Sunday, November 22, 2015

King Arthur

[The following is Episode 7 of my 16-part documentary series entitled Larger than Life, about the role that beliefs play in shaping the events of our civilization.]

After the great city of Troy fell to Greek invaders, Aeneas, a Trojan prince, fled with his family to the distant land of Italy, and placed his hopes on a new destiny for his people, in a new country far from the smoldering ruins of his homeland.  Those of his descendants who remained in this new land would live to fulfill that destiny, in the founding of the city of Rome.  But not all would remain in Italy.   A child was born in the new royal household of the Trojans, his father a prince named Silvius, his mother a niece of Aeneas’s wife, Lavinia. Before his birth an oracle predicted that he would cause the death of his parents, and that after wandering in exile he would someday rise to greatness.  The oracle’s unsettling predictions would prove to be true all too soon: the child’s mother died in giving birth to him, and when he reached his teens, a tragic accident with a bow and arrow would leave his father dead, an unintended victim of his deadly aim.  Being cast out of Italy by his angry relatives, the young man traveled to Greece, the land of his ancestor’s enemies, and there found that many Trojans were living in bondage, suffering slavery as the final humiliating price of their defeat.  The young man rallied his kinsfolk to revolt, and although his band of ex-slaves was greatly outnumbered, in a final assault against the king’s armies that was as cunning as it was bold, the Trojans massacred the Greek forces, and took the king himself as hostage.  In return for his freedom, the king offered the young man his own daughter’s hand in marriage, and a fleet of ships with which the Trojans could find freedom in a new land, far away from the bitter and vengeful malice of the Greeks.  In a dream, the goddess Diana told the young Trojan to take his ships westward, beyond the setting sun, to an island in the sea that had once been occupied by giants.  She promised him that the new land would be a second Troy, that he would father a race of kings there, and that its kingdom would one day have dominion over peoples and countries spanning the entire world.  The man was named Brutus, and the island that he and his followers settled upon would bear the stamp of that name.  It was called Britain, in his honor, and true to Diana’s prediction, his descendants would reign as kings over a nation that would someday hold the entire world in its sway.  But long before Britain would make its mark in the world, the relatives of Brutus in Italy would create their own empire based in Rome.  And after centuries of rule, as the empire of Rome began to shake and totter in the face of German invaders at its outer reaches, a young king in Britain would make his own stand against these invaders, facing them in a series of desperate conflicts on the island itself.  While the Germans would eventually carry the day, the heroism of this British king and his fellow warriors in holding them back would become the stuff of legend - the legend, in fact, of King Arthur.



            Of all of the legendary heroes of history, Gilgamesh, Theseus, Achilles, and Moses, there is probably none who has been more romanticized, and whose story has been so often retold in so many different ways, than King Arthur.  This fabled ruler of Britain, who was supposed to have lived in the late fifth or early sixth century, still has throngs of devoted fans to this day.  And in many respects the legends about the manners and traditions of his court made him and his fellow knights, with their code of chivalry, “role models” for European courtly life centuries later.  But did King Arthur really exist, and if so, what part of the legend is based in fact, and what is just poetic fancy?

