The Grail, the Quest, and the World of Arthur 1843841703, 9781843841708

Citation preview

Contributors

LACY (ed.)

RICHARD BARBER · PHILLIP BOARDMAN · JAMES P. CARLEY CAROLINE D. ECKHARDT · P. J. C. FIELD · ANTONIO FURTADO KEVIN J. HARTY · WILL HASTY · DAVID F. JOHNSON MARIANNE E. KALINKE · MARTINE MEUWESE NORRIS J. LACY · RICHARD TRACHSLER

BOYDELL & BREWER Ltd PO Box 9, Woodbridge IP12 3DF (GB) and 668 Mt Hope Ave, Rochester NY 14620-2731 (US) www.boydell.co.uk / www.boydellandbrewer.com

The GRAIL, the QUEST and the WORLD OF ARTHUR

The GRAIL, the QUEST and the WORLD OF ARTHUR

Exploring French, Dutch, Norse, German, and English texts, literary scholars and art historians discuss medieval quest themes, especially but not exclusively the quest for the Holy Grail. A number of the essays trace the relationship, often negative, between Arthurian chivalry and the Grail ethos. Whereas most of the contributors reflect on the popularity of the Grail quest, several examine the comparative rarity of the Grail in certain literatures and define the elaboration of quest motifs severed from the Grail material. An appendix to the volume offers a filmography that includes all the cinematic treatments of the Grail, either as central theme or minor motif. Contributors: See back of jacket

Jacket: The Grail Procession, from Chr Chrétien de Troyes, Le conte du Graal. Paris, BnF, fr. 12577, fol.18v, with permission.

D. S. BREWER

Grail Quest Wld Arthur.indd 1

Edited by NORRIS J. LACY

09/10/2008 08:26:36

ARTHURIAN STUDIES LXXII

THE GRAIL, THE QUEST AND THE WORLD OF ARTHUR

The theme of the quest in Arthurian literature – mainly but not exclusively the Grail quest – is explored in the essays presented here. Taking in the whole range of medieval literatures, and different media from art to film, they cover topics from the Grail of the Crusaders to female desire in the Arthurian legend. There is a particular focus on the incompatibility of the Arthurian world and the Grail quest.

ARTHURIAN STUDIES ISSN 0261–9814 General Editor: Norris J. Lacy

Previously published volumes in the series are listed at the back of this book

THE GRAIL, THE QUEST AND THE WORLD OF ARTHUR

Edited by Norris J. Lacy

D. S. BREWER

© Center for American Heritage Studies 2008 All rights reserved. Except as permitted under current legislation no part of this work may be photocopied, stored in a retrieval system, published, performed in public, adapted, broadcast, transmitted, recorded or reproduced in any form or by any means, without the prior permission of the copyright owner First published 2008 D. S. Brewer, Cambridge Reprinted 2010, 2012 ISBN 978–1–84384–170–8

D. S. Brewer is an imprint of Boydell & Brewer Ltd PO Box 9, Woodbridge, Suffolk IP12 3DF, UK and of Boydell & Brewer Inc. 668 Mount Hope Ave, Rochester, NY 14620–2731, USA website: www.boydellandbrewer.com

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Papers used by Boydell & Brewer Ltd are natural, recyclable products made from wood grown in sustainable forests

Printed in Great Britain by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY

Contents List of Illustrations

vii

Notes on Contributors

xiii

Foreword

xv

NORRIS J. LACY

1

Introduction: Arthur and/or the Grail

1

NORRIS J. LACY

2

The Shape of the Grail in Medieval Art

13

MARTINE MEUWESE

3

The Crusaders’ Grail

25

ANTONIO L. FURTADO

4

Bounds of Imagination: Grail Questing and Chivalric Colonizing in Wolfram von Eschenbach’s Parzival

48

WILL HASTY

5

The Land without the Grail: A Note on Occitania, Rigaut de Barbezieux and Literary History

62

RICHARD TRACHSLER

6

Female Desire and the Quest in the Icelandic Legend of Tristram and Ísodd

76

MARIANNE E. KALINKE

7

Questing in the Middle Dutch Lancelot Compilation

92

DAVID F. JOHNSON

8

Keeping Company: Manuscript Contexts for Reading Arthurian Quest Narratives

109

CAROLINE D. ECKHARDT

9

Grail and Quest in the Medieval English World of Arthur

126

PHILLIP BOARDMAN

10 Malory and the Grail: The Importance of Detail

141

P.J.C. FIELD

11 Glastonbury, the Grail-Bearer and the Sixteenth-Century Antiquaries JAMES P. CARLEY

156

12 The Grail Quest: Where Next?

173

RICHARD BARBER

Appendix: The Grail on Film

185

KEVIN J. HARTY

Index

Analysis of grail scenes

207

i–xxiv at back of book

Illustrations Between pages 14 and 15 1 Paris, BnF, fr. 12577, fol. 18v, with permission. Chrétien de Troyes, Le Conte du Graal, Grail procession. 2 Paris, BnF, fr. 12577, fol. 74v, with permission. First Perceval Continuation, Grail procession. 3 Paris, BnF, fr. 12577, fol. 213v, with permission. Second Perceval Continuation, Grail procession. 4 London, BL Add. 10293, fol. 244v. © British Library Board. All Rights Reserved. Prose Lancelot, Gauvain watches the Grail procession. 5 Paris, BnF, fr. 1453, fol. 282r, with permission. Manessier Continuation, Perceval and Hector cured by the Grail. 6 Mons, BU, 331/206, p. 474v, with permission. Manessier Continuation, Perceval and Hector cured by the Grail. 7 Paris, BnF, fr. 101, fol. 185r, with permission. Prose Tristan, Perceval and Hector cured by the Grail. 8 Paris, BnF, fr. 12576, fol. 261r, with permission. Manessier Continuation, Grail procession. 9 Paris, BnF, fr. 95, fol. 6r, with permission. Estoire del saint Graal, Deposition and Entombment. 10 Paris, BnF, fr. 19162, fol. 6r, with permission. Estoire del saint Graal, Entombment. Joseph of Arimathea collects Christ’s blood in the Grail. 11 Paris, BnF, fr. 113, fol. 7r, with permission. Estoire del saint Graal, Entombment. Joseph of Arimathea collects Christ’s blood in the Grail. 12 Amsterdam, Biblioteca Philosophica Hermetica, BPH 1 vol. 1, fol. 6v, with permission. Estoire del saint Graal, Crucifixion with Joseph of Arimathea collecting Christ’s blood in the Grail. 13 Paris, Bibl. de l’Arsenal 3142, fol. 263r, with permission. Marie de France, Esopet, bloodletting in a bowl. 14 Paris, Bibl. de l’Arsenal 3480, fol. 483r, with permission. Queste du Graal, Joseph of Arimathea collects Christ’s blood in a chalice under the Crucifixion. 15 Paris, BnF, fr. 120, fol. 520, with permission. Queste du Graal, Joseph of Arimathea collects Christ’s blood in a chalice under the Crucifixion. 16 Arras, Médiathèque Municipale, Ms. 49/94, fol. 82v, with permission. Missel de Mont Saint Eloi, Adam rising from his grave and collecting Christ’s blood in a chalice under the Crucifixion. 17 Paris, BnF, fr. 344, fol. 65v, with permission. Estoire del saint Graal, Christians travelling with the Grail Ark.

viii 18 19

20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40

ILLUSTRATIONS

Rennes, BM, 255, fol. 76v, with permission. Estoire del saint Graal, Josephe and the Christians travelling with the Grail. Amsterdam, Biblioteca Philosophica Hermetica, BPH 1 vol. 1, fol. 88v, with permission. Estoire del saint Graal, Josephe and the good Christians cross the sea to Britain. Bonn, Universitätsbibliothek, S 526, fol. 57v, with permission. Estoire del saint Graal, King Alphasem cured of leprosy by the Grail. London BL Add. 10292, fol. 65r. © British Library Board. All Rights Reserved. Estoire del saint Graal, Alain praying before the Grail. Paris, BnF, fr. 113, fol. 18v, with permission. Estoire del saint Graal, Grail Mass. Paris, BnF, fr. 344, fol. 78v, with permission. Estoire del saint Graal, Josephe gives the Grail to Alain. Paris, BnF, fr. 105, fol. 122r, with permission. Estoire del saint Graal, Josephe gives the Grail to Alain. Paris, BnF, fr. 96, fol. 58r, with permission. Estoire del saint Graal, Josephe gives the Grail to Alain. Paris, BnF, fr. 120, fol. 524v, with permission. Queste du Graal, the Grail appears at the Round Table. Paris, BnF, fr. 116, fol. 610v, with permission. Queste du Graal, the Grail appears at the Round Table. Manchester, Ryl. fr. 1, fol 184v, with permission. Queste du Graal, the Grail appears at the Round Table. Paris, BnF, fr. 99, fol. 563, with permission. Prose Tristan, the Grail appears at the Round Table. Bonn, Universitätsbibliothek, 526, fol. 414r, with permission. Queste du Graal, Lancelot’s Grail vision. Paris, Ars. 3479, fol. 1r, with permission. Queste du Graal, Lancelot’s Grail vision. Paris, BnF, fr. 116, fol. 671r, with permission. Queste du Graal, the Grail carried on the silver table into Sarras. Paris, Ars. 5218, fol. 88r, with permission. Queste du Graal, Grail Mass. Paris, BnF, fr. 112 (3), fol. 179v, with permission. Queste du Graal, the three Grail heroes praying before the Grail. Paris, BnF, fr. 112 (3), fol. 181v, with permission. Queste du Graal, Death of Galahad and the Grail taken away. Paris, BnF, fr. 343, fol. 103r, with permission. Queste du Graal, the healing of the wounded king. Udine, Biblioteca Arcivescovile, Ms. 177, fol. 4v, with permission. Queste du Graal, urn-shaped grail with two handles. Florence, BN, Pal. lat. 556, fol. 148v, Tavola ritonda, Grail Mass (by permission of the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze). Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Cgm. 19, fol. 50v, with permission. Wolfram von Eschenbach, Parzival, Grail feast and baptism of Feirefiz. Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Cgm. 8470, fol. 251r, with permission. Albrecht, Der jüngere Titurel, Titurel and Parzival transport the Grail to India.

ILLUSTRATIONS

41 42 43

44

45 46 47 48 49 50

ix

Lübeck, Parzival mural, with permission. Parzival and the Grail(?) Paris, BnF, fr. 19093, fol. 13v, with permission. Villard de Honnecourt, sketchbook, Descent from the Cross. Tahull, San Clemente, apse with Christ in Majesty (Barcelona, Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya. Photographers: Calveras/Mérida/Sagristà 2007). Tahull, San Clemente, detail of the Virgin Mary (Barcelona, Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya. Photographers: Calveras/Mérida/Sagristà 2007). Ginestarre, detail of the Virgin Mary (Barcelona, Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya. Photographers: Calveras/Mérida/Sagristà 2007). Burgall, San Pere, detail of the Virgin Mary (Barcelona, Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya. Photographers: Calveras/Mérida/Sagristà 2007). Utrecht, Universiteitsbibliotheek, Ms. 32, psalter, fol. 67r, Psalm 115, with permission. Crucifixion: Christ’s blood caught in a chalice. Paris, BnF, fr. 19093, fol. 4v, with permission. Villard de Honnecourt, sketchbook, Ecclesia. Valencia, Cathedral treasury, Grail, with permission. Pope Benedict XVI celebrating Mass with the Valencia Grail. Genoa, Cathedral treasury, Grail (Sacro Catino), with permission.

The Crusaders’ Grail Between pages 38 and 39 1 Watercolor representation of a fresco in the Collégiale of Aire-sur-la-Lys, depicting the story of the relic of St Jacques, stolen by Philip of Alsace. Provided through the auspices of Archives Départementales du Pas-deCalais. 2 Detail of fresco in Figure 1. Provided through the auspices of Archives Départementales du Pas-de-Calais.

Keeping Company: Manuscript Contents for Reading Arthurian Quest Narratives Between pages 116 and 117 1 London, BL MS Royal 19.c.IX, fol. 8. © British Library Board. All Rights Reserved. Illustration suggesting parallelism between the Albina and Brutus episodes. 2 Dublin, Trinity College Library, MS 505, by permission of The Board of Trinity College Dublin. Image of a walled city and countryside.

This volume is a project of the Center for American Heritage Studies at the Pennsylvania State University. We are grateful for the Center’s generous support. The Center for American Heritage Studies at the Pennsylvania State University has as one of its missions the investigation of North America’s European roots. The Arthurian legend is an important element of the American heritage, having extensively influenced American popular culture and continuing to resonate in our society. The Center is eager to encourage serious scholarly study of Arthuriana and its vital contribution to our collective heritage. The result was the first annual Heritage Studies Conference at Penn State University in March 2007. That conference and this ensuing volume represent the Center’s first Heritage Studies project; the Center is pleased to support publication of this volume and is honored by the quality of the essays included in it.

Notes on Contributors James P. Carley received his PhD from the University of Toronto in 1976. A fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, he is currently a Distinguished Research Professor at York University and an Associate Fellow at the Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies in Toronto. In 2001 he published a collection of essays, Glastonbury Abbey and the Arthurian Tradition. His most recent monograph is The Books of King Henry VIII and his Wives (2004). In 2008 his edition, translation and study of John Leland’s De uiris illustribus will appear. Richard Barber’s reputation as a medievalist is based on long familiarity with a wide range of medieval sources, literary and historical, which he has explored to illuminate both the lives and the culture of the Middle Ages. He has written extensively on Arthurian literature, from his first book, Arthur of Albion (1961), to The Holy Grail: Imagination and Belief (2004). He has also written on chivalry: The Knight and Chivalry (1970), which won a Somerset Maugham Award, and Tournaments (1989) (with Juliet Barker). Biographies include Henry II (1964) and Edward Prince of Wales and Aquitaine (the Black Prince) (1976). His next book is on Edward III and the first Knights of the Garter. Phillip C. Boardman is Professor of English and Director of Core Humanities at the University of Nevada, Reno, where he teaches courses on Chaucer, Arthurian Literature, the Bible, and ancient and medieval cultures. The author of articles and editor of volumes of essays and poems, he has most recently, with Daniel P. Nastali, published The Arthurian Annals: The Tradition in English 1250–2000. A long-time member of the Nevada Opera Chorus, he has also performed in Chautauqua tent-shows as Geoffrey Chaucer and Thomas Malory. He is currently at work on a study of medieval and modern traditions of Grail literature. Caroline D. Eckhardt is Director of the School of Languages and Head of the Department of Comparative Literature at the Pennsylvania State University. Her specializations include medieval chronicles, Chaucer, Arthurian tradition, and medieval manuscripts, readers and book production. Among her books and editions are Essays in the Numerical Criticism of Medieval Literature, Castleford’s Chronicle or the Boke of Brut and The Prophetia Merlini of Geoffrey of Monmouth: A Fifteenth-Century Commentary. She has also recently been working on medieval maps and concepts of geography and place in Middle English chronicles. P.J.C. Field was born in the English midlands, and educated by service in his country’s air force, two degrees from the University of Oxford, and teaching in the University of Wales at Bangor, where he fell under the spell of the beautiful complexities of the Arthurian legend. He has written about aspects of it ranging from Gildas in the sixth century to Charles Williams in the twentieth, but mostly

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(as in this volume) about Malory and the Morte Darthur. He is currently President of the International Arthurian Society. Antonio L. Furtado (PhD, University of Toronto) is professor in the Departamento de Informática at the Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro. His areas of interest include, besides Arthurian literature, conceptual modelling and digital storytelling. Among his publications are the article ‘From Alexander of Macedonia to Arthur of Britain’ in Arthuriana, 5.3 (1995), 70–86, and a Portuguese translation of the Lais of Marie de France (Petrópolis, 2001). In preparing his contribution to this volume, he relied on the continuous participation of his wife, the painter and plastic artist Alys Bittencourt Furtado. Kevin J. Harty, Professor and Chair of English at La Salle University, has written extensively on cinematic treatments of the Middle Ages. He is the author or editor of thirteen books including The Reel Middle Ages: Films about Medieval Europe, King Arthur on Film, and Cinema Arthuriana. Will Hasty is Professor of German Studies, Chair of the Department of Germanic and Slavic Studies, and Co-director of the Center for Medieval and Early Modern Studies at the University of Florida. He has published extensively on court literature of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, with particular focus on Germany and the romances of Hartmann von Aue, Wolfram von Eschenbach and Gottfried von Strassburg. He is currently working on a manuscript about the Nibelungen and German imperialism. David F. Johnson is Professor of English and Humanities at Florida State University. He is co-editor of Arthurian Literature (with Elizabeth Archibald) and co-editor and translator of Dutch Romances (with Geert H.M. Claassens) in the Arthurian Archives series. To date three volumes have appeared, Dutch Romances I: Roman van Walewein, Dutch Romances II: Ferguut and Dutch Romances III: Five Interpolated Romances from the Lancelot Compilation, and three more are in progress. He has been guest editor for two issues of Arthuriana: ‘Middle Dutch Romances: What Are They and Why Should We Read Them?’, and ‘Middle Dutch Romances: New Readings’. Marianne E. Kalinke, Trowbridge Chair Emerita in Literary Studies at the University of Illinois, is an international authority on literary relations between medieval Scandinavia and the continent. Her books include King Arthur, Northby-Northwest (1981), a study of the transmission of the Arthurian legend to Scandinavia, and Bridal-Quest Romance in Medieval Iceland (1990), on the development of new types of fiction. The Book of Reykjahólar: The Last of the Great Medieval Legendaries (1996) studies the role played by Iceland in preserving medieval German literature as does St Oswald of Northumbria: Continental Metamorphoses (2005), which traces the rise of fiction from historiographical and hagiographical models. Norris J. Lacy is the Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of French and Medieval Studies at the Pennsylvania State University. His research deals primarily with Arthurian literature; he has also published on the Old French fabliaux and other subjects. His Arthurian publications, often in collaboration with others, include

NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

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The Craft of Chrétien de Troyes, The Arthurian Encyclopedia, The Arthurian Handbook, Lancelot-Grail: The Old French Arthurian Vulgate and Post-Vulgate in Translations, A Companion to Chrétien de Troyes, A History of Arthurian Scholarship, and other volumes. He is past president of the International Arthurian Society and holds the rank of Officier in the French Ordre des Palmes Académiques. Martine Meuwese is an art historian who has published a series of articles on Arthurian iconography and vernacular manuscript illustration. On the occasion of the Congress of the International Arthurian Society in Utrecht in 2005, she organized the exhibition King Arthur in the Netherlands, a survey of Arthurian manuscripts and fragments in Dutch collections. She is currently part of the Utrecht University research project Arthurian Fiction: A Pan-European Approach. She is also part of the team working on the interdisciplinary Lancelot-Graal Project, directed by Professor Alison Stones (University of Pittsburgh). Richard Trachsler, member of the Institut Universitaire de France, has taught Medieval French Literature at the Universities of Zurich and Paris IV-Sorbonne and is currently professor of Romance Philology (especially French) at the University of Göttingen.. His main interest lies in medieval narrative literature and text editing, on which he has published extensively. Currently, he is doing research on Merlin’s prophecies and divination in the Middle Ages. In that field, he has recently edited the volume, Moult obscures paroles: Etudes sur la prophétie médiévale, with Julien Abed and David Expert (Cultures et Civilisations Médiévales 39; Paris, Presses universitaires de Paris Sorbonne, 2007).

Foreword NORRIS J. LACY

To suggest that the quest was a pervasive theme in Arthurian (and other) literature of the Middle Ages seriously understates the matter. Quests and adventures are the very essence of romance. Moreover, multiple adventures occur frequently in the course of a quest, almost as if the quest has as one of its purposes to provide the very narrative space within which adventures can occur, often at great length and in extended sequences. The suggestion that the quest either permits or sponsors adventures is supported in texts such as the French Vulgate Cycle of the thirteenth century: in that cycle and others, the conclusion of the quest also ends adventures and marvels, leaving little for Arthur and his surviving knights to do except hold tournaments, eventually become embroiled in a war between comrades and friends and finally end in the tragic fall of Camelot and the death of Arthur – if he did indeed die. The chivalric quest itself, whether Arthurian or other, was most often a highly structured and heavily conventionalized process. Douglas Kelly summarized some of the conventions in an article dealing with multiple quests: ‘the knight will usually grant mercy to a defeated opponent, refuse to halt more than one night before achieving his quest, preserve his incognito, and respond to any challenge.’1 The Grail quest, in many cases, adds its own conventions to the more generalized ones. Once it is known that a quest for the Grail will be undertaken, a knight who is most often Gawain/Gauvain impulsively swears to search for the Grail for a year and a day and never stop until he is successful – which he is only in rare instances. And when one knight swears to pursue the quest, we can assume, correctly, that most if not all the others will follow his lead. Though quests of all kinds abound in medieval romances, it is the Grail that comes most immediately to mind when the word ‘quest’ is mentioned. From Chrétien de Troyes in the second half of the twelfth century to fiction and scholarly analyses (or syntheses) during the first years of the twenty-first century, the quest for the Holy Grail is ubiquitous, and studies of the theme are almost without number. In the popular mind, the Grail is almost universally accepted as the chalice of the Last Supper, a relic to be sought and recovered by Galahad, the purest of knights. It is further assumed by many in our day that the Grail will either save 1

‘Multiple Quests in French Verse Romance: Mervelles de Rigomer and Claris et Laris’, L’Esprit Créateur, 9.4 (1969), 257.

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Arthur’s realm or transform it radically in some essential fashion. Such a notion is incorrect, however, in regard to many texts both medieval and modern (as well as post-modern). In a good many instances, the Grail quest itself may be a worthy enterprise, but its conclusion will also signal and provoke the downfall of Camelot. The modern tradition often goes farther and questions whether the Grail quest does in fact have intrinsic value. In the nineteenth century, Tennyson presents the Grail quest as destructive, and Mark Twain finds it comically absurd. Twentieth-century authors and film makers freely reshape the Grail and the quest to their liking: it can be beneficial or not, mysterious or not, possible or impossible. And the Grail may exist – or not. However, in many instances Arthurian (and other) works featured not the Grail quest – or not only the Grail quest – but instead, the rescue of a person or the recovery of a relic or other object. Occasionally, as in the opening pages of the early French prose romance Perlesvaus, Arthur himself undertakes a personal quest, its purpose being self-renewal. Indeed, any quest has the potential to serve also as an opportunity for self-discovery and for the improvement and demonstration of character or chivalric skills. Yet that potential is not always realized by any means: there are some texts in which a quest is pointless, frivolous or destructive, and in which knights manage only to demonstrate their own deficiencies. This volume concentrates largely on the Grail and the Grail quest, but it also offers some essays that deal instead with quests of another kind. Indeed, some of the authors represented in this book offer reflections on the rarity of Grail quests in certain literatures (e.g., Middle English before Malory), and one reflects on the near absence of the Grail quest in Occitan literature. Thus, the essays presented are themselves quests of a sort even as they deal with quests, Arthurian or other. The present volume had its genesis in a conference at the Pennsylvania State University in March 2007. ‘The Grail, the Quest and the World of Arthur’ was the First Annual Heritage Studies Conference at Penn State; it was sponsored by the Center for American Heritage Studies and organized by the university’s Center for Medieval Studies. The conference consisted of nine papers on medieval subjects and three on modern Grail materials. We have retained, in expanded form, eight of the medieval presentations, to which we have added four more invited contributions. Most of the essays are studies of a literary nature, but we also include an art historical examination of Grail iconography, and there is also a study of the probable historical influences on Chrétien de Troyes’s Perceval. Finally, although the focus of the volume is on the Grail and the quest in the Middle Ages, we have included in an appendix a complete census, with documentation, of films that deal with the Grail. I wish to express my gratitude to the contributors for generously sharing their remarkable knowledge of Arthuriana and for patiently enduring my inquiries and my editorial requests; to Penn State University colleagues for their invaluable support and encouragement, and to congenial friends at Boydell & Brewer, whose combination of professionalism and generosity makes the editing of a volume of essays a genuine pleasure rather than the ordeal it can so easily become. The names of the persons to whom I owe a debt of gratitude are too

FOREWORD

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numerous to offer here. They will be thanked individually, and in any case they and I know who they are. And thus begins the quest. N.J.L. February 2008

1 Introduction: Arthur and/or the Grail

NORRIS J. LACY

In John Boorman’s 1981 film Excalibur, we find a lethargic, ill and passive King Arthur in a land that is waste and sterile. There appears to be no remedy for either the court or the land until Arthur has an inspired idea: the Grail quest. He says that they must seek what was lost; they must seek the Grail. We are not told how Arthur knows about the Grail’s power, and even more remarkably, we are not told why, since he does know, from whatever source, that the Grail is their salvation, he did not announce the quest earlier. Puzzling as those questions are, the more significant fact for our present purposes is that it is the King himself who orders the quest, and he and his land will be the beneficiary of its healing power. He thus takes here the double role of King and Fisher King, the latter being traditionally an entirely different figure: the maimed king who can be healed only by another character’s success in the Grail quest. The importance of this doubling is that Boorman (and a number of authors writing before and since the making of his film) either thought or would have us think that, because Arthur is the greatest of kings and the Grail the holiest of objects, it is natural that Arthur would commission his knights to find this sacred relic. Indeed, it may well be another film that has confirmed Arthur’s supposed sponsorship of the Grail quest.1 Anyone familiar with Monty Python and the Holy Grail – and who is not? – will recall that God appears from the clouds, excoriates Arthur for ‘groveling’ and informs him that his mission is to find the Grail. Arthur then recruits knights to assist in his holy quest, and some of them accept the charge (though the French confuse matters by insisting that they already have a grail). It was in fact a Frenchman who started the tantalizing story of the Holy Grail.2 As has been pointed out frequently – and will be noted several more 1

2

Readers of this chapter and of others in this volume will find ‘grail’ written sometimes with a capital ‘G’, sometimes a lower-case ‘g’. In general, we have capitalized it when the reference is clearly to the Holy Grail and used lower case when alluding to the object or word that preceded Chrétien or to an object that is purportedly but not actually holy. There are of course some questionable instances, and accordingly there are some undecidable cases where the word may be ‘grail’ or ‘Grail’. Unsurprisingly, there are a number of theories contending that Grail origins predate Chrétien. I shall not deal here with those, whether they be Celtic cauldrons, Sarmatian/Alan beliefs, or a number of other ‘candidates’. Nor will I discuss the Welsh Peredur, not only because it may well have been written after Chrétien’s Perceval (though the two may have

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NORRIS J. LACY

times in this volume – Chrétien de Troyes, in his Perceval or Le Conte du Graal (c. 1190), appropriated a word (graal) that already existed but merely designated a serving tray, remade it into the name of a wondrous but mysterious vessel, later explained that the object was a ‘most holy thing’ (‘tant sainte chose est li graals’, vs. 6425) and then presumably died before he could explore the quest in detail and conclude, no doubt, with Perceval’s success.3 The incompletion of the romance was fortuitous in providing the space within which other authors (and eventually painters, film makers, and many others) could continue, complete or renew the story according to the tastes of the time and the vision of the artist.4 But Chrétien had created a problem for Perceval and perhaps for us as interpreters of the romance. Perceval, a man of few words (indeed, of almost no words once he is instructed in proper chivalric comportment), witnesses the Grail procession and, despite his curiosity, chooses not to ask about it until later. And it is of course on that crisis that the entire text hinges. Among the very large number of questions that the romance raises and does not fully answer is one that concerns the subject of questioning itself. Is it logical that someone as naïve and uninformed as Perceval could be expected to know that he should ask, concerning the Grail, ‘Who is served with it?’ The less than satisfactory but nonetheless, I believe, correct answer is that of course he could not be expected to know: his ignorance is the barrier to his intuition of the proper question. Only when he fully understands, for example, that a knight is not simply a man with a sword, shield and hauberk, but is a person whose status has a purpose and imposes certain obligations – only when he knows, as he did not in his first encounter with knights, that a sign is a sign of something (or, in terms that now seem rather antiquated but are still accurate in this context, that a signifiant must have a signifié), will he understand what the question must be. And he has only begun to understand that when Chrétien’s text turns to Gauvain’s adventures and then breaks off without returning to Perceval. It appears safe to speculate, at least cautiously, that, had the text been completed by Chrétien himself, Perceval would eventually find the Grail Castle and ask the question that he had failed to ask when he first encountered the Grail: ‘Who is served with the Grail?’ (cui on en servi, vs. 6380; see also vss. 6412–14). Richard Barber has noted the peculiar and rare nature of this quest: it is not a matter, as in many another story, of finding the answer to a question, but of asking the right question. Barber correctly characterizes it as a ‘daring leap of invention’ on Chrétien’s part.5 Where Chrétien’s text left off, four continuators took up the task and eventu-

3 4

5

a common source), but primarily because there is no grail in the Welsh. To be sure, there is an analogue of the grail, but it is not the same object and is never called a grail. The edition is Chrétien de Troyes, Le Roman de Perceval ou Le Conte du Graal, ed. Keith Busby (Tübingen, 1993). The first was doubtless Robert de Boron, a writer whose poetic gifts were paltry but whose vision would change the course of Grail fiction. Integrating the Grail thoroughly into universal history and linking it to the Last Supper and the Crucifixion were brilliant moves, even though many readers surely prefer the mystery of the Grail in Chrétien (prior to the hermit episode) to the explicit piety of Robert’s vision. The Holy Grail: Imagination and Belief (Cambridge, MA, 2004), p. 109.

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ally concluded it. But the Grail becomes even more enigmatic in some ways, in part because there are long periods during which it seems to have been simply forgotten. The First Continuation, in particular, has little to say about it during thousands of lines. Limits of space preclude my discussing the Continuations in detail, and such, unfortunately, is too often their fate: the Continuations merit far more attention than they have had. It is worth noting though that the authors of the Continuations left few stones unturned – unsurprisingly, since these texts run to some 60,000 lines. The Second Continuation, for example, has Perceval ask about the Grail, the Lance and the broken sword. And the Third Continuation expands further, having him ask about the Lance, the Grail and the trencher he had seen, but he is even more specific, asking to be told who is served with them and where they came from. In the earliest French Grail text in prose, Perlesvaus, the question must be asked, but it is coupled with the necessity of winning the Grail Castle by force.6 And in Wolfram von Eschenbach’s Parzival, the question is more direct and does not specifically mention the Grail: it is, ‘Uncle, what ails you?’7 The possible variants are numerous, but each of them, in the texts mentioned so far, involves the asking of a question. We might be tempted therefore to suggest that, in the early Grail quests and in Chrétien’s text in particular, it is the acquisition of knowledge that will bring the quest to a successful conclusion. That assumption is both reasonable (in part because it is ignorance that leads Perceval into error or sin) and, I believe, incorrect. Had Chrétien lived long enough to have Perceval ask the question, it would no doubt be answered, but the power to end adventures and break spells lies not in the answer but in the question.8 Amid this discussion of questions that should be, and sometimes were, asked, there are two that we ourselves must ask. The first concerns the collective nature of the Grail quest (in Chrétien, in the Vulgate Queste del saint Graal and elsewhere); the second considers further the definition of success in the quest. To the best of my knowledge, there has never been an entirely satisfactory explanation – satisfactory, at least, to most modern readers – for most of Arthur’s knights embarking on the Grail quest when it is known that only Galahad can succeed.9 The collective decision may strike some readers as little more than a death wish, though of course the acceptance of almost any challenge could theoretically be taken as that in Arthurian romance. In the French Vulgate Cycle, 6 7

8 9

Le Haut Livre du Graal: Perlesvaus, ed. William Nitze and T.A. Jenkins, 2 vols (Chicago, 1932–37). Of course, in Wolfram the Grail has been drastically modified in form: it is a stone. As Wolfram is discussed in chapter 4 of this volume by Will Hasty, I will go no further into detail. See below for further discussion of the end of adventures in Arthur’s realm. Specialists in medieval Arthuriana, especially French, will recognize that I am generalizing rather extravagantly here. In fact, although many readers, even scholars, routinely assume that Galahad will become the Grail hero after Chrétien, a good many manuscripts of the thirteenth-century romances keep Perceval in the central position. Elspeth Kennedy argued that these texts constituted a ‘non-cyclic Lancelot’, suggesting that in its early state, its authors were not composing the Lancelot as a preparation for the quest. See Kennedy’s Lancelot and the Grail (Oxford, 1986). She also edited the texts under the title Lancelot do Lac, 2 vols (Oxford, 1980).

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numerous predictions indicate that the chosen Grail knight is yet to come, and Galahad’s arrival at court, his assumption of the Perilous Seat (upon which his name then appears) and his drawing a sword from the floating stone10 all demonstrate unambiguously that he is destined to accomplish the Grail quest. And that destiny would seem to render pointless the efforts of other knights, unless the quest somehow must be a collective enterprise even though every participant but one will fail (with two others, Perceval and Bors, achieving a partial Grail vision). Yet the text of the Vulgate Cycle remains largely silent on this subject: we learn that the quest will be a vast enterprise involving most of the knights at court, but we are not told why that must be so. The most obvious explanation for the participation of them all is related not to pious inspiration but simply to Gauvain’s entirely typical response to a challenge. As soon as the quest is mentioned, Gauvain leaps to his feet and swears to undertake the quest, en tel maniere que je la maintendrai un an et un jor et encor plus se mestiers est; ne ne revendrai a cort por chose qui aviegne devant que je l’aie veu plus apertement qu’il ne m’a ci esté demostrez, s’il puet estre en nule maniere que je lou puisse veoir ne doie. [(I will pursue) it for a year and a day and longer if necessary. I will not return to court, no matter what happens, until I have seen the Grail more clearly than I did today, assuming that I see it at all].11

And once he has done that, all the others predictably follow suit. They may well be reacting more to Gauvain’s oath, taking it no doubt as a proper chivalric response, than to Galahad’s mission – and less to the sacred character of the quest than to their determination to accept any challenge and to follow the apparently secular lead of the courageous but often headstrong Gauvain. Arthur laments Gauvain’s decision and recognizes immediately that this decision portends the destruction of the Round Table and the dissolution of its fellowship. If there was, in fact, an Arthurian golden age, its tragic end, the impending ruin of Camelot, is signaled by the act of Gauvain, the paragon of chivalry who is determined to participate in a doomed quest.12 He is a pivotal figure in the fall of Arthur and thus, despite his failure in the quest, in the ascendancy of the Grail ideal. Therefore, the responsibility for the departure of the Round Table knights and

10

11

12

This sword in a stone (albeit a floating stone) cannot fail to recall Arthur’s feat in drawing another sword from another stone, thus proving his right to be king. Galahad’s similar accomplishment establishes his identity as the future Grail winner, but it also marks the beginning of the end for Arthur’s reign. See on this subject my ‘Motif Transfer in Arthurian Romance’, in The Medieval Opus, ed. Douglas Kelly (Amsterdam, 1996) pp. 157–68. La Queste del saint Graal, ed. Albert Pauphilet (Paris, 1921), p. 16. The translation is by E. Jane Burns in Lancelot-Grail: The Old French Arthurian Vulgate and Post-Vulgate Cycles in Translation, ed. Norris J. Lacy, 5 vols (New York, 1993–96), IV, p. 8. Of course, Lancelot and Guenevere contribute, more than a little, to the downfall of Arthur’s realm, but Gauvain’s oath is an intermediate instrumentality in the process, and finally Mordred’s treason seals its fate once and for all. Scholars have generally acknowledged the first and third of these elements as the ultimate and the proximate causes of Camelot’s ruin. Gauvain’s indispensable and fateful role in the process has not always received the credit – or, rather, the blame – it deserves.

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for the deaths of many of them must be laid, at least in large part, at Gauvain’s feet. He and the others, Galahad excepted, are practicing what the Queste will identify as ‘worldly chivalry’, and there is nothing in the text to inform us that Gauvain sees this quest as fundamentally unlike any other challenge or opportunity to ply his chivalric trade. Furthermore, if we assume that the Grail quest and Arthurian chivalry are ultimately incompatible, we must recognize that, with the accomplishment of the quest, Camelot must fall. Thus, Galahad and Gauvain are both indispensable: the former to achieve the quest, the latter to make the decision that, as Arthur recognizes, sounds the death-knell of his realm. The second question is one that is too rarely discussed: just what does it mean, logically and practically, to ‘achieve’ the quest? Win a battle, rescue a maiden, defeat an enemy, recover a lost or purloined object – all of those successes are logical and laudable accomplishments in an ordinary quest. But the Grail quest is different. Achieve a quest? And the word in Old French, achever, which can be transitive or intransitive, means literally ‘achieve’ (something) but also ‘finish’ (something). But in the Vulgate Queste it is said that Galahad will also finish, or bring to an end, the ‘aventures’ or marvels of Great Britain and will heal the Fisher King. The opening of the Queste abounds in references to such adventures, coupled with Galahad’s destiny, his ability to end them. The word indicating success in the quest is sometimes achever (pp. 7, 11), sometimes eschoir (p. 4); it is also said that he will metre fin to the adventures (‘put an end to them’, p. 16) or mener [them] a chief (‘bring them to a conclusion’, p. 9), and that the marvels remaindront (‘will cease’, p. 7). Adventures, marvels and enchantments of the sort that the Arthurian world encountered in the Vulgate Lancelot will end, supplanted surely by marvels related to the religious vision of the text and specifically to the Grail vision depicted at the end of the Queste. Thus, ‘achieving a quest’ has simultaneously negative and positive associations. Galahad will end worldly (i.e., Arthurian) adventures by achieving the Grail vision. But aventure is also a semantically rich word in this text and in the rest of the cycle. When Galahad is to attempt to draw the sword from the floating stone, we are told that ‘l’aventure du perron sera menee a fin’ [the adventure of the stone will be concluded; Queste, p. 11]. Here aventure may refer to a marvel or simply to a challenge, though one whose conclusion is foreordained. It will be recalled that in the last romance of the cycle, the Mort Artu, when a beautiful boat bearing the body of the damsel of Escalot floats down the river to Camelot, Arthur comments in an obviously wistful tone that one could almost say that the adventures were beginning anew.13 Adventures, obviously, are what Galahad’s efforts must end, and they will be replaced, in Arthur’s realm, by the decline of the King’s brand of chivalry, a decline accelerated by Gauvain’s impulsiveness, indiscretions on the part of Lancelot and Guenevere, Agravain’s hateful jealousy, Arthur’s decreasing decisiveness and authority, and of course Mordred’s treason.14

13 14

La Mort le Roi Artu, ed. Jean Frappier (Geneva, 1964), p. 88. See especially Jean Frappier, Etude sur La Mort le Roi Artu (Geneva, 1961). See also my ‘The Mort Artu and Cyclic Closure’, in The Lancelot-Grail Cycle: Text and Transformations, ed. William W. Kibler (Austin, TX, 1994), pp. 85–97.

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With the Vulgate Queste, which commentators most often take as the canonical version, there is not a Grail question to be asked. It is one’s virginity or chastity (or the opposite) that determines success or failure, and here ‘achieving’ the Grail means earning a beatific vision of it. And authors influenced by the Vulgate Cycle generally followed its lead (though often in less rigorously moralistic terms) in requiring the demonstration of purity and rectitude rather than the necessity of asking a question. We could easily argue – and I would – that Chrétien’s conception is the more subtle, requiring not only that the hero ask a question but that it concern neither the object nor its function, but the identity of the person sustained by it. The Queste and a good many later texts emphasize the character of the questing knights over the performance of a specific if complex task. Following the Vulgate Cycle, authors of Grail romances often found themselves confronted by a complicated literary task: they had to juggle several chivalric ‘stars’ – not only Galahad and Gawain (and Lancelot as well), but also Tristan, who, in the thirteenth century, becomes fully integrated into the Arthurian world. The French Post-Vulgate Cycle and the Prose Tristan are key texts in this process, but I would like to offer some comments instead on an Italian text that continues this tradition. The Tavola ritonda [Round Table] is an intriguing work, not only because the Grail quest is recounted only briefly, but also because Tristano is identified as the greatest of the knights: ‘Viva il più pro’ cavaliere del mondo!’ [‘Long live the best knight in the world’].15 Even though it is not unusual for two or more knights (e.g., Gawain and Lancelot, or Lancelot and Tristan) to be described as the greatest in the world,16 the emphasis on Tristano is highly significant, both because Galasso (Galahad) is destined to accomplish the quest and because Tristano does not even attempt to complete the quest: he chooses instead to abandon it in order to return to the woman he loves. This might strike us as a remarkable innovation, but in a sense Tristano is practicing, in his own way, ‘earthly chivalry’, which is regularly paired with the service of love. The text goes on to inform us that Tristano, the best knight in the world, was not worthy to receive grace and thus to resist sinful thoughts (I, p. 453). This pronouncement, particularly concerning grace, is a crucial point in the Tavola ritonda. It is revealing for its author’s handling of the problem implicit in most Grail quest narratives. That problem is one that is mentioned above: what is the point of undertaking the quest if it is known that only Galasso can accomplish it? A number of authors do not address this question explicitly, either because the answer is not easily found or because, instead, it would have been obvious to informed medieval audiences. Here, however, Galasso himself offers a partial answer: the salvation of the questers is in the power of the Grail itself. That, however, begs the question or at least raises another one that is not to be answered clearly in this romance or most others: does the earnest undertaking of

15 16

La tavola ritonda, o L’istoria di Tristano, ed. Filippo Luigi Polidori, 2 vols (Bologna, 1864–66), I, p. 437. In such instances, the superlative is simply an intensifier, underlining the fact that the knight so described is as great as any could possibly be.

