Somerset Historical Essays

Front matter

By

J. Armitage Robinson, D.D,

Fellow of the British Academy Dean of Wells

William of Malmesbury 'On the Antiquity of Glastonbury'

There was a pretty rivalry in mediaeval times between the great abbeys of Westminster and Glastonbury, not unlike the contest for historical precedence between the universities of Oxford and Cambridge which produced less reputable forgeries at a later time. If Oxford found in Asser's Life of Alfred that Grimbald had kept school in that ancient city, Cambridge made the happy discovery that some seven hundred years before two of her pupils had been sent by K. Lucius to the Pope of Rome to ask for Christian teachers. The great abbeys had at any rate a more solid reason than academic jealousy for insisting on priority of foundation. The precedence of abbots at a General Council was something worth fighting for; and Glastonbury's claim was challenged and defended again and again, and notably in 1434 at the Council of Bale, when the Spaniards were asserting priority over England in virtue of the preaching of St James of Compostella.

Westminster might at first be content to go back to K. Sebert in 604; for the great minster at Glastonbury was known to have been built by K. Ina a century later. But the Glastonbury monks discovered that K. Lucius had been left out of account, and they claimed a visit from the missionaries of Pope Eleutherus in 166. Westminster on enquiry discovered that their church also had been founded in the days of K. Lucius, though after the Diocletian persecution it was turned for a while into a temple of Apollo. Glastonbury, while insisting on 166 as her own date, allowed that Westminster followed quickly in 169: but presently she made a bolder bid for antiquity and took over the legend of Joseph of Arimathea and the Holy Grail, and so settled her date once and for all as the thirty-first year after the Passion of the Lord and the fifteenth after the Assumption of the glorious Virgin. It was vain for Westminster to plead that the blessed Peter himself had left the gate of heaven and come down to consecrate his new church with his own apostolic hands. For when St David came with his seven bishops thinking to consecrate the church of Glastonbury, the Lord Himself appeared to him in a vision by night and told him that He the Great High Priest had long ago dedicated the little church of wattles to the honour of His Ever-Virgin Mother.

It might indeed be supposed that of all our English monasteries none had its actual history so thoroughly explored and so well authenticated as Glastonbury Abbey. For early in the twelfth century its story was written by the famous pen of William of Malmesbury, and his work was continued by two monks of the house, Adam of Domerham who brought it down to A. D. 1291, and John of Glastonbury who abbreviated the narratives of both his predecessors and carried on the history to the end of the fifteenth century. But it has become the fashion to throw aside William of Malmesbury's Enquiry into the Antiquity of the Church of Glastonbury as a careless piece of work hastily put together to flatter the vanity of the Glastonbury monks when, for some reason which remains obscure to us, the great historian had for a time taken up his abode in their house. Nothing that the credulous fathers told him was too puerile for him to record as history while he ate their bread; and when he was gone they took his book and loaded it up with fresh fictions, so that it has no value left for serious students. This adverse judgement has seemed to be confirmed by the discovery of a tenth-century list of the English abbots of Glastonbury, which cannot be reconciled with William of Malmesbury's list in the De Antiquitate.

The names and sequence of the early abbots must be reserved for a special investigation. At present we are concerned with the general character of the book, and more particularly with the earlier portion of it. The only edition for critical purposes is contained in the first volume of Hearne's Adam of Domerham, which appeared at Oxford in 1727. Hearne had already sent to the press the main portion of his John of Glastonbury when through the good offices of Thomas Parne he was enabled to borrow from the library of Trinity College, Cambridge, the manuscript of Adam of Domerham—the unique copy, as he says, though large extracts were also contained in Cox Macro's Register which Tanner had borrowed for him. The De Antiquitate precedes Adam of Domerham's work in the Cambridge manuscript, and had already been edited from it by Gale in his Scriptores Quindecim (Oxford, 1691). But Gale, as Hearne says, used other people's eyes, and sleepy ones at that. Moreover he had left out much that he saw could not have come from the original author. Yet these were ancient notes, worthy at least of record; and most of them Hearne supposed to have been written by Adam of Domerham to whom the codex had probably belonged. Hearne therefore edited the work afresh as it stood in the manuscript, with the marginal notes in various hands which he endeavoured to discriminate: at the foot of the page he gave the variants of Gale's edition and the readings of Cox Macro's Register (M). A glance at the manuscript will show that, if Hearne's edition presents a somewhat repellent appearance, this is due to the faithfulness with which the editor has done his work.

