King Arthur in... Otranto?!

What is the ancient Briton doing up a tree in the south of Italy?

Mosaic detail, Otranto Cathedral

Otranto, now a backwater, was a major medieval port. Pilgrims walked the length of Europe to get there, catching boats onward to the Holy Land. Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II pulled a sickie there on his way to the Sixth Crusade, getting himself excommunicated by the Pope for his apparent lack of fervour. Frederick, whose blood mixed Norman, Sicilian and German, inherited Otranto from Norman invaders who had taken it from the Byzantine Empire, who had conquered it from the Lombards, who took over from Rome, who won it from Greeks, who colonised the Messapians (whose word for water, odra, named the city). And refugees fled across the strait from Byzantine purges, bringing Eastern Orthodox iconographic painting with them.

In short, Otranto was a hub for culture and art, a place of interaction for civilians and soldiers and religions.

But - even allowing for the city's rich mix - a named image of King Arthur is indeed "enigmatic" (as Duke University's site Dante's library puts it).

The famous mosaic

Like many visitors who wander into Otranto's cathedral, I got quite lost in the huge (300m²) mosaic covering its floor. From the portico to the altar, wall to wall, through hell and earth and paradise, this masterpiece synthesises the supernatural and the everyday. Completed in 1165, it stands among Italy's great medieval works of art, an encyclopaedia of Romanesque memes.

The Tree of Life (central nave)

Walking up the right-hand nave, I could easily spot "REX ARTURUS" in its central Tree of Life. But the general impression of the work is already so polymorphous and immersive, I didn't dwell on the weirdness of the king's presence. It took a while for the questions to surface:

What is he doing there?
Why is he there?

Google offers no simple answer, just further mystery. Indeed, the whole section of mosaic around Arthur's figure is assigned no theme in this explanatory diagram from the Italian wikipedia pages:

Red and white section themes omit Arthur (green circle)

It has taken some digging, in the bookshop and online, to construct something of an answer.

The artist

Design of the mosaic was led by a monk, probably a native, who spoke the local Greek dialect (rather than a refugee from the east). His name, Pantaleon (Πανταλέων or Pantaleone), is already obscure in its meaning: all-merciful, perhaps, or like, totally, a lion if you prefer. Better yet, we know nothing of his birth and death. Of his life, conjecture abounds.

But he did sign his mosaic, in Latin, in pretty black and white stones, just under Noah's Ark (symbolic of the Church)

THIS WORK MADE BY THE HAND OF THE PRESBYTER PANTALEONE
(HOC OP[US] FIERI P[ER] MANUS PANTALEONIS P[RES]B[YTE]RI)

And his likeness, if not of one of his team, features in the mosaic, kneeling before a unicorn (symbolic either of royalty, chastity or Christ):

The monastery where he trained is only 3 km south of the cathedral. It took its name from the "hovels" (casole in the Salentine dialect) where Basilian monks went to pray. So in reality the site, populated by refugees fleeing Byzantine purges, predated its documented founding (by the colourfully titled Bohemond I of Antioch). Before receiving Bohemond's patronage, conditions for the monks must have been simple; as the name recalls, the Monastero di San Nicola di Casole began as a place of migrants and hermits, rock-hewn crypts and lonely hovels.

But by Pantaleon's time, it had flourished into one of the most important libraries in Europe. Here, texts were translated between languages such as Greek, Latin, Hebrew and Arabic. The level of culture and learning in this corner of Salento was world-class. We know this, in part, because of the works which survived the library's destruction: works "borrowed" but not returned by passing scholars with a taste for the best manuscripts.

Ruins of the monastery

So these mosaicist monks were immersed in a world of cultural exchange, daily translating stories of multinational origin.  A nice app, with texts in English and designed for exploring Salento through story, imagines Pantaleon's excitement when a new cartload of books has arrived:
"I say to myself that a silent miracle is happening in San Nicola di Casole: when we are sitting in the dining hall I listen to voices and stories weaving together on the table, and I think that us, too, are becoming a big, living library where each man, as if he was a book, is more desired, and welcomed, the more different he appears in his origin, his story, his look."

It helps, I think, to hear the exuberance in the voice of this senior clergyman; he becomes more than the technical co-ordinator of a studio of artisans. The idea prepares us for the job of understanding one small corner of his product...

Arthur and the cat

Briefly, what do we see?

