Praxiteles

The Verduner Altarpiece from Klosterneuburg completed in 1181:

The altar dedication

QUALITER ETATUM SACRA CONSONA SINT PERARATUM

CERNIS IN HOC OPERE MUNDI PRIMORDIA QUERE

LIMITE SUB PRIMO SUNT UMBRE LEGIS
IN IMO

INTER UTRUMQUE SITUM DAT TEMPUS GRACIA TRITUM

QUE PRIUS OBSCURA VATES CECINERE
FIGURA

ESSE DEDIT PURA NOVA FACTORIS GENITURA

VIM PER DIVINAM VENIENS REPARARE RUINAM

QUE PER SERPENTEM DEIECIT UTRUMQUE PARENTEM

SI PENSAS IUSTE LEGIS MANDATA VETUSTE

OSTENTATA FORIS RETINENT NIL PENE DECORIS

UNDE PATET VERE QUIA LEGIS

ANNO MILLENO CENTENO SEPTUAGENO
NEC NON UNDENO GWERNHERUS CORDE SERENO
SEXTUS PREPOSITUSTIBI VIRGO MARIA DICAVIT QUOD NICOLAUS OPUS VIRDUNENSIS FABRICAVIT.

[In this work you see how the sacred

and salvific signs accord with the order of the ages.

Search for the world’s beginnings in the first zone;

the veiled shadow images of the law are to be found below;

in the middle zone discern the advent of grace
extending to the present.

What in early times prophetic song darkly foretold

is illumined by God’s new creation coming to heal with holy power

the fall which drove the first parents into exile by the cunning of the snake.

If you truly think about the commandments of the Old Law

you find little or no beauty in their external form.

This shows they are only the forebodings of the law

divine pity granted to the next world age

In 1181, Wernher, sixth abbot of
the Augustinian monastery at
Novum Castellum,
consecrated this work by
Nicolas of Verdun
to you Mary, most holy virgin, with a glad heart.].

ABSTRACT OF THEOLOGICAL PROGRAM

The typological schema of the ‘altar’s’ program is triadic: the main events of the New Testament, the Vita Christi, are shown to have been twice foretold by events recorded in the Old Testament. These past events now are seen as allegories, as veiled signs, as artfully concealed communications hinting at the divine plan: they are presented as an invitation to be cunningly and subtly read, according to their true significance in light of present revelation.

This method of interpretation, called typological, or figurative, rests its truth claims on the testimonies of biblical allegories and the authority of the patristic tradition. The fifth and the 12th century are periods where typology especially flourished, in strategic response to immense political and spiritual challenges.– Below please find the panel overview with the circumscription catalogue, followed by a translation of the original document with which the panels have been dedicated. This dedication defines typology in no uncertain terms. The “Dedicatio” is followed by the typologically construed Scripture references for each of the triads, vertically displayed on the altar’s 17 panels (51 scenes), together with the name of each panel’s presiding virtue.

St Jean le Rond, Paris

The church appears to have been demolished in 1748:

Saint-Jean-le-Rond
De l’église Saint-Jean-le-Rond, qui flanquait la cathédrale parisienne jusqu’en 1748 et qui en abrita jusqu’à cette date les fonds baptismaux, on ne sait au final presque rien1. Selon l’abbé Lebeuf, le baptistère originel, déjà dédié à saint Jean-Baptiste, se dressait près de la Seine, peut-être à l’emplacement ensuite occupé par Saint-Germain-le-Vieux2. En fait, il est beaucoup plus probable, à en juger par son emplacement, que le baptistère n’a jamais été déplacé. Il se situe en effet à peu près au milieu du bas-côté nord de la cathédrale primitive, emplacement habituel des baptistères de cathédrale dans la Gaule de l’Antiquité tardive et du haut Moyen Âge. C’est lui qui aurait accueilli le corps de saint Germain lorsqu’il fut mis en sûreté dans la Cité en 881, par crainte des Normands3. Le premier bâtiment à occuper cet emplacement devait avoir un plan centré, dont témoigne, jusqu’à l’époque moderne, la titulature du baptistère. L’église fut ensuite reconstruite d’après un plan rectangulaire, au xiiie siècle selon l’abbé Lebeuf4.

Trois éléments permettent de confirmer et d’affiner cette datation, malgré la disparition de l’église. D’une part, sa façade est exactement alignée avec celle de Notre-Dame, érigée au début du xiiie siècle. D’autre part, nous disposons d’une représentation très partielle de sa façade dans un tableau du maître de Saint-Gilles, aujourd’hui à la National Gallery de Washington5. Le saint évêque, personnage principal du tableau, se tient en effet devant la porte de Saint-Jean-le-Rond. Celle-ci est peu visible, mais la précision du peintre permet de l’analyser. Le portail, dépourvu de statues et colonnes, était surmonté d’un gâble triangulaire, amorti par une console. Dessous, une archivolte rehaussée de billettes retombait, via un large tailloir, sur une colonnette sommée d’un chapiteau aux feuilles lisses recourbées en larges boules. L’archivolte est caractéristique du décor architectural des deux premières décennies du xiiie siècle parisien. Quant au chapiteau, sa représentation a permis d’identifier parmi les fragments exhumés lors des fouilles du parvis un chapiteau provenant de ce portail, ce qui confirme sans plus d’hésitations la contemporanéité de la façade de Saint-Jean-le-Rond et de celle de Notre-Dame.

Cette façade n’est cependant pas celle que connut l’abbé Lebeuf. À un moment indéterminé, mais probablement au début du xviie siècle, à en juger par le style, elle a été remplacée par une façade classique. Le portail, en plein cintre, était encadré de deux colonnes doriques supportant un entablement simple et un fronton portant trois statues (ou trois flammes ?), à en juger par une gravure de Pérelle6. Au-dessus, une simple rosace, puis un large fronton triangulaire, derrière lequel s’apercevait un clocheton assez simple.

Malgré la multiplication des paroissiales de la Cité après la réforme de Maurice de Sully, Saint-Jean le Rond conserva longtemps un rôle central dans les cérémonies baptismales7. Ainsi, vers 1311-1316, on y baptisait toujours solennellement, par immersion, à Pâques et à la Pentecôte8. Outre sa fonction de baptistère, le jour de Pâques, Saint-Jean-le-Rond jouait aussi un rôle dans la répartition de la cure des âmes de l’île de la Cité. Au xiie siècle, elle était dotée de deux prêtres, en charge des domestiques des chanoines et des sergents de Notre-Dame, et plus largement, des laïcs vivant dans le cloître, ainsi que du soin des malades9. En 1296, on leur adjoignit trois diacres et trois sous-diacres. Les huit étaient chanoines de Saint-Jean-le-Rond, mais non de Notre-Dame, différence hiérarchique que le chapitre leur rappela à maintes reprises10. Si la population à la charge de Saint-Jean-le-Rond était à l’origine réduite, la plupart des habitants du cloître étant des clercs, elle alla en s’élargissant à mesure que les chanoines développèrent la location de leurs maisons11. Il fut cependant décidé de supprimer l’église en 1748, au motif que les bâtiments menaçaient ruine12. Un tel motif peut surprendre à propos d’une église qui avait fait l’objet de travaux importants à peu près un siècle auparavant, mais il faut se souvenir que l’on était alors au plus fort de la réorganisation des paroisses de l’île de la Cité, qui avait abouti à la suppression de nombre de petites églises. La cure, le baptistère et les chanoines furent alors transférés à l’est de la cathédrale, à Saint-Denis-du-Pas, où ils cohabitèrent avec les chanoines du lieu jusqu’à la suppression de l’une et l’autre cure à la Révolution13. L’église elle-même fut détruite et ses matériaux réutilisés lors de la reconstruction de la grande porte du cloître par Germain Boffrand en 1751.

