File:The greater abbeys of England (1908) (14785073085).jpg

Identifier: greaterabbeysofe01gasq (find matches)
Title: The greater abbeys of England
Year: 1908 (1900s)
Authors: Gasquet, Francis Aidan, 1846-1929
Subjects: Abbeys
Publisher: New York, Dodd, Mead and company
Contributing Library: The Library of Congress
Digitizing Sponsor: The Library of Congress

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siteof one of the most renowned sanctuaries of the Christianworld. The history of this sacred spot goes back to daysbefore the age of written records, for it is founded uponlegends which connect it even with some of the first dis-ciples of our Lord Himself. The story of the place istold in song and prose, in fact and fiction, in the legendsand in the chronicles, which relate the beginnings of theEnglish people. It opens with a vision of a venerableman from the tomb of Christ, bearing with him the HolyGrail, the chalice of his Masters Supper, and plantingin the soil of Somerset his staff cut from some Easternthorn. Tennyson thus alludes to this ancient legend: The cup, the cup itself from which our LordDrank at the last sad Supper with his own,This from the blessed land of Aramat,After the day of darkness, when the deadWent wandering over Moriah—the good SaintArimathaean Joseph, journeying broughtTo Glastonbury, where the winter thornBlossoms at Christmas, mindful of our Lord. (134)
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GLASTONBURY And the long story of the place ends in the sixteenthcentury with the violent and ignominious death of an old,white-haired monk, the last of a long and honourable suc-cession of abbots, by order of an English king in the evildays of Tudor despotism. Between St. Joseph of Arimathea, the hero of Glaston-burys earliest legend, and Abbot Richard Whiting, thevictim of an English kings rapacity, the space of well-nigh fifteen centuries intervened; and Chalice Hill andTor Hill, which still look down upon the ruins, and thevery names of which are associated with him whobrought the Holy Grail to our shores, and with himwhose gallows crowned the height by St. Michaelstower, have been silent witnesses during all those cen-turies of a great and varied history. The memories ofthe British Inyswytryn, the Saxon Glaestingburge, themodern Glastonbury, or as it was sometimes called theisle of Avalon, include the names of Arthur, the Britishhero, and of Alfred, the saviour of the Saxon race

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