The following is an extract from a book written by the Reverend Francis Uriah Lot titled 'The Island of Avalon' which sets out to show how Henry Blois was responsible for much of the Glastonburalia contained in William of Malmesbury's De Antiquitates.
You can also see the new 2019 updated information at https://geoffreyofmonmouth.com/
http://www.amazon.com/The-Island-Avalon-concerning-Geoffrey-ebook/dp/B011NWHSR6
Eadmer’s letter to Glastonbury monks.
How
it is that the monks of Glastonbury claim to have the body of St Dunstan.
Brother
Eadmer, one of the least in goodness and learning among the sons and brethren
of Christchurch, Canterbury, greets the glorious community of monks at
Glastonbury Abbey with the loyal friendship and loving service in our Lord
Jesus Christ.
I
remember how I came to visit you once, some time ago. You received me with
great rejoicing and honour, and for as long as I wished to remain with you, you
kept me with great celebration and jubilation. Even now I feel grateful to you
for this, and I shall continue grateful to you as long as I live. While this,
therefore, ought to be and is my attitude toward you, I fancy it will surprise
no one if I love your honour, if I applaud those things which benefit you, and
if I loathe and detest whatever causes your shame. If I did otherwise, how
could I be your loyal friend? How could I be said truly to observe the duty of
brotherly love? The importance this should have for a Christian who would
attain the Kingdom of God is seen by the man who puts his faith in the words of
the apostle, saying that everyone who does not love his brother is a homicide
and that such a man should have no share in the Kingdom of God and Christ. You
will see my reasons for saying this at the beginning.
There
are some among you, recent members of
your community, as I am aware, who claimed that your fathers of old were
thieves and robbers and, worse, that they committed sacrilege. They make it a
point of praise that they did so, perhaps drunk on the same desire, ignoring
the words of Sacred Scripture,’ nor thieves nor robbers shall inherit the
Kingdom of God’. Moreover, they reinforce their point, affirming that those men
were like Judas the traitor who, though he kept the Lords purse, wickedly stole
what he should have kept. Oh, men, who know your brethren! Who hear attentively
the Lord's words! A hundred and more years have passed since they left this
present life, those men whom these now claim to have been thieves and robbers.
And now only at this late stage is
such a grave reproach brought against them, and most unhappily they are now
newly consigned to eternal punishment, to which according to judgement of these
accusers they are condemned for torment. Truly, a great irreverence. For if
those old men were not such as these now claim they were, the irreverence of
their accusers is not lessened; no, without a doubt, it is worse, because they
defame the innocent and reveal themselves to all and sundry as shameless liars.
God's truth is my witness, all knowing and all ruling. For when I was still a
boy at school, Archbishop Lanfranc of blessed memory, Primate of all Britain,
had all this performed: the whole people of Canterbury were ordered the fast;
the body of the blessed farther Dunstan was lifted from its first burial place,
in the presence of Scotland, Abbot of St Augustine’s and of Gundulf (who was
later to become Bishop of Rochester) and of the whole company of monks of both churches, that is of our own
Christ church and of the neighbouring church of St Peter and St Paul, now
usually called St Augustine’s. An untold crowd of men and women assembled, who
all followed the heavenly treasure, rejoicing at with voice and heart, to the
place where it was to be reburied. The whole day was spent full of joy and
solemnity and made bright with divine miracles. It is 50 years since that
happened and now some of your community… if they really are your community….
have stood up and put it about wherever they like that, 100 years ago there
were monks from your church assigned as keepers for ours, which was at that
time left desolate, so they say, on account of the martyrdom of our glorious
father Elphege, and that these keepers with deceitful cunning stole what was
held most precious. Alas, men more wicked than all others! The mother church of
all Britain was afflicted by the death of its father and its sons, and she took
refuge as with a uniquely beloved daughter and… supposing for the sake of
argument that this happened… They thereby trusted that your church should
safeguard her relics and her very self. Your church, as you yourselves claim,
sent the best of her sons to do what was requested, but these men, having
become keepers of the relics, invaded the womb of the mother they had come to
protect, tore it open, looted her heart and bowels, snatched in carried away.
