The Good King Lucius
Rev L Smithett Lewis
from St Joseph of Arimathea at Glastonbury, James Clarke & Co, London, 1955. Chapter One.
This book is now re-published by Lutterworth
St. Joseph's little circle of twelve disciples was kept going by anchorites – as one died another was appointed; but in course of time a certain slackness seems to have come over them. William of Malmesbury tells us that the holy spot at length became a covert of wild beasts.
Then in the days of Good King Lucius aforesaid came a revival. Llewrug Mawr, Llewrug the Great (grandson of Saint Cyllinus and great-grandson of Caractacus), nicknamed Lleiver Mawr or the great luminary (hence his latinised name of Lux or Lucius), was king in Britain in the middle and towards the end of the 2nd century. He increased the Light that the first missionaries, the disciples of Christ, had brought, by sending emissaries to Eleutherius, Bishop of Rome, requesting him to send missionaries to Britain. The Welsh Triads tell us that Eleutherius, in response, sent Dyfan and Fagan, Medwy and Elfan, all of them British names, in AD 167.
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Monkish historians say that Elfan was the second Bishop of London. (Theanus, who died AD 185, was the first Bishop of London.) The Latin Book of Llandaff says that he was consecrated Bishop at the time of his mission to Rome. Welsh authorities say that he presided over a congregation of Christians at Glastonbury (Ivide/I Rev. Rice Rees's ILives of Welsh Saints/I). Godwin (Ide Praesulibus/I, pp. 169-170) says that he was brought up at Glastonbury, and was sent by Lucius to Eleutherius, that he founded a library "near the aforesaid Church" (St. Peter's, Cornhill, which was his seat as Bishop of London), and that he converted many Druids. Pitsaeus, the aforesaid Roman Catholic Canon in his Relationes Historicae de Rebus Aeglicis (Paris, 1619), among many "illustrious British writers" names Elvanus of Avalon, whom he puts about AD 180, and says that he was educated in the School of St. Joseph of Arimathaea, and that he wrote "concerning the origin of the British Church" |
But John Harding, in the reign of Edward IV, puts their mission at AD 190, which fits in with the papacy of Eleutherius, as does the date 183 given by Cardinal Baronius. Geoffrey of Monmouth tells us that Gildas (AD 516-570) recorded the names and acts of these missionaries in a book now lost, The Victory of Aurelius Ambrosius.
The story appears again in the second revision of the Liber Pontificalis about AD 685. The Venerable Bede, 673-735, tells the story of Lucius's appeal to Eleutherius. But we hear little or nothing of the appeal to Rome until after the Augustinian Italian mission to this country in 597. The Latin Book of Llandaff, or Book of Teilo (probably compiled by Bishop Urban in the 12th century, but based upon a book of Bishop Teilo, 540), and John of Teignmouth in his life of St. Dubricius (1346), and Capgrave (1393-1464), "the most learned of English Augustinians whom the soil of England ever produced", and Archbishop Ussher in his De Brittanicarum Ecclesiarum Primordiis (pp. 49-50) tell us that Medwy and Elfan were Britons who were sent as emissaries by Good King Lucius and returned with the missionaries Dyfan and Fagan.
It is noticeable that the pedigree of Dyfan, as given in the Cambrian Biography, makes him a Briton. The pedigree may be spurious, or he may have been a Briton resident in Rome. William of Malmesbury calls them Fagan and Deruvian, and Geoffrey of Monmouth Faganus and Duvanus. These missionaries journeyed through Britain and came to Glastonbury.
