Welsh Journals

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fire at the abbey, its monks discovered the 'bones of Arthur' in 1191, a 'discovery' widely advertised by no less a publicist than Gerald of Wales and given even greater prominence when the grave was reopened in Edward I's presence in 1278. More wonders were yet to be revealed before the saga was complete. By the mid-thirteenth century the tradition which connected Joseph of Arimathea with Glastonbury had emerged, only to be much enlarged and embroidered a century later in the work of John of Glastonbury, who depicted Joseph as the founder of Christianity in Britain and Arthur's saintly ancestor. (In passing, it is sad to have to note, when quoting from Tennyson's Morte d'Arthur on the title-page of this chapter, Dr. Dunning for once commits a serious solecism; the famous lines should read 'if knowing God, they lift not hands of prayer '.) The Tudor dynasty, understandably in view of its own claim to royal Welsh connections, latched on to the Arthurian legend, as did many lesser families of gentry. Arthur's existence cannot be proved, and the author is sensible enough not to try to do so. What is possible, and has been achieved with conspicuous success, is to bring together in sympathetic but scholarly synthesis the various strands that relate to Arthur and his connections with the West of England: from archaeology, early and relatively late written sources, tradition, and myth. Together they add up to a fascinating story and reveal, if nothing else, why the 'once and future king' has been and remains such a fabulously entertaining and magnetic figure, attracting to himself like iron filings to a magnet all kinds of stories, legends, and works of art. He is here presented in learned but unpedantic fashion, warm in approach without being uncritical, and written up with elegance and charm. GLANMOR WILLIAMS Swansea ENGLAND AND THE CRUSADES, 1095-1588. By Christopher Tyerman. Chicago University Press, Chicago and London, 1988. Pp. xvi, 492. £ 24.95. Remarkable and unfashionable comprehensiveness marks this substantial, often vivid, survey of the effects of crusading on the politics and society of England from Urban II at Clermont to the Spanish Armada. The author quietly refuses to adopt any rigorous definition of crusade. It was (p. 21) 'an imprecise set of attitudes and habits fused with older concepts of pilgrimage and just war', which survived astonishingly late because of its protean quality. Its ideology and emotions lasted, even as formal crusading faded in the fifteenth century, infecting other sorts of warfare 'in a process from which emerged the sanctified patriotism distinctive of late medieval and early modem Europe' (p. 324). That, and the vastness of the theme, makes for a certain diffuseness. The book has honesty and tenacity. The author declines to accept the over-easy definitions of the flowering and subsequent decline of the crusading ideal made by the generation of Runciman and Throop. Motives, he insists, were always mixed. Tenacity comes over in two non-narrative chapters, on