The Burial Cross of King Arthur

“Here lies the famous King Arthur, buried in the isle of Avalon”

Arthur's burial cross 

based on Camden's sketch

The Discovery of Arthur's Grave
With Henry II's death in 1189 and the accession of his son Richard to the throne funds where diverted to the cause of the Crusades. Glastonbury was in desperate need of funds following the fire of 1184 which destroyed the Abbey church. Pilgrims were a major source of income for religious houses; the more relics one held the more pilgrims would come to the site.

King Henry II was told of the location of King Arthur's grave at Glastonbury by an anonymous Welsh bard at Cilgerran Castle in Pembrokeshire, south-west Wales, where the king had stopped whilst on his way to Ireland in 1171. On his return Henry instigated a search at the Abbey and the grave was duly discovered, or so the story goes.

The body unearthed was confirmed as that of the renowned King Arthur by a leaden burial cross found in the grave with an inscription which also identified that this place, Glastonbury, was indeed the ancient Isle of Avalon.

These claims immediately raise suspicions; Henry II died 1189 and the search for Arthur's grave was not carried out until 1190 or 1191. Further, there are several versions of the discovery of the grave, including Ralph of Coggeshall in 1221 and Adam of Damerham 1290's, each offering slightly different details; there are at least five different versions of the inscription on the leaden burial cross found in the grave.

Gerald of Wales (Giraldus Cambrensis), often quoted as the primary source providing the earliest account of the exhumation around 1193, in "Liber de Principis instructione" he claims to have handled the bones and the leaden cross at the invitation of the Abbot, Henry de Sully. Gerald provides the only account of the inscription on the cross to include Guinevere as Arthur's second wife. Later, in "Speculum Ecclesiae," c.1216, Gerald repeats the claim that the search was carried out at the instigation of Henry II:

“The King had told the Abbot on a number of occasions that he had learnt from the historical accounts of the Britons and from their bards that Arthur had been buried in the churchyard there between two pyramids which had been erected subsequently, very deep in the ground for fear lest the Saxons, who had striven to occupy the whole island after his death, might ravage the dead body in their evil lust for vengeance. ….. To avoid such a frightful contingency, to a large stone slab, found in the tomb by those who were digging it up, some seven feet. . .a leaden cross had been fixed, not on top of the stone, but underneath it, bearing this inscription:

HERE IN THE ISLE OF AVALON LIES BURIED THE RENOWNED KING ARTHUR, WITH
GUINEVERE, HIS SECOND WIFE

They prised this cross away from the stone, and Abbot Henry, about whom I have told you, showed it to me. I examined it closely and I read the inscription. The cross had been attached to the under side of the stone and, to make it even less easy to find, the surface with the lettering had been turned towards the stone.” [Gerald of Wales, Speculum Ecclesiae, c.1216]

Gerald's writings are the most literary and innovative of the all accounts of the exhumation in which he reports visions and revelations had been seen by holy men and declared that records at the abbey contained "signs" of the body's presence in Glastonbury and the letters inscribed on the ancient cross shafts (i.e. the pyramids) in the cemetery "almost obliterated by age" suggested the same. However, William of Malmesbury, regarded a reliable historian, considered the pyramids recorded a list of previous abbots and the like but made no mention of Arthur with Glastonbury.

The account of Ralph of Coggeshall differs from Gerald's in stating that the cross was “placed” on the coffin. Ralph also claims Arthur's body was found while they were cutting a grave for another monk who wished to be buried in that particular spot in the cemetery. An account from the chronicle of Margam Abbey, thought to be copied from a monastic circular sent out by Glastonbury Abbey within several years of the event, is the only report that mentions the discovery of Mordred's tomb in the same grave.1 Adam of Damerham's later account adds the interesting detail that during the excavation the grave site was surrounded by drapes or curtains conjuring images of a modern crime scene.2

John Leland, King Henry VIII's antiquarian, claimed to have handled the leaden burial cross that he said was nearly a foot in length, when he visited the Abbey between 1533 and 1539. Leland makes no mention of the inclusion of Guinevere in the inscription. A sketch of the cross included in the 1607 edition of William Camden's Britannia also fails to mention Guinevere.

Where the monks dug in 1191

Following the exhumation Gerald  asserts that the bodies were entombed in the Lady Chapel, telling us that, “They carried it into the church with every mark of honour and buried it decently there in a marble tomb.” [Liber de Principis Instructione, c.1193] The Margam Abbey version also notes that the body of Arthur was transferred "with suitable honour and much pomp" to a marble tomb in the abbey church.3 It appears the bodies remained in the Lady Chapel for the next 88 years.

Adam of Damerham, writing a hundred years after the event, does not dwell on the exhumation of 1190/91 but focuses on the visit of Edward I and Queen Eleanor to Glastonbury in 1278 and the ceremonial transfer of the bones of Arthur and Guinevere to a black marble tomb in front of the high altar in the larger church.4

“The lord Edward....with his consort, the lady Eleanor, came to Glastonbury.......to celebrate Easter....the following Tuesday....at dusk, the lord king had the tomb of the famous King Arthur opened. Wherein, in two caskets painted with their pictures and arms, were found separately the bones of the said king, which were of great size, and those of Queen Guinevere, which were of great beauty......On the following day.....the lord king replaced the bones of the king and queen ...each in their own casket, having wrapped them in costly silks. When they had been sealed they ordered the tomb to be placed forthwith in front of the high altar, after the removal of the skulls for the veneration of the people.”

There may have been some delay in transferring the relics to the new location prior to Edward I's visit. According to a contemporary account in the Annals of Waverley the relics of Arthur and Guinevere were extracted and placed in the Abbey's treasury, in the east range of the church, until they could be more fittingly located.5 In Adam's version of the transfer of the remains to the new tomb there is no mention of the tomb in the Lady Chapel but the Abbot Henry de Sully is actually described as having King Arthur and Guinevere's remains carried directly to the adjoining majorem ecclesiam. 

A site for the new black marble tomb was constructed in a central position before the High Altar, the most important site in the whole church, the Celtic warlord located between the tombs of the Anglo-Saxon kings Edmund the Elder and Edmund Ironside. The tomb was fashioned with two lions at each end, a cross at the head and an image of King Arthur at the foot. The top of the black marble tomb bore the following inscriptions:

Here lies Arthur , the flower of the kings , and the glory of the kingdom,
Which of the characters, and honesty, and with eternal praise , commend.

Here lies Arthur, the second wife is buried here ,
Who was worthy the heavens of the virtues prolific of offspring .

This was the same epitaph that Leland saw and wrote down when he visited Abbot Whiting between 1534 and the fall of the monastery in 1539.

This however was not the final resting place for the legendary King Arthur. In 1368 Walter de Monington (Abbot 1342-1375) extended the length of the choir by 40 feet, adding 2 bays, and accordingly re-positioned the tomb so that it would continue to occupy its prominent place by the High Altar. Monington had this area redecorated at the same time making the area inaccessible for some years. During this period Arthur's bones were probably again housed in the Treasury.6

A hundred and seventy years later Arthur and Guinevere's remains disappeared along with the marble tomb after the Abbey was wrecked at the hands of Henry VIII's commissioners during the Dissolution of the Monasteries in 1539. A plaque now identifies “The Site of King Arthur's Tomb”:

Plaque marking the site of Arthur's tomb 1278 - 1539

The discrepancies between the accounts of the medieval chroniclers has generally led to the acceptance of the discovery of Arthur's grave at Glastonbury being a complete hoax. Even so, if the cross was genuine perhaps the discovery of the grave was a real event?

The Glastonbury Excavations
Courtney Arthur Ralegh Radford was born in 1900 in the shadow of the Arthurian Revival, a generation stimulated by Tennyson's poetry, the Idylls of the King. His father and grandfather were friends of William Morris, the English textile designer and poet associated with the British Arts and Crafts Movement. Morris was a close friend of the Pre-Raphaelite artists Edward Burne-Jones and Dante Gabriel Rossetti who used Malory's Le Morte Darthur as inspiration for their Arthurian art.

