Arthur and the Mafia

Last night, when I should have been sleeping, I stayed up watching this two-hour special on the History channel called "Quest for King Arthur." Generally, I enjoyed it (though I started nodding off towards the end). I think it focused a bit heavily on Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae, but I guess that's their prerogative.

Since Monmouth's Historia is pretty similar to Layamon's Brut, which I studied last year, a lot of the information was familiar. But I learned few things along the way. For instance....

(1) The real Arthur (or Ambrosius, or whoever he was) may have been one of the last Roman leaders in England, and rather than abiding in the great city of Camelot, it's possible he slept in a mud hut. He and his "knights" were probably kind of like the mafia on horseback (minus, I'm assuming, the drugs).

(2) Monmouth's Historia was really anti-Saxon propaganda put forth by the Normans in an effort to give the Bretons a folklorish hero who also fought against the Saxons.

(3) The Celtic word for "bear" is arth, so some scholars think it's possible the original military hero who came to be known as Arthur may have just been some random soldier who fought under the banner of the bear.

(4) "Camelot" is a French word. Lancelot du Lac was a French character introduced to the tales (also as Norman propaganda) to embody the perfection of the French. The elements of courtly love, chivalry, Guinevere/Lancelot's affair were not part of the original tales. (I knew this already from reading Brut.)

(5) Some people have a borderline unhealthy obssession with the historical Arthur. Remind me, when I have my Ph.D. in Medieval Literature, to remain as normal as possible. :)

It's really interesting to observe the similarities between scholars who are pursuing the "historical Arthur" and scholars who are pursing the "historical Jesus." They approach their subjects much the same way, with similar levels of skepticism, historicism, and theorism. I think the difference ultimately comes down to the fact that if Arthur really was real and if we were to know everything there was to know about him, we would still have only a man to deal with. But if we were to know everything there was to know about Jesus, we'd have to deal with the divine (or, as some scholars would say, the debunking of our misconceptions of His divinity--THOUGH THAT'S A LOAD OF CRAP.)

I think that's why, when it all comes down, I prefer studing literature. I can be as speculative as I like and none of my conclusions, whether accurate or inaccurate, affect ultimate things. If I get speculative about God...well, it just has the potential to get a bit messy.