Chapiteau engagé

FNI 68
1. Voir en dernier lieu Dec03-3 dont ce texte est une forme remaniée.

2. C’est en tout cas la théorie de Chr47, p. 20, qui résulte peut-être d’une confusion.

3. Leb63, t. I, p. 13.

4. Id., p. 14.

5. Scènes de la vie d’un saint évêque, vers 1500, inv. 1952.2.14. Il a été utilisé une première fois pour analyser la façade de Saint-Jean-le-Rond par Heb49.

6. BnF, Est., Va 253.

7. Fri59, p. 116.

8. Vid13, p. 348.

9. Dum91, p. 19.

10. Id., p. 20-21.

11. BD03.

12. Dum91, p. 29.

13. Id., p. 29-32.

Xavier Dectot

From the same Altarpiece, the Baptism of Clovis which is set in the interior of the Sainte Chapelle:

Our Lady of the Holy Trinity, Santa Paola, California

Here are some interesting panoramas of Duncan Stroik’s church at Santa Paola, California:

http://rackphoto.com/pp/prayerplaces/our-lady-of-the-most-holy-trinity-chapel/?utm_source=Rack+Photography+Master+List&utm_campaign=a46cf1e832-360around_1_2_15_102_15_2010&utm_medium=email

Ely Cathedral

West door which is entered through the Galilee porch:

Glastonbury

St Bride’s Mound

Bride’s Mound

Bride’s Mound is a tiny little mound to the west of Glastonbury, at Beckery, just near the foot of Wearyall Hill. Tiny it may be, but its history is great, for legend has it that it was a gateway to Avalon where pilgrims, arriving by boat from Ireland and Wales, would stay in vigil through the night, before passing on up the processional way to Avalon.

Arthur is said to have had a vision of the great Goddess here, and Mary with her son, and St. Brigid of Ireland are said to have stayed here. Hence the link with Bride (Brighde, Brigid).

St Bridget
William of Malmesbury, writing circa 1135, and John of Glastonbury, writing circa 1400, both describe traditions that St. Bridget visited Glastonbury in 488 AD, spending time at Bride’s Mound, where there was an oratory dedicated to Mary Magdalene. Relics of hers were left at Bride’s Mound where they were displayed in the chapel. Both writers implied that these relics were still at Bride’s Mound at the time of their writing.

Beckery
William of Malmesbury and John of Glastonbury both state that a charter of 670 recorded the granting of lands at Beckery, where Bride’s Mound is located. Beckery is also known locally as Little Ireland, though the true derivation of the name is Beo Cere, ‘beekeepers island’.

A papal charter of 1168 refers to Beckery as the first of the islands in the Abbey’s estate. John of Glastonbury also mentioned a chapel dedicated to St. Bridget which had a special opening in the southern wall which healed those who passed through it. The fields around are still called ‘the Brides’.

King Arthur
John of Glastonbury stated that on Wearyall Hill there was ‘a monastery of holy virgins’ – the first reference to a women’s community in the area. He then related a story concerning the visit of King Arthur to Beckery, at which he had a vision of Mary and her son Jesus. At this time a hermit lived on the mound and officiated as priest. As a result of this vision King Arthur became a Christian and changed his coat of arms from a red dragon to one showing Mary and Child.

The Womens’ Quarter
Legend also relates that this area used to be called the ‘women’s quarter’ because a community of women lived on Bride’s Mound after the visit by St Brigid, and a perpetual fire was kept there. In 2004 the flame from the perpetual fire at Kildare in Ireland was brought back to Glastonbury, where it is kept alive today, awaiting the restoration of Bride’s Mound.

Processional Way
An Arthurian legend recounts how pilgrims who passed over Pomparles Bridge (the Perilous Way – now the road between Glastonbury and Street, which used to be an oak causeway), had to spend all night in vigil at the chapel before they could pass up the processional way to the holy Isle of Avalon. Bride’s Mound was held to be the gateway to Avalon, and the processional way went from there via the Iron Age ‘Castle’ mount (now destroyed by development) and St Benignus’ (Benedict’s) church.

St Bride’s Well
There is also said to have been a spring called St Bride’s Well which in the 1920s was marked by a stone and a thorn tree on which women would tie rags, as is still the custom in Cornwall. People threw objects into the well for good luck. This stone has now been moved to a place close by the river.

Excavations
There has been one major excavation of the mound, by Philip Rahtz in the 1960s, funded by the Chalice Well Trust. This is what they found.

There is very little evidence from the Neolithic and Iron Age periods apart from some flints and some pottery, similar to that found in the nearby Lake Villages. One theory is that there were jetties along the north side of the island where the lake village people landed their boats.

There were some Roman coins, bronze items and tiles, suggesting that the mound was in continuous use throughout Roman times.

The archaeological finds of pre Saxon graves at Bride’s Mound.
The short straight lines with a circle in them are graves – only one was within the sanctuary. (Used with kind permission of the Glastonbury Antiquarian Society)

During the Romano-British, Arthurian and early Saxon eras there is evidence of post holes from substantial timber, wattle-and-daub structures. The dating is around 650-900 AD. There are also many burials.

The later Saxon chapel was built around this, suggesting the timber structure was still in use when the stone chapel was built. This suggests that the mound was in constant use and considered to be a holy place. Although there is no archaeological evidence for the period from the end of Roman times (c400 AD) to around 650 the fact that it was used both before and after suggests that the mound has probably been in continuous use since the Neolithic.

There is evidence of domestic occupation during this period, with remains of cattle, sheep, pigs and poultry, suggesting a small community lived on the mound.

During the later Saxon era, around 930, a stone chapel and an adjacent house, called the Priests’ House, was built. It was used until the 1200s, when a new Norman chapel was built. There is no evidence of a community during this period – merely one caretaker-hermit-priest tending to the chapel. This appears to have been abandoned after the dissolution of the monasteries in the 1530s.