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the quest ensure salvation even for all the knights who fail in it? Or is it only the successful knight or knights who will win salvation? And if the latter, we must conclude that there is a single victor (Galasso), along with two knights who are partially rewarded, as in the French tradition. Yet such a conclusion seems to contradict Galasso’s contention concerning the Grail’s power of salvation, which ought logically to extend to more than a single quester, or even three. The author of the Italian work may himself have been concerned about this contradiction or about the exclusivity of Galasso’s salvation, and so the text does offer a partial answer to these questions. Not only are there, beginning with the French Queste, two kinds of chivalry (earthly and celestial), but the Tavola narrator reveals that there are also two kinds of grace.17 One is a reward for the good that one does, and everyone receives that kind of grace in proportion to his good works. But the second is an additional grace freely given to Galasso, enabling him to pull the sword from the floating stone, thus identifying himself as the chosen Grail knight. And of course it is this second kind of grace that is not given to Tristano or to most of the others. The explanation may not satisfy readers entirely, but it does offer a justification – or a rationalization? – for many knights’ departure on a quest from which it is known that most will never return. Yet, when Calvano (Gawain) and then all the others swear that they will undertake the quest, and Arthur laments their certain loss, Lancilotto defends the decision, pointing out that even if they all die, they will die blameless. Thus is the quest justified, but that justification leaves unsettled the matter of the praise bestowed on Tristano, who is conspicuous for abandoning the quest. And the text raises yet a thornier question when it describes Galasso as the best knight in the world – except for Tristano. But the narrator makes it clear that Tristano is the best worldly knight but that he was not worthy to receive the special grace granted to Galasso.18 Although the French Queste may, as suggested, be generally accepted as the canonical version, we cannot fail to be surprised at how few texts actually follow it closely. The Germanic tradition in particular largely goes its own way. Wolfram sets the course, and a good many authors follow him rather closely and elaborate his vision, often to great lengths.19 Yet, some depart radically from his conception of the Grail story. One is Heinrich von dem Türlin, author of Diu Crône [The Crown], dating from the first half of the thirteenth century.20 Heinrich sets out to tell Arthur’s story, but his focus is more squarely on Gawein, the model

17 18

19

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Tavola ritonda, I, p. 431. Curiously, this romance, like a good many others, engages in circular reasoning when dealing with sin and virtue in relation to causality. We are told (I, p. 453) that it is Tristano’s desire to return to Isotta that prevents him from receiving the special grace that would place him among the first and best of the Grail knights. In other (circular) words, if he had not had that desire, he would have merited the special grace that would have let him resist that desire and therefore merit that grace. I will leave it to Will Hasty to write more fully, and with more authority, about Wolfram. The same can be said of my treatment of Malory: I will offer below some brief observations about him, but the present volume contains several more specialized discussions of Malory. The edition is by G.H.F. Scholl (1852; repr. Amsterdam, 1966).

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of chivalric virtue, who has the power even to change the course of Fortune, stopping her wheel. In fact, God intervenes directly on a number of occasions in order to ensure Gawein’s success. The text includes a visit of Gawein to the Grail Castle and offers an eventual conclusion in which Gawein, Keii, Calocreant and Lanzelet recover the ring of fortune and other magical objects, and the Grail sequence ends with the deliverance of the Grail company. There is a great deal that is unusual or wondrous in this romance, but for present purposes, we may be most intrigued by Heinrich’s occasional praise of Gawein as better than Parzival – comments that seem to be responses to Wolfram and that represent, in any case, a moral and chivalric demotion for Parzival. We must skip over large numbers of medieval texts that merit discussion. Examples include, of course, the French Post-Vulgate Cycle and Prose Tristan, Middle Dutch works (discussed elsewhere in this volume), the Middle English Sir Percevale of Galles and others. And then there is Malory, and here, too, I shall be brief. First, although the French texts were major sources for Malory, his work is slightly less stringent in the requirements for success in the Grail quest. The French Queste tells us that there are two categories of virginity. One is called ‘virginité,’ the other is ‘pucelage.’21 Pucelage means ‘maidenhood’, though it is a term applicable to men and women alike (or, here, to men in particular). The austere narrator explains that ‘pucelage’ is the state of a person who has never had sexual contact or experience, but ‘virginité’ is the purer state: it is the condition of people who are pure in body and in soul. It specifically describes those who have never even been tempted sexually. Since that can be said only of Galahad – and with his father, Lancelot, left very far behind – and since the French cycle, from the beginning, has emphasized that everything that occurs does so in preparation for Galahad, then, as noted, all others are doomed to fail. Malory, on the other hand, doubtless perceiving the problem with such exclusivity, appears to leave slightly more open the possibility that others who, though less than absolutely perfect, live pious and virtuous lives may have some legitimate hope of salvation. My second comment concerns Malory’s Percivale. In Book VI he will be one of the three principal questers (along with Bors and Galahad). Yet in Book IV we learn that the three greatest knights are Launcelot, Trystram and Lamerok, and Percivale is included in another group, which Malory calls ‘other noble knyghtis’. I mention this in particular because of the problematic position of Percival: sometimes a favored Grail knight, sometimes a failure, sometimes simply forgotten.22 Dhira Mahoney explains this inconsistency as the result of Malory’s multiple sources, and her argument is persuasive. She concludes that ‘Malory’s Percivale is drawn from competing literary traditions and, as a result, seems to have some-

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Queste, p. 213. See my ‘Perceval on the Margins: A Pan-European Perspective’, in The European Dimensions of Arthurian Literature, ed. Frank Brandsma and Bart Besamusca, Arthurian Literature, 24 (2007), 1–14.

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thing of a split personality’.23 Indeed, other inconsistencies from book to book in Malory obviously can be explained in similar fashion – multiple sources24 – and Malory is not by any means the only author whose work presents internal conflicts arising from dependence on discrepant sources. Let me return now to my title: ‘Arthur and/or the Grail’. Over the years I have come to understand the dangers inherent in the use of the words ‘never’ and ‘always’ in relation to Arthurian subjects. As soon as we use those words, examples will appear to contradict the generalization. And so it is with Grail material in particular. I began by noting the curious situation in John Boorman’s Excalibur, where Arthur apparently assumes the role of the wounded Fisher King, in addition to his own role as king. Remarkable as that may be, it is not the complete innovation we may take it to be. Let me return to the beginning of the thirteenth century, with Perlesvaus. After an introductory section, the author informs us that une volentez delaianz li [to Arthur] vint, e commença a perdre le talent des largesces que il soloit fere. Ne voloit cort tenir a Noël, ne a Pasques, ne a Pentecoste. Li chevalier de la Table Reonde, qant il virent son bienfet alentir, il s’en partirent e commencierent sa cort a lessier. De trois .c. et .lxx. chevaliers q’il soloit avoir de sa mesniee, n’avoit il ore mie plus de .xxv. au plus. Nule aventure n’avenoit mes a sa cort.’25 [(Arthur) became melancholy, and he began to lose his customary generosity. He no longer wished to hold court at Christmas, at Easter and at Pentecost. The knights of the Round Table, seeing his good will decline, began to leave the court. Of the 370 knights who had been in his entourage, no more than twenty-five at most remained. Adventures no longer occurred at his court.]

One day Arthur finds the queen weeping, and she explains that, as a result of his lassitude, his knights are leaving, there are no more adventures and she fears that God has forgotten him. He agrees, and she suggests that he go to the Chapel of St Austin, where he may recover his spirit and vitality. Arthur then leaves on a voyage of discovery, a quest of his own. But what is pertinent to my discussion is the fact that, to an extent, he seems to take the role traditionally assigned to the Fisher King, suffering and in need of succor. Thus, this early text

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‘Malory’s Percivale: A Case of Competing Genealogies?’, in Perceval/Parzival: A Casebook, ed. Arthur Groos and Norris J. Lacy (New York, 2002), pp. 253–65; here quoting p. 254. This point raises once again one of the traditional questions about Malory’s work(s): were they intended as a consistent and unified whole, or were they independent tales in which discrepancies of fact would perhaps not trouble readers to the extent they have? This controversy has an extensive history, which cannot be treated here. See, among numerous sources, The Malory Debate, ed. Bonnie Wheeler, Robert L. Kindrick and Michael N. Salda (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2000). Perlesvaus, I, 26.

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offers in the person of Arthur a fusion of characters of which Boorman will be oddly reminiscent.26 Here is one further example, which is mentioned also by Richard Barber in his chapter of the present volume. La Faula, a fourteenth-century Catalan/ French composition by Guillem Torroella, depicts Arthur in Avalon, awaiting the time when, healed, he will return to the world.27 The narrator, who meets Arthur there, is astonished that the king appears to be so young, and the latter explains that the Holy Grail, giving him nourishment once a year, enables him to maintain his youth. Arthur, whose suffering may recall that of the Fisher King in Chrétien (and elsewhere), is sustained by the Grail, much as the Fisher King’s father, in Perceval, is kept alive by the Mass wafer in the Grail. The conclusion to be drawn from the preceding examples is that there is very little that is new under the Arthurian sun or in the Grail. But there are of course exceptions to that generalization, and they occur mostly in the nineteenth and, especially, twentieth – and now the twenty-first – centuries. A crucial figure in the sequence is obviously Tennyson. He confessed to reservations about the Grail quest and wrote about it only reluctantly. There have been a number of speculative explanations for his hesitation. He himself offers one: he thought that a poem about the Holy Grail would be open to charges of irreverence.28 Yet he did write it, and his ‘Holy Grail’ idyll (1869, 1870) disappointed and shocked readers. As Debra N. Mancoff puts it, ‘rather than telling a triumphant tale of unwavering spiritual commitment, Tennyson offered his readers a tragedy, a saga of failure, exhaustion, ambivalence and denial’.29 Mancoff observes further that, in this idyll, a man – a knight – who is properly doing his duty ‘puts aside his fantasies and applies his strength and soul to practical, worldly service’ (p. 123) rather than engage pointlessly in a quest that is both an impossible dream and a socially destructive enterprise. It appears too that for Tennyson in this poem, celibacy and the repression of heterosexual desire were thought incompatible with the vitality and virility that should characterize Camelot’s knights. Across the Atlantic from Tennyson, Mark Twain offered a different and more explicitly negative vision of the Grail quest: he presented it (in Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, 1889) as an undertaking that was not only doomed to failure but largely silly and pointless, even absurd from the start. He noted that the knights were looking for an object they would not recognize and would not know what to do with if they did find and recognize it. In his words, the knights ‘went out holy grailing’, after which ‘relief expeditions’ had to embark on a quest for the questers themselves. In a sense, Twain’s satirical view is another response to a question posed above: why seek the Grail if you know yourself to be unqualified for the quest? His response: you do it because it is what everyone does. Or even a tautology: you do it because that is what you do.

26

27 28 29

And very distantly reminiscent at that. Beyond what I have noted, there are very few similarities. For example, the Arthur of Perlesvaus suffers from depression because of Perlesvaus’s failure to ask the required question when he had an opportunity. La Faula, ed. Pere Bohigas and Jaume Vidal Alcover (Tarragona, 1984). See Barber, The Holy Grail, pp. 269–71. The Return of King Arthur (New York, 1995), p. 123.

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Both Tennyson and Twain, though strange literary bedfellows, indicate, each in his own way, that for modern authors the concept and execution of the Grail quest could be troubling to say the least. Yet, it is in the twentieth century (especially the second half) and the first years of the twenty-first, that we find Arthurian and Grail traditions so radically expanded, modified and sometimes perverted that we must conclude that we are rapidly approaching literary (and cinematic) entropy. Even a reasonable sampling and discussion of modern approaches would require another book. Thus, passing reference to four modern works – out of many hundreds, indeed thousands, of possibilities – must suffice to illustrate the diversity of modern approaches to the Grail and the quest.30 Babs H. Deal’s novel The Grail31 concerns American football, and the ‘holy grail’ being sought is a perfect season. Unsurprisingly, the coach is named Arthur; his wife is Gwen, and the star of the team is named, of course, Lance. Donald Barthelme’s post-modern The King32 features an Arthur who, having lived for centuries, is a twentieth-century figure with access to the grail during a time of war. Here, however, the grail is not a sacred relic, but the most terrible and destructive of bombs, and Arthur’s distinction (apart from his age, of course) is that he could use this weapon but chooses not to do so. French author Robert Pinget’s Graal Flibuste33 offers a largely untranslatable French title that might be rendered as ‘Pirate Grail’ or ‘Grail Pirate’ or ‘Grail Piracy.’ Graal-Flibuste is apparently the equivalent of the Fisher King, except that his realm, rather than being arid, is being strangled by overgrowing vegetation. It is also inhabited by strange and fantastic creatures. It appears that there is to be a quest, but it is unclear whether one takes place and what the point of it is or might be. The complications and conundra of the Grail quest are here taken nearly to their logical extreme. Finally, Umberto Eco’s Baudolino, in which the eponymous hero, a dealer in counterfeit relics, successfully passes off his father’s wooden wine cup as the Grail. Toward the end, Eco has a character remark, the Grasal [Grail] is a stone … or cup, or spear: what does it matter? What counts is that nobody must find it, otherwise the others would stop seeking it. … [H]ide that thing [the Grail] … so that no one will kill his own dream by putting his hands on it.34

As noted and as illustrated here, the grail can be anything or nothing, a holy object or a hoax; the quest can be a sacred enterprise that gives meaning to life or it can be a pointless exercise or an absurd waste of time and humanity. One of the most remarkable facts about the grail, however, is surely the extent to which 30

31 32 33 34

In addition, it needs to be noted that, especially since Dan Brown published The Da Vinci Code (New York, 2003), a good many readers, though no reputable scholars that I know of, have taken seriously the notion that the grail is not an object but instead the bloodline of Jesus transmitted through his offspring with Mary Magdalene. (New York, 1963). (New York, 1990). (Paris, 1955; definitive edition 1966). Baudolino (Milan, 2000); English translation by William Weaver (New York, 2002), p. 502.

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the word, along with the notion of a quest, has found its way into our collective consciousness and thus into newspapers, magazines, newscasts and ordinary conversation. Anything that is actively sought or much to be desired is nearly certain to be described as a Holy Grail, either with capitals or in lower case. Richard Barber, in The Holy Grail (p. 380), offers a tally of the number of times the term ‘Holy Grail’ has appeared in ten major newspapers over a period of two decades. Significantly, the numbers increase steadily from 1977–78 through 2001–02, with the latter period offering some 900 instances.35 Manned missions to another planet are routinely described as the Holy Grail of space exploration. ‘Holy Grails’ abound in medical research: a cancer cure is a frequent example, but I have also seen more than one reference to the Holy Grail of research on sexual dysfunction. The Super Bowl is the Holy Grail of American football, and a report about the stock market once described outrageous profits as being the Holy Grail of day-trading. One of the more outlandish examples came from an article in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution on 22 December 2003 (pp. D1, A13). The article described a new way to shuck oysters by placing large numbers of them into a water-filled cylinder under very high pressure; vibrations remove the shells within three minutes. Predictably, if somewhat comically, the machine was described as the ‘holy grail’ of oyster shucking. There appear to be no limits, and perhaps there can be none. However, in concluding, I cannot resist mentioning a final example, which could well have been the premise for a science fiction Arthurian novel but is in fact real.36 On 11 December 2007, NASA announced a ‘New NASA Mission to Reveal Moon’s Internal Structure and Evolution’. The objective is to fly twin spacecraft in tandem orbits around the moon for several months to measure its gravity field in unprecedented detail. The mission also will answer longstanding questions about Earth’s moon and provide scientists a better understanding of how Earth and other rocky planets in the solar system formed.

The project is named the Gravity Recovery And Interior Laboratory. In other words: ‘GRAIL’.

35

36

The precise number for 2001–02 cannot be determined, since the database of Frankfurter Allgemeine gives only an overall total, not broken down by years. The total for the other nine newspapers is 847 for that year. See , accessed 25 January 2008. My thanks to Bonnie Wheeler for posting the announcement on the Arthurnet bulletin board in December.

2 The Shape of the Grail in Medieval Art

MARTINE MEUWESE

What exactly is the Grail and what shape does it have? Is it a dish, a bowl, a chalice, a ciborium or a stone? Is it made of wood, stone, silver or gold? The answers to these questions vary from text to text. In the numerous medieval literary works in which it appears, the Grail assumes many forms and functions. Most often the Grail is supposed to have been used by Christ during the Last Supper and to have been entrusted to Joseph of Arimathea, who used it to catch the blood flowing from the wounds of Christ at the Entombment. This sacred object usually has power as a provider of food; it heals the wounded and is surrounded by mystery. The appeal of the Holy Grail is not confined to the Middle Ages. Not only does it play a major part in Dan Brown’s best-selling murder mystery The Da Vinci Code, it also featured as the ultimate quest object in popular movies like Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. This movie even includes a ‘Grail test’ towards the end, in which those who fulfilled the quest are subjected to one last trial: to choose the Grail from a huge variety of cups and chalices displayed on a table. The ‘Bad Guy’ makes the wrong choice; he selects the most beautiful chalice on the table, assuming that the Grail is the cup of a King of Kings, whereas Indiana Jones makes the right choice by choosing the most plain and simple cup, one befitting a carpenter. However interesting and symbolic this modern view of a simple unadorned Grail may be, medieval depictions of the Grail tend to support the Bad Guy’s assumption of what the Grail should look like. The Grail’s pictorial presence in the medieval Arthurian manuscripts that transmit its legends is remarkably rare. Often it is excluded altogether in otherwise elaborately illustrated manuscripts. When it is depicted, its shape and degree of visibility can follow different patterns that are not necessarily in agreement with the texts they illustrate, as I shall demonstrate in the following survey.1

1

I owe much to discussions of this topic with Peter Field, Richard Barber and Mireille Madou. I am grateful to Jessica Quinlan for correcting the English text, and I would like to thank Alison Stones for generously sharing Grail photographs with me.

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Chrétien’s Grail and the Continuations In Chrétien de Troyes’s Conte du Graal, composed in the 1180s, Perceval sees a magnificent procession at the castle of the Fisher King. During each course of the meal, this procession emerges from a chamber at one end of the banqueting hall, passes before the table and then disappears into another room. A young boy holding a bleeding lance is followed by two youths with candles, and a beautiful maiden holds a Grail, made of gold and set with many precious stones. This Grail emits such a brilliant light that the candles seem pale in comparison. The fact that Chrétien designated this precious object ‘un graal’, a Grail, would suggest that he regarded the word as a common noun. Although perhaps not widely used, the word ‘graal’ in Old French designated a type of dish or serving vessel.2 In a later episode in the Conte du Graal Perceval is told that the Grail sustains the ailing king’s life by bringing him a Mass wafer, instead of more worldly food. And with that, the Grail had taken the first step from precious kitchen utensil to unique holy object. The Grail has rarely been represented in miniatures illustrating Chrétien’s text. Images depicting the Grail procession may even omit the Grail altogether!3 Only a single Grail depiction survives in an early fourteenth-century copy of Chrétien’s text (Fig. 1). This miniature not only depicts a king but erroneously also a queen behind the table, and the Grail precedes the bleeding lance in the procession, perhaps to show the objects in order of importance. The rubric above the miniature calls the object carried by the lady ‘le saint graal’ and its shape by no means corresponds to the presumably flat serving dish suggested by Chrétien’s text. The Grail is represented here as a medieval pyx (in this instance a small chalice with a lid of gold, surmounted by a cross), in which the Eucharist is traditionally carried to the sick. And indeed, this pyx shape, although different from Chrétien’s description, can be considered appropriate for the object that is said to contain a host and to sustain the life of the sick king. Both the rubric and the image thus christianize Chrétien’s Grail, which is not that surprising if we keep in mind that this copy of Chrétien’s text was written and illustrated at the beginning of the fourteenth century, by which time the concept of the Grail had changed. The twelfth-century text thus remained the same, whereas the early fourteenth-century image reflects more developed views on the Grail. The first author to link the Grail to biblical history was Robert de Boron, who turned Chrétien’s ambiguous grail into the Holy Grail. In his Joseph d’Arimathie, written at the end of the twelfth century, the Grail is the ‘vaissel’ of the Last Supper, used by Joseph of Arimathea to collect Christ’s blood at the Entombment. When Joseph is imprisoned, Christ visits him and brings him the Grail, shining radiantly and filled with blood. Christ tells Joseph that this vessel will be called a chalice.

2 3

See also Peter Field’s chapter in this volume. See Emmanuèle Baumgartner, ‘Les Scènes du Graal et leur illustration dans les manuscrits du Conte du Graal et des Continuations’, in The Manuscripts of Chrétien de Troyes, 2 vols, ed. Keith Busby, et al. (Amsterdam, 1993), I, pp. 489–503.

Figure 1. Chrétien de Troyes, Le Conte du Graal, Grail procession.

Figure 2. First Perceval Continuation, Grail procession.

Figure 3. Second Perceval Continuation, Grail procession.

Figure 4. Prose Lancelot, Gauvain watches the Grail procession.

Figure 5. Manessier Continuation, Perceval and Hector cured by the Grail.

Figure 6. Manessier Continuation, Perceval and Hector cured by the Grail.

Figure 7. Prose Tristan, Perceval and Hector cured by the Grail.

Figure 8. Manessier Continuation, Grail procession.

Figure 9. Estoire del saint Graal, Deposition and Entombment.

Figure 10. Estoire del saint Graal, Entombment. Joseph of Arimathea collects Christ’s blood in the Grail.

Figure 11. Estoire del saint Graal, Entombment. Joseph of Arimathea collects Christ’s blood in the Grail.

Figure 12. Estoire del saint Graal, Crucifixion with Joseph of Arimathea collecting Christ’s blood in the Grail.

Figure 13. Marie de France, Esopet, bloodletting in a bowl.

Figure 14. Queste du Graal, Joseph of Arimathea collects Christ’s blood in a chalice under the Crucifixion.

15. Queste du Graal, Joseph of Arimathea collects Christ’s blood in a chalice under the Crucifixion.

Figure 16. Missel de Mont Saint Eloi, Adam rising from his grave and collecting Christ’s blood in a chalice under the Crucifixion.

Figure 17. Estoire del saint Graal, Christians travelling with the Grail Ark.

Figure 18. Estoire del saint Graal, Josephe and the Christians travelling with the Grail.

Figure 19. Estoire del saint Graal, Josephe and the good Christians cross the sea to Britain.

Figure 20. Estoire del saint Graal, King Alphasem cured of leprosy by the Grail.

Figure 21. Estoire del saint Graal, Alain praying before the Grail.

Figure 22. Paris, BnF, fr. 113, fol. 18v, Estoire del saint Graal, Grail Mass.

Figure 23. Estoire del saint Graal, Josephe gives the Grail to Alain.

Figure 24. Estoire del saint Graal, Josephe gives the Grail to Alain.

Figure 25. Estoire del saint Graal, Josephe gives the Grail to Alain.

Figure 26. Queste du Graal, the Grail appears at the Round Table.

Figure 27. Queste du Graal, the Grail appears at the Round Table.

Figure 28. Queste du Graal, the Grail appears at the Round Table.

Figure 29. Prose Tristan, the Grail appears at the Round Table.

Figure 30. Queste du Graal, Lancelot’s Grail vision.

Figure 31. Queste du Graal, Lancelot’s Grail vision.

Figure 32. Queste du Graal, the Grail carried on the silver table into Sarras.

Figure 33. Queste du Graal, Grail Mass.

Figure 34. Queste du Graal, the three Grail heroes praying before the Grail.

Figure 35. Queste du Graal, Death of Galahad and the Grail taken away.

Figure 36. Queste du Graal, the healing of the wounded king.

Figure 37. Queste du Graal, urn-shaped grail with two handles.

Figure 38. Tavola Ritonda, Grail Mass.

Figure 39. Wolfram von Eschenbach, Parzival, Grail feast and baptism of Feirefiz.

Figure 40. Albrecht, Der jüngere Titurel, Titurel and Parzival transport the Grail to India.

Figure 41. Lübeck, Parzival mural, Parzival and the Grail(?)

Figure 42. Villard de Honnecourt, sketchbook, Descent from the Cross.

Figure 43. Tahull, San Clemente, apse with Christ in Majesty.

Figure 44. Tahull, San Clemente, detail of the Virgin Mary.

Figure 45. Ginestarre, detail of the Virgin Mary.

Figure 46. Burgall, San Pere, detail of the Virgin Mary.

Figure 47. Psalm 115, Crucifixion: Christ’s blood caught in a chalice.

Figure 48. Villard de Honnecourt, sketchbook, Ecclesia.

Figure 49. Pope Benedict XVI celebrating Mass with the Valencia Grail

Figure 50. Genoa, Cathedral treasury, Grail (Sacro Catino).

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Grail images occur in more abundance in the Continuations of Chrétien’s unfinished Conte du Graal. The Chrétien manuscript just discussed also contains an illustration of the Grail procession during Gauvain’s visit to the Grail castle in the First Continuation (Fig. 2). This miniature repeats the same configuration: again erroneously a queen sits next to the Fisher King (while Perceval is nowhere to be seen), and the Grail is depicted as a gold pyx. According to the text of the First Continuation, the Grail dispenses food to all those present. In a miniature in the Second Continuation in the same manuscript, the superfluous queen has finally been omitted, and the Grail is now carried by a youth (Fig. 3). The Grail depictions in this codex thus show a visual continuity, although the authors of the Continuations, probably inspired by Robert de Boron’s Joseph d’Arimathie, now describe the Grail as the receptacle used by Joseph of Arimathea to catch the blood of Christ. A similar view of the Grail procession as in this Chrétien codex can be found in a manuscript of the prose Lancelot (Fig. 4). In this episode Gauvain visits the Grail Castle and fails to pay homage to the Grail; he is the only one at table who does not pray. The lady again holds a pyx-shaped Grail, whereas the accompanying text specifies that the Grail has the form of a chalice in this episode. In the Third Continuation of Chrétien’s Perceval, also called the Manessier Continuation, the Grail appears to Perceval and Hector and cures the severe wounds they have inflicted upon each other in battle. A miniature illustrating the Manessier Continuation again depicts a pyx-shaped Grail, this time carried by an angel to a company of a king and several knights at table (Fig. 5). A historiated initial in a different copy of this Continuation remains closer to the text by representing the two exhausted knights while an angel holding the Grail appears above (Fig. 6). Now, this artist apparently had a different concept of the Grail, which he depicts as a huge chalice. The episode of Perceval and Hector cured by the Grail is not unique to the Third Continuation; it is also related in later prose texts. A fifteenth-century miniature illustrating this scene in a Prose Tristan manuscript also shows the Grail as a golden chalice (Fig. 7). It is covered by a white cloth, and held by two angels swinging censers. The concept of the Grail as a chalice is shared by an illuminator who painted a full-page miniature at the end of Manessier’s text in yet another copy (Fig. 8). Here a man holding a burning candle is followed by a woman carrying the chalice-shaped Grail, covered by a white cloth. While Perceval kneels in prayer, an angel in the sky swings a censer, and another angel reaches for the Grail to take it back to heaven.4 Although only a few late thirteenth- and early fourteenth-century illustrated manuscripts of the verse texts of Chrétien and his continuators have come down to us, the scarce representations of the Grail only make matters more complex. Different artists had varying concepts of the shape of the Grail, which were not necessarily in agreement with the texts they illustrated, if those texts contained a

4

This miniature has caused confusion among scholars. Baumgartner, ‘Les Scènes du Graal’, p. 495, took the candle for the broken sword, while it is interpreted as a burning lance, along with other misinterpretations of the scene, in Sandra Hindman, Sealed in Parchment: Rereadings of Knighthood in the Illuminated Manuscripts of Chrétien de Troyes (Chicago, 1994), p. 37.

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clear description of the form of the Grail at all. Let us now move to the extremely popular French prose Lancelot-Grail cycle, which still survives in over 200 copies, many of which have been illustrated. Is the shape of the Grail more uniform in this text tradition?

The Lancelot-Grail cycle By far the greatest number of Grail depictions can be found in manuscripts of the Lancelot-Grail cycle.5 Composed soon after the turn of the thirteenth century, this lengthy prose text includes two branches, the Estoire del saint Graal and Queste du Graal, in which the early history of the Grail and the quest for it by the knights of King Arthur are the primary focus.

Estoire In the Estoire del saint Graal, which tells the history of the Holy Grail, Joseph of Arimathea visits the room where Christ celebrated the Last Supper. Joseph takes along the ‘escuelle’, a dish from which, according to the text, Christ and the apostles had eaten the Pascal lamb. After he has taken Christ’s body from the Cross with the help of Nicodemus, he collects Christ’s blood in this vessel during the Entombment. Because of the explicit textual connection to nourishment in the Estoire, the Grail is often represented as a bowl or a pyx in manuscripts of this text. Some Estoire miniatures just show traditional biblical iconography for this episode (Fig. 9). Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus are taking Christ’s body from the Cross, while Mary and St John stand on either side. At the Entombment in the lower compartment, Joseph is anointing Christ’s body, but there is no trace of the Grail.6 Other Estoire manuscripts, however, do depict the Grail at the Entombment: it has the shape of a bowl (Figs. 10, 11). Although the text of the Estoire specifies that Joseph collected Christ’s blood in the Grail at the Entombment, manuscripts occasionally depicted this action under a traditional Crucifixion scene showing Mary and St John. Joseph of Arimathea is then sitting or kneeling at the foot of the Cross with the Grail, often a silver bowl, in his hands (Fig. 12). This bowl shape not only corresponds roughly to the vessel mentioned in the text, but it carries other resonances as well: it has the same form as the bowls used for collecting blood at a bloodlet-

5

6

See Alison Stones, ‘The Grail in Rylands MS French 1 and its Sister Manuscripts’, in Text and Image: Studies in the French Illustrated Book from the Middle Ages to the Present Day (Bulletin of the John Rylands University Library of Manchester, 81.3), ed. David J. Adams and Adrian Armstrong (1999), pp. 55–95; and Alison Stones, ‘Seeing the Grail. Prolegomena to a Study of Grail Imagery in Arthurian Manuscripts’, in The Grail. A Casebook, ed. Dhira B. Mahoney (New York, 2000), pp. 301–66. In religious iconography, Joseph of Arimathea is sometimes shown anointing Christ’s body at the Entombent, holding a little oil flask or ointment jar. For an example in a late thirteenth-century Liège Psalter-Hours see Judith H. Oliver, ‘The Matrem Laudamus: The Many Roles of Mary in a Liège Psalter-Hours’, in The Cambridge Illuminations. The Conference Papers, ed. Stella Panayotova (London, 2007), pp. 159–72, at p. 170.

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ting (Fig. 13).7 In fifteenth-century manuscripts Joseph is sometimes kneeling at the foot of the Cross with a chalice-shaped Grail in his hands (Figs. 14, 15). Such miniatures, however, usually open the sequence of the quest for the Holy Grail. The motif of a chalice beneath the Cross is very old. It occurs at least from the ninth century onwards in a biblical context. In tenth-century Spanish Beatus Apocalypses, for example, Christ’s blood can be seen dripping into a chalice under his feet.8 The chalice in this context symbolizes the eucharistic vessel. By sacrificing himself on the Cross, Christ delivered humankind from the original sin of Adam. Hence Adam’s burial place was often symbolically represented at the site of the Crucifixion. In the Beatus miniature Adam’s shrouded body can be seen buried under the Cross. In thirteenth-century psalters and missals, Adam was often depicted rising from his grave, collecting Christ’s blood in the chalice (Fig. 16). The iconography of Joseph with the Grail under a traditional Crucifixion was most probably an adaptation of the further developed religious motif of the chalice and Adam buried under the Cross. The main visual differences between the figures of Adam and Joseph collecting Christ’s blood at the Crucifixion are that Adam is usually rising from a grave and that he is wearing a shroud instead of ordinary clothes. Until 1180, nobody knew about the Grail, for the simple reason that it had not been invented yet. Chalices beneath the Cross that predate Chrétien’s text, therefore, should be interpreted as references to the chalice of the mass, and not as Grails. Even when the concept of the Holy Grail is in existence, this literary invention cannot be applied to religious art in general; one needs a specific Arthurian connotation of some sort to call something a Grail.9 Let us return to ‘real’ Grails in Arthurian romances. Only halfway through the text of the Estoire is the Grail mentioned by this name. Initially it is just called ‘saincte escuele’ and ‘saint vaissiel’. God instructs Joseph of Arimathea to make a small wooden ark for the sacred object. This way, the Grail is screened from view of all, save for the leaders of the Christians. In the text, an explicit link is made between the wanderings of Moses and the children of Israel with the Ark of the Covenant in the wilderness after the exodus, and the peregrinations, under divine protection, of Joseph of Arimathea and his followers with

7

8 9

A famous example from the Grail Quest is the bloodletting of Perceval’s sister, who donates her blood to cure a maiden with leprosy. For images of bloodlettings, see Alison Stones, ‘Indications écrites et modèles pictureaux, guides aux peintres de manuscrits enluminés aux environs de 1300’, in Artistes, artisans et production artistique au Moyen Age. 3 Fabrication et consommation de l’œuvre, ed. X. Barral i Altet (Paris, 1990), pp. 321–49. For instance in the Beatus Apocalypse from 975 in Girona, Cathedral, Ms. 7, fol. 16v. This distinction is not always obvious. For example, I ordered a slide that, according to the iconographic files of a distinguished manuscript library, depicts the Grail in a fifteenthcentury Flemish Book of Hours. The description said: ‘Christ praying in Gethsemane, before him the Grail appears on a hill. This is a typical example of a subject illustrated in liturgical and devotional manuscripts.’ When the slide arrived it was immediately obvious that there is no Grail connotation at all and that it represents the traditional iconography of the Agony in the Garden where Christ prays using a verbal metaphor: ‘Father, if it be thy will, take this cup away from me.’ The cup of this verbal metaphor is often rendered in art, but it has nothing to do with the Grail. More common are misinterpretations of the eucharistic chalice under the Crucifixion as the Grail.

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the Grail. Hence illustrations of the carrying of the Old Testament Ark and the traveling with the Grail ark are very similar (Fig. 17).10 For those familiar with the Indiana Jones movies, it will come as no surprise that Indiana was able to find the Grail in the third sequel, as this archeologist and university professor had already succeeded in retrieving the biblical Ark of the Covenant in the first movie. The Christians traveling with the Grail are depicted in the earliest illustrated Estoire manuscript, dating from c. 1220 (Fig. 18).11 Josephe, the son of Joseph of Arimathea, whose purity and chastity qualify him to become the first Christian bishop and keeper of the Grail, holds the large shallow vessel. Eventually the Christians will cross over to Britain. They have no boats at their disposal, but the Grail saves the day. Thanks to its miraculous powers, Josephe is able to walk on water and allows 150 chosen followers to step onto the miraculously expanding hem of his alb (Fig. 19). Bishop Josephe, carrying his followers along on the trail of his garment, thus crosses the sea to Britain in the course of a single night. In Britain the Grail performs a series of miracles. King Alphasem is cured of leprosy when he is baptized and sees the Grail, which in a miniature in the Bonn manuscript has the shape of a chalice (Fig. 20), although the illuminator depicted the Grail at the Entombment earlier on in the same manuscript as a bowl. The Grail seems to assume a different role in Britain: the ark used to transport it is not mentioned any more and the Grail is henceforth placed on a table made in remembrance of the table of the Last Supper. The Grail feeds the hungry Christians, but does not provide food for the sinners among them. Carol Chase pointed out that the part of the Estoire story set in the East is thus connected to the Old Testament idea of the Ark of the Covenant, and that the ‘New World’ adventures in the West, that is Britain, link the Grail to the New Testament idea of the table of the Last Supper.12 The Grail is also represented when Alain, who is to become the first Fisher King, prays before the Grail table (Fig. 21). The Grail here looks like a gold pyx, or should we, in this Last Supper and food distribution context, rather call it a ciborium? A ciborium is a bigger vessel of a similar shape that was used in churches for distributing the Holy Communion and for reserving the consecrated particles. In spite of the ciborium shape in this miniature, the Grail has been depicted as a bowl earlier in this manuscript. Apparently, the shape of the Grail could change even within the illustration cycle of a single text copy illustrated by the same artist, since this ‘shapeshifting’

10

11

12

For examples of recycling Biblical iconography in Arthurian illustration, see my forthcoming article ‘Recycling Sacred Iconography. The Adaptation of Biblical Scenes in Arthurian Illustration’ (to appear in a book, thus far untitled, on the Lancelot Project, ed. Alison Stones). This manuscript can be consulted on the website of the Bibliothèque Municipale in Rennes . See also S. Cassagnes-Brouquet and M. Clouzot, Les Romans de la Table Ronde: Premières images de l’univers arthurien (Rennes, 2005). Carol J. Chase, ‘The Vision of the Grail in the Estoire del saint Graal’, in Philologies Old and New: Essays in Honor of Peter Florian Dembowski, ed. Joan Tasker Grimbert and Carol Chase (Princeton, NJ, 2001), pp. 291–306.

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phenomenon occurs more often than in the two examples mentioned above.13 It can all be very confusing, especially when several different objects that could be considered as Grails are displayed on an altar. A similar ‘choose your own Grail’ situation can then occur, as in the Indiana Jones movie. A Grail Mass miniature in a fifteenth-century French Estoire manuscript, for instance, has different objects that could be interpreted as the Grail (Fig. 22). Hands holding a cross and a candle emerge from behind the altar, on which rest the three nails and the tip of the lance of Longinus. Is the shallow dish on the left the Grail, or is the Grail rather the ciborium-like vessel on the right? In this case the dish shape is more likely, since a similar shape for the Grail is shown at the collecting of Christ’s blood in the Grail in this manuscript (Fig. 11).14 When bishop Josephe dies, he entrusts the Grail to Alain, the first Fisher King. In a thirteenth-century manuscript the Grail that Josephe hands to Alain on his deathbed is veiled, but its shape with a stem and the round cross-topped upper part nevertheless suggest the shape of a pyx or ciborium (Fig. 23).15 The ciborium interpretation seems more likely, as it was common to cover a ciborium with a white veil of silk or cloth. The ciborium shape for the Grail is highly popular in fifteenth-century illustrations (Fig. 24), but older Estoire miniatures illustrating this scene can also depict the Grail as a bowl (Fig. 25), which after all is the form that is most in agreement with the text. At the end of the Estoire a far larger receptacle than the ark is constructed for the Grail: Corbenic, a castle built by the first Fisher King to house the Grail. In this castle the Grail will be kept on a silver table to await the arrival of the chosen Grail knight.

Queste du Graal In King Arthur’s time, the Grail becomes the object of the sacred quest that will be accomplished by Bors, Perceval and the pure knight Galahad. In the Queste du Graal, the three Grailwinners learn that the Grail is the ‘dish’ from which Christ

13

14

15

Chase, ‘The Vision of the Grail’, p. 300, comments on this phenomenon: ‘The variation in the way the Grail is presented may be due in part to the shift observed in the text: the disappearance of the term escüele after the naming of the Grail and the substitution of the terms “vessel” and “Grail” may have contributed to the confusion.’ It would be interesting to examine whether there is a point in the story where this shapeshifting generally occurs in the manuscripts, for example whether it links up with the adventures in the ‘New World’, but that investigation goes beyond the scope of this chapter. See Stones, ‘Seeing the Grail’, p. 317; Ulrich Rehm, ‘Daz was ein dinc, daz hiez der Grâl. Zur Ikonographie des Gral im Mittelalter’, in Der Gral. Artusromantik in der Kunst des 19. Jahrhunderts. Katalog zur Ausstellung des Bayerischen Nationalmuseums München, 25 Okt. 1995– 21 Jan. 1996, ed. Reinhold Baumstark and Michael Koch (Cologne, 1995), pp. 31–62, at p. 49. This confusion of shapes and functions is even more complicated as what is called ‘pyxis’ in the Middle Ages can refer to the object that nowadays is called ‘ciborium’, and the word chalice is sometimes used for a ciborium in the Arthurian texts. For instance, see Pierre Breillat, ‘Le Manuscrit de Florence Palatin 556 et la liturgie du Graal’, Mélanges d’archéologie et d’histoire de l’école française de Rome, 55 (1938), 341–73, at p. 352: ‘c’est, si on l’imagine matériellement, tantôt un calice, tantôt une pathène et, plus souvent, la pyxis du Moyen Age, le ciboire d’aujourd’hui. Il règne à ce propos une grande confusion; les objets liturgiques eux-mêmes ne sont pas désignés clairement; il arrive que le calice soit pris pour un ciboire: un prêtre, dit-on, “portoit corpus Domini en un calice” ’ (see La Queste del saint Graal, ed. Albert Pauphilet, 2nd edn [Paris, 1980], p. 231).

