Review: Grail and Cosmos

Arthurian Explorations
Alby Stone

Today Alby Stone concentrates on writing fiction but many of us know him better from his fascinating and highly original non-fiction works such as the books published by Bob Trubshaw’s Heart of Albion Press: Ymir’s Flesh: North European Creation Mythology (1996); Straight Track, Crooked road: Leys, Spirit Paths (1998); and, Shamanism; Explore Shamanism (2003).

In later years he returned to his first love of writing fiction, and in late 2012 and early 2013 self-published a trilogy of novels: The Forgotten Stars; Secret Songs; and The Hand of Fire. 

I first stumbled across Stone’s work some thirty years ago as a regular contributor of articles for Bob Trubshaw’s earth mysteries magazines Mercian Mysteries and At the Edge, including such gems as: The Nine Sisters and the Axis Mundi; Penda the Pagan - Royal sacrifice and a Mercian king; The Cosmic Mill; Hellhounds, Werewolves and the Germanic Underworld.

Prior to the books mentioned above, he continued his association with Bob Trubshaw and produced several booklets for Heart of Albion Press back in the early 1990’s. Sadly these works are currently out of print with second hand copies sometimes attracting extortionate prices.

I was therefore pleasantly surprised to find that three of these booklets with interrelated themes have been assembled together with an article from the now defunct periodical of the Pendragon Society as Grail and Cosmos: Arthurian Explorations (Independently published 2020, 162 pages), the common theme being King Arthur and the Grail:

• A Splendid Pillar (1992)
• The Bleeding Lance (1993)
• The Questing Beast and Other Cosmic Dismemberments (1992)
• A Head on a Platter (Pendragon Society, 1997)

In the introduction to A Splendid Pillar, Stone writes:

“The pre-Christian mythology of Celtic Britain has exerted a significant and widely acknowledged influence on the form and content of the medieval Arthurian romances……. The best example of this phenomenon is the Holy Grail itself, which can be traced back to the divine or magical vessels of Celtic myth: the cauldron in Branwen daughter of Llyr, which could resurrect the dead; the drinking horn of Gran Galed; ‘whatever drink might be wished for was in it’; the cauldron of Dyrnwch Gawr, which would not boil meat for a coward; the golden cup borne by the goddess who personifies Sovereignty in Irish tradition; the capacious cauldron of the Dagda; and so on.

“Yet, less than three decades after the Grail made its firs appearance in literature …… it had become transformed into a potent and inspirational symbol of Christianity, identified with the cup used by Joseph of Arimathea to collect the blood of Christ at the Crucifixion, associated with the Eucharist, and imagined as a touchstone of Christian faith and virtue.

“Even so, the Grail has retained all its heathen properties, more or less intact….”

This very much sets the tone for Grail and Cosmos. The Splendid Pillar is of course the axis mundi, a predominant of most traditional cosmological systems Stone tells us; conceptualised as the central point of the earth’s surface where the sky meets the underworld, the point to gain admittance to the Otherworlds; the realms of the gods or the spirits of the dead. Stone argues that in the Grail romances images of the axis mundi occur in two contexts; the Grail Castle and in adventures experienced on the way to the castle.

The Second Continuation of Chretien de Troyes' Perceval, for example, tells us that when trying to find the Grail Castle for the second time, Perceval arrives at the summit of Mount Delerous and sees a great pillar surrounded by fifteen crosses, He meets a girl here, the daughter of Merlin, who directs him on the correct path. Stone takes us through variant pillars in the tales of the Grail before concluding that this provides clear evidence that stories and characters of the pagan Celts has penetrated the medieval Grail romances. 

Yet, although these depictions are not directly relevant to the story, Stone asserts that they are introduced to guide or lead the quester to the Grail Castle, essentially providing information useful to the quest as in representations of the cosmic axis that facilitate travel to the Otherworld.

When the Grail is paraded through the hall of the Fisher King it is accompanied by various objects; tables, knives and platters, a candelabra, and a strange white lance that drips blood from its tip. In introducing the enigmatic weapon to the Grail romances Chretien described this as simply ‘The Bleeding Lance’. 

Stone sees the origins of the lance as strictly pagan although the Continuators’ of Chretien’s unfinished tale associated it with Christian imagery as the lance of Longinus, the weapon that pierced Christ’s side as he hung on the cross. The Celtic scholar RS Loomis is quoted by Stone as saying this was ‘natural but absurd’ and proposed alternatively that it was actually the spear of the Irish divinity Lugh. Loomis based his argument on the fact that the knight’s visit to the Grail castle strongly resembles Conn’s visit to Lugh’s palace in The Phantom’s Frenzy (Baile in Scail). Loomis supports his theory with reference to two other Irish texts that mention a fiery spear belonging to Lugh that is immersed in a cauldron of blood to keep it sedated and prevent it harming those who came near it.

After taking us through several comparisons, Stone reminds us of a tale of King Arthur in the 13th century Perlesvaus, or Le Haut Livre du Graal (The High History of the Grail), in which he is attacked by the Black Knight with a flaming lance that can only be quenched by the king’s blood. Arthur kills the Black Knight and his corpse is dismembered then carried away piece by piece.

This leads us fittingly to the third tale in Stone’s anthology, The Questing Beast and Other Cosmic Dismemberments which discusses in detail the two dismemberments in Perlesvaus: The Questing Beast and the Black Knight. Stone sees both incidents as based on archaic myth.

The Questing Beast is an obscure creature, smaller than a fox, whiter than fresh fallen snow. Perceval witnesses a bizarre event when he comes to a clearing in the Lonely Forest with a red cross at the centre, where there is a white-clad knight holding a golden vessel at one end while opposite is a maiden also clad in white garments and bearing a gold vessel.

The snow-white beast runs into the clearing terrified by a ‘litter of twelve in her belly yelping like a pack of dogs’. She goes to the white-clad knight then the maiden before turning to Perceval who is warned by the knight not to interfere with the beast’s destiny. The beast goes to the red cross and gives birth to twelve dogs which then immediately start to tear her apart. They leave the clearing and the white knight and white maiden gather up the flesh and blood of the beast in their gold vessels, then worship the red cross before leaving.

The other episode of dismemberment in Perlesvaus is the Black Night that we met above. Stone only sees two items in common with the two events: they both feature dismemberment in a forest clearing, followed by removal of the victims remains. However, the Black Knight episode and the fiery lance appear to be from older Celtic tradition.

Stone sees the presence of the white-clad knight as representative of the Irish god Lugh and the maiden in white as a goddess representing the Sovereignty of Ireland as they are depicted in the tale of The Phantom’s Frenzy, while the Black Knight’s lance suggests he also may be a manifestation of Lugh himself. From here Stone goes into some detail about sacrifice and Indo-European cosmogonic myth.

Finally, we come to the curious episode of A Head on a Platter as told in the 13th century Welsh romance known as Peredur, an offshoot from Chretien’s original Story of the Grail. In Chretien’s unfinished tale he describes the Grail, the centre piece of a ritualistic ceremony, as simply ‘a graal’, a common Old French word for a wide serving dish. In Peredur, which does not mention the Grail by name, it is a large platter (dysgl), in a shorter procession sequence, carrying a man’s head swimming in blood. 

Stone sees the bloody platter of Peredur in context with the lance that drips blood from its tip in the Grail procession. He argues that the lance is descended from the fiery spears of Irish myth that must be quenched in cauldrons of blood. These magical weapons are associated with lightning and made from fire. In turn he sees King Arthur’s sword that we know as Excalibur through the Romances as derived from Irish ‘caladboig’ (lightning sword) with its roots firmly based in Indo-European tradition.

This short book (150 pages) is essential reading for anyone interested in the sources of the Grail stories.

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Joseph of Arimathea at Glastonbury

Why Glastonbury?
Unlike other major religious houses in Britain, such as St Cuthbert at Durham, Glastonbury Abbey never enjoyed the patronage of a founding saint. Late Medieval Chronicles claimed that the first church at Glastonbury had been founded by Joseph of Arimathea. Yet, after the remains of King Arthur and Queen Guinevere where discovered there in 1191, Glastonbury seemed reluctant to accept the burden of Joseph.

Construction of the Lady Chapel during 1180s

The raison d'etre for the Glastonbury Legend is twofold; first and foremost, it provided a foundation legend for the Abbey; secondly, it provided an explanation for how the Holy Grail came to Britain. Ultimately these two two motives came to support each other although in Medieval literature Joseph's two roles  are never fully combined and neither the Glastonbury Legend or the Grail Romances provide a satisfactory answer to why Joseph of Arimathea should have come to Britain at all.

To deal with the second point first, the first Grail story was Perceval by Chretien de Troyes, which is always is set in Britain. In this work the “Grail” is described by Chretien as “un graal”, a simple serving dish or platter. In Chretien's account the significance is in the procession in which sacred items are paraded before Perceval, the bleeding lance, a candelabra and a dish containing a single mass wafer that sustains the Fisher King. Perceval does not seek an explanation to the procession and fails in his quest.

Chretien's unfinished work left later writers free to develop the Grail story restricted only be their imaginations. Led by Robert de Boron these writers Christianised the Grail as relics of the Passion; Robert dropped the bleeding lance altogether but in the First Continuation it became the spear that was used by the Roman centurion Longinus to pierce Christ's side as he hung on the cross, and the chalice was introduced as the Cup of the Last Supper, used by Joseph of Arimathea to collect the Holy Blood at the Deposition. Chretien's “un graal” had now become the “Holy Grail”. After all, this was the time of the Crusades when, following the sack of Constantinople in 1204, Holy relics were sent back to France in abundance.

Robert's story, known as Roman de l'Estoire dou Graal, consisted of three parts, Joseph d' Arimathie, Merlin and the Perceval, is generally dated to around 1200, generally accepted as some twenty years after Chretien's work first appeared. Robert combined elements of Chretien's story of the Grail with the Gospel of Nicodemus. He maintains that he is the first author to bring the story of the Grail from obscurity and translate it into French from a Latin work for his patron Gautier de Montbeliard.

That Montbeliard went on Crusade in 1199 and died as Constable of Jerusalem in 1212 suggests an earlier date for Robert's story of Joseph, presumably written around 1190, before his patron went on Crusade. Others have argued it was produced ten years before Chretien's Grail story. Either way, we can argue that Robert's account is roughly contemporary with Chretien's, which seems to hint at a connection between the two works and raises the possibility that both may be based on the same unknown Latin work.