St Michaels tower on Glastonbury Tor

The relief of St Bridget of Kildare milking her cow:

The Celtic Saints of Glastonbury

CELTIC SAINTS

Why so many Irish saints figure in the Glastonbury calendars is a vexed question, one which has not been completely resolved even by the the most sophisticated techniques of modern scholarship. Certainly there was an Irish influence in the South West as early as the seventh century when St Aldhelm berated one Heahfrith for succumbing to the allurements of Irish learning. Under the year 891 the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle refers to an Irish presence in England as the result of the travels of Irish pilgrims: ‘Three Gaels came to King Alfred in a boat without any oars from Ireland, which they had left secretly, because they wished for the love of God to be in foreign lands, they cared not where.’ Around 1000 ‘B’, the author of the Life of St Dunstan, refers specifically to an Irish community at Glastonbury.

Irish peregrini, as well as other flocks of the faithful, sought this aforementioned place called Glastonbury with great veneration, especially because of the renown of the younger [or older, depending on the manuscript] St Patrick, who is said to lie buried in that church.

In his late eleventh-century Life of St Dunstan, Osbern of Canterbury, who had visited Glastonbury and who was not himself particularly sympathetic to the aspirations of the monastery, takes up the same point:

Many distinguished scholars, eminent both in sacred and profane learning, who quitted Ireland to embrace a life of voluntary exile in England, chose Glastonbury for their habitation, as being a retired but convenient spot, and one famous for its cult – a point of special attraction, this, for the exiles – of Patrick, who is said to have come after a lifetime of miracleworking and preaching the gospel, and to have ended his days there in the Lord.

That there was an Irish community at Glastonbury before the Conquest, then, seems virtually certain. What is not clear, however, is whether the first Irish pilgrims came to Glastonbury because they had heard stories linking St Patrick with Glastonbury or whether their presence itself accounted for the formation of the legends.

Relatively recently, in the 1920s, a fragment from a Glastonbury manuscript of the late thirteenth century turned up at West Pennard, where it was functioning as the cover for a late sixteenth-century book of accounts. This fragment contains an Anglo-Norman verse rendering of the famous Glastonbury charter of St Patrick and gives a succinct account of the fully developed St Patrick legend at Glastonbury:

I [Patrick] was sent on a mission into a region
That is called Ireland, a very wild land,
By the Pope Celestine who caused me so to do
To preach to that folk our belief.
[Afterwards] I departed thence doing harm to none
And returned straightway into Britain
I came into an isle that had to name Ynswitrin,
So was it called of old time in the British tongue,
In the which I found a place delectable
There found I several brethren well indoctrinate
And well instructed in the Catholic faith
They came there after those saints
Whom saints Phagan and Deruvian had left there
And, because I found them humble and peaceable,
I made choice rather to be with them, though I should be feeble,
Than to dwell in a royal court in vigorous life
But, because we all had one heart
We chose to dwell together
And to eat and drink in one house
And in one place sleep under a rule.
So, though I liked it not, they chose me chief
And by fraternal force made me their guardian…

Another section of the charter tells us that St Patrick I climbed the Tor and found a ruined oratory with an anc volume containing the ‘Acts of St Phagan and St Deruvian’, so-called second-century missionaries. Patrick then appoii two Irish monks, Arnulf and Ogmar, to remain and admin at the chapel on the Tor. The charter also gives the name the twelve hermits whom St Patrick found living on the when he arrived at Glastonbury: Brumban, Hyregaan, Bren Wencreth, Bantommeweng, Adelwalred, Lothor, Wellias, Breden, Swelwes, Hinloernus and another Hin. The names puzzling: at first glance they seem neither Irish, Welsh, English nor Norman. In his researches into the history of Glastonbury Abbey, however, Dom Aelred Watkin made a compariso these names with William of Malmesbury’s account of names engraved on the larger of the two ancient pyramids which stood so prominently in the old cemetery.

The similarities are remarkable. What probably happened was that the person who first assembled the material for St Patrick’s charter looked at the pyramid with its images and weathered names and decided that he had found a memorial commemorating the names of the hermits. It is not, then, a question of blatant forgery but of over-ingenious detective work. Modern historians might not agree with the solution of the mystery, but the method cannot be dismissed out of hand.

In his chronicle John of Glastonbury supplies us with a variety of other details he ‘discovered’ about St Patrick’s mission to Glastonbury. St Patrick, John tells us, was born in Britain in 361 and was a nephew of St Martin of Tours. At the age of 16 he was abducted by Irish pirates and spent six years as a slave to a cruel Irish chieftain called Milchu. Miraculously he was directed to a piece of gold hidden under some turf and was thus able to redeem himself from slavery. After serving as a disciple to St Germanus of Auxerre, he travelled to the Roman curia. He was then sent back to Ireland in 425 by Pope Celestine I. Having converted the Irish he returned to Britain on a floating wooden altar and landed at Padstow in Cornwall. He arrived at Glastonbury in 433 and remained there as abbot until his death in 472. He was then buried in a beautiful shrine and remained there until the fire of 1184. After this catastrophe his bones were dug up and placed in a new shrine covered in gold and silver where they continued to be venerated for the rest of the life of the monastery.

Throughout the middle ages and even after William of Malmesbury, at the time considered a thoroughly dependable authority, gave his imprimatur to some of Glastonbury’s claims in his now lost Life of St Patrick, there continued to be unresolved doubts about the Glastonbury cult of St Patrick elsewhere in England and Ireland. To begin with, the Irish themselves had an early hagiographical tradition that there had been more than one Patrick. In the eighth century, for example, a hymn was composed which stated that ‘When Patrick departed this life, he went first to the other Patrick: together they ascended to Jesus the Son of Mary.’ The Patricius Senior, so some scholars now suggest, might have been Palladius, the Roman deacon who was sent to Ireland in 431 by Pope Celestine. If there were two Patricks, the question inevitably arises concerning the identity of the one commemorated at Glastonbury. Interestingly, when the Kalendar now found in the Leofric Missal was composed c.970, both saints appear: the feast of Patrick the bishop is found under 17 March and Patrick Senior is found with a very high rating under 24 August. This may suggest that the earlier tradition at Glastonbury concerned Palladius/Patrick, but it was later transformed when the monks realized that they might actually possess the relics of the greater and more prestigious saint.

Nor does the matter stop here. In the fourteenth century John of Glastonbury’s fellow historian and arch-rival Ranulf Higden, a monk of Chester, noted in his Polychronicon that there was a third Patrick, an Irish bishop who died in 863. Here, Higden postulated, lay the solution to the conflicting traditions. The saint of the Irish was, as the Irish generally claimed, buried at Down and it was the much later bishop who ended his days at Glastonbury. Needless to say, John was not impressed by Higden’s reasoning.

