Geoffrey of Monmouth was elected to the see of St Asaph in Wales on 24 February 1151. It is assumed that he was born between 1100 and 1110, and died between 25 December 1154 and 24 December 1155.
He is mainly known as a writer of the Historia Regum Britanniae (The history of the kings of Britain), which includes stories of Arthur, Merlin and kings Leir and Coel.
Geoffrey will always remind me of my classes in medieval Latin at university, where we studied his story of King Arthur. Though I had disliked Latin at school and only did the course because it was a prerequisite for graduation, here I discovered that studying a ‘dead’ language could actually be fun.
Reference:
J. C. Crick, ‘Monmouth, Geoffrey of (d. 1154/5)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004.
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