The Lady Chapel at night

The Cult of the Holy Blood
It would be surprising if Robert was not influenced by the Cult of the Holy Blood that thrived in northern France toward the end of the 12th century. Several religious houses in the Western Europe claimed to possess relics of the Holy Blood brought back from the Holy Land. In the early 9th century one such relic, said to have been brought there by by Longinus himself, was discovered at Mantua in northern Italy. This relic was rediscovered in 1048, after being lost, and then presented to Count Baldwin V of Flanders. His family, in turn, passed it on to the abbey at Weingarten. And then there is the famous Holy Blood relic of Fecamp on the Normandy coast, to name but two.

An illuminated manuscript of the Grail story held by the abbey at Weingarten is one of the earliest depictions of Joseph of Arimathea collecting the blood of Jesus at the Deposition, dated a hundred years before the first appearance of Robert de Boron's account. Whereas earlier depictions of the Crucifixion in religious iconography show an unnamed figure collecting the blood of Jesus in a chalice as he hung on the cross.

Joseph of Arimathea was particularly venerated in the Vosges area of Lorraine, north east France. At one time the abbey at Moyenmoutier claimed to house Joseph's relics. Significantly, this was not far from Montbeliard and the nearby village of Boron, presumably Robert's place of birth.

However, true to Chretien's original tale, Robert de Boron now had to explain how the Cup of the Last Supper had come to Britain from the Holy Land. In Robert's version of the Grail story Joseph spent his last days in the Holy Land, while his family and followers brought the Cup to “vaus d'Avaron”, the valleys of Avaron in the west, interpreted by many as Avalon and identified with Glastonbury since King Arthur's grave was found in the Abbey grounds in 1191. The leaden cross found in Arthur's grave left no doubt that the King was lying in Avalon, just as Geoffrey of Monmouth had claimed in 1136. However, later writers of the Grail story, such as the Vulgate Cycle (Lancelot-Grail) claimed that Joseph himself was responsible for bringing the Cup to Glastonbury.

The Glastonbury link with Joseph of Arimathea does not emerge until the 13th century. Around 1125 AD William of Malmesbury was invited to write the history of Glastonbury Abbey by the abbot Henry de Blois, the old wizard of Winchester. William was given unrestricted access to the Abbey archives but made no mention of either Joseph or indeed the tomb of King Arthur at Glastonbury in his subsequent work entitled De Antiquitate Glastoniensis Ecclesię (On the Antiquity of the Glastonbury Church), the first history of the Abbey. Around one hundred years later “amended” versions of William's manuscript were produced to include the arrival of the Arimathean at Glastonbury shortly after the Passion. A hundred years further on, in the mid-14th century, John of Glastonbury claimed to have access to texts that augmented William of Malmesbury's earlier work and produced his own Chronicle of the history of the Abbey. John's work included, for the FIRST time in print, the Prophecy of Melkin, an obscure Latin text which actually detailed the location of Joseph of Arimathea's grave, which many interpret as meaning Glastonbury.

Melkin the Bard
The so-called Prophecy of Melkin appears for the first time within the pages of the Cronica of John of Glastonbury, (Cronica Sive Antiquitates Glastoniensis Ecclesie) c.1342, claimed to be the earliest known account of the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea at Glastonbury.

Melkin (Melchinus) was said to be a Celtic bard of the time before Merlin. Although the Prophecy is not found before John's Cronica, later writers claim to have seen works authored by Melkin. In the mid-15th century John Hardyng makes reference to Melkin and John Leland, antiquary to King Henry VIII, claimed to have seen works by the bard in the Glastonbury library in the 16th century prior to the Dissolution. John Bale, a contemporary of Leland, states that Melchinus wrote three works: de Arthurii Mensa Rotunda (On Arthur’s Round Table); de Gestis Britannorum (On the Deeds of the Britons); and de Antiquitatibus Britannicis (On British Antiquities). Yet no one has seen any of these works since.

The Prophecy:

“The Isle of Avalon, greedy in the burial of pagans, above others in the world, decorated at the
burial place of them all with vaticinatory little spheres of prophecy, and in future it will be adorned
with those who praise the Most High. Abbadare, powerful in Saphat, most noble of pagans, took his
sleep there with 104,000. Among them Joseph de Mamore, named ‘of Arimathea’, took everlasting
sleep. And he lies on a forked line close to the southern corner of the chapel with prepared wattle
above the powerful venerable Maiden, the thirteen aforesaid sphered things occupying the place. For Joseph has with him in the tomb two white and silver vessels filled with the blood and sweat of the prophet Jesus. When his tomb is found, it will be seen whole and undefiled in the future, and will be open to all the earth. From then on, neither water nor heavenly dew will be able to be lacking for those who inhabit the most noble island. For a long time before the Day of Judgement in Josaphat will these things be open and declared to the living. Thus far Melkin.”

Inscription on the Lady Chapel

The Prophecy is interpreted as describing Joseph's tomb as lying on a forked line close to the southern corner of an oratory or chapel, commonly thought to mean the Lady Chapel at Glastonbury. The description “prepared with wattle” would appear to refer to the old church (vetusta ecclesia).  Many argue that “above the venerable maiden” suggests that the Blessed Virgin Mary accompanied Joseph and was also buried at Glastonbury. The Cup of the Last Supper from the Grail stories has become two cruets containing the blood and sweat of Jesus, sounding remarkably similar to the Holy Blood relics such as those at Weingarten and Fecamp Abbey.

The adjective “bifurcata” is often said to describe a forked path. In modern times this notion has had held great attraction for ‘ley-lines’ hunters who draw alignments across modern maps claiming to have identified the location of a long lost tomb or such. Further, in seeking a rational explanation for Melkin's Prophecy, in the 19th century the Rev. R. Willis suggested that in Medieval Latin “linea” would be an undergarment such as a shirt. Taken a step further this has been interpreted as meaning a split linen burial garment. From this, many deduce that Joseph's tomb lies on a forked line under an oratory dedicated to the Blessed Virgin where Joseph lies, uncorrupted, wrapped in a linen burial shroud with the two cruets, in a marble tomb.

Chronology of a Legend

7th century - First stone church at Glastonbury constructed during the reign of King Ine of Wessex.
10th century - The stone church was enlarged by St. Dunstan, Abbot of Glastonbury.
11th century - Extensive Norman embellishment of the Abbey buildings.
1125 – William of Malmesbury commissioned to document the early history of Glastonbury Abbey (De antiquitate Glastoniensis ecclesiae). William wrote that it is said that the old church at Glastonbury was built by unnamed disciples sent by St Philip. In his original text William does not associate King Arthur or Joseph of Arimathea with Glastonbury.
1136 - Geoffrey of Monmouth wrote his chronicle The History of the Kings of Britain. Following the final battle at Camlann, Arthur, mortally wounded, is taken to the Isle of Avalon. Geoffrey does not associate Glastonbury with Avalon.
1184 - a great fire destroyed many of the Norman buildings at the Abbey on St. Urban's Day, 25 May. An extensive rebuilding program begins.
1191 – King Arthur's grave discovered in the monks cemetery of Glastonbury Abbey.
1193 - Gerald of Wales describes the inscription on the leaden cross found in the grave at Glastonbury as “Here lies buried the famous King Arthur with Guinevere his second wife in the isle of Avalon” thus, confirming Glastonbury as Avalon.
1200 – Robert de Boron writes his Joseph of Arimathea and claims the Holy Grail, the Cup of the Last Supper, is taken to Britain shortly after the Passion. Other Grail stories (such as the Vulgate Cycle) emerge shortly after stating that Joseph actually brought the Grail to Avalon in Britain.
1247 – William of Malmesbury's history of Glastonbury Abbey is amended by a later copyist to include the arrival of Joseph of Arimathea at Glastonbury.
1278 - King Arthur's bones placed in black marble tomb at the Abbey by Edward I.
1342 – John of Glastonbury writes a chronicle of the Glastonbury church (Cronica Sive Antiquitates Glastoniensis Ecclesie). John claimed to include many items that previous historians had omitted,  including the Prophecy of Melkin (for the first time), a text which describes the location tomb of Joseph of Arimathea.
14th century - Abbot Chinnock (1375-1420) promotes the cult of St Joseph who then becomes a major object of pilgrimage at Glastonbury.
1500 - crypt, known as St. Joseph's Chapel, constructed by Abbot Bere beneath the Lady Chapel where a stone image of the Saint was set up for veneration by pilgrims.
1539 - Glastonbury Abbey suppressed under the Dissolution of the Monasteries. The Last Abbot, Richard Whiting hung, drawn and quartered on Glastonbury Tor on 15th November.



Copyright © 2017 Edward Watson
http://clasmerdin.blogspot.co.uk



Photographs of Glastonbury Abbey © Edward Watson

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The Glastonbury Legend

The Tin Merchant
An old Cornish legend claims Joseph of Arimathea visited Britain accompanied by his great nephew the Christ child. No one seems certain of the roots of this legend but Joseph is linked with the Cornish tin trade through his title as 'Nobilis Decurion', a term usually interpreted as a Roman title for someone with responsibility for the local mines. Similar legends persist in Somerset where Joseph is linked with the lead mines at Priddy in the Mendips. The Glastonbury Legend asserts that Joseph was responsible for establishing the first Christian church in Britain. How did this tin merchant from a town in Judea end up in Glastonbury?

Glastonbury Abbey

Joseph is a minor biblical character who features immediately after the Crucifixion. Matthew refers to him as a rich man and Mark says he is a member of the council, or Sanhedrin, but all four canonical Gospels are agreed that Joseph of Arimathea was responsible for the burial of Jesus after the Crucifixion, providing his own rock-cut tomb. The Gospel of John refers to Joseph as a secret disciple of Jesus who was given permission by Pilate to remove the body from the cross at Golgotha. Joseph, assisted by Nicodemus, took the body and bound it in linen clothes with a mixture of myrrh and aloes, according to the burial custom of the Jews.

Joseph of Arimathea then quickly fades from the Gospels. However, he returns in several later apocryphal and non-canonical works which expand the rather sparse accounts of him in the New Testament. Joseph is mentioned in the works of the early church historians through the 2nd to 4th centuries. An apocryphal work known as the Gospel of Nicodemus, dated to the mid-4th century, claimed to have been derived from an original Hebrew work written by Nicodemus himself is mostly a reworking of the earlier Acts of Pilate, apparently a report written by Pontius Pilate. Together Joseph and Nicodemus are always associated with the removal of Jesus' body from the cross; many medieval depictions of the Deposition show Nicodemus with Joseph removing the dead Christ from the cross and collecting the Holy Blood. The Catholic Church even commemorates Nicodemus on the same day as Saint Joseph, 31 August.

