In Armoricam

The poet deploys numerous strategies to construct an anticolonial Breton identity capable of withstanding incursions from ethnic cousins, linguistic rivals, and history itself. First, he limits his role in the creative process by invoking Calliope (conventional muse of epic poetry) as the narrative source: “Caliope referas, ut te referente renarrem” (Tell, Calliope, so that I may repeat as you relate) (2); the poet again calls upon Calliope as he begins the arduous task of narrating Arthur (174). The claim to repeat casts the narrator as an ideal colonial poetic subject, who mimics true authority to perfection. Yet with Calliope as author, the poet takes this mimicry beyond coercive power to a timeless, transcendent authority. His “repetition” thus extends a Breton refrain that reclaims ancient Breton territory. The poet defends these historic boundaries by also submitting himself to his bishop: just as Geoffrey gave his text over to Robert, Waleran, and Stephen, so the poet asks Cadioc to correct the work or even destroy it (“lima tollat abusum”) if he finds it silly or useless (2). Apparently, the bishop chose not to censure: under ecclesiastical approbation, we can still read this Briton history.

The poet also patrols Breton boundaries by limiting the audience to the bishop and the boys in his monastic care. While the poet is happy to have the bishop read the Gesta for entertainment (“post sacre scripture seria”) (2), he fears detractors and critics from outside the monastery or Brittany. He insists that he does not seek fame and would rather remain unknown to the Saxons, Romans (Quirites), and Gauls (284). Excluding these foreign readers as inappropriate and undesirable, the poet prefers a puerile audience: “satis est michi si puerorum / Gratus in ore legar” (it is enough for me if I am readily recited by the mouths of children) (284). Indeed, he identifies his intended audience as Breton novitiates:

Solis hec scribo Britannis,

Ut memores ueteris patrie iurisque paterni

Exiliique patrum propriique pudoris, anhelent

Uocibus et uotis ut regnum restituatur

Antiquo iuri, quod possidet Anglicus hostis;

Neue male fidei possessor predia nostra

Prescribat sumatque bonas a tempore causas.

At pueri, quibus istud opus commendo, rogate

Pro uestri uatis anima, famaque perhenni

Antistes uestro uiuat Chadiocus in ore.

(286)

[I write this entirely for the Bretons, so that, mindful of their ancient homeland, their hereditary rights, the exile of their fathers, and their own shame, they may strive with voice and prayer to restore the realm to their ancient jurisdiction, which the English enemy now occupies; and so that the faithless possessor does not lay claim to our farms and his case gain strength with the passage of time.

Boys, to whom I entrust this work, pray for the soul of your poet, and let Bishop Cadioc live with eternal fame in your mouths.]

This conclusion calls the young Bretons to action against invaders who threaten their lands. Only Bretons can properly hear and remember this history (quite the opposite of Wace’s inclusive “ki vult oir et vult saveir”). By repeating the history, the boys perform their tenancy of the land against their own colonized heritage. Joining this historiographical refrain to prayer, they immortalize their poet, their bishop, and their land. Like Laʒamon (his near contemporary), the poet thus purveys a Christian masculine pedagogy that creates and extends dominion through oral repetition. Readers’ partial identification with this subjectivity not only disrupts the stability of historical, religious, ethnic, and gender differences (as with Laʒamon), it also unsettles their adulthood. As children, readers are cast as pliant recipients of the poet’s historiographical pedagogy.

The poet materializes the integrity of the historiographical refrain by turning the Gesta into a ship:

Iam mea pene ratis fluctu maris obruta portum

Optatum tangit; et quam nec seua Caribdis

Nec catuli Scille nec terruit equoris unda,

Terrent terrarum fantasmata, terret edacis

Liuoris morsus, tormento seuior omni.

(284)

[Now my ship, almost swamped by the sea waves, touches the port it longs for, and, although it was not intimidated by cruel Charybdis nor Scylla’s whelps nor the ocean swell, it fears the specters of land, it fears the bite inflicted by consuming envy, more savage than any torture.]

The ship metaphor, which draws on the indigenous Breton genre of the navigatio, as well as on the very classical models the poet has cited elsewhere,¹³ tropes mobility in vivid contrast with the genre of the descriptio (scene of colonial encounters). In the navigable border, the ship literally mobilizes resistance, evading the stabilities that sustain colonial domination. The ship’s fear of land (cleverly enmeshed in the annominatio of “terreo” and “terra”)¹⁴ expresses trepidation about colonization and the loss of historic integrity. The ship’s specific fear of landed “fantasmata” overturns the usual poetic trope of navigation, which refers to safe port at a poem’s conclusion. Moreover, this dangerous landscape subverts the colonial trope of desirable land that launches the first ship from Greece in the Gesta’s first book (and that propels Geoffrey’s Historia). The Gesta itself plies the waves to deny conquest. The poem, an intact ship, thus moves a sacralized, integrated concept of Breton history through waves that undulate with the forces of cultural fragmentation (during the Diocletian controversy, the narrator refers to Christianity as “Petri nauis,” Peter’s ship [100]). Meanwhile, the ghosts of the past, fantasmata, haunt the land and menace the future.

The poetic ship materializes the enduring integrity of Breton identity. Throughout the narrative, the poet carefully seals the seams of history to keep out the water that threatens to submerge native culture. The Gesta’s portrayal of Aeneas, for example, conjoins Trojan origins with the Breton claim that the first ruler of Brittany was Aeneas Ledewic of Llysaw.¹⁵ Repeated references to Trojan fathers throughout the Gesta bolster the durability of Trojan-Breton memory.¹⁶ Indeed, the Bretons often viewed themselves as the proper heirs of Christian Rome, and the Franks and Saxons as usurpers of their imperial heritage.¹⁷ The poet insinuates continuity almost subliminally through the names of historic rulers that have recurred in recent times (Conanus Hoel, Arthur). The poet also observes the complexity of historic ethnic relations assiduously, underscoring both classical prestige and the immutability of ethnic identity.¹⁸ The poet takes particular care to differentiate Continental Bretons from the Insular populations: he refers consistently to Armorica (using minore Britanniam only at the moment of conquest) and calls the “Britones” who think that “Pendragon” means “head of a dragon” “stupidum” (168) (in Breton, pendragon means “head dragon,” that is, “leader” or “chief”).¹⁹ The debate between Cadwallo and Salomon reinforces this ethnic difference by identifying the degeneracy of the Insular people and the nobility of the Continentals (262–66). Finally, the poet follows the First Variant in bolstering ethnic legitimacy with an ethic of liberty and in excising genealogical discourses.²⁰ In Brittany, then, the Gesta narrates an always already indigenous history; ethnic resemblances do not leak through the poetic resin that seals the planks of the Breton ship.

