King Arthur's knights, gathered around the Round Table to celebrate Pentecost, have a vision of the Holy Grail. Manuscript of "Lancelot in prose". National Library of France • WIKIMEDIA COMMONS “B get back the leader » and « Bretaigne la grant ":these territories with very uncertain borders among medieval authors include present-day Armorican Brittany as well as the British island kingdom where the Arthurian myth was located, and correspond to multiple linguistic areas, covering both French and Anglo-English dialects. Normans of novels than the British languages carrying ancient legends, without forgetting the Latin of the chroniclers. The “matter of Brittany” In fact, the fortunes of the myth of Breton royalty during medieval times can be linked to the figure of King Arthur, historicized in Latin by the chronicler Geoffroy de Monmouth in the Histoire des rois de Bretagne (1138), and in Old French by the poet Wace in the Roman de Brut (1155). A medieval bestseller, the work of Geoffrey of Monmouth brings together a vast material to which it gives the appearance of historical depth. Drawing on a double written and oral tradition which makes Arthur a Breton warlord repelling the attacks of the Saxon invaders to defend peace and Christianity in the island of Brittany (now Great Britain), Geoffroy is the first to to set up as a conquering king, unifier of insular Britain, Wales and Scotland included. Only the betrayal of his nephew Mordred at the battle of Camlann brings down this chosen king of God, while his great victory over the Saxons at Mount Badon (483), an unidentified place, granted respite to his subjects. Translating this material, Wace is much more than a servile admirer, since it is he who invents the theme of the Round Table and its knights. From then on, the “matter of Brittany”, quite distinct from the “matter of Rome” (concerning the heroes of Antiquity) and the “matter of France” (centered on Charlemagne and his paladins), was launched. Its immense success, relayed by Chrétien de Troyes in France, but also by Béroul or Thomas from England, authors of the Roman de Tristan , will no longer be denied. This material brings to the monarchy of England, heir to Breton royalty, what it lacked compared to the Capetian monarchy, which chroniclers are beginning to link to the memory of Clovis and Charlemagne:prestigious origins, an inscription in the long historical duration, a cycle of glorious battles supporting a true Breton patriotism before the letter, and a quasi-identitarian messianism. The legend crosses the Channel Indeed, beyond Uther Pendragon his father, Arthur's genealogy goes back to Maximus, Breton king who became Emperor of the Romans thanks to the military upheavals of the Empire in the IV e century, and especially to Brutus who, like his great-grandfather Aeneas leaving the ancient city of Troy in flames to go and found a new home in Italy, lands on an unknown island, to which he gives his name:the Britannia (Great Britain) of the first Bretons. The exploitation of the myth of Trojan origins is a great service rendered by Geoffrey of Monmouth to the Breton cause:the Trojan ancestry is the reference of references within the medieval royal courts, and it gives an incomparable nobility to all that it button. The richness of Arthur's genealogy also makes it possible to give luster to the figure of Conan Mériadec, cousin of the Emperor Maximus who installs him as king at the western end of Roman Gaul to make it a "second" Brittany. According to Geoffrey of Monmouth, after Arthur, the power of insular Breton royalty still resisted the Saxons until King Cadwalladr, but it did not extend to Armorican Brittany. The springs of this material from Brittany therefore appear inexhaustible, and it is not surprising that it took on a popular dimension in the Middle Ages. Wace thus evokes the Breton storytellers who “tell many fables” about Arthur and the Round Table. As for the Occitan troubadour Peire Vidal, at the end of the 12 th century, he condemns the mockery of the belief in Arthur's survival in the marvelous island of Avalon, the island of the fairies, after his abdication on the battlefield of Camlann. Arthur celebrated by the Plantagenets The Plantagenet rulers, king-dukes on both sides of the Channel, favored this material. Within the conglomerate of estates called the “Plantagenêt Empire” for lack of a better word, stretching from the confines of Scotland to those of the Pyrenees, they benefit from seeing an imaginary Brittany tinged with wonder and courtesy magnified. King Arthur, wearing the brilliance of this material from Brittany at its peak, was picked up by the clerks of the Plantagenet court as a tutelary ancestor and figure of the king-knight, for the greater prestige of Henry II, Richard Coeur de Lion and John without Earth. The "Arthurianism" that they brought to life at their court was materially anchored in people's minds thanks to the pseudo-discovery of the tomb of Arthur and Guinevere at Glastonbury Abbey, pompously staged in 1191, followed of the gift of a sword presented as the real Excalibur to the King of Sicily. It also allows them to exploit the divisions between Breton lords to take control of the Duchy of Brittany. Thus, the marriage arranged between the young Geoffroy Plantagenêt, son of Henri II and Eleanor of Aquitaine, and the Duchess Constance, heir to the Breton