The early history of Christianity in Britain is obscure. The official arrival of Christianity in Britain is associated with the mission of Augustine in 597 AD but there seems to have been a traditional presence in these islands long before that date. Writing in the 6th century Gildas describes the execution of the first Christian martyr St Alban at Verulamium in the early 4th century during the Diocletianic Persecution, but claims the arrival of Christianity occurred during the reign of Tiberius Caesar, Roman Emperor from 14 to 37 AD, seemingly within a few years of the Crucifixion. But Gildas fails to mention the arrival of Joseph of Arimathea in Britain.

The Somerset Tradition

The legendary 2nd-century King Lucius of the Britons is also credited with introducing Christianity in to Britain. A 6th-century copy of the Liber Pontificalis (Book of the Popes) claims Lucius despatched a letter to Pope Eleutherius requesting to be made a Christian. Bede (Book I.IV) tells us that this was during the time of Marcus Antoninus Verus and his brother, Aurelius Commodus, who jointly reigned from 161 to 169 AD. In response Eleutherius is said to have sent the missionaries Faganus and Dumanus to Britain around 185 AD who established sees at London, York and Caerleon.

On the Antiquity of the Glastonbury Church, c.1130, William of Malmesbury also claimed it came in the 1st century from a mission by Philip the Apostle, concluding “No other hands than those of the disciples of Christ created the church of Glastonbury.” However, later versions of William's work, seemingly much altered by the monks of Glastonbury, claim Joseph of Arimathea established the first Christian church there in the 1st century. The revised version of William's work adds that Phaganus and Deruvianus (Faganus and Dumanus presumably) restored this first wattle church around 170 AD.

Although the details can only be described as murky at best, history and legend suggest in principal that there are two key events concerning the establishment of Christianity in Britain: the religion first arrived in Britain in the 1st century AD with a mission associated with Jesus' disciples, and by the 2nd century Christianity was reaffirmed among the Britons.

Abbots, Blood and Bones
Following the same route as the Mediterranean tin traders, as described by the Greek historian Diodorus Siculus in the 1st century BC, Joseph of Arimathea arrived in Britain, 37 AD or 63 AD depending on the source. Diodorus described the tin trading centre in Britain as an island called 'Ictis' which is usually identified as St Michael's Mount off the south coast of Cornwall, but another candidate is Glastonbury (the Isle of Avalon). Before the River Brue was diverted in the 12th century it provided a direct, navigable route to the sea at Burnham-on-Sea, thirty miles west.

Joseph is said to have sailed in-land down the River Brue and landed at the Isle of Avalon. He then climbed up to Wearyall Hill with his companions where he thrust his staff into the ground.  The staff rooted and grew in to the so-called Holy Thorn. Joseph and his followers built the first church at Glastonbury, a simple wattle building. Legend claims a local King named Arviragus presented Joseph with 12 hides of land, focused upon six dry knolls rising out of the surrounding Somerset marshes.

No one is certain of the origin of the 'Twelve Hides of Glaston' but a thousand years after the date of Joseph's traditional arrival in Britain the Domesday Survey of 1086 records the Twelve Hides as a privileged estate which never paid geld granted to the abbots of Glastonbury in a series of charters, in some cases of dubious legality, by the pre-Conquest Anglo-Saxon kings of Wessex. William of Malmesbury quotes a charter of 601 from the Glastonbury Abbey archives in which an unnamed king of Dumnonia granted the estate known as 'Yneswitrin' to the old church (vetusta ecclesia) at Glastonbury on petition of Abbot Worgret.

During the reign of King Ine of Wessex (r. 688 to 726) the first stone church was erected at Glastonbury. In the 10th century this church was enlarged by Abbot Dunstan, he who went on to become the Archbishop of Canterbury in 960. The Abbey continued to develop to such an extent that by the time of the Domesday Survey in 1086 it was recorded as the richest monastery in the country. However, tragedy respects no boundaries of wealth and in 1184 a major fire destroyed much of the church leaving it in need of an extensive rebuild.

St Joseph's Well

Memories of Joseph of Arimathea faded in time. Indeed, when William of Malmesbury was invited to write the early history of Glastonbury Abbey by Henry of Blois, brother of King Stephen and abbot from 1126 until 1129 when he became Bishop of Winchester, he made no mention of The Arimathean. A hundred years later, William's original manuscript was much altered to include the establishment of the first Christian church in Britain in the 1st century AD by Joseph and his followers.

This 13th century amendment to William's work failed to have any major impact on the Abbey at the time; thereby Glastonbury passed up the opportunity to host a major Apostolic shrine like that of St James at Santiago de Compostela in Spain. That venture was to come later. Perhaps it was unnecessary to introduce Joseph at this time owing to the recent discovery of the remains of King Arthur and Queen Guinevere in 1191 AD in the monk's cemetery. According to Giraldus Cambrensis, King Henry II had encouraged the monks to dig for Arthur's grave after he had heard of the location from a Welsh bard. However, Henry II did not live long enough to see the monks discovery.

In 1189, the year Henry II died, his cousin Henry de Sully was appointed Abbot of Glastonbury by Richard I who concentrated funds into the Third Crusade rather than church building. Two years later they discovered the remains of Arthur and Guinevere at Glastonbury. Two years after the discovery Henry de Sully left Glastonbury to become Bishop of Worcester in 1193.

By one of those odd coincidences an abbot of the same name was at Fécamp across the Channel, although we are told it was not the same person. Henry de Sully, Abbot of Fécamp, was the nephew of King Stephen of England and Henry de Blois. By another odd coincidence, he is said to have died 1189, the very same year that a man named Henry de Sully became Abbot of Glastonbury.

The Legend of Fécamp is remarkably similar to The Glastonbury Legend, and tells of two knives used by Joseph of Arimathea to remove the blood from Christ's wounds. Nicodemus scraped the dried blood from Christ's wounds with a knife which he then concealed in a small lead cylinder which he hid in the trunk of a fig tree. The fig tree was cast into the sea and finally washed up on the coast of Normandy at Fécamp in the 1st century. The trunk took root and sprouted leaves. At this spot miracles began to occur leading to the building of a church, later becoming a monastery. The relic of the Holy Blood was not discovered until 1171 during the rebuilding of the church that had been destroyed by fire.

St Joseph's Chapel - This place makes me shiver; 'something' was here.

Joseph and the Grail
It is significant that shortly before the interpolated version of William's account of the early history of the church at Glastonbury appeared two major Grail texts had been written. The French poet Robert de Boron gave the 'Graal' of Chretien de Troyes a Christian dimension, introducing the “Holy” Grail as the cup used at the Last Supper, the same vessel in which Joseph of Arimathea then collected the blood of Jesus after the crucifixion.

Robert wrote his story of the Grail around the turn of the 13th century in three parts; Joseph d'Arimathe, Merlin and Perceval. According to Robert, Joseph's family brought the Grail to the “vaus d'Avaron”, the valleys of Avaron in the west, interpreted by many as Avalon, identified with Glastonbury.

The second text, the anonymous Perlesvaus (The High History of the Holy Grail) was originally written in Old French sometime in the early half of the 13th Century as a continuation of Chretien de Troyes' unfinished work “Perceval, or the Story of the Graal”. Perlesvaus is said to be of the lineage of Joseph of Arimathea, and a colophon at the end of the text states “The Latin from whence this history was drawn into Romance was taken in the Isle of Avalon, in a holy house of religion that standeth at the head of the Moors Adventurous, there where King Arthur and Queen Guenievre lie”, thus confirming the Glastonbury connection between Joseph and the Grail. This link was reaffirmed when a fragment of a Perlesvaus manuscript was found at nearby Wells Cathedral.

The Cult of Joseph of Arimathea
In the later Middle Ages greater significance was placed on the Abbey's claim to be the oldest religious community in Britain. Indeed, as the Glastonbury tradition claimed an Apostolic foundation it was in a position to directly challenge the authority of Rome, a claim that would ultimately lead to the destruction of the Abbey and the execution of its last Abbot, Richard Whiting on the Tor in 1539.

A major contribution to the Joseph of Arimathea tradition at Glastonbury was when John of Glastonbury produced his mid-14th century chronicle of the abbey. John's Cronica Sive Antiquitates Glastoniensis Ecclesie (Chronicles or Antiquities of the Glastonbury Church) drew extensively on William of Malmesbury's earlier work on the Abbey, claiming to have added much which William omitted, and the Grail texts. Notably, John includes the episode at St Augustine's chapel from Perlesvaus, but in the Cronica it is St Mary's chapel at Beckery at the foot Wearyall Hill. John's work included, for the first time in manuscript, The Prophecy of Melkin.

Shortly after John's Cronica Abbot Chinnock (abbacy 1375-1420) did much to promote the cult of Joseph of Arimathea at Glastonbury with the abbey becoming a major object of pilgrimage. In the late 14th century Chinnock restored the ruined chapel in the cemetery, re-dedicating it to St. Michael and St Joseph of Arimathea. Chinnock also placed wooden boards at the Abbey which contained extracts from the Cronica encouraging those who came into the Abbey to read the legend.

St Joseph's Chapel

During the abbacy of Richard Bere (1495-1525), the penultimate abbot, Glastonbury embarked on extensive construction works. He built the chapels of King Edgar, Our Lady of Loretto and of the Holy Sepulchre. The numbers of pilgrims had now grown so great that around the year 1500 Abbot Bere excavated a great crypt below the Lady Chapel and Galilee, providing an entirely new subterranean chapel which he dedicated to St Joseph of Arimathea. A stone image of St Joseph was set up in the crypt for the pilgrims. He changed the Abbey's coat of arms to that of Joseph of Arimathea featuring the two cruets of Melkin's Prophecy containing the sweat and blood of Jesus. The cult must have spread throughout Somerset; a 15th century stained glass window of Langport Church shows Joseph with the two cruets.

The Return of the Grail
There is a tradition that the Nanteos Cup is the Holy Grail, brought to Glastonbury by Joseph of Arimathea. This cup, now on permanent display at the National Library of Wales, was in the possession of Glastonbury Abbey at the time of the Dissolution, so the story goes. Abbot Whiting sent the cup in the charge of seven monks to Strata Florida Abbey in Cardiganshire, mid-Wales. On the death of the last monk he revealed that the cup was the Holy Grail that had been brought to Glastonbury by their founder Joseph of Arimathea. The cup then passed into the Powell family at Nanteos House, near Aberystwyth.

The Nanteos Cup - is this the Holy Grail?

In 1938 Revd Lionel Smithett Lewis, vicar of Glastonbury, led a delegation to Nanteos to plead for the return of the cup to Glastonbury. But the cup remained at Nanteos which by now had acquired healing properties.

However, historians cannot trace references to the cup further back later than the 19th century. The Nanteos Cup has been identified as a medieval wooden mazer bowl made of olive wood or wych elm, dated to the 14th or 15th century, about 1,400 years after the crucifixion, around the same time as the cult of Joseph was established at Glastonbury and the first appearance of the Prophecy of Melkin.



