Hic jacet Arthurus, Rex quondam, Rexque futurus.
“Here lies Arthur, King Once, and King in the Future.”
July is the month of the Precious Blood, and, as always, that focus of devotion brings to mind the Holy Grail — as with every elevation of the Chalice at Mass. Apart from considerations of where the actual vessel might be — Valencia, Vienna, Genoa, Glastonbury — or of the Eucharistic and Holy Blood miracles that so closely mirror the Grail’s legendary effects, there is also the larger body of tales to which they were soon attached: King Arthur.
Ironically, what began as a series of quasi-historical legends about a late Roman-era leader of the Britons against their many post-Imperial foes, became a huge part of the English and then the European imagination. “The Matter of Britain,” concerning his doings, ranked alongside “The Matter of France” about Charlemagne and his Peers, and the “Matter of Rome” featuring such heroes as Alexander and Caesar as one of the three great genres of Medieval Romance from Ireland to Georgia. The Welsh/Cornish/Breton stories of the Great King and his Knights seeped into France; the Normans in turn brought them back to England, where they became a national epic for the descendants of them whom Arthur had fought for possession of the country. From Edinburgh to Cornwall, various sites associated with the King and his men were and are treasured by locals and shown off to awed visitors. Successive Kings of England sought to identify themselves with Arthur — and this was not confined to the British Isles and Brittany. Not far from my home here in Austria is the shrine of Maria Lanzendorf. Its chronicles maintain that in 506, a British Prince Arthur built a small church in honour of St. Luke. Not only is he identified with the King (and given the number of Britons passing back and forth to Rome in that era, not without reason), but a famous statue of the legendary ruler is also to be found by the unused tomb of his presumed descendant, Emperor Maximilian I.
It should not be thought, however, that the memory of the Once and Future King was without practical consequences. As Murray Pittock puts it: “Subsequently, it was to be ‘those who supported the Divine Right of Kings’ who ‘upheld the historicity of Arthur;’ whereas those who did not turned instead ‘to the laws and customs of the Anglo-Saxons.’ Arthur remained a figure central to Stuart propaganda. Stuart iconography celebrated the habits and beliefs of the ancient Britons. In particular, the Royal Oak, still a central symbol of the dynasty, was closely related to ideas about Celtic fertility ritual, and the King’s power as an agent of renewal: ‘The oak, the largest and strongest tree in the North, was venerated by the Celts as a symbol of the supreme power.’ It was thus fitting that an oak should protect Charles II from the Cromwellian troops who wished to strip the sacred new Arthur of his status. The story confirmed the King’s mystical authority, and also his close friendship with nature. Long after 1688, the Stuart dynasty was to be closely linked with images of fertility. In literature, Arthurian images of the Stuarts persisted into the nineteenth century. This ‘Welsh messiah, the warrior who will come to overthrow the Saxons and Normans,’ was an icon of the Stuarts’ claim to be Kings of all Britain, both ‘Political Hero’ and ‘National Messiah,’ in Arthurian mould. Arthur’s status as a legendary huntsman (‘the figure of the Wild Huntsman is sometimes identified with Arthur’) was also significant. The Stuarts made much of hunting: it helped to confirm their heroic status as stewards of nature and the land.” Indeed it did; Cromwell and later the Whigs came to hate the stories of Arthur as much as they were embraced by their Catholic, Cavalier, Jacobite, and Tory foes.
In the 19th century across Europe — but especially in the Anglosphere — King Arthur and his defenders, ancient and more recent – returned once more on the waves of Romanticism that engulfed Europe. Sir Walter Scott and Washington Irving did their best to revive so much that came to be identified with King Arthur and the “Good Old Times”; Christmas, for example, began once more to be kept as well as ever it was at Camelot, Caerleon, or Carlisle. From the Neo-Medievalism which affected art, architecture, and literature throughout the 19th century emerged all sorts of things, to include the Oxford Movement and the Catholic Revival — in the English-speaking world the Oratories of St. Philip Neri and the Anglican Ordinariates may both be said to be products of this revival. As Mark Girouard recounts in his The Return to Camelot: Chivalry and the English Gentleman, the imitation of Arthur affected the personal aspirations of very many: “By the end of the nineteenth century a gentleman had to be chivalrous, brave, straightforward and honourable, loyal to his monarch, country and friends, unfailingly true to his word, ready to take issue with anyone he saw ill-treating a woman, a child, or an animal. He was a natural leader of men, and others unhesitatingly followed his lead. He was invariably gentle to the weak; above all he was always tender, respectful and courteous to women.” It has often been said that this type died in the horrors of the First World War; but it may also be said to have reached an apogee in the figure of Bl. Emperor Karl.
Whether or not the Arthurian gentleman died in the trenches, the King retained his hold on the literary imagination of the Anglosphere. Quite apart from T.H. White’s Once and Future King — and its adoption by Walt Disney — J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, Artur Machen, G.K. Chesterton, and countless others tackled and continue to tackle the Arthurian legend in innumerable ways, some better, some worse. The reason is not hard to see. Orson Welles put it very well: “Falstaff is, I think, really Merry England. I think Shakespeare was greatly preoccupied, as I am, in my humble way, with the loss of innocence. And I think there has always been an England, an older England, which was sweeter, purer, where the hay smelled better and the weather was always springtime and the daffodils blew in the gentle, warm breezes. You feel a nostalgia for it in Chaucer, and you feel it all through Shakespeare. And I think that he was profoundly against the modern age, as I am. I am against my modern age, he was against his. And I think his villains are modern people…They represent the modern world, which includes gouging out eyes and sons being ungrateful to their fathers, and all the rest of it. I think he was a typically English writer, arch-typically, the perfect English writer in that very thing, that preoccupation with that Camelot, which is the great English legend, you know.”
But is this yearning nothing more than an ultimate ineffectual nostalgia? Is Arthur merely the quondam King, whose stories still retain sufficient magic to warm our hearts a little in the cold spiritual, cultural, and political winter we all inhabit? In a word, is the love of him and his knights merely a form of comforting self-delusion?
Well, there is still the question of the future King. All through his tales runs the promise that he shall one day return, and set things to rights, as King Richard the Lionheart did for Robin Hood and his Merry Men. What chance is there for this Messianic return? Well, European folklore is filled with such promises of returning Kings and heroes who shall do the same one day for their peoples. Overshadowing them all is the famed prophecy of the Great Catholic Monarch, the Last Emperor. Whether or not any of those things occur, when Christ returns, without a doubt all the Holy Monarchs and heroes shall return in His entourage.
Until that day, we can look to such figures as Bl. Karl, Servant of God Francis II of the Two Sicilies, and many more such for intercession and inspiration in a time when such leadership is needed more than ever before. Like our 19th century forebears, we can try to carry in ourselves and our lives the chivalrous qualities that the figure of Arthur inspired. Like him we can make the Church’s feasts the structure of our lives, and drink from the Holy Grail as often we attend Mass.
In a word, before we can expect to be rescued by the Future King, we must try to become subjects worthy of such a ruler. If he does not come in our time, but we remain faithful, then we shall gain Heaven, as have so many inspired by the old tales. For Arthur’s Kingship — like that of all Catholic Sovereigns — is a participation in the Kingship of Christ. May we all one day see our King face to face for all eternity, reigning with all the Saints.