Most of those in charge of the earlier excavations at Glastonbury Abbey were personal friends of either Ralegh Radford  or his father. Indeed, his father was a close friend of Frederick Bligh Bond, who excavated Glastonbury Abbey between 1908 and 1921. His father took him to visit the excavations in 1910, and from 1925 onwards Ralegh Radford visited the site every year while the excavation was in progress, stimulating a lifelong fascination with the medieval monastery and its Arthurian connections.

The associations of Tintagel with the Arthurian legend compelled Ralegh Radford to excavate there in the 1930’s. He adopted a highly romantic view of the post-Roman west country; a “heroic age” linked with the figure of King Arthur. However, Ralegh Radford was not alone in his romantic obsession with Arthur; in the 1960's, he was instrumental in creating the Camelot Research Committee with a team of like minded researchers such as Leslie Alcock and Geoffrey Ashe.  The search for the “Real Camelot” led to excavations at Cadbury Castle (Somerset) under the program of the Camelot Research Committee.7

During excavations at the Abbey in 1962 Ralegh Radford searched for evidence of Arthur's grave. He used Gerald's account of the exhumation to determine the site in the old cemetery, south of the Lady Chapel, where he found evidence that a large irregular hole had been dug and then shortly afterwards refilled in the 1180's or ’90's.  The bottom of the hole had disturbed two or three of the slab-lined graves belonging to the earliest phase of the Celtic cemetery. He claimed evidence for his precise dating was found in the presence of Doulting stone chippings in the hole, a stone which, he argued, was first used at Glastonbury in the rebuilding of the Lady Chapel in 1184–89. Ralegh Radford was convinced that he had found the location where the monks dug in 1191 for the grave of King Arthur and Guinevere.8

However, on re-examining the excavation records Roberta Gilchrist of the University of Reading has argued that this feature was merely a pit and its identification as Arthur’s grave was based entirely on medieval accounts of the excavation, which, as we have seen above, are rather spurious at best and certainly unreliable. Doulting stone has been identified as the principal building material used in ALL phases of Glastonbury Abbey stonework including Anglo-Saxon carvings. It was certainly used before the rebuilding of the Lady Chapel in the late 12th century. Further, the slab-lined graves were cut into the layer of clay that Dunstan had laid to raise the level of the old cemetery in the 10th century and therefore must be later.9

The Site of the black marble tomb by the High Altar

If the discovery of Arthur's grave in 1190/91 was indeed genuine then Ralegh Radford had certainly not found the site. Yet, the most telling factor is the leaden burial cross. Alarmingly, there are significant differences in the wording of the inscription on the cross as described by men who had claimed to have actually handled it; five different versions of the inscription on the cross  have been reported, but only Gerald of Wales mentions the inclusion of “Guinevere, his second wife.”10

Not only does the cross identify the body as that of Arthur but also conveniently identifies Glastonbury as the Isle of Avalon. Yet even that unscrupulous old cleric Geoffrey of Monmouth had failed to make the connection of Glastonbury with Avalon. Geoffrey mentions “Avalon” but twice in his Historia Regum Britanniae, (History of the Kings of Britain, c.1136); initially as the place were Arthur's sword Caliburnus was forged; and secondly he merely states that Arthur, mortally wounded, was taken there. In his later Vita Merlini (Life of Merlin, c.1148) Geoffrey provides more detail for the last journey of the King, but avoids the name “Avalon” completely and refers simply to the Fortunate Isles, as a Celtic island paradise, the abode of Morgan and her sisters.

The wording on the cross had been chosen carefully; Geoffrey's chronicle history of King Arthur had come to an end with the death of the “renowned king Arthur” and here were those exact words on his burial cross. A copy of Geoffrey's work is known to have existed at the Abbey.11

However, the cross was apparently still in existence in the 16th century when Leland handled it during his visit to Glastonbury and in the early 17th century when Camden sketched it and included it in his 1607 and 1608 editions of Britannia; however, there is some variation in the shapes of the letters between the two editions.12

So much of the authenticity of the discovery of Arthur's grave depends on this leaden burial cross. Yet, the only graphic representation that has come down to us is Camden's sketch in his Britannia. Leslie Alcock13 argues that the “evidence of the leaden cross can only be discounted if we maintain that Camden's drawing is not an accurate facsimile”.

It seems likely that Camden had not actually seen the cross but had in fact copied an earlier sketch. But what did he copy? In his description of the leaden cross, Camden says that it was “drawn out of the first copie in the Abbey of Glascon.”14 A copy of a copy originating from the Abbey itself certainly raises suspicions; the authenticity of Camden's sketch of the cross, our only representation of it, is looking dubious already. Further, earlier editions of Camden's Britannia featured the letters only. Armitage Robinson,15 adds that in “Gibson's edition (1695) the arrangement of the letters upon it, would seem to have been an after-thought on Camden's part: it is only the antique form of the letters for which he expressly vouches.” Camden's sketch then is likely to be his visual representation of the cross and not an accurate facsimile. Presented with this evidence one is forced to question what value the burial cross can possibly provide in determining the authenticity of the discovery of the grave?

The Discovery of King Arthur's Grave - John Mortimer (c.1767)

The Burial Cross Re-discovered?
The cross was apparently last seen in the 18th century, in the possession of Mr. William Hughes, Chancellor of Wells, then disappeared.16

Then in December 1981 a Mr Derek Mahoney turned up at the British Museum with what appeared to be the burial cross of King Arthur. Mahoney  claimed the inscribed lead cross was found during dredging of the lake  in the grounds of Forty Hall, Enfield, Middlesex in 1981. Mahoney refused to leave it for further examination and it was never seen again. The museum employee, Sue Youngs, managed to note that the cross was exactly 6 and seven-eighth inches tall, precisely the height shown in Camden's drawing in Britannia.17 Of course we cannot be certain whether Camden's sketch was full size or scaled; the sixth edition of Britannia published in 1607 figured the first appearance of an illustration of the cross. The page size was twelve and a half inches which could have contained a full size drawing if, as Leland claims, the cross measured about one foot in length. This supports the notion that Camden copied a copy and that Mahoney's cross was indeed a replica based on Camden's sketch. We seem to be getting further away from the original burial cross, if it ever existed.

Earlier that year, in October, Mahoney had contacted he Local History Unit claiming to have recovered an artefact from the bed of the lower lake whilst silt clearance was being undertaken at Forty Hall. Mahoney claimed he was in possession of the Glastonbury Cross, being about 30cm high and inscribed with the legend “HIC IACET SEPULTUS INCLITUS REX ARTURIUS IN INSULA AVALONIA” (“Here lies buried the renowned King Arthur in the Isle of Avalon”). The story appeared on radio and in the local papers.18

London Borough of Enfield, the Council, who owned the land where the lake is, took Mahoney to court in an attempt to recover the cross and served an injunction. Mahoney flatly refused to reveal its whereabouts, claiming he had hidden it in an “inert” container that no one would find. Refusing offers of legal aid he was sentenced to two years imprisonment for contempt but would be released as soon as he revealed the whereabouts of the cross.

Mahoney had been a lead pattern maker working for a well-known local firm of toy-makers who produced detailed lead models of cars. He had also been a member of the Enfield Archaeological Society. There is no obvious link between Glastonbury and Enfield other than that the antiquarian Richard Gough, an editor of Camden’s Britannia in which an illustration of the cross appeared, and a keen collector of antiquities, had lived at nearby Gough Park from 1714 until his death in 1809. However, there is no mention of the cross in any of Gough’s papers, or any reference to the object in any catalogue of his collection when it was sold at Sotheby's in 1810.

