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Arthur's Round Table

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Laura Hibbard Loomis
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Extract

Nothing in connection with Arthurian legend is more familiarly referred to than Arthur's Round Table. From 1155 when Wace first mentioned it down to the present day the Round Table has symbolized the idea of fraternal fellowship, whether as of old in chivalrous deeds of arms or as today in the asperities of political discussion. It has become perhaps the most famous piece of furniture ever invented by the mind of man and the concept of it, at once simple and profound, has kept curiously enough even in our own day the idea of a real table around which real men gather and of the symbolic value of their association.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 41 , Issue 4 , December 1926 , pp. 771 - 784
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1926

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References

1 For general discussion and bibliography see J. D. Bruce, Evolution of Arthurian Romance, Göttingen, 1923, I, 82-87.

2 Some archaeological material was cited by A. C. L. Brown in 1900, “The Round Table before Wace,” [Harvard] Studies in Philology and Literature, VII, 183-505. In 1924, Mod. Phil., XXII, 116, he stated: “Arthur's feasts and the feast of the Grail castle were round because the Celtic fairies feasted in a circle. Arthur as fairy king fell heir to the fairy feasts held especially at Samhain (Nov. 1) in circular mounds, raths, or cromlechs. Of course there is a connection with the ancient round houses of the Celts.” Leaving aside all question of the round houses of the Celts, it should be clear there is no necessary connection between the shape of a hall and a dining table. In historic mediaeval times the long board and trestle type of table was in common use whether in square or in round towers. For ancient Celtic times the only archæological evidence is given by Posidonius (c. 90 b.c.) who said: “The Celts banquet around wooden tables slightly elevated from the ground and when many are assembled they sit in a circle and the bravest sit in the middle like the leader of a chorus.” (Quoted by Brown, Harv. Stud., VII, 195.) Here Posidonius was certainly not referring to a common table but to those small individual tables of which the Celts, like the ancient Greeks, apparently made use. Among the Greeks only one or two guests sat at these tables and they were light enough for Penelope's suitors to hurl about. Cf. T. D. Seymour, Life in the Homeric Age, N. Y., 1914, pp. 203, 209. Prof. Brown's remark “that the Celtic habit of banqueting in a circle and the habit of using a round table” was therefore incautious. Rhys, Arthurian Legend, Oxford, 1891, p. 91, was absolutely correct when he said: “No such thing as a common table figures at Conchobar's court or any other described in the old legends of Ireland.” This fact must be separated from the unquestioned evidence concerning the circular feasts, houses, and stone remains of the ancient Celts.

3 See below, n. 8.

4 Roman de Brut, ed. Le Roux de Lincy, vv. 9994 ff.:

Iloc seoient li vassal
Tot chievalment et tot ingal;
A la table ingalment seoient
Et ingalment servi estoient.
Nus d'als ne se pooient vanter
Qu'il seist plus halt de son per.

5 Cf. the long list of literary references given by L. Gautier, La Chevalerie, Paris, pp. 616-19, chiefly from the romances of chivalry. The evidence of twelfth-century art, which was not considered by M. Gautier, is overwhelmingly in favor of the rectangular table.

6 Cf. Lot, Romania, XXVII (1899), 347, n., and Brown, Mod. Phil., XXII, 116, on Arthur's long (or large?) table mentioned in the Myfyrian Archaeology of Wales, I, 175.

7 For these lists see Brown, Mod. Phil., XXII, 114; PMLA, XXV, 29; Fletcher, Arthurian Material in the Chronicles, Boston, 1906, p. 95, n. 4.

8 Mott, PMLA, XX, 231 ff. (1905). Brugger, op. cit. and Fletcher, p. 142, accepted Mott's argument in large part; Lot, Lancelot en prose, Paris, 1918, p. 245, n. 5, and Bruce, Evolution of Arth. Romance, I, 85, rejected it. For the present writer the unsatisfactory character of Mott's evidence was not so much in the difficulty of explaining a twelfth-century literary statement by reference to folk festivals which took place in a very limited district some six centuries later, but in the fact that even these festivals offered no explanation for the central feature of this inquiry, i.e., the round table. Even Brugger admitted: “Die Ähnlichkeit [of the circular cut in the sod with people sitting about it] konnte aber kaum so gross sein, dass der Vergleich mit einem Tisch sich aufdrängte; und dies erklärt uns, dass wir bei den Schilderungen der Volkfeste den Versammlungsort sonst nicht direckt als ‘runden Tisch’ bezeichnet finden. Mir scheint es deshalb, dass dieser Ausdruck nur ausnahmsweise, nur ganz durch Zufall, geschaffen, dann zufällig in die literatur aufgenommen wurde” (op. cit., p. 244).

