THE NON-MYSTERY OF ARTHUR'S SWORD IN THE ANVIL (NOT SWORD IN THE STONE!)

The Glastonbury Cross

A great deal of ink has been spilt over the years regarding the famous Glastonbury Cross of King Arthur. I myself have contributed to that staining puddle.  But the account of the discovery of the cross at Glastonbury in the works of Gerald of Wales, combined with a couple of other medieval literary works, quite adequately explains where Robert de Boron's motif of the Sword in the Anvil (not Stone!) comes from.

In brief, other than the fraudulent discovery of Arthur's grave recorded by Gerald, we need plug in only two other sources to be able to demonstrate how the Sword in the Anvil story was created.  These sources are Geoffrey of Monmouth's HISTORY OF THE KINGS OF BRITAIN and the LIFE OF ST. EDWARD.

We may begin with the critical line from Geoffrey. It is there that the author tells us King Arthur's sword was forged on the Isle of Avalon:

Accinctus etiam Caliburno gladio optimo, et in insula Avallonis fabricato

https://la.wikisource.org/wiki/Historia_Regum_Britanniae/Liber_IX

 

The whole business of the difficult extraction of the sword from the anvil was taken from an early saint's life (1138), as described in the article The Staff in the Stone: Finding Arthur's Sword in the "Vita Sancti Edwardi" of Aelred of Rievaulx by MARSHA L. DUTTON in Arthuriana, Vol. 17, No. 3 (FALL 2007), pp. 3-30. 

https://www.jstor.org/stable/27870843

[I have suggested that Kay's involvement in the story of the extraction of the sword from the anvil may come not from a literary source, but from a folktale embedded in an ancient ritual landscape.  For more on this, please see 

https://mistshadows.blogspot.com/2021/10/the-anvil-stone-of-sir-kay-discovered.html.]

Bear in mind Geoffrey of Monmouth's work was compelted ca. 1138. Robert de Boron and Gerald of Wales have the following dates (drawn from THE NEW ARTHURIAN ENCYCLOPEDIA, ed. by Norris J. Lacy):

I think what happened (and this idea first appears in my piece 

http://www.facesofarthur.org.uk/articles/guestdan11.htm in 2008) is this:

Geoffrey of Monmouth said Caliburnus was forged on the Isle of Avalon.  Medieval tradition identified Avalon with Glastonbury.  Robert de Boron places the “Sword in the Stone” in a churchyard, and Arthur’s grave was supposedly discovered in the yard of St. Dunstan’s church.  It is the inscribed lead cross of this grave that holds the clue to unraveling the mystery of the “Sword in the Stone”.  From the account of the exhumation of Arthur at Glastonbury, by Gerald of Wales, c. 1193 (144):

Unde et crux plumbea lapide supposito, non superius ut [nostris] solet diebus, [sed] inferiori potius ex parte infixa, quam nos quoque vidimus, namque tractavimus litteras has insculptas et non eminentes et exstantes, sed magis interius ad lapidem versas, continebat

As this passage has frequented been mistranslated, I enlisted the help of Dr. David Howlett, MA, DPhil, editor of the Medieval Latin Dictionary and author of the “Dictionary of Medieval Latin from British Sources, Fasicule 5”, University of Oxford:

“Whence also a lead cross with a stone placed beneath, not further above, as is customary in [our] days, [but] rather infixed [the antecedent is feminine, so 'cross', not 'stone'] from the lower part, which we also have seen, for we have passed hands over these letters, ensculpted and not raised and outstanding, but rather turned inward toward the stone, it contained ...

There is no way one could construe this as implying that the cross was under the stone. Instead, we are to envisage an inscribed lead cross whose lower portion is infixed, i.e. thrust into, a stone.”

We thus have, in St. Dunstan's churchyard at Glastonbury/"Avalon", where according to Geoffrey of Monmouth the sword Caliburnus was forged, an inscribed cross driven into/piercing a stone - a stone which was found above the supposed tomb of King Arthur. 

Although Howlett is authoritative, I aslo checked with the Classical Latinist Dr. Roger Tomlin, himself a notable epigrapher. His take on the passage from Gerald:

I have no difficulty with this meaning of tractare. The Oxford Latin Dictionary (s.v. tracto, 2) translates it as 'To subject to the action of the hands, to handle ... to pass one's hand over, rub, stroke'.

And I agree with Howlett's translation, although I would probably write 'incised' for insculptas and 'standing out' for exstantes. The lettering was cut into the lead, not moulded in relief.

Swords had cruciform hilts, so it was an easy matter to substitute Caliburn for the Glastonbury Cross. The extraction of the sword from the anvil (of course an anvil, as the sword had been forged in Avalon, after all!) was then concocted by borrowing the staff motif from the Life of St. Edward.  

The staff story takes place at Westminster, the site of the coronation of English kings. Its use, therefore, had implications for the crowning of Arthur as king of all Britain. In the Galfridian tradition, Arthur is crowned at Silchester.

The only other possible influence on Robert de Boron's tale is the St. Galgano sword. In 1180, the medieval Italian knight Galgano Guidotti plunged his sword into a rock when he renounced war and worldly goods to become a hermit. The abbey at Montesiepi near Siena preserves the sword in its chapel. There the hilt and some of the blade protrude from the rock in the shape of a cross. For many years the sword was thought to be a fake, but recent metal testing has determined that the alloys and style of the sword are consistent with a genuine 12th century weapon.  In addition, ground penetrating radar has shown that beneath the sword is a six and a half foot by three foot room, which is quite possibly St. Galgano’s tomb. 

If St. Galgano really dates to the 12th century, this would place a ‘Sword in the Stone” story just prior to Robert de Boron’s Arthurian version, which is dated c. 1200 A.D.  

However, an important detail is missing from the St. Galgano legend: the Italian knight’s sword does not bear an inscription, which is true of Arthur's Caliburn. And, as it all too obvious, Arthur's sword is in an anvil, not in a stone.

NOTE:

When it comes to the Arthurian Sword in the Anvil story, I have not found evidence of influence from the Alanic practice of thrusting the war-god's sword into the earth or into heaps of brushwood, an idea put forward by Dr. Linda Malcor.  Instead, all sources of Robert de Boron's story plainly derive from Britain or the Continent.