Mahoney had been involved in legal wrangles over a property transaction and the episode was dismissed as a publicity stunt. Sadly Mahoney, embittered and unwell, is believed to have taken his own life, and the secret of his cross with him.19

Edited 10/04/2015

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


Notes & References
1. Both Antonia Gransden - Growth of the Glastonbury Legends and R Barber - Was Mordred buried at Glastonbury, in Glastonbury Abbey and the Arthurian Tradition, edited by James P. Carley, DS Brewer, 2001, argue that the date of composition of the Margam Abbey account is uncertain, but it is believed to have been written within a decade or two of the original discovery in 1190/91 and may possibly be one of the earliest accounts of the discovery. Margam is the only report that mentions the additional discovery of Mordred's tomb, stating that there were three separate coffins; one each for Arthur, Guinevere and Mordred. Only Margam and Ralph of Coggleshall state the monks dug between the two pyramids where a dying monk had requested to be buried. Both their accounts of the inscription on the leaden cross are identical. It seems that the Margam and Ralph of Coggleshall accounts derive from a common exemplar which may have been of  Glastonbury provenance.
2. Gransden, Ibid., considers that Adam of Damerham's account does not appear to be totally independent of Gerald's. The latter of Adam's two accounts written, a hundred years after the event, is derived almost word for word from Gerald's version in the Speculum Ecclesiae - or a source common to both accounts. The other is substantially the same as Gerald's, albeit in different words, with the exception of one or two additional items, such as the mention of screens surrounding the exhumation. Another passage in Adam resembles one in Gerald's earlier account in De Principis Instructione.
3. Gerald records the bodies were moved within the monks' church and placed in a tomb at the centre of the choir. W Nitze, in The Exhumation of King Arthur at Glastonbury, Speculum, Vol. 9, No. 4 (Oct., 1934), pp. 355-36, argues the Lady Chapel (presumably unfinished) is meant. The Margam Abbey account also records the translation of the relics to a marble tomb within the Abbey church which is often confused with the visit of Edward I to Glastonbury in 1278, and, mistakenly, the reason the Margam account is often given a late 13th century date.
4. Edward I's visit in 1278 followed on the Edwardian invasion of Wales in 1277. Conveniently the discovery of the grave and cross proved that Arthur was not merely sleeping but indeed dead, and that the Welsh resistance was doomed, as their messiah could not return. However, it failed to prevent a further Welsh rebellion five years later in 1282.
5. James P Carley and Michelle P Brown, A Fifteenth Century Revision of the Glastonbury Epitaph, in Glastonbury Abbey and the Arthurian Tradition, edited by James P. Carley, DS Brewer, 2001.
6. Carley and Brown, Ibid.
7. See: Leslie Alcock, Arthur's Britain, Penguin, 1971, pp. 73-80, for his hypothesis that the Glastonbury Exhumation was not a monkish forgery.
8. CA Ralegh Radford, Glastonbury Abbey, in Geoffrey Ashe, editor, The Quest for Arthur's Britain, Pall Mall press, 1968, pp.107-108.
9. Roberta Gilchrist, Courtney Arthur Ralegh Radford, in Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the British Academy XII, British Academy, pp. 341-358, 2013.
10. All these medieval accounts are very similar, essentially informing the discover that this was Arthur's grave in the Isle of Avalon, but with the fundamental difference, found only in Gerald's account, of the inclusion of Guinevere, his second wife. Suggestions that part of the cross is now missing or the Guinevere inscription is on the underside form a weak counter argument; no account mentions an inscription on the underside and Camden's drawing appears to show a complete cross.
11. S C Morland, King Arthur's Leaden Cross, Somerset & Dorset Notes & Queries, 31, 1984, pp.366-67, notes that the epithet “inclitus” (renowned) is not known to have applied to Arthur until after Geoffrey of Monmouth.
12. Aelred Watkin, quoted in James P Carley, Glastonbury Abbey: The Holy House at the Head of the Moors Adventurous, Gothic Image, 1996, says the lettering on the burial cross is identical to the lettering on a 12th century tympanum on the north door of St Mary's church at Stoke-sub-Hamdon, about one mile from Montacute in Somerset, barely 18 miles from Glastonbury.
13. Leslie Alcock, op.cit.
14. Richard Barber, Arthur of Albion: An Introduction to the Arthurian Literature and Legends of England, Boydell Press, 2nd Edition, 1973, pp. 58-9. (Re-issued as King Arthur: Hero and Legend).
15. J Armitage Robinson, Two Glastonbury Legends, Kessinger, 2003, (facsimile reprint of 1926 edition).
16. Sharon Turner, History of the Anglo-Saxons, from the earliest period to the Norman Conquest, Volume 1, Philadelphia, 1841. p.201, states that in Whitaker's “Manchester”, Dr Whitaker was told that the cross had lately been in the possession of Mr Chancellor Hughes of Wells.  Armitage Robinson (Two Glastonbury Legends, p.59), states that he can find no reference to Chancellor Hughes in Whitaker's “History of Manchester” published in 1771 and 1775, and suggests that Turner may have obtained information directly from Whitaker.
However, James P Carley, (Glastonbury Abbey, p.178), notes that the last fully reliable account is to be found in the late 17th century manuscript (Bodleian Rawlinson B.416A, fol.10v) where it is reported that the lead plate from the underside of the cover of Arthur's coffin at the Dissolution of the Abbey was within the Reverstry of the parish church of St John's in Glaston is now lost.
17. Peter Hancock, Hoax Springs Eternal, Cambridge University Press 2015.
18. Geoffrey Gillam, The King Arthur Cross, The Bulletin of the Enfield Archaeological Society, No 151, December, 1998.
19. Richard Mawrey, The Mystery of the Glastonbury Cross, in History Today, April, 2012.

Glastonbury Abbey photographs - the author.

* * *

The Arthurian Revival

“...the persistence of Arthurian subjects in the arts, from the earliest crude carving to the latest Hollywood spectacle, confirms that the appeal of the legend extends beyond the literary texts.” 

The Decline of a Legend
Throughout the evolution of the legend, Arthurian imagery emerged alongside the growth of literary texts, enjoying aristocratic patronage and a pan-European audience, reaching its zenith in the four centuries from 1100 to 1500. Yet, Arthurian iconography also appears independently of any known literary source as demonstrated in the sculpture on the north-portal archivolt (1100 - 1140) of Modena Cathedral in Italy.

Rarely have Arthurian subjects appeared in the arts during times when the Arthurian texts are neglected; periods of the legend's greatest popularity, the Middle Ages and the Victorian era, are reflected in artistic output. Even so, records indicate that the surviving objects are but a small fraction of the original output.

 Historia Regum Brittaniae illuminated manuscript (13th Century)

Surviving manuscripts suggest the first Arthurian texts were not illustrated, but throughout the Middle Ages the legend featured in illuminated manuscripts of unequalled splendour. The earliest known Arthurian miniature is found in a Flemish manuscript of Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Brittaniae from around 1180 with an embellished initial illustrating Arthur in combat with the giant of Mont-Saint-Michel. More elaborate illustrations began to appear in France in the 13th century, the eldest from around 1220 in a manuscript of the Vulgate Cycle, with a flurry of Arthurian Romance and Grail texts following.

After reaching its peak in the mid-15th century aristocratic patronage for Arthurian iconography began to decline with the advance of print technology which brought the illustrated legend to a wider audience. The emergence of block books, with pages of text and simple illustrations cut into a single block of wood, providing a less expensive alternative to hand painted manuscripts. Printing of “broadsides”, single sheets with printing on one side featuring a poem and an image, perhaps, of a knight, were the first form of popular literature marketed on a mass scale.

Wynkyn de Worde published the first illustrated Malory in 1498 after inheriting Caxton's printing works in London following Caxton's death in 1491. Using Caxton's 1485 Malory text, Wynkyn embellished each chapter heading with a simple woodcut illustration and reissued Le Morte Darthur in 1529.

Although little evidence survives, Arthurian iconography was now mainly used in pageant design in costumes and banners rather than monumental pieces of art. The interest in Arthurian extravaganza continued under the patronage of Henry Frederick, Prince of Wales, but with his death in 1612 the popularity of the Arthurian legend dwindled as England followed the European trend in adopting classical tastes. After more than a century of declining popularity the Arthurian legend quietly slipped into obscurity.