The Jews, when they took custody of our Lord's body for fear that it might be
carried off by the apostles, did not fail to regard it as long as they were
able, nor did they attempt to steal it or otherwise to make off with what was
entrusted to them. Rather they accused others of having stolen it while they
themselves slept. If those keepers from Glastonbury had done this, that is, if
they had said that the sacrilege for which they are praised had been committed
by others while they themselves were asleep, perhaps they would have had some
regard for their own reputation and would not have besmirched it in this
detestable way. As it is, what are we to say? As we stated out at the
beginning, we show that they were like Judas in their theft. But it is not we
who says so; rather it is their own modern brethren at Glastonbury. Assuredly
we know for certain that those men are not guilty of this sin. What does this
matter to the fellows who accuse their own brethren, nay, their own fathers,
with such silly concocted lies. Surely neither brethren nor fathers. For if
these fellows were brethren or sons of those men, surely natural affection or
even common decency would teach them to curb their tongues and the mind their
own reputations. But granted that the whole brethren of Glastonbury used their
cunning to make possible the concealment of their theft from everyone, they are
said to have brought with them the courts of one of their own abbots, whose
name is unknown to those who put about the story, and have set this in the holy
father Dunstan's coffin so that it should not stand empty. What forethought!
Were there not bones of dead men between Canterbury and Glastonbury that it
should have been necessary for them, in order to conceal their theft, to have
carried the corpse of someone they knew not over a distance of perhaps 200
miles?
Your
reverence must understand how, writing this, I am confounded by such patent
stupidity, worthy of everyone's scorn, especially because it is said that these
tales were made up by Englishman. Alas, why did you not look overseas, where
they have more experience, more learning, and know better how to make up such stories? You could even have paid someone to
make up a plausible lie for you on a matter of such importance. Oh, poor pitiable
you, and men of my nation, to be blackened with such stupidity that you are
forever judged worthy of universal derision.
So I
ask these men who lay claim to this remarkable sacrilege that they tell me,
their compatriot, did they really carry the body of their supposed abbot,
recently deceased and still intact, from Glastonbury to Canterbury? And did he
wear the chausuble and the pallium with its pin, as an Archbishop should, was
he shod with Bishop sandals, or not? And if he had all these, how did it come
about? Forgetting the rest for the moment, how did he come to have the pallium?
Surely the Abbots of Glastonbury did not wear the pallium in days gone by? This
is only granted by Rome and the Holy See to patriarchs and primates and
archbishops. No one has ever heard of a patriarch of Glastonbury, or even the
Bishop. So your predecessors carried to Canterbury a body dressed as an
Archbishop in order to deceive posterity, they were committing an affront to
the Roman pontiff and to all Christian men who keep the faith under the
direction of St Peter, a notorious affront which deserves all manner of
disgrace. It is known that they had no authority from the Apostolic See. They
made it up at the devil’s prompting or they got it made up by persons like themselves.
I can assure you that the body we found was in this condition, intact and
fittingly adorned with chausuble, ring, pallium, pin, and sandals. With it was found in inscription on a lead
tablet which clearly stated that there lay the body of St Dunstan,
Archbishop of Canterbury. Have you, pray, any writings to prove matters stood
thus? Namely to say that the body of that Abbott was decked out as I have
described? Again, I ask, did your fathers and brethren of old, who were
brought…so you say…to guard the relics of our deserted church, did they bring
with them that body to replace St Dunstan's as being without worries as to the
success of the coming theft? Or did they come here first and take away the
Glastonbury the exhumed body of our father, and did they there despoil it of
its pontifical garments, and then bring back here your own abbot, dressed in St
Dunstan's robes, to be placed in the grave from which our father was taken?
