Geoffrey of Monmouth’s The History of the Kings of Britain is a pseudohistorical narrative of the Kings of Britain published in 1136. It begins with the foundation of the British nation by Trojan exiles and continues for about 2000 years until the Anglo-Saxon invasion and the rise of King Arthur. Thomas More’s Utopia is a fictional socio-political satire published in 1516. It is a frame story describing a fictional island, some of its history and its societal, political, and religious traditions. Both narratives are fictional and deal with lands, and although their genres are different, it will be argued in this paper that both are meant to promote unity and good actions: with the former creating a British national narrative and warning against sin and the latter promoting uniform civic virtue and public service through a fantastical philosophical exercise. Britain and Utopia are created by eponymous mythological conquerors who are unifiers, but the former’s unification comes through conflict and the coming together of different peoples into one nation while the latter’s is more peaceful and comes through public service, virtue and conformity. The Britons and Utopians have legitimacies greater than themselves, with the Britons’ coming from myth and divine revelation while the Utopians’ comes from philosophical learning and observation. While Merlin’s role as a false scapegoat and his prophecy against arrogance, naivety and disunity shows how a people can start at the top in their origin story and later decline in morality and civilization, and that they must look to their beginnings, More gives hints that Utopia’s origin is a fantasy and warns against some aspects of Utopia which he believes aren’t desirable.

The two fertile lands have eponymous founders who promote unification but in different ways and circumstances. Geoffrey of Monmouth glorifies Britain, calling it “the best of islands”. He says that “it provides in unfailing plenty everything that is suited to the use of human beings” and talks about the resources and terrain (Monmouth 53). Britain’s eponymous founder is Brutus, taken from Nennius’ Historia Britonnum. He is expelled for killing his father and goes to Greece where his military skills, wisdom and bravery earn him great fame. He stays with enslaved Trojans for some time and soon becomes their leader (Monmouth 55). Although he defeats the Greeks and imprisons their king, he later makes peace with them and marries Pandrasus’ daughter Ignoge, representing the unity of two peoples (Monmouth 64).

The Greek-Trojan marriage is an original creation of Geoffrey, and it is notable, considering that the Romans, who saw themselves as being the descendants of the Trojans too, often had tension and conflict with the Greeks. A similar situation existed between the different peoples of the British Isles during Geoffrey’s time, as the Norman conquest had occurred merely 70 years earlier. Geoffrey had dedicated the text to Robert, the Earl of Gloucester, and Waleran, the count of Mellent (Monmouth 51-52). These 2 people were trying to kill each other since they were on opposite sides in the civil war between King Stephen I and Empress Matilda. But Geoffrey is saying that intermingling cannot be stopped and that the different peoples on the isles should be unified. By having the two peoples of antiquity who are arguably the greatest marry each other and becoming the originators of Britain, he is elevating the Britons above the English. This would achieve 2 things. It would increase their self-esteem and make them feel better than the English who conquered them many years ago. Geoffrey is also a Norman, and his people had just conquered the English. The Normans need to feel at home and want to get on good terms with the native Britons.

This is very different to the situation in Utopia. Utopus conquered Utopia and brought its barbarous inhabitants “to a level of culture and humanity beyond almost all other mortals”. He and his men dug a hole through the isthmus connecting Utopia to the mainland, startling the neighboring peoples who did not believe it could be done (More 53). He “laid out the whole plan of the city” himself, leaving the landscaping and adorning to his posterity (More 58). Utopus paid more attention to the gardens than anything else. The Utopians have a distributive farming system where each citizen learns farming skills, serving 2 years before returning home and being replaced. They produce a surplus (More 54-55). They tend well to their gardens (More 57). It is a very uniform society with 54 cities “having exactly the same languages, customs, institutions and laws” (More 53). The capital Amaurot is centrally located and the cities annually send 3 delegates there to discuss common issues. Each group of families provide elected magistrates and the highest of them elect the ruler. He serves for life if he is not “suspected of trying to become a tyrant”. Most other positions are held for a year, and it is a capital crime to conduct public business outside the assembly.  The Senate cannot discuss a point the same day it’s introduced to prevent conspiracy and hasty decision-making (More 58-59).

