I read my first book by Mary Stewart in the summer between fifth and sixth grade, it was the first book in her Merlin trilogy, The Crystal Cave, and it opened my eyes to many things in the realm of mythology, among them was the notion that there were actual historical antecedents for Camelot and King Arthur, subjects that I had fascinated me for a few years by the time I had turned eleven, but which I thought of as figures of myth and legend, like Hercules, Perseus and Theseus whose adventures were fantastical and magical to the point of being unreal.
Mary Stewart wrote her series of Arthurian romance from the perspective of Merlin; she set the time in the fifth century CE, when Roman influence was waning in the British Isles and the Christians among them were in the minority, her books linked the rise of Arthur to a Roman dynasty about one hundred and fifty years before Patrick, left England for Ireland.
She wrote about the Roman Army in which Arthur’s father Uther, and his uncle Vortigern, bore rank. Through her depiction of the Roman army she introduced me to the mystery cult of Mithras, who was known throughout Gaul as Sol Invictus. She wrote about the Celtic people of Gallia and she wrote about the Druids; she wrote about their myths and peeled away the most fantastical elements, she put human beings at the center of the narrative, and left me to wonder if what was left…even the traces of magic…if it might not be true.
The characters in her chronicle: Vortigern and Uther Pendragon, Merlin, Igraine and Arthur were presented with a kind of grittiness that made me believe in them. They were already mythic figures in my imagination, but through her narrative they became real…I was connected to them.
Through her discussion of Mithraism I came to be interested in the real history of Christianity, ultimately to become a theologian, specializing in the history and philosophy of religion. Long before I began my formal studies in those fields I became a researcher and began to question everything that I had been told was true about the origins of the Church.
I cannot thank Mary Stewart enough for this; if my interest in those subjects had not been peaked by her authorship, I would not be the person I am today, and for that she is a hero of mine.
She had an oversized influence on my life, though I did not read much of her work beyond the Merlin Trilogy. I had begun my reading on Arthur a few years before I read her, but after her I was on a path, I read everything I could get my hands on concerning Arthur, including Mallory’s, Le Morte d’Arthur, and all of the variations of that text which flowed from it.
From Mary Stewart I learned about many other things, I discovered the real presence of Arthurian myth in European culture, how it served as a beacon of hope, providing my ancestors with a set or mores and a code of conduct that instigated and promoted the chivalric ideal, supported the notion of the common-wheel, which is the foundation of the legal system that has done more to set people free from the tyranny of monarchs than any other law code in the history of the world. At the same time I learned how the Arthurian lore becoming a vehicle for subverting the hegemonic authority of the Catholic Church in western Europe, with the Albigensian Heresies, and other counter cultural movements such as the around the turn of the tenth century, such as the Cathars and later the Beghards and Beguines.
Mary Stewart died on this day in 2014, at the age of 97 she ascended into heaven.