Whichever of these you may say happened, it is easy even for a blind man to see
that it would be madness to believe you. O unhappy men! who are so entangled in
their own stupidity that they cannot understand how wiser men could not fail to
detect this blundering. Christ who is the Truth says,’ the truth shall make you
free’. Yet your soothsayers today say, ‘our fathers theft and sacrilege and our
own lies will bring honour to our church and to ourselves’. What a lie! ‘Our
fathers, they say, stole the body of St Dunstan, Archbishop of Canterbury and
Primate of all Britain, from his church, and they took our own abbot, removed
the such sacrilege, since he was no use to us, to Canterbury and set him in St
Dunstan's grave’. Oh joy! O sorrow! Oh that your church should be enhanced by
so great a gain. But what will you do, I beg you, enemies of pure truth, when
Truth himself will come to destroy all who spread lies? For it is clearer than
the light of day to all that what you claim about your fathers is lies. When
they were invited to Canterbury, they did not bring with them their Abbot’s
corpse. Nor, when they dwelt here, did they remove Dunstan's body and bring it
in the other. The former would be an act of extreme and incredible stupidity…
No, extreme and incredible madness; but the latter would be an act of audacity
impossible to bring about. For when the saint himself had his grave dug, the
account of his life truly bears witness to the fact that the depth of his grave
was sunk as much as a man's height into the ground. What possibility could
there have been for such as scandalous theft? Moreover, the church was at no
point destitute of its own sons, nor was the city of Canterbury ever emptied of
its people. In addition one should consider that when the blessed martyr
suffered death, the church itself was not burnt nor were its roof or walls
damaged. For we know it was profaned and looted of many ornaments, and that an
attempt was made to burn it, by a fire started from outside, so that the savage
troops could force out the Bishop, protecting himself within when the invader
had ordered him to leave. When he came out and they seized him, they abandoned
their fire and their other traps set to catch him. They killed a few monks in
his sight and took him away, bringing him to the place intended for his death,
where they afflicted him with tortures and injuries and destroyed him. Since
these are the facts, how much effrontery does it take to claim that, in the
sight of everyone, the floor of the church was dug up to the depth of the
grave… 7 feet on all sides, for otherwise they could not reach the body? Then,
the story goes, having removed the body of the Holy Father Dunstan, they left
the grave open for a fortnight, while the monks return to Glastonbury with what
they had stolen. There they found that their Abbot was dead on their arrival (I
shall not say he was done to death), so they remove St Dunstan's pontifical
adornments and dressed the Abbot’s body in them. Then they hastily carried this
body… was it on and ass’s back?.... to Canterbury and placed it in the grave.
How much effrontery? Again I ask. What all the land between Glastonbury and
Canterbury a deserted waste in those days, that they should be free to go and
return without hindrance, carrying such a treasure wherever they would? Or was
it not? Surely at the date when you claimed this was happening, the terror of
the Danes swarmed all over. Nowhere was peaceful, nowhere safe, wars and
troubles raged all around. On top of all this, as is surely known, the body of
St Dunstan had been buried in the middle of the choir at the foot of the steps
leading to the high altar, in a lead coffin, and a great depth, as the English
once used to bury their dead. How can it have happened, therefore, that the
monks of Canterbury tolerated such a gaping hole for so many days until the
nameless Abbot was brought and deposited in Dunstan's empty grave? We know from
what Osbern relates that at least four monks survived the slaughter, not to
mention the clerks who assisted them in maintaining the service of the church.
Their patience was wonderful, and more wonderful was their awaiting the arrival
of the Abbot, whose name was perhaps Wlsinus.