In the later middle ages, then, as conflicting accounts circulated more and more widely about the number of Patricks, their dates, and their final resting places, so too did doubts arise in the minds of the Glastonbury monks concerning the identity of their Patrick. The solution to these doubts came in a miraculous manner. A certain monk, who had long been pondering the matter, was vouchsafed a dream-vision in which it was confirmed that the Patrick buried at Glastonbury was, indeed, the apostle of the Irish and no lesser individual. This form of proof satisfied the community and provided the last word on the topic at the time, but it is, of course, somewhat less convincing to modern scholars. What, then, are the facts? How did Glastonbury come to appropriate Patrick so firmly into its roster of saints? H P R Finberg, who made detailed studies of early charters from south-west England, has suggested that patricius is a title as well as a name and that in the early English kingdoms it was applied to members of the royal family who served as under-kings. When the Irish peregrini came to Glastonbury, Finberg speculates, they might well have found an ancient monument with this title engraved on it. What, in this case, would be more natural than to assume that the term applied to their own national apostle, about whose burial place there was some confusion even in Ireland? Other scholars, however, feel the association is even more intimate. R P C Hanson, for example, observes that even if St Patrick was not buried at Glastonbury there is no reason why he could not have been born there and Hanson locates the place of his birth on the banks of the Brue. In The Two Patricks T F O’Rahilly goes further and suggests that St Patrick, apostle to the Irish, might have returned to Glastonbury after his missionary activities, a point which the Irish medievalist, James Carney, is also willing to consider: ‘There seems to be at least a possibility that Patrick, tired and ill at the end of his arduous mission, felt released from his vow not to leave Ireland, returned to Britain, and died at the monastery from which he had come, which, if this be so, may perhaps be identified as the monastery of Glastonbury.’ As tempting as these speculations may be, they ultimately seem to have no basis in recorded historical fact. St Patrick’s own words, moreover, must ring in our ears and stand as a stumbling block to a convinced belief that he really did end his days as Glastonbury’s abbot: ‘even if I wished to go to Britain I am bound by the Spirit, who gives evidence against me if I do this, telling me that I shall be guilty; and I am afraid of losing the labour which I have begun – nay, not I, but Christ the Lord who bade me come here and stay with them [the Irish] for the rest of my life.’

According to Irish tradition, St Patrick gave the name Benignus (Benén) to a certain man whom he baptized: at this time he also predicted that Benignus would be the heir to his kingdom. At some point in the very late tenth or early eleventh century Benignus’ name entered Glastonbury house-tradition, so it seems, through the following piece of mistaken etymology. The name Beonna was relatively common in England and appears in a variety of Anglo-Saxon records. In particular, it seems that a holy man called Beonna was commemorated in a monument at Meare. When the Irish pilgrims saw the memorial, they assumed the reference was to their own St Benignus who would, it seemed quite logical, have followed St Patrick into exile.

Over the years a number of local stories about this saint developed and in 1091 his relics were translated with great pomp from Meare to the main church at Glastonbury and placed in a beautiful reliquary which had been given to the abbot Aethelweard by King Harthacnut. The translation was accompanied by a variety of miracles which took place at a location about halfway between the monastery and the river from Meare. To commemorate the event, a church was built at the site and dedicated to the saint. It was replaced by the present church, now called St Benedict’s, at the turn of the sixteenth century. The relics themselves were placed in a shrine before the High Altar at St Mary’s, close to those of St Benignus’ fellow countrymen, St Patrick and St Indract.

By the time when William of Malmesbury visited Glastonbury in the 1120s, a fully fledged cult of St Benignus had developed which William recorded in a now lost Life; traces of this survive in John of Glastonbury’s chronicle. Here we learn that after seven years as bishop in Ireland Benignus took a vow to go on a pilgrimage; he arrived at Glastonbury in 462 [sic]. St Patrick, who had preceded him by almost thirty years, told him that he must continue on his pilgrimage until his staff put out branches and flowered; then he would know that he had’ arrived at the appointed place for his habitation. Accompanied by a boy, Pincius, he trudged through deep forests and boggy salt marshes until he came to a little solitary island: here, at Meare, the staff suddenly took root and soon grew into a tree, a tree which continued to thrive for many centuries as a testimony to the miracle. When Benignus settled at Meare the place lacked one major prerequisite for human settlement: there was no drinking water. Poor Pincius, therefore, had to walk almost three miles each day, often assailed by evil spirits, to fetch fresh water for himself and his master. Fortunately, Benignus soon had a divine vision and gave Pincius his staff – presumably a new one – and directed him to a bed of rushes nearby. At this place, so he ordered, Pincius was to strike a blow with the staff. The boy obeyed the instructions and a spring burst forth: ever afterwards, the water was clear and plentiful – as were fish and other delicacies, a fact which would prompt subsequent abbots to establish a fishery at Meare.

After St Patrick died, the monks insisted that Benignus become abbot, which he agreed to do only on condition that he be permitted to spend much of his time in his hermitage at Meare. On one of his evening visits to the brothers at Glastonbury he met and was tempted by the devil whom he, in turn, attacked with his trusty staff and pushed into a nearby ditch which, ever afterwards, emitted a foul-smelling slime. Slightly later, when the river overflowed and his path to Glastonbury was flooded, Benignus became ill and could no longer leave his cell. After enduring great agony and dreadful struggles he died in a state of blissful grace and was buried in the oratory at Meare, to await his later glorious translation. During the later middle ages the festival of his death was celebrated at Glastonbury on 3 November, and all his relics, including his miracle-working staff, were catalogued in the relic lists. In 1323 the church at Meare was consecrated in honour of the Blessed Virgin Mary, All Saints and especially St Benignus and even as late as the sixteenth century it seems to have carried a dedication to St ‘Bennynge’.

When he visited Glastonbury William of Malmesbury discovered enough information about St Indract’s local cult to warrant a Life of this saint. Like William’s other Irish! Glastonbury Lives, this one has been lost and our information on Indract at Glastonbury comes from an anonymous Latin passio, based on a now lost Old English Life, and from the brief account given by John of Glastonbury in his chronicle, which he in turn based on William’s version.

John places Indract’s martyrdom in the reign of King Ine (688-726) and tells the following story. Indract, the son of an Irish king, vows to make a pilgrimage to Rome. This accomplished, he decides to return to Ireland following a route which will take him to Glastonbury where he can venerate the relics of St Patrick. After a short stay in Glastonbury he and his seven loyal companions (nine according to the passio) set out for the coast, but decide to spend the first night at Shapwick (‘Hwisc’ in the passio). King Ine, as it happens, is staying at South Petherton and the members of his entourage have been billeted elsewhere in the vicinity. Among Ine’s retainers are certain wicked men who are overcome by greed when they see the Irish pilgrims arrive at Shapwick with stuffed purses and staves with shiny tips. (Little do the villains guess that the staves’ have brass tips and that the purses are stuffed not with gold but with the seed of a local celery which the pilgrims have picked to take home for its medicinal value.) The bandits, led by one Huna, craftily invite the Irishmen to be their guests, then murder them in their sleep and snatch up the supposed plunder. When they discover their mistake they mutilate the bodies in enraged frustration and leave them strewn about in wild disarray.

Meanwhile, King Ine, who has gone out to admire the clear evening sky, sees a pillar of bright light rising in the distance. On the two following nights the same phenomenon occurs in the sky and so me decides to investigate the spot whence the light originates. There he comes upon the foul carnage and, equally horrible, the criminals have been overcome with madness and are attempting to devour each other’s flesh like crazed beasts. King Ine, appalled by the spectacle, brings the bodies of Indract and his companions back to Glastonbury with great solemnity and has Indract laid in a shrine on the left side of the altar and his fellow martyrs placed under the floor of the basilica.