Utopus brings peace to his island by serving the people that he rules, as an urban planner who is creating and laying out their cities for them. He is a personification of the ideal of virtue and public service which is one of the most prized aspects of Utopia and serves as a unifying goal, and he is also a culture hero. He also makes his soldiers useful in something other than war, being a servant rather than a boss. Utopia’s unity does not come from intermingling or conflict: it is one of uniformity and working towards a common goal. There are no idlers in Utopia. This artificial work, rather than nature, it what makes Utopia a perfect place. Its politicians are transparent, limited in their powers and accountable to the people. Unlike Geoffrey, Thomas More’s England had a parliamentary system and the Magna Carta which was introduced in 1215 to make the king more accountable to the nobles and people. Public, common service is exalted by More, who was not just a philosopher and author, but also a lawyer and statesman who was constantly busy even at home when conversing with his family and servants. Such a diverse array of knowledge and activities really helped him in the writing of Utopia, which was an act of public service. He dedicated the work to his friend Peter Giles, the town clerk of Antwerp. As a devoted Catholic, he also worked towards uniformity of worship, opposing the Protestant Reformation and hunting Protestants as Lord Chancellor. He kept the faith even as he was executed by the king that he served, Henry VIII. While Geoffrey’s England had recently seen a change in the ruling class and was unstable, More’s England was an established, more uniform society where the ethnogenesis of the English was largely complete. Thus, Thomas More’s world has achieved more uniformity than Geoffrey: while the latter’s Britain is diverse and has strife, the latter’s Utopians have a peaceful, uniform society.

Both Geoffrey’s Britain and More’s Utopia have transcendent legitimacies. Brutus goes to a deserted island with an augur and 12 men to a temple of Diana to find the land she would offer them. After they perform a ritual sacrifice and Brutus pleads with her, she tells him that “beyond the setting of the sun, past the realms of Gaul, there lies an island in the sea, once occupied by giants. Now it is empty and ready for your folk” (Monmouth 65). This brings heavy allusion to the symbol of the Promised Land in the Bible, and through this connection Geoffrey is trying to make the British people divinely/supernaturally favored like the Israelites. The island even has giants just like Canaan was said to have, and Brutus would have to fight them. There is also a similarity in that according to Geoffrey, Britain is named after Brutus, similar to how Jacob’s other name is used for Israel, how Judah is named after one of the sons of Jacob, and how Rome is named after Romulus. When Diana tells Brutus that “a race of kings will be born there from your stock and the round circle of the whole earth will be subject to them”  (Monmouth 65), it is analogous to how God, in a dream to Abraham in the Bible, told him that his descendants would be more numerous than the stars[1]. It is also notable that Geoffrey of Monmouth has unknowingly predicted the future: the British Empire would end up conquering much of the world and was known as the empire on which the sun never set. So, in using classical mythological narratives with tropes like the Bible, Geoffrey is aiming for the best of both worlds, attempting to give supernatural justification for the British occupying their land and connecting them to the civilized peoples of antiquity.

On the other hand, the legitimacy of More’s Utopia lies not in religion and myth but rather philosophy and rationalism. The people of Utopia are very educated: “all children are introduced to good books” and many people devote themselves to learning all their lives when they are free from labor, including those children which have “remarkable talent, extraordinary intelligence and devotion to learning”. They learn with their beautiful language unsurpassed in thought expression which has spread throughout that part of the world, though in other places it is in corrupted form (More 79). They revere Greek philosophers and historians such as Thucydides and Herodotus. They also revere medical books such as those of Hippocrates and Galen’s Microtechne. They honor medicine and consider it a fine science though they do not need it. They use the resources of science to investigate nature’s secrets, as it gives them great pleasure, and they also believe “they win the highest approbation from the creator and maker of the world”.  They speculate that he “set up the marvelous mechanism of this world for mankind to view and contemplate”, and that he prefers this to a “lazy blockhead who ignores such a marvelous spectacle as if he were a mindless brute” (More 94). The Utopians are masters at learning: when Romans and Egyptians were shipwrecked on the island, “there was no useful skill in the whole Roman empire which they did not learn from the explanations of the strangers or did not manage to discover from the hints and clues they were given” (More 49). 

