The Compass Rose, Vol. 2, No. 1, Spring 2002

The Background of the Period

The background of the Middle Ages was very important in determining the fate of the Arthurian Chronicles. If Arthur hadn't been a cavalryman as well as a hater of Saxons, the Norman knights who defeated King Harold's Saxon footmen at Hastings would never have celebrated him. In the Rome of ancient times, armored infantry in a sense "ruled" over the battlefield, using the cavalry just as a flank support. At least this was true until the Battle of Adrianople (C.E. 378), when charges by the Gothic lancers defeated the Roman legions of Emperor Valen. This reversed the tactical position, making the cavalry the main arm. The code of chivalry,¹ is Gothic in origin, although it was later modified by the influences of the Italians, Celts, Arabs, the people of the Byzantine Empire, and the influences of other peoples. The Medieval knights were freemen; their base-born serfs, or infantry,² fought on foot; and this social difference between the two arms persisted in Europe until machine guns and barbed wire took away the tactical importance of the cavalry.

The Real Arthur and the Thread of Truth

The original Arthur, as was first suggested by Sir John Rhys, and as R.G. Collingwood has confirmed, was a heroic British cavalry general named Arturius. The earliest references to Arthur place him not in the position of a king but as a dux bellorum³ and as the Comes Britanniarum,⁴ meaning commander-in-chief. He could best be defined as a warrior, perhaps a special war general, who was supreme wherever his war activities were carried on. In other words, Arthur was originally a kind of battle-overlord who became entangled in a strange web of history, saga, and religious myth that was formed during the Dark Ages.

The passage in which Nennius recounts the turning of the Saxon tide introduces the first tales of Arthur and names his victories. It appears that a hundred years after the Roman legions had evacuated Britain, Arthur stopped the advance of the Pagan Saxon invaders with their Pictish and Anglian allies, fighting several battles of which ten are considered to be of great importance. It was in 517 C.E. that Arthur finally won a decisive victory at Mount Badon, which gave him unquestionable possession of London. Arhtur based his strategy on reconditioned hill forts, mounted commandos, and defensive dikes. Although it is true that he and his men said that they were devout Christians, it is likewise true that certain lives of British Saints hit that he brought the Church's dislike upon himself when he decided to finance his anti-pagan wars by sacrilege. Arthur fell in 538 C.E., at the Battle of Camlan, near Glastonbury, which was both the seat of an ancient pagan cult and a Christian shrine associated with St. Joseph of Arimathea. There, it is said, his knights secretly buried him. After his death, the Saxons resumed their invasions, regained Salisbury in 550 C.E. and London in 571 C.E., and by 623 had forced the British back into Wales.

There are not many sources that recount this historical sequence accurately. Many of these same sources, such as Malory's "Arthur and Lucius", also include a tale in which Arthur fought wars that gave him dominion over Britain, Ireland, and France, and finally made good his ancestral claim to the Roman Empire. In these tales, the Arthur of history, as imperator of the Romano-British forces fighting the Saxons, has apparently been confused with the Spanish-born general Maximus, who was acclaimed Emperor in 383 C.E. by the British legions. Maximus led a large portion of his armed forces across the English Channel, seized Paris, and established an imperial court at Tréves. Later, Africa and Spain fell under his rule. In 387 C.E., he used British recruits to reinforce his army, and, in 388 C.E., he conquered Rome. He was then defeated at Aquileia and beheaded by Theodosius, his rival. The Bretons, whose bards, like the Welsh, prophesied Arthur's second coming and his vengeance upon the Saxons, are descended partly from the survivors of Maximus's forces and partly from refugees who fled to Brittany after Arthur's death.

Ireland was added to Arthur's empire in "Arthur and Lucius" and other sources because of a Welsh tale in which Bran the Blessed makes an expedition from Wales to Ireland to avenge his wronged sister, Brangwen. Bran was identified with Arthur possibly because Bran held the title of Arddu⁵ and because they both had a shrine at Glastonbury.

In short, these ancient tales are based on little bits of truth and a lot of pagan and barbaric ideals as well as the mannered sentiments of chivalry. Many of the Arthurian tales consist of tall tales that were added many years after the first stories were told, which brings us to the next section of this paper.