The Arthurian legends remained out of favour until the 18th century when the Gothic Revival sparked an interest in the medieval past for a select audience. Country houses began constructing garden follies such as mock castles, false ruins and imaginative grottoes, permitting the gentry to escape into medieval fantasy. The appeal of the Arthurian legend might have returned to the aristocracy but the revival of Arthurian imagery trailed behind the recovery of interest in the literature with Arthurian subjects rare in the popular arts.

The Bard - Thomas Jones (1774)

The only 18th century painter making reference to Arthur was John Mortimer who was one of the first painters of this period to depict a scene from the legend when he illustrated the discovery of Arthur's grave (The Discovery of Prince Arthur's Tomb by the Inscription on the Leaden Cross c.1767).  A few years later Thomas Jones painted a landscape with Merlin by a megalithic structure, thought to be Stonehenge, (The Bard, 1774), and subjects from Spenser's Faerie Queen enjoyed a modest revival but a full return to the Arthurian legend in the popular arts was not to come until the general public were to become reacquainted with the legend.

During the 18th century Arthur's status reached its nadir with the once and future King becoming linked with figures of folklore such as Jack the Giant Killer and Tom Thumb. Low interest in Malory's Le Morte Darthur in the 17th and 18th centuries is reflected in its lack of publication for nearly two hundred years with nothing emerging in print since the Stansby edition of 1634.

William Stansby’s 1634 edition of Malory
 (Source: The Camelot Project, University of Rochester)

Bishop Thomas Percy rescued an old manuscript collection of poetry from his friend Humphrey Pitt's house in Shifnal, Shropshire, which the housemaid was using to light the fire. The grubby old manuscript contained mainly ballads and poems which Percy emended and even removed pages before passing the document to the printer without making copies. Joseph Ritson, a fellow antiquary, was among those who criticised Percy for his poor treatment of the original manuscript. The “Percy folio”, as it became known, also included Reliques from the Arthurian Cycle and when published as the “Reliques of Ancient English Poetry” in 1765 it was generally well received and inspired poets such as William Wordsworth and Walter Scott.

Scholarly interest in pre-Norman history of Britain was now on the increase but differing theories concerning the historicity of Arthur began to emerge. In his “History of the Anglo Saxons” (1799) Sharon Turner devoted a chapter to the examination of Arthurian tradition and came to the conclusion that the legends were based on slender historical evidence yet conceded, genuine or not, Arthur was a significant figure.

Joseph Ritson went on to write the “Life of King Arthur” in 1803, but not published until 1825, which provided the first thoroughly documented discussion of the problems of Arthurian scholarship. Ritson concluded,  “No character, eminent in ancient history, has ever been treated with more extravagance, mendacity and injustice, than the renowned Arthur, the illustrious monarch and valiant commander of the Britons.”

In the early 19th century Walter Scott, a respected antiquary, novelist and poet, with an interest in Arthurian romance edited and published “Sir Tristem” (1802), made many references to Malory in “Marmion” (1808) and included Arthurian material in the “Bridal of Triermain” (1813). Scott had plans to publish a new edition of Malory but surrendered the task to Robert Southey who edited the reprinted edition of Caxton's Le Morte Darthur in 1817 which was to become a source of inspiration to artists of the Victorian era.

Yet, the Arthurian legend was conspicuous by its absence from the walls of the Royal Academy until 1826 when "Henry II Discovering the Relics of King Arthur in Glastbury Abbey" by George Cattermole was exhibited, his source thought to have been Thomas Warton's 1777 poem "The Grave of King Arthur" when, in his passage through Wales to Ireland, Henry II was informed of the whereabouts of the grave by a bard at Cilgarran Castle, Pembrokeshire.

The medieval period continued to be used as a model of inspiration into the early 19th century with the emergence of a complex artistic and literary movement known as Romanticism. William Blake's paintings and poetry with mystical undercurrents have been characterised as part of the Romantic movement which had a compelling influence on the 20th century, although largely unrecognised during his own lifetime. However, Blake's work was not significantly influenced by the Arthurian legend; elements of the legend feature in the “Emanation of the Giant Albion” and the Glastonbury Legend is the focus of his epic poem “Prelude To Milton” that became the popular hymn “Jerusalem”.

Following the inattention of Romanticism a new generation of poets was now emerging who would bring the Arthurian legend to its greatest popularity since the Middle Ages.

The Arthurian Revival
In 1839 the Scottish painter Ronald McIan exhibited "Mark, King of Cornwall and his retinue", a subject from Walter Scott's 1802 edition of “Sir Tristrem”, the first use of a medieval Arthurian text as a source. In 1847, another Scottish painter, William Bell Scott, exhibited the first oil painting at the Royal Academy in which Malory's Le Morte Darthur was named as the source. Bell's “King Arthur Carried to the Land of Enchantment” quoted from Malory Book XXI, chapter vii, attached to the title in the catalogue; “Some men say in many parts of England, that Arthur is not dead; but by the will of our Lord Jesu, carried into another place, that he will come again and win the Holy Cross. And men say it is written on the tomb, 'Arthurus, Rex quondam, Rex furturus' – Romance of Arthur.”

King Arthur Carried to the Land of Enchantment - William Bell Scott (1847)

The republication of Malory's Le Morte Darthur in the early 19th century stirred public interest in the Arthurian legend but it wasn't until Tennyson's reworking in a series of Arthurian poems rekindled popular interest in the legend. Tennyson was known to own a copy of the early 19th century reprint of  Malory which provided the source material for his first published works “The Lady of Shalott” (1832) “Sir Galahad” and “Morte d'Arthur” (1842) Tennyson's early poems had whet the appetite but it wasn't until the first publication of  “Idylls of the King” in 1859, covering the career of Arthur from birth to death, that the Victorian public's hunger for all matters Arthurian became insatiable; Idylls sold 10,000 copies within the first week. Following centuries of obscurity the Arthurian legend was about to make a spectacular return to British art.

The first indications of mainstream interest in the Arthurian legend emerged in landscape painters before the publication of Idylls of the King stimulated by the appearance of Tintagel Castle in guidebooks and itineraries for the new Victorian pastime of tourism. Yet the powerful attraction of Tintagel's ruined castle perched on the precipitous cliffs on the desolate headland called Tennyson to write of the babe Arthur being washed up on the shore at Merlin's feet. Inspired artists included William Collingwood who's “King Arthur's Castle at Tintagel” was shown at the Royal Academy in 1843 and Samuel Palmer who visited Tintagel in 1848 and produced a number of sketches and watercolours. The following year he exhibited “King Arthur's Castle, Tintagel, Cornwall”.

In the 1860's, immediately after publication of  Idylls of the King, landscapes with Arthurian associations became particularly popular. John William Inchbold was one of a number of younger British landscape painters to be inspired to turn to mountain subjects by Ruskin's Modern Painters, visiting the Alps together in 1856 and 1858. In 1860 Inchbold stayed at Tintagel in Cornwall. Thomas Woolner, Francis Palgrave, and Alfred Tennyson encountered him there while they were on a walking tour, as described by Palgrave: “At a turn in the rocks [we met] that ever graceful, ill-appreciated landscapist Inchbold: whose cry of delighted wonder at sight of Tennyson still sounds in the sole survivor's ear.” In 1862 Inchbold exhibited the painting “King Arthur's Island”, inspired by this visit, at the Royal Academy  The title included a quotation from “Guinevere”, one of the Idylls published in 1859.

The Pre-Raphaelites
William Dyce was commissioned in 1848 to decorate the Queen’s Robing Room in the then-new Palace of Westminster. He decided to illustrate various Christian virtues with scenes from the Arthurian legends. By the time Dyce’s paintings were open to the public in 1864, Tennyson’s Arthuriad was the dominant literature and established him as a poet. His last Arthurian work “Merlin and the Gleam” (1889) was written as his biography.  

