1. The Early History of Glastonbury Abbey
Introduction
At the time of Domesday Glastonbury was the wealthiest religious house in England. The monastery’s fortunes had started to decline under the last Saxon abbots of the late 11th century. The situation was exacerbated by the arrival of the Normans and Lanfranc’s monastic reforms which brought the Glastonbury monks into conflict with Thurstan, their first Norman abbot. Then on St Urban’s day, 25th May, 1184 a disastrous fire broke out which destroyed much of the monastery’s buildings. Glastonbury’s fortunes were turned around by the successive appointments of some shrewd abbots who promoted the prestige of the abbey to reach its peak in the centuries following the Norman Conquest up to its Dissolution in 1539. The growth of the abbey’s reputation can be attributed to chroniclers employed by the monks to produce the history of the abbey and ‘prove’ its antiquity. The process started in the 12th century and saw the production of increasingly elaborate later medieval legends.
.jpg) |
| Glastonbury Abbey reimagined |
Henry of Blois: A Man of Influence
In 1126 King Henry I of England invited his nephew Henry of Blois (c.1096-1171) to become abbot of Glastonbury. The position had been vacated when Seffrid Pelochin left Glastonbury to take up the position of Bishop of Chichester. Blois was appointed Bishop of Winchester in 1129 and aspired to become Archbishop of Canterbury. Yet Henry refused to give up his beloved Glastonbury and remained abbot and bishop until his death in 1171; at 45 years one of the longest abbacy’s at Glastonbury equalled only by John Chinnock who served as abbot 1375-1420. As bishop of Winchester Henry resented his subservience to Canterbury but failed to convince his elder brother King Stephen of England to create a third diocese in the West Country, York being the second in Northern England. However, Stephen did appoint him as papal legate from 1139-1143, ranking him above the Archbishop of Canterbury, making him the most powerful man in the English Church during the civil war known as the Anarchy which raged from 1138 to 1153.
The Civil War erupted when the 17-year old William Adelin, the only legitimate son and heir of King Henry I of England, drowned in the White Ship disaster causing a succession crisis. King Henry’s preference was for his daughter the Empress Matilda to succeed him but he failed to gain the support of the nobility and his nephew Stephen of Blois, supported by his younger brother Henry, abbot of Glastonbury and bishop of Winchester, seized the throne. Henry would later switch sides to support Matilda and then switch back to Stephen. The Civil War raged on, becoming something of a stalemate; the way out was an agreement on the future succession of England. In 1153, the Treaty of Westminster stated that Stephen would remain monarch of England for the rest of his life but on his death Henry (Curtmantle), the eldest son of Empress Matilda and Geoffrey of Anjou would succeed him as King Henry II, the first Plantagenent king of England.
.jpg) |
| Bligh Bond's reconstruction of the first Christian settlement at Glastonbury |
Back at Glastonbury, when Henry of Blois first arrived from the Benedictine Abbey at Cluny in France in 1126 he is said to have found the Somerset monastery in a dilapidated state with the monks lacking even the daily basics. This was a drastic change of prosperity for a monastery that at the time of Domesday was recorded as the wealthiest religious house in England. The monastery’s fortunes had started to decline under the late-Saxon abbots Aethelweard (1027-1053) and Aethelnoth (1053-1077) who strayed from the abbey’s long traditions. The situation was exacerbated by the arrival of the Normans when William I installed many of his vassals in the abbey’s lands.
In 1070 King William appointed Lanfranc as Archbishop of Canterbury and head of the church in England. Lanfranc, an Italian born monk who had served as prior of Bec Abbey in Normandy and abbot of St Stephen's Abbey in Caen, introduced ecclesiastical reforms to the Anglo-Norman church in England and questioned the sanctity of the Anglo-Saxon saints; the likes of St Cuthbert, St Alban and St Dunstan all became objects of Norman scepticism. Lanfranc also started to replace the Anglo-Saxon bishops and within twenty years of the Conquest all Anglo-Saxon bishops had been removed except for Wulfstan, Bishop of Worcester (1062 to 1095), the only English-born bishop to retain his diocese for any significant length of time after the arrival of the Normans.
The appointment of Norman heads of religious establishments saw Thurstan from the Abbey of Saint-Étienne in Caen installed as the first Norman abbot of Glastonbury in 1077. Thurstan immediately started to introduce new ecclesiastical practices changed the traditional Glastonbury chant for that of Fécamp, which was unacceptable to the monks. His aggressive attitude resulted in a conflict in 1083 in which at least two monks were killed and several others wounded. Thurstan was sent back to Normandy in disgrace.