Copyright © 2017 Edward Watson
http://clasmerdin.blogspot.co.uk


Photographs of Glastonbury Abbey © Edward Watson

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Crusaders, Cistercians and Templars

"Go forth confidently then, you knights, and repel the foes of the cross of Christ with a stalwart heart. Know that neither death nor life can separate you from the love of God which is in Jesus Christ, and in every peril repeat, 'Whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord's.' What a glory to return in victory from such a battle! How blessed to die there as a martyr!" - St. Bernard of Clairvaux, In Praise of the New Knighthood.

The White Monks

Monasticism as a form of religious life, usually conducted in a community under a common rule, had been in existence in Britain since the 5th century. When Saint Augustine arrived in Canterbury in 597 AD, he introduced the Benedictine Rule to England. The Rule, written by Benedict of Nursia (c.480–550), considered the founder of Western monasticism, was widely popular for monks living communally under the authority of an abbot and popularly known as the 'black monks' by the colour of the choir robe (cuccula) worn over their habits.

However, by the 12th Century many Benedictines houses were considered to have become lax and no longer strictly followed the Rule of Saint Benedict. As a consequence the Cistercian Order was founded favouring solitude and the building of their monasteries in the remote places such as moors and mountain valleys. Around this time the Augustinian Order was also founded, followed by the Orders of Friars in the 13th Century.

The Cistercian Order, known as the 'white monks' for their undyed woollen habits, derives its name from Cistercium, the Latin name for the village of Cîteaux in eastern France. Here, in 1098, a group of Benedictine monks, under Robert of Molesme, founded Cîteaux Abbey with the focus on a return to literal observance of the Benedictine Rule.

In the early 1110s a young Burgundinian nobleman named Bernard, with 30 or so companions, entered the monastery at Citeaux. Bernard was to become one of the most admired and influential churchmen of his age and instrumental in the rapid proliferation of the Order. Three years later he left Citeaux and established an Abbey after Hugh, Count of Champagne, gifted a wild tract of land to the Order, in the Vallée d’Absinthe in the Diocese of Langres, some forty miles east of Troyes. Bernard cleared land here and named the abbey Clairvaux, meaning 'Valley of Light'.

Rievaulx Abbey

The first Cistercian Abbey in England was established in 1128 at Waverley on the River Wey in West Surrey by 12 monks from France.  In 1132 the first Cistercian house in northern England was established by twelve monks sent out from Clairvaux who founded Rievaulx Abbey in North Yorkshire. In the same year 13 monks who were expelled from the Benedictine house of St Mary's Abbey, in York, after attempting to return to the Rule of St Benedict, established the second Cistercian house in the north at Fountains Abbey in 1135. At its peak there were over 50 Cistercian Abbeys in England, most of these were dissolved by Henry VIII in the 1530's. Today there are just three active Cistercian houses in Britain.

The Church of the Holy Sepulchre 
The Greek historian of Christianity Eusebius of Caesarea records in his 'Life of Constantine' that in the 2nd century AD in the Old City of Jerusalem the Roman Emperor Hadrian had a temple dedicated to the goddess Aphrodite deliberately built over the rock-cut tomb of Jesus. Around 326 Helena, mother of Constantine the Great, the first Christian Emperor, ordered the pagan temple be destroyed and a Christian church to be built in its place. It is here that Helena is said to have rediscovered the "True Cross". The Church of the Holy Sepulchre was constructed as two connected churches over the two most important sites in the Christian religion; Cavalry, the site of the crucifixion, and the site of Jesus's empty tomb.

The Church suffered badly from damage by fires and earthquakes over the ages, yet early Muslim rulers, such as the Caliph Umar ibn al-Khattab, protected the city's Christian sites after Jerusalem's submission following the siege of 636-7. The Church of the Holy Sepulchre remained a Christian church, and when Umar visited the Church he is said to have stopped there a short while to pray.

However, in 1009 the most important site in Christianity was razed to the ground when the Fatimid Caliph Al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah ordered the complete destruction of The Church of the Holy Sepulchre in his intent to remove all Christian places of worship from the Holy Land. Reaction in Europe led to expulsions of Jews from many French towns. In 1027–8 the Fatimids and the Byzantine Empire reached an agreement in which the new Caliph Ali az-Zahir (Al-Hakim's son) allowed the Church to be rebuilt. The rebuilding was complete by 1048 with the Church site consisting of a court of resurrection with five small chapels attached to it, commemorating scenes from the Passion.

Yet, pilgrims arriving in Jerusalem during the 11th century reported finding much of the sacred site in ruins as control of Jerusalem continued to change hands  between the Fatimids and the Seljuk Turks. Christians had been making pilgrimages to the Holy Land since the 6th century to witness the birthplace of their religion but when the Seljuk Turks took control of Jerusalem Christians were barred from the Holy City. Loss of access to the most important site in Christianity was unacceptable to the Latin West.

The First Crusade
History insists that Pope Urban's motive in calling for the First Crusade was in response to the appeal of Byzantine Emperor Alexios I Komnenos to the threat of Seljuk Turkish invasion of Asia Minor. However, there can be little doubt that the fate of The Church of the Holy Sepulchre was of major concern, if not openly declared as the ultimate goal of the First Crusade.

Migrating tribes of Seljuk Turks began arriving from the East in the late-10th century and by 1055 they had taken Baghdad. In 1071 they defeated the Byzantine army at Manzikert in eastern  Anatolia which opened the whole of Asia Minor to conquest by the Turks, threatening the capital city of Constantinople. The same year the Turks also went south, taking territory in northern Syria from the Byzantines and Jerusalem from the Fatimids.

In 1074 the Byzantine Emperor Michael VII sent a request to Pope Gregory VII for military assistance, in desperation, willing to overlook the differences between the Latin and Orthodox churches that resulted in the Great Schism of 1054. However, Gregory did not feel it was the right time to send a crusade to fight in the east, although the papacy had approved the crusade in Spain eleven years earlier.

The Seljuk Turks westward advance continued and by 1076 they had taken Damascus from the Fatimids. In the same year, after the Fatimids had retaken Jerusalem, the entire Muslim population and a large number of Jews in the city were massacred by the Turks. Christians were spared from slaughter but expelled from the city. Clearly Anatolia and the Middle East was not a safe place for pilgrims venturing to the Holy Christian sites.

The Byzantine Emperor Alexius I Comnenus had recovered land along the Black Sea coast and around the shores of the Sea of Marmara during the 1080's, now made a special appeal to Pope Urban II asking for mercenaries from the West.

On 27 November 1095, at the Council of Clermont, in France, at which several hundred clerics and noblemen gathered, Urban delivered a rousing speech summoning the people to embark on a righteous war and go to the aid of their fellow Christians in the East and take back Jerusalem, preserve the holy sites from desecration and to ensure continued freedom for pilgrims to journey to them.

Four main crusader armies, estimated at around 30,000 Christian warriors, left Europe in August 1096. After taking Edessa and Antioch on the way, they marched along the Mediterranean coast reaching Jerusalem in early June 1099. Following the siege of Jerusalem a massacre ensued as the knights of the First Crusade entered the holy city, taking The Church of the Holy Sepulchre from the Fatimids on 15 July 1099. In the aftermath Godfrey of Bouillon was established as the new King of Jerusalem and, significantly, as Protector of The Church of the Holy Sepulchre.

The First Crusade had been a remarkable success, even if eyewitness accounts of the bloodbath appear to demolish claims by historians of exaggeration in the scale of the slaughter. Failure would almost certainly have resulted in no hope of any further crusades, but the First Crusade proved that Latin armies could venture into foreign lands and take back control of Christian sites. It is often said that Pope Urban II died in 1099 after receiving news of the conquest of Jerusalem in July 1099, but he died two weeks before news of the Christian victory was received in Europe.

The call for the First Crusade has been interpreted as Urban's attempt to reunite the churches of Rome and Constantinople, however there is little evidence from his own writings to support this.  Historians argue that there was no immediate threat from the Islamic world with Islam and Christendom coexisting in relative stability for centuries.

The concept “to crusade” is rooted deeply in the theology of Medieval Roman Catholicism of Western Europe and has been the subject of much debate. The concept of the “crusade” was to engage in a war which was both holy and penitential; a war believed to be waged on God's behalf and from the belief that acts of penance could be performed because it was authorised by the Pope as the Vicar of Christ.

The First Crusade (1095–1099) was the first of seven major military campaigns fought over the next two centuries and succeeded in establishing the “crusader states” of Edessa, Antioch, Jerusalem, and Tripoli, easing Seljuk Turk pressure on the Byzantine Empire. Yet from Egypt to Syria there were calls for the expulsion of the crusaders; the war for the Holy Land had only just begun.

The Crusader States in Outremer

Soldiers of Christ
The Historian's view is that The Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ (the first name of the Templars) had been born from the need to provide protection to pilgrims en route to Jerusalem in the aftermath of the First Crusade. However, gaps in the Templars history has led to a multitude of conspiracy theories with claims that they were a secret society holding a secret agenda for staying on in Jerusalem.

However, we do know that after Jerusalem had fallen to the crusaders in July 1099 a small group of Latin soldiers stayed on and began to follow a religious way of life in The Church of the Holy Sepulchre, a place of worship built on the site of Christ's empty tomb. The group led by Hugues de Payens, from Champagne, and Godfrey of Saint-Omer proposed to Baldwin II, the Patriach of Jerusalem, that they should form a lay community for the salvation of their souls.

Christian pilgrims on their way to Jerusalem to visit the Holy Sepulchre frequently came under attack from bands of Muslims. Baldwin II was well aware of the dangers facing travellers to the holy city and persuaded de Payens and his companions that they should save their souls by protecting these pilgrims. The Latin soldiers decided that the New Kingdom of Jerusalem needed arms more than monks and subsequently formed a military-religious Order vowing to protect pilgrims on their journeys to Christian sites in the Holy Land. Christmas that year de Payens and his companions took vows in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre to protect pilgrims, and the order of The Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ was born. The risk to pilgrims was underlined at Easter 1119 when 300 Christian pilgrims were slaughtered on the road to River Jordan.

In 1120 The Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ received approval at the Church Council at Nablus and Baldwin II granted them his palace in the former al-Aqsa mosque on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. As this building was known as The Temple of Solomon the group became known as “The Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ and the Temple of Solomon” with its members known simply as “Templars”. The new Order now seeked approval from the Pope; this was to come at the Council of Troyes in 1129.

The Templars were not only to give protection to pilgrims but also defended the new crusader states in Outremer ('the land overseas'). By the time of the Second Crusade their military power had grown to such an extent that they were instrumental in directing the military campaign.