The anonymous Latin writer adds a variety of other details about Indract’s cult which do not appear in John’s version and which presumably were absent from William of Malmesbury as well. In particular, he describes a number of miracles associated with the saint. For example, he tells of a rich man and his wife who came to pray at Indract’s shrine and brought their little son called Guthlac with them. While the parents, tired from their long journey, dozed in the church, the saint appeared to the boy and instructed him how to read and sing psalms. When they awoke the parents were amazed by this miracle and pledged the boy to a life of religion, leaving him to be instructed by the local clergy. As might be expected after such an auspicious start, Guthlac showed himself to be a dedicated scholar and holy individual, and ultimately became abbot of the monastery.

The early Glastonbury liturgical kalendars do not list Indract’s name and he first turns up in the Glastonbury context in a text dating from the second quarter of the eleventh century. The actual name Indractus is almost certainly a latinized form of the relatively common Irish name Indrechtach. Irish texts record, moreover, that on 12 March 854 one Indrechtach, abbot of Iona, was martyred among the English while on a trip to Rome. It is quite possible that the martyrdom did occur near Glastonbury, in which case an oral tradition of the catastrophe may have persisted at Glastonbury until the tenth century when a local hagiographer must have set about trying to reconstruct a suitable Life. Having only the vaguest of stories he created his own mise en scène and chose the reign of King Ine as the historical framework simply because he knew that me was a great benefactor to Glastonbury.

St Brigit’s name appears under 1 February in the two tenth-century liturgical calendars with Glastonbury associations. By the time William of Malmesbury visited the community St Brigit’s cult was well established and William accepted unquestioningly the house-tradition that she had made a pilgrimage to Glastonbury in 488, that she stayed for some time on the nearby island of Beckery and that she left various objects behind when she ultimately returned to Ireland: a wallet, a collar, a bell and assorted weaving implements.

Glastonbury’s own records state that there had been a church at Beckery dedicated to St Mary Magdalene previous to St Brigit’s visit, and this was later rededicated to Brigit. The chapel had a small opening on the south side and it was rumoured that anyone who squeezed through this opening would be forgiven his sins. King Arthur himself, so some romances relate, had a strange adventure at this chapel. On one occasion when he was staying with a group of nuns at Wearyall, Arthur had a recurring dream admonishing him to arise and go to the Chapel of St Mary Magdalene. The third night Arthur’s squire also dreamt about the chapel, which he thought he entered and from which he stole a rich and ornate candlestick. As he was leaving the chapel he received a mortal blow in revenge for the theft. At this point the squire awoke, screaming in pain, and discovered amazingly that both the wound and the candlestick were real. The squire died and the candlestick was given to either St Paul’s or Westminster in memory of the strange event. Arthur himself understood this as a sign that he should visit the chapel alone, which he then did, although with some trepidation. There he witnessed a literal re-enactment of the miracle of the mass, in which the Virgin herself offered up her Infant Son to the priest for the sacrifice. After the completion of the Office the Virgin presented King Arthur with a crystal cross in commemoration of the adventure. The king, in turn, changed his arms in token of the adventure and made them green with a silver cross; on the right arm of the cross he placed an image of the Mother and Child. Ultimately, the same arms were adopted by Glastonbury Abbey itself.

Excavations do, in fact, confirm that a chapel did exist at Beckery in the Middle Ages: there was an outer building dating from the fourteenth century, enclosing a similar chapel of late Saxon or early medieval date, which may even have been built by St Dunstan. Charters indicate that by the tenth century, that is by the time of St Dunstan, the accepted etymology for Beckery was Becc Eriu = Parua Hibernia (ie., Little Ireland), although modern scholars think that the real derivation is from ‘beocere’ = beekeeper and ‘ieg’ = island.3′ Interestingly, Brigit’s bell (made specifically for her by St Gildas, according to some accounts) resurfaced briefly in the twentieth century, when it appeared among the collections of Miss Alice Buckton, the owner of Chalice Well. Like Arthur’s sword, however, it seems to have disappeared beneath the waters with the passing of its custodian. Two stone carvings illustrating Brigit in her traditional role as milkmaid survive at Glastonbury, one in the doorway of St Mary’s Church and the other on the tower of St Michael’s on the Tor.

One last early Irish saint completes the Irish roster in the Glastonbury kalendar: St Columba, or as the Irish call him, Colum Cille. St Columba (521-597) was born in Ireland, but left with twelve companions in 563 to establish a foundation at lona, which would become a major centre for future missionary activity. By William of Malmesbury’s reckoning Columba came to Glastonbury during the course of his wanderings, attracted by its fame as the former dwelling place of his compatriots Patrick and Brigit and arrived in 504 – an impossible date since it anticipates his birth by almost 20 years.

In the Life of St David, written by the Welsh scholar Rhygyfarch around 1090, it is stated that Glastonbury was the first of twelve monasteries to be founded by St David (d.589 or 601). From the Glastonbury point of view, this account – flattering though it may have been in other respects – contained one serious flaw. St David, it is clear, could not have founded a church at Glastonbury in the sixth century when there had already been a Christian foundation there for many generations before his birth. William of Malmesbury pointed out this problem and suggested what amounted to a compromise position: St David must have originally come to Glastonbury to rededicate the Old Church, which had fallen into collapse during the dark days of the early sixth century. The night before the rededication ceremony David was vouchsafed a vision: Our Lord appeared to him and told him that He himself had long ago dedicated the Old Church and that it would be a profanity to repeat the act. As a sign Our Lord pierced the saint’s hand, a wound which miraculously healed itself during the consecration of the mass on the following day. After this divine intervention St David decided to build a second smaller chapel which would function as a kind of a chancel at the eastern end of the Old Church. The point of connection of these two chapels, according to later Glastonbury tradition, had some sort of arcane significance: ‘in order that it might always be known where the chapels were joined together, a pyramid on the exterior to the north, a raised step inside, and the southern end divide them along a line; on this line, according to certain of the ancients, St Joseph lies buried with a great multitude of saints.’

In Welsh hagiographical tradition it was recounted that St David had received a wonderful altar stone, commonly called ‘the sapphire’, from the Patriarch of Jerusalem and that he brought it back to Wales with him. The Glastonbury community, on the other hand, claimed that St David had presented this jewel to them, that it was later hidden during the unsettled early Saxon times, and that in the twelfth century the shrewd Abbot Henry of Blois discovered it during the course of renovations. In the fourteenth century Abbot Walter de Monington had the stone richly decorated and it was then hung aloft in the church where it remained until the depredations of Henry VIII’s agents: ‘Item, delyvered more unto his maiestie … a Super altare, garnished with silver and gilte and parte golde, called, the greate Saphire of Glasconberye.’