William of Malmesbury entitled his book De Antiquitate Glastoniensis Ecclesiae. It is unfortunate that it has come to be commonly described as 'The Antiquities of Glastonbury'. For the author's purpose was plainly indicated by his title. Doubt had been cast on the early date of Glastonbury. The Canterbury Chanter— for William of Malmesbury will not mention Osbern's name—had actually said in his Life of St Dunstan that the first abbot of Glastonbury was Dunstan himself. Our author proposes with the help of documents to show the line of succession from a very early time; and, after he has recorded the names and dates of some nineteen abbots of the English line alone before the year 940, he says: 'I fancy it will now be clear how far that writer was from the truth who wildly stated that the blessed Dunstan was the first abbot of Glastonbury'. Moreover in his Dedicatory Letter, addressed to Henry of Blois, who held the abbey from 1126 to his death in 1171, he speaks of having already written two books on St Dunstan's life, as well as Lives of SS. Patrick, Benignus and Indractus, and begs now a favourable hearing as he endeavours by tracing the successions of the abbots to rescue from suspicion the antiquity of the church, so far as the existing muniments of the abbey shall enable him to do so. This exactly describes his aim, and throughout the work he seldom fails to cite the authorities on which his statements rest. If for the earlier period his authorities are sometimes weak, that is not his fault. And, though the charters of the Wessex kings are for the most part rejected by the modern critics, we may find reason to think that they contain a good deal of true history, and that the immense pains which he expended on their examination may. even raise his credit as an investigator of the distant past.

The chronology of William of Malmesbury's historical works has been carefully investigated by Bishop Stubbs in the Introduction to the Gesta Regum, which he edited for the Master of the Rolls in 1887. His conclusions are as follows: the Gesta Regum was completed in the year 1125: a second and a third edition were issued by the author between 1135 and 1140. The Gesta Pontificum was in course of composition concurrently with the Gesta Regum, and came out later in the same year 1125: this also was to some extent revised before 1140. The later editions of the Gesta Regum expressly refer to the work De Antiquitate Glastoniensis Ecclesiae. As this last-mentioned work was dedicated to Henry of Blois the bishop of Winchester, who is however not addressed as papal legate, it was probably written between 1129 and 1139. Now the Dedicatory Letter declares that the author has already completed for the monks of Glastonbury two books on the Life of St Dunstan. When we turn to these books we find that in the former of them he promises to explain the presence at Glastonbury of the bodies of certain northern saints, if he is allowed to complete his proposed work on the antiquity of that church. But in the preface to the second book he says that he has already completed that work. The discrepancy of these statements is not a serious one. The last words of the De Antiquitate show that it was originally addressed to the monks of Glastonbury: the dedication to Henry of Blois, their abbot, was plainly an afterthought, and was written when the second book of the Life of St Dunstan was completed; but the De Antiquitate itself was finished before the introduction to that second book was written. In short, the two works were in hand together during the same period of the author's residence at Glastonbury.

When we look at the De Antiquitate in the only form in which it has come down to us, we find that not only are its margins crowded with later additions, but the text itself bears obvious traces of having been seriously modified many years after the author's death. It is enough here to mention that in one place it speaks of Henry of Blois, who was still living in 1171, as 'of blessed memory'; and that it has several explicit references to the great fire which consumed the abbey in 1184. When we insert the knife of criticism we shall discover that many pages of Hearne's careful edition are filled with inventions of a later date, which must no longer be allowed to blot the reputation of the great historian. It is fortunate for us that the so-called third edition of the Gesta Regum contains large insertions which run word for word with passages in the De Antiquitate; so that, if we accept the view that this edition was made by the author himself between the years 1135 and 1140, a valuable instrument of criticism is at once placed in our hands.

We shall best approach our task by giving an analysis of the book under its existing headings, and with occasional quotations in full, down to the point at which the evidence of charters is called in to trace the successions of the English abbots. The frequent repetitions in the text will at once suggest that it has passed through several stages of correction: and, in particular, the names of St Phagan and St Deruvian meet us so unnecessarily often, that we shall even begin to wonder whether they had any place at all in the original manuscript.

How the twelve disciples of St Philip and St James the apostles first founded the church of Glastonbury.

