Visions of Montacute

Mons Acutis
The name of the Somerset town of Montacute derives from the Latin words 'Mons Acutis' meaning pointed, or sharp hill. Montacute is about 14 miles south of Glastonbury, both have prominent hills and each can be seen from the other. References to a now lost 7th century charter asserts that Baldred granted 16 hides to Glastonbury at Logweresbeorh (Montacute). William of Malmesbury (followed by John of Glastonbury) also refers to the ancient name Logweresbeorh for Montacute and associates the site with the personal name Logwar which appears on one of the two pyramids in the ancient cemetery at Glastonbury in between which King Arthur's grave was discovered. This is just one strange occurrence that has been recorded at Montacute which appear analogous to events at Glastonbury.

St Michael's Hill, Montacute

The Castle and Priory
Tofig (Tovi), the great Danish standard-bearer of King Cnut, had large estates in Essex and in Somerset. On the hill-top of his land at Logweresbeorh in Somerset there was found about the year 1035 a miracle-making crucifix concealed under a large slab of stone, and this was regarded by Tofig as so precious that he determined to build a church for its preservation on his estate in Essex. Tofig then handed this precious site over to the church and by 1066 it had been placed in the guardianship of the Abbot of Athelney.

Being a natural conical hill Montacute was well suited for fortification, and after the conquest William the Conqueror gave it to his half-brother Count Robert of Mortain, who built a castle there of typical Norman motte and bailey construction, a 9 metre high scarp forms a motte with the bailey on the south east slope, the other three sides formed the outer terrace. Today the site of the Norman castle is known as St Michael's Hill, named after the castle chapel that survived into the mid-17th century. It seems the choice of Montacute for the castle was a political statement as the site of the discovery of the Holy Cross, c.1035. The local people saw this as disrespectful to the sacred site and attacked the castle but their revolt came to nothing.

Before the Battle of Hastings in 1066, Harold Godwinson held the cross in great esteem; he richly endowed the Abbey of the Holy Cross at Waltham,  Essex, with the Holy Cross becoming an object of veneration and pilgrimage. Harold stopped at Waltham Abbey on his way south to Hastings from the battle at Stamford Bridge and his English troops used “the Holy Cross” as the battle cry at Hastings.

In the late 11th century Robert gave his manor of 'Biscopestune' (Bishopston) consisting of the church at Montacute, the castle and burgh to the abbey of Cluny, following pressure from the King that if he did not do so, he would take the land from him.

In 1102 AD a Cluniac Priory was founded at the bottom of the hill at Montacute with a church dedicated to St Peter built in association with the priory. The stonework for construction of the priory by provided by the short-lived castle which was now dismantled. By 1200 a chapel dedicated to St Catherine had been added next to the monks cemetery.

We know little of the Priors of the Cluniac Priory of St. Peter and St. Paul at Montacute yet it is a persistent claim that Henry de Blois, abbot of Glastonbury 1126-71, was associated with the priory, although he is not listed among them. At its height in the 13th century there were 25 monks recorded at the Priory but at the time of the Dissolution in 1539, sixteen monks and the abbot were pensioned off. Today, all that remains of Montacute Priory is the gateway which is incorporated into the 16th century Abbey Farmhouse.

Following the Dissolution the church of St Catherine became the parish church. Henry VIII's antiquarian John Leland visited the area between 1535 and 1543, recording a tradition of an earlier Saxon stronghold and described the site of the Priory as “ruinous”. Earthworks in a field south of this church are thought to cover the foundation of the Priory and its buildings.

The Norman castle chapel, dedicated to Saint Michael, continued in use until at least 1315. In the 18th century a folly was built on the castle chapel's foundations and named after the original chapel; today St. Michael's Hill Tower stands as a local landmark with views across the Somerset countryside.

St Michael's Tower, Montacute

The Legend of the Holy Cross of Waltham
Around the year 1035 a Montacute blacksmith had a dream one night that he should go and tell the parish priest to go to the top of St. Michael’s Hill, where something was buried.

