Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 6.djvu/657

 GLASTONBURY

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GLASTONBURY

century, 100; at beginning of eighteenth century, 400; at beginning of nineteenth century, 700; in 1870-1, 127'.l; in Issil-OO, 21S0. In 1907-S there were 1905 men students (arts, 691; science, 275; theology, 56; medicine, 623; law, 208). In 1892 a neighbouring institution, established in 1883, for the higher edu- cation of women (Queen Margaret College) was incor- porated into the university, and there are now some 600 female sttidents.

The development of the university kept pace with the growth of Glasgow, and the increasing commercial importance of the city was reflected in the advance of scientific studies. The brothers William and John Hunter, in medicine; the philo-sophers Francis Hutche- son, Thomas Reid, and Adam Smith, are the great names in the eighteenth century, as teachers; Tobias Smollett, James Boswell, Francis Jeffrey, and Thomas Campbell as students. The university was also made famous by the Foulis printing press and the mechanical experiments of James Watt, inventor of the steam- engine. But perhaps the most world-wide celeljrity that Glasgow University can boast is the late William Thomson, Lord Kelvin, who taught and carried on his researches here for fifty years till his retirement in 1899. Sir Richard Jebb and Dr. Gilbert Murray were successively professors of Greek from 1874 to 1899; the Cairds, John and Edward, were great names in Scotland; and the medical faculty has been and is still graced by men of European reputation, such as Lord Lister and Sir W. MacEwen.

The government of the university has been sub- jected to revision by royal commission many times, particularly in 1830, 1858, 1889. The old college was abandoned in 1870 for the large, and still largely ex- panding, buildings on Gilmorehill. The teaching staff numbers 32 professors, 50 lecturers, and 40 assistants. The total revenues from all sources (including Govern- ment annual grant of £20,000) amount to about £80,- 000. Magnificent additions to the equipment of the scientific and merlical faculties have recently been made, the cost of which has been defrayed partly by the Carnegie Tru^t and partly by special subscription.

Munimenta Vnivcraiintii^ Glasquensis (Glasgow, 1854); Reid, Statislical Account of the University (1799): Baillie, Letters and Journals; Innes, Early Scottish History (1861); Weir, preface to Memorials of the Old College (Glasgow, 1871); Stewart, Uni- versity of Glasgow. Old and New (1891); CouTTS, A Short Ac- count of the University of Glasgow prepared in connexion with the Ninth Jubilee in 1901: the last author has a larger work in Glasgow A rcha

J. S. Phillimore.

Glastonbury Abbey [Gl.estingaburh; called also Ynvswitrin (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 in- land 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 AcconNT of Foundation. — For the early history of the foundation the chief authority is William of Malmesbury in his "De antiquitate Glas- toniensis Ecclesi^" and "De Gestis Regum" (lib. I). The former work, composed apparently about 1135, was written for the express glorification of Glaston- bury 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, Avira- gus, gave to these twelve holy men the Island of Ynys- witrin 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 orig- inal 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, him- self became their abbot, and remained at Glastonbury until his death, when his body was buried in the ve- tusta ecclesia. After St. Patrick his disciple, St. Benig- nus, became abbot at Glastonburj', while St. David of Menevia is also stated to have come thither, built an- other 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 Glastonburj' 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 Profes- sor Freeman may be quoted as an unbiased authority (Proc. of Somerset Archeological Soc, vol. XXVI): "We need not believe that tlie Gla.stonbury 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 begin- ning with the names of St. Philip and St. James, of their twelve disciples, with Joseph of Arimathea at their head, ... we read the tale of Fagan and Deru- vian; 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 m the Liber Vitce of Dur- ham or Peterborough. Now I do not ask you to be- lieve 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 Glas- tonbury alone of all the great monastic churches of Britain." And he explains the "special cause" as follows: "The simple truth then Ls this, that among all the greater churches of England, C!la.stonbury 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 non- sense when it is talked at Canterbury or York or Lon- don, ceases to be childish nonsense when it is talked at Glastonbury." This much therefore seems certain, that when at last the West Saxons captured Glaston- bury there already existed there, as at Glendalough or Clonmacnoise, a group of small churches built in the 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 pre- served, 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 to-day.

With the coming of the English the mist clears. In the first years of tlie eighth century Ina, King of the West Saxons, founded the great church of the Apos- tles Sts. Peter and Paul, and endowed the monastery,