'After the glory of the Lord's resurrection, the triumph of His ascension and the mission of the Holy Ghost the Comforter, who filled the disciples' hearts which still trembled with dread of temporal punishment, and gave them the knowledge of all languages, all who believed were together, along with the women and Mary the mother of Jesus, as Luke the Evangelist narrates; and the word of God was sown abroad and the number of them that believed increased daily, and they all had one heart and one soul. Kindled therefore with the torch of envy, the priests of the Jews together with the Pharisees and scribes stirred up persecution against the Church, killing Stephen the first martyr and driving far away almost all the rest. So while the storm of persecution raged, the believers were dispersed and went forth into divers kingdoms of the earth, which the Lord assigned to them, offering the word of salvation to the Gentiles. Now St Philip, as Freculfus declares in the fourth chapter of his second book, came to the country of the Franks, and by his gracious preaching turned many to the faith and baptized them. Then desiring that the word of Christ should be yet further spread abroad, he chose twelve of his disciples and sent them to Britain to proclaim the word of life and preach the Incarnation of Jesus Christ, and on each of them he devoutly laid his right hand; and over them he appointed, it is said, his dearest friend, Joseph of Arimathea who had buried the Lord. They arrived in Britain in the sixty-third year from the Incarnation of the Lord, and the fifteenth from the Assumption of the Blessed Mary, and preached the faith of Christ with all confidence.'

The king gave them an island on the borders of his country, surrounded by woods and thickets and marshes, called Yniswitrin. Two other kings in succession, though pagans, granted to each of them a portion of land: hence the Twelve Hides have their name to the present day. These saints were admonished by the archangel Gabriel to build a church in honour of the Blessed Virgin. They made it of twisted wattles, in the thirty-first year after the Lord's Passion and the fifteenth after the Assumption of the glorious Virgin. Since it was the first in that land, the Son of God honoured it by dedicating it to His Mother. 'Now that all this was so, we learn alike from the Charter of St Patrick and from the writings of the seniors. One of these, the historian of the Britons, as we have seen at St Edmund's and again at St Augustine's the Apostle of the English, begins as follows:

'There is on the boundary of western Britain a certain royal island. … Here the first neophytes of the Catholic law among the English found by God's guidance an ancient church, built, as it is said, by no human skill, but made ready by God for the salvation of men, which afterwards the Maker of the heavens … shewed that He had consecrated to Himself and to Mary the Holy Mother of God.'

After the death of the first settlers the place became a lair of wild beasts, until it pleased the Blessed Virgin that her oratory should come again to the remembrance of the faithful: which happened on this wise:

How St Phagan and St Deruvian converted the Britons to the faith, and came to the Isle of Avalon.

Annals of good authority record (Tradunt bonae credulitatis annates) that Lucius the king of the Britons sent to Pope Eleutherius asking for Christian teachers. So honourable a request deserves to be compared with the action of K. Ethelbert in later days, who hospitably received the Roman missionaries, though not himself prepared to accept their teaching. There came, then, these two holy men, Phagan and Deruvian, and preached the word in Britain in A.D. 166. When they came to the Isle of Avalon they found the church, 'built, as it is said, by the hands of the disciples of Christ and made ready by God for the salvation of men, which afterwards the Maker of the heavens … shewed that He had consecrated to Himself and to Mary the Holy Mother of God'. This was 103 years after the coming of the disciples of St Philip. St Phagan and St Dernvian remained here nine years. 'They found in ancient writings the whole story, how when the Apostles were dispersed throughout the world St Philip the Apostle came with a multitude of disciples to France and sent twelve of their number to preach in Britain. And these by the guidance of an angelic vision built that chapel which afterwards the Son of God dedicated in honour of His Mother; and to these twelve three kings, though pagans, granted for their sustenance twelve portions of land.'

Accordingly St Phagan and St Deruvian chose twelve of their companions and settled them on the island. They dwelt as anchorites in the very spots where the first twelve had dwelt. 'Yet often they assembled at the Old Church (vetusta ecclesia) for the devout performance of divine worship. And just as three pagan kings had granted the island with its appendages to the first twelve disciples of Christ in days gone by, so Phagan and Deruvian sought from K. Lucius that the same should be confirmed to those their twelve companions and to others who should come after them. And in this way many others in succession, always keeping to the number twelve, dwelt in the island throughout all the years, until the coming of St Patrick the Apostle of the Irish. To this church also, which they had thus discovered, the holy neophytes added another oratory built of stone, which they dedicated to Christ and the holy Apostles Peter and Paul. By their work therefore was restored the Old Church of St Mary at Glastonbury. … There is also that written evidence of good credit, found at St Edmund's, to this effect: The church of Glastonbury did none other men's hands make, but actual disciples of Christ built it; being sent, to wit, by the Apostle St Philip, as was said above. Nor is this irreconcileable with truth: for if the Apostle Philip preached to the Gauls, as Freculfus says in the fourth chapter of his second book, it may be believed that he cast the seeds of his doctrine across the sea as well.'