In 1125 Hugh, Count of Champagne, embarked for a third time to the Holy Land, joining the Knights Templar which then barely comprised of more than a dozen knights or so, with their first Grand Master (magister militum Templi) Hugues de Payens who had accompanied him as vassal in Jerusalem 1114-16. With Bernard, Abbot of Clairvaux, de Payens created the Latin Rule, the code of behaviour for the Order of the Knights Templar. In 1129 at the Council of Troyes, convened by Pope Honorius II, Bernard of Clairvaux obtained official recognition and approval for the Order of the Knights Templar, seen as a defining moment in the origin of the movement. The Templars now answered directly to the Pope.

In the early 1130's Bernard of Clairvaux, realising the crusades needed fighting men not wailing monks wrote “In Praise of the New Knighthood”. After all Bernard had a vested interest in the Order as his maternal uncle Andre de Montbard was one of the founding members.

The Second Crusade
When the first crusader state of Edessa fell to the Selijuk Turks in 1145 Pope Eugene III (1145-53) wrote to  to King Louis VII of France (1137-80) calling for a Second Crusade to recover the territory. It seems Louis was already minded to go to the Holy Land, but his barons did not share his ambitions. Louis called on Bernard Abbot of Clairvaux, considered the greatest spiritual authority of the time, for support. On 31st March 1146 Bernard preached to a large crowd in a field at Vézelay, in Burgundy, with King Louis VII present. Unlike the First Crusade, the new venture attracted much nobility; inspired by Bernard's speech thousands took the cross and enthusiasm for the crusade soon spread across Europe.

Odo of Deuil, a witness to Bernard's stirring speech at Vézelay recorded that, “[Bernard] mounted the platform accompanied by the king, who was wearing the cross, and when heaven's instrument poured forth the dew of the divine word, as he was wont, with loud outcry people on every side began to demand crosses. And when he had sowed, rather than distributed, the parcel of crosses which had been prepared beforehand, he was forced to tear his own garments into crosses and sow them abroad.”

The choice of  Vézelay was no accident: it stood at the beginning of one of the four major pilgrimage routes through France to Santiago de Compostela, the shrine of St James in north-western Spain; around 1050 the monks of Vézelay claimed to be in possession of relics of Mary Magdalene. The potent spirituality of the place clearly held great significance. In 1166, while in exile, Thomas Becket had delivered his Whitsunday sermon at Vézelay announcing the excommunication of the main supporters of his English King, Henry II, and in 1190 Richard I of England (The Lionheart) spent several months at Vézelay Abbey before departing for the Third Crusade.

A few months later in the summer of 1146 Bernard went to Germany to bring a halt to the anti-Jewish pogroms of Radulf, a fellow Cistercian. While there he also persuaded the German emperor, Conrad III (1138-52), to join the crusade. No reigning monarch had previously taken the cross but now, in a matter of months, Bernard had recruited two.

Following Bernard's call the Crusaders would embark on a Holy War from all corners of Western Christendom and journey by sea or land from the tip of England, down through France and Italy, crossing to Greece and Constantinople on course for the Holy Land. In the end the overall objective of the Second Crusade (1145-49) was to free Iberia from Muslim control and defeat pagans in north-eastern Europe in addition to the recovery of Edessa (Urfa).

On his election as the Third Grand Master one of Everard des Barres first tasks was to convene a meeting of the General Chapter of the Templars in Paris in April 1147 to discuss plans for the Second Crusade. King Louis VII, Pope Eugene III, several Archbishops and around 130 Templar knights gathered at the European headquarters of the Templars, the Paris Temple. It was around this time that Pope Eugene authorised the use of the Red Cross on the Templar uniform; the Templar Knights wore a white mantle over their chain mail, as the Cistercians had worn a white choir robe over their monk's habits.

This can leave little doubt that the Templars were the driving force behind this crusade from the very beginning. Indeed, Everard de Barres had gone ahead of the crusade to Constantinople to negotiate the passage of the French and German Latin armies with the Byzantine Emperor, Manuel I Comnenus.

In mid-May 1147 Conrad III and his German army departed for the Holy Land. The French contingent under Louis VII and his queen, Eleanor of Aquitaine, left a month later in mid-June. Conrad arrived in Constantinople in September, followed by Louis in early October. Conrad and his army then left Constantinople without waiting for Louis, only to have his main force destroyed by the Turks at Dorylaeum.

Louis opted for a more westerly route toward Attalia, but while passing through the passes of Pisidia in the Cadmus Mountains, his army suffered badly in the harsh winter conditions and he incurred heavy losses to the Seljuk Turks. Louis's army was on the verge of breaking up and he had little choice but to surrender control of the French Latin forces to The Master Templar Everard de Barres who divided the force into units, each under command of a Templar, and arrived safely at Attalia on the Mediterranean. Louis intended to take his main force to Antioch by sea, but there were so few Byzantine ships that he had to abandon the infantry, most of whom perished as they marched overland through Seljuk territory.

Arriving at Antioch in March 1148 Louis took what was left of his forces directly along the coast to Jerusalem instead of Edessa, the recovery of which had been the catalyst for the crusade. Now without any financial resources, Louis sent a request to the Templars for a loan of 2,000 marks. Everard des Barres set off to Acre to amass the funds. This loan was the first recorded financial deal made by the Templars who were to become bankers for the nobility of Europe.

Conrad, who had returned to Constantinople after being taken ill, finally arrived at Acre by sea with the remnants of his army. On 24 June 1148 both he and Louis met with Baldwin III, the king of Jerusalem (1143-63), and the Templars to plan strategy at the Council of Acre. King Baldwin and the Templars preferred target was Damascus because of its Christian history. Everard des Barres led his Templar knights along with the Latin forces on an unsuccessful siege of Damascus between 24 July and 29 July 1148. The siege ended in a humiliating defeat which led to the disintegration of the Crusade. Opinion differs as to whether the crusaders were beaten by the harsh desert conditions with no shade or water outside the thick walls of Damascus, or that many turned away on hearing that King Baldwin had promised to hand the city over to the Thierry of Alsace, Count of Flanders.

The Second Crusade failed in its primary objective, the recovery of Edessa, and failed to make any significant impact in the Holy Land with the unsuccessful siege of Damascus. The only positive results were in Iberia with the recovery of Lisbon and Almeria in 1147, and in Tortosa in which 400 years of Muslim rule came to an end when the Count of Barcelona took the city in December 1148 with the aid of crusaders returning from the East.

Andre de Montbard, now the Templar Seneschal, remained in Jerusalem after the Crusade. He despatched several letters to the Grand Master Everard des Barres requesting his return to Jerusalem with financial and military reinforcements. However, a reply was never received as des Barres had decided to give up his position as Grand Master, officially abdicating in April 1151, and becoming a Cistercian monk at Clairvaux Abbey where he died on 12 November 1174. In 1156 de Montbard gave up his role as the fifth Grand Master (1153–1156) of the Order and followed des Barres into retirement at Clairvaux, demonstrating the closeness between the two Orders.

Blame for the failure of the Second Crusade was placed firmly with the papacy who had inspired the crusade, but had done little to organize or coordinate it; yet historians tend to agree that the root cause of the failure was due to Louis VII of France and Conrad III of Germany being poor and inexperienced commanders who did not cooperate in their battle tactics.

Bernard's Apologia
After the failure of the Second Crusade Bernard felt compelled to issue an apology to the Pope in which he blamed the sins of the crusaders as the cause of their misfortune and failures. Consequently this was to be the last Crusade in which the armies were accompanied by large groups of pilgrims and other non-combatants; from now on the Crusades were to become more strictly military expeditions, with military objectives.

Bernard died on 20 August 1153, aged 63; Canonised twenty years later by Pope Alexander III in 1174; he was the first Cistercian monk to be named a Saint. By the end of the 12th century, the Order of the Cistercians had spread throughout Western Europe, supplanting the  Cluniac Order as the most influential and powerful Monastic Order. Such was the influence of Bernard of Clairvaux that he was regarded by many as the true founder of the Cistercians, who have often been called Bernardines. Bernard was buried at Clairvaux Abbey. When the abbey was dissolved by the French revolutionary government St Bernard's remains were transferred to Troyes Cathedral.

Significantly, the first Grail romance, Perceval, the Story of the Grail, written between 1181 and 1190, by the poet Chrétien of Troyes, is dedicated to Philip, Count of Flanders. Philip of Alsace, Count of Flanders from (1168 to 1191), was also buried at Clairvaux Abbey. Philip had succeeded his father Thierry of Alsace, who was frequently away on crusade. Thierry participated in four pilgrimages to the Holy Land, including the Second Crusade. Tradition claims thar Thierry returned to his capital Bruges on 7th April, 1150, with the relic of the “Precious Blood” a cloth that Joseph of Arimathea had used to wipe blood from the body of Christ after the Crucifixion. The Basilica of the Holy Blood was built under the direction of the Count of Flanders to house the venerated relic of the Holy Blood.

Chrétien left his story of the Grail unfinished, perhaps purposefully, and never fully developed the objects of his 'graal procession'; opinion tends to agree that if he had finished his Story of the Grail then he would have described the items of the Grail Procession as relics of the Passion; Chrétien hints as much in writing that 'un graal' ('a grail': a serving platter) contained a single mass wafer that sustained the Fisher King.

Certainly the Grail stories following Chrétien feature relics of Christ's Passion as the items of the Grail  Procession. Following Chrétien, a Bavarian knight and poet known as Wolfram von Eschenbach (c.1170-1220) wrote a version of the Grail story entitled “Parzival”. In the Parzival, Wolfram refers to the Order of Graal Knights as “Templeisen” which is usually interpreted as a reference to the Knights Templar.

The Order of the Knights Templar was formed to defend pilgrims travelling to the Holy Land, but their history is not exactly overflowing with examples of the Templars salvation of Christian travellers. Instead, it records many massacres and much bloodshed in their conquests, massive financial and military power; the gaps filled in by theories of arcane practices and covert agendas. And underneath all this lies the story of the Holy Grail, inescapably tied to the Templars.


