Glastonbury Abbey and the Arthurian Tradition (Arthurian Studies)

by James P. Carley (Editor)

The essays in this volume, some reprinted in their original form and some extensively revised, are concerned with the Arthurian traditions associated with Glastonbury Abbey. Certain of the essays are analytic and others provide editions of hitherto unknown texts. They all examine ways in which legendary materials and historical facts interconnected in the process by which Glastonbury Abbey came to present itself, nationally and internationally, as the custodian of King Arthur's relics and the burial place of Joseph of Arimathea, and the importance, political and ecclesiastical, that it derived from the connection.

Professor JAMES CARLEY is the author of Glastonbury The Holy House at the Head of the Moors Adventurous and a past editor of Arthurian Literature .

Glastonbury Legends (WATKIN, GRANSDEN), Legend of St Joseph of Glastonbury (LAGORIO), Guinevere at Glastonbury (WOOD), Vera Historia de Morte Arthuri (BARBER, LAPIDGE), Was Mordred buried at Glastonbury? (BARBER), Glastonbury in Welsh Vernacular Tradition (LLOYD-MORGAN), Second Exhumation of Arthur's Remains, 1278 (PARSONS), Abbey Memorial Plate (GOODALL), Arthur's Epitaph/s (CARLEY, BROWN, WRIGHT, WITHRINGTON), Hardyng and Holy Grail (KENNEDY, RIDDY), Henry V and Joseph of Arimathea's Bones, Holy Cross of Waltham at Montacute, Excavation of Arthur's Grave (CARLEY), Perlesvaus (Wells fragment), Quedam Narracio de nobili rege Arthuro, De Origine Gigantum (CARLEY, CRICK, EVANS), Glastonbury tablets (KROCHALIS), Relics in 14th Century (CARLEY, HOWLEY).

Table of Contents

The Glastonbury Legends - Aelred Watkin
The Growth of the Glastonbury Traditions and Legends in the Twelfth Century -
The Evolving Legend of St Joseph of Glastonbury - Valerie M Lagorio
Guenevere at A Problem in Translation(s) - Charles T Wood
The Vera Historia de Morte Arthuri and its Place in Arthurian Tradition - Richard W Barber
The Vera Historia de Morte Arthuri : a New Edition - Michael Lapidge
Was Mordred Buried at Glastonbury? An Arthurian Tradition at Glastonbury in the Middle Ages - Richard W Barber
From Ynys Wydrin to Glastonbury in Welsh Vernacular Tradition - Ceridwen Lloyd-Morgan
The Second Exhumation of King Arthur's Remains at Glastonbury, 19 April 1278 - John C Parsons
The Glastonbury Abbey Memorial Plate Reconsidered - John Goodall
A Fifteenth-Century Revision of the Glastonbury Epitaph to King Arthur (with James P. Carley) - Michelle Brown
A Fifteenth-Century Revision of the Glastonbury Epitaph to King Arthur (with Michelle Brown) - James Carley
A New Arthurian Epitaph? - Neil Wright NO LONGER AT THIS ADDRS
The Arthurian Epitaph in Malory's Morte Darthur - John Withrington
John Hardyng and the Holy Grail -
Glastonbury, Joseph of Arimathea and the Grail in John Hardyng's Chronicle - Linda Brosnan
A Grave Henry V, Glastonbury Abbey and Joseph of Arimathea's Bones - James Carley
The Discovery of the Holy Cross of Waltham at Montacute, the Excavation of Arthur's Grave at Glastonbury Abbey, and Joseph of Arimathea's BurialArimathea's Burial - James Carley
A Fragment of Perlesvaus at Wells Cathedral Library - James Carley
A Glastonbury Translator at Quedam Narraciode nobili rege Arthuro and De Origine Gigantum in their Earliest Manuscript ContextsManuscript Contexts - James Carley
Constructing Albion's an Annotated Edition of De Origine Gigantum (with Julia Crick) - James Carley
Constructing Albion's an Annotated Edition of De Origine Gigantum (with James P. Carley) - Julia C Crick
Gigantic An Annotated Translation of De Origine Gigantum - Ruth Evans
Magna Tabula : the Glastonbury Tablets (Parts 1 & 2) - Jeanne Krochalis
Relics at Glastonbury in the Fourteenth Century (with Martin Howley) - James Carley
Relics at Glastonbury in the Fourteenth Century (with James P. Carley) - Martin Howley