We may here pause in our analysis in order to consider the authenticity of these first two sections of the book. Before calling in evidence from outside we may observe that the second section (beginning with the words 'Tradunt bonae credulitatis annales') tells a complete story which might well have stood as the opening chapter of the whole work. Placed where it is, it gives us over again almost all that has been said in the first section. There are indeed some differences: the island is called Avalon, whereas in the first section it is Yniswitrin: stress is laid on the twelve portions of land granted to the earliest settlers, but there is no explicit allusion to the Twelve Hides: and, most noticeable of all, Joseph of Arimathea is not mentioned at all. If William of Malmesbury's hand is to be discovered at all in this mass of legendary narrative, it is in this second section that we shall be inclined to begin to look for it.

Now the first of the Glastonbury insertions in the third edition of the Gesta Regum (pp. 23-9) is introduced thus:

But since we have touched upon the times of Kenewalch, and the question of the monastery of Glastonbury has come up for consideration, I will unfold the rise and progress of that church, so far as I shall be able to gather up the facts out of the mass of memorials, setting out the tale from the beginning.

This corresponds with the closing words of the Dedicatory Letter to Bishop Henry of Blois (De Antiq., p. 4): 'so far as I have been able to gather up the facts out of the mass of your (v. l. our) memorials '. Earlier in the same Letter we find the words 'the start and progress of that church', and the same Virgilian tag 'repetens ab origine pandam' (cf. Aen. i. 372). The insertion at once proceeds as follows:

Annals of good authority record that Lucius king of the Britons sent to Eleutherius, the thirteenth pope after the blessed Peter, with the prayer that he would enlighten the darkness of Britain by the light of Christian preaching. A high-souled king was he, who essayed a deed worthy of all praise, in that of his own accord he sought after a faith of which he had bvit heard, at a time when well-nigh all kings and peoples were persecuting the very offer of it.

These are the exact words which open the second section of the De Antiquitate in the form in which we now have it. They are there followed by a passage in which the magnanimity of K. Lucius is compared with the generosity of K. Ethelbert, who long afterwards offered a welcome to another band of missionaries from Rome. This passage is not quoted in G. R.3, but it is quite in William of Malmesbury's manner: it was however no more than a rhetorical patch. The next sentences in the two books run thus:

|Gesta Regum3, p. 23. | |De Antiquitate, pp. 8 f.

There came therefore by the sending of Eleutherius preachers to Britain, the effect of whose work will last for ever, though their names have perished through the long neglect of time. | There came therefore by the sending of Eleutherius, (as) preachers to Britain, these two most holy men, Phagan and Deruvian, even as is declared in the Charter of St Patrick and the Deeds of the Britons.

[After two pages of their doings we continue:]

The work of these men therefore was the Old Church of St Mary in Glastonbury, as antiquity has not failed faithfully to hand down through the ages of the past. There is also that written evidence of good credit found in certain places to this effect : The church of Glastonbury did none other men's hands make, but actual disciples of Christ built it. | By the work of these men therefore was the Old Church of St Mary in Glastonbury restored, as antiquity has not failed faithfully to hand down through the ages of the past. There is also that written evidence of good credit found at St Edmund's to this effect : The church of Glastonbury did none other men's hands make, but actual disciples of Christ built it ; being sent, to wit, by St Philip the Apostle, as was said above.

Nor is this irreconcileable with truth : for if the Apostle Philip preached to the Gauls, as Freculfus says in the fourth chapter of his second book, it may be believed that he cast the seeds of his doctrine across the sea as well. But lest I should seem to cheat the expectation of my readers by fanciful opinions, I will leave disputable matters and gird myself to the narration of solid facts. | Nor is this irreconcileable with truth : for if the Apostle Philip preached to the Gauls, as Freculfus says in the fourth chapter of his second book, it may be believed that he cast the seeds of his doctrine across the sea as well. [After the story of a monk of St Denys, and a legend about the island of Glastonbury, and a discussion of the meaning of its various names, the narrative proceeds:]

The church of which we speak … | The church of which indeed we speak …

Here we have at the outset a notable discrepancy. The insertion in G. R.3 tells us that the names of the missionaries sent by Pope Eleutherus to K. Lucius are lost in the mists of antiquity. But in the De Antiquitate their names are given as Phagan and Deruvian, on the authority of the Charter of St Patrick and the Gesta Britannorum. Two alternative explanations of this discrepancy are open to us. We may suppose that William of Malmesbury came to mistrust the Charter of St Patrick which had been shown him at Glastonbury, and on second thoughts rejected its evidence altogether. Or we may suppose that the statement that the names of the missionaries were unknown is what he really wrote in the De Antiquitate; and that the Charter of St Patrick with all the information derived from it, was a later invention foisted into the original work.