9 It is significant that the number of the fellowship varies. Sometimes it is unspecified; again it is said to be thirty-two, fifty, one hundred and fifty, sixteen hundred. In the Christianized versions of the romances the number is commonly given as twelve, supposedly in memory of the twelve Apostles. A Celtic prototype might, however, be cited from the Fled Bricrend (ed. Henderson, Irish Texts, II, p. xliv) which describes Conchobar's royal couch “around which were placed the twelve couches of the twelve heroes of Ulster.” The writer hopes shortly to discuss elsewhere “The Solar Twelve in Pagan and Christian Tradition,” but here a reference, kindly pointed out by R. S. Loomis, may be given as indication of the survival of the solar, not the Christian twelve, in Arthurian romance. Bohors, after winning a great victory is declared the best knight; after him the twelve next best are elected. He is clad in a robe of vermeil samite and seated in a golden chair at a table set in a pavilion. He blushes red with modesty. The twelve knights serve him and then “vout seoir a la table” (Lancelot, ed. Sommer, IV, 265 ff.). Brugger, op. cit., p. 245, n. 8, rightly suspected that in the Chevalier as deux espees the “troi cent et sissante dis” (sis?) knights of the Round Table probably were suggested by the days of the year.

10 Brugger (pp. cit., p. 246, n. 9) got so far as to observe that the similarity between the Arthurian Table and the table of the Last Supper was not accidental for the latter too was “ein Überrest altheidnischen Opferbrauches.” The Gospels of course do not speak of the shape of Our Lord's Table and for Brugger the similarity lay either in the mere table idea or else in the idea of a communal meal. On this point Pliny's letter to Trajan (Epistola 96, written 112 a.d.) affords interesting evidence as to the communal meals of the early Christians and the fear that was felt of them since they were regarded as identical with those of secret societies that were often inimical to government. Such a meal is probably represented in the Roman Catacomb painting known as the Fractio Panis. See below, n. 26.

11 C. R. Morey, “The Sources of Mediaeval Style,” Art Bulletin, 1924, VII, 35, n.; p. 46.

12 Cf. A. van Scheltema, Über die Entwicklung der Abendmahlsdarstellung von der byzant. Mosaikkunst bis zur niederländischen Malerei des 17 Jahrhunderts, Leipzig, 1912.

13 Dobbert, “Das Abendmahl bis gegen den Schluss des 14 Jahrhunderts,” Repertorium f. Kunstwissenschaft, 1890-95, vols. XIII, XIV, XV. Cf. also E. Baldwin-Smith, Early Christian Iconography, Princeton, 1918, pp. 129-41.

14 Given at the end of this paper, n. 26.

15 Miss Weston, From Ritual to Romance, 1920, pp. 118-29, pointed out the striking parallels between the Messianic Fish Meal of the Early Christians and that described in Robert de Boron's Joseph (cf. Bruce, Evolution of Arthur. Romance, I, 233). Miss Weston emphasized the fact, so often neglected by students of the Grail romances, “that Christianity took over and adapted to its own use a symbolism already endowed with a deeply rooted prestige and importance.”

16 This is the view of E. Mâle, L'Art Religieux au XIIe Siècle, Paris, 1924, p. 419. A. K. Porter, Romanesque Sculpture of the Pilgrimage Roads, Boston, 1923, pp. 117, 123, dated the Dijon tympanum 1137-1145, and thought it subsequent to the Last Supper by the headmaster at Chartres.

17 See Porter, op. cit., by whose kind permission several plates are reproduced. Cf. Pl. 136, Dijon; Pl. 93-94, Neuilly-en-Donjon; Pl. 111, St. Julien-de-Jonzy; Pl. 174, Milan, S. Ambrogio; Pl. 199, Pistoia; Pl. 331, Dax, see here Fig. 12, reproduced from plate by Mrs. Porter; Pl. 661 Logroño; Pl. 875, Salamanca; Pl. 1136, Vouvaut, Vendée; Pl. 1148, St. Pons, Hérault; Pl. 1214a, Nantua; Pl. 1292-95, Beaucaire; Pl. 1318, St. Gilles; Pl. 1361, Arles. Aside from certain doubtful cases in which the table is curved to follow the curve of the column on which the capital stood, as in Pl. 471, Toulouse; Pl. 543, Huesca; Pl. 728, Lugo; Pl. 1104, L'Ile Bouchard; Pl. 1214, Issoire, the only notable instance of a sculptured round table in Prof. Porter's exhaustive study is that at Charlieu, Burgundy (Pl. 110, here Fig. 5) which shows an extraordinary mastery of technical problems and belongs, as he said (p. 121) “to the late autumn of Burgundian art.” In the complete survey of Les Ivoires Gothiques Français by M. Raymond Koechlin, Paris, 1924, there is no example of a Last Supper scene in which the straight table does not appear.

