris's The Defense of Guinevere, both based on the Arthurian myth, became very popular. popular. Arthur's Victorian revival was nothing more than a nostalgic look back.
Today, the search for Camelot and for a historical reference that verifies its existence continues to occupy historians, specialists and the curious. They may never find it, but after all, whether it existed or not may not matter so much. The true greatness of King Arthur lies in the eternity of the myth he represents, rather than in his own history, if he had one.
This text is part of an article published in number 472 of the Historia y Vida magazine. Do you have something to contribute? Write to us at redaccionhyv@historiayvida.com.