Copyright © 2016 Edward Watson
http://clasmerdin.blogspot.co.uk/

Edited 03/09/16

Sources:
Thomas Ashbridge, The Crusades: The War for the Holy Land, Simon & Schuster, 2012.
Thomas Ashbridge, The First Crusade: A New History, Simon & Schuster, 2005.
Malcolm Barber, The New Knighthood: A History of the Order of the Temple, Cambridge University Press, 2012.
Barbara Frale, The Templars: The Secret History Revealed, Maverick House, 2009.
John France, The Second Crusade: War, Cruel And Unremitting, pp.60-63, in Thomas F. Madden, editor, Crusades: The Illustrated History, Duncan Baird Publishers 2004.
Michael Haag, Templars: History and Myth: From Solomon's Temple to the Freemasons, Profile Books, 2009.
Helen Nicholson, A Brief History of the Knights Templar, Robinson, 2000.
Jonathan Phillips, Martin Hoch, editors, The Second Crusade: Scope and Consequences, Manchester University Press, 2001.
Jonathan Riley-Smith, The First Crusade and the Idea of Crusading, 2nd Revised Edition, Continuum, 2009.
Jonathan Riley-Smith, The Atlas of the Crusades, Times Books, 1991.
Steven Runciman, A History of the Crusades: Volume 1 - The First Crusade and the Foundation of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, Penguin, 1991
Steven Runciman, A History of the Crusades: Volume 2 - The Kingdom of Jerusalem and the Frankish East 1100-1187, Penguin, 1990.
Conrad Greenia, trans. In Praise of the New Knighthood (Liber ad milites Templi: De laude novae militae), St. Bernard of Clairvaux, from Bernard of Clairvaux: Treatises Three, Cistercian Fathers Series, Number Nineteen, © Cistercian Publications, 1977, pages 127-145.

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Valle Crucis and the Grail

The massive success of Dan Brown's book The Da Vinci Code (2003) led to a huge upsurge in interest in the Holy Grail and its so-called guardians, the Knights Templar.

In the introduction to 'Valle Crucis and the Grail' author Ian Pegler recalls a BBC website article from 2006 that said owing to the town's links with the Grail legend, Llangollen hoped to benefit from the success of the Da Vinci Code. In this book Pegler's objective is an examination of the Grail connections at Valle Crucis Abbey, barely a mile and a half from the Denbighshire town.

The BBC article made reference to 'The Keys to Avalon' by Steve Blake and Scott Lloyd (Element, 2000), a controversial book that claims to relocate Arthur's true kingdom (Ynys Pridein) west of Offa's Dyke, an earthwork forming the ancient land boundary of Wales that the author's claimed was constructed by the Emperor Severus in the Late 2nd Century AD.

In 'Keys' it was claimed that the Grail was linked to Castell Dinas Bran sited on the hill high above Llangollen. Blake and Lloyd also claimed that 'Glaestingaburh' (the Saxon name usually used in reference to the Somerset town of Glastonbury) originally referred to a location in the Eglwyseg Valley; the site now occupied by Valle Crucis Abbey.

Those of us not convinced by Blake and Lloyd's alternative Arthurian history will perhaps read Pegler's work with some caution from the introduction onwards. (For a critique of The Keys to Avalon see this article by Keith Fitzpatrick-Matthews). But stick with it as Pegler raises some interesting points from Valle Crucis that certainly whet the appetite.

Glyn Egwestl

Any claims of confusion with Glastonbury is really unnecessary as the area around Llangollen offers plenty of heritage and legend of its own: Castell Dinas Bran; Eliseg's Pillar; Croes Gwenhwyfar; St Collen's Well; Craig Arthur on the limestone escarpment of Eglwyseg Mountain; and of course the sacred River of the Goddess flows through the centre of the town.

Pegler's book offers many tantalising glimpses of these mysteries, such as the possibility of a Roman villa underneath the cloister area located in the early 1900s by Reverend Owen. Burnt timber remains under this were speculated by Blake and Lloyd as the site of Joseph of Arimathea's first church in Britain. Pegler locates anomalies in this area by dowsing, but does not speculate on the possibilities.

MORVS Head
found in the SW corner of the refectory at
Valle Crucis Abbey during excavations in 1970

The author hints at the Abbey's potential links with the Holy Grail such as the mysterious talking statue of Christ which gets all but a brief mention, as does the 'MORVS' head, and a 13th Century copy of the Koran found 'bricked up' at the Abbey possibly brought back from the Holy Land by a crusading Knight Templar. The author raises the possibility that a number of grave slabs at Valle Crucis may identify Templar burials at the site.

The poet Guto'r Glyn spent his last days at Valle Crucis and refers to the Grail in an elegy to Robert Trevor (c.1452) in which he mentions a 'man buried at Egwestl with the Holy Grail'. Sometime after 1480 Guto'r composed a letter on behalf of the Abbot of Glyn Egwestl (Valle Crucis) requesting the loan of a copy of the 'Sain Greal' owned by Trahaearn ab leuan ap Meurig, a nobleman of Penrhos Fwrdios near Caerleon.

Almost certainly this text was the Welsh translation made in Glamorgan, c.1400, of two French Grail Romances of c.1300, La Queste del Saint Graal and Perlesvaus, now known as Y Seint Greal. A copy was made of it sometime after 1485 which bears a colophon stating it was made from a book owned by Trahaearn. Why was the Abbot of Valle Crucis desperate to get his hands on this Welsh Grail text?

Pegler weaves a web of many loose threads but fails to bring any of them to a conclusion; I really expected some revelation that he had discovered some anomaly under the Abbey turf during his dowsing, but instead he writes that there were one or two other dowsed features which he felt was more discrete to deliberately leave out of the book.

This tantalising little book barely scratches the surface of the mysteries of Valle Crucis Abbey; the full story is yet to be told. 


Copyright © 2016 Edward Watson
http://clasmerdin.blogspot.co.uk/

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The Fourth Crusade, The Shroud and the Grail

"Thus it was that Constantine's fair city, the common delight and boast of all nations, was laid waste by fire and blackened by soot, taken and emptied of all wealth, public and private, as well as that which was consecrated to God ..." - Nicetas Choniates, 13th century Historia.

In 1095, Pope Urban II proclaimed the First Crusade with the objective of restoring Christian access to the holy places in and around Jerusalem. During the following 200-year struggle for control of the Holy Land perhaps the most perplexing event is the notorious Fourth Crusade in the early 13th Century. The leaders of the Christian army from Western Europe had planned an assault on Egypt, but with their Venetian allies, attacked and laid waste the Byzantine city of Constantinople, the single most bloody and destructive episode of the Crusades against fellow Christians.

The mystery of this self-inflicted slaughter of fellow Christians is made even more confusing by the knowledge that the Pope had expressly forbidden the Crusaders' attack on the Greek Metropolis. What prompted the Latin army to change the target of their crusade and defy the Pope?

The Call to Arms
The Third Crusade (1189–1192) had effectively come to an end with the two great military leaders, Richard I, The Lionheart, of England and Saladin, fighting each other to a standstill. The Lionheart had reclaimed much territory for the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem, including the key coastal cities of Acre and Jaffa, and territories of the Crusader kingdom conceded in the aftermath of the Battle of Hattin were restored, yet he had failed to recover the ancient city of Jerusalem. An uneasy truce was negotiated with unarmed Christians pilgrims permitted access to visit the Holy Sepulchre in the Holy city. Essentially the Third Crusade had failed in its prime objective to retake Jerusalem and recover the True Cross, last seen tied upside down to a lance and heading for Damascus following the massacre of the Crusader army at the Horns of Hattin in July 1187. There had been a tradition that the True Cross was carried into battle as a talisman; it was used at the battle of Ramleh in 1103 and in almost every major engagement in the decades thereafter.

By October 1192 The Lionheart had departed the Holy Land for France, vowing to one day return; six months later Saladin had fallen ill with fever and never recovered, dying in March 1993. It seemed the Holy Land was to enter a new era. However, the Lionheart's reluctance to pursue the recapture of Jerusalem would lead to the call for the Fourth Crusade six years later. Pope Innocent III had probably hoped that The Lionheart would make good on his vow to return to the Holy Land and join the Fourth Crusade but in March 1199 he was killed after being hit in the shoulder by a crossbow bolt during a siege at Châlus.

The call for a Fourth Crusade did not initially receive an enthusiastic response. However, by February 1200 Thibaut (Theobald) Count of Champagne and Count Baldwin of Flanders, along with his wife, Marie of Champagne, had taken the cross. At a meeting in Soissons in March the French nobles planned the crusade with a preference to travel by sea to the Holy Land and launch an invasion via Egypt. With the death of Thibaut in May 1201 the north Italian nobleman Boniface of Montferrat was appointed leader of the crusade. Boniface was of good crusading stock, as it were; his father William V of Montferrat took part in the Second Crusade and fought at the Battle of Hattin in 1187. He was a younger brother of William "Longsword", Count of Jaffa and Ascalon, and of Conrad I of Jerusalem, with his nephew Baldwin V crowned co-ruler of Jerusalem in 1183.

After some negotiations, The Treaty of Venice, (1201) was finally agreed in which the Venetians, led by the elderly 'Doge' Enrico Dandolo, providing a fleet and provisions for 33,500 men and 4,500 horses for one year for 85,000 silver marks. In addition, the Venetians agreed to join the crusade themselves providing fifty well-armed war galleys. All booty would be split evenly between the Venetians and the crusaders. The fleet would be ready to sail by June 1202.

The Venetians suspended all overseas trade and put enormous resources into the project to construct one of the largest fleets assembled in the period, purchasing thousands of tons of provisions, and building and fitting out war vessels at an amazing rate. Venice met its obligations to the letter; unfortunately, the crusaders did not. By the summer only around 13,000 men arrived in Venice, a much reduced number, with far fewer Franks than predicted, possibly influenced by the loss  of Thibaut of Champagne and some of the Flemish contingent finding their own way to the Holy Land, sailing direct from Marseilles. This lower numbers of crusaders led to a massive financial shortfall with the Crusade in debt to the Venetians by some 34,000 marks.

In a compromise the crusaders agreed to assist the Venetians in restoring the port of Zara on the Dalmatian coast, their political and economic rival, to their control. The fleet finally sailed in October 1202. When Pope Innocent III learnt of the Crusade's plan to attack Zara rather than relieve Jerusalem, he warned Boniface and his Venetian allies that they would face excommunication if they went ahead with the assault. The Crusade attacked Zara regardless which by November was under the control of the Venetian-Crusade alliance.

The Pope, having forbidden the attack, published an official decree excommunicating the entire crusade as he had threatened. The crusaders requested absolution, but the Venetians did not. With most of their provisions now consumed and little left of the year’s lease on the vessels, the crusade was in desperate straits. With the plunder from Zara being insufficient to pay off the Venetians, an opportunity for a “just cause” presented a solution for the crusaders.