To strengthen the difference between the Continental Bretons and the Insular population, the poet promulgates anti-English sentiment. Enjoining Mordred to repent his alliance with the Saxons, for example, he notes that they derive their name from stones (“a saxis”) since they are rough and unforgiving (240). Later, as the English flee Ivor, the narrator casts them in the role of the Historia’s Welsh, scattering like savages into the wastelands (282). Ivor goes on to rule for thirty-five years, longer than in any other version (284). Finally, the English win no glory from their eventual triumph: the poet enumerates their wickedness and offers an extended etymology of Angle that denigrates the English far more than the Historia does the Welsh:

Sed quare Saxones Angli

Dicuntur michi, Musa, refer, ne nescius errem.

Respondet sic Musa michi: “Dat patria nomen

Illud; id euentus nomen facit, Angulus Anglum.

Anglicus angelicus tamen exponi solet; huius

Nominis expositor et dictus apostolus Angli

Gregorius populi respexit ad exteriorem

Candorem uultus, cum quondam dixerit Anglos

Angelicos. Tamen angelico peruersa nitore

Mens caret; angelus est Sathane huius nominis auctor.

Forte uel inferior determinat angulus Anglos,

In quo cauda reget; uel id ex ‘in-gloria’ nomen

Composita exponit, sine qua gens illa futura est.”

(282–84)

[But tell me Muse, lest I am misled by error, why are the Saxons called Angles? The Muse replies to me: “Their homeland gives them the name; from it comes the name, Anglus from Angulus. Anglicus, however, is usually explained as angelic. The interpretation of this name comes from Pope Gregory, known as the Apostle of the English people, who had in mind the external brightness of their faces when once he called the English angelic. But their wicked minds lack angelic splendor; the angel of Satan is the instigator of this name. Or perhaps the English are defined by their lower angle, in which they have a stiff tail, or [Anglos] may be compounded from in-gloria, since that people will be without glory.”]

In Bede’s Historia as in Geoffrey’s, Pope Gregory’s observations on the Englishmen whom he discovers at his court inspire him to send evangelists to convert the island, thereby legitimizing English dominion and casting them as a chosen people. The Gesta here ingeniously subverts Bede’s praise, turning divine angels into Satanic power.²¹ The equivocation between English deformity and baseness echoes Geoffrey’s uncertainty about the origins of the Welsh name, only here there are no honorable possibilities. The Muse’s authority thus radically reinterprets the papal text (a rather heterodox maneuver in itself). The poet deploys Her judgment along Armorica’s border as an authoritative defense of Breton identity.

Like other historians, the poet sustains English difference by emphasizing the divide between Christians and Pagans. Many small revisions augment the prominence of Christianity. The poet adds, for example, an extended discourse on Christ’s birth (86) and then introduces Lucius, the first Christian king, with great rhetorical flourish (92–94). The accession of Constans the monk provokes a clever condemnation of his inconstancy and the illegitimacy of leaving the cloister (122). The Saxons’ arrival strengthens the dichotomy between Christians and Pagans (128), as the poet decries Vortigern’s marriage to Ronwen (132). During the ensuing battles, he repeatedly identifies the conflict as religious, concluding, as the Britons rout the Saxons: “Christus uincit, Christus regnat et imperat illic” (Christ vanquishes, Christ reigns and rules there) (134). Aurelius later attracts extended praise in biblical terms that assimilate him to crusade heroes.²² Yet when Augustine brings Christianity to the Saxons, anti-English sentiments override religious confraternity. The poet actually praises Dinoot for refusing to convert the Saxons, adding an extended explanation of God’s pleasure in receiving the martyred Briton souls (252–54). After the purported conversion, confrontations between the Britons and the Saxons are still described as clashes of Christians and Pagans (254). Moreover, the discord between Cadwallo and Edwin derives not from Edwin’s desire to wear a second crown in the kingdom (he already has his own crown, unlike the case in the Historia) but from his request to make Pagan sacrifices (256). Like Robert of Gloucester, then, the poet shifts strategically between ethnic and Christian identification in order to patrol the bounds of Breton identity.

The poet finishes the ship of Breton history with the sands of timelessness, smoothing away signs of historical difference. He consistently eliminates, for example, references to translation that conjure the processes of cultural transmission (56, 66). Likewise, he excises etymologies that refer to chronological changes (72, 90) or reduces them to juxtapositions of original and present practice: the island was “Albion,” now “Britannia Maior” (28); Leir’s city was called “Kaerleyr,” now “Lerecestria” (40). These and many other similar revisions avoid chronological dissonances that disturb historical continuity. Elsewhere, the poet telescopes chronological difference by addressing historical characters in apostrophe, as if he could alter their behavior. Aphorisms universalize historical meaning (40, 48, 80), while anachronisms locate distant history in the contemporary landscape: Ruhudus’s city was made famous by Thomas Becket’s blood (40); the Roman virgin includes the Normans in her list of Britain’s peoples (208). Finally, the poet turns the same Wheel of Fortune as his Continental neighbors, with similar disruptions to linear time (44, 78, 274). In this history beyond the limits of historical difference, the Gesta universalizes Breton identity as a sturdy vessel, undaunted by the seas of change. He speaks as the master of this ship, and only to its legitimate Breton crew.