18 Prof. Mâle, L'Art Religeux de la Fin du Moyen Age, Paris, 1908, p. 41, n referred to the square table, supposedly that of the Last Supper, which in the 13th century was shown in St. John Lateran, Rome, and was described in the meditation on the Last Supper attributed to St. Bonaventura. (Cf. Robert Mannyng's translation, EETS, 1885, p. 3): “Here table was brode and four square The maner of that cuntre was swych thare.” The description, like the relic itself, at odds though it was with the most ancient Eastern tradition concerning the table of the Last Supper, may nevertheless have had a very real influence on contemporary art and belief. Cf. Stations of Rome, EETS, 1866, ll. 305 ff. See also F. N. Nichols, The Marvels of Rome, Lond., 1889, pp. 131, 182.

19 Reproductions of several illuminations from manuscripts of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries are given by Lanson, Histoire Illustrée de la Litterature française, Paris, 1923, I, p. 45 (reproduced here as Fig. 10), p. 46; Bédier, Histoire de la Litt. frç., Paris, 1923, I, p. 40. A Round Table feast is represented among the fourteenth century frescoes at Castle Runklestein, Austrian Tyrol. The wooden round table known to the chronicler Hardyng (cf. Fletcher, Arthur' Chronicles, p. 252) and to Caxton, still hangs in Winchester Castle. See Smirke, The Hall and Round Table at Winchester, Proceedings of the Archæological Institute of Great Britain, 1846. The present painting of King Arthur enthroned above the rose in the center of this table probably belongs to the Tudor period. From the rose radiate twenty-four lines between which are inscribed the names of twenty-four knights, some of them (Degore, for instance) non-Arthurian. It is probable that when it was first painted the table bore only twelve names. A capital reproduction of the table is to be found in King Arthur's Castle Hotel, Tintagel, Cornwall.

20 Certain details in this Round Table scene which is represented as taking place in an interior room with little external scenes at each side and as having pew-like seats decorated with bands of ornament, strongly suggest comparison with the Last Supper attributed to Pietro Lorenzetti, a fourteenth century Sienese painter who made curious archaistic use of the round table for his painting.

21 Reproduced from K. Benziger, Parzival in der deut. Hds. Illustration des Mittelalters, Strassburg, 1914, Pl. 30. The MS. in question is Munich c Gm 10.

22 Cf. J. Richter and A. C. Taylor, The Golden Age of Classic Christian Art, Lond., 1904, pp. 389 ff.

23 It is perhaps not unimportant to remind those believing in the Celtic origin of the Round Table that there is not only no evidence for the idea of a communal table in ancient Celtic custom but that the very word for table in Irish or Welsh is derived from A. S. or O. N. bord. Cf. Kuno Meyer, Revue Celt., X. 369. Though this word bord is used no idea of a table, but only of an institution, an assembly of bards and minstrels, was expressed by the “Bord gronn” referred to in the following passage: “After that Rhys the son of Tewdwr, prince of Dinevor and Dyfed and Keredigion, having from necessity been some time in Brittany, returned to Wales, and brought with him the system of the Round Table, where it had become forgotten, and he restored it as it is with regard to minstrels and bards, as it had been at Caerleon upon Usk, under the Emperor Arthur.” (Welsh quoted by Zimmer, Göttingische gelehrte Anz., 1890, p. 796, and kindly translated for me by Prof. A. C. L. Brown.) Since this passage in the Iolo MSS. was admitted by Zimmer himself to be “jungere Fabelei und Combination,” it does not call for further discussion. Finally, it may be said with reference to Miss Weston's idea (Mèlanges offerts a M. M. Wilmotte. Paris, 1910) that the Round Table had some connection with the whirling round house of Celtic mythic story because Béroul, Tristan, I. 3384, said the Round Table “tornoie come le monde” is altogether unlikely. A passage in the Queste (Furnivall, p. 67) explains that the Round Table was so made because of the “rondeche del monde et la circonstance des planetes e des elemens,—dont on puet dire que en la table reonde est li mondes senefies.” In actual fact we might also notice that a famous silver table of Charlemagne's was made of three round bucklers which represented the earth, the constellations, the movements of the planets. Here, if necessary, was the fact of a round table, which “tornoie come le monde.”

24 Cf. Fletcher, Arth. Chronicles, p. 84; Zimmer, Gött. gel. Anz. 1890, pp. 829-30; Golther, Zts. f. vergleich. Litteraturgesch., 1890, III, 218; refs. by Brown, Harv. Studies, VII, 194, n.

25 M. Gautier, Chanson de Roland, Tours, 1872, II, 73-75, questioned Gaston Paris's assertion that the idea of the Twelve Peers in commemoration of the Apostles was not “dans la poesie primitive.” M. Gautier noted its appearance in the Chanson de Roland, the Voyage â Jerusalem, Karlamagnus Saga.