Now William of Malmesbury does not elsewhere in his historical works refer to the mission sent by Eleutherus at the request of K. Lucius. He found it, of course, in the Chronicle (under A.D. 167), as also in Bede (H. E. i. 4 and Epit.), who probably got it from the Liber Pontificalis. He was on firm ground therefore when he spoke of ' annals of good authority '. But in none of these sources are the names of the missionaries given. Geoffrey of Monmouth, however, says (IV, § 19) that their names were Fagan and Duvian; and he adds the story of the twenty-eight flamens and three arch-flamens, who as the result of their mission were superseded by twenty-eight bishops and three archbishops. After him Giraldus Cambrensis (Descr. Cambr. i ad fin.) gives their names as Fagan and Damian. But neither of these writers brings the missionaries to Glastonbury.

In the Gesta Pontificum (p. 196) William of Malmesbury had expressed his view that the first founder of the monastery of Glastonbury was K. Ina, acting under the advice of St Aldhelm. A like statement is found in the first edition of his Gesta Regum (p. 35, note). But this does not prevent him from recognising that Glastonbury had long been a sacred spot and that St Patrick at the close of his Irish mission had died and was buried there. In the insertion into his third edition of the Gesta Regum he goes much further back, and brings the nameless missionaries of Pope Eleutherus to Glastonbury and makes them the builders of the Old Church of St Mary. He has indeed seen some evidence of a yet earlier origin—the building of the church by actual disciples of Christ. He will not deny the possibility of this; for, if St Philip came to Gaul as Freculfus says, he may well have sent some of his disciples across the sea to Britain. The reader, however, shall not be troubled further with matters of mere opinion.

This is a statement guarded enough, and not unworthy of a cautious historian who at the time of writing was enjoying the hospitality of the Glastonbury monks. But a few strokes of the pen turn it into something very different. The missionaries are identified as Phagan and Deruvian, of whom much may be learned from the Charter of St Patrick and the Gesta Britannorum. The addition of the single word 'restaurata' makes Phagan and Deruvian the restorers, not the builders, of the Old Church. The suggestion that its building by the actual disciples of Christ can be treated as mere matter of opinion is struck out.

We are at a loss to know what written evidence William of Malmesbury found for the statement that 'the church of Glastonbury did none other men's hands make, but actual disciples of Christ built it '. He found it, he says, 'in certain places' (in nonnullis locis). For these vague words the De Antiquitate gives us ' at St Edmund's ', and it adds a reference to an earlier mention of the missionaries sent by St Philip. When we turn back to the first section we read, after a long account of these missionaries: ' Now that all this was so, we learn alike from the Charter of St Patrick and from the writings of the seniors. One of these, the historian of the Britons (Britonum historiographus), as we have seen at St Edmund's and again at St Augustine's the Apostle of the English, begins as follows: There is on the boundary of western Britain a certain royal island. …' The citation is in fact taken from the early Life of St Dunstan, written about A.D. 1000 by the Saxon priest known only by his initial B. A copy of this work was, as William of Malmesbury tells us in his own Life of St Dunstan, placed in his hands by the monks of Glastonbury; so that in any case this could not be the writing to which he refers. Moreover what we are there told is that ' the first neophytes of the Catholic law found an ancient church, built, as it is said, by no human skill, but made ready from heaven for the salvation of man '. This is in direct conflict with the statement that it was built by actual disciples of Christ. Further, it is not likely that William of Malmesbury could have spoken of this book, as the writer of the first section does, as the work of Britonum historiographus. It is plain that we have here an ignorant attempt of some later writer to identify the work to which reference had been made.

We must now resume our analysis of the work as it stands, taking it up at the third section (p. 15).

How a certain monk of St Denys discoursed concerning Glastonbury.

The antiquity of the church is shown by the story of a Glastonbury monk named Godfrey, of the time when Henry of Blois was abbot, who visited the monastery of St Denys. 'We have taken both this and the chapter which we shall subjoin from a letter of his.' An old monk there told him that, while both their churches were known to have been dedicated by the Saviour Himself, Glastonbury had the further distinction of being called 'Roma secunda'.

How a multitude of folk first came to dwell at Glastonbury.

'In the ancient Deeds of the Britons we read that from the northern part of Britain there came to the West twelve brothers.' The last on the list is Glasteing. It was he who passing through the English of the Midlands followed his sow from Wells along the Sugewege and found her under an apple-tree near the Old Church. Here he settled with his family.

Of the various names of this Island.

The British name Yniszvitrin was translated by the English as Glastinbiry. Or we may take the derivation from Glasteing, as given above. Avallonia may come from avalla, the British word for apples; or from Avalloc, who retired here with his daughters.