The poet’s Breton vessel, propelled by the devoted voices of Breton boys, ferries an anticolonial lament. Whereas Geoffrey generally favors Briton imperialism (with a few shadows of ambivalence), the Breton poet characterizes expansion as intrinsically wrong.²³ Condemning all force as illegitimate, the Gesta makes the conquest of Armorica the origin of all Breton ills. Thus while the Gesta poet and the First Variant redactors write from conquered cultures with common origins, they take nearly opposite ideological stances. In Wales, post-colonial fantasies embrace force as the grounds for a future restoration; in Brittany, anticolonial convictions display coercion to explain historic losses. These convictions dismiss the aesthetics of landscape and turn the blood of war into rivers that stain the borders of stolen dominions.

Like the First Variant, the Gesta founds Briton identity on liberty, not territory. Excising the opening descriptio and the generations between Aeneas and Brutus, the poet begins with a lengthy portrait of the Trojans’ enslavement and their legitimate demand for freedom (4–6). Within the ethic of liberty, however, the poet promotes pacifism instead of aggression. In the Historia, for example, Brutus persuades Anacletus to betray the Greeks by threatening him with a drawn sword; Laʒamon lays a blade right on Anacletus’s neck. In the Gesta, however, Brutus has no sword: the two men make a peaceful agreement and seal their bond of faith with a kiss (10). And even though the narrator supports the Trojans’ liberation, he notes during the second battle that violence does not necessarily lead to justice: “Nemo suo parcit gladio. Fas omne nefasque, / Cuncta licent ensi” (No one spares his sword. Everything both right and wrong is in the power of the sword) (10). He then turns the ensuing carnage into a landscape of horror that delegitimizes force. In a passage not paralleled in the Historia, the Greeks themselves become rivers of dead: “Sanguinis unda ruit; quos strauit uulneris ictus, / Hos cruor extinguit et sic leto germinato / Exalant animas” (A current of blood flows; those felled by a wounding blow drown in gore, breathing their last in a double death) (10). Another river of blood later flows from Corineus’s sword in Aquitaine (22); Hell itself is frequently represented as the river Styx.²⁴ These early metaphors color the traditional drowning deaths of Humber (34) and Habren (36), so that illegitimate violence flows along all aquatic boundaries. Coercive desire overrides even the shore when the blood that flows from Caesar’s attack mixes the land with the sea (74). Whether the blood flows from illegitimate Roman imperialism or legitimate Trojan freedom, it condemns force. The rivers and oceans that propel conquering vessels thus become dangerous signs of colonial transgression. Like the moralized waters of the prose cycle’s Estoire, aquatic borders pass judgment.

The threats of Scylla and the ocean swells that menace the narrator’s poetic ship also prey on Innogen, Brutus’s usually silent Greek wife. As she sets sail for Britain, she makes an impassioned speech to her father and her shore. She complains that she is being carried to her death, with the sea as her tomb; she wonders aloud why she did not die in her mother’s womb rather than becoming prey for sea monsters (14). The ocean and the marriage thus both provoke in her a desire to foreclose genealogy, to undo her own birth. Fantasizing the disruption of the continuities that can be bridged across water in a ship or through her body in childbirth, Innogen imagines absolute ends. The poet’s invention of this speech sympathizes with resistance to expansionism and anchors its perils in the depths of the sea.

Brutus’s settlement of Britain is, of course, suspiciously expansionist, but the poet does his best to minimize its coercive aspects. Diana, for example, does not invoke Troy in her prophecy (18). And when the Trojans arrive at the island, the poet does not mention a “promisa insula” or “amoenus situs” (26–28). Instead, the poet describes the origin of farmlands similar to those the Breton boys are convoked to defend. Overtly feminizing the landscape, the poet describes the first plowing of virgin land, which reacts in amazement (“miratur”) to insemination, germination, and the bringing forth of fruit (28). Finally, the poet represents the wrestling match between Corineus and Goemagog through sets of balanced appositions (“Collidunt pectore pectus, / Frontem fronte” [They collide breast to breast, forehead to forehead]) that overlook their differences. In fact, the encounter seems as if it will end in a stalemate, ingeniously expressed as the bind of uncertainty on certainty: “par cum pare certe / Certat in incertum” (certain that each has met his match, each struggles in uncertainty) (28). Once Corineus throws Goemagog’s body over the cliff, it falls into pieces, but the poet does not specify where or how, so that the resolution does not return to the liminal space of colonial contact.

Revisions to spatial representations throughout the Gesta overlook boundary problems as often as possible. When Brutus’s sons divide their inheritance, the poet does not name the divisive rivers. And as in the First Variant, the land is written out of landscape since the brothers divide the realm, not the island (32). In fact, the crown (diadema) and realm (regnum) substitute systematically for insula. The narrator also describes dominion as a regio, shaping regions into borders since regio connotes a boundary limit. In this formless landscape, architectural monuments become signs of full dominion: if rule can be contained in the crown, it is equally immured in statues, walls, and castles. When the Trojans fortify Tours against the Gauls, for example, Goffar calls their castle a sign of usurpation (24). Hengist later avoids the shore and builds his castle on top of a hill (“montis sublime cacumen”) (130), the better to survey and defend. And Belinus’s roads do not solve a boundary problem but usefully connect cities. Moreover, their construction materializes the seamless landscape: “Quas omnes ex cementi lapidumque perennat / Coniugio iurique suo rex uendicat illas” (From a lasting marriage of cement and stone, the king builds them all and puts them under his protection) (58). The roads’ durable junctures cover the differences that threaten colonial and post-colonial order; they conduct timeless precolonial fantasies. Yet when Aurelius envisions a lasting monument to the massacred Britons, the craftsmen fear God’s anger (160). This monument conjures the colonial ambition of Galehot’s castle in the Lancelot: the craftsmen rightfully fear to submit memories of coercive contact to divine judgment. The stones of the Giants’ Ring themselves stand for colonial ambition and illicit magic, even though they commemorate the deaths of men who fought for liberty (159–64).

The Gesta turns away from boundaries because they derive from violent efforts to expand dominion. The most severe representation of illegitimate expansion comes with Maximianus’s conquest of Armorica. The poet first intimates disapproval of imperial ambition when Maximianus’s anchor “bites” the shore (“mordet harenas / Anchora”) (106). The narrator himself catalogs the landscape, in an anaphoric sequence that echoes both the First Variant and Wace’s Roman de Brut:

Rex igitur tot stagna uidens, tot prata, tot amnes,

Tot saltus, tot agros, tot litora, tot nemorosa

Robora, tot frutices, tot fontes, omnia laudat.