            To understand the role that a historic Arthur would have played in Britain, around 500 A.D., we have to return to Rome, and trace its fate after the rise of emperor Constantine and his establishment of Christianity as the official religion of the empire.  In fact, the reign of Constantine in the early fourth century marks in many ways the beginning of the fall of the Roman Empire, a connection that would not be lost to many pagans who would later link the rise of Christianity with the fall of Rome.  Besides the establishment of a new official religion, Constantine also introduced another major change to the empire: he moved its capital from Rome to a new, more central location in Byzantium, in present-day Turkey.  By the end of the fourth century, the empire would be permanently divided, between an eastern one with its capital in Constantinople, the city founded by Constantine, and a western one with its capital still in Rome.  And in 410, Rome would be overrun and sacked by barbarian invaders led by Alaric, king of the Visigoths.  This disaster was the signal event that prompted many pagans to declare that the traditional gods were punishing the people for deserting them, and adopting the strange, new faith of Christianity.  The charge would inspire the famous Christian bishop and early Church father, St. Augustine, to write a book called The City of God, which was his defense of Christianity against the pagans.  The pagan gods, he contended, with their amoral and fickle ways, were never worthy of allegiance to begin with, as was the moral god of the Hebrews.  And in his book, Augustine actually refined the argument of St. Paul that a spiritual allegiance to God does not necessarily contradict an allegiance to an earthly state, and that Christians, with their otherworldly aspirations, were no threat to the safety of Rome.  But he went further, saying that the earthly city of man will pass away, but the city of God is eternal, and to find membership in it should be the most important hope and concern of any human being.  In fact, the city of Rome recovered from Alaric’s attack, but its salvation was only temporary.  In 476 it would see its last emperor, Romulus Augustulus, surrender the throne to a rebel German general, who in turn surrendered it to the Ostrogoths in 493.

The Sack of Rome by Alaric's Visigoths: 410 AD

            The empire had actually been under siege for centuries, contending with barbarian invaders attacking from many fronts.  Around 100 B.C., the Roman general Marius fought off an attempted invasion of Italy by the Cimbri and the Teutons, and in 50 B.C. Julius Caesar fought and subdued the Suevi in Gaul.  The Goths, who had originally come from Sweden, plagued Rome and its holdings as early as the third century A.D., when they plundered the city of Athens and then threatened Italy itself over the next one hundred years.  Around 370 A.D. the Goths split into two separate tribes, the Visigoths and Ostrogoths, and it was the Visigoths who would, after invading Greece, turn their wrath upon Rome in 410.  The Vandals were another persistent enemy of the empire; in 439 AD they took over Rome’s holdings in Africa, and looted and plundered ships sailing in the Mediterranean Sea, linking their name forever with random acts of violence and destruction.  And from the east, the empire faced the wrath of the Huns, an Asian horde, who under their famous leader Attila attacked Gaul and Italy, beginning in 451 AD.  In their expedition against Gaul, the Huns enlisted the aid of the Ostrogoths and Vandals, but were resisted by the combined forces of Rome’s legions and the Visigoths.  The battle that ensued was one of the bloodiest in ancient history, and although Attila and his forces lost, he returned a year later to threaten Rome itself.  It was only a personal appeal from Leo the Great - bishop of the city - that saved it from being sacked again.  A similar appeal from the bishop three years later would spare the lives of the Roman people from an attack by the Vandals, but he could not spare the city itself from being plundered by the barbarians.  And in 477 AD, the Vandals attacked the city again, which by then had already fallen under the control of barbarian rebels.  But it was the Ostrogoths, under the leadership of Theodoric, who would eventually bring Rome and the entire Italian peninsula under their rule in 493, the year that marks the end of the Roman Empire in the west, and the beginning of the Dark Ages for Europe. 