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ate the Pascal lamb, but it is usually represented as a chalice or a ciborium in the illustrations. The Grail makes its first appearance at Pentecost at Arthur’s court when Galahad has arrived and sits unharmed in the Perilous Seat at the Round Table. Its appearance is accompanied by thunder and radiance. The Grail is covered with white silk and moves without visible means of support. Emitting marvelous odours, it miraculously nourishes the knights with whatever meat each of them desires. In most fifteenth-century miniatures depicting this event, the Grail appears in the open circular space at the center of the Round Table. It often has the shape of a ciborium, surrounded by rays of light or covered by a cloth, which can be transparent (Figs. 26, 27). The Grail is occasionally supported by two angels in order to visualize the mysterious floating of the sacred object. In an early fourteenth-century miniature, Guinevere sits with Arthur and the knights behind a rectangular table, a shape that is not uncommon for early Round Table representations (Fig. 28).16 As the text suggests that the Grail is floating in the air independently, the miniature depicts it in the hands of a hermit who is surrounded by a wavy cloud so that he is visible to the beholder of the image, but not to Arthur and his court, while the chalice-shaped Grail that he holds lies beyond the cloud of invisibility. A fifteenth-century Prose Tristan manuscript depicts a semicircular Round Table with Galahad seated in the middle (Fig. 29). The chalice-shaped Grail, covered by a white cloth, here flies independently. The flames and rays descending from it upon the knights are probably modeled on the traditional representation of the Holy Spirit descending upon the apostles at Pentecost. After this miraculous Grail apparition at the Round Table, Arthur’s knights set out on the quest for the Holy Grail. Lancelot is denied access to the Grail Chapel because of his sinful love for Guinevere. Hence Lancelot is shown sleeping outside by a cross, while a wounded knight is cured by the Grail. In thirteenth- and fourteenth-century manuscripts depicting this episode, the Grail can be shown as a chalice hovering in mid-air, sometimes with a cross inside in order to show that it concerns a holy object (Fig. 30), while in fifteenth-century illustrations a ciborium carried by angels is more popular. One ciborium is even crowned (Fig. 31). After many adventures, Christ tells Galahad that he and the two other Grail heroes must take the Grail to the city of Sarras in the Holy Land. The three knights find the Grail on a silver table on Solomon’s Ship. They travel on this ship to Sarras, where they are instructed to carry ashore the silver table and the Grail (Fig. 32). Finding the table heavy, Galahad asks a cripple to assist them, and the man is miraculously cured. A miniature illustrating the final Grail Mass, which is celebrated by Bishop Josephe, visualizes the transformation of the host into a child that will be cut

16

Emmanuèle Baumgartner, ‘La Couronne et la cercle: Arthur et la Table Ronde dans les manuscrits du Lancelot-Graal’, in Texte et Image: Actes du colloque international de Chantilly (13 au 15 octobre 1982) (Paris, 1984), pp. 191–200.

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up in pieces (Fig. 33).17 The figure of Christ as a child displaying his wounds appears in the Grail, which is depicted as a gold chalice floating in mid-air between the two kneeling angels bearing candles. The spear is behind it. In a fifteenth-century representation of the three Grail heroes praying before the altar, the Grail has been transformed into a huge ciborium set with jewels (Fig. 34). When Galahad dies before the Grail, a hand appears and carries off the Grail and the lance up to heaven (Fig. 35).

Italy In the French Queste tradition, the Grail cult thus is essentially based on the bread of the Eucharist, which explains the frequent representation of the Grail as a ciborium. In Italy, however, the elements of wine or blood are emphasised for the Grail. In the Queste episode where Galahad cures the wounded king by means of the holy Lance dipped in blood, one manuscript, illustrated in Lombardy, depicts Galahad using the Grail to heal the king’s wound (Fig. 36). It is shown as a chalice, which he holds at the middle of the stem. In a Grail scene in a late thirteenth-century Italian Queste copy that was later owned by the Gonzaga family, the Grail on the altar has the unique shape of a pear-shaped two-handled vessel (Fig. 37). Alison Stones links this shape to the vessels at the foot of the Cross in ninth- and tenth-century Crucifixion scenes.18 In the illustrations of the Tavola ritonda, an Italian compilation based on the French Queste, the Grail is extraordinary in shape. In the only illustrated manuscript of this Italian text, dated 1446, the Grail is depicted as a huge round ceramic pot, decorated with a band of small circles and a ring of flowers (Fig. 38). The author of the Italian text combined the boat that transported the dead body of Perceval’s sister, who died from donating her blood, with Solomon’s ship carrying the Grail. The Grail with the bleeding lance standing upright in it, along with the instruments of the Passion, can therefore be discerned in the boat with the dead lady. In the Italian version, the description of the Grail Mass in Sarras also differs from the French tradition.19 Christ does not distribute the flesh or the bread, as in the French Queste, but he takes the chalice and offers his blood to drink. Christ is represented standing life-size on the table, next to the Grail. The Italian Tavola ritonda seems to be obsessed with blood. In this context, it is telling that an item in the 1426 Visconti inventory is described as ‘De sanguine graduali’, whereas the relevant manuscript is known to be identical with the late thirteenth-century Estoire del saint Graal codex fr. 95 in the Bibliothèque nationale de France in Paris (Fig. 9).20 Apart from this Italian blood-obsession, another difference from the French manuscript Grail quest tradition is that the episode

17 18

19 20

Lori Walters, ‘Wonders and Illuminations: Pierart dou Tielt and the Queste del Saint Graal’, in Word and Image in Arthurian Literature, ed. Keith Busby (New York, 1996), pp. 339–80. Stones, ‘Seeing the Grail’, p. 326. This manuscript is published in facsimile: La grant Queste del Saint Graal. La grande Ricerca del Santo Graal. Versione inedita della fine del xiii secolo del ms. Udine, Biblioteca Arcivescovile 177, ed. A. Comelli et al. (Udine, 1990). See Breillat, ‘Le Manuscrit de Florence’. Breillat, ‘Le Manuscrit de Florence’, p. 371. For this inventory entry, see also the chapter by Richard Barber in this volume.

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of the last Grail Mass in the Tavola ritonda manuscript is very densely illustrated, with no fewer than nine miniatures depicting successive elements of the mass. This sequence could nearly be called a medieval Grail movie.

The Grail in Germany The Grail assumes yet another shape in Germany. Although the chief source for Wolfram von Eschenbach’s Parzival, written c. 1200–10, was Chrétien’s Conte du Graal, Wolfram’s concept of the Grail is quite different. What was a serving dish in the French text has become ‘a thing called Grail’, a stone called ‘lapsit exillis’ that produces an abundance of food and drink. Each year a heavenly dove puts a host on this stone to renew its power. The earliest illustrated copy of Wolfram’s Parzival, the famous Munich codex, is the only manuscript of Wolfram’s text where the Grail has been depicted, and it predates the earliest surviving Chrétien manuscript. Two folia containing four full-page miniatures, each subdivided into three registers, illustrate the end of Wolfram’s story. The last miniature shows the Grail no fewer than three times (Fig. 39). Wolfram concludes the episode in the Grail Castle with a huge feast, for which the Grail produces the food. The upper register of the miniature shows a banquet with the new Grail King Parzival seated next to Feirefiz, who is talking to the old Grail King Anfortas. The Grail Procession is depicted in front of the table. The crowned woman who is represented slightly larger is Repanse de Schoye, the sister of Anfortas, who according to the text is the only lady who can carry the Grail. She holds the Grail, represented here as a silver stone, on a huge yellow cloth. Repanse’s future husband, the Saracen Feirefiz, cannot see the Grail because he has not yet been baptized. His speaking gesture and the scroll in his hand suggest that he is telling Anfortas: ‘I see nothing but a silk cloth.’ In Christian iconography, holding something precious in veiled hands was a sign of reverence. The bottom row of this full-page miniature depicts the Grail twice, each time borne by Repanse. At the baptism of Feirefiz, she holds the now gold Grail-stone on a red cloth. Wolfram’s Grail is also multifunctional, since the text describes how it fills the baptismal font with water of exactly the right temperature. In the scene on the right, the newly baptized Feirefiz is finally able to behold the Grail. It is most remarkable that the fifteenth-century Parzival manuscripts illustrated in the workshop of Diebold Lauber never depict the Grail, even when it is mentioned in the rubric above the image.21 This could be due to the fact that Lauber had a tendency to use generic stock images for the illustrations in his manuscripts. Inspired by Wolfram von Eschenbach’s Titurel, which narrates the prehistory of his Parzival, a certain Albrecht around 1270 composed Der jüngere Titurel. Titurel received the Grail from God, built a temple for it and served the Grail for 500 years. Again, the Grail is related to the Last Supper and is taken along 21

For the illustrated Parzival manuscripts see a.o. Karl J. Benziger, Parzival in der deutschen Handschriftenillustration des Mittelalters (Strassburg, 1914).

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by Joseph of Arimathea, but there is no reference to the collecting of Christ’s blood in it. Albrecht’s Grail has yet another appearance, according to the text: a vessel made of stone. The Munich Jüngerer Titurel codex, dating from the second quarter of the fifteenth century, is the oldest and most abundantly illustrated manuscript of this text (Fig. 40).22 A miniature shows Perceval and Titurel sailing with the Grail to India by way of the city of Pitimont. After the complete population of this town has been fed by the Grail, the city is renamed ‘Grals’ in memory of the miraculous food provider. Perceval is represented as a king while Titurel is shown as a bishop holding the Grail, depicted here as a silver ciborium topped by a gold cross. Once they arrive in India, the Grail is represented in further miniatures as a silver bowl. It remains unclear whether or not this pictural inconsistency is deliberate, since it has been argued that upon its arrival in India the Grail no longer has a nourishing function, but serves exclusively to identify sinners on the one hand, and the future Grail king on the other.23 In any case, none of the Grail miniatures in this codex represents a vessel made of stone. Yet again the textual form of the Grail is not reproduced in the illustrations, and within the images of one and the same manuscript the shape of the Grail changes.

The Grail or not the Grail? Unfortunately, no Grail illustrations survive in Middle Dutch, English, or Iberian Arthurian Grail romances. The same reluctance to depict the Grail as we observed for the Arthurian manuscripts seems to have held for the visual arts. Although the Grail theme was extremely popular in the arts from the PreRaphaelites till the present day, medieval artists seem to have avoided it. In 1929, during the demolition of a house in Lübeck, mural paintings of the Parzival story were discovered under layers of later decoration.24 These paintings, dating from the second quarter of the fourteenth century, were found in the original dining hall on the ground floor. The paintings were described and photographed at the time of their discovery, before they were destroyed shortly afterwards. Hence these old black and white photographs and descriptions are the only remaining witnesses. A photograph of the last roundel, which apparently was in poor condition, shows a seated figure holding a chalice and another person handing it to him (Fig. 41). This scene has been interpreted as Perceval receiving the Grail, although there is nothing in Wolfram’s text that corresponds to such a scene. Furthermore, Roger Sherman Loomis pointed out that in Wolfram’s text, as we have seen, the Grail was not conceived as a chalice but as a

22

23 24

The only other illustrated Titurel manuscript is kept in Bad Berleburg, Sayn-Wittgensteinsche Schloßbibl., Ms. RT 2/1. This is a paper manuscript dated 1479. The Munich codex contains eighty-five miniatures and the Berleburg manuscript has forty-one pen drawings. See Der Gral: Artusromantik in der Kunst des 19. Jahrhunderts, ed. Baumstark and Koch (Cologne, 1995), p. 139. See Der Gral, p. 140. Werner Burmeister, ‘Gotische Wandmalereien in einem Lübecker Bürgerhause’, in Zeitschrift des Vereins für Lübeckische Geschichte und Altertumskunde, 26 (1930), 113–28, at p. 120.

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stone.25 Was this chalice meant to represent a regular cup then, or is it conceivable that the Lübeck painter was acquainted with the French texts? Although the latter possibility can never be excluded and would in fact be extremely interesting, I share Loomis’s caution about interpreting this chalice as the Grail. There are other candidates. One of the sketches in the album of the architect Villard de Honnecourt, dating from c. 1230, depicts the Deposition from the Cross, with a man kneeling at the foot of the Cross, holding a cup (Fig. 42). This figure has been identified as Joseph of Arimathea with the Grail.26 In order for this to be the case, the famous artist would somehow have to have been familiar with the Grail story of the Lancelot-Grail cycle. By 1230, illuminated manuscripts of this text were indeed in circulation, although representations of Joseph kneeling with a chalice under the Crucifixion seem to be of a later date. What is more, the man with the cup is only partly dressed and therefore is more likely to be Adam than the fully dressed Joseph of Arimathea. If Joseph is depicted here, he will probably be one of the men taking Christ’s body from the Cross. If the kneeling figure with the chalice had been intended as a specific reference to Joseph and the Grail, this would have been a most interesting testimony of early Grail reception outside the romances. Unfortunately, however, for the reasons just mentioned we will have to delete Villard’s chalice from the Grail list as well. What then of the popularity in Catalan Romanesque churches of the motif called ‘Mary with the Grail’? According to the art historians Charles Kuhn in 1930, Walter Cook and José Gudiol Ricart in 1950 and Otto Demus and Max Hirmer in 1968, mural paintings in the apses of several northern Spanish Romanesque churches featured depictions of the Virgin Mary holding the Grail (Figs. 43–46).27 After 1970 that idea was quietly abandoned, till the historian Joseph Goering recently picked it up and developed it further.28 About nine instances of this rare iconographic motif are known; one painted on a wooden panel and the others decorating the apses of churches. Most of these Romanesque mural paintings can now be admired in the Museum of Catalan Art in Barcelona. These paintings all show the Virgin Mary, either sitting or standing, showing the palm of her right hand and holding an object in her covered left hand.

25

26

27

28

Roger Sherman Loomis and Laura Hibbard Loomis, Arthurian Legends in Medieval Art (London, 1938), pp. 75–76. Later authors seem to have ignored this dilemma. For instance, see Rehm, ‘Daz was ein dinc’, p. 31, and Bernd Schirok, ‘Die Parzivaldarstellungen in (ehemals) Lübeck, Braunschweig und Konstanz’, in Wolfram Studien, 12 (1992), 172–90, at pp. 176–78. Lynette Muir, ‘Villard de Honnecourt and the Grail’, BBIAS, 23 (1971), 137–41. For reproductions see The Medieval Sketchbook of Villard de Honnecourt, ed. Theodore Bowie (New York, 2006, repr. of the 1859 edition), plate 25. The manuscript can be consulted in colour on the BnF Mandragore website . A study of this iconographic motif and its misinterpretation by above-mentioned art historians has been carried out by Margriet C. Snel, ‘Maria en de Graal? Een queeste’, unpublished MA thesis in Art History (University of Leiden, 1993). She argues convincingly against an interpretation of this iconographic motif as the Grail, by examining the motif in the context of the decorative programme of the apses and by studying the tradition of Ecclesia and Mary as representations of the Church. I am grateful to Margriet Snel for allowing me to read and quote her thesis. Joseph Goering, The Virgin and the Grail. Origins of a Legend (New Haven, CT, 2005).

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Holding a sacred object in a veiled hand is a common iconographic motif, as we already observed concerning Wolfram’s Grail depictions. But is the object that Mary holds the Grail? In the apse decoration of the church of Tahull, the most beautiful painting of all, the object Mary holds clearly is a radiant shallow bowl or dish that is filled with a red substance (Fig. 44). Just as the Grail can take a multitude of different forms in the manuscript illustrations, the shining object in Mary’s veiled hand can have different shapes as well.29 It also appears as a chalice or cup, sometimes with handles (Fig. 45), or with a little cross on it. The object can even look like a vase (Fig. 46). What several instances have in common are the rays shining from this mysterious object. In order to determine whether this object can be interpreted as the Grail, we will have to look at the decorative programme of these churches (Fig. 43).30 The apses all show a similar composition. The upper zone shows a Majestas Domini: inside a mandorla Christ is enthroned on a rainbow, holding a book in his left hand and blessing with the other. The zone below depicts the Virgin among the apostles. Mary is usually situated immediately to the left of the central apse window. In this setting she will represent the triumph of Ecclesia: as Christ’s mother she is considered the foundation of the Church. St Augustine described the birth of Ecclesia from the blood and water from the wound in Christ’s right side. In the famous ninth-century Utrecht Psalter, the Virgin and St John stand to the right of the Cross. The Psalmist is shown on the left, collecting the blood flowing from Christ’s side wound in a chalice and holding a paten with the host in the other hand (Fig. 47).31 In later illustrations the personification of Ecclesia receives Christ’s blood; she is usually crowned, holding the banner of the Resurrection and the chalice symbolizing the New Law (Fig. 48).32 Sometimes Ecclesia and Mary are ‘united’. Mary then stands under the Crucifixion holding Ecclesia’s chalice. Mary probably replaces Ecclesia in the Catalan paintings as well; this would offer a plausible explanation for the chalice in her hand. A striking departure from traditional religious iconography is the rays of light shining from some of the Catalan cups, and probably it was especially this aspect that made people think of the Grail. The bowl shape of the Tahull painting no doubt reinforced the connection to the description of Chrétien’s Grail. If these shining objects represent the Grail, there would, once more, be no agreement as to whether it had the shape of a shallow bowl or a chalice. The fact that the Catalan instances date from 1090 to 1200 would make them too early to qualify as ‘Grails’. Goering therefore argues that the Catalan wall paintings were the source of inspiration for Chrétien and the whole Grail

29 30 31 32

For reproductions of these Maries with the ‘Grail’, see Goering, The Virgin and the Grail. See Snel, Maria en de Graal? See Richard Barber, The Holy Grail: The History of a Legend (London, 2004), p. 121; or Rehm, ‘Daz was ein dinc’, p. 34. For more examples, see Barber, The Holy Grail, p. 122; Rehm, ‘Daz was ein dinc’, pp. 32, 35.

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legend.33 That seems a little farfetched, and his line of reasoning is not unproblematic. The ‘Grail’ in Tahull has a bowl shape that perhaps is not unlike the shape that Chrétien had in mind, but in Chrétien’s perception a Grail contained food and therefore was some sort of dish, instead of a cup filled with blood or wine. It is also misleading that Goering mainly concentrates on the Tahull bowl, whereas none of the eight other Pyrenean instances of this motif have a bowl shape: they are all cups or lamps on some sort of stem. Furthermore, the Tahull Mary dates to 1123 and therefore is by no means the first occurrence or origin of the visual theme.34 And one should also keep in mind that, apart from Tahull, only the objects of San Pere de Burgal and Eulalia d’Estaon have rays. These three fiery objects are remarkable, but the remaining six cups are ‘regular’. In short: the Catalan cup motif is older than the invention of the Grail, Chrétien had a food dish in mind, and the Tahull shape is exceptional and merely a variation on an already existing motif of Mary with a chalice as a symbol of the Church. Unfortunately, therefore, these Romanesque paintings cannot pass the Grail test either. Medieval pilgrims could find true or presumed Grails throughout Spain and Italy. The famous Valencia Grail consists of two stone bowls, joined by a gold stem and handles, its base encircled in filigreed gold and ornamented with twenty-eight pearls, two rubies and a pair of emeralds (Fig. 49).35 The written history of the ‘sacred cup’ of Valencia does not begin until the last year of the fourteenth century, when the Prior of the Pyrenean monastery of San Juan de la Peña presented it to the King of Aragon. It was kept in the royal palace until 1425, when Alfonso V brought it to Valencia, and twelve years later it was presented to the cathedral. The protocol of that royal donation mentions the legend connecting the chalice to the Last Supper, claiming that it was brought to Huesca by St Lawrence in the third century and passed through a number of monasteries before it was entrusted to the monks of San Juan de la Peña for safekeeping. Although the cup could be an artefact of the Graeco-Roman period, the rest bears every indication of having been produced in the fourteenth rather than the first century. Another supposed vessel of the Last Supper is the Sacro Catino in the cathedral of Genoa (Fig. 50).36 Its origin is uncertain. According to William of Tyre, writing about 1170, it was found in Caesarea in a mosque and stolen by the Genoese during the First Crusade. Jacobus de Voragine also mentions it in his late thirteenth-century chronicle of Genoa as the emerald dish from which Christ and the disciples ate at the Last Supper. Christ’s blood would have been collected in it by Nicodemus (not Joseph!) at the Deposition, and that dish according to

33

34 35 36

Goering, The Virgin and the Grail. A similar approach in assuming a pictorial source for Chrétien’s Grail maiden can be found in Helmut Nickel, ‘A Pictorial Source for the Grail Maiden?’, Arthuriana, 16.1 (2006), 61–64. Snel, Maria en de Graal? considers Tahull chronologically the fourth out of the nine ‘Maries with the Grail’. Frederic V. Grunfeld, ‘The Last Holy Grail’, Connoisseur, 211 (1982), 98–99. Also see Barber, The Holy Grail, pp. 168–70. Johannes Zahlten, ‘Der “Sacro Catino” in Genua: Aufklärung über eine mittelalterliche Gralsreliquie’, in Der Gral, ed. Baumstark and Koch, pp. 121–32.

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certain English books is called ‘Sangraal’. This hexagonal bowl was supposed to have been carved from emerald, but in the nineteenth century it was discovered that it is in fact made of glass and painted green. It was sent to Paris after Napoleon’s conquest of Italy, and it was broken when it was returned to Genoa after his defeat. This vessel was probably a classical bowl, which may have been used for the washing of hands.

Conclusion The search for Grails outside the romances has not been very rewarding: no medieval Grail representations seem to have survived outside the Arthurian manuscripts, which were not particularly eager to represent the Grail either. Was it the many forms and functions of the Grail that confused artists or made them reluctant to represent it? Is it due to the lack of a clear description of the form of the Grail in the texts, or was it rather out of veneration for the holy object that they preferred not to depict the Grail? After all, the mysterious object was rarely seen by the characters in the romances either. It can be concluded that, as befits its mysterious nature, the representation of the Grail does not reflect a single tradition, although certain iconographic patterns for the shape of the Grail do emerge. Not surprisingly, liturgical vessels and containers for the celebration of the Mass and for veneration and reservation of the Eucharistic elements were significant models for the depiction of the Grail. In Chrétien’s text it seems clearly a dish, although it is usually shown as a pyx in the miniatures. In the early period of Estoire illustrations the Grail is predominantly represented as a bowl, to be replaced by a ciborium and chalice. The illustrated Queste manuscripts from the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries have a preference for the Grail as a chalice, while fifteenth-century manuscripts generally depict a wide ciborium. In Germany it can be a precious stone, and in Italy the Grail looks like a flowerpot. Moreover, even manuscripts produced by the same illuminator can show inconsistencies by depicting the Grail both as a bowl and a chalice or ciborium in one and the same text. Thus the shape of the Grail remains shrouded in mystery.

3 The Crusaders’ Grail

ANTONIO L. FURTADO

Quid rides? Mutato nomine de te fabula narratur. Horace, Satires, I, i, 69

The prologue to Le Conte du Graal (henceforward, the Romance) seems to reveal that a complex combination of purposes guided the composition of the unfinished masterpiece of Chrétien de Troyes.1 First of all, the author was writing by command of Philip of Alsace, count of Flanders, who would have given him a ‘book’, on which, presumably, the narrative should be based. On the other hand, independently of the book’s contents, he would like to please his patron, and what could be more agreeable to Philip than seeing his exploits celebrated in the new work he had ordered?2 The historical circumstances offered an excellent opportunity, since the count had engaged in a campaign to which all Christian knights, especially the Franks,3 had been called by Pope Urban II: the Crusades. Unfortunately his participation had been less than honourable. But his misdeeds might perhaps, with the aid of poetic licence, be partly excused on grounds of juvenile innocence and lack of worldly experience. The Romance would then take the form of an inspiring fable. In the semblance of one of the characters, the count would see himself in consoling flashback, growing in skill and understanding through chivalric deeds and successive encounters with wise mentors and remarkable women. If at one point he had failed, he was being prepared to return and try again. Another purpose was to tell in rhyme ‘the finest story ever narrated in a royal court’ (vss. 64–65). The story should be authentically his own, never the repetition or servile imitation of a previous narrative, real or fictive. In a mosaic style, he would collect small pieces from many places, including the alleged book, and put them together in a novel way. Moreover, to bear the mark of its author, the story should belong to the genre he, more than anyone else, had contributed to

1

2

3

I am indebted to Professor Judy Shoaf for insightful discussions and invaluable assistance in translating the Old French and Latin texts, and to M. Louis Maillard and M. Cyril Longin for the illustration of the relic of St Jacques. Chrétien de Troyes, Le Roman de Perceval ou Le Conte du Graal, ed. Keith Busby (Tübingen, 1993). Subsequent references to this romance are given in the text and identified by line number. Will Durant, The Age of Faith (New York, 1950), p. 587.

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inaugurate: the Arthurian romance of chivalry. Gawain would be there as foil to the hero, contrastingly more mature, dearest nephew and alter ego of an aged King Arthur. Other pieces might come from Chrétien’s own life experience and from his Latin and French readings. Among the latter was probably the Old French Roman d’Alexandre.4 To praise Philip, Chrétien’s prologue proclaims him worthier than Alexander. Similarly, he may have wanted his Romance, created in Philip’s honour, to surpass that legendary epic of so much renown. In what follows, we first examine the presumed relationship, previously identified by Martín de Riquer,5 between Philip’s frustrating expedition to the Holy Land and the central theme of the Romance. Then we argue that the marvellous objects that dominate the narrative – the Bleeding Lance and the Grail – as well as several of its characters and episodes, were modelled to a significant extent on elements extracted from the history of the First Crusade, centered on the rise and fall of the Kingdom of Jerusalem. As a complementary hypothesis, we contend that, if the book existed, it might consist of one or more Latin or French manuscripts about that momentous historical event. The most important report about the Crusades covering the period of interest was Archbishop William of Tyre’s Historia rerum in partibus transmarinis gestarum [A History of Deeds Done Beyond the Sea]. It received a Latin continuation and was the object of Old French translations and continuations. Two of the latter deserve mention: L’Estoire de Eracles, and the Chronique de Ernoul et de Bernard le Trésorier. Although the extant manuscripts of the French translations and continuations are dated towards the middle of the thirteenth century6 – too late therefore to have been used by Chrétien – they are today the closest available rendering into that language of the Latin texts, and should provide a reasonably good notion of how the French poet, famously knowledgeable in Latin, would read and interpret the originals. We shall accordingly base our comparisons on the French texts associated with William’s work, referring henceforward to the entire corpus as the Chronicle. Much research remains to be done. In particular, the relationship between the Romance and the Chronicle will remain conjectural, unless a specific manuscript can ever be established as having been available to the poet.

The Central Scene at the Grail Castle The nucleus of Chrétien’s narrative is Perceval’s visit to the Grail Castle, with its square-shaped tower so imposing that ‘L’en ne trovast jusqu’a Barut / Si bele ne si bien assise’ [‘From here to Beirut you could not find a finer or better situated one’ (vss. 3052–53)], where he is received with honour by the Fisher King.

4 5 6

Alberic de Briançon et al., The Medieval French Roman d’Alexandre, ed. Edward C. Armstrong et al., 7 vols (Princeton, NJ, 1937–76). Chrétien de Troyes et al., El Cuento del Grial de Chrétien de Troyes y sus Continuaciones, trans. Martín de Riquer and Isabel de Riquer (Madrid, 1989), p. xix. Steven Runciman, A History of the Crusades, 3 vols (London, 1990), II, p. 477.

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A sword is brought to the king; he should give it to someone who would use it well. And the king instantly places it in Perceval’s hands (see below). While Perceval is sitting by the king’s side, a group of persons passes before them, some holding candelabra, and others carrying objects which seem full of symbolic meaning: a bleeding lance, a grail, a carving dish. In his innocence, complying with his mentor’s injunction, Perceval does not ask the questions that come to his mind, fearing that they might be regarded as rude and inopportune. But, as the story later reveals, by staying silent he failed disastrously. If he had inquired about the objects, the maimed king would recover and would again be able to govern the land, and Perceval himself would reap a great profit. Now, many misfortunes would befall both him and others. Likewise, when Philip arrived at the Kingdom of Jerusalem, he was gladly received by King Baldwin IV. As he entered the holy city, whose hallmark was the square-shaped Tower of David, the king hastened to offer him the regency of the kingdom and the command of the army, ready to march against Egypt, joining forces with Byzantium. Baldwin needed such help because his leprosy was worsening with time. He had just been carried back from Ascalon on a litter, being no longer able to mount a horse. If Perceval was to be granted a similar mandate, the gift of the sword would assume the character of an investiture, as indicated by the wording: ‘Et dist: “Biax frere, ceste espee / Vos fu jugie et destinee, / Et je weil molt que vos l’aiez; / Mais çainniez le, si le traiez” ‘ [And he said: ‘Fair brother, this sword was intended and destined for you, and I very much want you to have it. But gird it on and draw it’ (vss. 3167–70)]. A late example of this sort of ritual is given in Les Gestes des Chiprois: ‘il traist s’espee et la vost metre en la main en maniere de luy revestir de la seignorie; mais seluy fu sage et ne vost prendre l’espee’ [he drew his sword and tried to put it in his hands, so as to invest him of lordship, but the other was prudent and wanted not to hold the sword].7 It was predicted that the sword given to Perceval would break in a fight. The sword of the first man to govern the Kingdom of Jerusalem, Godfrey of Bouillon, was broken in single combat, leaving him in mortal peril confronting his fully armed adversary; and yet he won with what remained of the sword.8 Philip declined the offer, claiming to be there simply as a pilgrim. Still, he took the occasion to ask for a totally different boon: to marry off Baldwin’s sister (and also his half-sister) to the sons of one of his vassals. William of Tyre, who, as chancellor, dealt personally with him, interpreted this as evidence of his ‘great malice’. The very title of the chapter, ‘Comment li quens Felipe de Flandres se contint mauvesement en la terre d’outre mer’ [How Count Philip of Flanders behaved badly in the land beyond the sea], could not be more eloquent: Li qarz anz del resgne Baudoin estoit entrez; entor le commencement d’aoust, li quens Felipe de Flandres que l’en aveit longuement atendu, arriva au port 7 8

Les Gestes des Chiprois, in Recueil des historiens des Croisades, ed. Académie Royale des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, 15 vols (Paris, 1844–95), XIII, p. 754. William of Tyre, Historia rerum in partibus transmarinis gestarum, in Recueil des historiens des Croisades, ed. Académie Royale des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, 15 vols (Paris, 1844–95), I, p. 373. Subsequent references are inserted into the text and identified by page number.

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de la cité. Li rois qui s’estoit fet porter d’Escalonne en Jerusalem en une litiere, ot mout grant joie de sa venue quant il l’oï. Si envoia de ses barons contre lui et des prelaz, por lui ennorer mout et conduire en Jerusalem où li rois gisoit encores malades. Quant il fu venuz, li rois manda le patriarche et de ses barons, les prelaz et les deus mestres del Temple et de l’Ospital. Par le consseil de touz li fist prier et requerre que il preist le roiaume de Jerusalem en sa garde et en sa desfensse, tuit obeiroient à son commandement en pès et en guerre … Le quens respondi à cele parole qu’il s’en conseilleroit, et quant il ot parlé à ses genz, il respondi que porce n’estoit il pas venuz en la terre de Surie que il eust ilec baillie ne tel jostice com de gouverner le roiaume, einçois estoit venuz por servir Nostre Seingneur en humilité … En ceste maniere ne pooit l’en savoir que li quens de Flandres penssoit, que il meismes descovri son proposement et dist que mout s’emerveilloit de ce qu’en ne parloit à lui del mariage de sa cousine. Li baron qui ce oïrent, furent tuit esbahi de la grant malice qu’il penssoit … Quant li baron … entendirent ce qu’il en penssoit, si respondirent que de ce couvendroit parler au roi et il l’en sauroient demein à respondre ce que le roi en pleroit. Au matin retornerent à lui et li distrent, par consseil, qu’il n’estoit mie coutume en la terre que nule voeve dame ne se mariast dedenz l’an que ele avoit perdu son seigneur, et ce apele le loi le ten de plor. (William, I, 1027–29) [In the fourth year of Baldwin’s reign, by the beginning of August, count Philip of Flanders, so long awaited, arrived at the seaport. The king, who had been carried from Ascalon to Jerusalem on a litter, was very much pleased when told of his arrival. He sent some of his barons and priests to escort him honourably to Jerusalem, where he was lying sick. When Philip came, the king summoned the Patriarch, his barons, the priests, and the masters of the Temple and of the Hospital. By their unanimous advice, he begged Philip to take under his guard and protection the Kingdom of Jerusalem: everyone would obey his commands in war and peace … The count said that he would take counsel, and, after speaking with his followers, replied that he had not come to the land of Syria to receive it as a gift, neither did he find himself entitled to govern the realm; on the contrary, he had come to serve Our Lord in humility … Thus, one could not guess what the count of Flanders had in mind, until the count himself disclosed his purpose; he said that he was very much surprised that nobody spoke to him about the marriage of his cousin (Baldwin’s sister). Hearing this, the barons were amazed at his malicious thinking … When the barons … understood what he planned, they declared that the matter had to be discussed with the king, and that, next day, they would be able to tell him about the king’s decision. They returned in the morning with the response that it was not customary in the land to have a widow remarried in the same year that she had lost her spouse, this being called the period of mourning.]

Perceval’s naïf prattle had once exasperated a group of knights he mistook for angels, provoking the comment that all Welshmen (‘Galois’) were foolish (vss. 243–44). But Philip’s wrangling had a worse effect, as he prevaricated about the planned Egyptian campaign. The four Byzantine ambassadors, led by ‘Androines qui estoit apelez li Angles’ [Andronicus, surnamed the Angel (William, I, 1030)], were disgusted with the mockery (‘gabois’) of the Franks, who in fact felt embarrassed: ‘il leur sembloit que ce fust aucuns gabois de tantes foiz mouvoir leur conseill et requerre ces hauz homes de Grece une eure de remenoir et autre

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de l’aler’ [to them it seemed mockery to change advice so often, asking those high men from Greece one time to stay and next time to go (William, I, 1034)]. Thus these two visits to a royal court, so full of promise both for the land and for self-realization, would equally end in failure. Philip did not leave immediately, but his half-hearted attempts to collaborate with the kingdom’s military action were ridiculed by the Chronicle in a chapter appropriately titled ‘Comment li quenz de Flandres s’en retorna sans rien faire’ [How the count of Flanders went back without accomplishing anything (William, I, 1047)].

Family Relationships The family ties between Perceval and the Fisher King explain his prestigious reception at the Grail Castle. We learn that he was first cousin to the king on his mother’s side. One can assume that if he had, in addition, behaved as expected, he would qualify as a successor to the throne, as confirmed in later Grail stories, such as the Manessier Continuation. What, in turn, moved King Baldwin to choose Philip of Alsace for the double task of regent and captain (‘chevetaine’) of the royal troops was that the count was then and there his closest male relative. A former king of Jerusalem, Fulk of Anjou, had generated both Amalric, who was Baldwin’s father, and Philip’s mother Sibylla. Thus, through his mother, Philip was first cousin to the king. As soon as Perceval leaves the castle, he meets another first cousin, a woman in tears clasping the dead body of her lover. She condemns Perceval for his failure and informs him of the death of his mother. She adds that, having lived in their company, she remembers him well. Perceval, with incredible lack of sentiment, tries to convince her to abandon the corpse and follow him, leaving the dead to the dead. As mentioned above, Philip’s concealed purpose was to arrange the marriage of a sister of Baldwin, who of course was equally Philip’s first cousin. She had been baptized Sibylla, deliberately so named after the other Sibylla, Philip’s mother: ‘Il en avoit deus enfanz: Baudoin … et Sebile qui estoit einz née, qui einsint ot non por la contesse de Flandres’ [He (Amalric) had two children: Baldwin … and Sibylla, who was the older, and had been so named after the countess of Flanders (William, I, 888–89)]. Her first husband, William of Montferrat, also called William Longsword, had died scarcely three months before, leaving her pregnant. Like the mother and the cousin of Perceval, Philip’s mother and cousin had shared the same dwelling. Philip’s father, Thierry, in one of his four expeditions to the Holy Land, had taken his wife with him. When he returned to Flanders in 1159, Sibylla remained behind to become a nun at the convent of St Lazarus in Bethany, where she died in 1165. And Sibylla, Philip’s cousin, born in 1160, was raised in that convent.9 Note also that Perceval stumbled upon the Grail Castle, and found his cousin in its vicinity, while going in the direction where he

9

Runciman, A History of the Crusades, II, p. 407.

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expected to meet his mother: ‘Kar por rien nule n’i aloie / Fors por li que veoir voloie’ [‘Because I was going that way for no other reason than that I wanted to see her’ (vss. 3623–24)]. Therefore, the family relationships coincide with respect to the characters in the two narratives: the hero, through his mother, is first cousin to the king. And another first cousin is mourning her recently deceased man. The conviviality between mother and cousin in the Romance echoes the close attachment of the two Sibyllas. Philip’s disrespect for recent widowhood is similarly reflected in Perceval’s attitude. If Philip did serve as model for Perceval, the Arthurian hero is certainly a generously retouched portrait. Perceval had a single damaging but not incurable blemish: ‘Mais plus se taist qu’il ne covient’ [But he remains silent more than he should (vs. 3298)], the same fault that plagued Amalric: ‘Celi avoit de tieux coutumes qui ces bonnes teches li oscurcisoient, quar il se tesoit plus qu’il ne li avenoit’ [He had habits that obscured his good qualities; for he remained silent more than it befitted him (William, I, 885)].

The Fisher King Having proposed the Leper King (‘li Rois Mesiaus’) as Chrétien’s model for the Grail King, can we come closer to the latter’s full image, so as to account for the maimed (‘mehaigniez’) and fisher (‘pescheor’) attributes? First, consider certain linguistic peculiarities associated with the word ‘poisson’ (fish). It is close to ‘poissans’ or ‘puissanz’ (powerful), and there are allusions to ‘puissanz rois’ (powerful king) since the beginning of the Chronicle (William, I, 10). It is also close to ‘poison’, corresponding to the same word in present-day French and English (a venom), but also to a purgative or even to any potion.10 This ambiguity is reflected in translations, an example being given by the lines: ‘Et d’autres borjois a fuison, / Qui pas n’avoient pris poison, / Qu’il estoient et gros et cras’ (vss. 5909–11). In the glossary of Roach’s edition, the entry for ‘poison’ registers ‘purge’, followed by a question mark.11 Owen follows Roach, laughing at those ‘townsmen who had certainly not been taking purgatives, so stout and paunchy were they!’12 Yet Martín de Riquer reads ‘poison’ as fish.13 A similar confusion occurs involving the Leper King. When his tutor, William of Tyre himself, discovered his illness, his father acted promptly: ‘Li rois fist venir ses mires qui assez i mistrent enplastres et oingnemenz; poisons li donerent et autres medecines, més riens ne li valurent’ (William, I, 1005), which one translator renders as ‘Physicians were consulted and prescribed repeated formentations, anointings and even poisonous drugs to improve his condition, but in 10 11 12 13

A.J. Greimas, Dictionnaire de l’ancien français (Paris, 1997), p. 466. Chrétien de Troyes, Le Roman de Perceval, ou Le Conte du Graal, ed. William Roach (Geneva, 1959), p. 356. Chrétien de Troyes, Perceval: The Story of the Grail, in Arthurian Romances, trans. D.D.R. Owen (London, 1987), p. 452. Chrétien, El Cuento del Grial, p. 115.