Then there were the challenges from Canterbury. Prior to Henry of Blois’s appointment Eadmer, a monk from Christ Church, Canterbury, had written a long letter to Glastonbury c.1120 ridiculing rumours circulating that they held the body of St Dunstan. The rumours claimed monks from Glastonbury had removed St Dunstan’s remains from Canterbury the year after the church was abandoned and left desolate following an attack by the Danes as recorded in the Anglo Saxon Chronicle year 1011. Eadmer asserted that he had himself as a boy witnessed the translation of St Dunstan’s body when it was moved during the construction of the new cathedral at Canterbury in 1074. The story continues that having retrieved the Saint’s relics from Canterbury the monks at Glastonbury then hid them away and only produced them for veneration by the public after the devastating fire of 1184. A few years earlier, late in the 11th century, probably between 1080 and 1090, another Canterbury monk named Osbern wrote a Life of St Dunstan and claimed that Dunstan was the first abbot of Glastonbury implying that the Somerset house’s foundation could only be traced back to the 10th century.
 |
| The Old Church |
It is hardly surprising that Glastonbury had reached such a low ebb when Henry of Blois arrived. Henry had a passion for grand buildings and was a great collector of the arts. On appointment he immediately started the restoration of Glastonbury on two fronts, firstly he restored the buildings and secondly raised the prestige of the monastery by employing writers to produce accounts of the early history of the monastery. Henry is credited with building a chapter house, cloister, bell tower, refectory, dormitory, an outer gate and the ‘castellum’.
As Henry set about rebuilding the monastery buildings he employed Robert of Lewes, a man with proven business acumen, to recover the monastery’s lost estates. Henry invited the hagiographer Caradog of Llancarfan and the respected historian William of Malmesbury to produce literary accounts to raise the profile and prestige of Glastonbury. During the 12th century religious houses relied on hagiography to establish their early history based on the deeds of a founding saint. Later the growth of Romance literature would start to influence the accounts of certain houses, including Glastonbury.
Men who knew of Arthur
At the end of Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia Regum Britanniae (History of the Kings of Britain, c.1136) he entrusts Caradog of Llancarfan to continue the history of the Welsh kings, leaving the English Kings to William of Malmesbury and Henry of Huntingdon. At one time Caradog was suspected of being the author of a large part of the Brut y Tywysogion (The Chronicle of the Princes) up to around 1150 but this is generally discounted by modern scholars. However it is generally accepted that Caradog did write the Life of St Cadog in which Arthur figures prominently, and also possibly the Life of St Iltud, in which Arthur is noted as cousin of the saint.
Caradog produced the second of the two lives of St Gildas around 1130-1150 which contained an episode of the abduction of Arthur’s Queen Gwenhwyfar by Melvas, king of the Summerland. Arthur assembled the men of the south-west but Gildas and the Abbot of Glastonbury resolved the issue without war breaking out. In return the two kings embellished Glastonia (Glastonbury) with gifts of many lands. Caradog tells us that after this Gildas went on to live a hermit's life upon the bank of a river close to Glastonbury and when he died he was buried in the middle of the pavement of St. Mary's church (the Old Church). However, another Life of Gildas, possibly written earlier in the 11th century by an unnamed monk claims Gildas spent he last days in Rhuys, Brittany, where he was buried.
At the end of his Life of St Gildas Caradog tells us that Glastonia was of old called ‘Ynisgutrin’ the name still used by the British inhabitants at the time he wrote. He explains that ‘Ynis’ in the British language is ‘insula’ in Latin, and ‘gutrin’ (made of glass). But, according to Caradog, after the coming of the English it was renamed “Glastigberi, according to the formation of the first name, that is English ‘glass’ and ‘beria’ a city; then Glastinberia, that is, the ‘City of Glass’.
The respected historian William of Malmesbury also knew of Arthur. In his Gesta Regum Anglorum (Deeds of the English Kings, c.1125) William treats Arthur as a historical figure who the Britons still told many fables even in his own day. In this chronicle he adds that the tomb of Walwin, ‘the noble nephew of Arthur’ has been found but adds that “The sepulchre of Arthur is no where to be seen, whence ancient ballads fable that he is still to come.”
 |
| The marker for Arthur's tomb |
Around sixty years after William’s visit to Glastonbury King Arthur’s grave was discovered in the monk’s cemetery in 1190/91. According to Gerald of Wales the monks of Glastonbury had been told of the location of the grave by King Henry II. A burial cross recovered from the grave identified the bodies as King Arthur and his wife Guinevere lying in the Isle of Avalon. Evidently from what we read in the Gesta Regum Anglorum William was not aware of Arthur being buried at Glastonbury and clearly he was not told of this by the monks during his visit. Significantly not one of these contemporary writers, William of Malmesbury, Geoffrey of Monmouth or Caradog of Llancarfan had identified Glastonbury with Avalon.