     
            Who were these Germans, that brought an entire empire to its knees?  To the Greeks and the Romans, they were uncivilized savages, and their strange customs were both fascinating and terrifying to the citizens of the empire.  While a good Roman wife, for example, might bear one or two children for her husband, it was observed that the German wife would have several, and it soon became apparent that while the Roman population was barely maintaining itself, the German population was exploding.  The German men were renowned for their savagery, but so were the women.  It was a popular belief that a German warrior, retreating from a battle, would have to face the vengeful and possibly deadly wrath of a wife who had been shamed by his cowardice.  For such a soldier, it required less bravery to stay on the battlefield than to leave it.  And while the Greeks and the Romans enjoyed wine as their drink of choice, the Germans preferred a bitter-tasting alcoholic beverage which they called “ol” (ale) made from fermented barley or wheat and other herbs.  It was reported that in nightly gatherings, when the men enjoyed drinking large quantities of this brew, what would begin as an orderly social event would descend into an out-and-out brawl.  This must have been shocking behavior to the wine-drinking Greeks and Romans, whose own drinking parties would produce only spirited, invigorating conversation, or in the most extreme cases, perhaps an orgy.  The growth of population, and the pressure of other migrating hordes from beyond the empire, continuously impelled the barbarians to search for new land to occupy, and when the Romans realized that they could no longer keep them out, they tried to find ways to use them, or at least to control them.  Barbarian tribesmen were inducted into the legions as auxiliaries, and veterans were rewarded with grants of land within the empire.  It was a practical, but ultimately shortsighted, solution to contain the German menace.  Ironically, after Rome fell to the barbarians, it was probably one very subtle but important thing that caused the Germans to ultimately become preservers rather than destroyers of much of Roman culture.  By the time they had overrun the empire, they had themselves been overrun by the message of St. Paul.  They had become Christians.


Gothic Warriors



            The island of Britain had been inhabited, in prehistoric times, by a people called the Picts, who in turn endured waves of invasions by another people known as the Celts.  It was Julius Caesar who first attempted to bring the island under Roman rule, in 54 B.C., but it was not until nine years later that it became an imperial province.  And resistance to Roman domination continued, prompting the Roman emperor Hadrian to construct a 70-mile wall across the island, to keep the most violent rebels, the Caledonians, north of the wall in Scotland.  For two hundred years, the Britons lived peacefully as subjects of the empire, benefiting from the technological advances and cultural influences bestowed upon them by the Romans.  But by 300 A.D., as the empire faced mounting threats in other regions, its legions began to pull out of Britain, and when Rome was sacked by the Visigoths in 410, its armies withdrew completely, leaving the islanders to fend for themselves.  Over the next two hundred years, the civilization established by the Romans in Britain disintegrated, while the islanders had to contend with their own hordes of Germanic invaders, the Angles and the Saxons.

            The earliest historical records of what actually happened in Britain during that time are very scarce.  We know that in 410 A.D. – the same year that Rome was attacked by the Visigoths – the Britons appealed to the empire for help in holding back an invasion of the Saxons.  Rome’s reply was that the Britons would have to defend themselves, and apparently they did.  The Saxons were repelled, but only for a time.  More appeals to Rome for help against the barbarians came during the years 430 to 454 A.D.  After that time, local princes on the island made the problem even worse when they hired Saxon mercenaries to protect their interests.  Flooding that occurred in the Saxons’ European homeland prompted them to seek a new place to settle in Britain, but they did not stay content in the plot of land given to them by their overlords.  In the violent conflict that ensued, the Britons would rally behind a local hero to save them from the invaders.  In the great battle of Mount Badon, which happened around the year 485, this hero rallied his people to a great victory over the Saxons, and as a result of this victory the German invasion was held off for another fifty years.


            But who was this hero?  The earliest surviving account of this conflict with the Saxons, written by a man named Gildas in 540 AD, says that the champion of the Britons was one Ambrosius Aurelianus.  Gildas never refers to this man as a king, but does say that he had Roman ancestors.  Two hundred years later, Saint Bede, a historian, also described the battle of Mount Badon and identified Ambrosius as its hero, now a king.  Arthur’s name, and his link with the battle, first appears around the year 800, in a history called The Annals of Wales, and some years later in an account by Nennius called the History of the Britons, in which twelve battles against the Saxons are described, under the leadership of Arthur in alliance with the kings of Britain, the final battle being the one at Mount Badon.  In the Cambrian Annals, written by an anonymous Welsh writer around 950, Arthur is again mentioned as the victor at the battle of Mount Badon.  This account goes on to describe the death of Arthur and one Medraut at the Battle of Camlann in 537.  And finally, in William of Malmesbury’s Exploits of the English Kings, written in the early twelfth century, the names of Ambrosius and Arthur appear together.  Arthur is credited with assisting Ambrosius in his victory over the barbarian invaders, and is also honored for his victory at the battle of Mount Badon.

