Two pages essay
Use the reading below to answer the topic question.
THE LAND AND THE KING ARE ONE:
KING ARTHUR IN SOUTHERN BRITAIN
Whenever one writes about King Arthur, one question inevitably occurs: did King Arthur really exist? or, to put it another way, is there any historical basis for the tales told of King Arthur? The short answer is, yes, there is a historical basis. Beyond that, though, it is necessary to distinguish between the man whom we may call the historical Arthur and the man whom we should call the legendary King Arthur. The historical Arthur appears to have been a Romano-Celtic dux bellorum, or leader of battles, a commander-in-chief of the combined forces of Britain who aimed to prevent the invading Anglo-Saxons from overrunning Britain during the late fifth and early sixth centuries. That no early historians of the battles between the Britons and the Germanic peoples mention Arthur by name need not make us doubt Arthur’s existence, if we understand "Arthur” as an honorific title rather than a personal name.(1) Scholars have long attempted to identify Arthur with some specific historical British leader. Most recently, Graham Phillips and Martin Keatman have asserted, with perhaps more enthusiasm than hard evidence, that Arthur was really Owain Ddantgwyn, King of Gwynedd and Powys (Wales). This Owain was of Scottish descent,(2) and indeed, in Scotland as in Wales, one still finds numerous sites associated with the name of Arthur. But this Arthur is distinctly not the King Arthur whom the world knows, the King Arthur of legend and literature who nevertheless played a part in shaping the actual history of Britain, and whose mythic presence continues to shed glamour on the many places in southern Britain associated with his name. As the printer William Caxton wrote more than 500 years ago, "in diverse places in England, many reminders of [Arthur], and also of his knights, still exist and shall remain forever."(3)
King Arthur, as he is recognized today, is largely the product of what has been called "the Renaissance of the Twelfth Century": a period characterized by a marvelous outburst of creativity in many fields of human endeavor in Western Europe, especially in French-speaking territories, including, at that time, England. King Arthur, more or less as we know him, enters the written record in approximately 1136 in a Latin book called Historia Regum Brittaniae, or The History of the Kings of Britain, by Geoffrey of Monmouth, a Welsh cleric with connections to Oxford and Westminster.(4) Geoffrey claims to have based his history on an early book "in the British language";(5) but if such a book ever existed, it has not survived. It is generally thought that Geoffrey created his historical narrative by weaving together scraps of actual history and Celtic legend and mythology. King Arthur is not the only subject of Geoffrey’s history, but he is its focal point. Geoffrey’s is the earliest written version to bring together much that is central in the Arthurian legend, for example the sword Excalibur and the characters Merlin and Guenevere.
Furthermore, Geoffrey locates Arthur and his other characters not in fabled regions such as Lyonesse, nor in fictional castles such as Camelot, but in actual British settings–however fictively he may treat these actual places. According to Geoffrey, for example, before the birth of Arthur, Aurelius, a fifth-century King of the Britons, commanded his brother Uther to accompany Merlin to Ireland to retrieve the so-called Giant’s Ring of Mount Killaraus and bring it back to Britain, in order to set it up as a memorial to some 300 Britons who had been ambushed and murdered by Anglo-Saxons. This stone circle was reerected by Merlin at Aurelius’s command near Salisbury, and Aurelius and Uther themselves were eventually buried there.(6)
The stone circle is, of course, known today as Stonehenge. During the earlier Middle Ages, large structures of unknown origin, even Roman works, were sometimes thought to be the work of giants. It is now well known, however, that the origins of Stonehenge are in fact prehistoric and, as it happens, merely human. The remains of Stonehenge which are visible today date from approximately 2000 BC, in the early Bronze Age, some 800 years before the legendary fall of Troy; but the site had begun to be developed as a ceremonial circle at least a thousand years before, during the late Neolithic period.(7) We should note that there is no historical connection between the Stonehenge and the Celtic priesthood known as the Druids, who certainly did not build Stonehenge. Perhaps John Aubrey, who suggested in the seventeenth century that the Druids had built Stonehenge,(8) envisioned Geoffrey’s Merlin as a Druidic priest. In any case, the lure of Stonehenge remains strong, to everyday folk as well as to so-called neo-Druids or New Age Travellers. Indeed, access to the prehistoric monument has now been restricted, and there is at present serious discussion about removing nearby roads and concession stands to return the area of the Salisbury Plain around Stonehenge to an earlier, less developed state, It is hoped that only the hardy and the truly dedicated will hike the mile or more to stand near the stone circle.