What More is aiming for here is to promote Greek philosophical ideals, with some from Plato’s Republic among them. Plato exalts learning and has his republic ruled by philosopher kings. Each person has their place assigned on society based on their talents. Thomas More was writing during the Renaissance, which looked to the classical world as the ideal. Greek was exalted more than Latin because it was considered a language of philosophy while Latin was associated with the Middle Ages and was backward with More wanting to move beyond it. This is seen in Book 1 when Peter Giles introduces Raphael Hythloday to More and describes him as a sailor “like Plato”. Giles says that Hythloday “has devoted himself to Greek more than to Latin because he has totally committed himself to philosophy and he knew that in the field there is nothing of any importance in Latin except some works of Seneca and Cicero” (More 11-12). Geoffrey deals more with holy revelation and passivity, with his Brutus waiting for a divine being and a calling. But Thomas More has the people of Utopia active in their learning, including both absorbing from text and hands-on learning through observation and doing. There are traces of empiricism here. Rather than being passive and waiting, the people of Utopia must actively discover the truth for themselves. They take the best from other cultures and have a natural love for learning and knowledge. The word philosophy itself means “love of knowledge” or “wisdom”. At the same time, More is integrating religion and science through the idea that God has set up the world as an ordered whole for humans to contemplate and how it pleases him. This was a common idea in the Middle Ages and Renaissance (Encyclopedia.com). The Renaissance was an age of observation: one example of this is seen in Leonardo Da Vinci’s notebooks where he drew several sketches from his observations, and came up with ideas or concepts from them, including a pair of wings that he drew up by carefully observing birds. He also learned a lot about the human body from dissection (LeonardoDaVinci.net). The Renaissance was greatly aided by ancient Greek texts brought by Greeks who escaped Constantinople after its fall to the Ottomans in 1453 (Encyclopedia.com). It was also an age of increased archaeology and excavation of classical Roman and Greek ruins (Dowdey). One example of antiquity’s effect on the Renaissance is how the Santa Maria del Fiore Cathedral in Florence was inspired by the dome of the Pantheon in Rome (Atkins). The knowledge of how to make pozzolan cement was also resurrected from manuscripts (Giatec Scientific). The contrast between Geoffrey and More’s times is also seen in how the Middle Ages had a primarily Christian influence, and while Christianity in the Renaissance was still the core religion of Europe, classical antiquity influences were stronger. So, Geoffrey deals more with mythological, biblical ideas while More deals more with philosophical, rational ideas.

Both Geoffrey and More have red herrings to distract their readers. For the former, it is Merlin. King Vortigern is told by his court magicians to find “a lad without a father” and then “kill him, so that the mortar and the stones could be sprinkled with the lad’s blood”, the stones in question being those of Mount Erith (Monmouth 167). The young Merlin later rebukes the magicians, telling them that “just because [they] do not know what is obstructing the foundations of the tower which these men have begun”, they are recommending his blood. He calls the magicians “lying flatterers” after the pool is drained (Monmouth 169). Here, Geoffrey is saying that the magicians were arrogant and dishonest: they truly did not know what was causing the tower to be obstructed, but rather than be honest with King Vortigern, they decided to mislead him. They wanted a boy without a father to sacrifice perhaps because such a conception would be immaculate, and thus pure, which would, according to them, make the foundations firm. Merlin would be a scapegoat, analogous to Jesus’ sacrifice in the Bible: his pure blood had to be spilled to save humanity from sin. But ironically it is false, because Merlin’s conception is invisible rather than immaculate. According to Maugantius, supported by books written by sages, Merlin was born to incubus demons, who “have partly the nature of men and partly that of angels, and when they wish they assume mortal shapes and have intercourse with women” (Monmouth 168). Through this Geoffrey could be saying that no one can do what Jesus did, not even a supernatural being like Merlin. Jesus represents the pure scapegoat who took on the sins of humanity for himself, a one-time person who is not coming back to save the Britons. The Britons, along with all of humanity, are saved on the spiritual level because of him, but they still cannot escape their earthly punishment. To attain eternal and worldly salvation, they must return to and remember their faith in Jesus and God.