There, God leading them (wrote William of Malmesbury), they found an old church built, as 'twas said, by the hands of Christ's disciples, and prepared by God Himself for the salvation of souls, which Church the Heavenly Builder Himself showed to be consecrated by many miraculous deeds, and many Mysteries of healing.... And they afterwards pondered the Heavenly message that the Lord had specially chosen this spot before all the rest of Britain as the place where His Mother's name might be invoked. They also found the whole story in ancient writings, how the Holy Apostles, having been scattered throughout the world, St. Philip coming into France with a host of disciples sent twelve of them into Britain to preach, and that there, taught by revelation they constructed the said chapel which the Son of God afterwards dedicated to the honour of His Mother; and, that to these same twelve, three kings, pagan though they were, gave twelve portions of land for their sustenance. Moreover, they found a written record of their doings, and on that account they loved this spot above all others, and they also, in memory of the first twelve, chose twelve of their own, and made them live on the island with the approval of King Lucius. These twelve thereafter abode there in divers spots as anchorites - in the same spots, indeed, which the first twelve inhabited (tradition- ally in huts round the wonderful Chalice Well at the foot of St. Michael's Tor). Yet they used to meet together continuously in the Old Church in order to celebrate Divine worship more devoutly; just as the three pagan kings had long ago granted the said island with its surroundings to the twelve former disciples of Christ, so the said Phagan and Deruvian (Dyfan) obtained it from King Lucius for these their twelve companions and for others to follow thereafter. And thus, many succeeding these, but always twelve in number, abode in the said island during many years up to the coming of St. Patrick, the apostle of the Irish.
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William of Malmesbury's Antiquities of Glastonbury, cap. 2. Those who have contended that there is no earlier authority than William of Malmesbury for the Great St. Patrick being first Abbot and dying at Glastonbury are upset by the discovery, in 1924, of St. Dunstan's own Psalter which he used at Canterbury, in the Calendar attached to which we read of "St. Patrick Senior at Glaston", vide Dean Armitage Robinson's Times of St. Dunstan, p.100. This is some 150 years earlier than William of Malmesbury. It is very significant that Irish pilgrims haunted Glastonbury in the Middle Ages. |
Fox, in his Acts and Monuments (Vol 1, p146), gives Eleutherius's letter to King Lucius, in reply to his request. It runs thus: "Ye require of us the Roman laws, and the Emperor's to be sent over to you, which you may practice and put in use in your realm. The Roman laws and the Emperor's we may ever reprove, but the law of God we may not. Ye have received of late through God's mercy in the realm of Britain the Law and Faith of Christ. Ye have with you within the realm both the parties of the Scriptures. Out of them, by God's grace, with the council of your realm, take ye a law that can (through God's sufferance) rule your kingdom of Britain. For ye be God's Vicar in your kingdom, according to the saying of the Psalm, 'O God, give Thy judgement to the King,' etc.". In the margin, Fox has this note: "Ex vetusto codice regum antiquorum" – from an old writing of ancient Kings.
Good King Lucius probably flourished about the middle of the 2nd century: the Latins said in the latter part, the Welsh said in the middle. Probably both are right, as the time fits in well with the reigns of the two Antonines, whose edicts favoured the Christians, and the date of the Embassy to Eleutherius is probably AD 183. In his time Britain, first of all countries, became Christian. Hence the proud title of our Kings "Most Religious King" - just as from St. Joseph came the precedence of British Bishops. The Welsh Triads tell us that Lucius "bestowed the freedom of the country and nation with the privilege of judgement and surety, upon those who might be in the faith of Christ."
Cressy, the Benedictine monk, who lived shortly after the Reformation, and who had imbibed many of the traditions of the Benedictine Monastery of Glastonbury (he mentions that St Joseph died at Glastonbury in July 27th, AD 82) kept alive on the Continent, tells us in his Church History of Brittany that, in company with his sister, St. Emerita, King Lucius finally went as a missionary through Bavaria, Rhoetia and Vindelicia, and was martyred near Curia in Germany.
The story of Good King Lucius appears in writing as early as the second revision of the Liber Pontificalis about AD 685. At Chur in Switzerland, they state that Lucius King of the British and his sister are buried in the crypt of the very interesting old cathedral there.
