100 NOTES AND QUERIES
James P. Carley (ed.), Glastonbury Abbey and
the Arthurian Tradition. Pp. xii + 646
(Arthurian Studies XLV). Cambridge:
D. S. Brewer, 2001. £75.00 (ISBN 0-85991-
572-7).
JAMES CARLEY's scholarly career has been
intimately involved with Glastonbury Abbey
and the various traditions associated with it.
The extent of this involvement is clearly
reflected in the essays reprinted here under
his editorship: he is sole or joint author of
seven out of the twenty-three (XI, XVI±XX,
XXIII), and two others (VIII, XV) earlier
appeared in a collection he co-edited.
The title of the collection suggests a focus on
the Arthurian connections with Glastonbury,
reflected most coherently in the first three
sections: `The Background' (I), `Departure
Points' (II±III), `Arthur's Death and Burial at
Glastonbury' (IV±XVII), although even here
there are occasional irrelevances (for example,
X, on the Glastonbury plate which has nothing
to do with Arthurian matters). But the ques-
tion of relevance becomes more pointed in the
final two sections, `Romances and Chronicles'
(XVIII±XXI) and `Other Texts (XXII±XXIII),
where the connection to any Arthurian tradi-
tion is at best tenuous and most of the time
non-existent: XVIII, an account of a fragment
of Perlesvaus, is directly concerned with neither
Glastonbury nor Arthur, and the edition and
translation of the De Origine Gigantum (XX±
XXI) seems relevant only to Glastonbury, not
to Arthurian tradition. The final section on
`Other Texts' occupies over a 130 pages but
has only marginal connection to Arthur. The
discussion of him in the Glastonbury Tablets
(XXII) is extremely brief (505±8) and wholly
derivative, and he does not figure in the record
of relics at Glastonbury in the fourteenth cen-
tury (XXIII).
At other points, particularly within the long-
est section on `Arthur's Death and Burial at
Glastonbury', the connection between essay
and the book's ostensible subject seems remote.
XII, for example (`The Arthurian Epitaph in
Malory's Morte Arthur') is only glancingly
concerned with Glastonbury (in Lydgate's
Fall of Princes, which figures prominently in
the discussion, Glastonbury is not mentioned).
In other respects there seems a degree of dupli-
March 2002
cation. There are actually three different essays
on Arthurian epitaphs (XI±XIII) and two on
Hardyng and Glastonbury (XIV±XV).
There is also a rather curious Appendix
titled `The major texts dealing with Arthur's
burial at Glastonbury' (617±28), but with a
running title reading `Was Mordred Buried
at Glastonbury?' It consists of a series of
passages, largely reprinted, without comment-
ary or explanatory notes. The lack of an
annotated bibliography, at least of the relev-
ant manuscript materials, is a matter for
regret.
These points suggest that this volume falls
uncomfortably between several stools, the lit-
erary, the historical, and the antiquarian.
Moreover, while almost all of these essays
are valuable in their own terms, they are all
accessible elsewhere (fourteen in Arthurian
Literature, published by the publishers of this
volume) and only rarely have been signifi-
cantly revised for the present volume (Michael
Lapidge's new edition of the Vera Historia de
Morte Arthuri (VI) stands apart from this
generalization). One cannot help feeling that
Glastonbury scholarship would have been bet-
ter served by Carley writing his own history of
these matters, as he is supremely qualified to
do. Such an undertaking would have permitted
a more critically selective (and concise) use of
the materials assembled here.
A. S. G. Edwards
London
Elizabeth M. Tyler (ed.), Treasure in the
Medieval West. Pp. xi + 174. Woodbridge
and York: York Medieval Press, in associ-
ation with The Boydell Press and with the
Centre for Medieval Studies, University of
York, 2000. £45.00 (ISBN 0-9529734-8-0).
THIS volume examining aspects of treasure
from late Antiquity to the end of the Middle
Ages publishes nine papers from the 1997 York
Medieval Seminar on the topic. It presents a
wide-ranging and varied series of contribu-
tions, chronologically arranged. The volume
is excellently edited and handsomely produced,
with more than twenty good-quality black-
and-white photographs and other illustrations.
The collection is multidisciplinary in character,
covering political and social history, archaeol-