(110)

[Seeing all the lakes, all the meadows, all the rivers, all the pastures, all the fields, all the shores, all the wooded forests, all the glades, all the springs, the king praises everything.]

The monotony of the landscape evacuates colonial desire, soon attacked directly in a lengthy apostrophe that merits full citation:

O regnum minime felix! O sanguine fuso

Optentum regale decus! Conane, resigna

Hoc ius iniustum! Prescripcio nulla tueri

Te poterit quoniam dum uixeris intus habebis

Accusatricem que teque tuosque nepotes

Semper mordebit. Non debet predo reatum

Dum tenet ablatum? Res semper erit uiciosa

Que uenit ex rapto, dum raptam predo tenebit;

Predonisque heres, postquam rem nouit ademptam,

In uicium succedit ei. Tecum tua proles

Uerget in interitum penam luitura perhennem,

Dum sic possideat iniuste res alienas;

In sobolem peccata patrum de iure redundant,

Dum soboles effrena patrum peccata sequatur.

Quis putet intrusos Britones uel semen eorum

In male quesitis cum pace quiescere terris

Euentus quis habere bonos se credat in illis

Que male parta tenet? Meritis Deus equa rependit.

Stirps homicidarum totis homicidia uotis

Perpatrare studens reputat dispendia pacem.

Cortinam cortina trahit, sanguisque cruorem.

Inconstans Britonum populus constanter in ipsa

Mobilitate uiget; numquam Ranusia uirgo

Mobiliore rota fertur quam spiritus eius.

O regio, tibi nunc rex presidet; ante ducatus

Aut comitatus eras. Non regnum siue ducatus

Sed comitatus eris; tu, que ducibus dominaris,

Cum seruis domino continget te dominari.

Ecce dies uenient quibus ad sua iura reducti

Tristia sub pedibus Galli tua colla tenebunt.

(112–14)

[O least happy kingdom! O regal power gained by spilled blood! Conanus, surrender your unjust dominion! No prescription will protect you, for, while you live, you will carry within you an accuser that will always gnaw at you and your descendants. Should not a robber be punished while he holds what is stolen? A thing is always sinful that is gained by theft, while the thief holds the spoils—and his heir, after he discovers that the thing is the result of theft, succeeds him in sin. Your descendants will fall to destruction with you, and will suffer eternal punishment while thus they unjustly hold the things of others; the sins of the fathers will rightly be visited on their children for as long as they unrestrainedly repeat their fathers’ sins. Who could believe that the usurping Britons and their seed may rest at peace in their ill-gotten lands? Who can expect to enjoy good fortune in respect of things he holds evilly? God will give him what he deserves. The progeny of murderers, thirsting to do murders with all its heart, counts peace as less than nothing. A curtain draws a curtain, blood draws blood. The inconstant Breton people flourishes constantly in its own changeability; like the changing wheel of the Rhamnusian maid, so their spirit ever changes. O region, now a king rules you; before you were a duchy or a county. Neither a kingdom nor a duchy will you be but a county; you, who are ruled by dukes, will serve a master who will rule you like slaves. The day will come when the Gauls will recover their rights and hold your sad neck under their feet.]

This litany of accusations defines the Bretons as thieving usurpers, unjustly holding property taken from native Gauls. The rhetoric of theft directly overturns the Historia’s malleable logic of legitimacy. Conanus’s transgression continues to haunt the Bretons, and it explains all that they have suffered at the hands of neighbors and foreign invaders. The Gesta thus dooms the future of Brittany at the very moment of its creation: the region will never enjoy autonomy because it was founded unjustly. Indeed, the arrival of Duke Pierre in 1212 might seem to fulfill this prophecy of enslavement to the Gauls; his capitulation to Louis IX in 1234 suggests the culmination of the tenurial degeneracy the poet outlines. From the Gesta’s perspective, then, Conanus’s illegitimate settlement leads directly to Brittany’s subsequent subjugation to France. The tragedy of this paradox turns the poet against change (the Breton’s greatest fault) altogether.

Although Armorica’s settlement, like Britain’s, does not inspire an aestheticized landscape, the Gesta does proffer one idealized descriptio— the island of Avalon. The descriptio begins without introduction, immediately after Arthur gives his crown to Constantine. Almost until the end, audiences could imagine that the passage describes Britain itself:

Cingitur occeano memorabilis insula, nullis

Desolata bonis: non fur, non predo, nec hostis

Insidiatur ibi; non nix, non bruma, nec estas

Immoderata furit. Pax et concordia perpes;

Uer tepet eternum; nec flos nec lilia desunt

Nec rosa nec uiole; flores et poma sub una

Fronde gerit pomus. Habitant sine labe pudoris

Semper ibi iuuenis cum uirgine. Nulla senectus,

Nullaque uis morbi, nullus dolor: omnia plena

Leticie. Proprium nichil hic, communia queque.

(246)

[The ocean surrounds a memorable island, which lacks no blessing: no thief, no robber, no enemy sets traps there; there is no snow, no mist, nor is summer intemperately hot. There is perpetual peace and harmony; it is eternally warm in spring; no flowers, nor lilies, nor roses, nor violets are lacking; flowers and apples grow together under the apple tree’s foliage. There youths ever live with virgins without loss of their chastity. There is no old age, illness has no power, there is no sorrow. All is full of joy. There are no possessions there, everything is held in common.]

This idealized descriptio negates imperial landscapes at every turn. The trees grow their own fruit against the genealogical grain (without cultivation, flower and fruit together); the soil bears flowers, not corn; men and women remain chaste. The lack of ordinary production (biological or agricultural) obviates all the tropes of the imperial gaze. Instead, this utopian landscape expresses an ideal inertia, informed by monastic perfection—no thieves, good weather, peace, gardens, youth, virginity, health, and no personal property. Here, Arthur retires when he has finally given up his ancestors’ imperial ambitions. This land, beyond time, cannot be settled because it is already fulfilled.