Geoffrey also identifies Tintagel, on the coast of Cornwall, as the site of the fortress of Gorlois, Duke of Cornwall, whose wife Ygerna is there seduced by Uther Pendragon, disguised as Gorlois through Merlin’s art.(9) Sir Thomas Malory’s better-known Le Morte Darthur begins with an account of these events in this same setting. On the "island" of Tintagel (in fact a peninsula joined to the Cornish mainland by a rocky, swooping strip of land about wide enough to support a walkway) are the ruins of a Celtic Christian monastic community which flourished there in the fifth century. There may have been an early "castle" on the island in this same "Arthurian" era, but such a castle would likely have been built of wood, and so would have left little evidence of its existence. The ruins of stone walls now seen at Tintagel are the remains of later religious buildings and the castle built by Reginald, Duke of Cornwall, in the twelfth century, probably within the lifetime of Geoffrey of Monmouth himself.(10)
Away to the east of Cornwall, in south-central Britain not far east of Stonehenge, lies the city of Winchester, a center of power for the English king Alfred the Great in the late ninth century, and a city also associated by Geoffrey with King Arthur. Geoffrey observes that Arthur’s uncle, Aurelius, dies in Winchester, and that his successor, Uther Pendragon, gives to the congregation of Winchester Cathedral one of two golden dragons he causes to be made at the beginning of his reign as personal emblems.(11) Later, near the end of Arthur’s reign, Geoffrey has Mordred, Arthur’s nephew, escape to Winchester, there to fight Arthur and his troops before once again escaping.(12) Later writers, including Malory, identify Winchester with Camelot,(13) although most writers record that Arthur, like English monarchs of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, kept court at various locations around Britain.
Today Winchester remains a major center of Arthurian interest, primarily by virtue of the Round Table which is exhibited on the west wall of the interior of the early thirteenth-century Great Hall of Winchester Castle. In the mid-fifteenth century, about two decades before Caxton mentioned the Winchester Table in his preface to Malory’s works, John Hardyng chronicles that "The Round Table began at Winchester, / And there it ended, and there it still hangs."(14) This Winchester Round Table is among the most vivid reminders that the legend of King Arthur could and did affect later British history. The Round Table of Arthurian literature appears to have originated in the late twelfth century, in the pages of the Roman de Brut, by a Norman cleric, Wace.(15) Scientific evidence suggests that the Winchester Table was made during the later thirteenth century, probably during the reign of Edward I (1272-1307),(16) perhaps for the tournament in 1284 at Nefyn celebrated by Edward to commemorate his victory over the Welsh.(17) Both Edward I and his grandson, Edward Ill, demonstrate a strong interest in King Arthur. In 1278, about a century after the initial discovery of the supposed tombs of Arthur and Guenevere at Glastonbury (about which more will be said later), Edward I causes the royal "remains" to be moved to a place of honor in front of the high altar of Glastonbury Abbey.(18) Sixty years after Edward l’s celebration at Nefyn, Edward Ill and his knights reenact a tournament of the Round Table at Windsor. At Windsor Castle, Edward Ill vows to reinstitute the brotherhood of the Round Table and within four years, he has founded the Knights of the Garter,(19) a foundation perhaps commemorated in the fourteenth-century alliterative poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.
