Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 6.djvu/658

 GLASTONBURY

580

GLASTONBURY

granting certain charters which, in substance at any rate, are admitted as genuine (see Dugdale, " Monasti- con Anglieanum", 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 banish- ment, until his elevation to the episcopate. (See Dunstan, Saint.) There can be no doubt that St. Dunstan enforced the Rule of St. Benedict at Glas- tonbury 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 independ- ent Irish tradition confirming the local one mentioned above.

From St. Dunstan's date until the Norman 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 Fecamp. Violent dis- putes 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 Wilhara Ruf us and died a-s abbot in 1 101. Under his successor Herlewin the abbey revived, but in 1184 a great fire destroyed almost the entire monastery, including the vetusta ecdesia. Rebuilding was begun at once. The beautiful stone chapel built on the site and in the shape of the liiinrn hitxilica was finished and conse- crated on St. Barnabas' day, 118G, and the majur ecdcuia 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 independ- ence secured. To this incident must be assigned the long delay in completing the great church, which was not consecrated im.til 1303, one hundred and nineteen years after the fire. From this date until its suppres- sion the history of the abbey is without exceptional incident. It continued to be one of the greatest pil- grim 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 repre- sentative of the "nationalist" aspect of the Church in England, as distinct from, and atr times opposed to, the "international" forces centred at Christchiirch, Can- terbury. 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 l.anfnmc's calliedral at Canter- bury 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 suppres- sion of the Glastonbury shrine under pain of excom- munication (Wharton, Angha Sacra, II, 222-33).

Second onlj' to St. Dunstan's shrine as an attraction to pilgrims was the tomb of King y^rthur. The claim that Arthur was buried at Glastonbury seems to be a late one. In the "Gesta Regum" (I, xxviii) Wilham of Malmesbury says expressly that the burial-place of Arthur was unknown. However, in his " De antiqui- tate Glastoniensis ecclesise" (Cap. De nobilibus Glas- tonia; sepultis), the text of which is in a very corrupt state, a passage asserts that Arthur was buried at Glastonbury inter duas ■piramides. Professor Free- man rejects this as an interpolation added after Geof- frey of Monmouth's time, when the Arthurian legend had reached its final form through that writer's fabri- cations. There is clear evidence that the two pyra- mids 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 apparentl}' as an eyewitness of the scene, relates (Speculum Ecclesia;, dist. ii, cap. ix) that at a depth of seven feet a large flat stone was found, on the under side of which was fixed a leaden cross. This was removed from the stone and in rude characters facing the stone were the words Hicjacct scpuUus inclilus Rex Arturiiis in insula Avallonin. Under this at a con- siderable depth was a huge coffin of hollowed oak containing the bones of the king and his Queen Guine- vere 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.

SuppRE.s.sioN 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 eomnumit y had agreed to place the appoint- ment. 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 Lajion, the most contempti- ble of all the "visitors" appointed by Thomas Crom- well, 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 1 9 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 conmiissioners, 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 them- selves. Within six weeks all was acconiplishod. 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 "super- fluous plate", among which is specially mentioned "a superaltar garnished with silver gilt and part gold, called the Great vSapphire 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 in- dict men ts brought against him was that of mismanage- ment in temporals, it is w'orth while to quote Crom-