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vain’,14 although ‘potion’ would sound more appropriate. And the suggestion of ‘fish’ remains, hinting at a possible source for the ‘fisher’ attribute. The word ‘pescheor’ (fisher), as has repeatedly been observed by Arthurian scholars, is close to ‘pecheor’ (sinner). When Perceval expresses his doubt about the man he had met: ‘Pucele, par le Salveor, / Ne sai s’il est peschiere ou rois’ [‘Young lady, by our Saviour I do not know whether he is a fisherman or a king’ (vss. 3496–97)], one remembers that Godfrey of Bouillon did not want to bear a crown, counting himself among the sinners: ‘il respondi qu’en cele seinte cité où Nostre Sires Jesucrist avoit portée coronne d’espines por lui et pour les autres pecheors, ne porteroit il jà, se Dieu plet, coronne d’or ne de pierres precieuses’ [he replied that, in the holy city where Our Lord Jesus Christ had worn a crown of thorns, for his sake as for the other sinners, he would not bear, so help him God, any crown of gold or jewels (William, I, 377)]. And St Peter, the first pope, a king of kings, had been a fisherman. Chrétien’s personage had been hit by a javelin through his thighs, and his incurable wound was a continuing torture. Among other disabilities, he could no longer mount a horse. To enjoy himself, he was wont to spend time fishing. Certain facts about Godfrey’s brother, Baldwin I, first potentate to rule in Jerusalem as king, may be relevant here. He suffered a wound that never entirely healed, inflicted by a javelin (although not through the thighs). Can we imagine a connection between this painful wound and … fishing? Let us look at two passages, the first about the wound: Endementres que li rois entendoit à ce, li uns des larrons lança un javelot par derrieres et le feri entre l’eschine et les costes, près del cuer. Mout en fu li rois bleciez perilleusement. Grant tens mist au guerir, mès au derrenier l’en guerirent li mire si comme il porent; quar tozjors puis en fu mès dangereus et par eures li douloit li leus de la plaie tout freschement. (William, I, 440) [While the king was so engaged, one of the bandits threw a javelin from behind and hit him between the backbone and the ribs, close to the heart. The king was grievously wounded. He took a long time to recover but finally, with difficulty, the doctors treated him as best they could; for after that he was always in danger, and sometimes felt a fresh pain in the wounded spot.]

and the second about the circumstances of his death: Tantost comme la cité fu einsint prise, li rois issi fors à la bouche del Nil. Moult durement s’emerveilla de cele eue et volentiers l’esguarda, pour ce que l’en dit que cil braz vient d’un des quatre fluns de Paradis. Après il fist prendre des poissons en cele eue dom il i a grant planté, et en mengierent assez; et quant li rois leva del mengier, il senti une grant douleur en son cors, et la plaie qu’il avoit eue de pieça li commença mout durement à douloir tout freschement, si qu’il ot mout grant poor de mort … La maladie l’opressa si durement que il ne pot chevauchier, pour ce li firent une litiere où l’en le porta plus soes … Là est une cité és deserz mout encienne qui a non Lars, et siest sus la marine.

14

William of Tyre, History of Deeds Done Beyond the Sea, trans. Paul Halsall, .

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Iluecques li engregna si sa maladie que il ne pot aler avant, einçois le couvint ilec morir et rendre l’ame. (William, I, 508) [As soon as the city (Faramie) was captured, the king went to the mouth of the Nile. He marvelled at this course of water and was pleased to watch it, for – so it is said – it flows from one of the four rivers of Paradise. Then he ordered his men to catch fish, very plentiful in those waters, of which they ate a large quantity. When the king finished eating, he felt a great pain in his body, as the wound he had suffered in the past started to ache anew, so that he was in utter fear of death … The illness tormented him to the point that he could no longer ride; they made a litter, to carry him smoothly … A very ancient city lies in the desert, called Lars (el-Arish), situated by the seaside. There his illness was aggravated so much that he could go no farther, and died there.]

We might risk the conjecture that Chrétien’s personage did (partly) result from a conflation of Baldwin IV with his predecessor Baldwin I. In addition, if eating fish (‘poisson’) proved fatal to Baldwin I, drinking a purgative (‘poison’) was believed to have precipitated Amalric’s death (William, I, 1001). Other cases will be examined later where such word similarities and variety of meanings may also have offered curious suggestions to the author.

The Holy Lance To follow the procession with our mind’s eye, we must recall that the Grail King, his guest and possibly a large number of other persons were sitting by a great fire: S’ot devant lui .i. fu molt grant De seche busche cler ardant, Qui fu entre .iiii. colommes. Bien poïst l’en .iiii. .c. homes Asseoir environ le feu, Et s’eüst chascuns aisié leu. (vss. 3093–98) [In front of (the king) was a great fire of dry wood that burned brightly between four pillars. It would have been easy to seat four hundred men, each with ample room, around that fire.]

The procession starts with a youth carrying a lance, and: ‘Si passa par entre le feu / Et cels qui el lit se seoient’ [he passed by between the fire and those seated on the couch (vss. 3194–95)]. Later tradition, adopted by Robert de Boron and by Chrétien’s continuators, identified this lance as a relic of the Passion: the lance of Longinus that pierced Christ’s side. It may sound incongruous to modern ears that, to an object associated with the salvation of humankind in general, Chrétien would attribute a destructive power: ‘Et s’est escrit qu’il ert une hore / Que toz li roiames de Logres, / Qui jadis fu la terre as ogres, / Sera destruis par cele lance’ [It is written that a time will come when the whole realm of Logres, which was formerly the land of ogres, will be destroyed by that lance (vss. 6168–71)].

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For the Crusaders a relic could well be used as a battle standard. Islamic troops were attempting to retake Antioch, adopting the usual Turkish technique of hiding in ambush, opposing the enemy with a few men, retiring and then attacking with the full contingent;15 such army tactics, plus a flank or encircling manoeuvre (‘foreclose’) are described in the sixth book of the Chronicle (William, I, 235–75) – and, incidentally, in the Biaurepaire episode of the Romance (vss. 2363–2427). While the starving Christians resisted, a poor semi-literate monk, Peter Bartholomew, had a vision. St Andrew announced to him that the Holy Lance could be found in a church dedicated to St Peter. A lance was in fact unearthed in the place indicated, a sign that their efforts would not be in vain: Li evesques del Pui et li autres seint home qui estoient en cele compaignie parlerent à touz les pelerins et lor distrent que Nostre Sires leur montroit biau signe … Il pristrent tuit cuer … si jurerent … il ne se partiroient de cele seinte compaignie jusqu’il eussent conquis, à l’aide de Dam le Dieu, Jerusalem, cele noble cité où Nostre Sires soufri mort par son pueple (William, I, 257–58) [The bishop of Le Puy and the other accompanying holy men spoke to the pilgrims and told them that Our Lord was showing them a sign … They took heart … and swore that … they would not part from this holy company until they had conquered, with God’s help, the noble city of Jerusalem, where Our Lord died for his people]

and the lance would soon be carried aloft in a victorious sortie against the besiegers. Later, its authenticity being doubted, Peter Bartholomew offered to submit himself to an ordeal by fire: Ilec fu renouvelée une parole, quar la menue gent et autres barons meismes commencierent à douter de la lance qui avoit esté trovée en Antioche, si comme vos oïstes desus; quar l’um disoient veraiement que ç’avoit esté cele dont Nostre Sires fu poinz en la croiz et qui de son sanc fu arousée … Cil qui trovée l’avoit, oï la doute, si vint devant les barons mout hardiement et leur dist: ‘Biaux seingneurs, ne doutez pas de ce … Et por vos montrer que voirs soit einssint comme ge l’ai dit, je vos pri que vos façoiz alumer un grant feu, j’enterrai enz et tendrai la lance en ma mein, je passerai outre et m’en irai toz seins.’ Quant il oïrent ce, bien si acorderent tuit: li feu fu apareilliez granz et hauz. Ce fu le jor del vendredi beneoit; et leur plot que la chose fu einssint esprouvée le jor que Jesucrist fu feruz de la lance. Cil qui s’ofroit à ceste mise avoit non Pierres Berthelemis, clers assez pou lettrez, selonc ce que l’en pooit conoistre par defors, mout estoit simples hom. Touz li olz estoit assemblez entor le feu. Pierres vint avant et s’agenoilla. Quant il ot fete s’oroison, il prist la lance et entra el feu, passa tout outre, ne de riens ne fu bleciez qu’en poïst seur lui conoistre. Quant li pueples vit ce, tuit i corurent por lui touchier et fere grant joie. (William, I, 304–5) [Then a rumour rose again, for it chanced that the common folk and even some of the barons began to have doubts about the lance which had been found in Antioch, as you have heard tell. Some said it was indeed the one which 15

Runciman, History of the Crusades, I, p. 248.

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pierced Our Lord on the Cross and was sprinkled with his blood . . . The man who had found it heard about the doubts; he went boldly before the barons and said to them: ‘Fair lords, do not doubt this! . . . And, to show you that it is true as I said, I pray you to have a great fire lit and I will enter it holding the lance in my hand; I will go through it and emerge untouched’. When they heard this they all agreed; the fire was built up huge and high. It was the day of Holy Friday, and it pleased them that the test was essayed on the day when Jesus Christ was struck by the lance. He who endured this was named Peter Bartholomew, a clerk with not much education and, from what we can learn about him, apparently a very plain man. The whole army gathered around the fire. Peter approached and knelt down. When he had made his prayer, he took the lance and entered the fire, passed completely through it and was not hurt in any way that anyone could discover. When the people saw this, they all ran to touch him and rejoice.]

A few days later he died, however, and the lance was abandoned. This tragic scene is absent from the Romance, but consider again the emphatic description, reproduced above, of a great fire blazing in the hall, with the potential attendance of hundreds of onlookers. Passing beside (if not through) a great fire stands out as a salient mark of the ritual witnessed by Perceval. Peter Bartholomew’s ordeal had taken place on a Holy Friday, the day when ‘Jhesucrist fu feruz de la lance’. Had Chrétien seen this passage, the coincidence would perhaps be in agreement with his vision: the iron tip should again be bleeding (‘de son sanc fu arousee’), in memory of that supreme day of sorrow.

The Grail, the Head of St Jacques and the Sacro Catino It is a well-known fact that Chrétien’s enigmatic object was not introduced as the Grail, but simply as a grail: .I. graal entre ses .ii. mains Une damoisele tenoit, Qui avec les vallés venoit, … Quant ele fu laiens entree Atot le graal qu’ele tint, Une si grans clartez i vint Qu’ausi perdirent les chandoiles Lor clarté come les estoiles Quant li solaus lieve ou la lune. Aprés celi en revint une Qui tint .i. tailleoir d’argant. Li graals, qui aloit devant, De fin or esmeré estoit; Pierres prescïeuses avoit El graal de maintes manieres, Des plus riches et des plus chieres Qui en mer ne en terre soient;

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Totes autres pierres passoient Celes del graal sanz dotance. (vss. 3220–39) [A damsel, who came with the youths … held in both hands a grail. Once she had entered with the grail that she held, so great a radiance appeared that the candles lost their brilliance just as the stars do at the rising of the sun or moon. After her came another maiden, holding a silver carving-dish. The grail, which proceeded ahead, was of pure refined gold. And this grail was set with many kinds of precious stones, the richest and most costly in sea or earth; those stones in the grail certainly surpassed all others.]

The Old French word ‘graal’ was not coined by Chrétien. It is a well-attested common noun, as Mario Roques verified, meaning a large platter; its first literary appearance was in the Old French Roman d’Alexandre.16 More precisely, it already occurs in the Alexandre décasyllabique version, attributed to the 1160s or early 1170s, which covers a limited period of the Macedonian king’s legendary career:17 Li seneschaus conut ben lo meschin E dist au rei sempres en son latin: ‘Per ma fei, sire, ça vei un pelerin, Il but erser a ma copa d’or fin …’ (stanza 61) Li proz Sanson conut lo seneschal. ‘Sire, dist il, Deus te porgart de mal. Ot tei manchai erser a ton graal …’ (stanza 62) [The seneschal recognized the young man (Sanson), and immediately told the king in his own tongue: ‘By my faith, lord, I see there a pilgrim who drank last night from my pure gold cup’ … Mighty Sanson recognized the seneschal. ‘My lord’, he said, ‘God protect you from evil. With you I ate last night, from your dish …’]

So, first a seneschal and then the worthy Sanson tell how the latter enjoyed the former’s hospitality. They echo each other. One line says that Sanson drank from the seneschal’s cup of gold; the other that Sanson ate from his grail. They confirm that the grail is a platter; and the symmetry of the descriptions in the successive stanzas induces a combination of the cup made of fine gold with the platter, to form the image of the grail as a precious golden object. Would the Grail be a relic, as was the Bleeding Lance if it is interpreted as the spear of Longinus? When the Grail is brought into the hall, a great radiance is produced, suggesting a manifestation of heavenly light, much like that which once descended before the True Cross carried by the Crusaders. The Leper King’s men, under the command of Guy of Lusignan, were camped dangerously close to Saladin’s troops. After a day or two, they were complaining of hunger; but a first portent relieved their suffering:

16 17

Mario Roques, Le Nom du Graal, in Les Romans du Graal dans la littérature des XIIe et XIIIe siècles, ed. J. Fourquet (Paris, 1956), pp. 7–14. Alberic, Roman d’Alexandre, III, p. 91.

Figure 1. Story of the St Jacques relic – mural painting in the Collégiate St Pierre at Aire-Sur-la-Lys.

Figure 2. Detail of Figure 1; Philip stealing the relic.

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Une chose ne veill ge mie oublier qui lor avint, de quoi meintes genz se merveillierent, quar en la fonteine de Tubanie et el ruissel qui en ist, n’avoit l’en onques oï parler à cel jor que il i eust nus poissons, se ne fust par aventure loches ou verons; de ceus mesmes i avoit il pou, mès quant noz genz i furent logiez, si grant planté en trouverent de gros et de bons que il soufirent à toute l’ost tant com il sejorna. (William, I, 1123–24) [One thing that I would not want to forget then happened, to the amazement of many people. For in the fountain of Tubanie, and in the adjoining stream, one had never heard of the existence of fish other than minnows or gudgeons, and even of these there were few. But, when our people lodged there, such a plenty of large and good ones was found that they were enough for the entire army, as long as it camped.]

And then the second portent occurred: ‘Quant ce vint le mardi al nuit, si envoia Dame Diex le fu nouvel devant le Sainte Crois qui en l’ost estoit, dont fist on si grant joie en l’ost, et si grans luminaires de candoiles com il fisent le nuit’ [When Tuesday night came, God sent the new fire in front of the True Cross, which was with the army, whereupon they rejoiced greatly, and made such lighting of candles as if they were making day of night].18 Observing from a distance the tumultuous light and sound coming from the camp, one enemy warrior, not suffering from Perceval’s inhibitions, approached a Christian soldier and asked questions. This saved the day, for as soon as Saladin heard that the clarity from heaven had come down before the True Cross, he moved away with his army. And it is the protection of the true Cross that is invoked for Perceval by the troops defending Biaurepaire: ‘Biax sire, icele vraie crois, / Ou Diex soffri pener son fil, / Vos gart hui de mortel peril’ [‘Fair sir, may that True Cross on which God allowed his son to suffer guard you today from mortal peril’ (vss. 2154–56)]. A hermit later adds something about the contents and use of the Grail. He who is served from the Grail, in a secluded room in the Grail Castle, is the father of the Fisher King. He had been living in confinement there for twelve years, and what was ‘served’ to him in the Grail was a single wafer. Since the hermit does not elucidate whether the wafer was consecrated, one suspects that the receptacle itself, not its contents, had the power to sustain the man’s life: ‘Tant sainte chose est li graals’ [‘so saintly a thing is the grail’ (vs. 6425)]. Even what the Grail is said not to contain deserves attention. It does not contain fish, and we are led to recall the deaths of those two predecessors of the Leper King, Baldwin I and Amalric, caused, respectively, by the ingestion of fish (‘poisson’) and purgative (‘poison’). As to the ‘sainte chose’ attribution, a fountain in Babylon had this same epithet in the Venice version of the Roman d’Alexandre: ‘Tant per est sancta chose’ [‘It is such a saintly thing’ (stanza 449)].19 However, besides enjoying the flattering parallel with Alexander in Chrétien’s dedication, would Count Philip find it natural to see his name associated with any sort of ‘saintly things’? During his youth, Philip had a predilection for the 18 19

Ernoul, Chronique de Ernoul et de Bernard le Trésorier, ed. Louis de Mas Latrie (Paris, 1871), p. 100. Alberic, Roman d’Alexandre, I, p. 371.

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ANTONIO L. FURTADO

city of Aire (today Aire-sur-la-Lys, in northern France). His mentor and chancellor, to whom his successful management of the county was credited, was named Robert d’Aire. In a desire to ennoble a newly constructed church in Aire (c. 1166), Philip performed a rash feat. He violently snatched from their guardians a miraculous relic: the severed head of St Jacques, belonging to the St Vaast abbey in the city of Arras. Pope Alexander III decreed severe counter-measures, but Hughes, abbot of St Amand, acting as an arbiter, negotiated a compromise: the head was split into two parts, the largest returning to Arras and the smallest staying in Aire to grace the new church where, since then, miracles have been reported. The relic is no longer preserved, but mural paintings in the church provide a pictorial account of the events.20 Now, turning to the Crusaders: did they find some relic that might reasonably be associated with Chrétien’s Grail? The Museo del Tesoro of the San Lorenzo cathedral, in Genoa, exhibits even today an object called the Sacro Catino, a platter of emerald according to medieval belief (but actually of crystal, as shown by modern analysis). William’s text reports how it was found inside a temple in Caesarea. Crusaders from Genoa, who were among those who pillaged the temple, took it to their city as their share in the spoils: Il avoit en une des parties de la vile un temple que Herodes avoit jadis fet és non d’Auguste Cesar qui estoit de trop riches oevres fez, touz peinz à or musique … Là dedenz fu trouvez uns vessiaux de pierres verz et cleres assez de trop grant biauté, fez ausint comme uns taillouers. Li Genevois cuidierent et cuident encore que ce soit une esmeraude, por ce la pristrent à leur part del gaeng de la vile por trop grant some d’avoir; il l’emporterent à leur cité et mistrent en la mestre yglise où ele est encore. L’en i met la cendre que l’en prent le premier jor de karesme, et le montre l’en ausint comme por une trop riche chose, quar il dient veraiement que c’est esmeraude. (William, I, 422–23) [Located in the city, there was a temple, built by Herod in honour of Augustus Caesar, all decorated with exceedingly rich works in gold mosaic … In the temple was found a vessel of bright and clear green stone of great beauty, shaped like a carving-dish. The people of Genoa believed, and still believe, that it is an emerald; because of this they took it as their part of the booty from the city, in exchange for a large amount of wealth; they brought it to their city and put it in the main church, where it still is. They place in it the ashes which are distributed the first day of Lent, and display it thus as a rich thing; for they say that it is really emerald.]

Note first that the adjective ‘esmeré’, applied to the gold used in the making of the Grail, sounds tolerably similar to ‘esmeraude’ (emerald). Secondly, although made of gold, not of some stone, the Grail is inlaid with precious jewels. And, last, consider the presence in the procession of that third object, the silver ‘tailleoir’ – whereas the passage above states that the emerald vessel was fashioned like a ‘taillouers’. From a simile employed to describe an object, Chrétien

20

.

THE CRUSADERS’ GRAIL

41

would have created a second object, a doubling artifice functioning as the inverse of conflation. The Genoans were happy to take to their cathedral a piece so splendid for both its material and – since it had been taken from a temple – spiritual value. The passage neither indicates whether, in the temple, there was something inside it, nor what it was used for. It does not matter: this receptacle, thought to be one single huge emerald, was a miracle by itself (the Latin original uses the phrase ‘quasi pro miraculo’(William, I, 423)). We might venture to say that, for the victors, the ‘riche chose’ qualified already as a ‘sainte chose’. As early as the last decade of the thirteenth century, the claim that the Sacro Catino is the Grail has found supporters. Says archbishop Jacopo da Varagine in his Chronica civitatis Ianuensis (Chronicle of the City of Genoa): Sicut enim, adveniente luce solis, omnia celi luminaria obumbrantur, sic in presentia illius lapidis ceteri lapides preciosi a suo fulgore destituuntur … Illud autem sub silencio pretereundum non est quod in quibusdam libris Anglorum reperitur quod quando Nicodemus corpus Christi de cruce deposuit, eius sanguinem, qui adhuc recens erat et ignominiose dispersus fuerat, recolegit in quodam vase smaragdino, sibi a Deo divinitus preparato. Et illud vas dicti Anglici in libris suis Sangraal appellant.21 [As indeed, when the light of the sun comes, all the lights of the sky are overshadowed, so in the presence of this stone other precious stones lose their brightness … One should not go on without mentioning that, in certain books of the English, it is found that, when Nicodemus took the body of Christ down from the cross, he collected his blood just fresh and shamefully flowing out, in such a vessel of emerald, prepared by him in divine inspiration; and the English in their books call that vessel the Sangraal.]

Side by side with the original ‘graal’ of the Roman d’Alexandre, we have thus reviewed the severed head of St Jacques and the bright stone from the temple of Caesarea, curiously reminiscent of the two unorthodox versions of the Grail given, respectively, by the Welsh Peredur and the German Parzival.

The Good Friday Procession After five years wandering, on a Good Friday, Perceval comes upon a procession of knights and ladies, walking barefoot after meeting a saintly hermit. They had tied together branches of trees to signal the path. Full of remorse for his sins, he dismounts and disarms before the hermit’s cell. With tears flowing from his eyes, he enters a chapel where Mass is being celebrated, and begs the hermit for counsel. From him, Perceval receives proper religious instruction. Before his departure, the hermit whispers a prayer in his ears, admonishing him not to pronounce the secret names contained in it except in dire peril (vs. 6484–91).

21

Jacopo da Varagine, Jacopo da Varagine e la sua Cronaca di Genova dalle origini al MCCXCVII, ed. C. Monleone (Rome, 1941), pp. 310–12.

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Perceval’s penitence was conceivably viewed by the poet as a necessary preparation towards a successful return to the Grail Castle. Would that be a reminder to Philip? Indeed, the early Crusaders had been advised by their bishops that only with repentant hearts could they conquer Jerusalem. After a fast of three days, on a Friday, 8 July 1099, a solemn procession wound around the path that surrounded the city.22 Shortly before, they had tied together tree branches, not to mark a path, but as part of military preparations: ‘Li barons conduisoient la gent hors de l’ost por querre la verge e les reins des arbres à fere claies por couvrir les engins’ [The barons detached people from the army to fetch stems and branches of trees that could be used to weave grids for covering the siege towers (William, I, 339)]. In the procession, all went barefoot, carrying the relics possessed by the army. To preach to them were called the chaplains Raymond of Aguilers and Arnulf of Rohes – seconding the irresistibly eloquent Peter the Hermit. When they had finished their prayers, the date of the assault was concerted (William, I, 340–41).

Palace of Marvels Gawain’s adventures once took him to Escavalon, whose king was more handsome than Absalon (Chrétien, vs. 4792), a name apparently inserted to supply a biblically-inspired rhyme. Its description mirrors that of the fortified coastal town of Ascalon (‘Escalonne’), whose bishop happened to be called Absalon (William, I, 812). Gawain swears to go in search of the Bleeding Lance. By water, he eventually reaches the Palace of Marvels. Would the lance found at the Grail Castle have been moved there? Or did another lance exist? The palace will be his if he can sit on the enchanted ‘Lit de la Merveille’ (wondrous bed), braving flying arrows and a lion. The bed stood on little carved dogs with grimacing jowls; pushed with one finger, it would run all over the hall. And it was uncommonly rich: ‘Teus fu li lis, qui voir en conte, / C’onques ne por roi ne por conte / Ne fu tiex fais ne n’ert jamais’ [To tell the truth, the bed was such that never was one like it made for king or count (vss. 7713–15)]. Could there be one made for an emperor? Chrétien had dealt in Cligés with the Byzantine Empire, whose capital, Constantinople, was the richest in the world. When King Amalric went there, plans for the future Egyptian campaign were discussed, ultimately aborted by Philip’s defection. Embarking on a ship sent by Emperor Manuel, Amalric entered the city through the palace gate at the harbour of Bucoleon, an honour reserved for the highest Greek nobility (William, I, 983). Almaric’s throne sitting was enhanced by theatrical effects, demonstrated during King Amalric’s reception (William, I, 983–85). In front of the emperor’s seat in the hall hung a high and ample curtain made of silk, heavily incrusted with gold and precious gems. After Amalric had been accommodated, the

22

Runciman, A History of the Crusades, I, p. 284.

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curtain was drawn apart very subtly (‘mout soutillement’) by way of cords, and then the emperor appeared sitting on his golden faldstool (‘faudestueill’), richly attired in imperial garb, so that he could now be viewed by everyone in the palace, with the king beside him on a seat covered with a gold-embroidered tissue, lower however than the emperor’s. To a French person living at that time, the prototypical faldstool throne would be the Chair of Dagobert,23 a chair of cast bronze, partially gilt, and supported upon legs terminating in the heads and feet of animals. Long before Amalric, Bishop Liudprand of Cremona had come twice to Constantinople, sent by the German Empire. In his Antapodosis, he reported how he was exposed during his first embassy, in 949, to the spectacular display of mechanical animals arranged around the emperor’s moving throne, often employed to intimidate foreign ambassadors. The bishop resisted well, or so he claimed: ‘As I came up, the lions began to roar and the birds to twitter, each according to its kind, but I was moved neither by fear nor astonishment … After I had done obeisance to the emperor by prostrating myself three times, I lifted my head, and behold! the man whom I had just seen sitting at a moderate height from the ground had now changed his vestments and was sitting as high as the ceiling of the hall.’24

Not even live specimens were lacking; in 1101, disorderly Lombard Crusaders, forcing their way into the courtyard of the imperial palace of Blachernae, killed one of the pet lions of Emperor Alexius.25 Emperor Manuel showed to Amalric an assortment of relics of the Passion: a large part of the True Cross, the nails, the sponge, the crown of thorns, the cloth known as the Sindon (shroud), the sandals, and the lance – a more plausible one than that from Antioch. After this, to the king’s delight, he called for different sorts of entertainment, including carols of damsels marvellous to the eyes. ‘Noz genz les regardoient à tiex merveilles que tuit en estoient esbahi’ [‘Our men gazed at such marvels, completely entranced’ (William, I, 985)]. In Chrétien’s Palace of Marvels lived the ancient Queen with the White Tresses, with other women of her lineage and a wise clerk with an artificial leg (‘eschace’; vss. 7651ff). A queen dependent on a powerful clerk was Mary of Antioch, Manuel’s widow, who reigned during the minority of their son, assisted by Alexius the seneschal (‘protosebastos’), her reputed lover (William, I, 1079–81). All hated him at the court, even more because he was parsimonious (‘eschars’) with the imperial treasure. The verb ‘escharsier’ (‘to use sparingly, moderately; to treat with severe economy’)26 sounds close to the word for one-legged: ‘eschacier’. While the ‘eschacier’ had lost a limb, the seneschal was destined to suffer the same degrading mutilation as Clinschor in Parzival.27 23 24 25 26 27

. Antony Littlewood, Henry Maguire and Joachim Wolschke-Bulmahn, eds, Byzantine Garden Culture (Washington, DC, 2002), p. 129. Runciman, A History of the Crusades, II, p. 20. Frédéric Godefroy, Lexique de l’ancien français (Paris, 1994), p. 192. Wolfram von Eschenbach., Parzival, trans. A.T. Hatto (Harmondsworth, 1987), pp. 328–29.

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Additional traits of the Queen with the White Tresses may have come from Melisende, queen of Jerusalem, one the most outstanding characters of her time. She founded the convent of St Lazarus in Bethany, where her sister Joveta would soon be abbess, and where the two Sibyllas lived together for some time. After King Fulk’s death, Melisende ruled even after their son, Baldwin III, reached majority (William, I, 780–81). She made constable one of her cousins, Manasses (Manesiers) of Hierges, detested by the barons and by her son for abusive power and arrogance. To the eyes of Chrétien’s queen of the Palace of Marvels, surprisingly revealed as Arthur’s mother, the king remained a child: ‘ “Par foi, sire, ce n’est pas tors, / Qu’il est enfes, li rois Artus; / S’il a .c. ans, n’en a pas plus” ‘ [‘By my faith, sire, that is not wrong, for King Arthur is a child. He cannot be more than one hundred years old’ (vss. 8168–70)]. Melisende felt no differently about her son. Baldwin’s supporters judged a terrible shame that he – so handsome, tall and wise – had no power, being still ruled by a woman as if he were a child (‘emfès’) (William, I, 780).

The Interrupted Scene Nothing more is told of Gawain’s quest for the lance. He sends a messenger to invite Arthur and his courtiers to watch his combat against Guiromelans. His last action is to make knights of all young men (‘toz les vallés’) dwelling at the palace: ‘Lors ot il compaignie viax / De .v. cens chevaliers noviax’ [After that he had a company of at least five hundred new knights (vss. 9187–88)]. Then follows the narrative of how the messenger fared. It is generally believed that the Romance was left unfinished because of Chrétien’s death. Such is the testimony of Gerbert de Montreuil in the third Continuation, but other possibilities cannot be discarded. Chrétien may have decided to stop working on the story, as happened with The Knight of the Cart (supposedly because, like Fenice in Cligés, he found adultery unacceptable). Now that he was composing ‘the finest story ever narrated in a royal court’, what might have so discouraged him? The situation at the Kingdom of Jerusalem by the two last decades of the twelfth century justified no optimism. In 1183 the Leper King proclaimed as heir and successor his nephew Baldwin, a child of six years, Sibylla’s son by her first marriage. He was crowned as Baldwin V while the king was still alive. The barons swore that, if the boy died before the age of ten, Count Raymond of Tripoli would keep the regency until a group of potentates, which included the Pope, should arbitrate between the claims of Sibylla and Isabella (the half sister of the Leper King). But, on the boy’s death, his guardian Joscelin the seneschal betrayed Raymond. Joscelin, Patriarch Heraclius, Gerard of Ridefort, Grand Master of the Order of the Knights Templar, and the villainous Reynald of Châtillon, among others, supported Sibylla for different personal motives. The barons faithful to count Raymond sent a sergeant to Jerusalem, disguised as a monk, to find out what was afoot. All doors were closed, so that Sibylla’s adepts could achieve their treason. When the barons’ emissary arrived, he had

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to enter through a postern of Madeleine des Jacobins, a hospital for the gravely ill (a ‘maladerie’).28 Likewise, Gawain’s messenger had to meet, on entering the town, not the common people, but ‘li contrait et li ardant’ [the crippled and the feverish’ (vs. 9193)]. Both envoys watched a crisis involving a king and his nephew. At Orquenie, Arthur had fainted and the people lamented for the absent Gawain. The scene is broken in mid-sentence with a lady – whose name is identical to an adverb (‘lores’, ‘then’) – coming to the queen (vs. 9227). In Jerusalem, Reynald addressed the population: ‘Seignors, vos saves bien que li rois Bauduin Meseau, et son nevo que il avoit fait coroner, est morz, et li roiaumes est demorez sans heir et sanz governeor; nos vodriens, par vostre los, faire coroner Sebile, qui ici est, et fu fille dou roi Amauri et suer dou roi Bauduin le Meseau. Car ce est li plus apareissanz et li plus dreis heirs dou roiaume.’29 [‘Men, you are well aware that king Baldwin the Leper and his nephew, whom he had caused to be crowned, are dead, whereupon the kingdom is left with no heir and no ruler. We would like, with your approval, to deliver the crown to Sibylla, who is present here and happens to be king Amalric’s daughter and a sister of king Baldwin the Leper. For she is the most apparent and rightful heir to the kingdom’].

With the demise of the two Baldwins, one woman alone, Philip’s ill-starred first cousin, held the central role; she starts as lady and ends up as queen. The ailing Fisher King had received a sword with the recommendation: ‘ “Vos le donrez cui vos plaira, / Mais ma dame seroit molt lie / Se ele estoit bien emploïe / La ou ele sera donee” ‘ [‘You will give it to whomever you please, but my lady will be glad if it be well employed where it will be given’ (vss. 3150–53)], and he passed it to Perceval. Very similar words occur in the Chronicle. There, however, not a token of the powers rejected by Philip, but a regal symbol was involved, and it was being transferred to the wrong place. Despite the opposition of the master of the Hospital, two crowns were eventually taken from the treasury, and then: Li patriarches en mist l’une sur l’autier dou Sepucre, et de l’autre corona la contesse de Japhe. Quant la contesse fut roine coronée, si li dist li patriarches: ‘Et dame, vous estes feme, il vos covient avoir qui vostre roiaume vos aide a governer, qui soit masle; vez la une corone, or la prenez, si la dones a tel home, qui vostre roiaume vos aide a governer et le puisse governer.’ Ele vint, si prist la corone, si apela son seignor, Gui de Lisignan, qui devant lui estoit, si dist: ‘Sire, venez avant, recevez ceste corone, car je ne sai ou je la puisse meaus empleer.’ Cil se agenoilla devant lui, et ele li mist la corone en la teste.30

28 29

30

Ernoul, Chronique, pp. 132–34. L’Estoire de Eracles empereur et la conqueste de la terre d’Outre mer, in Recueil des historiens des croisades, ed. Académie Royale des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, 15 vols (Paris, 1844–95), II, p. 28. L’Estoire de Eracles, II, p. 29.

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[The Patriarch placed one of the crowns on the altar of the Sepulcher and, with the other, crowned the countess of Japha. As soon as the countess was crowned queen, the Patriarch said to her: ‘Lady, you are a woman; it is convenient that you have a male person to help you govern your kingdom. There you see a crown; take it now and give it to a man who may help you govern your kingdom, and be capable of governing it himself.’ She stepped forward, took the crown, called her husband Guy of Lusignan who stood in front of her, and said: ‘Sire, come and receive this crown, for I do not know where I could employ it better.’ He knelt before her and she put the crown upon his head.]

Now reigned Guy of Lusignan, handsome like Guiromelans, but incompetent as ruler and military leader. At the end of 1186, Reynald of Châtillon, worthy model for the robber Greoreas who violated a truce (‘trives’) decreed by King Arthur, assaulted a caravan disregarding the truce celebrated with Saladin. In the Chronicle, this caravan is conflated, mistakenly but with dramatic effect, with another one (in fact not pillaged) on which Saladin’s sister participated. Saladin protested to King Guy, who was not firm enough to compel Reynald to restore the plunder. War was now inevitable: ‘La prise de ceste carevane fu l’achaison de la perdicion dou roiaume de Jerusalem’ [The capture of this caravan occasioned the perdition of the kingdom of Jerusalem].31 Saladin sent a loathly sorceress, riding an ass, to bewitch the Crusaders’ camp.32 Marching imprudently to rescue the Countess of Tripoli, besieged in Tiberias, Guy was defeated and imprisoned at the battle of Hattin, the Holy Cross was lost forever. The sultan finally prepared to take Jerusalem. When one of the last remaining crusader heroes, Balian of Ibelin, came to the city, he was regarded as the only one who could lead the resistance. Like Gawain at the Palace of Marvels, once he was there they were ready to accept him as captain and obey his commands, and they had decided among themselves that, if he was not willing to comply, they would seize him by force.33 No more than two knights survived in Jerusalem. Once more like Gawain, Balian took all the knights’ sons older than fifteen, as well as the most promising sons of the burgesses, and knighted them.34 Notice that, if this event was the inspiration for Gawain’s analogous act, the terminus a quo of the Romance would be as late as 1187. The final act of the historical tragedy was played in irreversible sequence. The best that Balian was able do, after a heroic struggle, was to persuade Saladin to establish relatively mild ransom terms. The surrender of Jerusalem occurred by the end of September. Rumour had it that, two years before, Patriarch Heraclius had been responsible for the death by poisoning, in Rome, of William of Tyre, his former rival for the position.

31 32 33 34

L’Estoire L’Estoire L’Estoire L’Estoire

de de de de

Eracles, Eracles, Eracles, Eracles,

II, II, II, II,

p. 34. pp. 53–55. pp. 68–69. p. 70.

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Epilogue The repentant count Philip of Flanders went back to Palestine in 1190. While taking part in the siege of Acre, he was stricken by an epidemic passing through the crusader camp, and died in the next year. Posterity has always remembered him in connection with the Grail tradition. Jeanne of Flanders, one of his successors, asked Manessier to write the fourth Continuation to Chrétien’s narrative, in which the hero finally achieves his mission. In his closing dedication to Jeanne, Manessier confirms to be completing the work initiated in her great uncle’s name. In retrospect, it is tempting to imagine that the fable of the Grail, so inspiring to widely different audiences throughout the centuries, contributed to Philip’s last redeeming gesture.

4 Bounds of Imagination: Grail Questing and Chivalric Colonizing in Wolfram von Eschenbach’s Parzival

WILL HASTY

The Arthurian and Grail narratives of the High Middle Ages, particularly by means of their adventures and quests, occupied a new territory in the imagination of Western Europe. In a manner that might be likened to the expansion of Europe and Europeans in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries into the Holy Land in the Crusades,1 and of Germans from their population concentrations close to the Rhine into the eastern territories,2 the courtly-chivalric romances – via their basic dynamic of movement from courtly-chivalric centers outward – find their way in wild, often uncharted landscapes, full of dangers, and upon overcoming them, claim and occupy them on behalf of God and knighthood. The connection suggested here may be more than an analogy. If imagined worlds and actions expand, enrich and multiply perspectives of the real world and of possible actions in it, then the courtly-chivalric romances are not only a new kind of narrative art that reiterates the increasing expansion and control one notes in other cultural and political domains in the High Middle Ages, but also a new intellectual and emotional enabler of expansion and control. With their tendency to displace armed aggression away from relatively pacific courtly centers in their characteristic dynamic movement outward (in adventures, quests), for example, the courtly-chivalric romances render perspectives and possibilities concerning aggression management and the more effective functioning of growing and more concentrated social groups that define themselves mainly in military terms (like the noble populations responsible for the development of the romances).3 The romances, in this particular feature (i.e., in their rendering of the outward

1 2

3

J.R.S. Richards, The Medieval Expansion of Europe, 2nd edn (Oxford, 1998), focuses on Europe’s expansion between 1000 and 1400. See Desmond Seward, The Monks of War. The Military Religious Orders (London, 1995), p. 18: ‘The heritage of the Drang nach Osten, today’s Oder–Neisse line, was largely bequeathed by the Teutonic Knights whose lands, the Ordensstaat, reached almost to St Petersburg. It was they who created Prussia, by conquering the heathen Baltic race who were the original Prussians and by the most thorough colonization seen in the entire Middle Ages.’ This is the principal topic of my book Art of Arms. Studies of Aggression and Dominance in Medieval German Court Poetry (Heidelberg, 2002).

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displacement of aggression), seem to reflect or continue preceding cultural developments (such as the Crusades), but at the same time they provide both a new method for archiving, remembering, and processing those developments, as well as a new medium in which different variations on the displacementdynamic can be tried out imaginatively.4 The imaginary as a cultural tool for rendering different perspectives of the world might be said to take a significant step forward in the second half of the twelfth century with the verse romances of Chrétien de Troyes, which depict the world as a geographically vague, yet malleable space consisting of courtly centers and a space outside them for chivalric adventuring and questing.5 In contrast to the wanderings of the famous literary heroes of antiquity, the adventures and quests of knights in the verse romances of Chrétien and his successors are invested with religious and social purpose, to such an extent that they are the knights’ proper mode of being. The knights are not returning home (like Odysseus) or establishing a new home (like Aeneas), but rather are almost perpetually in motion. The movement away from courtly centers that occurs in adventures and quests possesses a value of its own and, correspondingly, the courtly centers are frequently viewed mistrustfully from a quasi-monastic perspective as places of idle comfort and luxury that can lead to the destruction of one’s reputation and the perdition of one’s soul. Also different from the imaginary worlds of antique heroes is the geography of adventures and quests, which has only vaguely identifiable characteristics. While Arthurian romance geography is less factually descriptive, it is more protean, malleable and hence adaptable to different purposes. In their perpetual movement of adventures and quests, and in their malleable and hence adaptable spaces in which the movement is rendered, the verse romances as introduced by Chrétien provide a new artistic tool, more adaptable to the relatively diverse and dynamic cultural situation of the twelfth century than other, traditional types of narratives. The romances thus move and expand with, and for, the times in which they were composed. Presumably, they also, to an extent, shape those times (assuming a basic congruence of, and mutual influences among, the literary, intellectual and political aspects of Western Europe’s expansion). The term ‘colonization’ might be employed in this context in a twofold sense.6 One might speak, first, of courtly-chivalric perspectives, occupations and settlements of imaginary worlds occurring in the romances via adventuring and questing and, second, of the romances more generally – along the lines suggested above – as concomitant working elements (i.e., working the imagination, intellect, senses) in the contemporary cultural and political expansion of Western Europe (or at least of the Western Europe as imagined by its feudal-aristocratic and ecclesiastic elites, an expansion that typically takes the 4

5 6

To use the parlance for justifying a liberal arts education these days, medieval audiences of the romances would have been involved in a literary experience that would have inculcated ‘transferable critical thinking skills’. The critical edition is Chrétien de Troyes, Le Roman de Perceval ou Le Conte du Graal, ed. Keith Busby (Tübingen, 1993). See also Joshua Prawer, The Crusaders’ Kingdom: European Colonialism in the Middle Ages (New York, 1972).