The Gesta offers another vision of ideal immobility in the fish of Loch Lomond, where the poet describes boundary formations as immutable and timeless:

Unum quodque sibi partem tenet appropriatam;

Nec metam excedens istud genus inuidet illi,

Sed contentum sorte sua, quam lege perhenni

Mater ei natura dedit, non se gerit ultra.

(188)

[Each type remains in the part appropriate to it; nor does one kind exceed its bounds in envy of another, but, content with its lot (given by the eternal law of Mother Nature), does not claim more.]

Of all the descriptions of this marvel, only the Gesta invokes “lege perhenni,” affirming the universal value of the status quo.²⁵ Like the native kings of Gaul, who rule their realms without contention (“sine murmure regna regentes”) (22), the fish never trouble their borders. These inert fish perform a preservationist ideal, wherein no group seeks to expand its territorial authority. The allegory implies that if ambitious rulers, like Caesar and Arthur, had been more like the fish, they would not have lost their kingdoms. The poet extends the pool’s allegorical force by describing the world itself as “four-cornered” (“quadrangulus orbis”) (172). The pool thus contains the shape of the world itself, as well as an anticolonial pedagogy of territorial contentment.

The Gesta’s pointed discussions of legitimate dominion ratify this preservationist ideal. In adapting these episodes from the Historia, the poet resolves the paradoxes of inquietatione in favor of legitimate quiet. Once this “external law” is broken, battles drag on indecisively since no transcendent right tips the balance in favor of one side or the other. Ultimately, God punishes the Britons as he has the Bretons, disinheriting them through famine (274); Cadwallader sails away from the island’s blood-soaked soil, never to return (278). The poet’s apostrophe ratifies the punishment in terms that echo his prophecy of Breton losses:

O Bruti regio, miserande condicionis

Insula, plena doli, ueneris domus, hospita martis,

Sanguinis urna, capax uiciorum sportula: testis

Fortune stabilis, mendaces esse poetas

Conuincis, qui stare deam, quam uoluit in orbe

Orbita, posse negant. Fortunam stare tenaci

Proposito te teste probas nusquamque moueri:

Nam qualis tecum cepit persistere, talis

Perstat adjuc. Regni cepisti nomen habere

Ui gladii; tua cepta tenes, tua cepta tenebis,

Dum poterunt Britones et Saxones arma tenere.

Progenies Priami, fera gens, quam blanda molestat

Pax, quam bella iuuant, que semper uiuis in armis,

Cui semper discors concordia, scismaque concors,

Ecce uenit uindicta Dei dignaque reatus

Punit clade tuos; regni, quod polluis, expers

Huius eris. Tua destituens, aliena sequeris.

(282)

[O region of Brutus, island of unhappy condition, filled with deceit, home of lust, host to war, vessel of blood, spacious basket of sins, you bear witness to the stability of Fortune and convict of falsehood the poets who claim that the goddess, whirled in a circle by her wheel, cannot stand still. You provide evidence of Fortune remaining constant to a fixed purpose and moving nowhere: for just as she first attached herself to you, so she stays to this day. You assumed the name kingdom by the sword; you continue as you have begun, and as you began you will continue for as long as Britons and Saxons can hold their weapons. Offspring of Priam, savage race, gentle peace offends you; you delight in war, you live forever amid arms; harmony is ever disrupting to you, and disharmony ever harmonious. Now comes the vengeance of God, punishing your transgressions with just disaster. From this kingdom, which you pollute, you will be disinherited. In your destitution, you will seek another.]

Speaking directly to the regio (the region that forms a boundary), the narrator condemns Britain’s colonial origins as well as the paradoxes that define its present. The Britons have inherited Priam’s blood lust, just as the Bretons have Conanus’s theft. Both have disrupted the natural processes of Fortune and attracted God’s eternal punishment for founding their kingdoms on force. In the Britons’ case, exile paradoxically engenders further thievery. In these closing comments, the poet condemns Britain and Brittany in similar terms, justifying their respective subjugations to later colonizing powers as punishment for their own colonial ambitions. The result is an anticolonial stance that refuses to make peace with the post-colonial present.

The poet’s anticolonialist ethic converges on Arthur and Caliburn. Within the Gesta, where illegitimacy taints all force, Arthur represents a limit case in a long history of compromised historical figures. And his imperial sword embodies a judgment against empire and aggression. Like the Merlin, then, the Gesta turns Caliburn against the royal hand as it turns history against its imperial heritage. The poet’s deployments of Christianity, naturalistic imagery, and the rhetoric of legitimacy all purvey the unequivocal value of peaceful quiet and the transgressive nature of expansionism.

From the first mentions of Arthur, the poet casts shadows of disparagement across his heroic value. Merlin’s first allusions to Arthur, for example, cast him out of natural bounds—which is the territory of the illegitimate in the Gesta:

[C]uius preconia fine

Nullo claudentur, quem semper uiuere credit

Simplex posteritas, quamuis natura repugnet.

(146)

[His praises will be bounded by no limit, and later simpletons will believe that he lives forever, although this is contrary to nature.]

In a world where infractions against nature (such as the sins that disrupt Fortune’s natural motion or fish who might dare to cross into their neighbors’ aquatic space) define illegitimate action, this assessment of Arthur insinuates criticism. The idea that Arthur exists out of natural bounds (“fine”) gains strength at his conception, which takes three nights instead of one (170–72). At the end of the three days, however, Uther takes his own shape right in front of Ygerna (172). Although this innovation resolves all doubts of paternity, the poet remains uneasy about Arthurian value.

Nonetheless, the poet legitimates Arthur’s early campaigns by making him a defender of Christian faith. As soon as Arthur is crowned, the narrator notes that he is not corrupted by power and continues to revere Christ (176). Against Cheldric, Arthur defends Christianity, more than territory or ethnicity. The Britons are specifically protected by “clipeo Christi” (Christ’s shield) (178–80), and when the Saxons return for the second battle, Arthur exhorts his men against the enemies of the faith and Dubricius makes a more Christianized speech than in the Historia (182–84). Arthur’s arming reinforces Christ’s presence:

Induit Arturus loricam principe dignam;

Assumit galeam cuius draco fulgidus auro

Irradiat conum, clipeum quoque nomine Priduen

Fert humeris, in quo Christi genetricis ymago

Fulget; fert gladium, cuius nomine Caliburnus;

Hastam dextra gerit Ron dictam, cladibus apta.