The next day he decided that it must have been something he had eaten and thought no more about it. However, a few nights later he had the same dream again; more vivid than the time before and even worse; an apparition that frightened him near to death visited him. Waking in a cold sweat he told his wife that he had to see the priest at once. She told he would be ridiculed by the whole village.

On the third occurrence the apparition took hold of him and left him with wounds on his arms. He rushed off to wake the parish priest, who, on being told the story of the three visitations and seeing the wounds, took the whole thing seriously. The commotion had woken many residents who gathered outside the church and formed a procession to walk to the top of St. Michael’s Hill.

Many had brought spades and started digging; it was not long before someone struck a large, flat stone which they gently lifted. Beneath it they found a large black flint cross, finely carved with  an image of the crucifixion. Under the right arm of the cross lay a smaller crucifix and under the other, an ancient bell and a book (liber niger).

They took the bell, small cross and bible down to the church for safe keeping, but he big cross was very heavy, they would need equipment to move it. Some stayed and erected a shelter to keep the cross and the guards dry. 

Tofig, King Cnut’s standard bearer who was in the area, so a messenger was sent off to find him. The small cross would stay in the church but no one seemed certain where to take black flint cross. Tofig arrived and organised the removal of the cross from the hill and had it loaded onto a wagon pulled by twelve red oxen, together with the bell and gospels, but no one seemed sure where to take it; Durham, Winchester, Glastonbury, London and Reading all mentioned, but the oxen refused to haul it.

Then Tofig decided to take the black flint cross back to his estate at Waltham in Essex and build a greater church to house the relics and the oxen immediately moved off in that direction. When it arrived at Waltham it was set up and became the glory and the greatness of the Abbey of Waltham Holy Cross.

King Harold enlarged the Abbey and the Holy Rood became the special object of his devotion and the rallying cry of his men at Senlac. Before it he knelt on his way south to fight the Norman invaders and received warning of his impending doom. (see Gordon Rendell)

Smoke and Mirrors
The Montacute excavation of the Holy Cross is reported as taking place around 1035, but the earliest account was not written until after 1177, shortly before the excavation of King Arthur's grave at Glastonbury in 1191. The two events are similar in several key details:

• At Montacute they unearthed a large black flint cross under a stone slab (mire magnitudinis), a smaller cross, a bell and a book (liber niger).
• At Glastonbury an inscribed leaden cross was found under a slab (mirae magnitudinis) identifying the grave with King Arthur who lies buried here in Avalon.
• The lettering on this Arthurian cross as depicted by Camden is identical to the “Sagittarius” lettering on the 12th century tympanum on the north door of St Mary's church at Stoke-sub-Hamdon (Aeldred Watkin in Carley, 1985).
• Tents were erected around the excavation site at Montacute until the relics were removed from the earth.
• At Glastonbury Adam of Damerham reports that screens were erected around the excavation site in the monks cemetery.

James Carley (1985) suggests that the parallels between the two excavations may indicate that the Montacute event acted as a model for the later Glastonbury excavation.

Was Joseph of Arimathea Buried at Montacute?
The testimonies of two men who worked at Glastonbury Abbey at the time of the Dissolution suggest a further connection between Glastonbury and Montacute.

William Good who served as an altar boy at St Joseph's chapel at the Abbey, recalls that although Joseph was buried in Somerset no one was exactly sure where; “the monks never knew for certain the place of the saint's burial, or pointed it out; they said the body was hidden most carefully either at Glastonbury or on a hill near Montacute, called Hamden Hill”.

In the 16th century William Weston recorded a meeting with a man of about 80 years of age who also served at the Abbey before the Dissolution. Before the Royal Commissioners arrived at Glastonbury he was able to save a richly decorated cross and a nail said to have come from the Crucifixion and brought to England by Joseph of Arimathea. Even after the Dissolution, he continued to journey to a high hill associated with St Joseph as an act of pilgrimage.