Thomas More gives some impression that what he is writing about is real. In his letter to Peter at the beginning of the book, he says that he repeated what he and Peter “heard Raphael say” (More 3). He places Utopia in the New World but can’t remember where. He says that there are some people ready to go to Utopia including a theologian (More 5-6). In Book One when More and Giles meet Hythloday, he tells them that he is a sea captain from Portugal who “joined Amerigo Vespucci, and was his constant companion in the first three of the four voyages which everyone is now reading about”. Left behind, Hythloday and his companions traveled continuously before he met Portuguese ships near Ceylon and made his way home (More 12). Hythloday has a lot of knowledge: he knows the equatorial regions are scorching hot and he found monsters in the New World (More 13-14). Utopia, as the perfect place, is presented as a model for Europeans. Hythloday exalts the “most prudent and holy institutions of the Utopians, who have very few laws and yet manage so well that virtue is rewarded and yet, since everything is equalized, everyone has plenty of everything”, and contrasts this with other nations which do not achieve order and cannot protect private property despite many laws (More 46-47). He argues that if More had gone to Utopia and seen their customs and institutions, he “would quite agree that [he] had never seen a people well governed anywhere but there” (More 48).

Just as Merlin is being set up as a scapegoat saviour, Utopia is being set up as the perfect place for a society, and a veneer of plausibility is being given. Hythloday is presented as a smart person who has seen many things. More is doing this to hook the reader. The New World was still a very mysterious place during this time, although Europeans had fantasies about it as a natural paradise resembling the Garden of Eden. Narratives on this topic, such as the writings of Christopher Columbus or Thomas Harriot, were popular and sold well. More is leveraging this, although once again Utopia is not a natural but a planned paradise. Utopia is said to be in the New World. But it is simply a fantasy, a lie, and the hints are all around the book. They are also given away by more in a final letter to Giles. He is discussing the reception of the work and describing an unnamed critic who liked the book but found some of the Utopian practices absurd. He says that if his work were a fiction, he would have at least “inserted some pointed hints” for the reader. He then gives the clues that the world is not real: “Utopia” means that the island is nowhere; the city Amaurot means phantom; Anyder means that the river has no water, and Ademus mans that the ruler has no people (More 138-9). Hythloday also means “speaker of nonsense”. More is giving away the truth, that Utopia does not and cannot exist.  There can never be total perfection, and that is the reason why a “utopia”, despite being thought of as a perfect place, has such a translation. Just as Jesus is never coming back and the Britons are still being punished but can still be saved if they repent and turn to their faith, Utopia represents something that is not real and can never be attained, and the punishments or hardships of life cannot be avoided.

In both narratives, there is no escape from the hardships of life, and laziness, idleness and letting your guard down are considered wrong. Just as Vortigern’s trusted advisors mislead him, the Saxons betray the Britons. Although they were invited over to the island to protect it, the Saxons end up attempting to conquer it, and “the Britons, who had not expected anything of this sort to happen, had come unarmed and had little chance of offering resistance” (Monmouth 166). They had let their guard down, which is why the devastation wrought by the Saxons was so large and so total. They later discover 2 dragons in a pool under the foundations of the tower, and that the pool is swallowing it up. The dragons wake up and fight bitterly. The pool swallowing up the foundations of the tower could symbolize the disunity and weakness of Britain which is swallowing up the glory and power that it used to have. This results in the war between the Britons and the Saxons. In his prophecy Merlin says that “the cult of religion shall be destroyed completely, and the ruin of the churches shall be clear for all to see”, and the tower’s destruction could symbolize this. Merlin’s prediction of the Red Dragons, or the Britons, eventually prevailing is reflected in the battle that is simultaneously happening between the two dragons: “the White Dragon began to have the upper hand and to force the Red One back to the edge of the pool. The Red Dragon bewailed the fact that it was being driven out and then turned upon the White one and forced it backwards in its turn”  (Monmouth 171). This prophecy also symbolizes the inevitability of the ruin of Britain. Just as Vortigern cannot hold the foundations of the tower which he is going to use to save himself by killing Merlin, there will be no escape for the Britons against the Saxon invasion and the ruin of Britain. As Geoffrey says in the beginning of the text “the vengeance of God overtook them because of their arrogance” (Monmouth 54). In the end, only Arthur, the Bear of Cornwall can save the British people. Geoffrey of Monmouth is telling the British people that if they sin, then they cannot escape punishment. As said already, they must repent on the spiritual level, but they must also look to their glorious past: their nation was founded on a divine mandate. They must use the best of the past for their future. Arthur represents the heroic ideals of the British, and he is heir to the line established by his ancestor Brutus. Geoffrey is telling the British people not to forget who they are.