The tree of life, central, with Eden to the left; Adam and Eve are expelled right of the trunk by an angel (the scene is traditional rather than "correct"). Next to Eve, a rampant leopard-spotted cat bars Arthur's way; the Briton is shown mounted, and then his image repeats, this time unseated with the cat tearing his throat. A naked man rises over the scene, gesturing. "REX ARVRVS" is sandwiched between two figures. To the right again, we're back in the Old Testament with another violent end; this time Cain and Abel.

Arthur

We need immediately to "unsee" two misleading things: Arthur's Christmas cracker crown, and his raised right hand. Both are the invention of restorers. Here's a sketch, made by a famous French antiquarian, from before the mosaic was touched up:

Aubin-Louis Millin de Grandmaison

Arthur is sometimes said to be mounted on a horse, but don't fall for it. Look again at the beast he rides: horned, cloven hoofed. No medieval artist would make such a mistake: even-toed hoofed mammals, like cows sheep and goats, are a long way away from odd-toed donkeys and horses. Arthur's mount has small ears and large horns (or small horns and big ears, if you want), a small tail and balls which point backwards, nothing like a stallion's. If it isn't a fantasy hybrid it's a billy goat; a sign of Arthur's fallen - sinful - nature.

The cat

A sow gave birth to a kitten. The swineherd, presumably unsettled, tossed the newborn cat into the sea. Instead of drowning, the kitten swam the Menai Strait and made it alive to the Island of Môn, where it grew... and grew... and started eating the local people.

Island of Môn, home of Cath Palug

The fierce scratching/clawing (palug) cat was a well-known character in Welsh folklore. Around Pantaleon's time, the poem was copied into the earliest surviving Welsh-only manuscript, the Black Book of Carmarthen.
Here, it is Arthur himself who narrates. He almost tells us that it was Fair Cai, his trusted companion, who killed the cat:

Translation by Rachel Bromwich

... but the manuscript is missing the following page, and the poem ends there. We don't find out quite what happened. Somebody, clearly, killed her; and the fight was impressive enough to be told in Arthur's own words, as he lists achievements by himself and his men.

French folklore has a similar story. A kitten, fished from a lake, goes on to eat the fisherman and grow to be huge. A knight, identified with King Arthur, seeks out the cat; their battle is ferocious. The cat, lodging its claws in the hero's shield, clings on so hard that its paws have to be hacked away with a sword.

This detail might account for the missing patch in the pre-restoration sketch, filled today with Arthur's waving right arm. Elsewhere in the mosaic, a man fights left-handed with a club and shield:

Perhaps the original design gave Arthur reins, a shield (with or without claw marks!) or nothing at all?

In another version of the tale, the monstrous cat kills Arthur, invades England, and becomes king. It would fit with the scene in Otranto, with the cat tearing out the unseated rider's throat. It might also explain the naked man rising above the scene, as Arthur's soul leaving his dying body (the other theory is that Merlin, naked and thus without sin, watches over the battle).

Killing the Briton king and taking over his throne obviously echoes of the Norman conquests of England (completed by Pantaleone's time) and Wales (ongoing). But, for the Normans to identify themselves with the regicidal cat would be odd. Particularly so because, as we will see, they identified themselves with Arthur as a model of regal heroism.

But whatever the revised details and lost references, this story - and its outlandish variants - have made it all the way down to modern Arthurian romance:

Greek to Latin (via Celtic)

Cath Palug, then, was a Welsh story. So I jumped, when I stumbled across a passing suggestion that the mosaic might have been commissioned by a Welshman.

Named in the mosaic, Otranto's Archbishop Jonathas (Arcivescovo Gionata) ORDERED THIS WORK "IUSSIT HOC OP[US]". If the mosaic's commissioner were Welsh, that would explain beautifully the fact that Arthur appears, fighting Palug's Cat (if that is indeed the story told by the scene). Now the Archbish might have been many things. But is there any good evidence, or precedent, for the idea that he was Welsh?

Let's start with a map of the territory. Southern Italy appears united under the Norman kings of Sicily:

The Kingdom of Sicily c.1154 (Hillfighter)

Let's not be misled, though, by the homogenous blue colouring. The 1150s and '60s saw plenty of rebellion against the Normans, both in Sicily and in Puglia. There was power play also in the church, which had recently completed its long slide into schism between the Latin and Greek rites, and baronial rebellions in Puglia received support from adjacent Byzantium.

But things hadn't always been so tense.