In his home this man kept a lamp burning that faced this hill. However, this hill was was not Hamden Hill as William Good had stated, but Montacute Hill where the ruins of the medieval chapel of St Michael lay. (Carley, 1994) In time the story became slightly confused and the nail of the Crucifixion was apparently found at the chapel and a tradition grew that Joseph of Arimathea was buried at Montacute. (Thomas Gerard, Description of Somerset, 1633).

The site at Montacute has not undergone full archaeological investigation but partial excavation has shown that archaeological remains are present relating to the use of the summit. Indications on the ground suggest the tradition of a Saxon stronghold as recorded by Leland in the 16th century may well be correct, although this requires further investigation. In 1989 a small excavation found evidence for a building on the summit, thought to be the medieval chapel. Evidence for the demolition of the castle may exist in a layer of rubble found containing early medieval pottery.

Bards and Burials
The events at Montacute and Glastonbury, the discovery of the Holy Cross and King Arthur's grave, share much in common that it suggests a common source. According to Gerald of Wales the details of Arthur's grave in the Glastonbury cemetery were passed to King Henry II by a Welsh bard. The details of Joseph of Arimathea's grave exist in an enigmatic text by the bard Melkin, who, we are told, lived before the time of Merlin.

This presents two possibilities:

• The Prophecy of Melkin, as it exists today is a truncated text, originally, in its fuller form, detailed the graves of both King Arthur and Joseph of Arimathea; or,
• The Prophecy, which cannot be traced back earlier than John of Glastonbury's “Cronica”, is a re-working of an older prophecy about Arthur, adapted by Glastonbury to accommodate Joseph of Arimathea.

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



Sources:
James P Carley, Glastonbury Abbey: The Holy House at the Head of the Moors Adventurous, Gothic Image, 1996.
James P Carley, A Grave Event: Henry V, Glastonbury Abbey, and Joseph of Arimathea's Bones, 1994, in Glastonbury and the Arthurian Tradition, edited by James P. Carley, Boydell, 2001.
James P Carley, The Discovery of the Holy Cross of Waltham at Montacute, 1985, in Glastonbury and the Arthurian Tradition, edited by James P. Carley, Boydell, 2001.
James P Carley, The Chronicle of Glastonbury Abbey: An Edition, Translation and Study of John of Glastonbury's “Cronica sive Antiquitates Glastoniensis Ecclesiae”. Translated by David Townsend. Boydell Press, 1985.
The Legend of Montacute by Gordon Rendell

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The Search for the Tomb of Joseph of Arimathea

Where They Laid Him Down to Rest
Following the first known appearance of The Prophecy of Melkin in John of Glastonbury’s 'Chronicle of Glastonbury Abbey' (Cronica sive Antiquitates Glastoniensis Ecclesiae, c.1342) John Blome of London wrote to King Edward III in 1345 requesting permission to search the abbey grounds for the remains of Joseph of Arimathea, the man who according to the Gospels buried Jesus.

Seemingly an esoteric message detailing the location of the tomb of Joseph, The Prophecy of Melkin claims he lies in everlasting sleep on a forked line close to the southern corner of a wattle chapel above the powerful Venerable Maiden on the Isle of Avalon.

St Joseph window in St John's Church, Glastonbury

Blome had a vision in which he received divine instruction to search for Joseph's tomb in the grounds of Glastonbury Abbey. The King is reported as granting permission and issuing a writ on June 10th for Blome to search for Joseph’s body at Glastonbury provided he obtained the permission of the abbot and monks and caused no damage to the abbey.

In 1367 a report appeared in an East Anglian chronicle by a Lincolnshire monk named R. de Boston claiming that “The bodies of Joseph of Arimathaea and his companions were found in Glastonbury.” However, the abbey records make no mention of this search by Blome or indeed of such a significant find and we are forced to conclude that Boston's statement was incorrect.