Edward I and Edward Ill are not the last British monarchs to recognize the propaganda value of associating themselves with the fame of King Arthur. Henry VII makes much of his Welsh roots, and names his firstborn son–and heir to the throne –Arthur. But this Tudor Arthur does not live to ascend the throne of England, and Henry VII is of course succeeded by Henry VIII, who leaves a more lasting example of Tudor appropriation of the aura of Arthur. Approximately 1520, Henry VIII causes the already well-known table to be painted, apparently for the first time, and he gives it the familiar image which it retains today: alternating green and white wedge-shaped spokes radiating from a central red and white Tudor Rose, atop which sits "Kyng Arthur"; in a circle of white around the central rose are printed the words, "This is the Round Table of King Arthur with 24 of his Named Knights";(20) and the names of those 24 knights are printed on a white circle at the outer edge of the surface of the Table. The image of the enthroned "Kyng Arthur" shown on the table is in fact a representation of Henry VIII himself, holding sword and orb and, significantly, wearing the double-arched imperial crown. The legendary Arthur claims imperial rights dating to his predecessor Constantine, and Henry VIII himself, late in the second decade of the sixteenth century, believes that he has a chance to become Holy Roman Emperor: Maximilian I had once dangled before Henry the prospect of making the young Englishman his heir. In the event, the Spaniard Charles was chosen as the new emperor, and in 1522. when he visits England to negotiate for the help of England against France, Henry VIII makes a point of showing him the Round Table at Winchester.(21)
A little over a mile to the southwest of Winchester’s town center, in an idyllic country setting, is another ancient building with Arthurian connections. The Hospital of St. Cross features an "Almshouse of Noble Poverty," in continuous use since the twelfth century, and a Norman chapel of striking if severe beauty, noted for its so-called "bird-beak" rounded-arch window. St. Cross is founded in 1136 as a charitable institution for "thirteen poor men, feeble and so reduced in strength that they can hardly or with difficuity support themselves without another’s aid," so that "the poor in Christ may there humbly dwell[,] and devoutly serve God."(22) The founder is the brother of King Stephen, one Henry of Blois, abbot of Glastonbury, bishop of Winchester, and papal legate.(23) Henry of Blois is said to have "played a key role in English politics," and to have patronized the arts "almost on the scale of a Renaissance prince."(24) Henry of Blois’s nephew is Henri the Liberal of Champagne,(25) husband of Marie de Champagne, daughter of Eleanor of Aquitaine and an early patron of Chr�tien de Troyes, the poet credited with turning the Arthur of history and chronicle into the Arthur of romance, and of introducing Lancelot and the Grail into the Arthurian legend. "Henry of Blois," writes William Kibler, "had important contacts with Geoffrey of Monmouth and William of Malmesbury,"(26) and Henry of Blois might well be the link between these two early Arthurian writers and Chr�tien de Troyes, who is thought to have worked in England at some point in his career, perhaps at the court of Henry II.(27) Chr�tien, in his poem Clig�s, locates Arthur and his court at Winchester,(28) although in his poem The Knight of the Cart (Lancelot), it is Chr�tien who, without any particular fanfare, introduces the mythic Camelot into the Arthurian Iegend.(29)
As has been noted, Mordred is said by Geoffrey of Monmouth to have escaped to Winchester after an unsuccessful encounter with Arthur’s forces. Later medieval writers–for example, the anonymous writer of the stanzaic poem Le Morte Arthur–say that Arthur’s first military encounter with Mordred (the beginning of the end for Mordred and Arthur) took place at Dover Beach,(30) on England’s southeast coast, where Mordred has assembled disloyal British troops together with Germanic troops to prevent Arthur’s return from the continent. Among the casualties of this first encounter is Sir Gawain: following the battle, according to Malory, "the king caused him to be interred in a chapel within Dover Castle. And there still, all men may see his skull, and see the same skull-wound that Sir Lancelot gave him in battle."(31)
This skull is no longer to be found, although the Upper Chapel, in which Gawain might be supposed to have been buried, is still easily seen in the central tower or keep of the castle. But Dover Castle has had Arthurian associations at least since the thirteenth century, and the strategic hilltop site has a history even older than Arthur. By the time the Romans built their lighthouse, there in the first century A.D., the area had already been occupied by prehistoric peoples for centuries. The Saxons, too–the enemies of Arthur–there "built a burh, a fortified town,"(32) of which the church near the older lighthouse remains. But Dover Castle, as the Arthurian writers of the later Middle Ages would have known it, and as it exists today, is, like the ruins of Tintagel Castle, of Norman vintage. The central tower containing the "Gawain" Chapel dates from the reign of Henry II (1154-1189).(33) Its appearance is typical of Norman castle architecture: it is thick-walled and largely square, with its corner towers angular rather than rounded. Outside of the tower and southeast of it, but still within the Inner Courtyard, is the so-called Arthur’s Hall, a great banqueting hall built in 1240 for the grandson of Henry II, King John’s son Henry lll.(34) Curiously, Henry Ill might not have become king except for the untimely death–some say murder–of his cousin, the son of John’s older brother Geoffrey. This cousin, like Henry VIII’s older brother, was known as Prince Arthur–not a fortunate name in English royal families.