As far as geography is concerned as to the whereabouts of Arthur's courts, the three principle courts that are referred to in the tales and that are still identifiable today are Caer y Gamlas (Camelot in Somerset?), Gelliwig, and Caerlleon ar Wysg.

It ahs already been stated that Arthur's grave is somewhere in Glastonbury. However, one would be astounded to learn the rate with which new discoveries have been made and how many of these discoveries just happen to turn out to be the "real" grave of Arthur. Stories are also abundant that state that King Arthur's grave will never be found. As far as his queen, Guinevere, is concerned, there have been several graves discovered that have been said to be hers. There is no way presently to prove the truth or falsehood of these statements, but one curious fact that has been brought to my attention is that in the epitaphs that are written on either the coffins or on an object near the grave, Guinevere is often referred to as Arthur's second wife.

The Additions and the People Who Made Them

Arthur has unjustly been referred to as "the British Hector". In truth, King Arthur and the knights who abound in the tales of this period are not merely heroes but what one may choose to term national obsessions. There were many people who added tales to the main body of the Arthurian Chronicles. The following and those that have already been mentioned are just a few that are the easiest to detect and evaluate.

It may come as a shock to some to find out that the most famous and best loved of all of Arthur's knights, Sir Lancelot du Lac, not only never came anywhere near the Round Table, but also, in fact, never even existed. To really get down to basics, it should be established here and now that the entire myth of the Round Table is entirely false. The famed Table, like its likewise famous member, never was anywhere near Britain as well as not being anywhere near existence. Both of these symbols were never anything more than additions made by the fun-loving courts of France, who were trying to find an excuse for their lifestyle and did a very effective job of creating one. The Church had totally opposed the addition of Lancelot as Guinevere's lover, but it fought a losing battle.

Another famous tale, that of the search for the Holy Grail and of the peerless Sir Galahad, was an addition of the Church in the hopes that the tale would help sway the knights of the Middle Ages to champion the cause of the Church and of setting down in legend once and for all the model of the perfect knight. To the dismay of the Church, it was not the noble Sir Galahad who became known as the model of the perfect knight but the knight's father, Sir Lancelot. Another religious parallel that can be seen in the legends is that often Arthur appears to assume the role of Jesus Christ, Lancelot that of Peter, Sir Gawain that of John the Baptist, and the Twelve knights of the Round Table that of the Twelve Apostles.

Pagan additions are very high in number within the tales, and unfortunately there is not enough room to include all of them within the pages of this paper. However, any section of this nature would not be complete if the two best-known additions were not mentioned. Arthur's famed tutor, Merlin, was professed throughout the tales to be none other than the child "begotten on a nun by the Devil himself." The other most famous pagan addition was Queen Morgan Le Fey, who was in reality a dressed-up version of the Celtic Battle Goddess Morgana and who filled the role of Arthur's sister in the Arthurian tales.

The Fantasy and the Exaggerations

As can be clearly seen by now, the real Arthur was a far cry from the Arthur of the Arthurian Tales in more ways than one. In fact, whatever truth is in the tales has become a victim of a favorite device of the times: exaggeration. At times it appears that these people would go to any lengths to tell a good story. One of the most popular plots is that in which the hero battles an enormous giant and in the end triumphs by beheading the giant. Granted that there were many more people in the Middle Ages, as a result of interbreeding within families, who grew to abnormal heights, for example seven and eight feet, but no one in his right mind would believe that anything that even resembled a human in that day would top thirty or, upon occasion, fifty feet. It is just genetically impossible. Then there are also the many witches, sorcerers, soothsayers, fairies, ghosts, goblins, evil spirits, and any other number of odd creations that can only be attribtued, until the contrary can be proven to the logical minds of modern day men, to the dreams and possibly the hallucinations of members of pagan religions and superstitious faiths.

Conclusion

These faces, fantasies, additions, confused and tangled bits of truth, and exaggerations are those that make up the body of the Arthurian tales. This paper just covers a few of these. Volumes can be, and in fact have been, written on this subject. Actually, it is up to the individual to determine where the fact stops and the legend begins because, in many places, the web is so tangled that it is just a matter of beliefs as to whether the stories are true or false. I have found this subject to be very interesting as I have done extensive research in this area, and I hope to look into the subject further in the future.