Avallon in Burgundy

King Arthur's French Odyssey
by Marilyn Floyde

The Retreat from Bourges
"Arthur Riothamus, and what was left of his battle-weary troops, made their escape from Bourges (Avaricum), after their defeat by the invading Visigoths. They went east towards the Burgundians who were known to be allied to the Romans. There were still Roman strongholds in Avallon and Autun. The Romans had promised him reinforcements, but they had never materialised in Bourges, and Arthur Riothamus had been left to fight the Visigoths with his army alone, with disastrous consequences. The Burgundians would have offered him a safe haven. Along the Roman road to Avallon he would have passed through some of the most beautiful landscape in France. He would have reached the ‘Avallonnais’ region, surrounding Avallon itself, and the famous and sacred phenomenon for which Avallon was known throughout Gaul at that time, Les Fontaines Salées – literally, ‘the salt springs’. " [1]

The theory of King Arthur as Riothamus who met his demise in France is not a new one and has been championed in recent years by Geoffrey Ashe in The Discovery of King Arthur, (1985). Widely regarded as one of the leading Arthurian specialists, Ashe provides the foreword to Marilyn Floyde's new book, King Arthur's French Odyssey (published December 2009) endorsing the theory that the nearest we get to identifying an historical Arthur is Riothamus who was last seen heading towards the Burgundians in the direction of Avallon. Floyde, having lived in a small village near Avallon, Burgundy, France, for a number of years, has taken the theory a few steps further by investigating the Arthurian themes in the countryside around her French home.

Inspired by a question on the 'burgundytoday.com' message board asking ‘Avalon or Avallon', writer Marilyn Floyde set out to research the local area around her home in Burgundy. A strong case began to emerge that Arthur spent considerable time in Burgundy and was wounded in battle there. Despite the calls from Glastonbury in England, claiming Arthur as their own, Avallon in Burgundy now steps out of the shadows.

Floyde uses the two Geoffrey's, Ashe and Monmouth, as her main sources and provides a refreshing look at the Arthurian legend in a French context. It is Geoffrey of Monmouth's story that the author searches out the first clues and develops her Arthurian French Odyssey, combined with the use of ‘La Chanson de Girart de Roussillon' from a body of medieval French literature known as the Chanson de Geste (Old French for "songs of heroic deeds”), part of ‘The Matter of France’. The anonymous Chanson de Geste, is thought to be based on an ancient epic poem and recorded by a medieval monk either in Vézelay or Asquins some time between 1136 and 1180, around the same time Geoffrey of Monmouth penned his History of the Kings of Britain.

In exploring Arthur’s French connections, Floyde discusses the length of time he spent there, places he visited, wartime alliances, peacetime friendships, love affairs and his ultimate resting place. Floyde promotes a persuasive account containing all the typical components of a Dark Age tale full of fear, bloodshed and incest; a time for Arthur’s kinship with France to be acknowledged in the context of Geoffrey of Monmouth’s original story.

Not a heavy, scholarly work, but instead a very readable account which considers the real location of 'Avalon' as Glastonbury or the Burgundian town of 'Avallon', known as Aballo in the 12th Century. The story of Arthur's sword Excalibur (known as Caliburn in the earliest sources) and its connection with the forges of Avallon provides an adequate explanation for Geoffrey of Monmouth's account of the weapon's provenance. Floyde suggests that it is possible that from the earliest times in Gaul when the Roman Empire was in a state of terminal decay, Arthur's sword Caliburn was hidden, along with the body of Arthur, until King Richard the Lionheart set off on the Third Crusade. The last historical reference to Caliburn being when King Richard gave the magical sword to the King of Sicily while on his journey to the Holy Land.

Floyde considers the possibility of the King's bones being removed from the French town and taken to Glastonbury to be excavated later by the monks in the Abbey grounds c.1190. The transportation of Royal remains and martyr's relics was not an uncommon practice in medieval times. But perhaps the key factor in Floyde's argument for a French Avallon is the sacred waters of Les Fontaines Salées, in the ‘Avallonnais’ region of Burgundy, with its natural salt springs and mineral waters known as a healing sanctuary since prehistoric times, where she proposes the wounded King would have made for after being trounced in battle by the Visigoths.


Notes:
1. AVALLON – THE HEALING SANCTUARY – Marilyn Floyde.

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UPDATE 2016

After the first edition of King Arthur's French Odyssey - Avallon in Burgundy by Marilyn Floyde sold out, and no longer available, the book has been republished in 2016 with fresh findings.

Expanding Geoffrey Ashe's theory of Arthur as Riothamus, which he outlines in the Foreword, this new edition presents an extraordinary revelation and challenges Glastonbury's claim to be 'The Island of Avallon',

The author's website [www.islandofavallon.co.uk]

The book was commissioned by www.burgundytoday.com where the initial research was first published.

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Return of the King

The Sleep of Arthur in Avalon – Edward Burne-Jones

“Some men yet say that King Arthur is not dead,
......and men say that he will come again”

Edward Burne-Jones last and greatest work The Sleep of Arthur in Avalon has come home and returns to Britain for exhibition at the Tate Britain, London for a limited period only, from April 2008 to February 2009. Burne-Jones spent 17 years on the canvas and he was still painting it on the day before his death in June 1898.