As James Goldman has Eleanor of Aquitaine say in The Lion in Winter, "Well, what family doesn’t have its ups and downs?"(35) King Arthur is obliged to chase Mordred, whom later writers clearly call Arthur’s illegitimate son rather than his nephew, out of Dover and across southern Britain. Mordred first escapes to nearby Canterbury, where he has earlier had himself crowned king in Arthur’s absence. Mordred has not, however, been able to coerce the archbishop of Canterbury to take his side, and he soon heads westward.(36) Wace says that Mordred stops at London, but that "the citizens would not suffer him to enter in their gates."(37) According to Malory, Mordred earlier "had laid a siege about the Tower of London, because the queen would not wed him."(38) Guenevere fortifies the Tower (another foursquare, solid Norman fortress) against him. Mordred continues on to Winchester, where he is more successful at gaining support, though Arthur forces him eventually to abandon Winchester–and his erstwhile supporters–as well.(39)
The location of the field of battle on which Arthur finally confronts Mordred has never been firmly established, though many believe it to have been in the West, once again in Cornwall: the alliterative fourteenth-century Morte Arthure notes that the King, in pursuit of Mordred, "came into Cornwall comfortless of heart. I The track of the traitor he trailed unerringly. . . .(40) Not far from Tintagel, on Brown Gelly Downs, is Dozmary Pool, described as "a big bleak pond, high on Bodmin Moor."(41) Dozmary is thought by some to be the lake into which Bedyvere returns Excalibur, as Malory describes the event:
and so he went to the waterside. And there he bound up the belt about the hilt, and threw the sword as far as he might into the water. And there came a hand and an arm above the water, and caught the sword and shook it and brandished it three times, and then the arm vanished with the sword into the water.(42)
Medieval authors disagree about the precise fate of King Arthur following his final, man-to-man battle with Mordred. Geoffrey of Monmouth writes that, in 542, King Arthur "was mortally wounded and was carried off to the Isle of Avalon, so that his wounds might be attended to."(43) No mention is made of a burial; later in the twelfth century, Wace diverges from his source, Geoffrey, writing that the last battle occurred in 642, and moreover that "Arthur is yet in Avalon, awaited of the Britons; for they say and deem he will return from whence he went and live again."(44) Wace’s twelfth-century follower, the English poet Lawman, adds the detail that
there came gliding from the sea
What seemed a short boat, moving, propelled along by the tide
And in it were two women in remarkable attire
Who took Arthur up at once and immediately carried him
And gently laid him down, and began to move off.
The Britons even now believe that he is alive
And living in Avalon with the fairest of elf-folk. . . .(45)
The fourteenth-century stanzaic poem, Le Morte Arthur, follows Lawman’s description, though not in as much detail;(46) however, the fourteenth-century alliterative poem, Morte Arthure, clearly identifies Avalon with Glastonbury in Somerset. Arthur says to his men:
Let us go now to Glastonbury–it is our only good course–
To repose in peace and repair our wounds.
They wholehearted then held to his behest,
And went the swiftest way to Glastonbury.
They entered the Isle of Avalon, where Arthur dismounted
And made his way to a manor: he could move no farther.(47)
This poem is among the most pragmatic and least mystical versions of the Arthurian story: here are no elfin maidens or queens, but merely a surgeon from Salerno to treat Arthur’s wounds. Nevertheless, both poems assert that King Arthur is buried in Glastonbury.(48)
Malory, although he does borrow from the alliterative poem for parts of his works, follows his French sources in describing the passing of Arthur as much more of a supernatural event:
near the shore floated a little barge with many fair ladies in it, and
among them all was a queen, and they all wore black hoods.
And they all wept and shrieked when they saw King Arthur.
"Now put me into that barge," said the king.