ducal title, leads to the birth of a princely child named Arthur. However, if Armorican Brittany figures well in the adventures of the material of Brittany, it is far from being the seat of the exploits of King Arthur himself. In truth, only two Knights of the Round Table, Lancelot de Bénoic and Tristan de Léonois, have origins in Little Britain. And, of the high places of the Arthurian world, only the lake of the fairy Viviane, where Merlin would be held captive, is regularly established there. But this is not the case with Tintagel, Camelot or Salesbières. In short, all the elements of the continental Breton space commonly referred to as "Arthurian" are only impregnated with the presence that everyone wants to put there. The myth at the service of the dukes The end of the Middle Ages provided new twists to Arthur's fame on both sides of the Channel. In the context of the Hundred Years' War, the monarchy of England strongly claims its Arthurian insular origins to oppose them to France. Arthur is then pushed back to the English side, even if the greatness of his gesture is appreciated by all the European courts. However, in Armorican Brittany, at the time of the predecessors of the Duchess Anne confronted with the will of the Valois kings to reduce their power in the second half of the 15th th century, the Arthurian myth remains valued to support the Duke's claims to authority in his duchy. The challenge is then for the Dukes of Brittany of the Montfort dynasty to claim a sovereign power of very ancient legitimacy without provoking the King of France. This is why, at the head of a princely state that they hold independently and patrimonially, they avoid making direct reference to the former kings of Brittany:the Chronique de Saint-Brieuc – a compilation favorable to the Montforts and mixing reminiscences of Geoffrey of Monmouth and various lives of Breton saints – states that “there was once a king, / Now a duke who has the same rights / Than the king, neither more nor less . The royal title is therefore not explicitly claimed. But each duke of Brittany behaves like a king because he considers holding his duchy "by the grace of God" (he does not pay the liege homage to the king of France) and feels responsible for his peoples, whom he wants to unite around him and govern according to sovereign powers in all respects comparable to those that the King of France exercises in his kingdom (justice, police, finances). In fact, the ritual of the Breton ducal coronation ceremony refers to a “great golden circle” enhanced with “high florets” which girds the head of the prince during the great solemnity organized in the cathedral of Rennes. King Arthur has not finished making people dream. Find out more The Plantagenets and their court. 1154-1216, A. Chauou, Puf, 2019. From Camelot to Tintagel, the cradle of myth Archaeologists, historians and curiosity seekers have debated famous Arthurian places as far back as the 16 th century. Following excavations in the 1960s, Leslie Alcock historicized the Arthurian legend, endeavoring to find in South Cadbury (Somerset) Camelot Castle, which housed Arthur's court. Since then, this fortified hill, occupied from the Iron Age to the Middle Ages, has been enhanced. At the tip of British Cornwall, Tintagel Castle justifies its reputation as an impregnable fortress. But the building visible today, excavated in the 1930s by C. A. Ralegh Radford, was probably unknown to the medieval chronicler Geoffrey of Monmouth, since it was built by a later lord, eager to relate to the prestigious memory of Arthur. A seigniorial occupation dating back to the end of the 5th th or VI e century is however attested. On Salisbury Plain, Ralegh Radford also excavated Glastonbury Abbey, associated since the XII th century to Avalon Island thanks to the fabulous “discovery” in its sanctuary of the tombs of Guinevere and Arthur, mortally wounded during the Battle of Camlann. The difficulty with these sites, as well as with that of Mount Badon, the site of Arthur's triumph against the Saxon invaders, is that they all presuppose the existence of an "age of Arthur" linked to a character having actually existed. This warlord who has colonized our imagination has not finished fueling local popular demands. Novels with a European echo The Arthurian novels are narrative works written between the twelfth th and the XV th century which, as opposed to Latin chronicles, are written in the Romance language:novels in verse, of which those of Chrétien de Troyes are the best known, or prose novels disseminated within immense cycles, such as that of Tristan and Iseult. With them unfolds a marvelous material corresponding to codes that the public of European courts is perfectly capable of hearing, and constituting a "horizon of expectation". The synthesis proposed by the Englishman Thomas Malory, at the end of the 15th th century, embodies its coherence. Breton novels value the chivalrous ideal through the Round Table:in it, small knights and great lords project themselves, to the point of creating a fashion for Round Tables from the 13th th . century, which continues on a major scale with the rise of the great orders of chivalry such as that of the Garter. The vogue for Arthurian tournaments, pas d'armes, heraldry and onomastics was thus in full swing at a time when, however, war became the affair of the royal states.