The Victorians regarded the Arthurian legend as the starting point of their history; the revival of interest in Arthur and his court regarded him as a national hero. Following Malory's Arthurian epic Dyce had trouble adapting tales of courtly love and an unfaithful queen brining about the fall of the kingdom for the Victorian Age. Instead he chose the subjects of his frescoes by concentrating on the virtues displayed by Arthur's Knights as part of the ancient code of chivalry: "Religion"; "Courtesy"; "Generosity"; "Hospitality"; "Mercy"; "Fidelity"; and "Courage". He had completed the first three murals by 1852, but his work progressed slowly with the last two projected frescoes, "Courage" and "Fidelity", uncompleted at the time of his death in 1864. The sculptor Henry Armstead was commissioned to complete the Arthurian theme; he carved a series of oak bas reliefs along each wall beneath Dyce's frescoes.

Before his death Dyce had befriended three young Royal Academy students in London and introduced their work to John Ruskin. Dante Gabriel Rossetti, William Holman Hunt and John Everett Millais, all under 25 years of age, formed the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in 1848. Holman Hunt considered Dyce to be the most profoundly trained and cultured of all the painters of the time.

The arts and crafts movement was inspired by the writings of the critic John Ruskin and spearheaded by the work of William Morris, an associate of the Pre-Raphaelites, reaching its height between about 1880 and 1910.  Dyce, along with Ford Madox Brown, acted in part as mentors to the younger men, came to adapt their own work to the Pre-Raphaelite style. Dyce's later work was Pre-Raphaelite in its spirituality and attention to detail.

Influenced by Romanticism, the Brotherhood defined themselves as a reform movement rejecting what they considered to be the mechanistic approach first adopted by the Mannerism period of European art which came after Raphael and Michelangelo. The Brotherhood immediately began to produce highly convincing and significant works, striving to revive the deep religious feeling and naive, unadorned directness of the Florentine and Sienese schools of the 14th and  15th-centuries. The Pre-Raphaelites were fixed on portraying things with near-photographic precision but their work was devalued by many painters and critics. The Brotherhood's mediaevalism was attacked as regressive and its extreme devotion to detail was condemned as ugly and jarring on the eye.

Charles Dickins was a leading critic of the Brotherhood after the exhibition of  Millais' painting "Christ in the House of His Parents" (The Carpenter’s Shop),1849–50, partly for its realism which displayed Christ's home as an ordinary family defying all current expectations that religious art should depict the Holy Family in a highly idealised way. In his magazine Household Words, Dickins wrote;

“In the foreground of that carpenter's shop is a hideous, wrynecked, blubbering, red-headed boy, in a bed-gown, who appears to have received a poke in the hand, from the stick of another boy with whom he has been playing in an adjacent gutter, and to be holding it up for the contemplation of a kneeling woman, so horrible in her ugliness. that (supposing it were possible for any human creature to exist for a moment with that dislocated throat) she would stand out from the rest of the company as a Monster, in the vilest cabaret in France, or the lowest ginshop in England ...”

Undeterred, the Brotherhood found support from Ruskin, the man said to have coined the term “Medievalism”, who wrote to The Times defending their work. However, by 1853 the original Brotherhood had virtually dissolved with only Holman Hunt remaining true to its stated aims. But the term "Pre-Raphaelite" stuck to Rossetti and others, including William Morris and Edward Burne-Jones. The Pre-Raphaelites and the artists of the Arts and Crafts Movement tended to favour Malory; Burne-Jones was drawn to the mystical, secret, and ritual aspects of the legends; Dante Gabriel Rosetti to the erotic; and William Morris to the idealism and the concepts of brotherhood and fellowship.

For Morris and Burne-Jones Arthuriana was a shared mania feeding off Malory's text. Morris was predominately a designer who was influential in the Arts and Crafts Movement during the Victorian era, producing poetry and designs for his firm Morris and Co. Burne-Jones and Morris corroborated on The Grail Tapestries.

The Sleep of Arthur in Avalon - Edward Burne-Jones (1898)

Three scenes tended to dominate the Brotherhood's Arthurian cycle: The Lady of Shalott, Tristan and Isolde, and the Passing of King Arthur. Edward Burne-Jones's monumental 24 feet long painting "The Sleep of Arthur in Avalon" was the culmination of a succession of contemporary writings and works of art based on the Arthurian legend in which the hero-king was taken as an exemplar of how life could still be lived in the Victorian age.  Burne-Jones  attention to detail was obsessive with the "The Sleep of Arthur in Avalon" seemingly taking over the later part of the artist's life; he was 49 in 1881 when he started work on it and was still working on it at the time of his death in 1898, when he considered the painting still required another two months' work. Sadly, this monumental piece of Arthurian art was purchased for the Museo de Arte de Ponce Collection, Puerto Rico, in 1963, but made a brief return to Britain in 2008 when it was displayed at the Tate.

Before closing, mention must be made of John William Waterhouse (1849-1917) who worked after the dissolution of the Brotherhood but continued to work in the Pre-Raphaelite style for which he was known as “the modern Pre-Raphaelite”. The Arthurian legend was perhaps his favourite subject matter. One of Waterhouse's most famous paintings is “The Lady of Shalott” (1888) inspired by Tennyson's poem of the same name:

And down the river's dim expanse

Like some bold seer in a trance,

Seeing all his own mischance -

With glassy countenance

Did she look to Camelot.

And at the closing of the day

She loosed the chain, and down she lay;

The broad stream bore her far away,

The Lady of Shalott.

The Arthurian Revival lasted for the duration of Queen Victoria's reign (1837-1901). The single most important person in this revival was Alfred, Lord Tennyson.


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


Sources:
N J Lacey et al, eds. Arthur in the Arts, in The Arthurian Handbook, Second Edition, Garland, 1997.
N J Lacey, et al, The New Arthurian Encyclopedia, Garland, 1995.
Alan Lupack, The Oxford Guide to Arthurian Literature and Legend, Oxford University Press, 2007.
Christine Poulson, The Quest for the Grail: Arthurian Legend in British Art, 1840-1920, Manchester University Press, 1999.

* * *

Dark Days in York

The historic walled city of York is said to have been founded by the Romans as Eboracum in 71 AD, at the confluence of the rivers Ouse and Foss in North Yorkshire, England. At its prime it was the largest town in northern Britain and capital of the Roman province of Britannia Inferior.

In 208 the Roman Emperor Septimius Severus travelled to Britain, strengthening Hadrian's Wall and reoccupying the Antonine Wall during a campaign in Caledonia (modern Scotland). Following a short illness Severus died at Eboracum in 211, his body cremated outside the city walls. In 306 Constantius I became the second Emperor to die at Eboracum. His son Constantine I (Constantine the Great) was instantly proclaimed as successor by the troops based in the fortress. His bronze statue stands outside York Minster.

Constantine I

The traditional view is that the name "Eboracum" is based on a Latinisation of the native British name “Eburos” for the ancient site, "place of the yew trees”. The name was later revived as the Anglo-Saxon trading port of Eoforwic, from the Old English “eofor,” for boar, and “wic” for settlement. The usual explanation given is that the Anglo-Saxons confused the Brythonic word “ebor”, yew tree, with their own word “eofor”.

The city became the capital of the northern ecclesiastical province of the Church of England, a role it has retained with the present building of the Gothic cathedral of York Minster, the second largest in Northern Europe, dominating the city skyline, begun c.1230 and completed in 1472. The first church recorded on the site was a much more modest affair; a wooden structure was built in 627 to provide a place for the baptism of Edwin, King of Deira.

In 866 Eoforwic was captured by Ivar the Boneless, leading a large army of Danish Vikings, known as the "Great Heathen Army" to the Anglo-Saxon chroniclers, and renamed the city 'Jórvík.' Excavations at Coppergate in central York by the York Archaeological Trust revealed that during the 10th century, Jórvík's trading connections reached as far as the Byzantine Empire in the Eastern Mediterranean. The site of the excavations is now the Jorvik Viking Centre. Eric Bloodaxe, last ruler of an independent Jórvík, was finally driven from the city in 954 by Eadred, King of Wessex, in his campaign to unify England. Eric was killed and Eadred took control of the kingdom of York.