26 The Round Table of Christ in Art:

First, second, third centuries: Roman catacomb paintings.

Catacomb of St. Priscilla, Capella Greca. Seven people, one of them a woman, sit at a round table on which lie five loaves, two fishes, a two-handled chalice. Probably the representation of an actual commemorative Eucharistic repast. Cf. J. Wilpert, Fractio Panis, 1895, Pl. III; W. Lowrie, Monuments of the Early Church, N. Y., 1923, p. 227.

Sacrament Chapel of St. Callistus. Christ Himself consecrates the bread and fish lying on a classical round-topped tripod. Cf. Michel, L'Histoire de l'Art, Paris, 1905, I, 56.

Ibid., Christ, the Fisher of Men, draws a line from the sea; behind Him, seven men feast at a round table. Cf. Lowrie, op. cit., p. 224.

Symbolically suggestive pictures of this type, necessitated by the dangers of the early Church, gradually gave way to definite presentments of the Last Supper (cf. Dobbert, Repertorium, XIV, 182 ff.; Rohault de Fleury, La Messe, IV, 6, Pl. 256; L'Evangile, II, Pl. 69; Wilpert, Die Malereien Katacomben Romes, 1903, passim.

Sixth century.

Fig. 1. Ravenna mosaic. San Apollinare Nuovo, reproduced from Millet, L'Iconographie, Fig. 268. This same type of Last Supper, treated as an event, and with the same arrangement of couch and table ends, is also found in the Rossano Gospels. Cf. Herbert, Illuminated Manuscripts, p. 23.

Fig. 2. Corp. Chr. Coll. Camb. MS. 286, Gospels (perhaps one of the MSS. sent to St. Augustine). The Institution of the Sacrament, reproduced from Dobbert, Repertorium, XVIII, 339, Fig. 53. Cf. R. van Marke, La Peinture Romane, 1921, p. 34.

Eighth Century.

Tours, Sacramentary of Autun, cir. 845, Institution of the Sacrament. See Boinet, La Miniature Carolingienne, Paris, 1913, Pl. XLI. The inscription on the table reads: “Cena Domini.”

Ninth Century.

Fig. 7. Berlin, Kaiser Friedrich Museum, ivory, cir. 850, school of Metz, reproduced from A. Goldschmidt, Die Elphenbeinskulpturen aus der Zeit der karolingischen u. sächischen Kaiser, Berlin, 1914, I, No. 76.

Tenth century.

Fig. 8. Berlin, Kaiser Friedrich Museum, ivory book cover, reproduced from Goldschmidt, I, No. 124.

Eleventh century.

Aix-la-Chapelle, gold altar, made after 1001. Cf. Rohault de Fleury, La Messe, I, Pl. 87. In this Christ is at the left of the round table; Judas stands alone in front; the other apostles are grouped at the far side of the table. Cf. Figs. 6 and 7 here.

Fig. 3. Munich MS. Gospels given to Bamberg by Henry II (the Saint), reproduced from G. Leidinger, Miniaturen aus Hds. der Kgl. Hof.-und Stadtsbibliothek in München, V, Pl. 17.

Twelfth Century.

Fig. 4. Erlangen, Gumpertsbibel, reproduced from Swarzenski, Die Salzburger Malerei, Leipzig, 1908-13, Taf. XLVIII, Abbildungen 148.

Fig. 5. Charlieu, Burgundy, stone sculpture, reproduced from Porter, Romanesque Sculpture, Pl. 110.

Fig. 6. London, British Museum, Egerton 1139, Psalter made for Melissenda, wife of Fulke of Anjou, reproduced from Millet, L'Iconographie, Fig. 279. Cf. Herbert, Illuminated MSS., p. 57.

New York, Morgan Library, Limoges Gospels, No. 101. In this Christ holds in outstretched hands the bread and chalice; the apostles are grouped on one side of a narrow semi-circular table, similar to that represented in the Charlieu sculpture. In the Limoges Gospels, as in the famous Hortus Deliciarum, and the Gumpertsbibel (Fig. 4 here) it is interesting to notice that the traditional round table is used for the Last Supper scene but in other scenes, the Supper at Emmaus, for instance, the rectangular table is represented. The earliest fresco of the Last Supper scene with a straight table seems to be that in Garene, Cappadocia, and to date from the tenth or the eleventh century. Cf. Rott, Kleinasiatische Denkmäler, 1905, Fig. 75, a reference for which I am inhebted to Prof. Porter. The earliest illumination with a straight table for this scene is in a manuscript dating from 1011-1014. Cf. S. Beissel, Des hl. Bernward Evangelienbuch, Hildesheim, 1891, Taf. xviii.