Some, who have studied the subject of Good King Lucius, claim that he died a Confessor in the City of Gloucester, and was "buried in the Church of St. Mary de Lode there. They claim that the Roman Martyrology has confused the British with the Bavarian Lucius. Among those who think so is Monsignor Bernard Williams of Painswick, Gloucestershire. The tradition is that Lucius built the Church of St. Mary de Lode in Gloucester. It is worth remembering that the learned Fox in his Acts and Monuments, wrote:
The said Lucius after he had founded many churches, and given great riches and liberties to the same, deceased with great tranquillity in his own land, and was buried at Gloucester the 14th year after his baptism, as the book Flores Historiarum doth count, which was the year of Our Lord (as he saith) 201, and reckoneth his conversion to be Anno 187. In some I find his decease to be the 4th and in some the 10th year after his baptism, and hold that he reigned in all the space of 77 years.
We must not forget that the Abbey of Westminster, then the Isle of Thorney, included good King Lucius in her claims. The Most Rev. Bernard Mary Williams, Roman Catholic Archbishop in England (pro-Uniate Rite), has lent me his MS notes on King Lucius, many of which I cite or quote here. The Archbishop calls his notes rough MS notes on Lucius first Christian King of Britain. He cites an English abridgement (1718) of Sir William Dugdale's Monasticon Anglicanum as saying,
There is a tradition that a Bishop and Preachers were settled at Gloucester immediately after Lucius the first Christian King of Britain embraced the Faith, that is in the year of Grace 189. Antiquity testified that Eldadryn was Bishop of Gloucester in 489, and Dubricius in 522. Nay, the ancients make Gloucester an Archepiscopal See, when Lucius by the advice of Fugacius and Damianus sent hither by Pope Eleutherius converted the three Archflamens of London, York and Gloucester into so many Archbishoprics. After- wards the See was translated to Menevia or St. David's in Wales, but in the year 679 Wolphen, the first Christian King of the Mercians, beautified and enlarged Gloucester.
The Monsignor points out that the Book of Llandaff tells of Lucius' embassy of Elfan and Medwy to Eleutherius and gives the date as 156, and it says that "Elfan was ordained a Bishop, and Medwy a Doctor". He says that "it was from Glastonbury that King Lucius first heard of the Christian faith". He also tells that "King Lucius' embassy is mentioned in the Chronicle of Fabius Ethelwerd, 975 1011, in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle most likely written by King Alfred the Great, or at any rate up to AD 891 or so, and in Bede's Ecclesiastical History, AD 730. All these I have verified. None of these mentions St. Joseph of Arimathaea, or the first beginnings at Glastonbury, and this for two reasons: (1) they were of different race and unfriendly; (2) they all wrote after the coming of St. Augustine, AD 597, and were unwilling to mention a British Catholic Foundation older than Rome itself." It is interesting that the Archbishop, a strong champion of the Papacy, and myself, have separately arrived at these two reasons.
Nothing perhaps is more revealing of the way in which the history of our Celtic Church has been forgotten than the story of good King Lucius. The man in the street knows nothing about him. But Bede, Nennius, the Book of Llandaff, the Welsh Triads, the Mabinogion, Achaury Saint, Geoffrey of Monmouth, William of Malmesbury, Cressy, Cardinal Baronius, Ussher and Rees have told of him. Ussher in particular has written long and fully. The very uncertainty of the exact date of his conversion tells the same tale. There is a great volume of tradition which recounts the Baptism of Lucius, and the early national conversion of Britain. St. Peter's, Cornhill, in London, proclaims it, so do the early centres of British Christianity, Glastonbury, Llandaff and Gloucester. And the story lingers in the name of the following churches (three in Glamorganshire): Llanfedwy (Medwy's Church); Merthyr Dyfan (Dyfan the Martyr); St. Fagan's and Llan-Lleirwg (Lleirwg's or Lucius' Church), now St. Mellon's, near Cardiff.
Just as it is very suspect whether the claim that Pope Celestine sent St. Patrick to Ireland be not a claim of after centuries, so a typical claim about Eleutherius may have crept into the Good King Lucius story. It may be true. The story, as it is told, suggests that Lucius, great-grandson of Arviragus, before he quite embraced the Christian religion, sent messengers to Rome, the centre of civilisation. But the case of St. Patrick makes us suspicious. St. Patrick's name was Succat. The name Patricius or Patrick was used as late as the 7th century to denote gentle or noble birth.