Whether Eboracum, Eoforwic, or Jórvík, call it what you will, a visit to York with its rich heritage never fails to stimulate the senses, walking the city walls being one the best ways to take in views of this rich historical tapestry.

York - city wall and Minster (Source: http://www.jorvik.co.uk)

The city walls have been convincingly described as the best in Britain, with most of the medieval walls built to encircle the city 700 years ago still intact. The tops of the walls were restored about 150 years ago to provide a public walkway, the route marked with small brass pavement studs on the ground showing a tower with battlements, providing what is claimed to be the best city walk in the country. Who could argue with that? But this city has a dark, dismal secret.

The Romans surrounded their fort with walls but little evidence of these remain today; the current walls are largely of Medieval construction, strengthened in the 1640s for the English Civil War. There are four main Medieval gateways, or bars, into the city: Bootham Bar; Monk Bar; Walmgate Bar; Micklegate Bar. The Minster sits toward the north corner, between Bootham Bar and Monk Bar. In the south corner between Walmgate Bar and Micklegate Bar are the Lesser Gateways: Fishergate Bar, Fishergate Postern and Victoria Bar. 

Just past the Guildhall some steps lead up to the Walls at Monk Bar. Outside the Walls  here is Sainbury's multi-storey car park, built on the site of York’s medieval Jewish cemetery. The area is still called Jewbury but it was long forgotten and fell in to disuse when all Jews were expelled from England in 1290 and not re-discovered until construction work began on the supermarket.

Situated between the Rivers Foss and Ouse, beyond the city walls and Fishergate Postern Tower, is Clifford Tower on the top of a steep man-made mound with extensive views across the modern city. The Foss was dammed at Fishergate Postern Tower, where the road now crosses the river. The purpose of the dam was to flood York's castle’s moats, now filled in, Clifford’s Tower, or the King's Tower as it was then known, the castle keep, being the only significant remnant of old York Castle. A stone plaque at the bottom of the steps recalls a disturbing event over 800 years ago on the hill where Clifford’s Tower now stands.

Clifford's Tower

The mound was constructed by William the Conqueror in 1068 after meeting resistance in the north. This was promptly besieged and the wooden defences were destroyed within a year.  Undeterred, in March of that year, William built another castle (Baile Hill), positioning each castle on either side of the river Ouse. Clifford's Tower on the Eastern side of the river and Baile Hill on the Western side with the foundations of York Minster laid in 1070.

There is no record of Jews in England before the Norman Conquest, however, it is known that William the Conqueror brought a Jewish contingent from Rouen, in Normandy, to Britain in 1070 for the prosperity their commercial skills and incoming capital would bring to England. However, they were not permitted to own land or to participate in trades, being limited to money lending. During the 12th century Jews from Paris and elsewhere in France were settled at York making worthy contributions to the Exchequer.

Fuelled by Christian enthusiasm for the Crusades anti-Semitic feeling was running high throughout Western Europe in the 12th century, with aggression directed against Jews not just in England, but also France and Germany. Pope Gregory VIII had called Christians to arms for the Third Crusade to put Jerusalem under Christian control once more after the Crusader army was slaughtered by Saladin at the Battle of Hattin in 1187. A rumour started that the new crusader-king no longer wanted to protect the non-Christian Jews of England, some even claimed there was no need to go abroad to find enemies of Christianity to kill. Yet the fate of Europe’s Jewish communities is often omitted from accounts of the Crusades.

England’s newly crowned monarch Richard I, 'The Lionheart', had “taken up the cross” and was eager to join the crusade. Rioting had spread throughout England since prominent Jews had been denied entry to Richard's coronation in 1189. One of these was Benedict of York, the wealthiest Jew in the City who was mortally wounded in the rioting at Westminster.

After rioting had engulfed the towns of Norwich, Stamford and Lincoln they began in York on 16th March 1190 with a mob attempting to burn down Benedict’s palatial house. The Jews were officially protected by the king as his feudal vassals but the entire Jewish community of York, 150 people, sought protection in the royal castle, barricading themselves into the wooden keep, where Clifford’s Tower now stands, in fear of the mob.

The royal constable was locked out of the keep and refused entry. Calling on a group of knights, he ordered the castle keep to be taken by force. The mob were encouraged by members of the local gentry who saw this as an opportunity to erase the debts they owed to the Jewish money-lenders in York. It is claimed that most of the Jews chose to commit suicide in the keep rather than fall to the hands of the mob. It is claimed that after killing their wives and children they set fire to the wooden keep and killed themselves. However, a few declined suicide only to perish in the fire, or be murdered by the mob. After the massacre the gentry proceeded to the Minster to destroy records of their loans, so absolving themselves from repayment to the king, who would acquire the property and debts owed to the murdered Jews.

The events at York were recorded in the Chronicles of the Abbey of Meaux in East Yorkshire, and Roger of Howden. The chronicler William of Newburgh described the mob who murdered the Jewish community of York as acting “without any scruple of Christian conscientiousness”.

Soon afterwards a royal inquest was held which resulted in the city receiving a heavy fine, but no individuals were ever held responsible for the loss of life at York that night. It is thought that some of them were already travelling through France to join the Crusades.

The events at York have been compared to the Siege of Masada, one of the final events in the First Jewish–Roman War, in which, according to the 1st century historian Josephus, a long siege by troops of the Roman Empire ended in the mass suicide of the 960 Sicarii rebels and their families hiding on a large hilltop in current-day Israel, in 74 AD.

Josephus  reported that when the Romans entered the fortress at the end of the siege they found it to be "a citadel of death." The Jewish rebels had set all the buildings but the food storerooms ablaze and had committed mass suicide. Masada has become a controversial event in Jewish history, with some regarding it as a place of reverence. The Jews of York were probably aware of Masada and may have seen a similar fate for themselves.

Judaism prohibits suicide, therefore it is argued that the Jews must have killed each other in turn. However, there is no archaeological evidence that Masada's defenders committed mass suicide. And what evidence is there for a mass suicide at York?

The cemetery at Jewbury is estimated to contain around a 1,000 graves, it must have been one of the largest Jewish cemeteries in the country. The archaeologists discovered about 500 medieval graves during the construction of Sainbury's multi-storey carpark in the 1980s. However, none of the excavated graves at Jewbury showed any signs of violence, except one, it therefore seems unlikely that these were the bodies of the Jews massacred in Clifford's Tower in 1190. What became of their fate? At Norwich seventeen skeletons found in a well were identified as Jews murdered during this period

No physical memory was left in the city of the murders, but archaeological excavations have revealed the burnt remnants of the original wooden structure beneath the tower. For years it was believed a cherem had been placed on York, prohibiting the resettling of the city by Jews following the mass-murder in 1190.

Memorial plaque at Clifford's Tower

In efforts toward reconciliation it has been argued that Jews continued to live at York and built houses after the massacre at Clifford Tower up to the expulsion in 1290 under Edward I and there is no evidence of a cherem at York in any known Rabbinical text.

Today, at the foot of Clifford’s Tower, a plaque marks this dark day in York’s history. Further to the memorial plaque, in 1990, exactly eight-hundred years after the massacre, the slopes of Clifford's Tower were planted with daffodils with six pointed petals representative of the Star of David, which flower in March when the 150 souls were lost.

Next time you are in York admiring the fine medieval walls and the rich history of the city bear a thought for that dark day in March 1190.


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

* * *

The Tudors: Divorce and Dissolution

On this day 7th March in 1530 King Henry VIII's divorce request against Catherine of Aragon was denied by the Pope triggering a remarkable series of events that will finally conclude later this month.

The Battle for the Roses
On 22nd August 1485, Henry Tudor became King Henry VII of England upon defeating Richard III at the Battle of Bosworth Field, the last significant battle of the Wars of the Roses, effectively bringing to an end the civil war between the Houses of Lancaster and York.