In the later middle ages Glastonbury Abbey also laid claim to the majority of St David’s physical remains. It could hardly be disputed, the Glastonbury writers pointed out, that the whole of the Ross Valley including the church at St Davids had been devastated by English invasions during the tenth century. At this time of chaos a noble matron, called Aelswitha, acquired the relics and brought them to Glastonbury for safekeeping, where they ever afterwards formed part of the Glastonbury collection. The Welsh, of course, were not convinced that the bones of their patron saint had deserted them. They continued to display their own collection of relics at St Davids Cathedral as the genuine remains: these were so widely venerated that Pope Calixtus 11 decreed in 1120 that two journeys to St David’s shrine in Menevia should be regarded as the equivalent to one to Rome.

Glastonbury Abbey

A view through the Galilee to the Lady Chapel or the Vetustata Ecclesia

Some notes on Glastonbury Abbey from the catholic Encyclopedia:

[GLESTINGABURH; called also YNISWITRIN (Isle of Glass) and AVALON (Isle of Apples)]

Benedictine monastery, Somersetshire, England, pre-eminently the centre of early Christian tradition in England. Though now thirteen miles inland from the Bristol Channel, it was anciently an island encircled by broad fens, the steep conical hill called Glastonbury Tor rising therefrom to a height of about four hundred feet. Thus, difficult of access and easy of defence, it formed a natural sanctuary round which has gradually clustered a mass of tradition, legend, and fiction so inextricably mingled with real and important facts that no power can now sift the truth from the falsehood with any certainty.

Traditional account of foundation
For the early history of the foundation the chief authority is William of Malmesbury in his “De antiquitate Glastoniensis Ecclesiæ” and “De Gestis Regum” (lib. I). The former work, composed apparently about 1135, was written for the express glorification of Glastonbury and consequently gives the legendary history much more fully than the latter. Malmesbury’s story of the foundation and early years is briefly as follows:

In the year 63 A.D. St. Joseph of Arimathea with eleven companions was sent to Britain from Gaul by St. Philip the Apostle. The king of the period, Aviragus, gave to these twelve holy men the Island of Ynyswitrin and there, in obedience to a vision, they built a church in honour of the Blessed Virgin Mary. This church, called the vetusta ecclesia or lignea basilica, from its being constructed of osiers wattled together, was found more than one hundred years later by Fagan and Deruvian, missionaries sent to Lucius, King of the Britons, by Pope Eleutherius. Here therefore the missionaries settled, repaired the vetusta ecclesia, and, on their departure, chose twelve of their converts to remain in the island as hermits in memory of the original twelve. This community of twelve hermits is described as continuing unmodified until the coming of St. Patrick, the Apostle of the Irish, in 433, who taught the hermits to live together as cenobites, himself became their abbot, and remained at Glastonbury until his death, when his body was buried in the vetusta ecclesia. After St. Patrick his disciple, St. Benignus, became abbot at Glastonbury, while St. Daid of Menevia is also stated to have come thither, built another church, and presented a famous jewel known as the Great Sapphire of Glastonbury. The chronicler then goes on to record the death and burial of King Arthur at Glastonbury and gives a list of British saints who either died and were buried at Glastonbury, or whose bodies were translated thither on the gradual western advance of the conquering English.

The first impression produced on a modern mind by William of Malmesbury’s pages is that the whole is one barefaced invention, but on this point the late Professor Freeman may be quoted as an unbiased authority (Proc. of Somerset Archæological Soc., vol. XXVI): “We need not believe that the Glastonbury legends are facts; but the existence of those legends is a great fact.… The legends of the spot go back to the days of the Apostles. We are met at the very beginning with the names of St. Phillip and St. James, of their twelve disciples, with Joseph of Arimathea at their head,… we read the tale of Fagan and Deruvian; we read of Indractus and Gildas and Patrick and David and Columb and Bridget, all dwellers in or visitors to the first spot where the Gospel had shone in Britain. No fiction, no dream could have dared to set down the names of so many worthies of the earlier races of the British Islands in the Liber Vitæ of Durham or Peterborough. Now I do not ask you to believe these legends; I do ask you to believe that there was some special cause why legends of this kind should grow, at all events why they should grow in such a shape and in such abundance, round Glastonbury alone of all the great monastic churches of Britain.” And he explains the “special cause” as follows: “The simple truth then is this, that among all the greater churches of England, Glastonbury is the only one where we may be content to lay aside the name of England and fall back on the older name of Britain,… as I have often said, the talk about the ancient British Church, which is simply childish nonsense when it is talked at Canterbury or York or London, ceases to be childish nonsense when it is talked at Glastonbury.” This much therefore seems certain, that when at last the West Saxons captured Glastonbury there already existed there, as at Glendalough or Clonmacnoise, a group of small churches built in typical Celtic fashion and occupied by the British monks. One of these, the oldest and most venerated of all, the vetusta ecclesia or lignea basilica, was preserved, and by its survival stamped the later buildings at Glastonbury with their special character. Indeed, its successor, falsely called the Chapel of St. Joseph, is the chief feature and loveliest fragment in the ruins that exist today.

With the coming of the English the mist clears. In the first years of the eighth century Ina, King of the West Saxons, founded the great church of the Apostles Sts. Peter and Paul, and endowed the monastery, granting certain charters which, in substance at any rate, are admitted as genuine (see Dugdale, “Monasticon Anglicanum”, I). The monastery, thus firmly established, maintained a high reputation until the advance of the Danes in the ninth century, when it was ravaged and despoiled and sank into a low state. From this it was raised by the work of St. Dunstan who, as a boy, received his education in the cloister at Glastonbury, and later became abbot there, ruling the monastery, except for one brief period of banishment, until his elevation to the episcopate. (See DUNSTAN, SAINT.) There can be no doubt that St. Dunstan enforced the Rule of St. Benedict at Glastonbury as a part of his reform there, the fact being expressly recorded by his first biographer and intimate friend “the priest B.”, who also tells us that in his day Irish pilgrims, learned men from whose books Dunstan himself learned much, were in the habit of coming to Glastonbury to worship at the tomb of one of their worthies, a Patrick, though doubtless not the Apostle of the Irish, which seems a clear proof of an independent Irish tradition confirming the local one mentioned above.