660 pages, Hardcover

First published March 29, 2001

Reviews

[Hon Lady Selene · Rating 4 out of 5]

Of interest here: Vera Historia de Morte Arthuri, an anonymous 12th- or 13th-century Latin text relating the story of King Arthur's last journey to the Isle of Avalon.

It mentions King Arthur being wounded at Camlann by a arrow poisoned with adder venom, fired by Mordred, as recorded in Cornish folklore. An adder also figures in accounts of the battle of Camlann in The Stanzaic Morte: A Verse Translation of Le Morte Arthur (14th century Old French Vulgate Cycle), suggesting that both texts were drawing on a lost Welsh source of Arthur's death being caused by an adder.

[dragonhelmuk · Rating 4 out of 5]

From the local library. This is a collection of 22 essays on the Arthurian tradition at Glastonbury. Most of it is made of questions about Arthur’s burial, but there is a little about Joseph of Arimathea, the name Glastonbury and a few editions of the texts written here. Because it’s all made up of essays it has taken me an embarrassing amount of time to read, but I am finally done, and shall stick with happy scholarly books about extinct birds next week. :p

(the end of myths?)
Yet not even Whiting’s martyrdom of the abbey’s downfall in 1539 could halt the legend-making process. As a pious colophon, theGlastonbury Thorn which flowered at Christmas time on Werall Hill was transformed into Joseph’s flowering staff in the early eighteenth century. The resultant legend related how the travel worn Joseph rested on Wearyall Hill (owing to a folk etymology of Weall), and his knotted staff burst into bloom. Just as St Joseph of Naereth, the foster father ofJesus, was known in ancient tradition by his flowering staff, so undoubtedly it seemed fitting that the alter Joseph, the guardian of Christ’s body, should be similarly endowed. The Victorian age also introduced a miracle working fountain known as the Chalice Well, a folk etymology for Chal(c) welle, which, unlike the grtail, could boast of few, if any cures.

(Vera historia Arturis is very interesting)
The most striking parts of the tale – the mysterious handsome young man with the poisoned lance, the chapel with the narrow entrance and the terrible mist and darkness which descended during the funeral – have their closest parallels in the native Welsh romances, such as the moment in the story of Pryderi where Pryderi and Rhiannon enter a magic caer or fortress and touch a marvellous golden bowl: they are rooted to the spot, unable to speak ‘And with that, as soon as it was night, lo, a peal of thunder over them, and a fall of mist, and thereupon the caer vanished, and away with them too. The spear is similar to the poisoned spear with which Gronw Bebyr slew Llew Llaw Gyffes. The adoption of native Welsh story motives into Latin narrative (outside the pages of Geoffrey of Monmouth) (pp110) is not common. The two latin romances which derive more or less directly from welsh material, the Historia Meriadoci and De Ortu Walwanii, would therefore be prima facie candidates for common authorship with the Vera Historia.


(Ynys witrin never existed?)
By the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, it would seem that welsh tradition viewed Glastonbury above all as the site of the abbey, the place of pilgrimage perhaps, with Arthurian connections certainly, but more of a Christian holy place than the resting place of the king, Arthur, who would rise again…
It should be stressed that during this period the name of the true mab darogan (‘the son of prophecy’) or returning saviour-king was not Arthur, but Owain, Yvain de Galles (or Owin Lawgoch’) Owain Glyndwr and Owain Tudor were identified with this Owain, and the legend was concsiouly manipulated during the fifteenth century with the aim of (p177) securing support for the Tudor dynasty.