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name ‘colonization’). The social and religious status invested in the adventures and quests of the romances receives an added dimension when viewed as aspects of a colonizing project, in which the imaginary is being discovered and employed in new ways by courtly-chivalric societies in Western Europe. As such an adaptable artistic medium and tool from the start, it is not surprising that the possibilities of the verse romances, the perspectives they were able to provide, increased very rapidly among the successors of Chrétien in France and Germany. Arguably the most expansive of the medieval Grail verse romances was composed by the German poet Wolfram Eschenbach, based on the Perceval of Chrétien but – and how could it be otherwise given the process already set in motion by the French poet? – going significantly beyond his source in its rendering of imaginary perspectives of the world. For Wolfram’s envisioning of new domains of adventuring and questing, and for the specific manner in which he ‘occupies’ them, the appropriate term might be ‘bounds’, both as a motion into new spaces that implies expansion (i.e., bringing by ‘leaps and bounds’ one’s values and interests into new spaces), and as the spatial limits of that movement (in the sense of boundaries). With regard to the former significance, Wolfram prepares his audience from the very beginning for a narrative that will move in bounds. Following his notoriously difficult introductory verses, which combine vaguely formulated religious and chivalric terms and ideas in the image of the plumage of the magpie, Wolfram proceeds to liken the basic idea with which he begins his work – the understanding of which arguably has something to do with its correct comprehension – with the movements of another animal: diz vliegende bîspel ist tumben liuten gar ze snel, si enmugens niht erdenken: wand ez kan vor in wenken rehte alsam ein schellec hase. (1, 15–19)7 [This winged comparison is too swift for unripe wits. They will lack the power to grasp it. For it will wrench past them like a startled hare!8]

The image of the startled hare suggests a narrative logic that moves somewhat erratically, in leaps and bounds,9 and seems especially appropriate for a romance such as Wolfram’s, which bounds away from previous chivalric and Grail narratives in myriad ways: in flushing out the story of Parzival’s parents and taking the audience via their adventures on a tour of the vaguely Arabic or Persian lands of the Baruc and the vaguely African lands of Belakane (also, given that these imaginary spaces coincide in part with the historical spaces of the Crusades, Wolfram presents a strikingly different perspective or vision with his

7 8 9

Wolfram von Eschenbach, Parzival, ed. Karl Lachmann (Berlin, 1964). Wolfram von Eschenbach, Parzival, trans. A.T. Hatto (London, 1980), p. 15. This is reinforced by subsequent verses: ‘The tale never loses heart, but flees and pursues, turns tail and wheels to the attack and doles out blame and praise. The man who follows all these vicissitudes and neither sits too long nor goes astray and otherwise knows where he stands has been well served by mother wit’ (Hatto, trans., p. 15).

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generally sympathetic, courtly-chivalric depiction of its inhabitants); in the way that Wolfram imaginatively ‘authorizes’ his creative embellishments by having recourse to a fictional source – a chronicle in Provence – found by a fictional intermediary whom Wolfram names ‘Kyot’, thus extending the imaginary (i.e., fiction) in an unprecedented way that makes it its own reason for being; and, perhaps most important, in the ways that Wolfram’s narrative – to a greater degree than earlier romances – bounds contrastive and sometimes contradictory perspectives and positions, as we shall see in greater detail below. With regard to the significance of ‘bounds’ in its application to Wolfram’s romance, it is the different kinds of dynamic non-linear movements that may be most immediately striking (and must also have been to Wolfram’s first audiences, who would have had to accustom themselves to his romance’s multiple perspectives). However, these movements also involve bounds in its other sense of ‘borders’: new imaginary territories that are demarcated and through which the characters’ adventures lead, populated by many diverse, imaginary peoples. The new spaces are encompassed and comprehended in ways that correspond to their novelty, but an overriding characteristic of Wolfram’s narrative world and the peoples who inhabit it is that they are thoroughly courtly-chivalric and rendered as such even before the principal characters make their appearance in them. The adventures and quests in Wolfram’s Grail romance take place in new spaces which have already been, for the most part, rendered in ways consistent with courtly-chivalric values and interests by the imagination of Wolfram. Independent of the questing of his heroes, this world has thus already been ‘colonized’, though the heroes arguably bring a new chivalric standard with them and make a specific and memorable mark on these spaces they occupy, leaving it better and stronger than it had been before. This is the case with the nonChristian domain of the Baruc and Belecane in which Gahmuret moves, and it is also the case with the more conventionally Arthurian geography in which the adventures of Parzival and Gawan occur. It is the wilderness of Parzival’s mother Herzeloyde, and the sorrowful existence at the Grail Castle, that stand at odds with the courtly-chivalric world as rendered elsewhere in Wolfram’s romance. It is these narrative spaces, their inhabitants, and the non- or anti-chivalric interests and values they incorporate and advocate, that could possibly necessitate distinguishing between Arthurian romance and Grail romance, adventure and holy quest. However, the meaningfulness of such distinctions for Wolfram’s romance is questionable. As in the Arthurian romances generally, the action proceeds from courtly-chivalric centers outward into unknown, dangerous, resistant domains, such as the wilds of Herzeloyde and those surrounding the Grail Castle. In the adventures/quests of the main characters, the relationship between courtly-chivalric (worldly) values and religious ones is negotiated in different ways. While fine-tuning of approach on the part of the questing knights is certainly necessary, the case can be made that Wolfram’s romance – via the singular quest of its main hero Parzival – remakes the relationship in a basically courtly-chivalric sense. A domain that was previously religious in a somewhat monolithic and (however vaguely) monastic sense is expanded, occupied and (re)mapped by the actions of the questing Parzival as a space that bounds chivalric and religious priorities,

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worldly and spiritual interests. For the understanding of how this occurs, and for orienting oneself in the kind of world that Wolfram renders in his romance, one is best served not so much by a deep religious purpose as by a mind that can move with the agility of a startled hare. A comparison of Wolfram’s romance with other significant religious-monastic conceptions of chivalry provides a manner of appreciating the distinguishing characteristics of the former. A template for the medieval Grail romances, particularly as they took form in France from Chrétien and Robert de Boron to the Vulgate Cycle, is arguably Bernard of Clairvaux’s Liber ad milites Templi de laude novae militiae, composed in the 1130s. Whether this specific text was known to the later romance authors is, of course, impossible to know, but it articulates monastic ideas about chivalry and its appropriate mission that would have formed part of the cultural horizons in which the later authors lived and worked. Bernard sets off his conception of knighthood and its proper purpose from a worldly knighthood that he characterizes in this way: Quis igitur finis fructusve saecularis huius, non dico, militiae, sed malitiae, si et occisor letaliter peccat, et occisus aeternaliter perit? Enimvero, ut verbis utar Apostoli, et qui arat, in spe debet arare, et qui triturate, in spe fructus percipiendi. Quis ergo, o milites, hic tam stupendous error, quis furor hic tam non ferendus, tantis sumptibus ac laboribus militare, stipendiis vero nullis, nisi aut mortis, aut criminis? Operitis equos sericis, et pendulos nescio quos panniculos loricis superinduitis; depingitis hastas, clypeus et sellas; frena et calcaria auro et argento gemmisque circumornatis, et cum tanta pompa pudendo furore et impudenti stupore ad mortem properatis.10 [What therefore is the end or result of this secular malitia, I do not say militia, if the killer sins mortally and the killed dies eternally? Indeed, to cite the words of the apostle: ‘he who ploughs ought to plough in hope and he who threshes does so in the hope of receiving the fruits.’ O knights, what is this error so stupendous, what is this madness so unacceptable, to fight at such great cost and effort, with no rewards other than those of death or crime? You cover your horses in silks and put over your coats of mail I know not what sort of cloth hangings; you paint your spears, shields and saddles; you decorate your bridles and spurs with gold, silver and jewels, and you hurry to your deaths with such great pomp, with shameful madness and shameful rashness.]11

It is not difficult to perceive in Bernard’s disparaging words precisely those aspects of worldly knighthood – particularly the richness of its material trappings and sensations – that made it so attractive to its worldly practitioners and, one is already tempted to say in view of the sumptuousness of his Grail romance, to authors such as Wolfram. This beautiful pomp and effort is only so much sinful waste, for Bernard, because its ultimate purpose or mission is combat 10

11

Bernard of Clairvaux, ‘Liber ad milites templi de laude novae militiae’, Sancti Bernardi Opera, vol. III, Tractatus et Opuscula, ed. J. Leclercq and H.M. Rochais (Rome, 1963), pp. 205–39; here p. 216. The cited translation of Bernard’s text is in The Templars. Selected Sources Translated and Annotated, by Malcom Barber and Keith Bate (Manchester, 2002), pp. 215–27; citing p. 218.

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with another knight, which brings with it only the possibility of one Christian killing another, and mortal sin and death. The concern with glory and worldly reputation, one of the hallmarks of the chivalric romances, would have to be dismissed as frivolous according to Bernard’s view of things. There are many things that make worldly knighthood suspicious in Bernard’s eyes, such as the military insignia that he likens to women’s baubles, thus manifesting a characteristically monastic contempt for sensual pleasure (and, though less directly in this context, for women, with whom such pleasure is frequently connected). But it is because of combat as its final aim and reason for being that worldly knighthood is condemned. Because it brings with it the possibility of such great transgression and such great waste of God-given life, worldly knighthood is necessarily self-destructive and leads to perdition in Bernard’s conception of it. Against this view of worldly knighthood, Bernard places his conception of a religious knighthood, thoroughly renewed by virtue of its association with a quite different ultimate purpose, a purpose that can be connected quite concretely with a contemporary colonizing mission. Based on the model of the Knights Templar, and tapping into contemporary Crusades propaganda, Bernard articulates the chivalric approach he sees as leading not to perdition, but rather salvation and heaven: Miles, inquam, Christi securus interimit, interit securior … Sane cum occidit malefactorem, non homicida, sed, ut ita dixerim, malicida, et plane Christi vindex in his qui male agunt, et defensor christianorum reputatur. Cum autem occiditur ipse, non periisse, sed pervenisse cognoscitur. Mors ergo quam irrogat, Christi est lucrum; quam excipit, suum. In morte pagani christianus gloriatur, quia Christus glorificatur; in morte christiani, Regis liberalitas aperitur, cum miles remunerandus educitur.12 [Thus, I say, the knight of Christ kills in safety and dies in greater safety … Obviously, when he kills an evildoer, he does not commit a homicide, but rather, as one might say, a malicide, and clearly is considered the avenger of Christ against those who that do evil and a defender of Christians. When, however, he is killed it is recognized that he has gone to Heaven, not to his death. The death that he inflicts is reward for Christ, the death he suffers is reward for himself. In the death of an infidel the Christian glories because Christ is glorified; in the death of a Christian, the generosity of the King is revealed when the knight is led off to his reward.]13

Knighthood becomes holy to the degree that it is made part of the mission of the Crusades, and of Western Europe’s expansion in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. In his specific depiction of a displacement of aggression outward, away from Europe, to negate the possibility of killing one’s ‘own’, Bernard renders a landscape of colonization that superimposes worldly and religious dimensions. The chivalric struggle with the adversary is both a real one of the Christian against the ‘infidel’ as well as a spiritual and allegorical one of Good against Evil. Corresponding to these dimensions, two different but complemen12 13

‘Liber ad milites templi’, p. 217. Barber and Bate, The Templars, p. 219.

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tary domains are colonized by the ‘new knighthood’: the lands and wealth of the Holy Land that are taken (in the form of the Christian Crusader kingdoms), and that in possible future military action against the infidel remain to be taken, as well as the spaces in the Heavenly Kingdom that will increasingly be occupied by knights who have shunned the worldly approach leading to perdition and embraced chivalry’s proper holy mission. Paramount in Bernard’s conception of chivalric action and the way it should shape the world is its necessary justification by a religious purpose that envisions and occupies the world and heaven according to the absolute perspectives of good and evil, and the complementary imperative that chivalry must transcend a sinful, inferior, material (sensual) form to become a higher spiritual mission. Later in the twelfth century, the French Grail romances take up some of the aspects of Bernard’s depiction of the new knighthood and its mission. Though the romances are clearly not the same kind of programmatic and propagandistic text as Bernard’s, they nevertheless manifest some of the significant aspects of the monk’s Liber ad milites templi and begin to articulate, according to their own more specific narrative conventions, the insufficiency of a purely worldly knighthood, the association of the practice of knighthood with death and sin, and the need for a renewal of chivalry that is increasingly rendered as an allegorical battle of Good against Evil. The first Grail romance, Chrétien’s Perceval, begins in the ‘gaste forest’ [waste forest; vss. 1289 and passim] and tells of the eponymous hero’s youth. This unusual space shows itself soon enough to be an anti-chivalric one,14 associated with the hero’s mother’s wish to keep her son away from knighthood because of the great grief it has caused her. Her two eldest sons, brothers Perceval never had a chance to know, died in chivalric action, causing their wounded father’s death from grief. Perceval’s insensitive and impetuous desire to become a knight at Arthur’s court, the worst fear of his mother, reopens this old wound and causes her death. The manner in which the problems associated with chivalry are eventually addressed in Chrétien’s unfinished Grail romance become clear during Perceval’s meeting with his hermit uncle. In the French author’s rendering of this episode, the shortcomings of the chivalric approach Perceval has taken to this point are underscored in numerous ways that suggest the need for a more spiritual mode of questing for the Grail. The setting includes a ‘chapele petite’ [small chapel; vs. 6342], and the hermit uncle is accompanied by ‘un provoire / et .i. clerçon, ce est la voire, / Qui començoient le servise / Le plus haut que en sainte eglise / Puisse estre fais et le plus dols’ [a priest and a young cleric – this is the truth – who were just beginning the service, the highest and sweetest that can be said in Holy Church; vss. 6343–47]. The Good Friday Mass – for this is the day on which these events occur – performed by figures of the religious establishment, leads Perceval to kneel and, overcome by fear that he has sinned against God, to ask his uncle for absolution: ‘ “Sire, fait il, bien a .v. ans / Que je ne soi ou je

14

Earlier the waste forest is described as a refuge, to which Perceval’s father fled upon the destruction befalling the whole chivalric world after the death of Utherpendragon, Arthur’s father. As part of these hard times, Perceval’s father was wounded through both thighs and his body maimed.

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me fui, / Ne Dieu n’aimai ne Dieu ne crui, / N’onques puis ne fis se mal non” ‘ (vss. 6364–67) [‘Sir,’ said Perceval, ‘it has been over five years since I have known where I was going, and I have not loved God or believed in Him, and all I have done has been evil’].15 All the while, Perceval is awash with tears, the most visible and continuous outward sign of the profound inner transformation he is experiencing. A key moment in this transformation is Perceval’s discovery of his sinful responsibility for the death of his mother. This sin is strongly reminiscent of the principal sin of worldly knighthood as discussed by Bernard: it is the mindless desire to be a knight in the Arthurian mold that causes his mother’s death (just as the practice of worldly knighthood had previously led to the deaths of Perceval’s brothers and father). Though Chrétien’s romance abruptly ends before we can see the degree to which Perceval’s approach is different after he leaves his uncle, this episode strongly suggests that Perceval has left the old, evil knighthood behind and will henceforth practice a fundamentally different, ‘new’ kind of knighthood, consistent with his religious awakening or renewal. The Continuations of Chrétien’s Grail romance, like so many other medieval continuations of the great unfinished works of hallowed predecessors, provide ambiguous information at best for imagining how the text might have ended if its original author had been able to finish it. The Continuations seem generally to revert to a more conventionally chivalric orientation, and only that of Manessier, which has Perceval retiring in the end as a hermit in the forest, seems to be in the spirit of the radical questioning of conventional knighthood towards which Chrétien’s romance seemed to heading in the quest of Perceval. In the anonymous Queste del Saint Graal of the Vulgate Cycle, we have another famous version of the Grail quest that takes the approach begun by Chrétien (by way of Robert de Boron’s connection of the Grail with Christ’s cup at the Last Supper) much farther in the same apparent direction. In the adventures of Bors, Perceval and Galahad, the Queste expands the spiritual, allegorical landscape that was only intimated in the first Grail romance – but that has been a latent cultural possibility at least since Bernard of Clairvaux’s Liber ad milites templi – integrating into the imaginary world a landscape that is vaguely biblical and reminiscent of the deserts of the saints’ lives. The terrains of questing are rendered like those of the early eremitic saints, with demons taking the form of beautiful temptresses to distract the holy heroes from their missions (in the scene depicting the temptation of Perceval, the hero catches sight of a red crucifix on the hilt of his sword and recoils from the carnal sin he is about to commit and soon after, as if to punish the sinful desires of his fallible flesh or to establish mastery over it, stabs himself in the thigh).16 The hermitic commentators, wearing the white robes characteristic of the Cistercian order, eventually make quite clear that the battles in which all knights of the Grail quest are involved must not lead to homicide (as when Gawein is admonished for killing knights

15 16

Chrétien de Troyes, Arthurian Romances, trans. William Kibler (London, 1991), p. 459. La Queste del saint Graal, ed. Albert Pauphilet, 2nd edn (Paris, 1980), pp. 110–11.

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with whom Galahad had contended and left alive).17 The Vulgate Cycle depicts a Grail quest with a single transitional wilderness space occupied by worldly warriors and adversaries, and religious, spiritual ones. The latter eventually move beyond it, and Galahad, in achieving the Grail, transcends the material world entirely by virtue of his monastic virtue of chastity and his sinless chivalry (he wins every contest without ever committing homicide). The thirteenth-century prose romance charts the spaces of the Grail quest, much as Bernard charted the spaces of the Crusades, as a terrain of the righteous struggle against evil, but in the former there is no physical embodiment of evil in the same way as there is in the latter (i.e., the Muslim ‘infidels’), and there are no worldly kingdoms to be won in achieving the Grail. From the standpoint of colonization, what the Queste seems to achieve is a reiteration or rehearsal of the typically monastic subjugation of self and world. Though this subjugated space represents an interesting and varied amalgam, as the quest proceeds it shows itself, predictably, to be increasingly fragile and insubstantial. As such, it is a world that is both completely mastered and uninhabitable for courtly-chivalric purposes. Although it manifests a significant narrowing of purpose in the direction of its religious (heavenly) value, the Grail quest of the Vulgate Cycle is driven by, and perhaps represents a literary culmination of, the approach based on absolutes that showed itself in Bernard’s Liber ad milites templi, and in the religious ‘renewal’ of Chrétien’s Perceval. Wolfram’s Parzival renders the mission of the Grail quest and its concomitant traversal and occupation of imaginary realms in quite different ways. The basically religious interest associated with the Grail in influential French versions of the narrative (as possible literary articulations of, or responses to, monastic ideas and ideas about the Crusades that also found their way into Bernard’s text on the ‘new knighthood’) is preserved to a certain degree in the section of the German romance dealing with the eponymous hero. Yet a very different guiding principle is at work in the German romance. The narrative world and the author’s approach to it are rendered not in terms of the absolute distinctions that begin to dictate the approach to imaginary realms in closer proximity to the Grail (Good versus Evil, holiness versus sin, chastity versus lust, etc.), but rather in a way that is consistent with the hops, skips and jumps of Wolfram’s prologue. In so doing, Wolfram takes a principle that has been present in the Arthurian romances since their beginning with Chrétien and expands it radically (just as he expands the mere girth of the narrative beyond the French source with his bounds of imagination). Perhaps the best articulation of this principle occurs immediately following one of Wolfram’s many self-references: ob ich guotes wîbes minne ger, mac ich mit schilde und ouch mit sper verdienen niht ir minne solt, al dar nâch sî si mir holt.

17

La Queste, pp. 46–55.

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vil hôhes topels er doch spilt, der an ritterschaft nâch minnen zilt. (115, 15–20) [If I desire a good woman’s love and fail to win love’s reward from her with shield and lance, let her favor me accordingly. A man who aims at love through chivalric exploits gambles for high stakes.]18

These verses can be understood on many levels, which is typical for Wolfram’s Grail romance. On one, the author is occupying a (fictional) self in the context of his performance and seems to be claiming for this ‘self’ the same chivalric values and orientation as those of his heroes Parzival and Gawan.19 On another, this self-reference reinforces the basically chivalric impetus or mission of Wolfram’s narrative. This is reiterated in the actions of his hero Parzival, for whom adventuring and Grail questing basically coincide. Wolfram’s (self’s) prioritization of a good woman’s love is found again in the love of his hero Parzival for his wife Condwiramurs, a love that remains a motivating and sustaining force for the adventuring/questing Parzival alongside the Grail (in stark contrast to anti-feminine aspects of the Grail quest as rendered in the Vulgate Cycle). The final lines, though perhaps most immediately a statement of personal conviction on the part of that (fictional) self, suggest with their broader implications that the guiding principle of Wolfram’s narrative – if ‘principle’ it can really be called – is chance. The metaphor of gambling aptly characterizes an approach that does not turn back from chivalric adventuring in the direction of pre-existing absolute meanings, upon the inception of Grail questing, but rather moves boldly forward, accepting, affirming and operating with the element of chance in adventure to an as yet unprecedented degree.20 There is no doubt that Wolfram’s Grail, particularly as described by Parzival’s hermit uncle Trevrizent (the equivalent of Perceval’s unnamed hermit uncle mentioned above), has strongly Christian characteristics: it is too heavy to be lifted by sinful mortals, infidels cannot see it, messages brought by a turtledove from Heaven on Good Friday communicate instructions to the Grail community, and the guardians of the Grail must be virgins and chaste. The most important political function of the Grail and the community guided by it is to provide new lords for lands in need of them: wirt iender hêrrenlôs ein lant, erkennet si dâ die gotes hant, sô daz diu diet eins hêrren gert vons grâles schar, die sint gewert. des müezn och si mit zühten pflegn: sîn hüet aldâ der gotes segn. (494, 7–12)

18 19

20

Hatto, trans., p. 68. The relationship between this constructed ‘self’ of the performance and Wolfram’s ‘real’ self remains a matter of conjecture. That the relationship is one of consistent irony is questionable. Shortly afterward, the constructed self claims to be illiterate (patently untrue); immediately before, the self claims to be a knight (highly likely). On chance and contingency in the romances, see Walter Haug, ‘Der Zufall: Theodizee und Fiktion’, in his Die Wahrheit der Fiktion. Studien zur weltlichen und geistlichen Literatur des Mittelalters und der frühen Neuzeit (Tübingen, 2003), pp. 64–87.

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[If a land should lose its lord, and its people see the hand of god in it and ask for a new lord from the Grail company, their prayer is granted. Moreover, they must treat him reverentially, since from that moment on he is under the protection of God’s blessing.]21

In its political mission, the Grail community could be said to be expanding into the world, occupying or colonizing lordless lands, and bringing them into line with its quasi-monastic characteristics. These characteristics are underscored in the sometimes contentious discussions that occur between Parzival and Trevrizent. While the former has shown some signs of remorse about his defiance to God (he has not forgotten God, as had Chrétien’s hero, but rather quite pointedly renounced his service to God and replaced it with service to ladies), he continues throughout his stay with his uncle to be an advocate of chivalric values and interests. The uncle remains the most vocal and prominent advocate of the quasi-monastic values and interests that seem to hold sway around the Grail – and presumably in the Grail’s ever-expanding worldly sphere of influence. Several exchanges between these two figures reveal their distinctive priorities, as this one concerning the manner in which the Grail is to be approached: dô sprach aber Parzivâl: ‘Mac rîterschaft des lîbes prîs unt doch der sêle pardîs bejagen mit schilt und ouch mit sper, sô was ie rîterschaft mîn ger. ich streit ie swâ ich strîten vant, sô daz mîn werlîchiu hant sich naehert dem prîse. ist got an strîte wise, der sol mich dar benennen, daz si mich dâ bekennen: mîn hant dâ strîtes niht verbirt.’ dô sprach aber sîn kiuscher wirt: ir müest aldâ vor hôchvart mit senften willen sîn bewart. iuch verleit lîhte iwer jugent daz ir der kiusche braechet tugent. hôchvart ie seic unde viel.’ (471, 30–472, 17) [‘If knightly deeds with shield and lance can win fame for one’s earthly self, yet also Paradise for one’s soul, then the chivalric life has been my one desire!’ said Parzival. ‘I fought wherever fighting was to be had, so that my warlike hand has glory within its grasp. If God is any judge of fighting He will appoint me to that place so that the Company there know me as a knight who will never shun battle.’ ‘There of all places you would have to guard against arrogance by cultivating meekness of spirit,’ replied his austere host. ‘You could be misled by youthfulness into breaches of self-control. – Pride goes before a fall!’]22

21 22

Hatto, trans., p. 251. Hatto, trans., pp. 240–41.

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The tensions visible here between the positions of Parzival and Trevrizent are never completely resolved in Wolfram’s romance. Parzival remains proudly and defiantly chivalric, and never experiences, awash with tears, the same deep spiritual transformation of his French predecessor Perceval. The leveling in the direction of religious-monastic values as one approaches the Grail does not occur. Instead, multiple chivalric and monastic perspectives, with points of convergence, but also with tensions, if not frictions, remain in play to the end. The religious-monastic approach to the Grail and the world that surrounds it, suggested by Chrétien and perhaps taken to its most developed form in the Queste del Sainte Graal, becomes in Wolfram’s romance one manner of proceeding among many, one part of a much more complex approach to narrating and questing. This greater complexity and open-endedness with regard to the author’s narration and the hero’s questing for the Grail (which is also adventuring for a lady) corresponds to the variety, color and vividness of the depicted world and experiences in it. As a manner of efficiently comprehending and taking control of his world, Parzival’s approach is necessarily worldly, which in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries is to say courtly-chivalric (and aristocratic). Parzival fights till the end of his quest, when he is informed by the Grail spokesperson and sorceress Cundrie that he has been summoned to it. Clear indications of a change in Parzival’s approach are difficult to find in Wolfram’s text. Outwardly he continues to do what he had done prior to his meeting with Trevrizent. Of course, it is quite possible that an inner change – a religious enlightenment or transformation – has occurred in Parzival, but if this is the case it scarcely affects his actions and words. The more obvious changes are in the words and actions of characters such as Trevrizent, who have been the most outspoken critics of Parzival’s approach. Near the end of the romance, after Parzival has won the Grail, he comes across his hermit uncle again, who expresses to him his amazement that, after all, he was able to get the Grail by means of his defiant anger (the same prideful attitude for which the uncle had criticized him in Book IX). Trevrizent continues to feel that God remains in control of events, but – understandably under the circumstances – leaves room for believing that God is still in control of events with his remarks about the inscrutability of His divine plan. Though it may be presumptuous to say so, in view of the holiness for which it comes to be known on account of the French romances, even the Grail itself seems to be ‘bounded’. When Parzival takes control of the Grail Castle, the chivalric love of ladies effectively displaces the quasi-monastic chastity imposed by the Grail on its keepers. Anfortas, a man punished (wounded in the scrotum) for engaging in chivalry for the love of a lady, is saved and restored to health by Parzival, whose chivalric fighting for a lady’s love first became part of his approach when he declared his angry defiance towards God. When Parzival heals Anfortas and replaces him as lord, he does not transcend an older inferior (chivalric) self as he rises to the higher level represented by the Grail. Rather, he strengthens and expands the power of the chivalric interests he has advocated from the start. In his typical manner, Wolfram provides strong support for the idea of a victory of worldly love at the Grail Castle in an indirect way, with the behavior of Parzival’s infidel brother Feirefiz, who falls in burning hot love for

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Repanse de Schoie, Parzival’s aunt and the high priestess of the Grail. Told that he can only have her in wedlock if he converts to Christianity, Ferefiz asks: ‘Ob ich durch iuch ze toufe kum, / ist mir der touf ze minnen vrum?’ [‘If I were baptized for your sake, would Baptism help me win love?’; 814, 1–223]. When this is affirmed, Feirefiz immediately consents to be baptized, thus effectively rendering this most holy ritual an instrument for the satisfaction of his clearly very carnal desire. This affirmation of love at the end of Wolfram’s romance is striking not only as an aspect of the courtly-chivalric colonization of the Grail domain, but also as a final reaffirmation of something that has caused so many people so much grief and sorrow during the course of the romance. Despite the frequently fatal outcome of love (which is both erotic and spiritual in Wolfram’s conception of it), which by way of loyalty leads to death in the event of the death of the beloved (most notably in the cases of Herzeloyde and Sigune), Wolfram does not reject it. The happy end, rather, is a reiteration of love as ‘daz nahe süeze / der alde und der niuwe site’ [what is sweet when near, the old custom, ever new; 203, 9–10]. Wolfram presses forward with worldly desire and love, despite their transitoriness and resulting pain, and he proceeds in a similar way with regard to the possibility of death in knighthood. By making Parzival’s killing of the Red Knight Ither one of his hero’s main sins, Wolfram focuses more squarely on death in chivalric action than Chrétien did in his unfinished romance. But it remains a problem for which there are no simple, absolute answers. Parzival later engages his best chivalric friend Gawan, and shortly thereafter his half-brother Feirefiz, in combat. In both cases there is the danger of repeating the terrible sin. The first time such an outcome is prevented by a random occurrence: a man passes by, recognizes Gawan, and calls out his name, thus informing Parzival of the identity of his opponent and bringing the fight to an end. In the second combat, God causes Parzival’s sword (the one he took from Ither) to break as it strikes the helmet of his brother, in what otherwise might have been a fatal, fratricidal blow. The happy ending which ensues is thus facilitated by a God who has decided, perhaps according to the same inscrutable plan to which we saw Trevrizent allude above, not to permit a chivalric homicide (and fratricide) to take place this time. On the surface it might look as if Wolfram hereby seeks by means of a kind of Deus ex machina to evade the problem to which Bernard of Clairvaux so forcefully drew attention, and to which Wolfram himself repeatedly draws attention in his own work. But it would probably be more accurate to say that in order to remain open to all of life’s possibilities, it is necessary also to accept the possibility and perhaps inevitability of death in chivalric combat. In some respects, Wolfram’s Grail quest operates within the socio-cultural boundaries of its time: at the Grail Castle Parzival is next in line of succession, he is arguably the best and most determined fighter in his world, and God also eventually shows Himself to be on his side. The successful quest thereby corresponds to basic dynastic, military and religious expectations. Still, in important respects, Wolfram’s Grail quest pushes boundaries outward. Between the

23

Hatto, trans., pp. 240–41.

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extremes of utter self-determination and the random occurrence of individual events (functioning according to their own logic), on the one hand, and an ‘absolute’ understanding of the course and status of events according to pre-existing religious or aristocratic conceptions, on the other, Wolfram’s romance evinces a wide range of perspectives and outcomes. As part of the broader cultural and military expansion of Western Europe in the twelfth- and thirteenth centuries, Wolfram’s Grail romance models an intrepid approach to, and occupation of, an imaginary world that is rendered with unprecedented differentiation and complexity.

5 The Land without the Grail: A Note on Occitania, Rigaut de Barbezieux and Literary History

RICHARD TRACHSLER

Little is left today of the once flourishing literary activity in the South of France, and much debate has arisen as to what exactly has been lost. Given the scarceness of surviving testimonies regarding the matière de Bretagne in the South, especially compared with the mass of Arthurian texts preserved in the langue d’oïl, critics, particularly those who argue for the priority of Occitan literature over its northern rival, have attempted to make up for quantity with quality. They console themselves with the thought that the Arthurian tradition in the South may not be very visible today but might in fact be older than the one inaugurated by Chrétien de Troyes in the North.1 The extant material does not offer much support for claims in one direction or the other. Most of the evidence is indirect: as early as 1170, Guiraut de Cabrera, in his famous Ensenhamen in which he tells a jongleur what he should improve, mentions stories of Arthur, Erec, Tristan and Gauvain, and numerous troubadours allude to Arthur and Guenièvre, Tristan and Isolt, Gauvain, Yvain and Perceval.2 Unfortunately, these instances consist only of titles, names or, at most, the ‘emblematic’ use of isolated features of the legends involved. The exact story to which they allude can no longer be deduced. On the basis of what can be gathered, though, nothing indicates that the Arthurian tradition circulating in the South prior to Chrétien de Troyes was essentially different from what was known in the North, and it is indeed most likely that the early allusions refer very much to the same kind of material Chrétien himself would

1 2

This position is most brilliantly defended by Rita Lejeune, whose articles on the issue have been re-edited in her volume Littérature et société occitane au Moyen Age (Liège, 1979). The first systematic inventory of this material is Joseph Anglade, Les Troubadours et les Bretons (Montpellier, 1939). Since then, not many new facts have been added. For a not entirely impartial discussion of these Arthurian instances see François Pirot, Recherches sur les connaissances littéraires des troubadours occitans et catalans des XIIe et XIIIe siècles (Barcelona, 1972), pp. 485–94, and Simon Gaunt and Ruth Harvey, ‘The Arthurian Tradition in Occitan Literature’, in Arthur of the French. The Arthurian Legend in Medieval French and Occitan Literature, ed. Glyn Sheridan Burgess and Karen Pratt (Cardiff, 2005), pp. 528–45.

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use to elaborate his romances.3 The extant Arthurian texts and manuscripts lead precisely to the same conclusion: a fragment of the Merlin can be traced back to the textual tradition of the North, and Jaufre, the only ‘real’ romance of the Round Table in Occitan language, contains precise echoes from several works of Chrétien de Troyes.4 The Grail is mentioned even less frequently than other Arthurian elements, and of the three Grail heroes featured in the northern Lancelot-Grail Cycle – Galaad, Perceval and Boort – only Perceval occurs in Occitan literature.5 The other two are absent, as perhaps would be expected in a literary tradition made up mostly of lyric poems with narrative texts underrepresented.6 The mention of Perceval in Occitan texts, along with other kinds of evidence, would suggest, though, that Chrétien’s Conte du Graal was known in the South. The question is therefore why there is so little trace of a Grail tradition in Occitania. I would like to argue here that this is due not only to the small number of surviving Occitan texts and their essentially lyric nature, for the only authentic ‘Grail scene’ extant in Occitan occurs precisely in a canso. In the frequently discussed opening stanza of the love song Atressi con Persavaus by Rigaut de Barbezieux, the poet compares himself to the Grail hero. But the medieval vida and razo regarding Rigaut never linger on the Grail poem and choose to comment on other aspects of his work. From these vidas and razos thus emerges at least one half of the truth we may be seeking: the one concealed in the documents, which reflect the reception in a given circle of readers.7 This evidence suggests that the Grail, in the South, was not a subject that intrigued poets and authors. *

3

4

5

6

7

This is also the conclusion presented in the recent survey by Gaunt and Harvey, The Arthurian Tradition in Occitan Literature. When re-reading Rita Lejeune’s 1959 contribution on a similar topic, one can only marvel on how strongly our attitudes have changed in the last fifty years. See Rita Lejeune, ‘The Troubadours’, in Arthurian Literature in the Middle Ages: A Collaborative History, ed. Roger Sherman Loomis (Oxford, 1959), pp. 393–99. Anna Cornagliotti, ‘Les Fragments occitans du Merlin de Robert de Boron’, in Etudes de langue et de littérature médiévales offertes à Peter T. Ricketts à l’occasion de son 70ème anniversaire (Turnhout, 2005), pp. 5–16. Even if Tasso’s mention of Arnaut Daniel as the author of a prose Lancelot is not entirely trustworthy, it is quite probable that there was an Occitan translation of parts of the Lancelot-Grail Cycle, as a reference in the Leys d’Amor and two items in the catalogue of the Library of the Castle of Ozon would suggest. On these points see Lejeune, The Troubadours, pp. 393–94, and Gaunt and Harvey, The Arthurian Tradition in Occitan Literature, pp. 534–35. For a discussion of Jaufre, see also the work by Charmaine Lee, cited below, n. 9. See Frank M. Chambers, Proper Names in the Lyrics of the Troubadours (Chapel Hill, NC, 1971), for the list of Arthurian names in the troubadour corpus. I checked all potentially Arthurian entries in Peter Ricketts’s Concordance de l’occitan médiéval, especially the numerous instances of Blancaflor and others, in the hope that they would allude to the matière de Bretagne, rather than to other sources. I feel that nothing conclusive can be extracted from Occitan onomastics at this stage. Hence Alberto Limentani’s famous formula ‘narrative exception’. Alberto Limentani, ‘I problemi del Jaufre, l’umorismo e una contraffazione del Conte du Graal’, in L’Eccezione Narrativa. La Provenza e l’arte del raconto (Turin, 1977), pp. 78–101. The metaphor is of course Avalle’s. D’Arco Silvio Avalle, La Doppia Verità. Fenomenologia Ecdotica e Lingua letteraria del Medioevo Romanzo (Florence, 2002). The other half of the ‘truth’ lies with the author and needs to be reconstructed on the basis of the documents.

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The only surviving romance of the Round Table in Occitan language is Jaufre. Its connections with the Northern tradition, especially Chrétien’s Chevalier au Lion and the Conte du Graal, have long been recognised, and after some discussion as to which text was borrowed from the other, it is now generally acknowledged that Jaufre was influenced by Chrétien de Troyes.8 The relationship is so close that one can actually use the romances of the latter to emend the Occitan text and to establish the original version.9 Over the last few years, Jaufre’s dependence on Chrétien has increasingly been viewed not as a simple question of source, but as an intertextual relationship in which certain episodes of Chrétien’s text overtly function as elements to be used in a new way, with often mocking intentions.10 Given this ‘dialogical’ attitude, one can rightly ask why the major theme of the Grail has not found any reprise in the Occitan romance and has completely vanished from Jaufre. The truth is that it has not completely vanished – it has just been absorbed by a more Occitan issue: love. Instead of the blinding light surrounding the Grail, it is now the Lady who is shining in a supernatural light. The quest for the Grail has been supplanted by the quest for Love.11 The intrinsic link between the Holy Vessel and Love occurs also in the only surviving Occitan ‘Grail scene’ in Rigaut de Barbezieux’s canso III (PC 421, 3). Atressi con Persavaus el temps que vivia que s’esbait d’esgardar tant qu’anc non saup demandar de que servia la lansa ni•l grazaus, et eu sui atretaus, Miels de dompna, quan vei vostre cors gen, qu’eissamen m’oblit quan vos remir e•us cug preiar e non fatz, mais consir.12 8

9

10

11 12

See the precocious note by Aurelia Pontecorvo, ‘Una fonte del Jaufre’, Archivum Romanicum, 22 (1938), 399–401. In several articles Rita Lejeune was close to sustaining the opposite point of view. See, for instance, Rita Lejeune, ‘A propos de la datation du roman de Jaufré. Le Roman de Jaufré, source de Chrétien de Troyes?’, Revue Belge de Philologie et d’Histoire, 31 (1953), 717–47. For the relationship with Yvain, see Tony Hunt, Text and Pretext, Jaufré and Ivain, in The Legacy of Chrétien de Troyes, ed. Norris J. Lacy, Douglas Kelly and Keith Busby, 2 vols (Amsterdam, 1988), II, pp. 125–41. See Charmaine Lee, ‘La Tradition “indirecte” dans l’édition d’un roman: l’exemple de Jaufre’, in Actes du XXIVe Congrès International de Linguistique et de Philologie Romanes, ed. David Trotter, (Tübingen, forthcoming). I wish to thank Charmaine Lee for letting me have a copy of her contribution before its publication. Alberto Limentani uses the terme contraffazione in ‘I problemi del Jaufre’; similar expressions occur in Hunt, Text and Pretext, and Emmanuèle Baumgartner, Le Roman aux XIIe et XIIIe siècles dans la littérature occitane, in Grundriß der romanischen Literaturen des Mittelalters, Le Roman jusqu’à la fin du XIIIe siècle (Heidelberg, 1978), IV/1, pp. 627–44. This is the general idea expressed by Jean-Charles Huchet in an otherwise slightly questionable article, ‘Jaufré et le Graal’, Vox Romanica, 53 (1994), 156–74. I, vss. 1–11. There are two good editions of Rigaut’s songs: Rigaut de Berbezilh, Liriche, ed. Alberto Varvaro (Bari, 1960), pp. 137–38, and Rigaut de Barbezieux, Le Canzoni, ed. Mauro Braccini (Florence, 1960), p. 35. I am using Varvaro’s text. For the transcription of the music, the old edition is still convenient: Camille Chabaneau and Joseph Anglade, ‘Les Chansons du troubadour Rigaut de Barbezieux’, Revue des Langues Romanes, 60 (1918–20), 201–310. For

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[Just as Perceval, in his time, was so astonished from watching that he could not ask what the lance and the Grail were used for, so am I, Best-of-AllLadies, when I look at your beautiful person, so that I forget myself, gazing at you, I mean to ask you for your love, but I do not; all I do is wonder.]