In 1201 the young Alexius Angelus travelled to the west claiming he was the legitimate heir to Byzantium and requested the Crusade stopped off in Constantinople and overthrow the usurper and restore his father to the throne. Alexius’s father, Isaac II, had been deposed and blinded by his own brother, who was then crowned Alexius III in 1195. In return for the crusader's assistance Alexius offered 200,000 silver marks, to provide the crusade with 10,000 men for one year and establish a permanent garrison of 500 knights in the Holy Land. Prior to this he had visited the Pope promising to re-unite the Greek and Latin churches separated since the great schism of 1054. Innocent III declined to get get involved with internal dynastic struggles; his interest was the  re-conquest of Jerusalem.

However, the Venetians had their own agenda and were eager to direct the crusader's attention toward Constantinople; the Greeks had stifled their ambitions to dominate Mediterranean trade for decades. In June 1203 news reached Innocent III that the crusade was to divert to Constantinople. He wrote to the Crusade leaders explicitly forbidding any attack on the Christian city. The Pope's letter, when it did arrive, forced the crusaders to choose between obedience to the pope and fulfilling their obligations to the Venetians. However the letter arrived too late and for a second time the crusade disobeyed the Pope. The crusaders seemed to have lost sight of their original objective to recapture Jerusalem and set sail for Constantinople.

A crusader siege

Devastatio Constantinopolita
The Fourth Crusade arrived at the walls of Constantinople in June 1203. In July they attacked the northern walls of the city with the Venetians starting many fires in that area. Alexius III fled during the night, Isaac II was released from his prison and restored to the throne. His son, Alexius, was crowned co-emperor Alexius IV (1203-4) but was unable to pay the crusade what had been promised. Relations between the Latins and Byzantines quickly soured.

Tired of waiting, the crusaders demanded payment in November. Hostilities erupted as the crusaders began to collect their own payment and starting looting the city. Isaac II died and Alexius IV was unable to stop the crusader attacks. A palace official, Mourtzouphlus (heavy-brow), arranged a coup in February 1204 and had Alexius IV strangled to death. Mourtzouphlus was crowned Alexius V. This appalled the crusaders who saw Mourtzouphlus as a tyrannical usurper who must be removed from office. The crusader's clergy made a ruling that the murder of Alexius IV and the Byzantine failure to accept the primacy of Rome made Constantinople a legitimate target of the Crusade and the Latins prepared for a full scale assault on the city.

However, in defiance of Innocent III, who had forbidden any attack on Christians and especially on Constantinople, the assault began on 8th April 1204, when the Crusade attacked the northern harbour walls. Four days later On 12th April 1204, the crusaders made a second attack at the same location. Because of the efforts of a small group of knights, and an armed priest named Alleumes de Clari, the crusaders gained entry into the city. Thousands of western knights streamed in to the Byzantine capital setting it ablaze devastating one-sixth of the city, and regardless of their crusading vows, subjected it's Christian citizens to a gruesome three-day ordeal of violence, rape and plunder in which the city was stripped of its treasures; enormous amounts of gold, silver, precious gems, and holy relics were taken to be transported back to Europe. Perhaps the best known is the gilt bronze horses from the Hippodrome of Constantinople, which were placed above the entrance to the cathedral of Venice, St Mark's Basilica. One of the crusaders recorded the scene:

“When the city was captured [...] and the palaces were taken over, [...] they found in them
riches more than a great deal. [...] And the palace of Bukoleon was very rich [...] and in it
there were fully thirty chapels, great and small, and there was one of them which was called
the Holy Chapel, which was so rich and noble that there was not a hinge nor a band nor
any other part [...] that was not all of silver, and there was no column that was not of jasper
or porphyry or some other rich precious stone. [And] within this chapel were found many
rich relics: [...] two pieces of the True Cross as large as the leg of a man [...], and the iron
of the lance with which Our Lord had his side pierced, and two of the nails which were
driven through his hands and feet; and one found there in a crystal phial quite a little of
his blood and [...] the tunic which he wore [...] when they led him to Mount Calvary. And
one found there also the blessed crown with which he was crowned [...] and the robe of
Our Lady and so many other rich relics that I could not recount them to you [...].” - Robert de Clari on the Latin conquest of Constantinople, 1204.

The Fourth Crusade never did sail for the Holy Land. The crusaders remained in Constantinople building a new Latin Empire with Baldwin of Flanders elected its first Emperor on 16 May 1204 in the Hagia Sophia, the great church built by the emperor Justinian in the 6th century. Following the ceremony, Constantinople and the Empire were then divided up, with one-quarter (two-eighths) going directly to the Emperor, three-eighths to the Franks, and three-eighths to the Venetians, who also bought the island of Crete from Boniface. The crusaders then set out in all directions to seize Greek lands.

In November 1204 Baldwin wrote to Innocent III advising of the capture of the Byzantine capital, evidently omitting much of the gruesome detail. The Pope is said to have initially reacted with jubilation, even though the crusade had disobeyed him, with the prospect of the unification of the Eastern and Western churches. Only later when he had heard of the three days of carnage did Innocent III react with disgust and condemn the crusade.

However, the Pope recognised the authority of the new Latin Empire in order to end the schism and unite the churches of east and west. He ordered the new Emperor to ensure the Latin rite took root throughout the newly acquired territories and installed three of his most trusted Orders in the area: the Templars; the Hospitallers; and the Cistercians. The two military orders took possession of various Byzantine territories at the disdain of the Emperor and his vassals who did not consider the Templars or the Hospitallers had any rights to the land as they did not participate in the overthrow of Constantinople.

The Fourth Crusade is typically characterized as some great fiasco; although it quickly fell out of Papal control one is forced to question how this Crusade ended up so far from its intended destination – was there always a hidden agenda?

A Theory of Accidents?
The slaughter of the Christians of Constantinople has been described as the result of a festering distrust due to declining Crusader-Byzantine relations during the 12th century. The Second Crusade had considered attacking the Greek capital and Richard the Lionheart had taken Cyprus, a Byzantine protectorate, during the Third Crusade, before selling it on to the Templars. Was the failure of the Fourth Crusade manipulated by the Venetians as an anti-Greek conspiracy?

From the many views that have emerged, the finger of suspicion often points firmly toward the Venetians to whom the crusaders owed a large sum of money, and may have been involved in a secret conspiracy to divert the crusade to Constantinople since it was to their economic advantage; the Venetians now had control of the trade routes from the Adriatic to the Black Sea.

The Doge, Enrico Dandolo, is typically cast as the villain of the piece, the man who sparked the flames of  the sack of Constantinople in 1204; he was certainly the architect of the diversion of the Fourth Crusade to Zara in 1203. A man said to be driven by greed and hatred which stemmed from the seizure of Venetian residents at Constantinople and their goods in 1171. Although Venetian merchants had been allowed back in to Constantinople, they had never been fully compensated for their losses. The Massacre of the Latins at Constantinople in 1182 in which the bulk of the Latin community, estimated at over 60,000 at the time, was either wiped out or forced to flee, was an event which Venice had never forgotten or forgiven. The Venetians certainly had the motive and the powerful army of the Fourth Crusade presented the opportunity.

The Massacre of the Latins

However, modern scholars tend to accept Queller's theory that the Fourth Crusade was directed largely by incident and circumstance rather than planned decision. The Fourth crusade has been described as “a thousand or more decisions, often at cross-purposes” made by the leadership of the crusade on the spur of the moment and on the basis of little useful information. As the historian Riley-Smith writes, “The capture of Constantinople seems to have been the result of a series of accidents . . . There is no need even to explain the crusade in terms of the long history of bad relations between crusaders and Greeks; it was a response to a request from a Byzantine prince, made when the crusaders were heavily in debt because of an error of judgement on the part of the six delegates who had negotiated on their behalf with Venice.”

This may be true in so much as the sack of Constantinople achieved two goals for the Latins; it installed the rightful heir to the throne of Byzantium; and, secondly, it freed the Fourth Crusade from their debt to the Venetians. Yet the leaders of the Fourth Crusade may have had their own, secret agenda from the very beginning.

The Grail Quest and Relics of the Passion
The city of Constantinople was a wealthy place and within its walls were the riches of an empire.
Immense booty was gained from Constantinople described as “every choicest thing found upon the earth” most of which was sent back to the crusader's homelands. Geoffrey of Villehardouin, the marshal of Champagne, claimed that never had so much booty been won in any city. Material riches were not the only loot; the Greek Metropolis housed many relics of the crucifixion – the recovery of relics of Christ's Passion had been amongst the objectives of previous crusades. So rich was the assemblage of relics at Constantinople it was considered the second Jerusalem.

In the Middle Ages relics were immensely powerful objects, considered to retain the spiritual power of martyrs and saints, in particular early Christian martyrs were the most revered.  Although, from a medieval perspective, relic theft was not necessarily wrong, since it was generally believed that relics could only be stolen if the holy figure wished them to be and would subsequently show approval by performing miraculous deeds at their new home. Many of Europe's most famous relics were looted from Constantinople in 1204: the supposed head of John the Baptist; pieces of the True Cross; hair of the Virgin; and innumerable body parts of various saints all went westward. The list seems endless.

The Imperial Palace of Boucoleon in Constantinople was to the south of the city. Inside this
Imperial complex was the Pharos Chapel. At that time, the chapel kept the most famous collection of relics of Christ, including the cross, the nails, the lance, the sponge, the cane, the crown of thorns, the sandals, the tunic, the stone from the tomb, the sudarium (face cloth) and burial cloths from the tomb. In his eyewitness account of the Fourth Crusade, Robert de Clari, who's brother Alleumes was one of the first through the city walls in the sack of 1204, notes the presence of many of the aforementioned relics, including the Virgin’s veil and John the Baptist’s head.

It would appear the relics of the Passion that were kept in the Pharos Chapel were very quickly taken under Latin control and protected from looting. But later a group of 22 relics of the Pharos collection were sold by the Latin Emperor of Constantinople, Baldwin II, to his relative King Louis IX of France between 1239 and 1242 who built the Sainte-Chapelle in Paris to house them. This was normal practice; the majority of crusaders who obtained relics during the Crusades sent them back to their local churches.

The city had been a repository for holy relics at least since it became capital of the Roman Empire in 324 AD under Constantine I. Needless to say, relics of Christ's Passion would be the most valued. Helena, the mother of Constantine, the first Christian emperor, is said to have travelled to the Holy Land c.326-28 in search of relics of the Passion. She is attributed as having discovered the True Cross and other Passion relics that were brought back to Constantinople.

The Image of Edessa, recorded since at least the 6th century, a square or rectangle of cloth upon which a miraculous image of the face of Jesus was imprinted, the first icon or image of Christ, known as the Mandylion, was brought to Constantinople in 944. The Mandylion has been identified as the burial linen known today as the Shroud of Turin, a 14 foot length of linen cloth bearing the image of a man who appears to have suffered the physical trauma consistent with crucifixion, (folded in four so that only the face was visible), however this identification is disputed by other Sindologists. Whether we accept the Mandylion is the Shroud of Turin or not, it seems certain there was a burial cloth at Constantinople bearing a full figure image as Robert de Clari attests.

