Merlin the prophet: from Welsh legend to Geoffrey of Monmouth
Merlin before Arthur: Myrddin in Welsh tradition, Geoffrey of Monmouth's Prophetiae Merlini, Vortigern's dragons and the political use of prophecy.
Before he became King Arthur's magician and counsellor, Merlin was above all a prophet. His figure, as medieval Europe came to know it, took shape in the first half of the twelfth century thanks to a cleric active in Oxford, Geoffrey of Monmouth, who blended elements of Welsh tradition with material of his own invention. The prophecies he attributed to Merlin spread enormously and were commented on, imitated and used for political ends throughout the Middle Ages.
Myrddin and the Welsh roots
Medieval Welsh poetry features a Myrddin, a bard and seer who, according to tradition, went mad after the battle of Arfderydd, fought in northern Britain and dated by the annals to 573. Taking refuge in the forest of Celyddon, he is said to have lived among the animals uttering obscure prophecies. The poems attributed to him survive in later manuscripts, such as the Black Book of Carmarthen, and their dating remains disputed.
A related figure, Lailoken, appears in the tradition connected with Saint Kentigern in southern Scotland. Scholars have long debated whether Myrddin and Lailoken represent two versions of the same legend. What is certain is that the motif of the wild man as prophet, living on the margins of the human world and knowing its fate, forms the oldest layer of the figure of Merlin.
The boy and the two dragons
The Historia Brittonum, a Latin compilation attributed to Nennius and dated to the early decades of the ninth century, tells of King Vortigern, who could not build a tower: every night its foundations collapsed. His wise men advised him to seek a boy without a father. The boy they found, called Ambrosius, revealed that beneath the ground lay a pool with two dragons, one red and one white, locked in perpetual combat.
Geoffrey of Monmouth took up the episode and gave it to his Merlinus Ambrosius. In the Historia regum Britanniae, completed around 1136, the red dragon represents the Britons and the white the invading Saxons. From that vision begins the long section of the Prophetiae Merlini, which Geoffrey had also circulated as a separate work before inserting it into his history.
Prophecies for kings
The Prophetiae are a deliberately enigmatic text, full of lions, boars, eagles and lynxes, which lent itself to being applied to ever new events. Readers recognised in it allusions to Henry I, to English dynastic conflicts, to the crusades. Commentaries devoted to deciphering its meaning were already circulating in the twelfth century, and rulers and chroniclers quoted it to legitimise enterprises and alliances.
Around 1150 Geoffrey also composed the Vita Merlini, a poem in Latin hexameters that takes up the Welsh theme of the mad prophet in the forest. Later, around 1200, Robert de Boron made Merlin the son of a demon and a devout young woman, endowed by divine grace with knowledge of the future. It was through these romances that the seer became a permanent part of the Arthurian cycle.
Over the centuries collections of prophecies placed under his name multiplied, in Latin, French and Italian, applied in turn to wars, kings and popes. The story of Merlin shows how a legendary figure could become a living prophetic authority, invoked by those who sought in the past a guarantee for their own present.