Arthur at the Battle of Mount Badon

            But while Arthur’s name shows up relatively late in the historical accounts of Britain, he had apparently become a folk hero among the Welsh and other Celtic peoples of Britain very early on, appearing in poems, ballads, and tales that were recited by the natives and passed on from generation to generation.  Already in these accounts, Arthur has a supernatural aura, and the tales of his exploits are tinged with magic.

            In 1139 A.D. the Arthur of history and the Arthur of legend were thrown together for the very first time in Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Histories of the Kings of Britain.  Geoffrey claimed that his history was a translation of an earlier work written in the Welsh tongue, but evidence of that earlier work has never been found.  And like Plato’s story of the lost land of Atlantis, Geoffrey’s history was regarded by many as a tall tale, even in his time.  Nevertheless, it enjoyed wide popularity after its publication.  Geoffrey himself was of Celtic descent, and in an age in which Celtic pride was reasserting itself, the story of Arthur’s valiant defense of Britain against the German invaders, whose descendents in Britain now treated the Celts with condescension, must have struck a sympathetic chord.  What’s more, the island had fallen to foreign invaders in recent times once again.  In 1066, less than one hundred years before the publication of Geoffrey’s history, Norman invaders from France, under William II, conquered the land and established William as its new king.  It’s probably no coincidence that Geoffrey traced the history of Britain’s early rulers back to the Trojans, since Norman royalty believed that their own ancestry also had ties to Troy.

            Geoffrey of Monmouth gives us the first full-blown account of the story of Arthur’s life, complete with Merlin, Guinevere, and Mordred, an enchanted sword, and many of the other features of the Arthurian legend that would survive in all later versions.  In his story, the direct line leading to Arthur begins with Constantine – not the Roman emperor, but a nobleman who was called upon to lead the Britons as their king and protect it from barbarian invaders after Rome abandoned the island.  Constantine rallied his people to victory against the barbarians, but was assassinated soon afterward by one of their spies.  After his death, the oldest of his three sons, Constans, was set up as a puppet ruler by the evil Vortigern, who pretended to be a trusted counselor to the young king, but secretly wanted the crown for himself.  Vortigern had Constans assassinated, and rose to the throne, but then he made a fatal mistake.  In an effort to secure his tenuous hold over the island, Vortigern enlisted the aid of the Saxons, and invited them to send soldiers to his kingdom and even to settle there.  Vortigern would come to realize that the Saxons were not his protectors, but his conquerors, and that he was in imminent danger of losing his own life at their hands.  In desperation, he consulted his magicians for advice on how to protect himself from the invaders, and they advised him to build a strong tower where he could flee and find refuge if all of his other fortresses fell.  But when his masons found that they could not establish a foundation for the tower at the site that he had chosen, because with each attempt it would sink into the earth, Vortigern consulted his magicians again.  This time they advised him to seek out a boy who had no father, and to make of him a human sacrifice whose blood, when sprinkled on the mortar and the stones, would make the foundation firm.  Messengers were dispatched throughout the kingdom to find such a boy, and after searching the island, they produced one, whose mother was the daughter of a king, but who apparently had no earthly father.  His name was Merlin.  But Merlin proved to be more than a match for the magicians who had called for his death.  After being presented to the king, Merlin so impressed him with his knowledge and his boldness that his life was spared, and he was retained as a court prophet, although his prophecies did not bode well for Vortigern.  Merlin predicted that Vortigern would soon face vengeance at the hands of Constans’ two younger brothers, Aurelius Ambrosius and Uther Pendragon, and the very next day Aurelius arrived on the shores of Britain and rallied the people to his cause.  Vortigern fled to a tower, but died as the forces of Aurelius set it to the torch.

Image result for stonehenge
Stonehenge: A Gift from Merlin?