From St. Dunstan’s date until the Normal Conquest the abbey prospered exceedingly, but in 1077 Egelnoth, the last Saxon abbot, was deposed by the Conqueror, and Thurstan, a Norman monk of Caen, installed in his place (Anglo- Saxon Chronicle, 1077). The new abbot at once began to change the local use as to the liturgy and chant for that of Fécamp. Violent disputes followed, which in 1083 ran so high that the abbot, to enforce obedience, called in armed soldiers, by whom two or three of the monks were slain and many more wounded. After this the king removed Thurstan, who was restored, however, by William Rufus and died as abbot in 1101. Under his successor Herlewin the abbey revived, but in 1184 a great fire destroyed almost the entire monastery, including the vetusta ecclesia. Rebuilding was begun at once. The beautiful stone chapel built on the site and in the shape of the lignea basilica was finished and consecrated on St. Barnabas’ day, 1186, and the major ecclesia and other buildings commenced. Soon after this, however, with the consent of King Richard I, the abbey with all its revenues was annexed to the See of Bath and Wells, the bishop styling himself Bishop of Bath and Glastonbury. This meant disaster to the abbey, and an appeal was made to the pope. After much costly litigation the monks were upheld by the Holy See on every point, and the abbey’s independence secured. To this incident must be assigned the long delay in completing the great church, which was not consecrated until 1303, one hundred and nineteen years after the fire. From this date until its suppression the history of the abbey is without exceptional incident. It continued to be one of the greatest pilgrim centres of England, and its connexion with the ancient British and Saxon Churches seems to have created a tendency to regard it almost as the representative of the “nationalist” aspect of the Church in England, as distinct from, and at times opposed to, the “international” forces centred at Christchurch, Canterbury. This was accentuated and embittered by a personal rivalry due to the claim of both churches to possess the body of the great St. Dunstan. No one denied that the saint had been buried at Canterbury, but the Glastonbury claim was based on a pretended transfer, alleged to have taken place in 1012; the relics, on their arrival at Glastonbury, being hidden away and not produced for public veneration until after the great fire in 1184, when a shrine was erected. That the whole story was a fabrication is clear from a letter of Eadmer, a monk of Canterbury, who declares that he had himself been present when the body was moved during the building of Lanfranc’s cathedral at Canterbury in 1074, and also from the formal search and finding of the body in the Canterbury shrine in 1508 by Archbishop Warham, who then ordered the suppression of the Glastonbury shrine under pain of excommunication (Wharton, Anglia Sacra, II, 222-33).

Second only to St. Dunstan’s shrine as an attraction to pilgrims was the tomb of King Arthur. The claim that Arthur was buried at Glastonbury seems to be a late one. In the “Gesta Regum” (I, xxviii) William of Malmesbury says expressly that the burial-place of Arthur was unknown. However, in his “De antiquitate Glastoniensis ecclesiæ” (Cap. De nobilibus Glastoniæ sepultis), the text of which is in a very corrupt state, a passage asserts that Arthur was buried at Glastonbury inter duas piramides. Professor Freeman rejects this as an interpolation added after Geoffrey of Monmouth’s time, when the Arthurian legend had reached its final form through that writer’s fabrications. There is clear evidence that the two pyramids did actually exist, and in 1191, we are told, Abbot Henry de Soliaco made a search for Arthur’s body between them. Giraldus Cambrensis, who writes apparently as an eyewitness of the scene, relates (Speculum Ecclesiæ, dist. ii, cap. ix) that at a depth of seven feet a large flat stone was found, on the underside of which was fixed a leaden cross. This was removed from the stone and in rude characters facing the stone were the words Hic jacet sepultus inclitus Rex Arturius in insula Avallonia. Under this at a considerable depth was a large coffin of hollowed oak containing the bones of the king and his Queen Guinevere in separate compartments. These were later removed to a shrine in the great church. Leland (Assertio Arthuri, 43, 50, 51) records that he saw both the tomb and the leaden cross with the inscription, and Camden (Britannia, Somerset) states that the latter still existed in his day, though he does not say where it was when he saw it.

Suppression of the abbey
In 1525 Abbot Bere died, and Richard Whiting, chamberlain of the abbey, was chosen for the post by Cardinal Wolsey, in whose hands the community had agreed to place the appointment. For ten years he ruled his monastery in peace, winning golden opinions on all hands for his learning, piety, and discreet administration. Then in August, 1535, came Dr. Richard Layton, the most contemptible of all the “visitors” appointed by Thomas Cromwell, to hold a visitation in the name of King Henry VIII. He found everything in perfect order, though he covers his disappointment with impudence. “At Bruton and Glastonbury”, he writes to Cromwell, “there is nothing notable; the brethren be so straight kept that they cannot offend; but fain they would if they might, as they confess, and so the fault is not with them”. But the end was not far distant. The lesser monasteries had gone already, and soon it was the turn of the greater houses. By January, 1539, Glastonbury was the only religious house left standing in all Somerset, and on 19 September, in the same year, the royal commissioners arrived without previous warning. Abbot Whiting was examined, arrested, and sent up to London to the Tower for Cromwell to examine in person. Meanwhile the commissioners, regarding Glastonbury as part of the royal possessions already in view of the intended attainder of the abbot, proceeded to “dispatch with the utmost celerity” both their business as spoilers and the monks themselves. Within six weeks all was accomplished, and they handed over to the royal treasurer the riches still remaining at the abbey, which had previously been relieved of what the king chose to call its “superfluous plate”, among which is specially mentioned “a superaltar garnished with silver gilt and part gold, called the Great Sapphire of Glastonbury”. The words of Layton, quoted above, bear witness to the admirable condition of the monastery as regards spirituals under Abbot Whiting. As one of the indictments brought against him was that of mismanagement in temporals, it is worth while to quote Cromwell’s own note in his manuscript “Remembrances” as to the booty obtained from Glastonbury at this, the second, spoliation: “The plate of Glastonbury, 11,000 ounces and over, besides golden. The furniture of the house of Glaston. In ready money from Glaston £1,100 and over. The rich copes from Glaston. The debts of Glaston [evidently due to the abbey] £2,000 and above.” While his monastery was being sacked and his community dispersed, Abbot Whiting was kept a prisoner in the Tower of London and subjected to secret examination by Cromwell. It is curious that the ordinary procedure of law, by which a bill of attainder should have been presented to and passed by Parliament, was utterly ignored in his case; indeed his execution was an accomplished fact before Parliament came together. His condemnation and execution and the appropriation of his monastery with its possessions to the Crown could only be justified legally by the abbot’s attainder, but no trace that any trial did take place can be found. Such an omission, however, was not likely to trouble Cromwell, as is shown by the note in his autograph “Remembrances”: “Item. The Abbot of Glaston to be tryed at Glaston and also executed there with his complycys.” Accordingly Abbot Whiting was sent back to Somersetshire, still apparently in ignorance of the fact that there was now no Glastonbury Abbey for him to return to. He reached Wells on 14 November, where some sort of a mock trial seems to have taken place, and the next day, Saturday, 15 November, he with two of his monks, John Thorne and Roger James, was carried from Wells to Glastonbury. At the outskirts of the town the three martyrs were fastened to hurdles and dragged by horses up the steep sides of Tor Hill to the foot of St. Michael’s tower at its summit. Here all were hanged, their bodies beheaded and cut into quarters, Abbot Whiting’s head being fixed over the great gateway of his ruined abbey as a ghastly warning of the punishment prepared for such as opposed the royal will (see RICHARD WHITING, BLESSED). There can be no doubt that a special example was deliberately made of Glastonbury, inasmuch as by its wealth, its vast landed possessions, its munificence, and the halo of sanctity with which its past history and present observance had crowned it, it was by far the greatest spiritual and temporal representative of Catholic interests still surviving in England. The savagery with which it was attacked and ruined was intended to and did strike terror into all the West of England, and during Henry’s lifetime there was no further resistance to be feared from that part of his realm. During the brief restoration of Catholicism in Queen Mary’s reign, some of the surviving monks petitioned the queen to restore their abbey again, as having been the most ancient in England. The queen’s death, however, put an end to all hopes of restoration.