The First Crusade had recovered the Lance of Longinus, the Roman soldier who pierced Christ's side while he hung on the cross, discovered in 1099 during the Siege of Antioch. The Lance of Longinus became identified with the Bleeding Lance of the Grail procession by authors of the Continuations to Chretien de Troyes Story of the Grail in the early 12th century.

Regardless of claims of pagan origins, the Grail Romances were clearly focused on Relics of Christ's Passion as items of the Grail procession; the Holy Lance that drips blood; the chalice of the last supper. Further, the key Grail texts were written under the patronage of powerful Crusader lords. As such, the Grail appears linked to the Holy Land and Jerusalem and certainly to the Relics of the Holy Passion.

The patron of the first story of the Grail was Philip of Alsace, count of Flanders from 1168 to 1191, cousin to King Baldwin IV of Jerusalem, the leper king, and participated in a crusade in 1177 and departed again for the Holy Land with a Flemish contingent in 1190 where he died a year later from an epidemic at the Siege of Acre. In the prologue to Perceval, or Conte du Graal, Chrètien de Troyes pays homage to his patron for providing the source for the best tale ever told in a royal court. Although he never fully developed the objects of  his 'graal procession', general opinion agrees that if Chretien had finished his Story of the Grail then he would have described them as relics of the Passion; he hints at this by saying 'un graal' (a grail) contained a single mass wafer that sustained the Fisher King.

Philip's father was Thierry of Alsace, Count of Flanders from 1128 to 1168, who participated in four pilgrimages to the Holy Land, including the Second Crusade in 1147 AD. According to tradition, Thierry returned to his capital Bruges on 7th April, 1150 AD, with the relic of the “Precious Blood” a cloth that Joseph of Arimathea had used to wipe blood from the body of Christ after the Crucifixion. The Basilica of the Holy Blood was built under the direction of the Count of Flanders to house the venerated relic of the Holy Blood.

Following Chretien, Robert de Boron Christianised the Grail even further; Chretien's simple serving dish, un graal, had now developed into The Holy Grail, a Christian relic of the Passion brought back from the Holy Land as used by Joseph of Arimathea to collect the blood of Christ at the deposition. At the end of his 'Joseph d'Arimathe' de Boron states he is in the service of Gautier of "Mont Belyal", identified as Gautier de Montbéliard who departed on the Fourth Crusade in 1202 and died in the Holy Land. Robert is said to have been originally from the village of Boron in the district of Montbéliard.

Originally written in Old French, in the first decade of the 13th century, the Perlesvaus, or the High History of the Holy Grail, is a continuation of Chrétien De Troyes' unfinished Story of the Grail, in a rather more mystical tone drawing on archaic Celtic legends. The author of Perlesvaus remains anonymous but has been suggested as a Glastonbury monk or a Templar knight. The prologue outlines the guardianship of the Grail through Joseph of Arimathea's family down to Arthur's times in much the same vein as Robert de Boron's story. Perlesvaus also boasts crusader patronage. Jean de Nesle, like Gautier de Montbeliard, Robert de Boron's patron, was one of the small group of Flemish crusaders who sailed directly from Marseilles during the Fourth Crusade.

The fourth major grail text is Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parzival, the first treatment of the Holy Grail theme in German, which is associated with Hermann I, the Landgrave of Thuringia, a Crusader veteran, who accompanied the Holy Roman Emperor on crusade in 1197. Wolfram’s poem features a band of Grail guardians whom he calls 'templeisen', generally considered to be a reference to the military order of Knights Templar.

The Blachernae Shroud
The other church in Constantinople concerned with housing relics of the Hoy Passion was at the other side of the town, to the north, the church of Saint Mary of Blachernae, where Robert de Clari saw a burial linen with the figure of Christ raised up every Friday. Notably, his brother Alleumes was first to breach the wall in the northern quarter by the church of the Virgin which was said to have housed the burial linen. Other funeral linens were kept in the imperial chapel of Pharos as noted above, yet the shroud with the whole figure of Christ was very much related to the church of Saint Mary of Blachernae.

There are very few previous references to this cloth and its arrival in Constantinople. However, as we have seen above, it has been identified with the Mandylion brought to Constantinople in the 10th century. There is also a reference by Antoine de Novgorod who, in the year 1200, wrote about the image of the face in the Boucoleon Palace and of the Image of the Saviour in Blachernae. Robert de Clari uses the word 'sydoine' (Syndone, or Sindon) to describe the Blachernae cloth and clearly distinguishes it from other burial clothes without an image. The description of the image of the whole body suggests the cloth of Blachernae was what we know today as the Shroud of Turin, the very cloth that Joseph of Arimathea used to cover Christ’s body after the crucifixion.

The publicity surrounding the weekly exhibition every Friday made it a perfect target for looting during the sacking of the city in 1204. As Alleumes de Clari was first through the city walls in the northern sector near to the church of Saint Mary of Blachernae, where the Shroud was housed, it seems a small group of crusaders had deliberately targeted Christ's burial Shroud when they entered Constantinople in 1204. Robert de Clari testifies to its disappearance; “No one, either Greek or French, ever knew what became of this Shroud when the city was taken.”

In 1205, a year after the Crusader sacking of Constantinople, Theodore Angelus Comnenus, nephew of Isaac II, wrote to Pope Innocent III protesting of the looting; “The Venetians partitioned the treasures of gold, silver and ivory while the French did the same with the relics and the most sacred of all, the linen in which our Lord Jesus Christ was wrapped after his death and before his resurrection...the sacred linen [is] in Athens.”

This linen was in the territory of Otho de la Roche who became Duke of Athens, in the Greek Latin Empire, in repayment for his actions during the sack of Constantinople in 1204. La Roche was a Burgundian knight and counsellor to Boniface of Montferrat, the leader of the Fourth Crusade. If this is assumed to be the same burial linen that de Clari saw bearing the full figure image, the Blachernae Shroud, then there is no further reference to the Shroud in the East after this letter.

The Shroud then disappears for some one hundred and fifty years before reappearing in the 14th century. There are numerous theories as to the whereabouts of the Shroud during those missing years. One such is the family tradition that claims the Shroud, after disappearing from Constantinople, was kept in Ray-sur-Saône castle by the de la Roche family.

The Shroud reappeared at Lirey in the 14th century when it was shown by Geoffroi I de Charny, considered the first owner of the Shroud, in the 1350's, following his marriage to Jeanne de Vergy, a descendant of Otho de la Roche, where the Holy relic was kept in a collegiate church in the Diocese of Troyes not far from Ray-sur-Saône castle. The Bishop of Troyes was not impressed and declared the relic nothing more than a painting, and opposed its exposition.

There are those who argue there is no evidence for the Shroud's existence before 1356, which very conveniently corresponds with the medieval date obtained through carbon dating carried out in the 1980's. And, equally, there are those that claim the Shroud was the same burial linen that Robert de Clari saw bearing a full figure image that was raised up every Friday at Constantinople,  the Blachernae Shroud, which was used to wrap Christ's body after the crucifixion. de Clari adds that after the sack of the city no one knew what happened to it. The missing years of the Shroud, from 1204 to the 1350's, have been the subject of much debate amongst Sindologists. Some claim that it was held by the Templars and the image of the face, or head, on the cloth was the secret idol they worshipped.

As a relic of the Passion, the Shroud must surely rank as the most sacred relic of all, and the Templars were said to be guardians of the Holy Grail. However, there is no public record of the Templars involvement in the Fourth Crusade, yet Innocent III placed them in the newly acquired Byzantine lands shortly after the sack of Constantinople. That the Shroud should end up in their hands is perhaps not so surprising.

It seems a rather fitting conclusion that the most sacred Holy relic of them all was first shown at Lirey, in the Diocese of Troyes, near to where the first Grail romance was written some two centuries earlier. We have seen that the patrons of the four key Grail texts were crusader lords, though not necessarily Templars; however, these writers certainly knew of the Templars achievements in the Holy Land. Thus, the Grail Quest ends as it begins; in Troyes.

Did the nobles of north-eastern France, the leaders of the Fourth Crusade, have one objective in mind from the very beginning; a series of accidents or a quest for relics?



Copyright © 2015 Edward Watson
http://clasmerdin.blogspot.co.uk/



Notes & References
Michael Angold, The Fourth Crusade: Event and Context, Routledge, 2003.
Thomas Asbridge, The Crusades, Simon & Schuster, 2012.
Malcolm Barber, The Impact Of The Fourth Crusade In The West: The Distribution Of Relics After 1204, in AE Laiou, ed. Urbs capta: the Fourth Crusade and its consequences, Realités Byzantines (10). Lethielleux, Paris, France, 2005, pp. 325-334.
Richard W. Barber, The Holy Grail: Imagination and Belief, Harvard University Press, 2004.
Noel Currer-Briggs, The Shroud and the Grail, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1987.
Barbara Frale, The Templars, Maverick House, 2009.
Barbara Frale, The Templars and The Shroud of Christ, Maverick House, 2011
Charles Freeman, Holy Bones, Holy Dust: How Relics Shaped the History of Medieval Europe, Yale University Press, 2012.
Patrick J. Geary, Furta Sacra: Thefts of Relics in the Central Middle Ages, Princeton University Press, 2011.
Michael Haag, The Templars: History and Myth, Profile Books, 2011.
Christopher Knight and Robert Lomas, The Second Messiah: Templars, the Turin Shroud and the Great Secret of Freemasonry, Century, 1997.
Dhira Mahoney, ed. The Grail: A Casebook, Garland, 2000.
William A. Nitze, On The Chronology of the Grail Romances. I The Date of the "Perlesvaus"-(Concluded), Modern Philology, Vol. 17, No. 11 (Mar., 1920), pp. 605-618.
Jonathan Phillips, The Fourth Crusade: And the Sack of Constantinople, Pimlico, 2005.
Donald E. Queller and Thomas F. Madden, The Fourth Crusade: The Conquest of Constantinople, University of Pennsylvania Press; 2 edition, 1999.
Jonathan Riley-Smith, The Crusades: A Short History, Yale University Press, 1990.
Jonathan Riley-Smith, ed. The Atlas of the Crusades, Guild Publishing, 1991.
Ian Wilson, The Shroud, Bantam Press, 2010.


The Shroud of Turin
The first public exhibition of the Shroud of Turin in five years opened on 19 April 2015 in the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist in Turin, Italy, where the famous relic has been kept since 1578.
The exhibition will end on 24 June 2015.

For further information see:
www.sindone.org
www.shroud.com

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