Artorius Rex

Jul2004

• myth

Okay, I have 2 major issues with King Arthur:

1. the history (normally I'm not so anal with historical accuracy but this just gets worse everytime I think of it - cos for one I've always wanted to make my own 'historical' version of King Arthur, and (2) the trailer really pushed this as THE True story behind the legend). Then they went and pushed 100 years of history into the space of a week or 2 (correct me if I'm wrong, but it goes something like: Romans withdrew from Hadrian's Wall 410ish, from Britain 467ish, and the Battle of Baden Hill was 511). The movie moved Baden Hill from the border of Wales and England (where an 'Arthur' defended the Celtic South-West from the Saxons who had by then taken much of modern-day England) to Hadrian's Wall (border of Scotland) where 'Arthur' defended Celtic England from a single raiding party of Saxons who had entered via Scotland (which historically was a Celtic stronghold....) My history's not great, I know, but the movie's was very dodgy.

2. The anti-Christian thing: Ppl have suggested the movie's anti-establishment, but after a cpl years of humanities at UTS i'd argue it's postcolonial (re-interpreting history/legends, essentially from the side of the colonised). It wasn't a simple 'poor oppressed Celts', because the Roman Empire wasn't shown as overly oppressive, but many elements of it particularly were (especially when they professed to be Christian). A lot of that I can handle though, it's almost just a literary device, but Arthur's 'journey' particularly bothered me.

Basically, near the beginning of the film, Arthur prays to God, offering himself as a Christ-like sacrifice for his friends. But over the course of the movie, God and the Church reject Arthur - God taking his friends, the Church excommunicating Pelagius (more on him below...). At the end of the final battle, bent over the body of Lancelot, Arthur cries out to God "it wasn't supposed to be like this", or something along those lines. The film then cuts to a pagan wedding between Arthur and Guinevere - complete with stone circle and Merlin as a Celtic Shaman. Stripped of Christian symbolism, I read this as Arthur's reciprocal rejection of God and His Church.

(Appendices)

i. Pelagius

Pelagius was pushed throughout the film - Arthur kept referring to him as a great teacher/mentor/friend. Towards the end Arthur learnt that Pelagius had been excommunicated and died, that the Rome he believed in didn't exist - probably a turning point for the character (given it was mostly fighting from this point to the end of the film). Pelagius had some good things to say - Arthur kept on about 'free will and equality', and (ridiculously anachronistically) freed Celtic slaves to prove his worth. But Pelagius' heresy was to deny Original Sin and Christ's Redemption of mankind. Pelagius claimed Adam's sin and Christ were just 'examples' to man.

More in the Catholic Encyclopedia online - the first couple of paragraphs have the basics.

I've been reading about Pelagius for a couple of years now, (but nothing serious...) and my understanding of him is this: Pelagius was fighting against corruption (good on him) and against what he saw as a dualistic taint (the idea that Good and Evil are two equal forces, constantly at war) - when things got personal with St Augustine he seems to have accused Augustine of tainting Christianity with Manicheanism (which Augustine converted from, and became a staunch opponent of). But I think he misunderstood the doctrine of Original Sin (admittedly history is hazy, and perhaps it wasn't particularly well defined at the time). Pelagius appears to have believed that the idea of Original Sin gave too much power to Evil - pushing in turn the idea that the grace of God's creation is enough to save mankind (with elements of 'Faith Alone' a millenium before the Reformation - more on this in that Catholic Encyclopedia entry).

As far as the use of Pelagius in King Arthur goes, it's all a little confusing... They pushed the more 'Catholic' interpretations of Pelagius - ie, free will and equality. Which made me think it was a reaction to some of the hardline 'eye-for-an-eye' attitudes of modern Protestantism. And maybe the filmmakers missed the fact that much of Pelagius was what comes up in Protestantism, while the good parts are strongly held by the Catholic Church, thus ditching Christianity in one broad sweep and going for some revisionist neo-paganism.