Marching through Wales on his way to Bosworth Field Henry flew the ancient battle standard of Cadwaladr ap Cadwallon, 7th century king of Gwynedd, the Red Dragon (Y Ddraig Goch), claiming direct descent from the noble families of Wales. The Red Dragon is indeed ancient and can be traced to the Arthurian Legend when Merlin prophesied of a battle between a red and a white dragon, the red dragon being the Britons and the white dragon representing the invading Saxons.

Henry carried the Red Dragon through London in his victory parade with the flag carried to St. Paul's Cathedral to be blessed. The arms of Cadwaladr were also prominent at his coronation. With the victory Henry became the first Tudor Monarch of England, his opponent Richard III was killed in the battle and the last king of the House of York. After the Battle of Bosworth Field, Henry Tudor added his family colours, green and white, representing the Tudor House, to his Red Dragon flag, today the National flag of Wales.

In the aftermath of the battle Richard's crown was found and presented to Henry who was crowned king at the top of Crown Hill, near the village of Stoke Golding. Richard's body was stripped naked and bound over a horse and taken to Leicester where it was exhibited in a church. After two days, Richard's corpse was interred in a plain unmarked tomb within the church of the Greyfriars Friary Church.

Arthur Prince of Wales
In an effort to strengthen the Tudor claim to the throne and emphasise his family's Welsh ancestry, Henry had royal genealogists trace his lineage back to the ancient British rulers and decided on naming his firstborn son after the legendary King Arthur. Subsequently, Winchester was identified as Camelot where his wife, Elizabeth of York, was compelled to give birth to his heir.

Born at Saint Swithun's Priory (today Winchester Cathedral Priory) on 20th September 1486 Arthur was Henry and Elizabeth's eldest child with the young Prince viewed as "a living symbol" of not only the union between the House of Tudor and the House of York, but also of the end of the Wars of the Roses; he was the great hope of the newly established House of Tudor.

Before Arthur was two years old he was betrothed to the Spanish princess Catherine of Aragon, the youngest surviving child of Ferdinand and Isabella, rulers of Spain. Arthur and Catherine married on 14th November 1501 in Old St. Paul's Cathedral. After the wedding and celebrations, the young couple moved to Ludlow Castle on the Welsh border but less than six months later on 2nd April 1502 Arthur was dead, victim of an unknown ailment.

Fourteen months after Arthur's death Catherine, Princess of Wales, was betrothed to his younger brother, the future Henry VIII, who was too young to marry at the time. Canon law forbade men to marry their brother's widow but Catherine testified that her marriage to Arthur was never consummated, therefore the marriage was deemed not valid and received dispensation from the Pope. Following King Henry VII's death in April 1509, the young King's first priority was to marry Catherine in June of the same year.

Supremacy & Suppression
Frustrated by his lack of a male heir after 24 years of marriage, King Henry VIII lost interest in Catherine and became fascinated with Anne Boleyn, the Queen's lady-in-waiting. The King began to petition the Pope for an annulment claiming that the marriage was cursed as it went against the biblical teaching that a man should never marry his brother's widow. But on the 7th March in 1530 the King's request for a divorce was rejected by the Pope.

The political and legal debate continued for six years with Catherine seeking not only to retain her position as the King's true and legitimate wife but also that of her daughter Mary, insisting that she and Arthur, her first husband and Henry's brother, did not consummate their marriage and therefore were not truly husband and wife.

By 1533 Anne Boleyn was pregnant forcing Henry to act; his solution was to reject the power of the Pope in England and instruct the Archbishop of Canterbury to grant the annulment. The subsequent divorce led to the Reformation in England and schism with Rome with Henry then declaring that he, not the Pope, was supreme head of England's church through the Act of Supremacy, passed by Parliament in 1534.

In 1536 Henry began the legal process in which the monasteries, priories, convents and friaries in England, Wales and Ireland, would be disbanded through the First Act of Suppression (1536) and the Second Act of Suppression (1539). During this period around 800 religious houses were either demolished or disbanded.

One such was Greyfriars Friary Church, Leicester, the last known location of the body of Richard III. With the demolition of the church and the site levelled following its dissolution in 1538 Richard's tomb appeared to be lost forever.

The Return of the King
The search for Richard's body began in August 2012. The archaeological excavation was led by the University of Leicester Archaeological Services and Leicester City Council with the Richard III Society.

By comparing historical maps the search located the foundations of the Friary Church where Richard's body had been hastily buried in 1485, located beneath a modern-day city centre car park. On the first day of the dig a human skeleton belonging to a man in his thirties was uncovered. The remains showed signs of severe injuries and had several unusual physical features, most notably a severe curvature of the back. DNA analysis has matched the remains to descendants of Richard's sister Anne of York concluding beyond reasonable doubt that the skeleton was that of Richard III.

Richard's remains will be re-interred in Leicester Cathedral on 26 March 2015.



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


Pictures: Wikimedia commons

* * *

Brân - Celtic god of Hades

Brân fab Llyr/Bendigeidfran is the central character of the Second Brânch of the Mabinogi, which traditionally bears the name of his sister, Brânwen ferch Llyr. Brân Bendigeid, “Blessed Raven” is a Celtic sea-deity, the son of Llyr, associated with the early Celtic cult of the head and and possibly with the Morrigan, the goddess of battle, strife, and sovereignty who also appears in the form of a crow. The Morrigan can appear as both a single goddess and as a trio of deities with Badb (Crow), and either Macha (also Crow) or Nemain (Frenzy). There is ample evidence that the concept of a raven goddess of battle was not limited to the Irish Celts.

In the Mabinogi
In the distant mythological past, Brân is a giant and king of Britain. His sister Brânwen is betrothed to Matholwch, king of Ireland. Matholwch is insulted when his horses are mutilated so Brân presents a gift of a magic cauldron to the Irish king. Matholwch takes Brânwen back to Ireland with him. When Brân hears Brânwen is being mistreated by her husband’s people he musters the hosts of Britain for an expedition to Ireland. He leaves his son Caradawg as officer in charge of the Island of the Mighty while he embarks to Ireland.

In the bloody war that ensues, Irish warriors are revived by being thrown into the peir dadeni (cauldron of rebirth) resurrected but without the power of speech. Ultimately Brân succeeds in rescuing Brânwen but in the midst of the fighting, there is an obscure traditional utterance in which Brân is called 'Morddwyd Tyllion' this is clear reference to his fatal wound (pierced thighs). The fighting ends when the Irish and the army of the Island of the Mighty have all but annihilated each other; only seven of Brân's party survive and return to Harlech. He tells his followers how to deal with the situation by decapitating him:

‘And take the head,’ he said, ‘and bring it as far as the
White Mound (Gwynfryn) in London, and bury it
with its face towards France. And you will be a long
while on the way. In Harlech you will be seven years
engaged in feasting, with the birds of Rhiannon
singing above.’

The following 87-year Otherworldly feast is referred to in the tale by the peculiar traditional name 'yspydawt urdawl benn' (hospitality of the noble head), during which Brân’s head remains alive, uncorrupted, and as good a companion as ever. The Otherworld feast comes to an end when one of Brân’s retinue opens the door facing south, towards Cernyw (Cornwall) and Aber Henfelen. They must now end their sojourn in the Otherworld, take the head  and bury it at the White Mound. The Third Brânch (the Mabinogi of Manawydan), opens with Brân’s head interred as a talisman preventing the incursion of foreign oppression.

It is evident from the Mabinogi account that Brân is a supernatural figure; his head has the ability to live on after its decapitation; it talks, sings and can prophesy to its companions in an Otherworldy feast that lasts 87 years.

In the Book of Taliesin
In the Second Brânch tale, Taliesin is named as one of the seven who returned from Ireland with Brân’s head. Among the mythological poetry in Llyfr Taliesin, in the poem Song Before the Sons of Llyr, there are allusions to two episodes in Brân’s story which interestingly use the same words as the Mabinogi tale:

A battle at the feast over joyless beverage,
A battle against the sons of Llyr in Ebyr Henfelyn. 

