Biography

GEOFFREY of MONMOUTH (1100?-1154). —Chronicler, was probably a Benedictine monk, and became Bishop of St. Asaph. He wrote a Latin History of British Kings. Merlin's Prophecies, long attributed to him, is now held to be not genuine. The history is rather a historical romance than a sober history, and gave scandal to some of the more prosaic chroniclers who followed him. It was subsequently translated into Anglo-Norman by Gaimar and Wace, and into English by Layamon.