King Arthur in the Lives of the Saints
Arthur wasn't always depicted as heroic in his encounters with saints, but that changed over time.
I published the first section of this before, but I’ve expanded it to look at how treatments of Arthur changed under the influence of Geoffrey of Monmouth, turning Arthur from a relatively negative figure in early saints’ lives to a model Christian king.
The literature of King Arthur exerts a powerful gravitational pull, drawing in history, lore, legend, fiction, poetry, folktale, art, and even faith. The New Arthurian Encyclopedia, a catalog of all things Arthur, is roughly the size of a phonebook, and until you’ve dug past the first layer—Malory, Tennyson, Chretien de Troyes, Prince Valiant, Hollywood—you don’t begin to grasp just how huge this ever-evolving, loosely connected body of work really is. Within it, in a small forgotten corner, is the place where Arthur meets the Catholic saints.
If a genuine historical figure is at the core of the Arthur legend, that man was likely a warlord or chieftain living in Britain around 500 AD. The traces of him in literature make for an absolutely fascinating detective story, and everyone seems to have a theory of how the scraps of story and history evolved and fit together.
Arthur isn’t mentioned by name until Historia Brittonum (820) by the monk Nennius. This in turn was based on the early 6th century On the Ruin of and Conquest of Britain (De Excidio et Conquestu Britanniae) by St. Gildas, which mentions some of the actions attributed to Arthur but not his name. He really only emerges as the figure we know in the 1130s, in Geoffrey of Monmouth’s History of the Kings of Britain (Historia Regum Britanniae), which contains a blend of fact and fiction. Around the time of Geoffrey, Arthur begins appearing in saints’ lives.
Nine different hagiographies show us a figure quite different from the one depicted in legend. The Lives (known as Vitae) of the Welsh saints are as obscure as their subjects. Written in the 11th and 12th century long after the deaths of their subjects, their value as historical documents is questionable, but their insight into medieval piety and attitudes about the past at the time they were written is valuable. There is a common strand binding five of these Lives: the monastery of Llancarfan, founded in Glamorgan by St. Cadoc. This hive of hagiographic activity was basically a Vita factory. Biographies from Llancarfan include those of Ss. Gildas, Cadoc, Illtud, Carannog, and Padern, all of which mention King Arthur, often in a less than flattering light.
Arthur Brings Together a Saint’s Parents
Let’s look at one of the more entertaining Vitae: The Life of St. Cadoc (Vita Cadoci), written in the 11th century by Lifris at Llancarfan. We’re told that Arthur, Kaye (“Cai”), and Bedevere (“Bedwyr”) are dicing when they see a knight and a lady being pursued by King Brychan and his forces. Arthur at first lusts after the woman, but after he’s reminded of his knightly ideals, he intervenes to help save the couple. They turn out to be King Gwynllyw and the daughter of King Brychan, who have fled in order to be married, and with the help of Arthur, they are able to be married and produce the future saint, Cadoc (6th century).
Later in the Life of St. Cadoc, Arthur is chasing a warrior named Long Hand, who had killed three of his knights. Long Hand is given sanctuary by Cadoc, and for seven years Arthur rages against the situation but refuses to violate sanctuary. Cadoc attempts to negotiate a solution, and gets the parties to agree to a payment in cattle for the lives of the three knights.
Arthur, however, is still feeling prickly, and demands that the cattle be red in front and white in back. Cadoc prays for a miracle, and the cattle are changed, thus ending the standoff. Once Arthur gets them back to their stables, however, the cattle turn into bunches of ferns, and only change back once Arthur apologizes.
St. Gildas (c. 500-572) is relevant to Arthurian lore as both a writer and a subject. His history of the Saxon invasions is the first mention of the Battle of Badon, a victory later attributed to Arthur. Arthur isn’t named, but the writer of a later Life of Gildas has a ready explanation for this. Gildas had a brother named Hueil mab Caw, a popular brigand who may have carried off one of Arthur’s lovers, and also spotted Arthur sneaking around in drag in order to visit a woman. Arthur caught Hueil and had his head cut off, and the stone where the execution was performed—called Maen Huail—can be seen today outside the Barclays Bank in Ruthin.
St. Cadoc also tells a story about St. Gildas helping Arthur retrieve Guinevere (“Gwenhwyfer”) from King Melvas of the “Summer Country.” He makes peace between the two, who give lands to the abbot of Glastonbury in gratitude. Accounting for land grants is another common motif in hagiographies.
There Be Dragons
There’s a colorful story in The Life of St. Carannog (Vita sancti Carantoci) about Arthur and the saint’s portable altar. Carannog had thrown the altar into the sea to learn which way God wanted him to go, then couldn’t find it. He runs into Arthur while the King is hunting a dragon, and asks if he’s seen his altar. Arthur had found it, and wanted to use it for a table, only to discover that anything he placed on it flew right off. He promises to return the altar in exchange for Carannog’s help with the dragon. The saint prays and then uses his stole as a leash to lead the now-gentle dragon, then frees it on the promise that it will do no more harm.