The Old Church
William of Malmesbury was a highly respected historian for his works Gesta Regum Anglorum (Deeds of the English Kings) and Gesta pontificum Anglorum (Deeds of the English Bishops). He had translated the Life of St Wulfstan into Latin for Worcester and already written several saint’s Lives for Glastonbury, SS. Dunstan, Patrick, Benignus and Indract. But Glastonbury had a major problem: it did not have a founding saint. Encouraged by their new abbot Henry of Blois, the monks of Glastonbury requested William to write the history of the abbey. On his arrival in 1129 he engaged with the monks no doubt listening to their tales of the long traditions of the monastery and spent much time in the abbey archive researching its history.
The monks of Glastonbury firmly believed in the sanctity of the monastery’s provenance and subsequent long history. In the late-10th century the first biographer of Dunstan, known simply as ‘B’, recorded the belief that the ancient church (antiqua ecclesia) at Glastonbury had not been built by the hand of man but had been “fashioned in Heaven”. ‘B’ appears to be a trustworthy source for the long traditions at Glastonbury as he had apparently been a member of the community there, his account of the abbot being based on personal memories up to 960 when Dunstan was appointed archbishop of Canterbury.
.jpg) |
| The First Saxon church (Reading University) |
However, during his time at Glastonbury William could not find any evidence for the first church having been built by the disciples of Christ as implied by ‘B’. Yet he knew of the story of missionaries sent to Britain by Pope Eleutherius at the request of King Lucius, as recorded in Bede and other sources which, according to Scott, arose from a misreading of the Liber Pontificalis (The Book of Popes). As a compromise William did however allow the possibility, probably on the insistence of the Glastonbury monks, of an apostolic origin.
Evidently, the Old Church (vetusta ecclesia) is at the heart of the Glastonbury legends. Writing in the early 12th century William described this church as the oldest he knew, describing it as a brushwood building identical with the antiqua ecclesia mentioned by Dunstan's biographer 'B' in the 10th century. The Old Church along with many of the monastic buildings was completely destroyed by the fire of 1184.
 |
| Construction of the Lady Chapel 1184-86 |
The Lady Chapel that survives in a ruinous state today as a result of the 16th century Dissolution was built during 1184 and 1186 on the exact site of the vetusta ecclesia, and later a crypt was added, thus any archaeological evidence for the Old Church was totally lost. The Lady Chapel was built in a Romanesque style, intentionally designed to appear archaic to preserve the memory of the Old Church and its claimed early foundation
By the time of William’s visit the monks firmly believed in the tradition that St Patrick had been the first abbot of Glastonbury in the 5th century. The connection with St Patrick later attracted many Irish pilgrims which can be traced back to at least Dunstan’s abbacy in the 10th century. ‘B’ tells us that Dunstan received an excellent education from Irish pilgrims who frequented Glastonbury, learned men who came to the Abbey to worship at the tomb of their blessed Patrick.
Legendary accounts suggest a Celtic Church was founded at Glastonbury. Tradition claims Saints Patrick and Brigit visited in the 5th century with the monastery claiming to hold relics of both saints and SS David and Gildas. However, there is no evidence that St Patrick ever visited Glastonbury, let alone appointed as the first abbot, yet there was certainly an attraction at Glastonbury that drew many Irish pilgrims in the 10th century which indicates that at least from this date Celtic saints were being venerated there. So many saints relics were held there that William called it a “heavenly shrine on earth.”
The archaeological picture has been confused by the layers of clay, which contained Roman or sub-Roman ceramics, imported into Glastonbury by Dunstan to raise the level of the monk’s cemetery. A spring, known today as St Joseph’s Well, on the southern edge of the Lady Chapel may date from the Roman period. The waters are said to have healing properties and was certainly in existence long before the chapel was built. The monks claimed a pre-Saxon church at Glastonbury and there is certainly a case for a post-Roman settlement at Glastonbury, but whether this was secular or ecclesiastical has not been determined.
Glastonbury traditions also recounted numerous endowments made by kings and nobles associated with the place throughout its history which supported the high regard that the monastery was held in the past. William could trace land grants back to 601 but Glastonbury’s earliest historical documents date from the late 7th century; charters of the Wessex kings Cenwealh (641-72), Centwine (676-85) and Ine (688-726) confirm land grants or privileges to the monastery.