I have been with Brân in Ireland.
I saw when Morddwydtyllon was killed 

Complete is my chair in Caer Siddi,
No one will be afflicted with disease or old age that may be in it.
Manawyddan and Pryderi know it  

The narrator, Taliesin, was one of the seven survivors named along with Manawyddan, Pryderi, and four others in the Mabinogi of Brânwen. Clearly, the poem and the tale of Brânwen are closely related texts, referring to the same event, confirming the old and traditional status of elements of the Mabinogi text.

In the Welsh Triads 
The burial of Brân’s head is recorded in the Triads of the Island of Britain (Trioedd Ynys Prydein) as one of the Three fortunate concealments of the Island of Britain. The following translation is based on the Red Book version (Llyfr Coch Hergest):

The head of Bendigeidfran son of Llyr, which was
concealed in the White Hill in London, with its
face towards France; and so long as it remained as it
was laid there, no Saxon oppression (gormes) would
ever come to this island. 

Brân's severed head is also described as one of Three Unfortunate Disclosures because Arthur declared that he needed no talisman to protect his own country and dug up the head. However, we are not told what he did with it.

In Ancient Greek History
Brân's story is well known in traditional accounts, as we have seen, featuring in the Mabinogi, The Book of Taliesin and the Triads of the Island of Britain. John Koch has equated Brân's story with the famous historical Gaulish chieftain Brennos (Brennius), together with Akichorios, who led a Celtic offensive in the Balkans and attacked Macedonia and Greece in the 3rd century BC.

At the beginning of 279 BC the Gaulish chieftain Bolgios’s army annihilated the detachment of the Macedonian ruler Ptolemy Keraunos, opening the way into Greece for Brennos to follow with a force comprising 152,000 infantry and 20,000 cavalry. Brennos continued south. By the autumn of 279 BC he had reached and passed the strategic pass at Thermopylae. Brennos then attacked Delphi with 65,000 men. It seems the winter forced the Gauls to retreat; a miraculous snowstorm sent by Apollo saved the Delphic sanctuary from the onslaught of the Gauls. Brennos, gravely wounded, retreated to the north, where he rejoined Akichorios’s forces but, unable to stand the pain of his wounds, he took his own life by stabbing himself.

The episode of Brennos’s death has been compared with the voluntary beheading of the wounded Brân after the great invasion of Ireland in the Mabinogi; Diodorus Siculus (22.9) has the wounded Brennos command his surviving followers to kill him.

Some of the treasure taken from Delphi by Brennos’s Gauls was deposited, as an offering to their god, in the sacred pools of the Volcae Tectosages at Tolosa (Toulouse) in south-west Gaul. The treasure was then raised out of the ritual pools by the Roman general Caepio when the area was conquered in 106 BC, and considered comparable with the talismanic deposition of Brân’s severed head which protected Britain from foreign conquest.

In Medieval Welsh Legendary History
In Brut y Brenhinedd, the Welsh versions of the Historia Regum Britanniae of Geoffrey of
Monmouth, the legendary prehistoric British king called Hely by Geoffrey appears as Beli, and the
conquerors of Rome whom Geoffrey called Brennius and Belinus have the Welsh names Brân and Beli. However, Beli may derive from the Old Celtic name, which is attested as both Bolgios and Belgius, and was borne by the chieftain who led the Gauls’ invasion of Macedonia in 280–279 BC.

Another Brennos (of the Senones) was a Gaulish leader who marched at the head of assembled Celtic warbands c. 390 BC, that routed the Roman army eleven miles from Rome. The recurrence of the name Brennus raises the suggestion that it was a title rather than a proper name. However, the Welsh name Brân could be related to Gaulish Brennos, but is not its exact equivalent. Geoffrey probably saw the name 'Brennius' as a Latinisation of 'Brân' and muddled the two accounts.

The Raven
The story of Brân in the Mabinogi is well known for the 'talking head' episode when, after being fatally wounded, Brân orders his retinue to severe his head and take it with them. The head continues to talk and remains uncorrupted until one of the party break a taboo and open a window to the south. The head is then buried at Bryn-Gwyn, the White Mound, said to be the site of the Tower of London, however, the Tower's association with the raven is a late tradition. Nearby Tower Hill, described as the“blood-stained ground to the north-west of the Tower,” maybe a better candidate where there is archaeological evidence of a Bronze Age settlement and, later, the site of many public executions. According to Geoffrey the 'White Mound' is the burial place of Brutus.

There seems to have been a cult of the head at the site of St Paul's with numerous animal skulls found there when the building of the present cathedral began in 1675 AD, architect Sir Christopher Wren, discovered remains of a pagan Stag Goddess temple in the foundations of the previous Cathedral which had been destroyed in the Great Fire of London in 1666. This was possibly the site of the pagan temple at Ludgate Hill, reputedly destroyed by the Saxons in 597.

Koch suggests that the Roman Saxon Shore fort of Brâncaster in Norfolk, may have been the site of the original interment of Brân's head. Recorded in the Notitia Dignatatum under the Romano-British name as “Brânodunum” meaning the 'fort of Brân'. It seems more than coincidence that a fort of the litus Saxonicus should be named after a supernatural protector defending the land from foreign oppression (gormes) as reflected in the Triads; the White Mound in London would hardly be in the first line of defence against overseas invaders.`

Anne Ross informs us that birds and heads are associated with each other concerning the Irish war raven goddesses. In O'Mulconry's Glossary, from the Yellow Book of Lecan, the name of the goddess Macha is described as “a crow, or it is one of the three Morrigana. Mesrad Machae, Machae's Mast, that is the heads of men after their slaughter.” Ross adds that the heads of the dead would thus appear to be this bird-goddesses' due, i.e. the dead were more than just food for crows; the spirits of the fallen belonged to the Morrigana.

Koch has drawn attention to a similar reference in Y Goddodin. Crows and ravens feature heavily in Welsh poetry depictions of battlefields. This is typically seen as the act of consuming carrion but can equally imply the presence of a deity collecting souls of the fallen. Koch translates the following stanza (A.24) of Y Gododdin as:

The hero with the protective shield under its polychrome boss,
(with movement like a colt),
was tumult on slaughter's high ground, was fire,
His spears were readied, they were [like] the sun,
He was food for ravens, he was spoils for Brân.

The final line of this stanza makes it quite clear that the dead were not just food for carrion birds but the property of Brân; he was the Celtic god of Hades.

Koch adds that in pre-Christian times, Brennos functioned as the Brittonic god of death, comparable to the Irish Donn and the Dis Pater of the Gauls as reported by Julius Caesar. This supernatural role fits perfectly with Brân's living decapitation and the 87 year Otherworld feast of the noble head.

Significantly, in the Mabinogi of Brânwen the gathering in Ireland is referred to as Gwledd Brân, (The feast of Brân): there is strong argument for presenting Brân as a Celtic psychopomp, guiding the souls of the dead heroes of the battlefield to the glorious afterlife.


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


Sources:
Anne Ross, Celtic Pagan Britain, Academy Chicago, 1996.
Rachel Bromwich, Trioedd Ynys Prydein (The Triads of the Island of Britain), University of Wales Press, Third Edition, 2006.
Mary Jones, Celtic Literature Collective, Song Before the Sons of Llyr from Llyfr Taliesin (The Book of Taliesin).
John T. Koch, Brân, Brennos: an instance of Early Gallo-Brittonic history and mythology, Cambridge Medieval Celtic Studies (CMCS) 20, 1990.
John T. Koch, Celtic Culture, ABC-CLIO, 2006.
John T. Koch, The Gododdin of Aneirin: Text and Context from Dark-Age North Britain, Celtic Studies Publications, 1997.
Angelique Gulermovich Epstein, War Goddess: The Morrígan and her Germano-Celtic Counterparts (Dissertation).

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