The stanza has been much commented on, for, once again, it was thought to be potentially older than Chrétien’s Conte du Graal. On the basis of historical documents mentioning a Rigaut de Barbezieux, as early as the first third of the twelfth century, and on the grounds of the question de que servia la lansa ni•l grazaus, that the poet relates to both the lance and the Grail, where Chrétien de Troyes’s Perceval is concerned only with the Holy Vessel itself, the Grail allusion was believed to predate the Northern tradition.13 Most likely, this is not the case, and Rigaut was using Chrétien’s Perceval as a chiffre, a similitudo for astonishment, just as he would elsewhere compare his own arrogance to the superbia of Simon Magus or, according to some manuscripts, Dedalus, seeking to rise above their mortal condition.14 Perhaps the real problem lies elsewhere: the attention this unique instance of a ‘Grail scene’ has attracted amongst modern critics has its (inverse) match only in the indifference it encountered in the Middle Ages. The medieval reaction is complicated and paradoxical, however, because the poem has come down to us in eleven manuscripts and, in excerpts, in two additional witnesses, which is better than the average transmission of most of Rigaut’s songs. That transmission indicates that the poem was appreciated in its time,15 but it was not used for the troubadour’s vida any more than it was thought worthy of a razo.16 Rigaut de Barbezieux, to the medieval audience, is noteworthy not because he compared himself to Perceval, but for entirely different reasons.

13

14 15

16

a more recent edition of the music, see Antoni Rossel i Mayo, Monodia cortesana trobadoresca (Barcelona, 1986), pp. 187–92. It was again Rita Lejeune who rescued Rigaut from oblivion in her thorough study ‘Le Troubadour Rigaut de Barbezieux’, in Mélanges de linguistique et de littérature romanes à la mémoire d’István Frank (Saarbrücken, 1957), pp. 269–95. Since the two Italian editors of Rigaut were not obviously convinced, she wrote a second article, which then triggered a reply by the young Varvaro and an increasingly acerbic answer by Lejeune. See Rita Lejeune, ‘Analyse textuelle et histoire littéraire: Rigaut de Barbezieux’, Le Moyen Age, 68 (1962), 331–77; Alberto Varvaro, ‘Encore sur la datation de Rigaut de Barbezieux’, Le Moyen Age, 70 (1964), 377– 95; Rita Lejeune, ‘La Datation du troubadour Rigaut de Barbezieux: Questions de détail et question de méthode’, Le Moyen Age, 70 (1964), 397–417. Soon after, Jacques Duguet published more genealogical material on Rigaut’s family supporting Rita Lejeune’s position. ‘L’Identification du troubadour Rigaud de Barbezieux’, Bulletin de la Société des antiquaires de l’Ouest et des Musées de Poitiers, 9 (1968), 537–47. In my opinion the whole discussion has reached a decisive point with the discovery of a later Rigaut in historical documents. See Saverio Guida, ‘Problemi di datazione e di identificazione di trovatori. I. Rigaut de Berbezilh’, Studi provenzali e francesi, 86/87 (1989), 87–108. On these comparisons, see Rigaut de Barbezieux, Le Canzoni, pp. 105–21. C (Paris, BnF, f. fr. 856); D (Modena, Bibl. Estense, alpha, R. 4. 4); G (Milan, Bibl. Ambrosiana, R 71 sup, with musical notation); I (Paris, BnF, f. fr. 854); K (Paris, BnF, f. fr. 12473); N (New York, Pierpont Morgan Library, 819; O (Città del Vaticano, Bibl. Apostolica, lat. 3206); Q (Florence, Bibl. Riccardiana, 2909); R (Paris, BnF, f. fr. 22543); S (Oxford, Bodleian Library, Douce 269); T (Paris, BnF, f. fr. 12511); a1 (Modena, Bibl. Estense, Campori gamma, N. 8. 4: 11, 12, 13). The extracts are found in the two French chansonniers W (Paris, BnF, f. fr. 844, with musical notation) and X (Paris, BnF, f. fr. 20050). The texts of both the vida and the razo are reproduced at the end of this chapter.

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Rigaut’s vida is very short and tells us only that he was shy, especially in public. This is a current topic in troubadour lyric and does not necessarily refer to the ‘Grail scene’, which is more about astonishment than about shyness and inhibition. It then says little more than that he was in love with a lady, wife of Lord Jaufre of Tonnay and daughter of Jaufre Rudel, that his senhal for her was ‘Miellz-de-Domna’ and that he celebrated her in his songs for a long time but without success, since it is not believed that she ever made love to him. After her death, he travelled to Spain, where he died. So much for l’Homme. About his Œuvre, the vida merely says: ‘Et el si se deletava molt en dire en sas cansos similitudines de bestias e d’ausels e d’omes, e del sol e de las estellas, per dire plus novellas rasos qu’autre non agues ditas.’ [And he also took great delight in making in his songs comparisons with animals and birds and men, and with the sun and stars, in order to treat more novel subjects than anyone else had done.]17 In other words, it insists upon the technique of the comparisons, much more than on their content, and the most striking amongst the images seem to be the comparisons with animals rather than with Perceval.18 That is exactly the point that the razo elaborates on, since it does not aim to explain the origin of the Grail allusion in canso n° III, but the elephant similitudo in canso n° II (PC 421, 2). The incipit that triggered the razo is not Atressi con Persavaus but Atressi con l’orifanz: the medieval persona of the poet and lover Rigaut de Barbezieux is not that of the Grail hero, but that of the elephant. In order to understand the razo, it may be helpful to have a closer look at the poem it refers to. In the opening stanza of one of the best known songs, Atressi con l’orifanz, the poet compares himself to the elephant (which, once he has fallen, can no longer get up without the help of others) and then goes on alluding to a mesfaitz of his, which caused his fall. Atressi con l’orifanz que quant chai no•s pot levar tro li autre, ab lor cridar de lor voz lo levon sus, et eu voill segre aquel us, que mos mesfaitz es tan greus e pesanz que si la cortz del Puoi e lo bobanz e l’adreitz pretz dels lials amadors no•m relevon, iamais non serai sors, que deingngesson per mi clamar merce lai on preiars ni merces no•m val re. [Just like the elephant, which, when he falls, cannot get up again until the others shout and raise him to his feet with their voices, I will follow this behaviour, for my fault is so bad and heavy that I shall never get up again,

17 18

Jean Boutière and Alexander Herman Schutz, Biographies des troubadours (Paris, 1964), p. 149; The Vidas of the Troubadours, trans. Margarita Egan (New York, 1984), p. 99. For a discussion of these similitudines, see, again, Rigaut de Barbezieux, Le Canzoni, pp. 105–21, and Robert Taylor, ‘Les Images allégoriques d’animaux dans les poèmes de Rigaut de Berbezilh’, Cultura Neolatina, 38 (1978), 251–59.

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if the court of Puy and the magnificence and the subtle praising of the faithful lovers don’t help me up, consenting to implore mercy for me where begging and pity are of no help.]19

The poet here is echoing the idea, spread by medieval encyclopaedias and bestiaries, that the elephant’s legs do not have any articulations and thus prevent him from raising himself without help. The rest of the poem is quite in conformity with the tradition of Occitan love lyric, telling a ‘story of the heart’, a Herzmaere, that depicts one of the constellations in the canon of love casuistic and declines the problem of the lover’s fault and the lady’s pardon.20 The razo takes up both these points. As often is the case, most of the material used for the explanations is extracted directly from the song itself, thus creating a hermeneutic circle. But the interesting aspect is that the poem, in the razo, is cast into a plot, a plot that could not be further from Perceval’s vida, who is constant in his love for Blanchefleur. Rigaut, says the razo echoing the vida, loved and served ‘Miellz-de-Domna’, who would not return his favours. A second lady then appeared, who convinced Rigaut to abandon the first one and accept her love instead. Rigaut officially breaks away from his first unrequited love and turns to the second one, claiming his price, after having done what she had asked him to do. The second lady then announces that never could she love such a fickle man who will leave one lady just because another one promises him her love. Rigaut tries to convince ‘Miellzde-Domna’ to have him back, but she turns him down. The poet then retreats into the wilderness from where he will not move until he has regained the love of his lady. The noble knights and ladies, feeling sorry for Rigaut, begged ‘Miellz-de-Domna’ to forgive him. But she would only take him back the day one hundred men and women, all true lovers, implored her on their knees. They eventually did and she forgave him. The persona of the poet Rigaut de Barbezieux, thus, enters the stage of medieval literary history not as the bewildered Grail hero, but as the fallen elephant, raised to his feet after a most unfortunate tentative to finally conquer a noble lady. The ‘glose’ invented by the razo to explain the poem follows a clearly nonlyric pattern with a narrative element strong enough to make the razo the source of novella 64 of the Novellino.21 The almost fabliesque features of the razo turn

19 20

21

I, vss. 1–11. Rigaut de Berbezilh, Liriche, pp. 121–22. On this point see the interesting article by Eckhard Höfner, ‘Interdependenzen, Interferenzen, Intertextualitäten. Narrativik im provenzalischen Lied und in seinem Umkreis’, in Fragen der Liedinterpretation, ed. Hedda Ragotzky, Gisela Vollmann-Profe and Gerhard Wolf (Stuttgart, 2001), pp. 158–87. This resemblance was first pointed out by Antoine Thomas, ‘Rigaut de Barbezieux et le Novellino’, Giornale di Filologia Romanza, 3 [fasc. 7] (1880), 12–15. For the text and further bibliography see Cesare Segre, Volgarizzamenti del Due e Trecento (1953; Turin, 1980), pp. 51–52 and, more recently, Alberto Conte, Il Novellino (Rome, 2001), pp. 354–56. It is generally assumed that the razo and the novel have a common source. See, on this issue, Don A. Monson, ‘De la chanson par la razo à la nouvelle: Atressi cum l’orifanz de Rigaut de Barbezieux et ses commentaires narratifs médiévaux’, Medioevo Romanzo, 16 (1991), 271–84. Comic aspects occur also in other razos than Rigaut’s. See Elizabeth Wilson Poe, From Poetry to Prose in Old Provençal (Birmingham, AL, 1984), pp. 57–58, who stresses the comic potential of the razo of Peire Vidal.

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Rigaut into a hero who, socially, is not particularly dexterous but whose niceté is, nevertheless, of a very different kind from Perceval’s. The least that can be said about the vida and the razo is that they do not seem to be interested in the Grail allusion contained in Rigaut’s poem and prefer to stress quite different aspects of his œuvre. Several centuries would go by without any change. The first and only person who seems to have been tempted to mention Perceval in relation to Rigaut de Barbezieux is the infamous Jehan de Nostredame, brother of the prophet Michel de Nostredame, in his Les Vies des plus célèbres et anciens poètes provensaux from 1575. Nostredame’s compilation was severely judged and profoundly despised by Bartsch, Meyer and all the real ‘professionals’ of the nineteenth century who considered it a mixture of incompetence and forgery.22 In fact, Nostredame was trying with all means to link the troubadours to his Provence and did not hesitate to fabricate appropriate evidence himself wherever it was lacking. The biographical notice on Rigaut is a good example of the way the Provençal ‘amateur’ worked: although he seems to have known a good share of Rigaut’s poems and presumably also the vida, he quotes only the first one of the cansos and prefers to make up some extra lines himself to fit in with an entirely new vida, where two Provençal ladies are mentioned as Rigaut’s source of inspiration. Nostredame makes no mention of the unique Grail scene in Occitan literature, dismissing it, de facto, as unlikely to add any prestige to Rigaut’s work. The point is particularly noteworthy because we know with certainty that Nostredame was perfectly aware of the existence of the Perceval canso. The manuscript drafts leading up to the printed edition of 1575 contain some additional material with the original notice on Rigaut. Even a quick glance at the primitive version shows the modifications Nostredame inserted for publication. The original notice says, just as in the printed edition, that the poet was in love with a noble lady from the family of Berre, for whom he wrote a poem containing the line ‘m’arma e mon corps’, which is the first line of the tornada of canso I. Both notices further agree in saying that this first lady died and Rigaut then loved the dame de Pontevès, for whom he wrote many songs. The original version, instead of the four lines that Nostredame himself made up for the printed edition, continues by noting that one of the songs says the ‘dame est jeune d’ans et antique de prudence’ [the lady is young in years and mature in prudence].23 This is the proof Nostredame knew canso III of Rigaut, for the line, quite clearly, comes from Rigaut’s Perceval-poem,24 and in the space between the lines Nostredame had even written ‘Il faict comparaison de luy et du chevalier Perceval’ [he compares himself with the knight Perceval]. But again, it is not for the Grail allusion that the poem is mentioned.

22

23

24

See the observations by Laura Kendrick, ‘The Science of Imposture and the Professionalization of Medieval Occitan Literary Studies’, in Medievalism and the Modernist Temper, ed. R. Howard Bloch and Stephen G. Nichols (Baltimore, 1995), pp. 95–126. Jehan de Nostredame, Les Vies des plus célèbres et anciens poètes provençaux. Nouvelle édition, accompagnée d’extraits d’œuvres inédites du même auteur, ed. Camille Chabaneau and Joseph Anglade (Paris, 1913), p. 146. Vieilla de sen e de laus, / ioves on iois lia; / vieilla de pretz e d’onrar, / ioves de bel domneiar etc., Rigaut de Berbezilh, Liriche, p. 139.

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69

All Nostredame is interested in is the claim that Petrarch imitated Rigaut’s poem in one of his songs. Chabaneau and Anglade, the last editors of the poem, did not manage to identify the Petrarchan echo, and it may well not exist any more than numerous other elements quoted by Nostredame. Even today, with modern instruments, it is not easy to check the information. The only line by the Italian poet that comes close to Rigaut’s verse is ‘di tempo anticha, et giovene del viso’, but it appears in quite a different context and is not an entirely accurate quote.25 It is clear, however, that not even Nostredame thought he could make anything spectacular out of the Grail allusion, simply skipping it in his draft, deleting the entire reference to the poem in the printed edition, and thus putting an end to the scholarly rediscovery of the only Occitan Grail scene before it had really started. From the absence of any reaction or comment on Rigaut’s ‘Grail scene’ prior to modern critics, one simple conclusion emerges. At the time Rigaut was writing, the character of Perceval was so banal that the passage did not call for any comment. Far from proving that the Grail was not known in the South, the line provides evidence to the contrary. Given the widespread transmission of the canso, it is likely that somebody would have commented on it had it been thought to have any special potential. Referring to the tradition of the chanson de geste, Joseph Bédier once coined the formula of the silence des siècles leading from the Carolingian period to the twelfth century. He argued that the centuries are silent on epic tradition because there is nothing there that they could echo. In the case of the Occitan Grail, the centuries could be silent because what they could have said was dismissed as too common. Unlike the chanson de geste, the silence may in this case not reflect absence, but indicate over-abundance.

Appendix Vida of Rigaut Manuscripts containing the vida are ABIKP. I (fol. 87v) and K (fol. 71r) also contain a vignette showing Rigaut. Richartz de Berbesieu si fo uns cavalliers del castel de Berbesieu, de Saintonge, de l’evesquat de Saintes, paubres vavausors. Bon cavalliers fo d’armes et bels de la persone; e saup mielz trobar qu’entendre ni que dire. Mout fo pauros disenz entre las genz; et on plus vezia de bons homes, plus s’esperdia e menz sabia; e totas vetz li besoignava altre que•l conduisses enan. Mas ben cantava e disia sons, e trobava avinenmen motz e sons. Et enamoret se d’una domna, moillier d’En Joaufe de Taonai, d’un valen baron d’aquella encontrada. E la domna era gentils e bella, e gaia e plazenz, e mot envejosa de pretz e d’onor, filla d’En Jaufre Rudel, prince de Blaia. E quant ella conoc qu’el era enamoratz d’ella, fetz li doutz senblanz d’amor; tant 25

In some fields, philology has made some progress since Chabaneau and Anglade. Unlike them, we can consult a concordance of Petrarch’s songs: Concordanze del Canzoniere di Francesco Petarca, 2 vols (Florence, 1971): the line is in 325, 51.

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qu’el cuilli ardimen de lei pregar. Et ella, ab douz senblanz amoros, retenc sos precs, e los receup e loz auzi, com domna que avia volontat d’un trobador que trobes d’ella. Et aquest comenset a far sas cansos d’ella, et appelava la ‘Meillzde-Domna’ en sos cantars. Et el si se deletava molt en dire en sas cansos similitudines de bestias e d’ausels e d’omes, e del sol e de las estellas, per dire plus novellas rasos qu’autre non agues ditas. Mout longamen cantet d’ella; mas anc non fo crezut qu’ella li fezes amor de la persone. La domna mori; et el s’en anet en Espaingna al valen baron Don Diego; e lai visquet, e la mori.26 [Richart de Berbezeill was a knight from the castle of Barbezieux in Saintonge in the bishopric of Saintes, a poor minor noble. He was a capable knight and handsome in appearance. And he knew better how to compose poetry than to listen to it or recite it. He was a very timid speaker in public, and the more noble people he saw, the more he was troubled and the less he knew. And he always needed someone to encourage him. But he sang and he performed melodies in a charming way. And he fell in love with a lady, wife of Lord Jaufre of Tonnay, a worthy baron of that region. And the lady was noble and beautiful and gay and charming and very desirous of merit and honor, daughter of Lord Jaufre Rudel, the Prince of Blaye. And when she learned that he was in love with her, she made sweet pretenses of love to him, so much that he summoned up courage to woo her. And she, with sweet pretenses of love, welcomed his requests, received them, and heard them like a lady who desired that a troubadour invent poems about her. And he began to compose songs about her, and he called her ‘Miellz-de-Domna’ in his songs. And he also took great delight in making in his songs comparisons with animals and birds and men, and with the sun and stars, in order to treat more novel subjects than anyone else had done. He sang about her for a very long time, but it was believed that she never made love with him. And the lady died, and he went away to Spain, to the worthy baron Don Diego. And there he lived and died.]27

Razo applying to the Rigaut’s poem Autressi com l’orifanz (PC 421, 2) transmitted by one single manuscript P (Florence, Bibl. Laurenziana, Plut. XLI, cod. 42), fol. 46r28 Ben avetz entendut qi fo Ricchautz de Ber[be]siu et com s’enamoret de la molher de Jaufre de Ta[o]nay, q’era bella et gentils et joves; et volia li ben outra mesura, et apellava la ‘Mielz-de-Dompna’ et ella li volia ben cortesamen. Et Ricchaut[z] la pregava q’ella li degues far plaser d’amor, et clama[va] li merce. Et la dompna li respondet q’elle volia volentier far li plazer d’aitan qe li fos onor; et dis a Ricchaut qe, s’el li volges lo ben q’el dixia, q’el non deuria voler q’ella l’en dixes plus, ne plus li fezes con ella li fazia ni dizia. Et aisi [e]stan et duran la lor amor, una dompna d’aqella encontrada, castellana d’un ric castel, si mandet per Ricchaut; et Ricchautz si s’en anet ad ella.

26 27 28

Boutière and Schutz, Biographies des troubadours, pp. 149–50. The Vidas of the Troubadours, trans. Egan, pp. 99–100. On the Florence manuscript, see Giuseppe Noto ‘Intavulare’. Tavole di canzonieri romanzi (serie coordinata da Anna Ferrari). I. Canzonieri provenzali. 4. Firenze, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, P (plut. 41. 42) (Modena, 2003).

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Et la dompna li comencet a dir com ella se fasia gran meravilha de so q’el fasia, qe tan longj[a]men avia amada la soa dompna, et alla no•l avia fait null plaser en dreit d’amor; et dis q’En Ricchaut[z] era tal hom de la soa persona et si valentz qe totas las bonas dompnas li deurion far volentier plazer; et qe, se Ricchaut[z] se volia partir de soa dompna, q’elle li faria plaser d’a[i]tan com el volgues comandar, et disen autresi q’ella era plus bella dompna et plus alta qe non era aqella en qi el s’entendia. Et aven[c] aisi qe Ricchautz, per las granz promessas q’ella li fazia, qe•ll dis qu’el s’em partria. Et la do[m]pna li commanda q’el anes penre connjat d’elle et [dis] qe nul plazer li faria, s’ella non sa[u]bes q’el s’en fos partiz. Et Ricchautz se parti et venc se a sa dompna en q’el s’entendia; et comenset li a dir com ell l’avia amada sobre totas las autres dompnas del mon, et mais qe si meseis, et com elle no li volia aver fach nul plazer d’amor, q’el s’en volia partir de leis. Et ella en fo trista et marrida, et commenset a pregar Richhaut qe non se degues partir d’ella; et, se ella per temps passat non li avia fach plazer, q’ella li volia far ara. Et Ricchautz respondet q’el si volia partir al pus to[s]t; et enaisi s’en parti d’ella. Et pois, qant el ne fo partiz, el se venc a la donne qe•l n’avia fait partir, et dis li com el avia fait lo sieu comandemen et com li clamava merce, q’elle li degues complir tot so q’ella li a[c] promes. Et la dompna li respondet q’el non era hom qe neguna dompna li degues ni far ni dir plazer, q’el era lo plus fals hom del mon, qant el era partiz de sa dompna, q’era si bella et si gaia et qe•l volia tant de be, per ditz d’aucuna autre dompna; et si com era partiz d’ella, si se partira d’autre. Et Ricchautz, qant auzi so q’elle dizia, si fo lo plus trist hom del mon e•l plus dolenz qe mais fos. Et parti se, et volc tornar a merce de l’autra dompna de prima; ne aqella no•l vol[c] retener; don ell, per tristessa q’el ac, si s’en anet en un boschage et fet[z] se faire una maison et reclu[s] se dinz, disen q’el non eisseria mais de laienz, tro q’el non trobes merce de sa dompna; per q’el dis en una soa chanson: Mielz-de-Do[m]pna, don soi fugitz doz anz. Et pois las bonas dompnas e•ill cavalier d’aqellas encontradas, vezen lo gran dampnage de Ricchaut, qe fu aisi perduz, si ve[n]gen la on Ricchautz era recluz, et pregero lo q’el se deges partir et issir fora. Et Ricchaut[z] disia q’el non se partria mais, tro qe sa do[m]pna li perdones. Et la[s] dompnas e•l cavalier s’en venguen a la domna et pregero la q’ella li degues perdona[r]; et la dompna lo[r] respondet q’ella no•n faria ren, tro que .c. dompnas et .c. chavalier, li qual s’amesson tuit per amor, non venguesson tuith devant leis, man[s] jontas, de genolhos, clamar li merce, q’elle li degues perdonar; et poins elle li perdonaria, se il aqest faisian. La novella venc a Ricchaut, don ell fetz aqesta chanson que ditz: Atr[e]ssi com l’olifanz. Qe, can c[h]ai, no•s pod levar, Tro qe l’autre, a lor gridar, De lor voz le levon sus, Es eu voill segre aqel us; Que mos mesfait[z] es tan greus e pesant[z] [Qe], se la cort del Poi et lo bobanz E los fins precs de[l]s leial[s] amadors No•m relevon, ja mai non serai sors,

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Que den[h]essen per mi clamar merce Lai on prejars ses merce pro no•m te. Et qant las domnas et li cavalier ausiren qe podia trobar merce ab sa dompna, se .c. dompnas et .c. chavalier, qe s’amesson per amor, anassen clamar merce a la dompna de Richaut q’ella li perdones, et ella li perdonaria, las dompnas e•l chavalier s’asembleron tuit et anneron et clameron merce as ella per Ricchaut. Et la dompna li perdonet.29 [You have clearly heard who Rigaut of Barbezieux was and how he was in love with the wife of Jaufre of Taonay, who was beautiful and noble and young. And he loved her exceedingly and called her ‘Best of all Ladies’ and she loved him courtly. And Rigaut asked her if she would grant him the pleasure of love and implored her mercy. And the lady answered that she would gladly give him her love as long it was honourable to her, and she told Rigaut that, if he loved her as much as he claimed, he should not ask her to say or do anything more than she had done or said. And while their love lasted and continued in that way, a lady from that country, chatelaine of a mighty castle, sent for Rigaut; and Rigaut went to see her. And the lady told him that she greatly marvelled at the way he was behaving, since he had loved his lady for so long without her giving him the pleasure of true love, and she said that Sire Rigaut was a man of such great value that all good ladies should gladly want to please him and that, if Rigaut were willing to leave his lady, she herself would please him in any way he would demand. And she also said that she was more beautiful and of better birth than the other lady he was courting. And it then happened that Rigaut, as a result of the high promises she was making, told her that he would leave the other lady. And she then commanded him to go and take leave of the other lady and added she would not let him have any pleasure unless she knew he had left the first one. Rigaut departed and went to see the other lady he had been courting; and he started telling her how he had loved her more than any other lady in the world, and more than himself, and how she would refuse to give him any of love’s pleasure, and that he wanted to leave. And she was sad and pained by that and started to beg Rigaut not to leave her, and she said that if she had not granted him any pleasure so far, she was now willing to do so. But Rigaut answered that he wanted to leave as soon as possible, and so he left her. Once he had left her, he went to see the lady who had asked him to leave the first one, and he told her how he had obeyed her command, imploring her to keep now the promises she hade made. She replied that he was not a man whom a lady should please by word or act, for he was the most treacherous man in the world because he had left his lady, who was so beautiful, so gay and well disposed to his person, for the mere words of another woman. And just as he had left the first lady, he would leave another. When Rigaut heard what she was saying, he was the saddest man on earth and most unhappy that ever existed. He left and tried to reconcile with the first lady, but she refused to receive him. So he retired into the woods for the grief he was feeling and had a house of wood built where he lived all secluded, announcing that he would

29

Boutière and Schutz, Biographies des troubadours, pp. 153–55.

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not leave this house before he would have forgiveness from his lady. That is why he says in one of his songs: ‘ “Best-of-all-Ladies” whom I fled for two years’. The noble ladies and the knights of the country, seeing Rigaut’s suffering, who was lost in this way, went to see him where he had retired, and requested that he come out and leave the place. But he replied that he would not leave the place as long as the lady had not forgiven him. And the ladies and the knights went to see the lady to ask her to forgive him; but the lady told them that she would forgive him only if one hundred ladies and one hundred knights truly in love would present themselves before her together, hands clasped and on their knees, begging for mercy and imploring her to forgive him. Only then would she forgive him. The news reached Rigaut who composed the song saying: Just like the elephant, / who, when he falls can not get up again / until the others shout / and raise him to his feet with their voices, / I will adopt this behaviour, / for my fault is so terrible and heavy / that I shall never get up again, / if the court of Puy and the magnificence / and the subtle praising of the faithful lovers / do not help me up, / consenting to implore mercy for me / where begging and pity are of no help. And when the ladies and the knights heard that he could have mercy from his lady if one hundred ladies and one hundred knights truly in love went to implore Rigaut’s lady to forgive him, and that she then would forgive him, the ladies and knights all assembled and went and implored her mercy for Rigaut. And the lady forgave him.]

The Life of Rigaut de Barbezieux according to Jehan de Nostredame De Ricard de Barbezieux Ricard de Barbezieux fut seigneur du dict lieu, bel homme, ayant une reputation qui rendoit tesmoignage du bon courage et grande magnanimité qu’estoit en luy, savoit bien parler, estoit grandement exercé és sainctes lettres et en la poësie vulgaire provensalle, en laquelle il s’adonna en sa jeunesse, fut excellent mathematicien, laissant perpetuelle memoire de soy, envers ceux qui vindrent apres luy; fut amoureux d’une gentilfemme de Provence, nommee Clere de Berre, fille d’un gentilhomme, sieur d’Entravenes, qu’estoit belle à perfection, à la louange de laquelle escrivit plusieurs belles chansons en langue provensalle, la nommant en la coupple finale d’icelles, M’arma e mon corps.30 Mais par un mauvais rapport se rendit religieuse au monastere de la Celle pres la ville de Brignolle laquelle peu de temps apres deceda. Et Ricard s’enamoura d’une damoyselle de la maison de Ponteves, non moins douee de beauté que la dame de Berre, pour laquelle il chanta de fort belles chansons, en l’une desquelles es finalles lettres des quatre permiers vers est compris son nom, qu’est ainsi: Lou jour del nom qu’en mon cor tant s’imprima Fon qual jour de ma destruction De ma ruyna, e ma perdition, Qu’ay ma persona enequalida, e prima.31

30 31

This is indeed the first verse of the tornada of canso I, Atressi com li leos. Nostredame invented the four lines whose final letters form ANNA.

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En laquelle il demontre qu’il n’en estoit pas tant surpris que de la defuncte; car en un’autre de ses chansons, parlant contre Amour dict, que s’il veut qu’il retourne estre autant amoureux affectionné de ceste, comme il a esté de l’autre, qu’il face retourner les beaux yeux de l’une à l’autre. Et toutesfois il continua tant que finallement il en fut fort surpris et vaincu, ainsi qu’il le confesse en un’autre chanson, en laquelle il dict que les clers yeux de ceste ne l’ont moins vaincu que ceux qui sont ores exteincts.32 Petrarque s’est aydé de ce poëte en ses oeuvres.33 [About Ricard de Barbezieux Ricard of Barbezieux was the lord of that place. A handsome man with a reputation testifying the good-heartedness and the great magnanimity that were in him; he was well spoken, was very experienced in the holy writings as well as in popular Provençal poetry, which he indulged in during his youth; he was an excellent mathematician, and he left a lasting memory of himself in all who came after him; he was in love with a noble lady of Provence, called Claire de Berre, daughter of a noble man, lord of Entravenes, who was beautiful to perfection, to whose glory he composed several beautiful songs in the Provençal language, addressing her in the last stanza by the name of ‘My Soul and my Body’. But after an unlucky pregnancy [?] she became a nun in the monastery of la Celle near the city of Brignolle, and she soon after died. And Ricard then fell in love with a young lady from the house of Pontevès, no less endowed with beauty than the lady of Berre, for whom he sang very beautiful songs; one of them in the last letters of the four first lines, contains her name, as follows: The day her name engraved itself in my heart was that day of my destruction, of my ruin, and my perdition, For I then, for the first time, felt my inferiority [?]. From this he shows that he was not that much overcome by the deceased lady: for in another of his songs, addressing Love, he says he tells him [Love] that if he wants him to be in love with this new lady as affectionately as he loved the other one, he should make the eyes of the first one come back to life in the latter. But nonetheless he continued and was very much subdued and defeated in the end, as he admits in another song, where he says that the bright eyes of this lady have not conquered him any less than those which are now extinguished. Petrarch used this poet in his works.]

32

33

None of the extant songs of Rigaut seems to contain anything similar. It may be, as Anglade suggests in his note, that Nostredame is referring to n° 270 of Petrarch’s Canzoniere: Amor, se vuo’ ch’i torni al giogo anticho. If I understand correctly, Nostredame would be contending that Rigaut had written a non-existent poem used by Petrarch in order to increase the fame of the Occitan writer. Jehan de Nostredame, Les Vies des plus célèbres et anciens poètes provensaux qui ont floury du temps des Comtes de Provence (Lyon, 1575), pp. 242–43. I quote from the modern (1913) edition by Chabaneau and Anglade: Nostredame, Les Vies des plus célèbres et anciens poètes provençaux, pp. 145–46.

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Manuscript version of Nostredame’s note on Rigaut Fut amoureux d’une gentilfemme de Provence, de la maison de Berre, à la louange de laquelle escrivit plusieurs belles chansons en langue provensalle, qui sont fort bonnes et de bon sens, la nommant en la couple finale d’ycelle: m’arma e mon corps.34 Mais elle par ung maulvais rapport deceda et s’enamoura d’une dame de la maison de Pontevès, pour laquelle chanta de fort belles et doctes chansons, en l’une desquelles dict que sa dame est jeune d’ans et antique de prudence. En une autre, parlant contre Amour, luy dict que s’il veut qu’il retourne estre aultant amoureux de ceste nouvelle dame, qu’il fut de la dame de Berre, qu’il fasse, si son pouvoir est tel, revivre les beaulx yeulx de la dame de Berre. Lesquelles deux chansons ont esté imitées en invention par Petrarque en ung sonnet et un ung chant …35 [He was in love with a noble lady from Provence, from the house of Berre, for whom he wrote several beautiful songs in Provençal, which are very good and well written, calling her ‘My Soul and My Body’ in the last stanza. But she died after a tragic pregnancy, and he fell in love with a lady from the house of Pontevès, for whom he sang songs beautiful and wise, in one of which he says that his lady is young in years and old in knowledge. In another one, addressing Love, he tells him that if he wants him to be in love with this new lady as much as he loved the lady of Berre, he should bring back to life the beautiful eyes of the lady of Berre, if he could. These two songs have been imitated by Petrarch in a sonnetto and a song.]

34

35

In the interlinear space Nostredame had written: ‘Il faict comparaison de luy et du chevalier Perceval qui quand il en une autre dict que’; Nostredame, Les Vies des plus célèbres et anciens poètes provençaux, ed. Chabaneau and Anglade, p. 352. Nostredame, Les Vies des plus célèbres et anciens poètes provençaux, ed. Chabaneau and Anglade, p. 146.

6 Female Desire and the Quest in the Icelandic Legend of Tristram and Ísodd

MARIANNE E. KALINKE

French romance was introduced to Norway in translation in the year 1226. The work in question was Thomas de Bretagne’s Tristran, known in Old Norse as Tristrams saga ok Ísöndar. The saga, the only complete member of the Thomas branch of the Tristan legend, was translated at the behest of the Norwegian King Hákon Hákonarson (r. 1217–63) by a certain Brother Robert.1 Today the source text is extant solely in fragmentary form, while its other derivative text, Gottfried von Strassburg’s Tristan, is incomplete. The Norwegian translation thus plays an extraordinary role in assessing the courtly version of the Tristan legend. Tristrams saga was followed by the translation of three of Chrétien de Troyes’s romances, his Erec, Yvain and Perceval, the same three romances that were also the sources of German versions by Hartmannn von Aue and Wolfram von Eschenbach. Unlike the German versions, however, the Norse versions of Chrétien’s romances did not generate indigenous Arthurian compositions in the North.2 Tristrams saga ok Ísöndar was a prolific source of motifs, however, not only for the riddarasögur, the Icelandic romances, an imported genre, but also for two Íslendingasögur, that is, Sagas of Icelanders. In addition to the love-triangle motif, Icelandic authors of romance borrowed the ambiguous oath, the voyage for healing, the statue of the beloved and the abduction and restoration of the wife to her husband.3 Notable is the fact that when Tristan motifs were borrowed for the indigenous Icelandic romances, they remained the same. When Tristan motifs were incorporated into the Íslendingasögur, however, they underwent acculturation. The case is similar for the Tristan

1

2

3

Our source of this information is the prologue to the saga. See Tristrams saga ok Ísöndar, ed. and trans. Peter Jorgensen, in Norse Romance, I: The Tristan Legend, ed. Marianne E. Kalinke (Woodbridge, 1999), p. 29. Erex saga, Ívens saga and Parcevals saga contributed a number of Arthurian motifs to the indigenous Icelandic romances composed primarily during the fourteenth century. See Marianne E. Kalinke, King Arthur, North-by-Northwest: The matière de Bretagne in Old Norse-Icelandic Romances, Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana, 37 (Copenhagen, 1981), pp. 221–41, especially pp. 228–38. See Paul Schach, ‘Some Observations on the Influence of Tristrams saga ok Ísöndar on Old Icelandic Literature’, in Old Norse Literature and Mythology: A Symposium, ed. Edgar C. Polomé (Austin, TX, 1969), pp. 81–129.

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legend itself, which was retold by an anonymous author in fourteenth-century Iceland as the Saga af Tristram ok Ísodd and was oddly transformed. Whereas the Icelandic Tristram transmits the distinctive structure, themes and motifs of the legend, modifications in the portrayal of the protagonists and their relations to each other resulted in a romance quite different from Thomas’s legend as transmitted in Tristrams saga ok Ísöndar. In effect, the Icelandic author retold the legend in such a manner as to make the object of desire Tristram rather than Ísodd and the recipient of Tristram’s allegiance his uncle rather than Ísodd. The acculturation of two Tristan motifs in the Sagas of Icelanders reflects, as will be seen, the more drastic transformation of the entire legend in its Icelandic version. The most striking Tristan loan in the Íslendingasögur is the ambiguousoath motif in Grettis saga, where a woman clears herself of the charge of adultery, but the outcome of the episode reveals assimilation to Icelandic cultural norms.4 As in the Tristan legend, a guilty woman clears herself of the charge of adultery by means of an ambiguous oath. The story told in the Tristan legend as also the ambiguous-oath episode itself is rather un-Icelandic. Those who transgress the law in the sagas generally not only admit to doing so, but are also expected to announce the crime themselves, for example, a killing. Adultery too is admitted and is often quite public, as the examples of extramarital relationships and concubinage in the sagas show.5 The incident in Grettis saga actually takes place in Constantinople and involves a woman named Spes, who is nobly born while her husband is not. She had been given to him in marriage on account of his wealth, but Spes considered herself to have married beneath her. She falls in love with an Icelander, Þorsteinn, who serves in the Varangian Guard, the Byzantine emperor’s royal guard, and bestows much wealth on him. Her husband accuses her of squandering their wealth and suspects her of adultery. On three different occasions he attempts to find his wife in flagrante delicto, but each time she manages to outwit him. Her husband’s charges continue until she finally declares that she will go to the bishop to clear her name. She is asked to swear an oath and on her way to the church she is accompanied by family and friends. It is raining, the roads are wet and she has to traverse a big ditch. She accepts a beggar’s offer to carry her across the ditch, but he falls into the mud, and ‘because he could not get a grip on her clothes he put his muddy hand on her knee and all over her bare thigh’.6 She curses him roundly but when the crowd intercedes for the old man,

4

5

6

Paul Schach noted that the ambiguous-oath motif in Grettis saga has been the subject of much scholarly controversy relating to disagreement as to the date of Grettis saga and consequently the specific source of the motif (‘Some Observations’, pp. 114–16). I am not arguing for derivation of the motif from either Tristrams saga ok Ísöndar or a French or German Tristan text. The point is that the ambiguous oath, as we see it in Grettis saga, is a Tristanian motif, regardless of the source that inspired it. Jenny Jochens points out that the contemporary saga Sturlunga, that is, the thirteenth-century saga that deals with contemporary events in Iceland ‘makes it clear that few prominent men lived in monogamous marriage; most added concubines (frillur) openly to their wives or established informal unions with official mistresses (fylgikonur)’. Women in Old Norse Society (Ithaca, NY, 1995), p. 31. The Saga of Grettir the Strong, in The Complete Sagas of Icelanders, II, ed. Viðar Hreinsson (Reykjavík, 1997), p. 187.

