Berard, Christopher, “King Arthur’s charter: a thirteenth-century French satire against Bretons”, Journal of the International Arthurian Society 8 (2020): 3–37.
- journal article
On the verso of the last leaf of a twelfth-century manuscript containing the poetry of Hilarius, a student of Abelard, appears a faux charter purporting to have been issued by Arthur, king of the Britons, in the hundredth year of his immortality. In the act, Arthur thanks the descendants of his British subjects for their fidelity and grants them an exclusive franchise to fish in secret rivulets. The privilege contains two prohibitions: one prohibiting Britons from wearing shoes and the other prohibiting them from owning cats. This article provides a diplomatic edition, English translation and analysis of King Arthur’s Charter. It identifies the strange stipulations of the charter as tropes of anti-Breton satire, attested also in the Privilège aux Bretons (c. 1240), an Old French song that mocks the customs and occupations of impoverished Breton immigrants to thirteenth-century France.
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