            After driving off a large remnant of the Saxons on the island, and subduing many others, Aurelius sought to erect a monument to commemorate the bravery of his soldiers.  He sent for Merlin, and the young wizard told of a ring of huge stones in Ireland, used for religious rites, which had magical properties.  The stones had been moved to Ireland from Africa by a race of giants many years earlier, Merlin explained, and now he proposed to bring them into Aurelius's realm.  Aurelius had laughed at Merlin as he began to recount this story, but he would later discover that this was no idle tale.  Merlin recovered the stones, astonishing the men who accompanied him to Ireland as he lifted them effortlessly with the aid of his magic, and later set them up at the site chosen by Aurelius in Britain, the site that is known as Stonehenge today.  Aurelius Ambrosius soon met his own end after falling ill, when a Saxon spy, disguised as a doctor who had come to treat the illness, poisoned him.  The crown of Britain now passed on to the youngest of Constantine’s sons, Uther Pendragon.

            Uther continued his brother’s rout of the Saxon enemies, winning a decisive victory at the Battle of Mount Damen.  But in a victory celebration in the town of London, Uther’s courage and heroism would give way to baser instincts.  One of his allies in the battle had been the Duke of Cornwall, and at the celebration, Uther became enthralled with the Duke’s wife, Ygerne, showering her with admiration and unseemly attention.  The Duke, annoyed at this spectacle and fearful that he would lose his wife to the covetous desires of the king, withdrew from the court in the company of his wife.  Enraged at this insult, Uther collected an army and pursued the Duke back to Cornwall.  The Duke, who was more concerned about his wife’s safety than his own, put her up in Tintagel castle, which seemed to be impregnable to outsiders.  And Uther, unable to restrain the passion that he had for Ygerne, appealed to Merlin to help him find a way to reach her.  Through Merlin’s magic, he assumed the appearance of the Duke, and gained access to Tintagel castle, and to Ygerne.  The real Duke met his death at the hands of Uther’s armies in another castle, while in Tintagel, Ygerne believed that she had been reunited with her husband.  It was during this time that Uther and Ygerne conceived a child, the future King Arthur.


            Uther Pendragon would meet his own end the same way that his brother Ambrosius had, through poisoning at the hands of Saxon spies.  At the news of his death, the Saxons who had remained in Britain urged their relatives from Germany to join them, since they believed that with the king gone there would no longer be a champion to rally the Britons in defense of the island.  In desperation, the bishops bestowed the crown upon the king’s son, Arthur, though he was only fifteen years old.  He proved to be a more than worthy successor to his father.  With his sword, Caliburn, forged in the Isle of Avalon, he led the fight against the Saxons, until they were again driven off the island.  But Arthur did not settle for defensive victories.  After marrying Guinevere, a noblewoman of Roman ancestry, he led his armies in wars of conquest against Ireland, Iceland, Gaul, and eventually in a war of revolt against Rome itself, after emissaries of the empire demanded that Britain resume paying a tribute to the empire that had been levied against it since the days when Julius Caesar ruled.  Although Arthur’s army would be victorious in this war against the empire, the victory would yield the seeds of his own doom.  For while he had been away on the continent, his traitorous nephew Mordred, in whom he had entrusted the care of Britain, had entered into an adulterous affair with Queen Guinevere, and had declared himself king.  Arthur returned with his army to face Mordred, who had enlisted the aid of the Saxons, Irish, Scots, and Picts in his cause, and the two opponents met at the River Camlann in 542 AD, where Mordred met his death, and Arthur was mortally wounded.  Arthur passed the crown on to his cousin Constantine, and was carried off to the isle of Avalon, to be treated for his wounds.

