King Arthur

A Legacy of Chivalry

There is very little verifiable historical data from the time of King Arthur. Just about all we know is that there was such a king who had a kingdom called Camelot sometime after the Roman legions abandoned the British Isles in the fifth century. Other than that, virtually everything about the legendary king and his times is shrouded in mystery.

Even so, no tale has more completely captured the imagination of every generation since the Medieval epoch like the story of Arthur, his Knights of the Round Table, and their quest for the Holy Grail. Even the most dearly beloved of literary classics, like the stories of Don Quixote, Robin Hood, Scrooge, Huck Finn, Ben Hur, and Aslan, pale in popular comparison to the glories of Camelot. The vividly remembered characters of Lancelot, Mordred, and Elaine, to say nothing of Merlin, Guinevere, and Arthur himself, have been so assimilated into the common currency of popular culture that they are familiar even to the youngest of school children. 

Geoffrey of Monmouth wrote the first known history of the exploits of Arthur sometime around 1136. A Welsh chronicler during the waning days of Celtic independence, he wrote the richly inventive Historia Regum to preserve the final remnants of the old culture in the face of French and Norman dominance. He collected the folk tales and legends from the earliest days of English regency on the island—a beguilingly beautiful Celtic knot of fact, fiction, and fantasy.

The stories he thus recorded, being both nostalgic and romantic, quickly became an attractive subject for the jongleurs, troubadours, and minstrels of the High Medieval Age. They were thus repeated, retold, and recast by poets and jesters throughout England, Scotland, Wales, Normandy, Aquitaine, Burgundy, Lombardy, and the domains of the Holy Roman Empire.

The story lines varied greatly—as did the focus.  In the realms of Gaul, Lancelot and his quixotic quest for the Holy Grail became the central element of the story cycle. Among the British lands it was the betrayal of Arthur by Guinevere that dominated the saga. For the Teutonic peoples it was the sinister conniving of Mordred and Morgaine that possessed the attentions of the talebearers. But for each of them the Eden-like theme of an idyllic kingdom spoiled, not by external defeat but by dissension from within, claimed a tenured place in popular folk literature and music.

Sometime before 1469, Sir Thomas Malory novelistically connected all the Arthurian stories in his landmark book, originally entitled Le Morte d’ Arthur. Malory was hardly a man of letters.  Instead, he was a hapless Medieval soldier and adventurer, who simply identified himself as, “a servant of Jesu, both day and night.” Thus, it is not at all surprising to find that he did not actually invent the great Arthurian legends.  He merely collated them from extant documentary histories, ballads, poems, minstrel songs, and epics and then provided them with a cohesive and coherent narrative structure. Even so, this was, in and of itself, a monumental achievement. Prior to his work, most of the ancient stories of Camelot’s chivalry and heraldry had been passed from one troubadour to another, mostly in stiff, formal, and inaccessible languages, through a disconnected series of romantic cycles. Malory took that vast assemblage of heterogeneous stories and forged it into what we would today call an epic work of heroic fiction. 

Le Mort d’Arthur makes no pretense of being an accurate historical record. It is quite forthrightly portrayed as the noble stuff of fairy tales. It is designed to be a morality play not a biography. It is purposefully romantic. And that may well be the key to comprehending its genius.

William Caxton, the original printer and publisher of the Le Mort d’Arthur, wrote that the book was offered to the public “to the entente that noble men may see and lerne the noble acts of chyvalrye, the jentyl and vertuous dedes that somme knyghtes used in those dayes, by whyche they came to honour.” Thus, the venerable code of chivalry plays a prominent role in every aspect of the book, from character development to plot lines to conflict resolution. The code, formalized in the 11^th century by Bernard of Clairveuax, comprise twelve distinctive elements:

According to Bernard, a true Christian knight was to demonstrate chivalry first in integritas. He was to be trustworthy. Second, a true Christian knight was to demonstrate chivalry in fidelitas. He was to be steadfastly loyal to all those with whom he was in relationship. Third, he was to demonstrate succurrere. He was to be helpful to all in need. Fourth, he was to demonstrate benevolus. He was to be gracious and mannerly. Fifth, he was to demonstrate urbanus. He was to be courteous. Sixth, he was to demonstrate benignus. He was to be selflessly kind. Seventh, he demonstrated referre. He was to obey all those that God had place in authority over him. Eighth, he was to demonstrate hilaris. He was to be joyous and cheerful. Ninth, he was to demonstrate frugalis. He was to be marked by thrifty stewardship. Tenth, he was to demonstrate fortitudo. He was to be brave despite all the dangers that might cross his path. Eleventh, he was to demonstrate abulere. He was to be scrupulously clean in all his personal habits. And finally, he demonstrated sanctus. He was to be piously reverent. Interestingly, the twentieth century British war hero, Robert Stephenson Baden-Powell, utilized Bernard’s code as the basis for the virtues to be inculcated in his Boy Scouts. But centuries before Lord Baden-Powell tapped the principles and elements of chivalry for his fledgling movement, Thomas Malory built his tales of Arthurian romance around them.

It is often asserted that “familiarity breeds contempt,” though familiar things are all the more remarkable for their comfortable accessibility. In the same way, certain aspects of the story of Arthur have become so familiar that we are apt to miss their original impact and import; but we ought not and had best not. Thus, true histories of epoch must aim at the familiar as much as the unfamiliar in the hopes of exchanging contempt for cognizance. The structure of such a work, just like the structure of social memory itself, is progressive but not necessarily chronological.

The story of King Arthur and his noble knights has inspired innumerable artists, writers, musicians, statesmen, and scientists over the course of the last millennium and a half—Malory being just one among many. Inevitably, the image that they drew of him owed much to popular legend, a legend that was only sometimes factual and was more often fanciful.

Oddly, by making Arthur into a larger-than-life character those admirers simultaneously diminished his importance. Modern men—and particularly modern historians—have the curious habit of dismissing people of whom tales are told. As G.K. Chesterton observed, “They find a man’s reputation more trustworthy if nobody thought him important enough to lie about.” They are more comfortable with credible obscurity than with incredible fame. Then they are free to concentrate upon people of whom nothing is told. That is important to remember as we work for both resistance and reformation.