King Arthur at Oxbridge: Nicholas Cantelupe, geoffrey of monmouth, and Cambridge's Arthurian foundation myth

Medium Aevum

Volumn 72, Issue 1, 2003, Pages

  Putter, Ad ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF BRISTOL   (United Kingdom)

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EID: 60949929371     PISSN: 00258385     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2307/43630634     Document Type: Review

References (35)

1. A. B. Emden, Biographical Register of the University oj Cambridge to 1500 (Cambridge, 1963)
2. and Cosmas de Villiers, Bibliotheca Carmelitana (1752), ed. Gabriel Wessels (Rome, 1927), II, 482-3
3. John Bale, Index Britanniae scriptorum, ed. R. L. Poole and M. Bateson (Oxford, 1902)
4. See Honor C. McCusker, John Bale: Dramatist and Antiquary (New York, 1971), p. 3
5. Sharpe, A Handlist oj Latin Writers oj Great Britain and Ireland bejore 1540
6. r
7. See Copsey, Register
8. That Geoffrey's Historia is parodic is argued by V. I. J. Flint, 'The Historia regum Britannic of Geoffrey of Monmouth: parody and its purpose', Speculum, 54 (1979), 447-68
9. On Cambridge's ignominious beginnings see D. R. Leader, The History of the University of Cambridge (Cambridge, 1988), p. 17
10. On the development of Oxbridge foundation myths my constant guide has been J. Parker, The Early History of Oxford (Oxford, 1885), pp. 1-62, 305-17
11. I quote the crucial passage: 'ad consilium Neoti Abbatis ... scholas publicas variarum artium apud Oxoniam primus instituit' ('on the advice of the abbot St Neot, he [Alfred] first founded public schools of the various arts at Oxford') (Ranulphi Higden Polychronion, ed. C. Babington and J. R. Lumby, 9 vols, Rolls Series (London, 1865-86), VI, 354). On Alfred's association with the University of Oxford see also Simon Keynes, 'The cult of King Alfred the Great', Anglo-Saxon England, 28 (1999), 225-356
12. Liber monasterii de Hyda, ed. E. Edwards, 8 vols, Rolls Series (London, 1866), I, 41
13. Bede, The Ecclesiastical History of the English People, ed. and trans. B. Colgrave and R. A. B. Mynors (Oxford, 1969), pp. 266-9
14. Cited from Parker, Early History, p. 309
15. On Geoffrey's status as the official historian of early Britain see C. Dean, Arthur of England English Attitudes to King Arthur in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance (Toronto, 1987)
16. This medieval proverb is cited e.g. by Dante in La vita nuova, ch. xiii
17. On the influence of etymology on medieval thought see Ernst Robert Curtius, 'Etymology as a category of thought', in his European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages (London, 1953), pp. 495-50, and W.J. Ong, 'Wit and mystery: a revaluation', Speculum, 22 (1947). 310-41
18. On Geoffrey's Oxford connections see E. K. Chambers, Arthur of Britain: The Story of King Arthur in History and Legend (London, 1966), p. 23
19. The Historia regum Britannic of Geoffrey of Monmouth, ed. Neil Wright (Cambridge, 1984), p. 123. See also p. no
20. M. J. Curley, 'A new edition of John of Cornwall's Prophetia Merlini', Speculum, 57 (1982), 217-27
21. Jacob Hammer, 'A commentary on the Prophetia Merlini', Speculum, 10 (1935), 3-30; 15 (1940), 409-31. Perhaps it ultimately goes back to Merlin's fifty-sixth prophecy - 'Expellet ilium per regni diuersatoria sed cornua sua in muros Exonie [MS var. Oxonie] confringet' (Historia, ed. Wright, p. 82)
22. Les Romans de Chretien de Troyes, II: Cligés, ed. A. Micha, CFMA 84 (Paris, 1982)
23. Geoffrey of Monmouth: The History of the Kings of Britain, trans. L. Thorpe, Penguin Classics (Harmondsworth, 1966), pp. 100-1
24. For the Latin text see Historia, ed. Wright, p. 32
25. Historiola, ed. Hearne, pp. 262-3
26. The Historia Brittonum: The Vatican Recension, ed. D. N. Dumville (Cambridge, 1985), p. 62. Nicholas's identification of Caergrant (probably Grantchester) with Cambridge probably derives from Higden's Polychronicon, II, 54
27. Geoffrej, trans. Thorpe, pp. 226-7
28. Historiola, ed. Hearne, pp. 267-8
29. Anon., History of Barnnell Abbey (London, 1786). The appendix contains an edition of contemporary documents relating to the Barnwell process
30. For discussion see especially Charles Henry Cooper, Annals of Cambridge, 5 vols (Cambridge, 1842), I, 182-3. 56 The Minor Poems of John Lydgate, ed. H. N. MacCracken, EETS, os 192 (London, "934), PP-652-5
31. The relevant passages from John Rous's Historia regum Angliae are printed in J. Parker, Early History, pp. 305-7 and 315. On John Rous
32. see also Kendrick, British Antiquity, pp. 25-6
33. Arthur's Great Seal hung by the shrine of Edward the Confessor until at least the seventeenth century. Caxton famously mentions it as proof of Arthur's existence in his prologue to Malory's Morte Darthur, The fullest description is by John Leland in his Assertio Arturii (1582), ed. W. E. Mead, EETS, OS 165 (London, 1923), pp. 40-1
34. Twyne, De antiquitate, pp. 46-7
35. Ludwig Wittgenstein, On Certainty, ed. G. E. M. Anscombe and G. H. von Wright, trans. D. Paul and G. E. M. Anscombe (Oxford, 1997), p. 15