King Arthur, Mortally Wounded

            That’s it – the earliest written account that gives us a complete story of Arthur’s origins and accomplishments, by Geoffrey of Monmouth in 1136 AD, nearly a thousand years ago.  Geoffrey’s version, in addition to giving us the first fully formed story of Arthur’s life, also introduces other features of what would become the Arthurian legend.  We are told that his knights were famed for their bravery, and descriptions of his court are livened by the simultaneous spectacle of pomp and ceremony, religious devotion, and military tournaments.  Courtly love finds its first expression in this tale, as the women of noble rank only show affection to knights who prove themselves in battle.  And many of the knights who would be immortalized in all of the later Arthurian stories appear here, such as Arthur’s nephew, Gawain, and Sir Kay.   But other features of the legend would only arise in later accounts, such as Merlin’s role as Arthur’s tutor, the sword in the stone, the round table, Arthur’s evil sister, Morgan le Fay (who in earlier versions was merely a healer and enchantress unrelated to Arthur), and many of his other principal knights, like Lancelot, Percival, and Galahad.  About half a century after Geoffrey’s history of Arthur appeared, the lyrical poems of French writer Chrestian De Troyes would add color and substance to the tale.  In these poems, we learn of the knights’ quest for the Holy Grail, the cup that Christ drank from during the Last Supper.  And in these poems we find the tragic love triangle between Arthur, Guinevere, and Arthur’s trusted knight, Lancelot.  Two hundred years later, in 1485, the legend would find its fullest expression in Sir Thomas Malory’s Le Morte D’ Arthur

Knights of the Round Table

            In many respects, the saga of King Arthur and his battles is not unlike the saga of the Trojan War, in which Greek forces fought valiantly against a foreign power that dared to offend their honor.  Both of these sagas seem to have a basis in fact, alluding to real conflicts that occurred in the distant past, that have been embellished and glossed over with mythic and supernatural imagery, exaggerated deeds of valor, and struggles of literally epic proportions.  But in the case of Troy, while we know that the tale survived in poems or songs that were recited over succeeding generations, it is only the final version of these retellings that has survived, as two epic poems, the Iliad and Odyssey, supposedly composed by a person who may be semi-mythical in his own right: the blind poet Homer.  So we can never tell exactly where history ends, and fantasy begins, except by looking at archaeological ruins to get a hint of what may have actually occurred.  In the case of Arthur, however, we can get at least a sense of what part of the legend is based on facts, and what part on myth.  The earliest historical accounts all seem to agree that a great battle, or series of battles, occurred between the native Britons and invading German tribes around the time that Arthur supposedly lived.  And while Arthur’s name does not appear in the earliest versions of these accounts, it does appear very early on in Welsh poems.  Geoffrey of Monmouth almost certainly relied on the earlier histories for his own version, and it is very likely that he drew from these Welsh poems, as well as other native legends or tall tales, for the more fanciful part of his story.  The other heroes and events of Arthur’s tale probably came from a variety of sources.  Both Mordred and Merlin appear in histories older than Geoffrey’s; and in an account written by Nennius around 800 A.D., while Merlin’s mother claims that her child has no mortal father, Merlin himself says that his father was in fact a Roman consul.  Many of the knights who appear in the court of Camelot were probably introduced from other folk religions or legends: Gawain, for example, a Celtic sun god, Lancelot, a Gaelic sun god, and Parsival, the Welsh hero Peredur; and Arthur’s evil sister, Morgan le Fay, could be an incarnation of the Celtic war goddess, Morrigan, or the Welsh mother goddess, Modron.