Buildings
Very little of the vast pile of buildings now remains above ground, but in its main lines the abbey followed the usual plan, a vast cruciform church on the north side, with cloister, conventual buildings, abbot’s lodgings, and rooms for guests all south of this. The one unique feature was at the west end of the great church, where the west door, instead of opening to the outer air in the usual way, gave entrance to a so-called “Galilee”, which in turn led into the church of St. Mary, the westernmost part of the entire edifice. This famous church, now often called in error the Chapel of St. Joseph of Arimathea, was built between 1184 and 1186 to take the place of the original vetusta ecclesia which had been entirely destroyed in the great fire of 1184. It is said to preserve exactly the size and shape of the original building and measures sixty feet by twenty- four. The Galilee was added about a century later when the western part of the great church was being completed to form a connexion between the two churches, thus making the whole western extension about one hundred and nine feet long. This western part is the most perfect of all the ruins. The Norman work of 1184, exquisite in design and very richly decorated, has stood perfectly, although in the fifteenth century a crypt was excavated beneath it to the depth of some eleven feet. At the same period tracery in the Perpendicular style was inserted in the Norman windows at the west end, portions of which still remain. Of the great church (400 feet by 80), the piers of the chancel arch, some of the chapels at the east side of the transepts, and a large portion of outer wall of the choir aisles are practically all that remains. The nave consisted of ten bays; the transepts of three each, the outer two on either side being extended eastward to form chapels. The choir at first had four bays only, but was increased to six in the later fourteenth century, the chapels behind the high altar being again modified in the fifteenth century. It is much to be regretted that so large a part of the buildings has been destroyed, but since the ruins were for long used as a kind of quarry, from which anyone might carry off materials at sixpence a cartload, the wonder is that anything at all is left. The ruins have recently been purchased at the cost of £30,000 ($150,000) through the action of the Bishop of Bath and Wells (Anglican) and are now held by trustees as a kind of national monument. Every effort is being made to preserve what is left, and also, by means of excavation, to recover all possible knowledge of what has been destroyed.

One curious relic still exists. The church clock, formerly in the south transept of the great church, was removed in 1539, carried to Wells, and placed in the north transept of the cathedral there. It bears the inscription Petrus Lightfoot monachus fecit hoc opus, and was constructed in the time of Abbot de Sodbury (1322-35). The outer circle of the dial has twenty-four hours on it, another within this shows the minutes, and a third again gives the phases of the moon. Above the dial is an embattled tower in which knights on horseback revolve in opposite directions every hour as the clock strikes and represent a mimic tournament. The original works were removed from Wells some years ago and may be seen, still working, in the Victoria and Albert Museum at South Kensington. This, with Lightfoot’s other clock at Wimborne Minster, Dorset, are commonly held to be the oldest known. Of the conventual buildings the abbot’s kitchen and a small part of the hospice alone survive. The former is an octagon set within a square and crowned with an octagonal pyramid. Within it is square in plan, the roof rising in the centre to the height of seventy-two feet. The upper part forms a double lantern of stone, which was formerly fitted with movable wooden shutters so that the smoke might always be let out on the side away from the wind. Practically all the rest is level with the ground, but mention must be made of the library, of which Leland, who saw it in Abbot Whiting’s time, declares that no sooner was he over the threshold but he was struck with astonishment at the sight of so many remains of antiquity; in truth he believed it had scarce an equal in all Britain. In the town, amongst other buildings erected by various abbots, are the court-house, the churches of St. Benignus and St. John the Baptist, the tithe barn, a fourteenth-century building and the finest existing specimen of this class of structure, also the Pilgrim’s Inn, a late Perpendicular work built at the end of the fifteenth century, where, it is said, all visitors used to be treated as guests and entertained for two days at the abbot’s expense.

Still in the neighbourhood, in many places, one sees the ruined abbey’s coat of arms: Vert, a cross botonée argent; in the first quarter the Blessed Mother of God standing, on her right arm the Infant Saviour, a sceptre in her left hand.

The Glastonbury Thorn
The Glastonbury Thorn (Crategus Oxyacantha Præcox) is a variety of hawthorn, originally found only at Glastonbury, which has the peculiarity of flowering twice in the year, first about Christmas time and again in May. By a curious irony of fate the first mention of the Holy Thorn flowering at Christmas-tide is contained in a letter written by Dr. Layton to Thomas Cromwell from Bristol, dated 24 August, 1535. “By this bringer, my servant”, he writes, “I send you Relicks: First, two flowers wrapped in white and black sarsnet, that on Christen Mass Even, hora ipsa qua Christus natus fuerat, will spring and burgen and bare blossoms. Quod expertum est saith the Prior of Mayden Bradley.” In a life of St. Joseph of Arimathea, printed in 1520 by Richard Pyerson, a pupil of Caxton, there is, however, an earlier notice of its coming into leaf at Christmas:

The Hawthornes also, that groweth in Werall [Wearyall Hill]
Do burge and bere grene leaves at Christmas
As freshe as other yn May…
Later references to the fact abound, e.g. Sir Charles Sedley’s verse:

Cornelia’s charms inspire my lays,
Who, fair in nature’s scorn,
Blooms in the winter of her days,
Like Glastonbury Thorn
and the lines in Tennyson’s “Holy Grail”:

…Glastonbury, where the winter thorn
Blossoms at Christmas, mindful of Our Lord.
The original thorn tree on Wearyall Hill was cut down in 1653 by some fanatical soldier of Cromwell’s army, to the great annoyance of Bishop Goodman of Gloucester who wrote to the Lord Protector complaining of the outrage; but before that date slips had been taken from it, and many specimens now exist which blossom about Christmas time. The blossoms of the Christmas shoots are usually much smaller than the May ones and do not produce any haws. It is noteworthy also that plants grown from the haws do not retain the characteristics of the parent stem, and the Glastonbury gardeners propagate the thorn by budding and grafting only. Botanists are not yet agreed as to the origin of the Glastonbury thorn. Some have desired to identify it with the Morocco thorn, introduced into England about 1812, which puts forth its leaves very early in the year, sometimes even in January; while others claim it as the Siberian thorn, which begins to produce its shoots in January. Neither of these varieties, however, has the special peculiarity of the Glastonbury thorn, that of flowering twice. Possibly the truth may be that the Glastonbury thorn was originally an individual or “sport”, and not a true variety; but if this is so it is certainly remarkable that for four hundred years the peculiarity of the tree has been preserved and transmitted to its progeny. The legend that the original tree grew from the staff of St. Joseph of Arimathea, which was thrust into the ground and took root, is found before the destruction of the abbey, but the date of its origin cannot now be ascertained.