Digging up the past

Just as the mining of Cornish tin or Derbyshire alabaster was a semi-industrialized concern, so the digging up of the past was already, by the fifteenth century, a very ancient and respectable pursuit. Richard of Cornwall, the brother of King Henry III, had been licensed in the 1250s to excavate barrows and ancient graves in the west of England and to keep whatever treasure might be found. In the 1180s, King Henry II is said already to have ordered a search for the bones of King Arthur at Glastonbury, and these same bones were reburied there a century later by Edward I. It was perhaps from these Glastonbury excavations that Westminster Abbey claimed to have come into possession of King Arthur’s seal, set in beryl, still being displayed in the 1480s. Again at Glastonbury, around 1400, a local monk named John wove a wonderful tale, in part copied from earlier histories of his abbey, in part newly spun, in which Glastonbury’s claim to the relics of St Patrick was fiercely defended and in which King Arthur was revealed to be a direct descendant of Joseph of Arimathea, the attendant at Christ’s burial who was said to have collected a portion of Christ’s blood in a ‘grail’ identified as the cup used at the Last Supper.

According to legend, Joseph had travelled to England where he had founded Glastonbury Abbey in 63AD. This claim was of more than merely local significance. Since 1378, Christendom had been thrown into turmoil by the simultaneous election of two popes: one still based at Avignon commanding the allegiance of the kings of France, the other once again resident in Rome and recognized by the kings of England. To heal this ‘Schism’, a series of councils was held, in which the representatives of the various churches of Europe were seated and granted precedence according to the date at which their nations had first accepted the word of Christ. If Glastonbury had been founded as early as 63AD, then this would render the English Church the oldest in Europe, far senior to the French. Not surprisingly, French and Spanish churchmen sought to pour scorn upon Glastonbury’s legend. The Glastonbury monks responded with a highly politicized exercise in archaeology, claiming to have excavated a tomb identified as belonging to Joseph of Arimathea, the news of their find being communicated both to Henry V and to the Council of Siena in 1424.