William of Malmesbury tells us that St. Patrick was the first to gather the Anchorites at Glastonbury, unbroken successors of St. Joseph and his eleven companions, under one roof. It has often been contended that the Glastonbury St. Patrick was not the Apostle of Ireland. We have pointed out the evidence of the calendar attached to the Bosworth Psalter supporting the claim in St. Dunstan's time. But there is evidence practically con- temporary with St. Patrick, that the great St. Patrick died and was buried at Glastonbury. It is very likely that he was born and brought up in the neighbourhood. His father was Calpurnius, a deacon; his mother was Concessa; his grandfather was Potitus, a priest and also a decimo or magistrate of a Romano-British colony; and his great-grandfather was Odissus, another deacon – a name strangely recalling the wily Odysseus of Homer. So he lived in some Church centre. He tells us that he was born near Nem Thor, which means the lofty hill or tor. Another name connected with his birth was Bannavem Taberniae. I hazarded the guess that this was a corruption of the name Bona Venta Hiberniae, good market or meeting place for Ireland. Dr. Davey Biggs of Oxford arrived independently at the conclusion that the first part was Bona Venta, a Venta being a well-known centre. I think that this may have been Bristol, 27 miles from Glastonbury. The Irish frequently raided the neighbourhood of Bristol, and Irish raiders carried St. Patrick as a prisoner to Ireland for six years. Be this as it may, there is the ancient evidence in the text of this book for the great St. Patrick being buried at Glastonbury.
St. Patrick being a Briton, it was quite natural for him to return to his native country, and quite natural to choose Glastonbury, the great Church centre there, and possibly his birthplace. It is very suspect whether the claim that Pope Celestine sent St. Patrick to Ireland be not a claim of after centuries. St. Patrick was the nephew maternally of the French Bishop St. Martin of Tours. A marginal note in the Cambridge MS. of William of Malmesbury's De Antiquitate Glastoniae tells us that St. Patrick after his captivity in Ireland met in England the two French Bishops St. Germanus and St. Lupus (after the Alleluia victory) and that he was twenty-two years under the teaching of St. Germanus at Auxerre. The honest and learned Abbe Riguet says that Pope Celestine consecrated St. Palladius instead of St. Patrick. He says "some authors, anxious to connect the Church of Ireland with Rome, wish to say that the Apostle was ordained Bishop by Pope Celestine. This is a detail which older documents do not give.... The first Bishop of Ireland is certainly Palladius, and not Patrick. On hearing of the death of Palladius, Patrick retraced his steps to Auxerre, where he was ordained by St. Germanus."
Furthermore, Bede, so devoted to Rome, never even mentions St. Patrick! He ignores the Celtic saint consecrated by a French Bishop.
The marginal note above referred to is only more explicit in detail than Malmesbury is in the text, for there he says that at the time of troubles with the Angles and the Pelagian heretics St. Germanus of Auxerre came to the help of the British, winning the Alleluia Victory, and returning home "took Patrick into the company of his immediate followers, and sent him some years afterwards by the command of Pope Celestine to preach to the Irish." But there is very little doubt that, although Rome and the Celtic Church were quite friendly in those days, Germanus acted on his own initiative. This accounts for the silence of Bede about Patrick. Bede's interests and knowledge were wrapped up mainly in the Roman Church and not in the great missionary efforts of the Celtic Church.
On the other hand, the remains of dedications of the above churches to Medwy, Lucius' messenger, and Dyfan and Fagan, the Pope's messengers in reply, as well as to Lucius himself, certainly appears confirmatory, not only of the whole story, but of a Pope's part in it. But if the date was 167 it was not Eleutherius: if it was 183, it was.