Thomas More sees that emulating Utopia has negative consequences of idleness. During his conversation with Giles, he denies that there can be a comfortable life with common property, asking him how there can “be any abundance of goods when everyone stops working because he is no longer motivated by making a profit, and grows lazy because he relies on the labors of others” (More 48). More is saying that people will only work if they get a worthwhile reward from it. If they do not get anything, they will not work. Since everyone gets equal resources even if they do not pay, then there is no point in working either. He also sees that with weak laws and an inability to keep what you earn, there will be plenty of bloodshed and anarchy. The common property for him “entirely undermines all nobility, magnificence, splendor, and majesty which are […] the true adornments and ornaments of a commonwealth” (More 134). He also dislikes their form of warfare, their religious traditions and their other institutions as well. More also say that Utopia has many features to emulate, but he “would wish rather than expect to see” them. He knows that these aspects of Utopia cannot be emulated, but he is hopeful that at least some of its aspects will be adopted by the population, namely the ones of public virtue, service and knowledge that have already been spoken of. More uses the simile of “medicine smeared with honey” to describe his book as meant for the reader’s moral education (More 138). The “honey” is the fantasy aspects of the story, meant to sweeten the “medicine” or the lessons. He hopes that careful readers will be able to find the medicine and discern the honey for what it is. So, although there is no escape from punishment or imperfection in both Geoffrey and More’s narratives, there are still ways to improve that both are promoting.

Geoffrey of Monmouth’s The History of the Kings of Britain and Thomas More’s Utopia are both fictional narratives dealing with lands, but they are meant to promote unity and good behaviour: with the former creating a national British narrative and the latter being a philosophical exercise teaching public service, civic virtue and good behaviour. Both lands have conquerors that inspire and unify their peoples and lands, but while Britain’s unification comes through conflict and intermingling, Utopia’s is more peaceful and comes through conformity, community service and virtue. Britain’s legitimacy comes through a mythological divine revelation while Utopia’s coms through philosophy, learning and observation.  But both have false objects to distract their readers: Merlin is set up as a scapegoat but is a warning to Britons to return to the faith and their origins, while More inserts hints that Utopia is not the perfect place but still wants parts of it emulated. Both stories have been regarded as some of the best ever written: Geoffrey’s was second to the Bible in popularity in the Middle Ages, and spawned Arthurian stories and the Breton lays, while More’s gave birth to utopian and dystopian fiction and also influenced Anabaptism and communism.

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Dowdey, Sarah. The History of Archaeology | HowStuffWorks. n.d. Website. 14 December 2020.

Encyclopedia.com. Classicla Scholarship | Encyclopedia.com. 16 October 2020. Website. 14 December 2020.

—. Ordering Knowledge in the Medieval World | Encyclopedia.com. 16 October 2020. Website. 14 December 2020.

Giatec Scientific. The History of Concrete | Giatec Scientific Inc. 28 July 2017. Website. 14 December 2020.

LeonardoDaVinci.net. Leonardo Da Vinci: Paintings, Drawings, Quotes, Facts & Bio. n.d. Website. 14 December 2020.

Monmouth, Geoffrey of. The History of the Kings of Britain. Penguin Books, 1966.

More, Thomas. Utopia. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001. Digital Document.

       New International Version. Biblica, Accessed 22 March 2020.

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[1] Genesis 26:4: “I will make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and will give them all these lands, and through your offspring all nations on earth will be blessed”