Sicilian society prior to the Normans was a mix of Greek/Christian and Arab/Muslim, with most people speaking and worshipping on a spectrum. Otranto was a similar blend of cultures; you can still read an Arabic invocation of Allah, gracing the frescos in a Christian church, the beautiful Basilica of San Pietro:

Kufic script in a Christian fresco, Otranto

This continued under Norman rule, with Arabic-speaking Christians playing important roles, up until the time of the Otranto mosaic. By then, Latin culture had completed its fundamentalising push against cheek-by-jowl conviviality, relegating Muslim and Greek/Byzantine culture. The cathedral in Otranto, at Italy's closest geographical point to Byzantium, celebrated both the Greek and the Latin rites in 1177. However, it was a Roman cathedral. (Of course, Italy is still struggling with this kind of interculturality, a thousand years later!)

To change a culture so fundamentally takes some effort. In Otranto, Pantaleone’s boss was a political manipulator loyal to the Norman kings:
“Very probably he [Archbishop Gionata] had entered the kingdom's Latinisation program, started by Roger II and followed strongly by his son William I, in which French and English ecclesiastics were promoted to Episcopal seats to consolidate the monarchy. This is, for example, the case of Richard Palmer, an Englishman, bishop of Syracuse and a member of the royal council after the revolt of 1161, or of Gugliemo, bishop of Brindisi of French origin [...] who commissioned in 1178 a mosaic floor for his cathedral with images from the Chanson de Roland. [Brindisi’s mosaic, by the way, looks strikingly familiar to Otranto’s and is generally assumed to be by the same craftsmen.] We cannot say that Gionata was also a bishop of foreign origin, but there is no doubt about his unconditional support for the political-religious program of Latinisation by the Norman kingdom.” (source)

So we can see that the Normans appointed loyal French and English clerics, who commissioned works of art reflecting their political ambition: "The prominence of King Arthur and Alexander the Great in the mosaic bears witness to Norman claims of ancestral ties to these legendary figures" (V&A). This must have worked two ways, simultaneously suggesting Norman legitimacy, whilst literally setting their chosen iconography in stone.

Duke William's remarkably similar depiction in the Bayeux Tapestry; detail of the Reading copy

The Bayeux Tapestry is another famous case of public art serving Norman political aims. But unlike England, Wales was not easily conquered, neither in military nor religious terms. Welsh Chrisitanity was wonky by Norman standards, with fluid geographical boundaries and a hereditary priesthood. The colonisers stamped their mark with mixed success, bringing in fixed dioceses but tolerating married clergy. "The first bishop to swear an oath of allegiance to the archbishop of Canterbury was Urban of Llandaf in 1107, and by the middle of the century all Welsh bishops had followed suit." (BBC) Perhaps an ambitious Welsh cleric was rewarded for his political loyalty with the throne of an Archdiocese, and repaid the favour in floor tiling?

Still, isn't it a little far-fetched? That a Celt - perhaps someone with Welsh roots - should wash up in Salento and rise as high as Archbishop? A trip to the seaside near Lecce, to the beach at San Cataldo, suggests not. Saint Catald had already set a precedent; an Irish hermit and pilgrim, shipwrecked on his way back home from Jerusalem, he stayed on, becoming Archbishop of Taranto.

San Cataldo, Lecce (Massimo Tolardo)

Beyond good and evil

People argue whether the figure of Arthur is somehow good or bad. He might be a symbol either of vanquishing pride, or royal goodness. An initial look at the evidence suggests he is seriously tainted:

• He stands on a yellow branch, symbol of human separation from the divine
• He's clothed; the sinners in the mosaic are fallen, shamed; the pure are naked
• Although he is turned towards the Tree, his way is barred by the cat
• He's riding a goat, a sign of his sinful - fallen - nature

But it isn't enough to try and interpret the figure of Arthur on its own. Out of context, it makes little sense, an isolated tale of human woe. But sandwiched between the Fall and murderous Cain, Arthur can take on a more nuanced role:
"If secular narrative cycles [...] were effective exemplars on account of their subject matter and affective appeal, they were also exceptionally well suited to the task of personalizing moral and ethical messages by virtue of their specific location on the manuscript page." (book)

A priest at the cathedral who is remembered for spending hours sat studying in the sacristy, Don Grazio Gianfreda interprets Arthur in context, and his work "The Mosaic of Otranto: a medieval library in images" (Il mosaico di Otranto: Biblioteca medioevale in immagini) is very helpful. As well as hammering home the diversity of culture here in Pantaleon's day, Gianfreda sees Arthur's sinful character in light of its surroundings. What he manages to do is stand between original sin and Cain's fratricide, yet find redemption. He sees in Arthur a reference to the Messiah, the divine in earthly form. I don't think this is mere sleight-of-hand, the rose-tinted delusion of a priest determined to ignore the devil under his nose in order to talk about Jesus. I detect a more grandly synthetic view.