(184)

[Arthur dons a hauberk worthy of a prince; he puts on a helmet on whose crest shines a dragon blazing with gold; a shield named Pridwen he bears on his shoulder, on which the image of the Mother of Christ blazes; he bears a sword, whose name is Caliburn; a spear in his right hand he carries named Ron, apt for destruction.]

The poet revises the Historia’s structure so that each object is first identified by its common name (the shield and sword descriptions change the most), subtly devaluing the force of their proper names. Moreover, he avoids mentioning Mary by referring to her only in relation to Christ (the poet in fact always invents a Christological reference to Mary [e.g., 86, 188]). Since the poet does not explain how Arthur uses the image on the shield or the origin of Caliburn, the objects lose some of their legitimizing effects. Instead, their power of destruction becomes a force of nature akin to fire (“fulgidus,” “fulget”). The blaze will burn the enemy, but it does not specifically augment the hero’s stature.

When Arthur meets Cheldric in battle, the Gesta represents him as angry (as in the Historia), but he does not triumph with the sword:

Sed cum pars magna diei

<Nequiquam> consumpta foret nec cederet isti

Aut illi parti uictoria, concitus ira

Impiger Arturus obstantes fertur in hostes.

Ut leo, quern stimulant ieiunia uentris inanis,

In pecudes fertur sternitque et diripit illas,

Nec stratis sedare famem sed sternere curat,

Dum quas stare uidet: sic heros marcius hostes

Impetit et sternit et dissipat; as Stiga solus

Quingentos mittit.²⁶

(184)

[But when a great part of the day has passed without result and neither side has gained victory, driven by anger the tireless Arthur leaps on the resisting enemy. As a lion, driven by the hunger in its empty belly, leaps on sheep to overthrow and tear them, and does not wish to slake its hunger on the fallen, but rather to overthrow those it sees still standing: so the martial hero attacks, overthrows, and destroys; to the Styx by himself he sends five hundred.]

The extended animal simile replaces Caliburn, and even Arthur’s own body. By substituting the lion for Arthur, the poet indicates that a natural desire for blood, rather than legal rights, determines success. Through animalistic simile (which occurs frequently in combat descriptions), the poet weakens the legitimacy of military activity and the ideology of conquest. This particular battle may legitimately defend Insular Christianity, but Arthur does not fight with God’s name on his lips. Instead, his success derives from a preternatural hunger that overshadows heroic strength and divine approbation.

The strength of Arthur’s anger continues to propel his military success as he confronts Frollo:

Toto conamine Frollo

Allidit regis terebrata casside frontem;

Purpurat arma cruor. Quo uiso flagrat in ira

Utherides heros et uulneris impete miro

Impetit auctorem; strictumque tenens Caliburnum

Adquirit uires extenso corpore toto

Astantisque uiri galeamque caputque bipertit.

(194)

[Using all his might, Frollo pierces the king’s helmet and strikes his forehead; his armor is purple with blood. At the sight [of it] the heroic son of Uther burns with anger and assaults the author of his wound in a marvelous assault; holding the straight Caliburn he summons his strength with his whole body extended, and he splits his opponent’s helmet and head in two.]

The poet takes the occasion to remind the audience of Arthur’s genealogy, which also reminds us that Uther never held jurisdiction here. Exceeding his paternal inheritance, Arthur blazes (“flagrat”) just as his helmet and shield did in the arming description. The poet’s refusal to legitimate force also remains constant, and he overlooks the tempting analogy between this Parisian conquest and the defeat of contemporary Breton enemies. These enemies surface nonetheless in the metaphoric link between wounding and narrative. Arthur’s assault on his wound’s “author” assigns responsibility for blood; the narrator also authors the blood by describing it. Moreover, the infliction of wounds by the French partly “authors” the Gesta itself as a historiography of resistance. And historiography can in fact lead to fatal encounters, as the poet’s fear of landing his narrative ship intimates.

While the Briton-Saxon conflict that opens Arthur’s reign establishes the bounds between Christian and Pagan, and Frollo’s defeat redefines the bounds of Arthur’s dominion, the Roman conflict poses the question of right and wrong in legal terms. Here, the limits are more difficult to fix, except that clearly they should not move. Lucius’s challenge to Arthur opens the encounter by mobilizing the principle of stability: Lucius suggests that Arthur (like the fish) should be content with his limits: “Sistantum contentus eo quod iure paterno, / Rex Arture, tenes” (You ought, King Arthur, to be content with the possessions you hold by paternal right) (200). Lucius goes on to denounce Arthur’s transgression of established frontiers (“Miratur que fronte tuas excedere”), defining the move as an infraction against justice (“ius”). Finally, Lucius accuses Arthur of illegitimate farming (gain in the Roman de Brut) and threatens to retaliate with slaughter (200–202). Within the Gesta, Lucius’s arguments seem valid and irrefutable: Arthur has in fact followed in Conanus’s bloody footsteps, illegitimately expanding his territory and cultivating invasive agriculture (which the poet later identifies as a threat to contemporary Breton sovereignty [286]).

Arthur’s advisers deploy exactly the same rhetoric to answer these (just) accusations. Hoel invokes ius four times in two lines of speech, calling the Roman claim specious and outlining a reversal of the Roman definition of justice without mentioning freedom or enslavement (204). Auguselus continues the argument, invoking the natural laws (“nature . . . legem”) offended by the Roman jurisdictional claim; like Caesar, he recalls the terms of ideal action encoded in the fish pool (204). With both sides claiming the same justified authority, legal reasoning itself is shown to be malleable and untrustworthy. Ultimately, the decision to go to war answers to the crowd’s plea that Uther’s son fight for their freedom (“pro libertate”) (206). As in the First Variant, then, freedom becomes the basis for aggressive action. Nonetheless, the entire endeavor is cast into question by the pointed protest of a young Roman woman who watches the men leave for battle (208). The defensive arguments ultimately fail to legitimate themselves, for they rely on always already suspect imperial ambitions.

