King Arthur, as we picture him, never existed. His character and his setting are 12th century French constructs, fictions of courtly and chivalric life which the French poet Chretien de Troyes inserted over an earlier, also fictional narrative from the 11th century Welsh cleric Geoffrey of Monmouth.
The narrative, the stories and the people who populate these romances and “histories” are figments of the authors’ imaginations. However the central figure of Arthur is not. The man (or men) behind the myth may not look much like the “King” Arthur of these tales, but there were real people and there was an “Arthur” before Geoffrey.
Searching for the historicity of Arthur is where careers go to die, but something can be said about this historical man. His character comes principally out of Welsh myth, but he can also be associated with other figures, known themselves to have really existed.
There are several of these figures, but perhaps the most prominent is Ambrosius Aurelianus.
The War Leader
Ambrosius was a 5th century war leader, a remnant of the Romano-British system who had found new purpose in the chaos following Rome’s withdrawal from Britain. And unlike Arthur, who appears only in the 11th century, Ambrosius appears in the documentary record much earlier.
Gildas, a 6th century monk and historian, references Ambrosius as in overall command of an army which won a vital 5th century victory for the native Britons against the insurgent Saxons. That Battle was known as Badon Hill, and Geoffrey of Monmouth gives this victory in his work to Arthur.
Here then we have a link between the character of Arthur and a real victory. Sadly that gives us nothing of the real Ambrosius, and also does nothing to make Arthur himself real. Geoffrey is seeking to give his character bona fides by gifting him the victories of others, and all Gildas is able to do is confirm the battle itself was real.
Interestingly, Geoffrey seems to have planned for this, for he also inserts Ambrosius as a character into his narrative. Seeking perhaps to deflect criticism of his “history”, he made Ambrosius Uther Pendragon’s brother, and Arthur’s uncle.
However Geoffrey’s working is showing, as he also borrowed other stories associated with Ambrosius, only to put them to use elsewhere. The tale of a young Ambrosius’s encounter as a prophet with King Vortigern of the Britons is given by Geoffrey not to Arthur, but to Merlin.
So, what can we say about Ambrosius? Aside from this story, where he prophesied dragons fighting for Vortigern, and the Battle of Badon Hill, we know precious little.
We perhaps should be happy with what we do have, however: Ambrosius is the only figure from the entirety of the 5th century mentioned in Gildas. Perhaps that was why Geoffrey used him for Arthur, too.
Tantalizing clues are given by Gildas. Ambrosius’s family are said to be Roman, and interestingly to have “worn the purple”, a phrase associated with the Emperors of Rome, or at the very least the highest echelons of the patrician class. Ambrosius’s other name, Aurelianus, means “of Aurelian” and there was an Emperor Aurelian in the 3rd century, known as the “restorer of the world”.
Ambrosius, interestingly, also appears to be Christian in Gildas’s work. This may be the later monk adding pious asides such as “with God’s help” to the text, but it certainly seems like Ambrosius is seen as at least proto-Christian.
But, aside from that, we have nothing. Ambrosius lost his parents in the waves of Saxon incursions that followed the withdrawal of the Romans, gathered the forces of native Britons to oppose them, and then won a famous victory which gave them a generation’s breathing space against the new invaders.
And that may be as close to the historical Arthur as we are able to get.
Top Image: Depiction of Ambrosius Aurelianus from a 15th century copy of Geoffrey of Monmouth’s work. Source: Geoffrey of Monmouth / Public Domain.
By Joseph Green
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