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
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.
[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
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.
Now, this is okay so far as it goes. And, regardless how we interpret the description of the cross in the stone, there is ample cause for us to view this account as the root source for the Arthurian sword story. But let us take my discussion of the sword with Tomlin and Howlett to its conclusion:
Me:
How is the cross attached to the stone? I'm trying to envision a cross thrust into a stone, but with its letters incised inwards towards the stone. Doesn't much sense unless the base of the cross was stuck into the stone to fasten it, then bent over so the rest of the cross was resting, as it were, on the stone.
Tomlin:
The Latin only says that the stone was 'underneath' the cross. A freestanding cross made of lead would not be all that strong or stable, and I wonder whether it was actually set into the stone, i.e. part of the surface, but easier to inscribe than stone.
I think the cross was simply laid flat on the stone – I expect it could have been attached by solder. All this business about 'above' and 'below' refers only to its place on the stone. This would have been a long narrow rectangle, like a coffin slab or the flat top of a sarcophagus. He is saying that we would have put a cross at the top of a memorial stone, over the head, but this cross was at the bottom, over the feet.
Me:
Infix works for something soldered?
Tomlin:
It is the 'crux plumbea' which is 'infixa', which means 'fixed in'. I think 'inferius' refers to the lower part of the stone (don't say 'rock'). We might say 'set into' the stone, meaning that it was firmly attached to it. 'in' may well mean that the forger hollowed out a recess for it.
Howlett:
Shall we suppose that molten lead had been poured into the stone, in which sideways indentations ensured that the metal would not easily be prised from the stone?
Me:
Now that makes perfect sense! But this was done on the lower, rather than on the upper portion of the stone, right?
Howlett:
When I wrote earlier of the antecedent as cross, not stone, I was thinking of petrus as masculine, but of course in Greek and Classical Latin petra is feminine, so either cross or stone could grammatically have been the antecedent. I think now the latter.
Tomlin:
Yes, it's possible that the stone itself was incised with the outline of a cross which was filled with melted lead. When this had set, level with the surface of the stone, it could have been inscribed with the epitaph.
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.
SCYTHIANS AND THE SWORD OF MARS
Dr. Linda Malcor has long sought to associate the Scythian Sword of Area of Herodotus 4:62 with Arthur's sword. Unfortunately, there is no relationship between a sword stuck in variously a pile of sticks or the ground and the taking of Arthur's sword from an anvil on a stone. In the story of Attila and the sword, the great king of the Huns is gien the sword by a shepherd; he does not draw it forth from the cow pasture himself.
Here is the account of Herodotus:
Such is their way of sacrificing to all other gods and such are the beasts offered; but their sacrifices to Ares are on this wise. Every district in each of the governments has in it a building sacred to Ares, to wit, a pile of fagots of sticks three furlongs broad and long, but of a less height, on the top of which there is a flattened four-sided surface; three of its sides are sheer, but the fourth can be ascended. In every year an hundred and fifty wagon-loads of sticks are heaped upon this; for the storms of winter ever make it sink down. On this pile there is set for each people an ancient scimitar of iron, which is their image of Ares; to this scimitar they bring yearly sacrifice of sheep and goats and horses, offering to these symbols even more than they do to the other gods. Of all their enemies that they take alive, they sacrifice one man in every hundred, not according to their fashion of sacrificing sheep and goats, but differently. They pour wine on the men's heads and cut their throats over a vessel; then they carry the blood up on to the pile of sticks and pour it on the scimitar. So they carry the blood aloft, but below by the sacred building they cut off the slain men's right arms and hands and throw these into the air, and presently depart when they have sacrificed the rest of the victims; the arm lies where it has fallen, and the body apart from it.
Ammianus condenses the account considerably in Book 31:2 -
No temple or shrine is to be found among them, not so much as a hut thatched with straw, but their savage custom is to stick a naked sword in the earth and worship it as the god of war, the presiding deity of the regions over which they range
A still later account is found in Jordanes, where we are told of Attila the Hun finding the weapon:
And though his temper was such that he always had great self-confidence, yet his assurance was increased by finding the sword of Mars, always esteemed sacred among the kings of the Scythians. The historian Priscus says it was discovered under the following circumstances: "When a certain shepherd beheld one heifer of his flock limping and could find no cause for this wound, he anxiously followed the trail of blood and at length came to a sword it had unwittingly trampled while nibbling the grass. He dug it up and took it straight to Attila. He rejoiced at this gift and, being ambitious, thought he had been appointed ruler of the whole world, and that through the sword of Mars supremacy in all wars was assured to him.
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