En route to Rome, the Gesta poet, like Wace and Robert of Gloucester, adds Arthur’s defeat of the giant of Mont Saint-Michel to the group of battles fought by Caliburn. As in the Roman de Brut, the Mont represents an important local border space, and the sword’s presence delineates its jurisdictional identity. Although the poet does not name the Mont, the description of the tides leaves no doubt as to the site of the encounter: “cum maris estuat unda, / Insula fit; cum se retrahit, facilis datur illuc / Ingressus pedibus” (when the sea-tide rises, it makes an island; when it retreats, it becomes easily accessible on foot) (210). The horror of the scene, on an island near Brittany, manifests the dangers of colonial invasion. The episode turns the giant into a colonizing figure, instead of the force of indigenous rebellion he represents elsewhere. First, the poet rejects the possibility of colonial contamination by having the nurse comfort herself with the knowledge that Helen died chaste; she repeats to Bedver that Helen died of fright, unviolated (212). Alongside the virginal Helen, the poet casts the giant as a disgrace to nature: he disrupts normal boundaries just like human expansionists. The bloodstained, naked body of the disfigured cannibal conjures a vivid image of preternatural horror, a body from beyond nature disciplined by the sword that reestablishes nature’s bounds. When the giant fights Arthur, the noise of the blow he strikes on Arthur’s shield fills the shore (“Litora tota replet”) (214), signifying the fullness of violence in the border. At his death, the earth itself, his mother, trembles at the forced reimposition of limits (214). Finally, when Arthur recounts his victory over Ritho, Ritho wears the beards of those he has killed and Arthur retaliates by killing him: territorial dominion never enters the discussion. Arthur’s victory thus reestablishes original political and natural boundaries. Caliburn, moreover, returns the Mont to its royal Breton origins, as the “Armorican king” founds a church on Helen’s grave (216).

As the Armoricans subsequently prepare for battle with the Romans, the poet reiterates the arguments for quiet. When Gawain visits the Roman camp, Quintilianus reaffirms that they should be content (“contend”) with the realm of Britain (216). Arthur’s preliminary speech repeats that they seek liberty through the sword and defends the honesty of their military tactics, although he concedes that victory may not win them praise even if it brings great rewards (222). Lucius counters with a speech exhorting his men to remember their ancestors and to defend their imperial expansions (224–26). The narrator, however, has the last word in the conflict over legitimation. He apostrophizes to both sides that they will lose everything by exceeding their limits:

Quis furor, o fortes, pro regno deperituro

Perdere perpetuum regnum? Perdetis utrumque

Excedendo modum: contenta Britannia fine

Debuit esse suo; potuit quoque Roma tributum

Quod petit iniuste non exegisse.

(226)

[What madness, O brave men, drives you to sacrifice the Eternal Kingdom for a transient realm? You will lose both by exceeding the bounds. Britain ought to be content with her own limits; Rome need not have demanded the tribute that she seeks unjustly.]

The ideology articulated in the “contentment” of the fish returns here, as the narrator declares that each side should have stayed within its own “fine” rather than seeking to expand beyond existing borders. The narrator goes on to attribute the conflict to the workings of “hostis / Humani generis” (the enemy of the human race) (226), and to elaborate the various forms of sin; the apostrophe ends by declaring pride the root of the conflict between Britons and Romans (228). The poet’s reference to Bellona (230) reinforces Satan’s influence, and the fateful battle that can bring no glory begins.

During the battle, the poet attenuates the discourse of legitimation radically. Whereas Arthur’s speech to his men in the Historia is a rhetorical tour de force of justifications, in the Gesta he offers little more than two lines of encouragement to the retreating Armoricans:

Arturus succurrit eis dicitque: “Fideles

Et fortes socii, mecum properate; Quirinos

Sternite semimares, titulisque adiungite nostris.”

Parent: apparet cui mens adquirere laudem.

(234)

[Arthur succors them and says: “Faithful and bold comrades, hasten with me; overthrow the womanish Quirites and add them to our titles.” They prepare: they show which of them has a mind to win glory.]

With no interrogative, no anaphora, and no mention of the sword, the speech focuses only on the acquisition of new titles—and the hollow desire for a glory that the narrator has already judged impossible. As Arthur rushes into the fray, animalistic simile again displaces the sword:

Rex extracto Caliburno

Irruit in Lacios, sternit, ceditque, facitque

Ense uiam; quemcumque semel ferit, ad Stiga mittit;

Sternit equos equitesque simul. Ueluti Iouis ales

Dispergit uolucres, ueluti leo nobilis ire,

Quern stimulat ieiuna fames et uentris inanis

Ingluuie pellente rapax auidusque cruoris,

Se gerit in tauros, rapit hos et dissipat illos:

Sic in Romanos deseuit marcius heros.

Ecce duo reges fato rapiente sinistro

Arturi simul ense cadunt; quoscumque uel hasta

Sauciat aut gladio, uitam cum sanguine fundunt.

(236)

[The king, drawing Caliburn, rushes on the Latins and overthrows and slaughters them and makes a path with his sword; whomever he strikes once, he sends to the Styx; he overthrows horses and horsemen together. As Jupiter’s eagle scatters birds, as a lion of noble anger, stimulated by the cravings of hunger and driven by the pangs in its empty belly, fiercely and bloodthirstily hurls himself on bulls, seizing some and tearing others: so the martial hero rages against the Romans. Here two kings are snatched away by an evil fate, both felled by Arthur’s sword; whoever is wounded by his spear or sword pours out his life with his blood.]