King Ine was the first of its patrons among the Wessex kings, enriching the monastery with gifts of vast estates and credited with building the first stone church at Glastonbury in the early 8th century dedicated to Saints Peter and Paul. Excavations in the 1920s discovered three phases of stone churches associated with the Saxon monastery. The earliest, King Ine’s dates to around AD 712, being erected immediately to the east of the Old Church
The royal endorsement of Glastonbury continued through the 10th century into the early 11th century with three prominent Wessex kings buried there; Edmund I (d.946) in the presbytery, with Edgar the Peaceful (d. 975) and Edmund II Ironside (d. 1016) both reburied adjacent to the tomb of King Arthur.
.jpg) |
| The ruins of Glastonbury Abbey today |
The History of Glastonbury as it Should Have Been
After spending time with the monks at Glastonbury and listening to their oral accounts of the long traditions associated with the monastery and searching the document archive William presented his De Antiquitate Glastonie Ecclesie (On the Antiquity of the Church of Glastonbury) to the monks for their approval. He was aware that his work would not be what the monks had expected. Being a respected historian William would not include fables as fact unless he could find evidence to substantiate them; he could not give them the history they wanted. This would explain his rather defensive Preface to De Antiqitate; clearly the monks were dissatisfied with William’s conclusion
After the fire of 1184 Glastonbury was in desperate need of funds for rebuilding. Long running issues with the bishop of Bath came to head in 1192 when Savaric Fitzgeldewin was appointed to the position. Savaric wanted control of Glastonbury and formed a new seat known as the Diocese of Bath and Glastonbury. However, the Glastonbury monks refused to accept Savaric as the head of their establishment and held out for their independence. In 1199 he forced his entry into the abbey and excommunicated monks who opposed him. The dispute had cost Glastonbury dearly in legal fees and Savaric was also said to be diverting Glastonbury’s funds for other purposes in the Diocese. In 1186 when the Lady Chapel was completed work started on the Great Church (major ecclesia) but was not completed until 1303, 119 years after the fire, a long delay which can only be attributable to a lack of funds.
The dispute with the Bishop of Bath had taken its toll on the abbey’s finances and weakened their independence. Their prestige had taken a battering from Osbern and Eadmer of Canterbury, which from 1170 held the relics of Thomas Becket, the top pilgrim attraction in the country. It is hardly surprising that Henry of Blois found the monastery in such a sorry state on his arrival, downbeat and downtrodden. Glastonbury then entered a period of ‘creative writing’, in other words outright forgery, amending documents and producing charters within its scriptorium to create a foundation story and long history how they thought it should be.
Dissatisfied with William’s conclusion the monks would later add the required ‘proofs’ to the De Antiqitate that William had omitted to create what they perceived to be the ‘real’ history of Glastonbury. No original copies of De Antiquitate have survived in the form in which William presented it to Glastonbury on completion, but we know of its original text from large sections that had been transcribed into William’s later editions of the Gesta Regis Anglorum. The earliest version of the "De Antiquitate" that has come down to us is a 13th century copy heavily interpolated by the Glastonbury monks which adds significant elaboration not present in William's original document. As time went on the Glastonbury monks would make further amendments to William’s original work and by the 14th century later copies of William’s work claimed that the Old Church was founded by Joseph of Arimathea in the year AD 63 who had travelled to England after the Crucifixion.
Manuscript scholars such as John Scott have identified a combination of historical, textual, and chronological inconsistencies, particularly when compared to William’s other, authentic works such as the Gesta Regum Anglorum. Some interpolations even refer to events after William’s death c.1143 providing conclusive proof that he could not have written those parts.
Scott concludes that the first 36 chapters of the De Antiquitate have been heavily rewritten by later scribes. Scott summarises what he considers was the fate of William’s De Antiquitate as such:
- incidents that refer to Henry of Blois in the past tense must have been added after his death in 1171,
- the rediscovery of the remains of St Dunstan at Glastonbury post date the fire of 1184,
- references to King Arthur were added after the discovery of his grave in 1190-91,
- chapters identifying Glastonbury as Avalon only became necessary after the discovery of Arthur’s grave and the inscription on the burial cross - as we have seen above neither William or contemporary writers identified Glastonbury with Avalon. Or, indeed, the burial place of Arthur,
- We can be certain that Joseph of Arimathea as the founder of Glastonbury does not appear in William’s original work, he only mentioned the possibility of an apostolic origin, as this was added by monks in response to the later Romance tradition that claimed Joseph brought the Holy Grail to Britain, literature that appeared well after William’s death.