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she relents and gives him some gold coins, saying: ‘It would never be right if you were not paid in full for the way I have abused you’ (p. 188). Spes then takes the oath and says: vil ek sverja, at engum manni hefi ek gull gefit ok af engum manni hefi ek saurgazk líkamliga, útan af bónda mínum ok þeim vándum stafkarli, er tók sinni saurugri hendi á lær mér, er ek var borin yfir díkit í dag.7 [I swear that I have not given any man gold and been defiled by him apart from my husband and that wicked beggar who put his muddy hand on my thigh when he carried me over the ditch today. (p. 188)]

Subsequent events in Grettis saga are quite different from those in the Tristan legend, however, for although Spes is now exonerated, she proceeds to ask the bishop for a divorce from her husband Sigurðr, ‘since she did not want to put up with his slanders’ (p. 188). The narrator reports that [h]er kinsmen presented the request, and through their agency and gifts of money, the divorce was granted. Sigurd received little of their wealth and was banished from the country. In this case, as in others, the weaker were forced to yield. He did not manage to have his way even though he was in the right. (p. 188)

The narrator’s wry comment on might over right reflects conditions not infrequent in the Sagas of Icelanders as does the intimation that Spes got her way through bribery. While Spes resorts to an ambiguous oath to clear herself of the charge of adultery, her subsequent divorce reflects the rights – and practice – of women in medieval Icelandic culture.8 A similar Icelandic twist is given to the abduction motif of the Tristan legend. In the Norwegian translation of Thomas’s romance, Tristrams saga ok Ísöndar, King Markis promises to grant an Irish harper anything he wants as a reward for regaling his court with an Irish tune. When the harper subsequently asks for Ísönd, the king wants to renege on the promise but is told by the harper that ‘[i]t is the law and it is just, that you no longer rule in your realm, for that nobleman who openly lies or who breaks his oath or his word, shall not hold power or dominion over valiant men’.9 The harper makes off with Ísönd and it is Tristram who then tricks him out of Ísönd and returns her to King Markis. He admonishes the king, however, to protect her more carefully in the future (p. 133). The abduction motif occurs in one of the so-called skáldasögur, that is, Sagas of Poets, namely Kormáks saga, which some scholars believe to have been written under the influence of the Tristan legend.10 A beautiful woman named Steingerð 7 8 9 10

Grettis saga Ásmundarsonar, ed. Guðni Jónsson, Íslenzk fornrit, VII (Reykjavík, 1936), p. 284. See Jochens, Women in Old Norse Society, pp. 55–60, on divorce in law, practice and as depicted in Sagas of Icelanders. Tristrams saga ok Ísöndar, ed. and trans. Jorgensen, p. 129. One of the most ardent proponents of this thesis was Bjarni Einarsson in his monograph Skáldasögur (Reykjavík, 1961). In the chapter ‘Skald Sagas in their Literary Context. 2: Possible European Contexts’ in Skaldsagas: Text, Vocation, and Desire in the Icelandic Sagas of Poets, ed. Russel Poole, Ergänzungsbände zum Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertums-

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is loved by the poet Kormákr, but is given in marriage to a man named Þorvaldr. On one occasion, Steingerð is abducted by Vikings from her husband’s ship. Kormákr comes upon the Icelanders on an island, learns what has happened, and asks the hapless husband why he had not pursued the Vikings. Þorvaldr admits that he did not have the manpower, in response to which Kormákr asks: ‘Are you admitting that you’re not up to it?’11 Needless to say, Kormákr rescues Steingerð, returns her to her husband Þorvaldr, who now asks Steingerð to go with Kormákr, saying that he had pursued her like a man. Steingerðr objects, however, saying that ‘ekki skyldu kaupa um knífa’ [‘she was not going to exchange one knife for another’].12 The incident concludes with Kormákr telling Steingerð to go with her husband.13 The Tristan motif undergoes an odd transformation not only in Steingerð’s response but also the fact that her husband is willing to give her to his rival, and is a strong indication that we are here on generic ground diverging strikingly from that of romance. In these two Sagas of Icelanders Tristanian motif complexes underwent a remarkable adaptation to Icelandic literary and cultural norms. Something similar occurred, but even more drastically, with the entire legend as retold in one of the most curious Icelandic romances, the Saga af Tristram ok Ísodd, the oldest manuscript of which, AM 489, 4to, is dated ca. 1450, but which is thought to have been composed in the fourteenth century. This Icelandic version of the Tristan legend has been dismissed by scholars on the one hand as a ‘boorish account of Tristram´s noble passion’14 and on the other as ‘a deliberate reply’ to the Norwegian version of the French romance’.15 Following up on Paul Schach’s interpretation of the saga as a response to the Norwegian Tristrams saga ok Ísöndar, I ventured to suggest that the saga ‘is, in fact, a humorous commentary on Arthurian romance, a parody of the genre, and a result of drawing the ultimate and often ludicrous consequences of the behavioral tenets propounded in Arthurian romance’.16 Geraldine Barnes has taken exception to both Paul Schach’s and my own interpretation and has suggested an alternative approach

11 12

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kunde, 27 (Berlin, 2001), Alison Finlay discusses at length Bjarni Einarsson’s theses with special attention to Kormáks saga (see pp. 245–65). Kormak’s Saga, trans. Rory McTurk, in Sagas of Warrior-Poets (London, 2002), p. 63. Kormáks saga in Vatnsdœla saga, Hallfreðar saga, Kormáks saga, ed. Einar Ól. Sveinsson, Íslenzk fornrit, VIII (Reykjavík, 1939), p. 298. The expression kaupa um knífa [‘exchange one knife for another’] is a euphemism referring to the male sexual organ. Finlay argues that the proposed parallels with Tristan are ‘overstated’, that Kormáks saga does not contain the motif of the rash promise, and the episode could have been inspired ‘by either some version of Tristan, or the story of Lancelot’ (‘Skald Sagas’, p. 264). Derivation from a Lancelot text seems unlikely to me, not only because of the greater points of convergence of the motif in the Tristan legend (and the North did know Tristrams saga ok Ísöndar) than in Chrétien’s Lancelot, but also because no Lancelot text, as far as we know, was ever transmitted to the North. Henry Goddard Leach, Angevin Britain and Scandinavia, Harvard Studies in Comparative Literature, 9 (Cambridge, MA, 1921), p. 186. Paul Schach, ‘The Saga af Tristram ok Ísodd. Summary or Satire?’ Modern Language Quarterly, 21 (1960), 352. Kalinke, King Arthur, North-by-Northwest, 199. In a later article, Paul Schach noted that I have ‘reinforced and amplified’ his thesis (‘Tristrams saga ok Ýsoddar as Burlesque,’ Scandinavian Studies, 59 [1987], 87), and ‘that this seemingly insignificant tale is, indeed, a parody of Arthurian romance as a genre’ (p. 95).

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to the Saga af Tristram ok Ísodd, ‘namely, a consideration of the work in the wider framework of late medieval Icelandic romance’.17 In this context, Barnes writes, ‘what might seem like oddities and discordances in comparison with Tristrams saga [that is, the thirteenth-century Norwegian translation] become familiar narrative conventions’ that draw ‘upon a common storehouse of 14th-century literary rhetoric’ (p. 384). Her point that some of the oddities in the Icelandic version ‘can be viewed as the marks of a generic consistency’ (p. 384) is well taken, but I would like to extend the issue of generic expectations and practices in another direction, namely, that of the Íslendingasögur, the Sagas of Icelanders. My thesis is that in the Saga af Tristram ok Ísodd the legend underwent a type of acculturation similar to the modification of the Tristan motifs in Grettis saga and Kormáks saga, and this occurred under the influence of indigenous Icelandic literature, not the imported romances and the indigenous romances indebted to them. The cultural assimilation is most evident in the portrayal and behavior of the protagonists in the love triangle. A superficial reading of the saga leaves one with an impression similar to that voiced by Henry Goddard Leach when he wrote that the Icelandic version reflects an ‘imperfect memory’ of the Tristan legend (p. 184). Geraldine Barnes argued, however, that ‘[t]he fundamental difference between Tristrams saga and the Saga af Tristram ok Ísodd is one of ideology: the moral turmoil and anguish and the tragic consequences of fatal attraction which dominate Thomas’s story are of little consequence to the Icelandic romance’ (pp. 387–88). Indeed, there are different ideologies at play in the Norwegian and Icelandic versions of the Tristan legend, but the differences reflect not so much the differences between courtly continental and indigenous Icelandic romance but rather differences in the expression of male and female sexuality in courtly romance and in the indigenous Icelandic sagas. As Barnes has noted, the Icelandic saga does not conclude with Tristram’s death but rather continues by informing us of the fate of Tristram’s son and in turn that of his children. The story does not end with the tragic death of the lovers, for unlike the continental Tristan, his Icelandic counterpoint does consummate his marriage with Ísodd the Dark, as Isolt with the White Hands is called in the saga. About Tristram’s relationship with her we are told that ‘þykkiz Ísodd svarta ekki fá ást hans’ [‘it seemed to Ísodd the Dark that she was not in possession of his love’], but ‘þá er þau höfðu saman búit þrjá vetr, ól Ísodd svarta sveinbarn’18 [‘when they had been living together for three years, Ísodd the Dark gave birth to a baby son’].19 He was called Kalegras and he enters the narrative in a concluding chapter after the lovers’ death. Tristram’s uncle

17

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‘Tristan in Late Medieval Norse Literature: Saga and Ballad’, in Tristan und Isolt im Spätmittelalter. Vorträge eines interdisziplinären Symposiums vom 3. bis zum 8. Juni 1996 an der Justus-Liebig-Universität Gießen, ed. Xenja von Ertzdorff, Chloe. Beihefte zum Daphnis, 29 (Amsterdam, 1999), p. 384. Saga af Tristram ok Ísodd, ed. Peter Jorgensen, in Norse Romance, I: The Tristan Legend, ed. Marianne E. Kalinke (Woodbridge, 1999), p. 284. The Saga of Tristram and Ísodd, trans. Joyce M. Hill, in Norse Romance, I: The Tristan Legend, ed. Marianne E. Kalinke (Woodbridge, 1999), p. 285.

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convened an assembly, and at that same assembly King Mórodd gave England and the kingdom to Kalegras Tristramsson, and King Mórodd went out to Jerusalem and entered a hermit’s cell and joyfully waited for the time when it would please the Almighty God to call him to Himself from the bondage of this world. (p. 291)

The saga continues by informing us that Tristram´s son married Lilja, the daughter of the Saxon emperor, and that the couple had three children, two sons and a daughter. The sons were promising men ‘and there is a great saga about them’ (p. 291). This saga, if it ever existed, has not been transmitted. This ending, which is totally at odds with the traditional Tristan legend, expresses the Icelanders’ interest in genealogy and the penchant of the indigenous sagas to conclude their narratives by looking into the future and remarking on the descendants of a saga’s protagonists. Furthermore, as the traditional English designation for the classical Sagas of Icelanders denotes, that is, Family Sagas, these works deal with families, and families include progeny through many generations. The author of the Icelandic Tristrams saga could not conceive of Tristram and the second Ísodd living together for three years without having children, and once there are children, the author also had to account for their fate. In all, the saga takes us through five generations of a family. The conclusion of the saga of Tristram and Ísodd suggests the author’s attempt to tell the legend in accordance with indigenous models of story-telling and the Icelandic interest in genealogy. But there is also every indication that the specific character of the Icelandic Tristrams saga and its substantial divergence from the continental legend is the result of acculturation to an Icelandic sexual and homosocial sensibility at odds with that in the foreign import, romance.20 Whereas ‘romances typically adhere to a gender scheme in which men, as autonomous agents and knights, are sharply distinguished from women, who are passive subjects’,21 this is not the case in the Saga af Tristram ok Ísodd, where the distinction is blurred. Thomas’s Tristan legend, as it has been transmitted by Gottfried von Strassburg and in the Norwegian translation, has a distinct structure in which the love story of Tristan and Isolt is prefaced and anticipated by that of Tristan’s parents. This same structure also obtains in the Icelandic Saga af Tristram ok Ísodd, but its realization is quite different from that in Thomas’s courtly version as known through the Norwegian translation. In Tristrams saga ok Ísöndar Kanelangres of Brittany visits the English court of King Markis, where he meets and falls in love with the king’s sister Ísönd. The narrator reports: ‘En fyrir því hann reyndiz umfram aðra at öllum atgervum, þeim sem ágætan mann megu sæma, þá mundi hann gert hafa samkomu þeira með fjölmenniligum fagnaði ok virðiligri vild, ef hann vildi þessa máls við kónginn leita’ (pp. 40–42) [‘Because Kanelangres had demonstrated that he was more accomplished than others in those endeavors befitting a nobleman, the king would have celebrated their wedding 20

21

In what follows, I am indebted to Karen Lurkhur’s PhD dissertation, ‘Bodily Trauma and Gendered Identity: Reading Chrétien de Troyes’ Le Chevalier de la Charette through the Old Icelandic Saga af Tristram ok Ísodd.’ (University of Illinois, 2008). Lurkhur, ‘Bodily Trauma’, p. 5.

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with general rejoicing and approval if Kanelangres had wanted to broach this matter with him’ (pp. 41–43)]. Oddly enough, Kanelangres does not pursue this quest, and indeed the narrator transmits his reasoning for not doing so. He believes that if King Markis became aware of his desire for Blensinbil and the fact that he had gone about it so secretively, he would never obtain her (p. 41). Tragically, Kanelangres misjudges the king, just as Blensinbil misjudges her brother. She does not reveal her distress when Kanelangres is wounded in a tournament ‘because of her great dread and fear of her brother, King Markis, and a host of other powerful men’ (p. 43). No explanation is given for either Kanelangres’s misreading of the situation or for what seems to be Blensinbil’s irrational fear of her brother’s reaction should their love become known. Matters come to a head when Kanelangres is seriously wounded in a great tournament. Blensinbil visits him on his sick bed and she conceives Tristram. To avoid disgrace because of the pregnancy, once Kanelangres has recovered, he sails with Ísönd back to his own country where he marries her. What Thomas’s romance lacked, to judge by the Norwegian translation, is a quest for Tristan’s mother, that is, he does not publicly seek her hand in marriage. Tristan’s father more or less abducts her, albeit with her consent, and this of course is the reason why the plot can develop as it does. In the Icelandic saga, the relationship of brother and sister is quite different from that in the Norse translation. Moreover, although the Icelandic Tristan version, like the Norwegian translation, lacks the bridal quest for Tristan’s mother, the forestory does include a quest, that of the female for the male. The anonymous Icelandic author of Tristrams saga inverts the traditional gender roles of romance, commencing with the story of Tristram’s parents. In the saga the mother is called Blenziblý and her brother Moródd. When their father dies, Moródd convenes an assembly and is accepted as king by popular acclaim. His sister objects, however, since ‘hún þóttiz fyrir engan mun síðr til komin ríkisins en hann’ (p. 244) [‘she thought that she was not in any way less eligible for succession than he’ (p. 245)]. She gathers an army and together with a knight named Plegrus, who is her lover, attacks her brother. Seeing that his forces are not equal to his sister’s army and that there is no way he can be victorious, Moródd suggests that Plegrus and he engage in single combat to decide the issue. The combat is inconclusive, however, and through the intercession of friends of the siblings, they become reconciled and peace is restored. The Saga af Tristram ok Ísodd here introduces two motifs common in the Icelandic sagas, that of the woman who considers herself superior to the male – this usually occurs in the context of matrimonial considerations – and that of the woman who takes up arms against a male she considers inferior, a most popular motif in the indigenous Icelandic bridal-quest romances.22 The story of Tristram’s parents commences when King Moródd announces a tournament to which he summons all the lords of the land around the northern

22

A subgenre of Icelandic romance, maiden-king romance, tells of the quest for a woman who is a ruler, who even calls herself ‘king’, and who rejects wooers as not being equal to her in power or wealth. See Marianne E. Kalinke, Bridal-Quest Romance in Medieval Iceland, Islandica, 46 (Ithaca, NY, 1990), ch. 3 ‘The Misogamous Maiden Kings’, pp. 66–108.

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sea. Also in attendance is the king of Spain and one of his young knights named Kalegras. The latter rides three times against Blenziblý’s knight Plegrus and at the third tilt kills him. Blenziblý’s reaction is extraordinary: she has watched the combat from a high tower and when Plegrus is killed, she sends for Kalegras. She says that he is the man whose equal she has never seen and that as a result she has fallen deeply in love with him. She sends for Kalegras and has her messenger tell him that she desires his love. When Kalegras arrives, she kisses him and then they both got into one bed and slept the night. And although day came they did not bring their love or friendship to an end; it is true to say rather that each of them had such great love and strong passion for the other that they paid attention to nothing other than that each of them was embracing the other. And although men came to see them, not a word was got out of them. (p. 253)

The episode concludes with the narrator’s remark that people said they remained in their bower for three years and never left it in all that time (p. 253). The lovers’ isolated preoccupation with each other does not come to an end until Kalegras learns of the death of his king and of his father in a monumental battle against invading forces. He sets out for Spain, is victorious but also mortally wounded, and sends for Blenziblý who in the meantime has given birth to Tristram. After her arrival, Kalegras lives only three more days, and she in turn only a few more days after his death. The two are placed side by side in a sarcophagus. It should be noted that while the Icelandic saga transmits the tragic death of Tristram’s parents, it does not link the mother´s death to the birth of Tristram – he is born in England while Kalegras is warring in Spain – as happens in the Norse Tristrams saga ok Ísöndar. There we read that she went into labor after she hears of the death of Kanelangres, and the narrator attributes the cause of her own death to the distress and pain of childbirth and the intense love she bore her husband. In the story of Tristram´s parents we encounter not only a reversal of the typical quest for a marital partner but also an exaggeration of its traditional features. I once suggested that the author may have parodied the recreantise motif of Erec et Enide, and that some of the other exaggerated features of the Icelandic Tristrams saga are also parodic,23 but the suggestion has incurred criticism. In a recent article Ralph O’Connor argued that ‘any whole-hearted adaptation of a chivalric romance into the indigenous mode of Icelandic storytelling . . . must, by definition, end up appearing parodic’.24 Whether an Icelandic audience could have understood the lovers’ behavior as an extraordinarily exaggerated form of recreantise would have depended on familiarity with the story of Erec and Enide, but the couple’s three-year verligen25 is not only unique in Icelandic literature but also entirely foreign to it. Also unique is a woman’s aggressive

23 24 25

Kalinke, King Arthur, North-by-Northwest, pp. 201–3. Ralph O’Connor, ‘History or fiction? Truth-claims and defensive narrators in Icelandic romance-sagas’, Mediaeval Scandinavia, 15 (2005), 132, n. 125. In his German version of Chrétien’s Erec et Enide, Hartmann von Aue translated recreantise by verligen, which literally means something like ‘to lie around too long, too much’.

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quest for a husband, though there are instances of women attempting to seduce a man in Icelandic romance.26 The most extraordinary discrepancy between the Icelandic Tristram and the Norwegian translation affects the bridal quest. Unlike the Norse translation of Thomas’s Tristran, which lacks the bridal quest in the story of Tristan’s parents, the male becomes the object of desire in the Icelandic saga. This is the case not only for Tristram’s father but also later for Tristram himself. His mother Blenziblý quite clearly takes the initiative and the male acquiesces. She admits that her desire is aroused by Kalegras’s imposing appearance (though no portrait of him is provided by the narrator) and his comportment as a warrior (p. 249). Not until the mature Tristram enters the saga is there a portrait that reveals why the male might be an object of female desire. The narrator offers an extended portrait of Tristram Kalegrasson with attention to specific physical detail. We are told that Tristram was hár á vöxt, herðibreiðr, miðmjór, þykkr undir höndina, breiðr í bringunni, digrir handleggirnir ok miklir aflvöðvarnir upp at öxlinni en heldr mjóvir fram at hreifunum, ok þó beint í bjór, höndin fögr ok ekki alllítil, lærin digr ok hörð viðkomu, hátt til knésins, kálfinn furðuliga digr, en fótrinn forkunnliga fagr. Þat er sagt at … nú hafði hann hár mikit; þat var svá fagrt sem gull sæi, en svá sítt sem bezt sómdi. Hann var snareygr, ok brýnnar váru jafnt litar sem hárit, meðallagi langleitr; andlit hans var hvítt sem lilja, en roðinn í kinnunum sem rósa. (pp. 262–64) [tall of stature, broad-shouldered, slender in the waist, stout and broad across the chest, with thick arms and big muscles up to the shoulder, but rather slim down at the wrists, and yet his arms were well proportioned. His hands were beautiful and not too small, his thighs were big and hard to the touch, long to the knee, the calf wonderfully stout, but the foot exceedingly beautiful. It is said that … he now had a fine head of hair which was as fair as gold and just as long as was seemly. He was keen-eyed, and his eyebrows were the same colour as his hair, and his face was of medium length. His countenance was as white as a lily, but his cheeks were as red as the rose. (pp. 263–65)]

What is particularly striking is the lily/rose simile, which otherwise occurs in Icelandic romance only in reference to a woman’s face.27 Tristram’s portrayal, indeed the saga’s interest in Tristram’s corporeality, contrasts sharply with that of Ísodd, which follows and is separated from Tristram’s portrait by a mere 26

27

The most apposite example occurs in Rémundar saga keisarasonar, which, like the Icelandic Tristrams saga, was presumably composed in the fourteenth century. This indigenous romance is replete with Tristan motifs, including the embedded sword fragment, the voyage for healing and the statue of the beloved. The female protagonist falls immediately and passionately in love with the eponymous protagonist, but the seduction and quest motifs in this episode function rather differently than in the Saga af Tristram ok Ísodd. See Rémundar saga keisarasonar, in Riddarasögur, V, ed. Bjarni Vilhjálmsson (Reykjavík, 1951), p. 206. The episode in its totality is on pp. 205–20. For example, the eponymous heroine of Nitida saga is portrayed as ‘both wise and beautiful, light and rosy in her face as though the red rose had been commingled with the snow-white lily. Her eyes were bright like carbuncles, her skin as white as ivory, her hair like gold and it reached all the way to the ground around her.’ Nitida saga, ed. Agnete Loth, in Late Medieval Icelandic Romances, V, Editiones Arnamagnæanæ, B, 24 (Copenhagen, 1965), p. 3.

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four short sentences. The only specific detail of Ísodd’s appearance concerns her hair: Ísodd hin fagra … var fríðari hverjum kvennmanni; hún var svá fögr, at menn sá ekki lýti á henni, ok ef þat skyldi þora at segja, þá þótti mönnum geislar skína af augum hennar ok andliti. Hár hennar var svá mikit, at hún mátti hylja sik með, þá er hún leysti þat ór gullböndum, en hár hennar var því fegra en gull, er gull er fegra en járn. (p. 264) [Ísodd the Fair … was more beautiful than any other woman. She was so fair that people saw no blemish on her and, if one might dare say so, it seemed to people that rays of light shone from her eyes and face. Her hair was so long that she could cover herself with it when she loosened it from her golden hairbands, and her hair was as much more beautiful than gold as gold is more beautiful than iron. (p. 265)]

Thomas’s romance, if judged by the Norwegian translation, did not contain any extended portrait of Tristan.28 What is so striking about the discrepancy in the portraits of Tristram and Ísodd is that a similar discrepancy in the portrayals of men and women obtains in the Icelandic sagas, both the Íslendingasögur and the fornaldarsögur, that is, the mythical-heroic sagas. They tend not to offer descriptive details, but when they do, the divergence is striking. For example, in Laxdæla saga the only information given about Guðrún, the female protagonist, is that ‘she was the loveliest woman in Iceland at that time, and also the most intelligent’,29 whereas Kjartan, the man she loves but does not get as husband, is portrayed as Hann var allra manna fríðastr, þeira er fœzk hafa á Íslandi; hann var mikilleitr ok vel farinn í andliti, manna bezt eygðr ok ljóslitaðr; mikit hár hafði hann ok fagrt sem silki, ok fell með lokkum, mikill maðr ok sterkr … Kjartan var hverjum manni betr á sik kominn, svá at allir undruðusk, þeir er sá hann.30 [He was the most handsome man ever to have been born in Iceland. He had a striking face, with regular features, beautiful eyes and a fair complexion. His hair was long and fine as silk, falling in curls. He was tall and strong … Kjartan was better proportioned than any other man, and everyone who saw him marveled at him. (p. 109)]

The narrator goes on to mention Kjartan’s physical skills, his humility and popularity.

28

29 30

Gottfried von Strassburg, however, presents a Tristan not unlike the Icelandic counterpart, with a mouth as red as a rose, radiant color, clear eyes, brown locks, arms and hands that are shapely and dazzling white. See Wolfgang Spiewok, Das Tristan-Epos Gottfrieds von Strassburg mit der Fortsetzung des Ulrich von Türheim (Berlin, 1989), vss. 3334–44. Tristan’s portrayal is not juxtaposed to that of Isolt, however, as in the saga, but is rather subject to the gaze of his uncle Mark when he first arrives at his court. What may be the most titillating portrayal of a woman in medieval literature is that of Isolt in Gottfried’s romance. The effectiveness of that depiction resides not in the mention of Isolt’s physical features, however, but rather in the depiction of her clothing in relation to its fit on her body (vss. 10,900–10,956). Laxdæla saga, trans. Magnus Magnusson and Hermann Pálsson (London, 1969), p. 118. Laxdœla saga, ed. Einar Ól. Sveinsson, Íslenzk fornrit, V (Reykjavík, 1934), pp. 76–77.

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An even greater discrepancy between male and female portrayals obtains in Völsunga saga, between that of the hero Sigurðr and those of the two women he is involved with, the shield maiden Brynhildr and Guðrún, his wife. Sigurðr merits an extended portrayal: Hár hans var brúnt at lit ok fagrt at líta ok fór í stórlokka. Skeggit var þykkt ok skammt ok með sama lit. Hánefjaðr var hann ok hafði breitt andlit ok stórbeinótt. Augu hans váru svá snör, at fár einn þorði at líta undir hans brún. Herðar hans váru svá miklar sem tveir menn væri á at sjá. Hans líkami var skapaðr allr við sik á hæð ok digrleik ok þann veg, sem bezt má sama. Ok er þat mark um hans hæð, at þá er hann gyrði sik sverðinu Gram, en þat var sjau spanna hátt, ok er hann óð rúgakrinn fullvaxinn, þá tók niðr döggskórinn á sverðinu akrinn uppstandanda. Ok hans afl er meira en vöxtr.31 [Sigurd’s hair was brown and splendid to see. It fell in long locks. His beard, of the same color, was thick and short. His nose was high and he had a broad, chiseled face. His eyes flashed so piercingly that few dared to look beneath his brow. His shoulders were as broad as if one were looking at two men. His body was well proportioned in height and size and in all respects most becoming. It is a mark of his great height that when he girded himself with the sword Gram, which was seven spans long, and waded through a field of full-grown rye, the tip of the sword’s sheath grazed the top of the standing grain. And his strength exceeded his stature. (p. 72)]32

In contrast, the most we hear about Brynhildr’s appearance comes from the lips of Sigurðr who tells her that no fairer woman than she has ever been born (p. 75), while Guðrún is characterized as ‘the most famous of maidens’ and in company with her brothers Gunnar, Högni and Guttormr, is praised as surpassing the children of other kings both in looks and stature (p. 75). The story of the Völsungs quite clearly is the story of Sigurðr, while the two women in his life, although responsible for his tragic death, are of secondary importance. Similarly, when Gunnarr, one of the main characters in Njáls saga, enters the narrative he is given a lengthy portrait that focuses first on a variety of physical skills – among others, he could jump more than his height in full armor, and just as far backwards as forwards – and then moves on to his looks: ‘Hann var vænn at yfirliti ok ljóslitaðr, réttnefjaðr ok hafit upp í framanvert, bláeygr ok snareygr ok roði í kinnunum; hárit mikit, gult, ok fór vel’33 [‘He was a handsome man, with fair skin and a straight nose slightly tilted at the tip. He had keen blue eyes, red cheeks, and a fine head of flaxen hair’].34 In contrast, about the woman whom he eventually marries, who contributes to his death, and who already puts in an appearance as a child in the first chapter of the saga, we learn no more than that she was tall and beautiful (‘fríð sýnum ok mikil vexti’) and that she had hair ‘svá fagrt sem silki ok svá mikit, at þat tók ofan á belti’ (p. 6) [‘long silken hair that hung down to her waist’ (p. 39)]. When as a grown woman 31 32 33 34

Völsunga saga, in Fornaldar sögur Norðurlanda, ed. Guðni Jónsson (Reykjavík, 1954), p. 164. The Saga of the Volsungs, trans. Jesse L. Byock (Berkeley, CA, 1990), p. 72. Brennu-Njáls saga, ed. Einar Ól. Sveinsson, Íslenzk fornrit, XII (Reykjavík, 1954), p. 53. Njal’s saga, trans. Magnus Magnusson and Hermann Pálsson (Harmondsworth, 1960), p. 73.

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she meets Gunnarr, it is once again her hair that is mentioned: ‘hárit tók ofan á bringu henni ok var bæði mikit ok fagrt’ (p. 85) [‘Her beautiful thick hair flowed down over her bosom’ (p. 93)]. Her hair puts in a final appearance, when her husband is under attack by his enemies and his bowstring breaks – when he first appears in the saga the narrator reports that his arrows never missed their mark (p. 73). Gunnarr asks for two locks of Hallgerð´s hair so that a bowstring can be plaited from them, but she refuses in vengeance for having earlier been publicly humiliated by him. Ultimately, the reason the hair is repeatedly mentioned is that it plays a role in bringing about a hero’s downfall. The preceding examples of male portraiture, and lack of similar female portraiture, in the Icelandic sagas exemplify a major generic difference between saga and romance. Whereas the indigenous Icelandic romances that were inspired by the translations of foreign romances lovingly detail a woman’s appearance, for example, in Nitida saga (see fn. 27), this is not the case in the indigenous genres. There it is the male body that is of interest while the female body, if it is mentioned at all, is accorded a cliché, a reference to her beauty and to her hair. While the Saga af Tristram ok Ísodd preserves the structural and motival features of the continental Tristan legend, this is reconceived, however, in light of the conventions of portraiture in the Sagas of Icelanders. The contrast in the portrayal of Tristram and of Ísodd is emblematic of the inversion of romance conventions and the Tristan legend itself in the Icelandic saga. What is at issue as the story unfolds in Icelandic is not so much Tristram´s relationship to Ísodd but rather his relationship to his uncle. Karen Lurkhur has argued that the narrative focus is to such an extent on Tristram that Ísodd is effectively marginalized and that the saga favors the homosocial over the heterosocial bond, thereby bearing the cultural imprint of the Sagas of Icelanders.35 Furthermore, Lurkhur argues that Ísodd’s body is essentially erased from the text, while the only body that matters is Tristram’s.36 The importance of Tristram’s bond to his uncle Mórodd, which is to affect his subsequent relationship to Ísodd, is evident in his early behavior at the king’s court. The saga contains a lengthy episode depicting the tilting that takes place at Mórodd’s court – there is no corresponding episode in the Norse Tristrams saga ok Ísöndar. Every time Tristram rides against one of the king’s knights, he succeeds in unhorsing his opponent. The episode culminates when uncle and nephew ride at tilt. The narrator reports that all could see that Tristram could have thrown Mórodd off his horse, but did not do so, ‘for he thought it an honour for himself that whatever concerned the king should be considered the foremost’ (p. 263). This attitude is to shape his subsequent interaction with Ísodd. As we saw previously, the wooing of Tristram’s father by his mother is rather aggressive, even parodistic. In Tristram’s bridal quest of Ísodd for his uncle, the princess’s role echoes, albeit in more subtle fashion, that played by Tristram’s mother. Even as Tristram woos Ísodd for his uncle, Ísodd, abetted by her

35

36

Lurkhur, ‘Bodily Trauma’, pp. 7–8, 137. Ármann Jakobsson notes the ‘pervasive homosociality of mediaeval Iceland and most of the sagas’ (‘Masculinity and Politics in Njáls saga’, Viator, 38 [2007], 191–215). Lurkhur, ‘Bodily Trauma’, pp. 265–66.

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mother, woos Tristram for herself. When Ísodd realizes that Tristram has killed her brother (not her uncle as in the Norwegian translation) and she is prevented from killing him by her mother, the narrator informs us that Ísodd ‘admired Tristram’s beauty and accomplishments very much, and although he had killed her brother and done her great other harm, she wanted to marry Tristram more than any other man she had ever heard of’ (p. 271). Once Tristram has killed the dragon, the queen mother ‘offered Ísodd to Tristram in return for his great and daring deed in killing the reptile’ (p. 275), but he responds that he does not want this and that he knows the very man who is fitting for her ‘but this is too humble for her’ (p. 275). When the queen hears that it is his uncle, King Mórodd, she restates her position: ‘My daughter needs nothing better than you’ (p. 275). Upon his return to England, Tristram informs Mórodd that Ísodd’s mother had offered her daughter to him, but that he intended to woo the princess for his uncle. The narrator comments: ‘King Mórodd was pleased with this’ (p. 275). When Tristram subsequently returns as his uncle’s proxy wooer, Ísodd once more offers herself to him by saying that ‘it would not be unlikely that she would accept if he were to ask for her hand for himself’, but the narrator reports ‘that this was not forthcoming from him any more than before’ (p. 275). It is quite clear that Tristram has no interest in Ísodd whatsoever and that his only concern is to woo her for his uncle. When on their voyage Tristram and Ísodd consume a drink intended for Ísodd and Mórodd – the Icelandic saga, unlike the Norwegian translation of Thomas’s romance, does not indicate explicitly that this is a love potion – immediately each of them fell so much in love with the other that they scarcely paid any attention to their travels. Now their journey became slow because they lay for a long time in the same harbour. So it is said that they had been on the journey for three months before they reached England. (p. 277)

Tristram’s three-month dalliance with Ísodd hardly compares with his mother’s three-year repose in bed with Kalegras; nonetheless, it is a faint echo of the behavior of his parents. The couple’s arrival elicits a rather unexpected reaction from Tristram’s uncle. Like Steingerð’s husband in Kormáks saga, who offers his wife to his rival for having rescued her, King Mórodd offers Ísodd to Tristram, saying that this would be ‘a more auspicious match on account of their age, “and I freely grant you the woman and the kingdom” ‘ (p. 277). In rejecting the offer Tristram refers only to the kingdom: ‘No sire, … I do not want to be king while you are able to be’ (p. 277). Mórodd does not wonder at this, but Tristram’s reply can be interpreted as an implicit rejection of Ísodd as well, to judge by the narrator´s comment at the conclusion of the saga that ‘the reason why Tristram did not accept Ísodd the Fair from King Mórodd was because he wanted him to have the best match’, but the narrator at once adds: ‘and yet he was by no means able to withstand the fates’ (p. 289). The saga is not interested in the emotional state of the lovers but rather in Tristram’s emotional attachment to his uncle, and this is reciprocated. Even after

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the king has been given proof of the adulterous relationship, the saga relates that the king did not want to believe this, since ‘the king always loved his kinsman Tristram dearly’ (p. 281). Lurkhur argues that ‘the main thrust of the narrative tension is directed towards the relationship between Tristram and his uncle rather than to Tristram and the queen’.37 This explains Tristram’s repeated rejection of Ísodd on his bridal-quest mission and subsequently also Mórodd’s magnanimous offer to Tristram of the bride. But Mórodd’s offer of Ísodd to Tristram on the one hand and Tristram’s refusal on the other also reflect the importance Icelandic culture placed on the equality of marital partners. Mórodd’s offer rests on similarity of age, while Tristram’s refusal implicitly addresses the importance of the social station of the marital partners. In medieval Iceland the issue of the couple’s jafnræði, their being equally matched, was of prime importance, and the term comprised both social prestige and wealth.38 Tristram’s liaison with Ísodd comes to an end when Tristram places service to his uncle above his love for Ísodd. A certain heathen king attacks England and Tristram leads his uncle’s forces against him. The main part of Tristram’s army is slain and the situation seems hopeless. The narrator then reports that Tristram ‘promised to God Himself that in return for victory he would leave off his dalliance with Queen Ísodd’ (p. 283). Tristram engages the heathen king in combat, slays him and every one of his fleeing troops. For this he earned Mórodd’s thanks and great renown. Tristram’s battle with the heathen king is bracketed by the cave-of-lovers and the ambiguous-oath episodes. Despite King Mórodd’s repeated unwillingness to believe that Tristram and Ísodd were betraying him, he discovers them in bed one night and finally realizes that he was no longer able to deny ‘that things were not as they should be’ (p. 281). He has the couple dispatched to a cave. Once again, Ísodd takes the initiative, suggesting that they should enjoy themselves. The word used by Ísodd is yndi, the primary meaning of which is ‘enjoyment’ but which is also used euphemistically for sexual intercourse.39 Tristram demurs and says that they should stay separated on their respective sides, and that is how Mórodd finds them. The couple stay in the cave for a week without food and when at the end of this Mórodd finds them asleep, ‘each in their own place, it seemed to the king that it [the accusation of adultery] had been a lie’ (p. 281). Although there is no denying that the couple had previously engaged in adulterous conduct, this is not the case in the cave. By refusing to act on Ísodd’s suggestion, Tristram anticipates his immediately following promise to God to cease his adulterous affair in return for victory for Mórodd over the heathens. Oddly enough when the heathens comment on his prowess in battle, Tristram responds by saying that he does this ‘for the sake of the lady’ (p. 283), frúinnar sakir (p. 282), not my lady. The reader is left to puzzle over his word choice. It is doubtful that the author was aware of the implications of choosing the article rather than the possessive pronoun, but it is tempting to interpret this as 37 38 39

Lurkhur, ‘Bodily Trauma’, p. 190. See Jochens, Women in Old Norse Society, pp. 21, 24. See yndi in Sigfús Blöndal, Íslensk-Dönsk Orðabók (1920–24; Reykjavík, 1980), p. 398.

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Tristram’s public declaration that Ísodd, as Mórodd’s wife, is now for him the queen, the lady. Following this battle and Tristram’s actual departure from Mórodd’s court to fulfill his vow, the author nevertheless interjects the ambiguous-oath incident. It is related in one short paragraph; the beggar who pulls Ísodd out of the bog into which her horse had sunk is not identified as Tristram. Nonetheless the narrator reveals that Tristram and Ísodd had managed to meet before the ordeal was to take place, thereby allowing the reader to assume that they had hatched the plan to have Tristram appear as beggar. When Ísodd is declared innocent after her oath – she swore that ‘other than her husband, only the beggar who had pulled her across the bog had come near her’ (p. 283), Mórodd goes home while ‘Tristram began his journey from England out to Spain’ (p. 285). The Saga af Tristram ok Ísodd diverges from the canonical legend by incorporating modes of behavior consonant with medieval Icelandic culture as depicted in the Sagas of Icelanders. The revision of the legend in Iceland resulted from the application of differing cultural norms in respect to gender relations. This presumably explains the military aggression of Tristram’s mother Blenziblý against her brother Mórodd when he declares himself king, and it is in any case reminiscent of the behavior of the powerful queens in a group of Icelandic bridal-quest romances who call themselves king and humiliate and reject suitors they consider beneath them. Similarly, Blenziblý’s ‘male’ behavior toward the man she has chosen as her lover suggests the author’s interpretation of her character in light of the powerful women of the verisimilar Sagas of Icelanders who, admirably, behave like men when they engineer slayings, thefts, and in general incite men to revenge, although they themselves only rarely wield a weapon. While the saga preserves many of the features of the courtly Tristan legend, as we know it in the Norwegian translation, the saga nonetheless reconceives gender relations in conformity with the homosocial thrust of the Sagas of Icelanders. The story of the adulterous lovers is repeatedly short-circuited by Tristram’s unfailing allegiance to and preference for his uncle. Although the author chooses not to discard such important motifs and episodes as the love potion, the cave of lovers and the ambiguous oath, all indicative of an adulterous relationship, in the end these indispensable elements of the legend are rendered meaningless by the author’s insistence that Tristram did not act out of malice (‘fyrir illsku sakir’ [p. 288]) and that God Himself is ultimately responsible for what happened, for in His wisdom he had destined Tristram and Ísodd for each other (‘sjálfr guð hafði þeim skipat saman af sinni samvizku’ [p. 288]). When in the end Tristram is fatally wounded, sends for Ísodd to heal him and is treacherously told by his wife that she has not come, he is taken aback and says: ‘That I would not have expected … that King Mórodd would not let her go if my life depended on it. And I do not know … what is the reason for it’ (p. 289). Indeed, Mórodd was present when the messengers delivered the news of Tristram’s mortal wound and implicitly approved of Ísodd’s departure to heal him (p. 289). The Norwegian translation, Tristrams saga ok Ísöndar, despite the considerably reduced text preserved in the Icelandic manuscripts, is a more or less faithful rendering of Thomas’s romance, but this is not the case for the Icelandic saga.

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I still believe that a parodistic instinct is at work in the Icelandic version of the legend, but have also come to the conclusion that some of its rather curious elements derive from the saga’s acculturation to Icelandic norms. The crux of the Tristan legend, the adulterous triangle and the lovers’ ultimately unfulfilled longing for each other are foreign to medieval Icelandic culture as we know it from the Sagas of Icelanders, despite certain Tristanian reminiscences in the Sagas of Poets (skáldasögur).40 The changes of plot and characterization in the Icelandic Tristram vis-à-vis the courtly legend are generated by two opposing but not necessarily mutually exclusive concerns, on the one hand the strong male bonds evident throughout the Sagas of Icelanders, on the other the appropriation by women of what might otherwise be considered male conduct. The remarkable transformation of the Tristan legend in fourteenth-century Iceland must be understood in the context of the culture that received it.

40

Scholars have repeatedly suggested foreign influence, especially of the Tristan legend, on the Sagas of Poets. For a review and discussion of the European context of the Sagas of Poets, see Finlay, ‘Skald Sagas’, pp. 232–71.