The reference to the Styx recalls the battle against Cheldric, as does the lion simile. The poet revises his earlier image (and that of the Historia) by turning the sheep into bulls, a more formidable foe but still no match for preternatural hunger. Finally, Caliburn has no special role: sword or spear are equally able to generate rivers of blood. As in the Historia, the two sides are equally matched and the outcome remains unclear: “quandoque Quirites / Excellunt Britones, illos quandoque Britonni” (sometimes the Quirites excel over the Britons, sometimes the Britons over them) (236). After the nearly accidental Arthurian victory, Arthur marches on Rome: “Sed Deus opposuit tantis sua numina uotis” (but God opposes these lofty ambitions) (238). Although the Roman confrontation began with declarations that force would establish who had the right to Gaul, in the end the sword is impotent as God intervenes to thwart imperial desires.

God punishes Arthur through Mordred’s usurpation. The poet never names Guenivere, but the first element of transgression mentioned is the queen’s irregular intercourse: “Nam uiolasse thorum regis regnique Britanni / Usurpasse” (He has violated the king’s bedchamber and usurped the kingdom of Britain) (238). When the queen then retires to the convent as a widow, the poet criticizes her pretention: “duobus / Nupta tamen uiuisque uiris, incesta secundo” (Yet she remains married to two living men, incestuously to the second) (240). A bigamist adulterer who defies the laws of consanguinity, the queen transgresses spectacularly (presenting a potent lesson for monastic boys). In the spirit of the queen’s lawlessness, the final battle displays a complete collapse of stable judgment. As the two sides face off across the river Cambula and brother prepares to fight brother, the narrator observes: “Omnia iura / Natura confusa iacent; concessa uidentur / Fasque nefasque simul, gladio dum uincere captant” (All natural rights lie in confusion; while they wish to conquer with the sword, both right and wrong seem equally legitimate) (240). The confusion of natural rights returns to the limits set out in the fish allegory and reiterated in numerous territorial conflicts. The narrator’s apostrophe not only states the judgment explicitly, it exhorts Mordred to repent by offering a history lesson of Briton enslavement and Saxon treachery; weapons themselves are the enemy of honor (240–42). The battle itself resembles originary chaos (“In chaos antiquum”) (244), a prehistory devoid of boundaries. Through this confusion of natural limits flows a river of blood:

Late ruit unda cruoris

Et fluit in fluuium. Naturam Cambula fontis

Mutatam stupet esse sui. Transcendit inundans

Sanguineus torrens ripas et ducit in equor

Corpora cesorum; plures natare uideres

Et petere auxilium, quos nondum uita relinquit.

(244–46)

[A stream of blood spreads wide and flows into the river. The Cambula is amazed that its water is transformed. The swollen, bloody torrent bursts its banks and carries the bodies of the dead to the sea; many whose lives have not yet drained away can be observed swimming and calling for help.]

The description recalls Brutus’s defeat of the Greeks (drowned in their own blood) as well as his settlement of the island (amazed at the plow). Unlike the river Achelon, however, the Cambula cannot contain the new river of blood. The fluid that overflows the riparian boundary washes away the lines of difference between the land and the sea, the natural and the monstrous, the legitimate and the transgressive.

In the wake of this dissolution, the boundary of death itself becomes difficult to fix. Indeed, the Gesta is elaborately ambiguous in the representation of Arthur’s fate. In the prologue to book 9, before Arthur meets Mordred in battle, the poet states clearly that both will die (“Hec causa est utruisque necis”) (230). And yet the actual end remains far from clear:

Agmina cuncta fere pereunt regesque ducesque,

Uiuo rege tamen, cui mortia ianua clausa

Creditur, Arturo. Stat et hie pectore uulnus

Letiferum gestans.

(246)

[Almost the whole of the armies and all the kings and dukes are killed, although King Arthur lives, to whom the door of death is believed to be closed. Yet even he stands with a mortal wound in his chest.]

While Arthur has a wound that kills, the poet presents his immortality as only a belief. Leaving Arthur’s body in this suspense, the poet begins the idealized descriptio of Avalon. The absence of an introduction, however, invites a conflation of Avalon and Britain: one transcends natural differences, and the other erodes them with torrents of blood. The descriptio’s culmination casts further doubt on both Arthur’s death and his survival:

Regio uirga locis et rebus presidet istis,

Uirginibus stipata suis pulcherrima pulcris

Nimpha, decens uultu, generosis patribus orta,

Consilio pollens, medicine nobilis arte.

Ac simul Arturus regni diadema reliquit

Substituitque sibi regem, se transtulit illuc,

Anno quingeno quadragenoque secundo

Post incarnatum sine patris semine uerbum.

Immodice lesus Arturus tendit ad aulam

Regis Auallonis, ubi uirgo regia uulnus

Illius tractans, sanati membra reseruat

Ipsa sibi; uiuuntque simul, si credere fas est.

(246–48)

[This place and its benefits are ruled over by a regal maiden: a most beautiful nymph surrounded by comely virgins, she has a pleasing face, is born of noble parents, is wise in counsel, and renowned for her skill in medicine. As soon as Arthur relinquishes the crown of his realm and creates a king in his place, he travels there: it is the five hundred and forty-second year after the Word was made flesh without a father’s seed. Badly wounded, he goes to the court of the king of Avalon, where the regal maiden examines his wound and keeps his cured limbs for herself; they live on together, if we are to believe it.]

The poet has no difficulty believing in the maiden’s superlative qualities or the island’s, only in Arthur’s survival. The expanded description may react to the discovery of Arthur’s grave at Glastonbury in the late twelfth century,²⁷ although here the discovery does not lead to certainty about Arthur’s death, as it does for Robert of Gloucester. Instead, the poet deftly maintains the certainty of doubt while endowing Avalon with an ordinary political economy. He thus keeps Briton history suspended in the border between past and future, natural and supernatural.

Arthur’s liminality nourishes the hope of Briton and Breton restoration, as well as the specter of their transgressions. He exemplifies in every way the Gesta’s definitions of illegitimacy: he defies natural limits (at both ends of his life) and expands the realm at sword point. The Gesta’s anticolonialism makes Caliburn the emblem of these illegitimate expansions, which in turn justify the Bretons’ punishment; the Bretons continue to suffer as a result of their own inquietatione. The Historia’s Continental itinerary thus concludes on the edge of one absolute certainty: force dominates history.