To sum up, it is interesting that English tradition associates Lucius with building churches in four great religious centres, Glastonbury, London, Llandaff and Gloucester, and that there still stand associated with him St. Michael's on the Tor at Glastonbury, St. Peter's, Cornhill, London, claimed to be the earliest Metropolitan Church of London, and four churches near Llandaff, one actually dedicated to him as Lleurwgg, and the others respectively to Dyfan, Fagan, and Medwy. The Welsh Church commemorated the baptism of King Lucius on May 28, and his Martyrdom on December 3, the latter an interesting commemoration. The Festival of St. Dyfan was kept on April 8, and that of St. Fagan on August 8. They were commemorated together on May 24, obviously part of the King Lucius commemoration. St. Elfan's Day was on September 26, and St. Medwy's on January 1.
Geographically and architecturally there is strikingly visible support to these ancient traditions of the early Church at Glastonbury. Just as to the south-west of the little city stands Wyrral Hill, where the feet of the first disciples rested, where once grew the Holy Thorn, so to the southeast looms St. Michael's Tor, visible over half Somerset, and even from other counties, and crowned with the tower of St. Michael's Church, successor of the one wrecked by a severe earthquake." A lonely church set on a hill far above human habitation bespeaks here, as elsewhere, the site of a primitive Christian church converted from, or taking the place of, a heathen temple. It was the wise custom of our forefathers when a country was won for Christ to consecrate to Him, by crosses or churches, spots which were sacred in the minds of the inhabitants. This explains such lonely churches on hills as St. Michael's. Another is at Churchdown in Gloucestershire, which rises sheer out of the plain, the church at the terribly steep top ministering to the hamlets of Hucklecote and Chosen at its base. But the examples are common. It is a relic of Baal or Sun worship, when people worshipped in the groves and high places often mentioned in the Bible. And it is not at all uncommon to find these loftily-placed, lonely churches dedicated to St. Michael, as here, to signify that Christ and His angels had triumphed over the devil and his angels.
Rather more than one hundred years after the coming of St. Joseph to Glastonbury, and the setting up of his little wattle church, the religion of Christ prevailed. It had been fostered here by King Arviragus, by direct missionary work; by the return of the converted family of King Caractacus straight from the feet of St. Paul; by the coming of Christian Roman soldiers and traders and colonists; by Apostolic and sub-Apostolic missions; and finally consummated by a mission from the Church of the Great Mistress of the World. The temples of Baal fell, and Britain was Christian. The Church of Rome in modern days scoffs at our beautiful British tradition of the Arimathaean Mission. She did not do so as long as we were in union with her. And Robert Parsons the great and self-sacrificing Jesuit, a man of noble zeal, embalmed the tradition in his Three Conversions of England, viz., by St. Joseph, by SS. Fagan and Dyfan, and by St. Augustine. It is extremely significant that, of the "Three Perpetual Choirs" of Britain, Glastonbury is at the foot of the Tor, once a centre of Druidic worship (as the tower of the Christian church still amidst all weathers and lights triumphantly proclaims north, south, east, and west); and Ambresbury is close' to Stonehenge, the great temple of Druidic worship.
This dominating Tor rises out of the plain, and is the centre of a great basin ringed mound with hills. It is one of the few places in England where you can see more than a clear mile in every direction, and you can see many miles in every direction. There is a perpetual breeze at the top. One wishes that the little church could be restored, and the hill become a place of pilgrimage for consumptives, who could breathe the pure air, and rest, and say their devotions on this age-consecrated spot, and perchance stop on their downward journey to crave a drink of water from the medicinal waters of the Chalice Well.*
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* After a dream by one Matthew Chancellor in 1750 for a short time the water was in great demand, and a small spa was formed. It is a strong chalybeate, reputed to be especially good for asthma, phthisis and cancer. The spring yields about 25,000 gallons a day, and never lessens. Radioactivity has been found in it. |
As one stands here on the Tor with an absolutely uninterrupted circle of view, one can well understand that the spot was chosen for the worship of the sun. Perhaps it was this commanding lane, with the sacred well at its foot, which led to the presence of the court of Arviragus. Certain it is there are no lake villages in the Kingdom equal to the two which lie amid the marshes which surround the town - those of Godney and Meare – and the remains found in them date, roughly, from 200 BC.