Scott expands this: although the Glastonbury monks were not totally satisfied with the interpretation of the monastery’s history as presented by William in his De Antiquitate the shortcomings did not seem that important while they had the powerful abbot Henry of Blois, who as we have seen was also Bishop of Winchester and one time papal legate to the king, his brother. However their fortunes soon changed with Henry’s death in 1171 which was followed by the disastrous fire in 1184 which destroyed most of the church buildings, then Savaric, the Bishop of Bath, threatened their independence and tapped into the monastery’s wealth.
The monks began to seek a means to restore their finances and prestige. Without a founding saint and relics they had to look elsewhere for a major attraction. Following the devastating fire of 1184 the monks started publicising the claim that the bones of Arthur had been discovered at their monastery and made the first additions to William’s original text accordingly. Among these amendments the most outrageous were the claims that Glastonbury held the remains of St Dunstan and the falsification of the Charter of St Patrick. The history of the monastery was extended to include the conflict with the bishop of Bath in 1192. Around 1230 these additions were integrated into a continuation of William's De Antiquitate attributed to Adam of Damerham, a monk of Glastonbury. Then the publication of the History of the Holy Grail, which detailed how Joseph of Arimathea brought the Holy vessel to the Vale of Avalon in Britain, meant further revision was necessary. Accordingly in 1247 the reworked version of William’s De Antiquitate was copied again and the scribe introduced Joseph into the monastery’s history by adding a first chapter and rewriting the second. The 1247 revision survives as the earliest known copy of De Antiquitate known as T, Cambridge, Trinity College, MS R.5.33 (724).
The ‘history’ of Glastonbury received further interpolations as an ongoing matter with the addition of notes and marginal glosses by various hands inserted into the T, Cambridge manuscript. There are other variant manuscripts that have largely copied and extended from T, Cambridge and include additional later material annotated by different hands from the 13th through to the 15th centuries.
However, the fantastical claims of Glastonbury did not convince everyone. We have already seen how Canterbury had challenged their claim to possess the relics of St Dunstan. Oddly, there was no challenge, although perhaps a great deal of scepticism, to the claim that Glastonbury had discovered Arthur’s grave and held his relics. Then in his early-14th century ‘Polychronicon’ Ranulf Higden stated that it was not possible that the St Patrick buried at Glastonbury could be the apostle of Ireland as it was well known that he was buried in that country.
In response in the mid-14th century a monk known as John of Glastonbury in an abbreviated continuation of Adam of Damerham’s work strongly opposed Higden's argument. John’s chronicle (Cronica sive Antiquitates Glastoniensis Ecclesie) added further information on Joseph of Arimathea and produced in writing for the first time the ‘Prophecy of Melkin’ which claims Joseph lies in Avalon with two cruets containing the blood and sweat of the “prophet Jesus”. John’s work ran to the year 1342 then was in turn continued by another hand down to the late 15th century. The cult of Joseph of Arimathea at Glastonbury was developed and promoted particularly by the later abbots John Chinnock (1375–1420) and Richard Beere (1493–1524).
The rewards of fake and forgery propelled Glastonbury Abbey into a Golden Age in the four centuries following the Norman Conquest up to its fall in the Dissolution in the 16th century.
Sources:
John Scott, The Early History of Glastonbury: An Edition, Translation, and Study of William of Malmesbury's De Antiquitate Glastonie Ecclesie, Boydell Press, 2009. Scott’s comprehensive study of the ‘De Antiquitate’ has been invaluable in producing this article. Scott’s edition is based on manuscript T, Cambridge.
Antonia Gransden, The Growth of the Glastonbury Traditions and Legends in the Twelfth Century,
The Journal of Ecclesiastical History, Volume 27, Issue 4, October 1976, pp. 337-358. Reprinted in Glastonbury Abbey and the Arthurian Tradition (see below).
Caradoc of Llangarfan: The Life of Gildas - Medieval Sourcebook, Fordham University
Hugh Williams, translator. Two Lives of Gildas by a monk of Ruys and Caradoc of Llancarfan.First published in the Cymmrodorion Record Series, 1899.
Other Works Consulted:
Glastonbury Abbey and the Arthurian Tradition, edited by James P Carley, DS Brewer, 2001.
James P Carley, Glastonbury Abbey: The Holy House at the Head of the Moors Adventurous, Gothic Image, 1996.
The Archaeology and History of Glastonbury Abbey: Essays in Honour of the ninetieth birthday of C.A.Ralegh Radford, edited by Lesley Abrams and James P Carley, Boydell Press, 1991.
Chronicle of Glastonbury Abbey: An Edition, Translation and Study of John of Glastonbury's Cronica sive Antiquitates, James P. Carley (Editor) and David Townsend (Translator), Boydell Press, 2009.