And so they did, softly, and there three ladies received him with
great mourning. And so they set him down, and in one of their
laps King Arthur laid his head.(49)
But Malory is not willing to commit to the notion that Arthur is indeed dead, and although he speaks of a grave, is uncertain that it is really Arthur’s grave. Even so. he admits that Arthur’s final companion, Bedyvere, thereafter spent time at a chapel near Glastonbury.(50)
In fact, in 1191, during the reign of Richard I, Coeur-de-lion, monks at Glastonbury Abbey claim to have discovered the tombs of Arthur and Guenevere in their cemetery. Gerald of Wales, a contemporary of Wace and Lawman, describes the discovery in his De princiris instructione:
The body was hidden deep in the earth in a hollowed-out oak-bole and between two stones pyramids which had been set up long ago in the churchyard there. They carried it into the church with every mark of honour and buried it decently there in a marble tomb… . beneath [the original oak coffin] … there was a stone slab, with a leaden cross attached to its under side…. The inscription [on the cross] read as follows: HERE IN THE ISLE OF AVALON LIES BURIED THE RENOWNED KING ARTHUR, WITH GUINEVERE, HIS SECOND WIFE. . . . Her bones were found with those of her husband, but they were separate from his.(51)
Gerald asserts that "[i]n his own day [Arthur] was a munificent patron of the famous Abbey of Glastonbury,(52) and in a way, Gerald speaks more truly than he probably knew. for following a disastrous fire in 1184, which mostly destroys Henry of Blois’s Abbey, Glastonbury Abbey resurrects itself magnificently, in what was to become one of the largest religious foundations in Britain–a resurrection funded largely by interest in Glastonbury’s alleged Arthurian connections (53) The ruins of this great Norman and Gothic Abbey, complete with the site of Edward l’s shrine for Arthur, are picturesque even today, sad commentary as they are on Henry VIII’s destructive Reformation policies.
But we should not think that the alleged discovery of King Arthur’s grave at Glastonbury comes about simply because monks of the Abbey need a lot of money very quickly. True, some stories suggests that the monks themselves experience visions instructing them where to dig for the grave of Arthur; but other sources suggest that it is no less than the King of England, Henry II himself, who has such a vision. Vision or not, Henry II does have political reasons to establish beyond a doubt that, contrary to the rumors recorded by Wace and Layamon, King Arthur is indeed well and truly dead. Although Henry is King of England, he is extremely concerned to consolidate his continental land-holdings, and some of his maneuverings stir up resentment, especially in Brittany, where in 1168, a monk named Etienne de Rouen produces a poem entitled Draco Normannicus. Briefly, the heart of this poem is a letter said to be from none other than King Arthur himself, warning Henry II that he had best not harass the Bretons, and that Arthur is at the moment gathering troops in Cornwall to ensure Henry’s compliance with his wishes.(54) What Henry II made of this forgery is not known, but clearly it would have been in Henry’s interests to defuse the threat of a once and future king as a rallying point for malcontents in his territories. That Henry himself dies several years before the "discovery" is made does not necessarily weaken the idea of his interest in it.
Even without fictional claims, Glastonbury does have a rich spiritual history. It is built on hilly ground which, it is said, once rose out of surrounding marshes:(55) Glastonbury Tor still dominates the Somerset landscape for miles around, and was probably the inspiration for the fabled "Isle of Avalon." Glastonbury may once have been the site of ancient pre-Christian worship. Be that as it may, it is known that Glastonbury, like Tintagel, was in the fifth century the home of a flourishing Celtic Christian missionary community, which may have been visited by St Patrick.(56) However, it is only after the presumably manufactured association with King Arthur at the end of the twelfth century that legends begin to arise suggesting that the Christian community in Glastonbury is traceable as far back as New Testament times. It is asserted that Glastonbury had been founded by Joseph of Arimathea, who brought with him from the Holy Land the Grail, which at one time had been hidden in Glastonbury’s sacred spring, now known as the Chalice Well.
Clearly, a healthy skepticism is necessary, especially with regard to Glastonbury, to disentangle historical fact from romantic fiction; but throughout this paper we have been concerned primarily with such fictions, because they have given us the Arthur that matters, the legendary King Arthur whose name is still commemorated throughout southern Britain, and whose light still beckons us down through nearly a thousand years.
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