Since 1247, when William of Malmesbury's history of Glastonbury Abbey was amended by a later copyist, about a hundred years after the original, to include the arrival of Joseph of Arimathea at Glastonbury, the abbey seemed reluctant to promote their foundation by the man who buried Jesus. Perhaps Joseph was not necessary as a pilgrim attraction after the discovery of the grave of King Arthur and Guinevere there in 1191. The amendment to William's work appeared to be in direct response to the Grail stories of the late 12th - early 13th centuries, which, following Robert de Boron, claimed Joseph brought the Holy Grail to England.

A few years later in 1382, John Chinnock (abbot 1375-1420) restored a small chapel in the cemetery, rededicating it to St Michael and St Joseph of Arimathea. Its decoration included a life-size triptych featuring Joseph’s role in the deposition. It would appear the Cult of St Joseph at Glastonbury had begun.

However, it was not until the abbacy of Richard Bere (1494 - 1525) that Glastonbury began to seriously exploit St Joseph at Glastonbury.

Division in the West 
Glastonbury always seemed reluctant to accept the responsibility of owning Joseph's grave; they accepted that he was buried in the Abbey grounds but no one really seem to know where.

Lagorio (1971) asserts that the slow emergence of the Joseph of Arimathea tradition at Glastonbury can be attributed to the lack of crisis at the Abbey from the mid-13th century until the Dissolution in 1539. This period was a golden age of prosperity for the Abbey which had little need to further embellish its Arthurian tradition with that of St Joseph.

However, pressure to find Joseph's grave increased in the 15th century following several ecclesiastical councils attended by the Abbots of Glastonbury who were now using their foundation legend with Joseph of Arimathea in their claims for Apostolic authority.

The medieval church entered a forty-year crisis of authority, known as the Western Schism, or Papal Schism, when two popes, and later three, competed for supremacy from the period from 1378 to 1417.

The Schism started when Pope Gregory XI left Avignon to return to Italy and re-established the pontifical see in the Eternal City, where he died on 27 March, 1378, returning the papal residence to Rome following almost 70 years in Avignon. Shortly after Gregory's death the Roman populace were demanding “a Roman, or at least an Italian”, and elected the archbishop of Bari as pope Urban VI. The council of Pisa in 1409 added another claimant to the papal throne with the election of a third pope, Alexander V. The matter was finally resolved during a series of councils in the early 15th century, attended by the abbots of Glastonbury, now seen as chief among the churchmen of England.

In March 1417 at the council of Constance in which Abbot John Chinnock was head of the English delegation, the Frenchman Jean Campan produced a document attacking the nationhood of the English. On 31 March the English response called on the Glastonbury Legend:

“The greater antiquity of faith was proved by the fact that Joseph of Arimathea himself had come to England with 12 companions; and he converted the people to the Christian faith. The King of England gave him the diocese of Bath and the twelve hides of land, and the saint was buried at Glastonbury.”

Alphonso presented the Spanish claim of Apostolic foundation arguing that St James had preached throughout Spain and was a significantly greater authority than Glastonbury's claims as The man from Arimathea had only preached in the south-west of England. The English counter-argument was that St James was beheaded in the Holy Land by Herod and the only evidence for his evangelising in Spain was to be found in the Golden Legend.

To verify their claims to Apostolic authority from Joseph of Arimathea, the secret disciple of Christ, the onus was now on Glastonbury to produce evidence of his burial in the Abbey grounds and produce relics, as they had done previously with King Arthur in the 12th century.

Yet Another Search
Further searches for Joseph’s remains were seemingly made in the cemetery and in the Lady Chapel in 1419. The details are found in a letter of Abbot Frome of spring 1421 which was in response to an enquiry from Henry V who was aware of the excavation carried out in 1419. Frome informs the King that three coffins were discovered in the southern sector of the cemetery at a similar depth to Arthur's grave in 1191 (consistent with the raising of the level of the cemetery by Dunstan in the 10th century); two contained individual remains, but the third contained the full relics of twelve skeletons.

