Arthurianism in Early Plantagenet England: From Henry II to Edward I by Christopher Michael Berard (review)

Christopher Michael Berard examines textual examples of Arthurianism spanning the reigns of five twelfth- and thirteenth-century Angevin/Plantagenet kings: Henry II, Richard I, John, Henry III, and Edward I. He explores the purpose, political significance, intended audience, and effectiveness of examples in the textual record, and incorporates a wide range of literary, annalistic, legal, and historiographic material across a variety of languages, locating these texts in their broader socio-political contexts.

The argument is broadly as follows. During the reign of Henry II, Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia rerum Brittanie came to be a pivotal work, asserting a historical rather than mythic Arthur and reducing the ethnic Celtic 'Breton Hope' of Arthur's promised return to an absurdity. This theme was developed further through other contemporary works, including Étienne of Rouen's Draco Normannicus, Walter of Châtillon's Tractatus, and Peter of Blois's epistles. As a result, Henry II came to be portrayed as the symbolic revival of Arthur, while the Welsh/British threat was marginalized as bad-faith Christian. In the next chapter, Berard finds, in the reign of Richard I, a continuation of the discourse of Arthur as the ideal model for, and ancestor of, the Angevins, rather than a king to the Britons to be victorious over the Normans.

The next two chapters, in which Berard traces a decline in Angevin Arthurian pretensions, deal with John and Henry III. During John's reign Arthurianism played out prominently against him: French and Castilian courts and the rebellious English baronage drew upon Arthur as an ideological weapon, and Richard's nominated heir to the throne, Arthur of Brittany (John's adversary), became the 'Breton Hope'. The Capetians vilified John so as to justify their claim on Angevin lands; so too, the Castilians used Arthurianism to argue a claim against Angevin land in Gascony; and the English barons idealized Arthur's court in their pursuit of reform against John. Then, in Henry III's reign, Arthur reached the nadir of his Angevin fortunes, becoming a focal point for the Gwynedd dynasty in the wars against Henry for control of Wales and the Welsh Marches. The final, lengthy, chapter of the book, where Berard discusses a series of Arthurian-themed occasions, looks at the reign of Edward I, arguing that Edward saw himself as the legitimate heir of an historical Arthur, giving justification for his bloody defeat of the Welsh and his expansion into Scotland.

The breadth of vision in this volume is ambitious, and the range of texts examined is extensive, but the book is not without issues. 'Arthurianism', per se, remains undefined, even though it is the main analytical category of the book. In places the concept seems to embrace those aspects of Geoffrey's Historia that are wider than Arthur's court: Geoffrey's Trojan history of Britain for example. Likewise, Berard treats Edward I's enactment of a chivalric code as evidence of Arthurianism, but no case has been made for this, nor for Edward's use of knighthood as a means for political control and fiscal resourcing for expansionist politics as being specifically Arthurian. Berard also invokes classical, biblical, and wider (non-Arthurian) courtly material in his discussion, but doesn't seem to approach these as a category of the same class as his Arthurian material. Indeed, some of his analyses even seem to show signs of post hoc theorizing resulting in a set of false positives regarding the role and importance of Arthurianism, absent any wider mapping of the non-Arthurian material, and this is the most noteworthy shortcoming of this book.

There is also a directionality issue here. On the one hand the medieval author is presented as the initiator of discourse, comparing the medieval king against a mytho-historic Arthur. But in places Berard argues that the king was the motivator, modelling himself...