The Anglo-Norman and Continental French Reception of Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Corpus from the 12th to the 15th Centuries

1 Given space restrictions, the lists, notes, and references presented here cannot be exhaustive, but are intended to suggest future paths of research. 2 Henry, archdeacon of Huntingdon, was amazed (stupens) to have discovered it at Le Bec in the company of Robert de Torigni, and treated it with caution in his adapted abbreviation of Geoffrey’s DGB, the Epistola ad Warinum (c.1139); see Henry of Huntingdon, History of the English, ed. and trans. D. Greenway, Henry, Archdeacon of Huntingdon: Historia Anglorum. The History of the English People, Oxford, 1996, pp. 558–83, at p. 558; and N. Wright, “The Place of Henry of Huntingdon’s Epistola ad Warinum in the Text-History of Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia regum Britannie: a Preliminary Investigation”, in G. Jondorf and D.N. Dumville (eds.), France and the British Isles in the Middle Ages and Renaissance: Essays by Members of Girton College, Cambridge, in Memory of Ruth Morgan, Woodbridge, 1991, pp. 71–113. Alfred of Beverley repeated much of Geoffrey’s account of the history of the Britons in his Annales (c.1143), but noted that no contemporary Saxon or Roman historians had commented on Arthur’s conquests: Annales v, ed. T. Hearne, Aluredi Beverlacensis Annales, sive historia de gestis regum Britanniae, libris IX E. codice pervetusto ..., Oxford, 1716, p. 76. William of Newburgh’s scathing criticism of what he considered Geoffrey’s mendacious propaganda is the most well-known; on William’s criticism, and that of Gerald of Wales (each of whom were writing in the 1190s, and the latter who evinced some ambivalence toward the Galfridian material), see, for example, K. Robertson, “Geoffrey of Monmouth and the Translation of Insular Historiography”, Arthuriana 8:4 (1998), 42–57. See also S. Meecham-Jones, “Early Reactions to Geoffrey’s Work”, pp. 181–208 in this volume. 3 Most recently edited as the De gestis Britonum, ed. M. Reeve and trans. N. Wright, Geoffrey of Monmouth, The History of the Kings of Britain: An Edition and Translation of De gestis Britonum [Historia Regum Britanniae], Woodbridge, 2007; for dating, see p. vii. See also Bern, ed. Wright; and The First Variant Version, ed. Wright. 4 Crick, SC and Crick, DR; for references to Crick’s updates in the count, as well as Reeve’s own discoveries, see DGB, pp. vii–viii, n. 5. See also J. Tahkokallio, “Update to the List of Manuscripts of Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia regum Britanniae”, AL 32 (2015), 187–203; id., “Early Manuscript Dissemination”, in this volume, who counts nearly 80 manuscripts