The Life of St. Padarn (Vita Paterni), also from Llancarfan, tells of Arthur being “pierced with the zeal of avarice” when he sees the tunic of the saint. He demands it, only to rebuffed when the saint says it’s only fit for a cleric. When Arthur returns to rage some more, the saint has the ground swallow him up to the chin until he cools off.
Read enough saint lives of the middle ages and you find repeating motifs and even tales because the facts of some lives were lost to history. A dragon like Carannog’s occurs again in the life of Efflam. The demand for pious literature was large, and the historicity of a story was sometimes considered secondary to its religious message. In the case of Arthur, he assumes the role of a stock character: the Recalcitrant King. He often does something that needs to be corrected by the saint, with an accompanying moral point.
Some medieval hagiography is almost a kind of Christian fan-fiction, and the inclusion of a well-known figure like Arthur was like having Harry Potter appear in your Doctor Who story. It also served to reorient secular literature by bringing its heroes down to earth in sacred literature.
Is there any way Arthur could have actually interacted with the saints as depicted? Most of the dates just don’t match up, even if Arthur was real, was a king, and was active in the areas of Wales where the saints lived. And hunted dragons.
After Geoffrey
There is a shift in treatment of Arthur after the 12th century and the publication of Geoffrey of Monmouth’s The History of the Kings of Britain (De gestis Britonum or Historia Regum Britanniae). This was the “best-seller” of its age, with over 200 surviving manuscripts. By comparison, there are only 83 for The Canterbury Tales. It popularized Merlin and his prophetic powers, the stories of Uther and Arthur, and the tale of King Lear.
Not much is known about Geoffrey. He may have been a Benedictine, and appears to have been made bishop of St. Asaph, Wales. War prevented him from visiting his see, and he seems to have died within a few years of his elevation.
Geoffrey takes the matter of Arthur in a new direction, shaping his story into one of a supernaturally chosen Christian warrior-king: a latter day Alexander who drives out the Saxon, expands his empire, and defies Rome. This is not brute tribal leader but a figure more akin to an emperor, as though to show that the right to rule and the political center of gravity is shifting from Rome to Britain. Poised to become the next emperor, he is betrayed by Mordred and falls in battle at Camlann, and much of his achievement is undone.
In a 12th century life of the 5th/6th century Welsh abbot St. Illtyd, for example, we find a change in the hagiographers treatment of Arthur, who is now an idealized Christian king. There is an effort to link Illtyd to him through his parents Bicanus and Rieingulid, nobles who were related to Arthur. The future saint even is believed to have served Arthur, and in some lore he is said to have been one of the custodians of the Grail.
This new approach takes shape in the Old French Vulgate, or Lancelot-Grail, cycle, particularly in the History of the Holy Grail (Estoire del Saint Graal) which was written later but is first in sequence. This volume attempts to reconcile the sprawling body of often-contradictory material (filling 9 volumes plus an index in the Boydell and Brewer Edition) that coalesced around Geoffrey of Monmouth’s history, Robert de Boron’s Grail and Merlin poems, and other sources. One of the signal elements is using the grail as a connective tissue as well as a moral focal point for Christian virtue.
It’s highly likely that Cistercians formed the network that made all this possible, transmitting both “The Matter of Britain” (Arthur and other material) as well as didactic and morally edifying literature, particularly saints’ lives. Monasteries on the content maintained ties with England and Wales, and are the most logical vector for both the literature and its gradual transmutation into a particularly Christian epic.
Various saintly models and tropes start to emerge. Characters like Celidoine call to mind saints like Cybi or Cadoc who grasp deep religious truths at a young age. Grail figures like Alan reflect saints such as Petroc or Tysilo, who rejected thrones to pursue monastic or eremitic lives. Joseph of Arimathea’s company is driven to travel like Celtic saints David and Cadoc. The grail community practices radical poverty. King Calafes is cured of leprosy by Alan and builds him a stronghold to keep the grail.
Most strikingly, Joseph of Arimathea emerges as the evangelist of Britain, becoming inextricably linked to the story of the grail and a great body of legend and folklore on in the British Isles, bridging the Biblical and Arthurian worlds. All of this suggests a monastic influence at work in the Lancelot-Grail in general and, in particular, The History of the Holy Grail.
I first learned the connection between St. Illtyd and the Grail from, of all places, the Darklands video game. St. Cardarn (as St. Gerfel Padarn) is featured too. Strongly recommend it.
Someone needs to update Malory by taking his plot and incorporating all these saints.