Gianfreda and Otranto's harbour

Clearly this is dicing with heresy, a dangerous flirtation with sin. But it is profound; a rebellious insight which recurs globally, expressed wherever religion has pushed hard against the human spirit. The Lollards, 200 years after Pantaleon, asked "If the cross of Christ, the nails, spear, and crown of thorns are to be honoured, then why not honour Judas's lips, if only they could be found?" while Rinzai, 200 years before Pantaleon, quipped "As I see it, there are none who are not of the utmost profundity, none who aren’t emancipated."

Don Gianfreda called the insertion of a secular character into a religious context "contaminatio medievalis". The term seems to be of his own invention, but the idea is not mere fantasy. Medieval writers argued (a century after Pantaleon) that although "garbed in beautiful lies", secular romances "carry significations of propriety and truth" suitable for reading to children.

Just be careful not to overdo it...

So hubris and redemption are represented as a duality behind which Pantaleone points us towards something - something he need not name, because he sees it everywhere. He talks to us on two levels. On the earthly level, he tells us stories - tickles our intellect - and shows us all the extremes of biological fantasy, torture and ecstacy, numerical symbols and daily agricultural life.

The complete work

Any single part of the mosaic, taken alone, allows earthly interpretation, numerological reference, or simple visual pleasure. Put back together, these diverting little scenes resonate with something more - a harmonic vision of complete creation, of all that is. In this sense, the work is indeed a suitable candidate for having inspired Dante. And it merits appreciation beyond what we bring with our usual visitor mindset, beyond an act of cultural consumption bracketed between one gelato and the next.

Other theories

This post is my own synthesis of mainstream opinion. It's the best explanation I can find within the bounds of my own reading and imagination.

There are, of course, other ideas! If you've the patience, wade through this gnostic interpretation. But I'm scared off by mention of the Templars - I've spent more than enough time with Umberto Eco and Foucault's Pendulum.

There is suggestion of another Welsh story in the mosaic, the abduction of Arthur's queen Guinevere by Melwas. But instead of going on a wild hunt for further Arthurian references, it'd seem wiser to notice just that reflex - to go looking for Arthur where he might not exist!

Indeed, there's a theory that Arthur never figured in the original mosaic. I had wondered whether "Rex Arturus" might apply to the naked figure, not the rider of the goat; this theory goes further, arguing the caption was added later, when Arthur mania took over the Medieval world. Its author makes some good points, but beyond deconstructing the "Arthur" figure, he fails to convince. First of all, his alternative hypothesis (Thomas Beckett) seems contrived; he suggests the entire mounted figure was added after Beckett's martyrdom, and then captioned. But worse, he overlooks the presence of an Arthur in Italy, predating Pantaleone's mosaic by twenty-something years. The name was already carved in marble on the door of Modena Cathedral:

Artus de Bretani, Modena, before 1140

Finally, we might imagine Arthur as Pantaleone's reinterpretation of ancient Greek myth. It is suggested that the king in the mosaic was based on a vase painted in Salento's Greek period. In fact, he's supposed to be just like a Dionysos from this vase; if you can find the contending figure, you've better eyes (or a stronger imagination) than mine. The idea that Arthur on his goat is an underworld figure makes sense - no doubt Pantaleone knew his ancient Greek mythology - but it seems to me an echo, not a primary reason.

It's interesting to imagine reasons to doubt mainstream academic opinion. But doubt alone isn't enough; an alternative interpretation is needed, and it will have to be less contrived than whatever else is on offer.

Further reading

Kathryn Berenson Tales from the 'Coilte' V&A Online Journal, Issue No. 2 Autumn 2009

Manuel Antonio Castiñeiras González, L’Alessandro anglonormanno e il mosaico di Otranto: una ekphrasis monumentale, Troianalexandrina, 4, 2004, p. 41-86

Grazio Gianfreda Il mosaico di Otranto: biblioteca medioevale in immagini, Edizioni del grifo, 1990

Helmut Nickel ABOUT PALUG'S CAT AND THE MOSAIC OF OTRANTO Arthurian Interpretations Vol. 3, No. 2 (Spring 1989), pp. 96-105

Linda Safran The Medieval Salento: Art and Identity in Southern Italy University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014

Francesca Tagliatesta, Iconography of the Unicorn from India to the Italian Middle Ages East and West, Vol. 57, No. 1/4 (December 2007), pp. 175-191