Following the artist's death the painting with its magnificent frame with Latin inscription passed to a neighbour of Burne-Jones's whose descendents, John and Penryn Monck, sold the work at Christie's on 26 April 1963. Even at a time when Victorian art was unfashionable, the sale was considered a significant loss to Britain.

Tragically, Burne-Jones last work was allowed to leave Britain in 1963 after being sold at auction when the Tate had the opportunity to buy it for £1,000. It was purchased for the Museo de Arte de Ponce in Puerto Rico by the island's governor and founder of the museum, Don Luis Ferré, in 1963.

This enormous painting, measuring 21ft by 10ft, is being loaned to Tate Britain with Frederic Leighton's masterpiece Flaming June (1895) from the Museo de Arte de Ponce, Puerto Rico, while its galleries undergo a major renovation and expansion programme during 2008.

The subject of the painting is taken from the fifteenth century work Thomas Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur, Book 21, Chapters 5 and 6. Mortally wounded in the Battle of Camlann, Arthur is taken way to the isle of Avalon and tended by Morgan and her sisters, where he would enter a dream like sleep until summoned again.

Burne-Jones painting shows the King laid out in a cloister, capped by a canopy embossed with panels showing the story of the Holy Grail, three queens keeping vigil; Morgan le Fay in white; the queens of Northgallis and the Wastelands by his feet. In the foreground, playing instruments, are Nimue (The Lady of the Lake), the queens of Sothian Orkney, Eastland and the Outer Isles. Amazons hold the kings’ armour, while Watchers look out into the distance ready to raise the alarm should the King awake.

If you appreciate fine Arthurian art see it now while you can - it returns for a limited period only, you will not be disappointed.

Flaming June

Also on loan from the Museo de Arte de Ponce, Puerto Rico, Flaming June, was last shown in the UK in 1996 and has become an iconic work in Puerto Rico. The picture was one of the artist's final works and shows a woman in a state of total relaxation, with brilliant orange drapery stretched across her body, as she sleeps in the heat of the Mediterranean sun.


The theme of sleep and its associations with death and unconsciousness was important to both Leighton and Burne-Jones, and has additional resonance in these two works that were painted towards the end of the artists' lives.

Tate Britain
Millbank
London
SW1P 4RG


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AVALON (1)

1. The Island of Apples

Writing around 1150 in the Vita Merlini, Geoffrey of Monmouth introduces the Island of Apples as the place where Arthur is taken to be healed of his wounds after the battle of Camlann.

"The island of apples, which is called the Fortunate island has its name because it produces all things for itself. There is no work for the farmers in plowing the fields, all cultivation is absent except for what nature manages by herself. On its own the island produces fertile crops and grapes and native apples by means of its own trees in the cropped pastures. On its own the overflowing soil puts forth all things in addition to the grass, and in that place one lives for one hundred years or more. There nine sisters give pleasant laws to those who come from our parts to them, and of those sisters, she who is higher becomes a doctor in the art of healing and exceeds her sisters in excellent form. Morgen is her name, and she has learned what usefulness all the herbs bear so that she may cure sick bodies. Also that art is known to her by which she can change shape and cut the air on new wings in the manner of Dedalus. When she wishes, she is in Brist, Carnot, or Papie; when she wishes, she glides out of the air onto your lands. They say that this lady has taught mathematics to her sisters Moronoe, Mazoe, Gliten, Glitonea, Gliton, Tyronoe, and Thiten the most noteworthy on the cither. To that place after the battle of Camblan we brought Arthur, hurt by wounds, with Barinthus leading us, to whom the waters and the stars of the sky were known. With this guide for our raft we came to that place with our leader, and with what was fitting Morgen did honor to us, and in her rooms she placed the king upon a golden couch and with her own honorable hand she uncovered his wound and inspected it for a long time, and at last she said that health could return to him...." - excerpt from Vita Merlini by Geoffrey of Monmouth

Geoffrey's Island of Apples is clearly based of The Fortunate Island account by St. Isidore of Seville a 7th Century Bishop:

"... the western limit of the world is furnished by the Fortunate Isles, so named because 'they are blessed with abundance of produce; their woods yield apples naturally, their ranges of hills are clad with unplanted vines and everywhere there are crops and vegetables in place of pasture. Hence the false opinions of pagans, and the poems of secular poets, claiming that these islands were Paradise".

Isidore may in turn have been influenced by The Garden of Hesperides in Greek mythology.
The Hesperides were a group of nymphs who tended a garden in a far western corner of the world, located on a distant blessed island at the edge of the world Ocean.

Morgen

Geoffrey introduces Morgen as an enchantress of the Island of Apples, capable of healing Arthur after his final battle. Geoffrey's Morgen is based on Circe and Medea, sorceresses from Greek Mythology with a Celtic twist in her name, probably from the Morrigan.
Morgen, before she became the dark witch Morgan le Fey and tales of incest by the Grail Romancers, was respected by Geoffrey as the head of the nine maidens on the Island.

‘It is Morgan le Fay,’ he said. ‘It is difficult to explain her.’
‘I should not try.’ …
The Wart thought it was time to ask a tactful question, so he made a polite cough and said: ‘Please, who is Morgan the Fay?
All three answered at once.
‘She’m a bad ‘un,’ said Little John.
‘She is a fairy,’ said Robin.
‘No, she is not,’ said Marian. ‘She is an enchantress.’

Morgan the Enchantress - Skilled in the arts of healing and changing shape, she ruled Avalon. (painting by Frederick Sandys, 1864)

................To be continued