Another coffin was discovered which held the remains of a single individual “adorned most excellently beyond the others, with linen cloth inside all over” and which “excelled all others in delicacy of scent” under the southern corner of the altar in the chapel. As Carley (1994) notes, the ‘linen cloth’ seems to be taken from 'linea bifurcatea' in Melkin's Prophecy, which some understood as a reference to a linen burial shroud, rather than a ‘forked line’ in the cemetery. But surprisingly, there was no mention of Melkin's two cruets containing the blood and sweat of Jesus.

Carley (1994) suggests that this apparent discovery of Joseph and his companions, although Abbot Frome never said as much in his letter, was in preparation for a political propaganda exercise in which the discovery would be announced, perhaps by the King himself, to enhance the English Church’s Apostolic authority founded at Glastonbury, but was aborted because of Henry V’s death in 1422 and there was no major announcement of the discovery of Joseph of Arimathea's tomb.

The alleged search in 1419 was just part of a process that had started in earnest during the abbacy of John Chinnock (1375-1420) promoting the Cult of St Joseph who then become a major object of pilgrimage at Glastonbury; soon after the Abbey was venerating Joseph's relics.

By 1424 the English delegation at the Council of Sienna maintained that the body of Joseph had indeed been found and a leaden plaque identified it as such. However, by the time of the Council of Basel in 1434 the English were no longer claiming that his relics had been found and the Glastonbury delegation fell back on their former position relying on the written word of John of Glastonbury.

Chinnock also responsible for introducing the Glastonbury Tablets (Magna Tabula Glastoniensis), a large hollow wooden box with two hinged wooden leaves inside and located in a prominent position in the chapel, readily accessible to pilgrims. Pasted on these leaves was the history of the abbey, drawing heavily from the amended version of William of Malmesbury's early history of the Abbey and John of Glastonbury's Chronicle. The text begins with the mission of Joseph of Arimathea to Glastonbury in 63 AD, and includes excerpts from the Prophecy of Melkin, St Patrick's Charter, the translation of St Dunstan and the discovery of King Arthur's grave.

The Magna Tabula contains two small pieces not found in any other Glastonbury documents. One of these pieces, in the form of a short chapter, claims there was an ancient and ruinous chapel in the cemetery where numerous, unidentified relics, had been stored under the altar. Chinnock rebuilt this chapel in 1382 (as noted above) and rededicated to St Michael and the saints resting in the cemetery and chapel, the chief among these saints was Joseph of Arimathea, which thus made Glastonbury's cemetery the holiest earth in the land. The Magna Tabula asserts that St Joseph's remains had been buried in the cemetery but the exact place of his burial was unknown.

The penultimate abbot of Glastonbury Richard Bere (1494-1524) developed the cult further, devising the Glastonbury coat of arms, influenced by Melkin's Prophecy, featuring a cross formed by two tree trunks shorn of their branches (St Joseph's staff which became the Glastonbury Thorn), with two cruets in the lower corners and drops of blood (or is it heavenly dew) falling across the shield. Several stone representations of this device are known in Glastonbury, three on buildings erected by Abbot Bere.

The numbers of pilgrims had now grown so great that around 1500 Abbot Bere constructed a crypt, known as St. Joseph's Chapel, beneath the Lady Chapel, destroying any archaeological evidence of the vetusta ecclesia, where a stone image of the Saint was set up for veneration by pilgrims. Originally the crypt was reached by a staircase that passed the ancient well of Joseph.

The Tomb of 'JA'
Many years after Glastonbury Abbey was wrecked during the Dissolution of the Monasteries in 1539 a stone tomb said to be that of Joseph of Arimathea was reportedly seen in the crypt by John Ray in 1661. This stone tomb was apparently the same tomb that was placed in the original, smaller Joseph's Chapel before the crypt was made around 1500.

Inside this stone tomb was a step for a silver casket which it is claimed at one time contained the relics of Joseph of Arimathea. Fearing destruction by puritans during the Reformation, a year later, in 1662, the sarcophagus was relocated into the churchyard of St John's in Glastonbury High Street.