For
God’s sake, is there anyone who can help but laugh at such nonsense? We could
go on to pile up more arguments, no less suited to show the foolishness of this
pretence, but we should spare the embarrassment of your sacred Abbey. It is a
shame and disgrace that Glastonbury fosters, feeds, embraces such men as so did
fame it. No monks of Glastonbury came to Canterbury in those days as they make
out, nor did they dwell here. There were none to snatch St Dunstan's body, and
it was never taken from us, nor ever brought to you. But your claim is not that
it was brought by others on any other occasion. Confess therefore that your
soothsayers have spoken falsehoods, and that it is in every way untrue to claim
that you have anything of St Dunstan's body. Look to your reputation,
therefore, and curb your tongues from such vanities. Let truth be brought to
mind, even if you have forgotten it.
Know…
there is no room for doubt...that once Aethelnoth, Abbot, or rather former
Abbot of Glastonbury, and one or two of his monks lived for a long time over
Canterbury. I call him former Abbot because as a general synod of the English
church he was deposed of his abbacy by Lanfranc, Archbishop of Canterbury, and
he was placed under such confinement at Canterbury as fitted his position. At
that time the number of the monks serving Christ and St Dunstan here exceeded
sixty. If then there were ever monks of Glastonbury who stole St Dunstan's body,
I think it was those. Yet during the period when they were at Canterbury, the
body had already been translated, as I have described above, from its first
burial place into a place where they could have had no access. It was not taken
by them; therefore it was not taken by any of your monks. If you listen to my
advice, you will remove those bones which you have loaded onto the image of our
Redeemer, before He is Himself angry with you. It is sufficient that He be
honoured for Himself and there is no need to keep up holiness on Him through
dead men's bones or otherwise. My brethren, think and think again, what is it
honourable for you to think, what is it proper for you to say, what is it right
for you to do?
100
years and more have passed since the martyrdom of St Elphege. No one who was
present is still alive today, or at least no one who remembers being present.
To this day I have never heard that anyone who was there at the time has ever
said or written anything concerning these matters which you have put about… Not
a single word, spoken or written, that any sane man could accept. Drop these
playground stories, therefore, and behave like mature and intelligent men, love
St Dunstan as your father and patron and speak the truth about him. Then truly
you will deserve his love. He is a member and a friend of the highest Truth and
he cannot admit to the bosom of his love any who depart from the truth. God
knows, and he knows to who is our father and our most sweet advocate that what
I say, I say for your honour and help, nor do I have any purpose other than
that God who is the truth should be magnified, praised, and proclaimed in St
Dunstan, as is right, by you as well as by us and, if I could achieve it, by
the whole world. I know that I have gone a little beyond the usual length of a
letter addressing you so, but my subject was so important that, although I
intended to use few words, my speech spread to the length it has. Do not
wonder. The way of man is not His way. So, my lords and my brethren, to whom
God has opened the means of understanding matters of reason, bridal the wanton
violence of your foolish young men who
open their mouths only in order to seem to know how to speak, on whatever the
flightiness of their hearts lead them to, thinking that they are something
because others are innocent enough to listen to what they say. I once knew such youths, and perhaps I was one, so
I do not doubt that young men are the same these days. I am now older
white-haired, and many things which I valued greatly as youth I now rate is
nothing. This will come to today's young men too by God's gift.
The
length of this letter however, demands an end, so this is my last word.
Although your fathers of old are now dead who live at Glastonbury a century
ago, I think there will be some still living who were fostered in the monastic
life before our Norman age. If there are, ask them whether they remember an
Abbot there who every year on St Dunstan's day used to come to Canterbury with
four monks or more. They would stay among our brethren in the six days and
longer, giving themselves to rejoicing and celebration for reverence of the
Holy Father. If any of these men remains alive today, I fancy he will confirm
that what I say was the case. Anything else would be far from the truth. If then
these men knew that they had sent Dunstan’s body at Glastonbury, why did they
come to Canterbury to do reverence to it on his feast day? I say this to
confound the errors of the foolish and to strengthen the sacred love of the
wise towards us, which we much hope to receive. Farewell, therefore, in Christ
Jesus. Pray for us.
