E 326K // Literature of the Middle Ages in Translation: Mysteries of the Grail

Translatio Imperii

The term “translatio imperii” refers to a model of history that focuses on a centralized world power determined by linear succession of rule. This concept unites ideas of geography and genealogy as co-constitutive factors for determining the transfer of power between places. This transfer of power is determined in an unbroken, linear manner, and suggests that imperial power exists as an uninterrupted process of rule subject only to the movement of the family that possesses that power. In practice, this power is usually described as an incrementally western movement. This was a popular model of history in the Middle Ages.
 
In the case of Geoffrey of Monmouth’s History of the Kings of Britain this succession is determined as follows:
 
Troy à Rome à Britain
 
Here, following Virgil, Geoffrey describes how the Trojan Aeneas founded Rome after the Trojan War. From here, Geoffrey describes how Aeneas’ great-grandson Brutus, after being banished from Rome, came to found Britain. In this way, Geoffrey describes Britain as inheriting the seat of imperial power from Rome. In other words, Geoffrey plays up the importance of Britain in the course of world history by linking it to the great empires of earlier world history.

Perceval has nothing to do with translatio imperii. 
 
 

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