            What is it about Arthur’s legend that makes it so compelling, and so fascinating to readers and listeners, even now, some fifteen hundred years after this hero supposedly lived?  What is the source of its power, and what has been its relevance to the generations that continue to preserve it?  A key to this question’s answer is the reality of life, both in Arthur’s day, and in the days of those who chronicled his life.  We know that in the years preceding Arthur’s birth, the empire of Rome collapsed, succumbing to waves of Germanic invaders, just as the island of Britain itself was fending off incursions from the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes, German tribes that were endeavoring to establish a new homeland there.  In the centuries that followed, the conquering Germans established kingdoms of their own on the ruins of the Roman Empire.  One of the most notable of these was Charlemagne, who was crowned as Holy Roman Emperor by the pope in 800 A.D.  The fact that Charlemagne allied himself to the Pope is a testament to the fact that the one institution which survived, unscathed, after the fall of Rome, was the Christian Church.  Every other relic of the great Roman civilization crumbled, sending Europe into a time called the Dark Ages, or the Gothic Era, as it was contemptuously labeled by Italians centuries later during the Renaissance.  The Roman roads, which had criss-crossed the European continent, fell into disrepair, and the great cities went into decline.  Agricultural productivity also declined, as fields and estates fell into the hands of local kings, who bestowed them upon powerful nobles as rewards for faithful service.  These “nobles” were little more than well-armed thugs, who treated the serfs who worked their lands with contempt, and offered them only a share of the food that they cultivated for their overlords.  But by the time of Geoffrey’s age, in the twelfth century, towns and cities began to re-emerge as centers of commerce, farming techniques were improved, and roads were reconstructed.  Serfs were actually able to accumulate some wealth, and a rising commercial class came into existence.  Meanwhile, the nobility developed a new sense of social pride, based upon ancestral lines, and a code of conduct, called chivalry, that defined their relations with each other, with women, and with the other members of their society.  Chivalry literally means “horsemanship”, and the code had a particular bearing on the behavior of the warrior class, the knights, demanding that in addition to bravery they exhibited a gentle personality towards those with whom they came in contact.

The Gallantry of Medieval Knights

            By Geoffrey’s time, much of the land of the Britons had become the land of the Angles – “Angle-Land”, or England – and it had been ruled by Saxon kings for over two hundred years until a new wave of invaders, the Normans, conquered the island in 1066 AD.  And although Geoffrey and his fellow Celts might have taken some satisfaction in this, seeing in it a turning of the Wheel of Fortune as the old invaders were overrun in turn by new ones, for the Anglo-Saxons, the event must have been seen as catastrophic.  It is ironic, then, that they probably drew a different sort of inspiration in Arthur’s story.  Just as the ancient Sumerians, after seeing their land conquered by Sargon, took heart in the story of their ancient hero Gilgamesh, and the Hebrews, during their times of troubles, found comfort in the stories of Moses and King David, so the English could look back to the ancient hero Arthur, who so valiantly defended their land against an earlier wave of conquerors.  But the irony, of course, is that these enemies of Arthur were their own ancestors, the Germanic invaders now permanently established on the island.

            The story of Arthur and his court also has another parallel to a legend that we have looked at: the story of the ancient kingdom of Atlantis.  Here again we see the yearning to believe that there was a golden age, half-forgotten in the distant mists of the past, where a society reached the summit of power and glory before a tragic downfall.  And like Atlantis, Arthur’s kingdom was like a beacon, guiding those of later generations who revered it on a path of return to glory.  While chivalry and courtly life in Arthur’s era may have been a myth, it became a reality in Europe by the twelfth century, defining a code of conduct for the warrior class that was supported by the Church, the one institution that had survived the catastrophes which had befallen the old Roman Empire.  The religious mysticism that permeated so many of the Arthurian tales, in particular those involving the quest for the Holy Grail, inspired the Christian population, both rich and poor, to find meaning in their lives through devotion to a higher ideal, continuing a trend to greater piety that had already been underway in the centuries after Arthur’s death.  But as the growing power of the Church led to internal corruption, and conflicts with the secular power of the European kings, the religious zeal of the general population began to express itself in new and unconventional ways.  The Church itself tried to harness this religious devotion to attain very worldly ends, as a weapon against kings who dared to challenge its power, and against foreign enemies, through the launching of Crusades.  But there were other enemies that would soon occupy the energies of the Church – the pagan, the heretic, and the witch.

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