After some 250 years in the churchyard the sarcophagus, said to be the same that Ray saw in in 1661, was moved inside St John's church in the 1920's by the Reverend Lonel Smithett Lewis (late Vicar of Glastonbury) who was convinced the 'JA' initials, complete with caduceus, on the side of the sarcophagus stood for 'Joseph of Arimathea'. The tomb has been worn smooth on the top edges, perhaps by the weather, perhaps by the hands of many visiting pilgrims.

Today, the stone tomb, alternatively known as the 'John Allen' tomb, remains in St John's church Glastonbury, placed under stained glass windows depicting the story of Joseph's arrival in England, formerly known as St Katherine's Chapel in the north transept. On top of the tomb is a case containing the cope of the last Abbot of Glastonbury, Richard Whiting.

The JA tomb in St John's church, Glastonbury

If Joseph's relics had been recovered from the so-called 'JA' tomb many years ago by the faithful there is certainly no record of their whereabouts today and the silver casket, if it indeed it ever existed, has never been found.

A Green Hill Far Away?
William Malmesbury described Glastonbury as a house of 'saintly relics', but rather tellingly, Joseph's remains do not appear in any of the Glastonbury Abbey relic lists. We must remember that Joseph’s presence in England is by no means historical, however, it follows that if there are no known remains of St Joseph at Glastonbury, it does not necessarily disprove the legend: are we looking in the right place; do his bones lie somewhere else entirely?

A Jesuit exiled in Italy after the Dissolution, but born at Glastonbury in 1527 and serving as an altar boy at St Joseph's chapel at the Abbey, William Good recalls that although Joseph was buried in Somerset no one was exactly sure where; “the monks never knew for certain the place of the saint's burial, or pointed it out; they said the body was hidden most carefully either at Glastonbury or on a hill near Montacute, called Hamden Hill”.

The autobiography of another Jesuit, William Weston, who worked as a missionary in England from 1584 to his arrest in 1586, included a meeting with a man who also served at the Abbey before the Dissolution. Before the Royal Commissioners of Henry VIII arrived at Glastonbury and claimed all relics the man was able to save a richly decorated cross and a nail said to have come from the Crucifixion and brought to England by Joseph of Arimathea. The nail eventually came into the possession of the Bishop of Salisbury, but the man had kept the reliquary that contained it. Even after the Dissolution, he continued to journey to a high hill associated with Joseph as an act of pilgrimage.

In his home this man kept a lamp burning that faced this hill. However, this hill was was not Hamden Hill as William Good had stated, but Montacute Hill (Latin - Mons Acutus), fourteen miles south of Glastonbury, where the ruins of the medieval chapel of St Michael lay. In time the story became slightly confused and the nail of the Crucifixion was apparently found at the chapel and a tradition grew that Joseph of Arimathea was buried there. 



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



Sources:
J A Robinson, Two Glastonbury Legends: King Arthur and St. Joseph of Arimathea. Cambridge University Press, 1926.
R F Treharne, The Glastonbury Legends, The Cresset Press, 1967.

William John Lyons, Joseph of Arimathea: A study in reception history. Oxford University Press, 2014.
James P Carley, Glastonbury Abbey: The Holy House at the Head of the Moors Adventurous, Gothic Image, 1996.

James P Carley, A Grave Event: Henry V, Glastonbury Abbey, and Joseph of Arimathea's Bones, 1994, in Glastonbury and the Arthurian Tradition, edited by James P. Carley, 2001.
James P Carley, The Chronicle of Glastonbury Abbey: An Edition, Translation and Study of John of Glastonbury's “Cronica sive Antiquitates Glastoniensis Ecclesiae”. Translated by David Townsend. Boydell Press, 1985.
Valerie M Lagorio, The Evolving Legend of St Joseph of Glastonbury, in Glastonbury Abbey and the Arthurian Tradition, 1971, edited by James P. Carley, 2001
Emma Jung, ‎Marie-Luise von Franz, The Grail Legend, 1998
Richard Hayman, Holy Grail and Holy Thorn, Fonthill Media, 2014.


(Edited 10/04/17 - minor revision)

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