7 Questing in the Middle Dutch Lancelot Compilation

DAVID F. JOHNSON

In a volume that deals largely with the Quest for the Holy Grail, my contribution may stand out by its failure to do so. The manuscript I wish to discuss here does indeed contain a version of the Queste, and I will have something to say about it. But it contains a great many other ‘quests’, which take many forms, and ultimately it is the quest to find meaning in the composition of the manuscript as a whole that forms this paper’s central concern. Perhaps the single most important witness to the Dutch Arthurian tradition is MS The Hague, Koninklijke Bibliotheek Hs. 129 A 10, also known as the Lancelot Compilation, which contains no fewer than ten Arthurian romances.1 It was compiled sometime in the early fourteenth century, probably around 1320, in Brabant. The Lancelot Compilation comprises translations of the core trilogy of texts that make up the Old French Vulgate cycle: the Roman van Lanceloet, the Queeste vanden Grale, and Arturs doet are readily recognizable as the Middle Dutch counterparts to the Lancelot–Queste–Mort. The manuscript originally consisted of four books contained in two codices, the first of which has been lost but presumably corresponded to the first third of the Lancelot proper. Into this core trilogy seven additional romances have been interpolated.2 There is a striking difference between this Dutch compilation and others familiar to students of the Arthurian legend: the Lancelot Compilation clearly * 1

2

I would like to thank my friend and collaborator, Geert H.M. Claassens, for reading and commenting on an earlier version of this paper. See the Appendix at the end of this chapter for a visual overview of the romances contained in this manuscript. For a full-length study of the Lancelot Compilation and its contents in English, see Bart Besamusca, The Book of Lancelot: The Middle Dutch Lancelot Compilation and the Medieval Tradition of Narrative Cycles (Cambridge, 2003). Facing page texts and translations of two further Middle Dutch romances and several of the ones contained in the Lancelot Compilation are the following: David F. Johnson and Geert H.M. Claassens, eds and trans., Dutch Romances I: Roman van Walewein. Arthurian Archives VI (Cambridge 2000); David F. Johnson and Geert H.M. Claassens, eds and trans., Dutch Romances II: Ferguut. Arthurian Archives VII. (Cambridge, 2000); and David F. Johnson and Geert H.M. Claassens, eds and trans., Dutch Romances III: Five Interpolated Romances from the Lancelot Compilation. Arthurian Archives XII (Cambridge, 2003). For brief, handy discussions of the manuscript and its contents, see Johnson and Claassens, Dutch Romances III, pp. 3–9, and Besamusca, The Book of Lancelot, pp. 8–17. The most comprehensive description of the manuscript itself is by Jan Willem Klein in Lanceloet: De Middelnederlandse vertaling van de Lancelot en prose overgeleverd in the Lancelotcompilatie, Pas I, ed. Bart Besamusca and Ada Postma (Hilversum, 1997), pp. 51–90.

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constitutes a cycle intended to stand as a unified whole. Whereas many have questioned this aspect of Malory’s work, it is harder to do so with the Lancelot Compilation. There are no unwieldy imbalances of proportion, like Malory’s Book of Sir Tristram; there are no explicits in the manuscript that would suggest that these romances were to be read as works independently of each other. In fact, in the Lancelot Compilation, the compilation’s architect – I follow common practice and refer to him as the ‘Compiler’, though he may have been one of the five scribes who produced it or its owner, whose name we know – has taken pains to link these romances to the larger core texts, announcing at the end of each romance what is to come in the next, with rather uniformly formulated rubrics to demarcate the shift from one text to another, and transitional passages crafted to effect as seamless a joint as possible.3 To give just one example of this, here is the Compiler’s connecting link between two of the interpolated romances, namely Lanceloet en het Hert met de Witte Voet and Torec: Now I shall leave off this story and tell you, as I read it, how Torec first came into the world, and how he afterwards came to court and became a knight of great renown.

I. CONCERNING THE KING AND OF THE DAMSEL OF THE CIRCLET The story tells us now that at this very time there was a king named Briant, who was king of the Red Island. One day he was out hunting in a forest that was very vast.]4

In a recent study of the love affair between Lancelot and Guinevere as it spans the texts in the Lancelot Compilation, Bart Besamusca sums up the question of unity as follows: The addition of a transitional passage is not the only method used by the compiler to present the separate romances in the Lancelot Compilation as one coherent unity. In other places, for example, he inserted complete episodes of his own invention to round off narrative threads. He furthermore connected the romances by means of a system of cross-references … As the compiler clearly intended the Lancelot Compilation to be interpreted as a coherent entity, there is no reason whatsoever to restrict thematic investigations to the separate romances of the compilation.5

The physical attributes of the manuscript and the way it has been compiled, then, point to an honest attempt at narrative unification. The Compiler has 3

4 5

The last page of the manuscript (fol. 238r) bears the inscription, Hier indet boec van Lancelote, dat heren Lodewijcs es van Velthem [Here ends the book of Lancelot, which belongs to Master Lodewijc van Velthem]. See Besamusca, Book of Lancelot, pp. 8–14, where he proffers the possibility that van Velthem not only owned the book, but was in fact himself the Compiler. See also Jan Willem Klein, ‘De status van de Lancelotcompilatie: handschrift, fragmenten en personen’, TNTL 114 (1998), 105–24, who posits that van Velthem may also have been scribe B, the hand responsible for writing most of the manuscript. Johnson and Claassens, Dutch Romances III, pp. 560–63. Text and translations have been reformatted here to match house style. Bart Besamusca, ‘Lancelot and Guinevere in the Middle Dutch Lancelot Compilation’, in Lancelot and Guinevere: A Casebook, ed. Lori J. Walters (New York, 1996), pp. 105–24, at 106–7.

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taken existing texts, abridged and adapted them and woven them together in a way that is hardly flawless but makes the distinct impression of presenting this Dutch compiler’s idea of the ‘whoole booke of King Arthur.’6 Even a cursory consideration of the Middle Dutch Grail text that appears in this manuscript may reveal something about the Compiler’s methods and intentions. I should preface what little I will say about the Queeste vanden Grale by pointing out that it has not received a great deal of critical attention. To date the two most notable treatments are by Johanna Prins s’Jacob (1980) and Geert Claassens (2000).7 This lack of attention may be attributed to the long-standing view that the text is a faithful, if not slavish, translation of the Old French, and to the impression that the Dutch version is an ‘anemic’ imitation that reveals the translator’s lack of understanding of the original’s theological content (Prins s’Jacob’s view).8 Claassens reads the text differently, concluding that the changes point to a reorientation of the story, rather than a misunderstanding of it. Most importantly, in my view, he reads the Queeste in the context of the compilation as a whole. The Dutch adaptation of the Queste as it appears in the Lancelot Compilation invites comparison with Malory’s Tale of the Sankgreal. Both are fairly drastically abbreviated; both tend to delete specifics pertaining to psychological and practical detail, and both virtually eliminate the allegorical dimension of the source. As in Malory’s Sankgreal, the theological content in the Dutch adaptation has been seriously diluted. One consequence of this is that the description of characters has become more blurred, but Claassens contends that this is not necessarily due to the translator’s ineptitude. These changes point in his view to a ‘carefully considered transformation of the quest story into a more traditional Arthurian romance’.9 The Queste is universally recognized as a romance critical of the kind of courtly chivalry propagated at Arthur’s court, one in which the dichotomy between earthly and heavenly chivalry is highlighted. Claassens argues that in the Dutch text this criticism is toned down, the characters subtly rounded out, the impending clash between Lancelot and Guenevere softened (thus postponing the fateful final rift between them) and the disavowal of courtly love present in the Old French source text reversed. This seems to fit well into the Compiler’s larger scheme, for in his master plan there is a great deal of action to come, and in his version of the ‘whoole booke of King Arthur’, the rapid progress toward collapse of Arthur’s realm that transpires in the traditional Vulgate progression from Queste to Mort Artu is delayed considerably. Claassens concludes that the changes he identifies were the work of the Compiler. If this be true, then we may surmise that the Compiler felt it was far too early in his conceived narrative to

6 7

8 9

For the Compiler’s methods and techniques, see, among others, Besamusca, The Book of Lancelot. J.C. Prins s’Jacob, ‘The Middle-Dutch version of La Queste del Saint Graal.’ De nieuwe taalgids, 72 (1980), 120–32, and Geert H.M. Claassens, ‘Redressing the Balance: On the Queeste vanden Grale’, in King Arthur in the Medieval Low Countries, ed. Geert H.M. Claassens and David F. Johnson (Leuven, 2000), pp. 135–50. Prins s’Jacob, ‘The Middle-Dutch Version of La Queste del Saint Graal’, pp. 131–32, as cited by Claassens, ‘Redressing the Balance’, p. 136, n. 4. Claassens, ‘Redressing the Balance’, p. 149.

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allow the dark clouds of impending doom and biting criticism of the Arthurian ideal to descend upon his readers. Such criticism would ultimately be levied, but it would be on the Compiler’s terms. And this criticism, I maintain, is rendered in much more subtle fashion than in the Vulgate Queste, and, as is the case with Malory, it is of an entirely different nature. Like Malory’s adaptations, the Compiler’s abbreviations and additions to the Queste have virtually erased the distinction between spiritual and secular chivalry. Unlike the Queste, the Middle Dutch Queeste does not cast aspersions upon secular chivalry by unfavorable comparison to the quest for celestial knighthood. Instead, the religious elements of the tale are here much less well defined, and the way is cleared for a continuation of secular questing and adventure. To return to the interpolated romances, the Compiler has situated two of these between the Lancelot propre (Roman van Lanceloet) and the translation of the Queste del Saint Graal (Queeste vanden Grale; see the Appendix, p. 108). The first is a much abridged version of a translation of Chrétien’s Perceval, one of the most striking features of which is that it consists almost exclusively of the adventures of Walewein, with most of what pertained to Perceval having been expunged.10 Next follows the Roman van Moriaen, a father-quest romance featuring a Moorish knight as protagonist, but in which Lanceloet and Walewein also play prominent roles. The story is tightly structured around successive imbedded quests, the first of which is instigated by Arthur, who wishes to have Perchevael brought back to court. Moriaen is searching for his father Acglovael, and joins Walewein and Lanceloet in their quest for Perchevael. The narrative threads of these three knights separate and converge, with both Walewein and Lanceloet taking on further tasks, both of which turn into ordeals that necessitate their rescue and provide opportunities for the new knight, Moriaen, to demonstrate his bravery and martial abilities.11 Again, the Appendix (p. 108) shows the five romances inserted before the final chapter of Arthur’s history, in the Middle Dutch, Arturs doet. The first of these is an abridgement of the Old French La Vengeance de Raguidel, itself a compilation of adventures concerning mainly Gauvain. To this romance have been added two new chapters, presumably created by the Compiler. One recounts Lancelot’s unusual behavior and intense reaction to Guinevere’s shame caused by the test of the cloak (Le Mantel mautaillé). Lancelot becomes incensed at the mere sight of a cloak and flies into a rage. The resulting fight with Yder ends well, but brings Lancelot shame, not glory. The second interpolation is an analogue to the quest for what women really want, familiar from the Middle English Wife of Bath’s Tale, The Wedding of Sir Gawain and Dame Ragnell, and The Marriage of Sir Gawain. In this version, Walewein meets a dwarf king, is transformed into a dwarf himself, and sets out to test his lady-love’s fidelity. The answer to the 10

11

The most recent edition of the Parchevael is that by Soetje Ida Oppenhuis de Jong, De Middelnederlandse Perceval-traditie: Inleiding en editie van de bewaarde fragmenten van een Middelnederlandse vertaling van de Perceval of Conte du Graal van Chrétien de Troyes, en de Perchevael in de Lancelotcompilatie (Hilversum, 2003). The most recent edition of the Moriaen is H. Paardekooper-van Buuren and M. Geysseling, eds, Moriaen (Zutphen, 1971). A somewhat problematic translation into prose is Jessie L. Weston, Morien (London, 1901).

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question of women’s desire here is not ‘sovereignty over their men’, but pure sexual satisfaction. Walewein’s quest becomes an ordeal, as he easily seduces his girlfriend while disguised as a dwarf, and the relationship ends badly.12 The Wrake is followed in the manuscript by the Riddere metter Mouwen (Knight with the Sleeve), a quest by the foundling Miraudijs for his parents and his own identity. Unlike the other interpolated romances, no significant role is set aside here for Walewein.13 If this was an error on the Compiler’s part, he corrects it emphatically in the next romance, Walewein ende Keye. As is so often the case in Arthurian literature, the action in this episode is set in motion by the sharp tongue of Keye, whose target this time is Walewein, whom he accuses of arrogance and challenges to a contest in which the winner will experience more adventures than the loser within the course of a year. It goes almost without saying that Walewein emerges victorious from the quest, his reputation as a shining exemplar of knightly excellence seriously enhanced.14 Walewein ende Keye is followed in the manuscript by Lanceloet en het hert met de witte voet (Lancelot and the Stag with the White Foot). This is probably an adaptation of the Old French lai of Tyolet, but here it is Lanceloet, not Tyolet, who together with Walewein embarks on a quest to win the foot of a mysterious stag. More on this one in a moment.15 The last of the interpolated texts is the Roman van Torec. Of all the Middle Dutch romances in the manuscript, this is the only one for which we know the author. The great Flemish poet Jacob van Maerlant tells us himself that he translated the Torec, though we have no way of knowing to what extent the version in the Lancelot Compilation corresponds to the translation he actually produced of the Torrez chevalier au cercle d’or.16 As this brief overview of the manuscript’s contents suggests, the entire

12

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Willem Gerritsen discusses these episodes in his study and edition of Die Wrake van Ragisel (Assen, 1963), pp. 250–59. For text and translation, see Johnson and Claassens, Dutch Romances III, pp. 50–195. See further Bart Besamusca, ‘In Quest of What’s on a Woman’s Mind. Gauvain as Dwarf in the Middle Dutch Wrake van Ragisel’, Neophilologus, 87 (2003), 589–96, and Geert Pallemans, ‘Undoing the Subversive: Parody and the Wrake van Ragisel’, in Claassens and Johnson, King Arthur in the Medieval Low Countries, pp. 151–62. The two episodes referred to above are found at lines 1475–1894 (Hoe Walewein wilde weten vrouwe gepens – ’How Walewein wanted to know the thoughts of women’) and 2976–3142 (Hoe Lanceloet vacht jegen Ydire – ’How Lanceloet fought against Ydier’, with the so-called ‘trial of the mantle’ having first been mentioned at 1337 ff). For a Dutch edition, see M.J.M. de Haan et al., eds, Roman van den riddere metter mouwen (Utrecht, 1983). For an edition with facing-page English translation, see Johnson and Claassens, Dutch Romances III, pp. 196–367. The first edition of Walewein ende Keye since Jonckbloet (W.J.A. Jonckbloet, ed., Roman van Lancelot, 2 vols [The Hague, 1846–49]) is Johnson and Claassens, Dutch Romances III, pp. 368–523. Marjolein Hogenbirk recently published the first full-length study of this romance, Avontuur en Anti-avontuur: een onderzoek naar Walewein ende Keye: Een Arturroman uit de Lancelotcompilatie (Amsterdam, 2004). For a recent Dutch edition, see Roel Zemel and Bart Besamusca, ‘Lanceloet en het hert met de witte voet’, in Jeesten van rouwen ende van feesten Een bloemlezing uit de Lancelotcompilatie, ed. Bart Besamusca (Hilversum, 1999), pp. 181–210. An edition with English translation appears in Johnson and Claassens, Dutch Romances III, pp. 552–61. For the attribution to Jacob van Maerlant, see, among others, Johnson and Claassens, Dutch Romances III, pp. 38–39, Claassens and Johnson, King Arthur in the Medieval Low Countries, p. 3, especially n. 7, and Frits Van Oostrom, Maerlants wereld (Amsterdam, 1996), pp. 81–147.

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Lancelot Compilation is replete with quests of various kinds, some very familiar to those who know the other national traditions, others apparently unique to the Middle Dutch compilation.17 Not unexpectedly, the nature of the quests in the Dutch Lancelot Compilation differs little from those found in French Arthurian romance, or German, or English. Norris Lacy’s useful typology of the categories of chivalric activity in French romance may readily be applied to the Dutch: The quest represents the most extended and significant category, with the Grail quest serving as the prototype. Quests also include tests of those who undertake them: tests of their dedication, of their prowess, of their moral and personal fitness to succeed. After quests and tests, there are tasks – errands on which a knight may be sent, sometimes for good reason, sometimes not – and finally, any of these categories may devolve into the fourth, simple ordeal.18

The Lancelot Compilation has two father quests (Moriaen and Ridder metter mouwen), two bridal quests (Torec and Wrake van Ragisel) and, of course, one quest for the Holy Grail (Queeste vanden Grale), all of which contain further multiple tests, tasks and ordeals. But what exactly do they add to the whole? Were they woven into the narrative simply because the Compiler knew of their existence and felt that the cycle was incomplete without them? He was, I would contend, a poet with an attitude. At the beginning of the Roman van Moriaen, the narrator must establish the parentage of the romance’s eponymous hero. According to the original Flemish romance that he was abridging, Moriaen’s father was Perchevael; as this did not serve his own narrative purposes, he shifted that honor to Perchevael’s brother Acglovael. But instead of simply quietly effecting this change, the Compiler felt it necessary to make his standpoint clear, aware as he must have been that he was tampering with authority and that some among his audience would notice the change and perhaps question it: I suspect that the one who composed the Roman van Lanceloet must have fallen asleep while composing, for he forgot and neglected to include the fair tale of Moriaen. It amazes me that there are those who strive to write poetry and compose rhymes who cannot even finish a story.19

Has the Compiler, then, inserted the other romances simply because, to his mind, the original poet had fallen asleep on the job and they serve to ‘finish the story’? As I see it, there are five possible, interrelated and not necessarily mutually exclusive motivations for the Compiler’s insertion of these added romances and episodes into the Lancelot Compilation:20

17 18 19 20

For an edition and translation, see Johnson and Claassens, Dutch Romances III, pp. 562– 727. An excellent and instructive illustration of this is provided by Thomas Kerth’s ‘Arthurian Tradition and the Middle Dutch Torec’, Arthuriana, 17 (2007), pp. 5–31. Norris J. Lacy, ‘From Medieval to Post-Modern: The Arthurian Quest in France’, South Atlantic Review, 65 (2000), 114–33, at p. 116. Moriaen, vss. 23–29. For text and translation of the Moriaen I cite from the forthcoming edition by Johnson and Claassens in the Arthurian Archives series from D.S. Brewer. But see now as well Katty De Bundel and Geert H.M. Claassens, ‘Alle daventuren van

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1 Simple expansion of a court entertainer’s repertoire. Significant portions of the manuscript have been prepared for oral delivery by the addition of words, phrases and other signals helpful to performance. How and under what conditions this delivery took place and whether the manuscript was used solely for that purpose is impossible to say, but it raises the very real possibility that the interpolated romances were added simply to expand a court entertainer’s repertoire. If this were so, it would of course have consequences for our perception of the Lancelot Compilation as a coherent cycle.21 2 Wolfgang Iser’s ‘inviting gap’ theory: Iser posits an ‘ “Auslegungsspielraum”, a playground for interpretation’, whereby ‘the author leaves “gaps” in the text which each individual reader is invited to fill out in his own way’.22 Our compiler must have known of these other romances, and saw such ‘inviting gaps’ between the core romances of the Vulgate where he could add new episodes. The Compiler knew that the adventures would cease at the end of the Queeste, and that Arthur could compensate for this only by announcing tournaments. He locates one of these gaps, then, between the return of the Grail knights at the end of the Queste and Arthur’s announcing of the tournament at Winchester at the outset of the Mort Artu. 3 ‘Historicization.’ The Compiler may have been mindful of Wace’s reference in his Roman de Brut to the long peace in Arthur’s reign during which ‘the wonders were demonstrated and the adventures found’ of which the episodic verses speak. Jeanette Koekman argues that he added the episodic romances to give the whole a more historical context, to create something more akin to the ‘whoole book of King Arthur’. In this view, then, the Compiler added these extra romances to transform the cycle into a more complete history.23

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Logers. Over de samenstelling van de Lancelotcompilatie’, in B. Besamusca, R. Sleiderink and V. Uyttersprot, eds, Maar er is meer. Avontuurlijk lezen in de epiek van de Lage Landen. (Leuven, 2005), pp. 303–18. De Bundel and Claassens read the five romances interpolated between the Queeste and Arturs doet holistically as a group, arriving at conclusions that are not entirely dissimilar from my final ones, below. Claassens also scrutinizes Walewein ende Keye with a similar aim of determining how it fits into the compilation as a whole, in ‘Laß Dich einen Fremden loben! Der mittelniederländischen Walewein ende Keye und die Europäische Artustradition’, in Stefan Zimmer, ed., König Artus lebt! Eine Ringvorlesung des Mittelalterzentrums der Universität Bonn (Heidelberg, 2005), pp. 181–219. Both of these articles came to my attention too late to incorporate their conclusions here. For more on the Lancelot Compilation as a performance text, see especially W.P. Gerritsen, ‘Corrections and Indications for Oral Delivery in the Middle Dutch Verse Translation of the Roman de Lancelot en prose’, Bibliographical Bulletin of the International Arthurian Society, 27 (1976), 167–69. Akin to this motivation for the inclusion of new episodes in cycles of this kind is what Emmanuèle Baumgartner terms ‘decentralisation’, or the desire to incorporate the adventures of other knights into a compilation. Besamusca uses this theory to account for the inclusion of both Ridder metter mouwen and Torec in the Lancelot Compilation. In Besamusca’s view, both of these texts demonstrate that ‘the compiler accepted texts that did not really fit his concept, but must have seemed too good to discard.’ See Besamusca, Book of Lancelot, p. 170. As I hope will become clear below, I believe that the Compiler included the Torec for reasons other than mere narrative enthusiasm. Cited from Frank Brandsma, ‘Opening up the Narrative: The Insertion of New Episodes in Arthurian Cycles’, Queeste, 2 (1995), 32. He derives it from Iser’s article ‘Die Apellstuktur der Texte’, in Carsten Schlingmann, ed., Arbeitstexte für den Unterricht: Methoden der Interpretation (Stuttgart, 1985), 146. See Jeanette Koekman, ‘A Guiding Thread Through the Textual Labyrinth of the Middle

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4 ‘Deferral of closure.’ As Norris Lacy observes, ‘Success in a quest produces a static situation; at least temporarily, adventures cease’.24 Again, in the Vulgate scheme of things, adventures are due to cease at the end of the Grail quest. But, to quote Norris Lacy once again, The chilling effect of success on the nature of Arthurian adventure is clearly one of the principal reasons writers of romance developed elaborate methods of deferral, often involving the insertion of multiple episodes into a sequence, which thus is able to avoid closure.25

The architect of this compilation was able to postpone this closure for some 16,000 lines after the end of the Queeste vanden Grale. 5 The valorization of Walewein. This is the one most frequently remarked upon in Lancelot Compilation criticism, and of the five, this is perhaps the only thematically motivated one. It is familiar in Arthurian romances produced in this area (Flanders/Brabant/Northern France) and moreover finds a parallel in Malory. I refer here to the desire on the part of the poet/compiler to influence the audience’s perception of a given Arthurian figure, in particular one whose character has been tarnished in some way. Malory very clearly did this when he wrote his Book of Sir Launcelot and Queen Guinevere, the transition from the Holy Grail to the story of the death of Arthur (including the healing of Sir Urré). Its effect is a kind of rehabilitation of Lancelot following his failure to achieve the Grail, and prepares the way for his prominent role in the last chapter of Arthurian history. More relevant here is the familiar trajectory of Gauvain’s character in the long course of medieval Arthurian romance. In a fairly reductive nutshell, Gauvain’s Old French career propels him on a steadily descending arc, from ‘First Knight’ to womanizing and murderous scoundrel. But the disintegration of Gauvain’s character was not a universal phenomenon. As others have shown, the ‘rehabilitation’ of Gauvain’s character was a literary practice in Northern France as well.26 Writers of Arthurian romance in the Low Countries participated in this trend, too, for to them Walewein, not Lancelot, was the ‘First Knight’. This is illustrated by an epithet frequently and exclusively applied to Walewein in these romances: Der aventuren vader, ‘the father of adventures’.27 All but one of the interpolated romances in the Lancelot Compilation has a significant if not always equally substantial role reserved for Walewein. Following the Roman van Lanceloet, the Moriaen and Perchevael function as counterpoints to

24 25 26

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Dutch Lancelot en prose’, in Arturus Rex. Vol. II: Acta conventus Lovaniensis, ed. W. Van Hoecke, G. Tournoy and W. Verbeke, 2 vols (Leuven, 1991), I, pp. 361–66, especially p. 365. Lacy, ‘From Medieval to Post-Modern’, p. 115. Lacy, ‘From Medieval to Post-Modern’, pp. 115–16. For more on this, see Lori Walters, ‘The Formation of a Gauvain Cycle in Chantilly MS 472’, Neophilologus, 78 (1994), 29–43, and Lori Walters, ‘Making Bread from Stone: The Roman van Walewein and the Transformation of Old French Romance’, in Originality and Tradition in the Middle Dutch Roman van Walewein, ed. Bart Besamusca and Erik Kooper (Cambridge, 1999), pp. 189–207. Again, this theme is a commonly cited one in the literature on the interpolated romances in the Lancelot Compilation. For an overview, including further references, see Besamusca, Book of Lancelot, pp. 166–69.

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the prominence of Lancelot at that juncture in the compilation. The Compiler achieves the same effect at the end of the Queeste by means of some very shrewd interventions. Immediately preceding the introduction of the first new romance that will serve to rehabilitate Walewein (Wrake van Ragisel), the Compiler has included material that usually appears at the outset of the Mort Artu, namely the so-called ‘Aftermath of the Grail Quest’. Significantly, this section recounts Arthur’s interrogation of Gauvain about his slaughtering of fellow Round Table knights, and in the Old French original it immediately precedes Arthur’s declaration that the adventures of Logres have been brought to a close, followed by his announcement of the tournament of Winchester.28 By separating the interrogation of Walewein from the observation concerning the end of adventures in the Lancelot Compilation, the Compiler effects a dramatic shift in contrast; in the Vulgate, Gauvain’s reputation is severely tarnished at this juncture, and the focus returns immediately in the Mort Artu to his narrative rival, Lancelot. But in the Lancelot Compilation, this blow to Walewein’s reputation is followed by nearly 16,000 lines of verse, lines recounting adventures that for the most part underscore Walewein’s sterling qualities. By the time the reader of the Lancelot Compilation arrives at Arthur’s statement concerning the end of all adventures (i.e., at the beginning of Arturs doet), Walewein’s fratricides in the Queeste have long been forgotten. In fact, in the last romance to precede the Death of Arthur in the Dutch cycle, Walewein is pretty much the only knight in Arthur’s court who possesses an ounce of integrity, as we will see in a moment. In what follows I wish to touch on just two of the interpolated texts in this manuscript, to see whether we can come any closer to an appreciation of the Compiler’s motivations for including them in his design. The first of these is an excellent example of Walewein’s rehabilitation in action: the lai-like Lanceloet en het hert met de witte voet.29 The parallels in contents and structure between this Middle Dutch romance and the Old French Lai of Tyolet have long been noted by critics.30 This lai has

28

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In the Vulgate, Arthur’s ‘interrogation’ of Gauvain occurs at the very beginning of La Mort le Rois Artus, in Sommer VI, p. 204, vss. 3–27. Arthur’s observation that all adventures have come to an end follows immediately at vss. 28–31 on the same page. In the Lancelot Compilation, however, the interrogation of Walewein appears at the end of the Queeste vanden Grale (Jonckbloet, II, pp. 75–76, vss. 11,085–11,134). Arthur’s observation that no more adventures are to be expected occurs many folios later in the Dutch manuscript, only after the intervening quests and adventures of the five interpolated romances have been recounted, and Arturs doet proper begins (Jonckbloet, II, p. 189); a curious prologue of almost 300 lines has been inserted just before Arturs doet begins. See Bart Besamusca and Orlanda S. H. Lie, ‘The Prologue to Arturs doet, the Middle Dutch Translation of La Mort le Roi Artu in the Lancelot Compilation’, in Medieval Dutch Literature in its European Context, ed. Erik Kooper (Cambridge, 1994), pp. 96–112, as well as Herman Vekeman and Henrik Schöder, ‘De vertaling van het eerste kapittel van Hugo van Saint-Victors De modo orandi in Arthurs Doet’, Ons Geestelijk Erf, 71 (1997), 108–44. For a summary of the romance, see Claassens and Johnson, King Arthur in the Medieval Low Countries, p. 232; full translation in Johnson and Claassens, Dutch Romances III, pp. 524–61. See especially Maartje Draak, ed., Lanceloet en het hert met de witte voet (Culemborg, 1953), Roel Zemel, ‘Hoe Walewein Lanceloet bescudde ende enen camp vor hem vacht. Over Lanceloet en het hert met de witte voet’, in De Ongevalliche Lanceloet. Studies over de Lancelotcompilatie, ed. Bart Besamusca and Frank Brandsma (Hilversum, 1992), pp. 77–97. See further the references listed in note 16, above.

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always been invoked in discussions of Witte Voet as an analogue, though earlier critics did not regard it as the source. What little has been written on the issue recently overturns this view: according to Roel Zemel, Witte voet was based on the second part of the Tyolet.31 In exploring the issues of design and adaptation with regard to Witte Voet and Tyolet, it is important to remember that we are hardly dealing in certainties. While we know that the Compiler abridged several of the romances for inclusion in his cycle, and that he was quite capable of doing so in a creative way, we possess no other concrete evidence of other versions of either Tyolet or Witte Voet. Again, current consensus is that Witte Voet was based on the second half of Tyolet. If this was so, then one of two likely scenarios must be entertained. Either the Compiler found a redaction of Witte Voet in much the same form as appears here, or he adapted a Dutch version of Tyolet. If he did the latter, it would have been he who discarded the first half of it, having no use for the episode concerning another homo silvaticus, and it would have been he who substituted Lanceloet for Tyolet. What, we ask, are the effects of the placement of this narrative at this point in the manuscript? Primarily, it sets up and underscores a number of contrasts. Walewein is valorized and compares favorably with Lanceloet in light of his ability to save the latter and restore justice. If the Lai of Tyolet acted as the model, then the expansion of Walewein’s role and importance in Witte Voet is telling. While in the Tyolet Gauvain does expose the false knight, it is Tyolet’s return and subsequent verbal attack upon that knight that resolve the issue. In Witte Voet, Walewein not only finds and saves the helpless Lanceloet, but he fights on the latter’s behalf and defeats the false knight. It is important to note that this is the second time Walewein has saved Lanceloet’s hide in this way in the manuscript. In the Roman van Moriaen, when Lanceloet sets out to kill a dragon (his reward for success: a damsel’s hand in marriage), he kills it and chops off the right foot of the serpent, but a lurking scoundrel takes advantage of his weakness and wounds him further. He rides off on Lanceloet’s horse. Walewein encounters, challenges and defeats him and takes him to Lanceloet. He is summarily executed, and the two companions ride off, without informing the poor princess or claiming the prize.32 One suspects that, by the time he got to Lanceloet en het hert met de witte voet, any truly attentive reader or listener would have started to have doubts about Lancelot’s judgment in choosing adventures. The Dutch have a saying, ‘Een ezel stoot zich niet tweemaal aan dezelfde steen’ [A donkey doesn’t bump into the same stone twice].33 Intentionally or otherwise, this second failure at virtually the identical quest makes an ass out of Lanceloet.

31 32

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See as well Geert Claassens, ‘The Narrator as a Character in Lanceloet en het hert met de witte voet’, in Claassens and Johnson, King Arthur in the Medieval Low Countries, pp. 173–85. The episode follows the rubric, HOE LANCELOET DAT DIER VERWAN ENDE HONE WALEWEIN VERLOESTE [How Lancelot defeated the beast and how Walewein saved him], at vss. 3971– 4151. For the proverb, which ultimately derives from the Latin Asinus ad lapidem non bis offendit eundem, see F.A. Stoett and C. Kruyskamp, eds, Nederlandse spreekwoorden en gezegden: verklaard en vergeleken met die in het Frans, Duits en Engels, 2 vols (Zutphen, 1953), I, p. 222.

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Moreover, the title the poem currently bears comes from Gaston Paris34 and has no textual authority, while the manuscript provides a better one. Many of the episodes in the manuscript’s romances are set off by rubrics, and one such appears about halfway through Witte Voet: ‘How Walewein came to Lanceloet’s aid and fought a battle on his behalf’ (fol. 189rc). A clearer indication that the story really is not about Lanceloet at all would be difficult to find. Walewein’s reputation, then, receives a boost in this brief tale. But opposed to this valorization of Walewein is the effect on Lanceloet’s image. Though in Witte Voet he kills the lions and captures the stag, he is helpless in the rest of the romance. Here Walewein leapfrogs over Lanceloet, and this is a departure from the French tradition. The adapter of the Tyolet has shifted elements around to bring Walewein to the fore and send Lanceloet to the background. Worse than this, for Lanceloet at least, are the further implications of his actions and intentions in the context of the larger cycle. The reader/audience has just finished three interpolated romances, two of which promote Walewein’s reputation. But now we have a story that goes beyond this, one that tarnishes Lanceloet’s and reminds the audience of his adulterous relationship with Guinevere, and in some ways foreshadows his role in the downfall of the Arthurian world. The text does not merely valorize Walewein: it stands as an indictment of Lanceloet. Over 11,000 lines of verse lie between Witte Voet and the last time Lanceloet’s sin was thrust upon the reader’s attention, in the Roman van Lanceloet. It is further symbolically underscored by Lanceloet’s defeat of the lions guarding the stag. Lanceloet’s pursuit of love (for Guinevere, symbolized by the stag) constitutes a threat to royal authority (Arthur, symbolized by the lions) and the ordo of Arthurian society. This is a theme treated rather subtly in the last interpolated romance (Roman van Torec), but of course developed more fully in the final chapter of this Arthurian cycle, Arturs doet. The compiler of the Lancelot Compilation may or may not have been the one who removed Tyolet from an existing Middle Dutch adaptation, inserted Lanceloet and expanded Walewein’s role, but if he wasn’t, he certainly recognized the potential of this narrative for what I take to be his two-fold agenda: the rehabilitation of Walewein and a teasing and subtle questioning of the received, Old French, Lancelot-centric version of the history of King Arthur. The five reasons for interpolation cited above may well suffice to account for the Compiler’s additions. The Compiler may indeed have wanted to flesh out his repertoire so as to be able to entertain his audience longer; he may have seen the inviting gaps and jumped at the chance to fill them, and he may have done so to increase the ‘historicity’ of his compilation; there is certainly no doubt that he was successful in deferring closure for a considerable time with his interpolations following the Queeste. And one of the most prominent results of his interventions is a rehabilitation of Walewein. Yet, there remain questions about the choices he made. The Riddere metter Mouwen has nothing to contribute to Walewein’s reputation, and the Torec gives him only a minor role. In fact, the entire Round Table is marginalized in this latter romance, so much so that one is

34

Lancelot et le cerf au pied blanc; see Histoire littéraire de la France (Paris, 1888), 30, pp. 113–18.

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left to wonder whether it was ever really conceived of as an Arthurian romance at all. And this brings me to a final contributing explanation for the Compiler’s addition of so many adventures in this manuscript, something I will call ‘Quest as Commentary’. I would maintain that the position of the Torec at the end of the many additional quests and adventures following the Queeste and preceding Arturs doet is no coincidence, but rather that it constitutes an implicit commentary on and critique of Arthurian ideals and pretensions. Thematic meaning is thereby created through juxtaposition. The Torec is too long to be summarized here, but in what follows I shall highlight some of the relevant narrative details.35 The Torec is essentially the story of the young knight’s quest to find a circlet of gold and win the hand of his beloved, Miraude. Among the many adventures that Torec experiences are three especially notable episodes worth commenting on here. The first involves his dealings with a damsel who has lost thirty castles to King Arthur on a legal technicality, for failing to appear in court (vss. 1925–88). Torec takes up her cause and rides to Arthur’s court at Tintagel, but the latter is unbending and stands by his verdict. The only knight to disagree with the unjust treatment of the damsel is Walewein, who makes his position clear to Torec: Then said Walewein, that noble knight, ‘I take no responsibility for this verdict, for I was not there when it was pronounced’. Torec took a good look at Walewein and then asked him who he was. ‘It is I, Walewein’, he replied. Then Torec said, ‘Noble lord, your virtue will never diminish. You are so good and powerful! I say as well that all those who pronounced this verdict are liars, for it was a base decree.’ Sagrimor jumped up at that and demanded the combat of the king. The king said, ‘That may not be, for you are not yet healed from your most recent combat.’ Then fully one hundred men stepped forward, all of whom wished to have that combat; but the king gave it to a man there who was both stalwart and brave. That was Ywain, son of king Uriens. He offered Torec his gauntlet. Torec accepted it immediately, and agreed that they would fight early the next morning as soon as they could appear on the field.36

A trial by combat ensues in which Torec defeats Ywain and wins back the damsel’s estates for her. Torec rejects a subsequent offer to join the Round Table. The second episode of import is Torec’s encounter with the ‘Ship of Adventure’, an enchanted craft that takes him to an island where he finds the ‘Chamber of Wisdom’ (vss. 2390–2435). Torec is the first living non-inhabitant of the isle ever to be admitted to this wonder, and he is allowed to spend three full days there, drinking in the wisdom and moral teaching expounded upon by the men and women present, who conduct their debates on the virtues and lack thereof in the dealings of the ruling classes. More on this in a moment. Having heard enough, Torec is magically transported back to where he had boarded the enchanted ship. Riding forth on his quest to find Miraude and the golden circlet, Torec finally locates his beloved, who in the meantime we learn is 35

36

For a summary of the romance in English, see Claassens and Johnson, King Arthur in the Medieval Low Countries, pp. 232–36. For a full translation, see Johnson and Claassens, Dutch Romances III, pp. 562–727. Johnson and Claassens, Dutch Romances III, vss. 1925–1988, pp. 644–47.

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just as much in love with him as he is with her. It is then revealed that Miraude is ready to marry Torec only if he can overcome all of the knights of the Round Table. Torec achieves this, as Walewein obligingly persuades his comrades to cut the girths of their saddles so that they are all unhorsed at the first shock. The third notable episode involves Arthur’s victory against Torec in combat (vss. 3681– 3706), about which more in a moment. At the ensuing wedding feast Miraude wears the golden circlet, his parents die and Torec ascends the throne. With this his narrative thread within the Lancelot Compilation comes to an end. To my mind the main problem with the single thematic explanation for the inclusion of these interpolated romances – that is, the valorization of Walewein – is the Roman van Torec. Any claim for an overarching thematic unity for the manuscript has got to account for this romance. And there are problems, not least of which are that its hero is otherwise unmentioned up to that point, does not belong to Arthur’s court, refuses to join until the very end and then disappears from the scene – that is, the Compiler has not written him into the final chapter, not even in a minor capacity. Walewein plays a relatively insignificant role, though the thread of his exemplary character runs through the romance and is played up in a significant way such that he is very favorably contrasted with the rest of the court. Despite the fact that Arthur’s court is marginalized for most of the romance, the Compiler did take pains to bring it into the sphere of the Arthurian world and as such it fits into the compilation. But it differs from the other romances in some potentially significant ways. To begin with it is a biographical romance; i.e., it recounts the history of the titular figure from before he was born to his rise as a knight and ruler in his own right. Torec grows progressively stronger, inspired first by his quest for revenge and then by his love for Miraude, all the while performing great deeds of prowess and justice. This is not just another ‘adventure’, another chapter in the careers of Arthur’s knights, as for example the stories of Walewein ende Keye and Lanceloet en het hert met de witte voet arguably are. To move toward a conclusion, allow me to return to two of the three passages I isolated above. I will take them in reverse order of their appearance in the narrative. As mentioned, in the final episode of the romance, Torec refuses to join the Round Table until he has been defeated by one of its knights. Arthur rides forth in disguise and accomplishes the task. Of significance here, however, is how Arthur defeats Torec. Arthur succeeds in unhorsing him only by the most unconventional and unchivalric means: he grabs Torec in a bear-hug and wrestles him to the ground. The poet offers an explanation for this startling development: There was no man so brave, nor so strong, either, nor who could ride so well, that if Artur came next to him, he could not take him in his arms – whether in earnest or in jest – and lay him across his horse in front of him and take him wherever he wished. Walewein and even Lanceloet, Percheval and the entire company of the most renowned knights had all of them been tested but not a one of them could escape Artur laying them across his horse. And it was for this reason that they never allowed the king to joust or take part in tournaments, for he would defeat them all and have the prize all to himself, and all of their feats of arms would seem as nothing, of this you may be sure, when

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compared to his. And this is why they asked the king to renounce these things and let them pursue renown and praise, and he would be lord over it all.37

There is something oddly disturbing about Arthur’s methods here, and this little-known proclivity of Arthur’s is presented as the Round Table’s dirty little secret: Arthur no longer participates in the adventures of his knights, not so much because he would outstrip them in victories, but rather because there is something embarrassing about the way he goes about it. This revelation casts an interestingly negative light on Arthur and his court.38 The second episode I would focus on here is Torec’s visit to the ‘Chamber of Wisdom’, an absolutely central episode in his development and that of the romance as a whole, a portion of which I reproduce here: Then one of the elders spoke, ‘I know of no better joy than to listen to fine words. He who is wise may utter them: Wise words bring profit. And yet there are those who benefit but little from them: that is caused by men’s dull wits. According to the capacity of a man’s wits, wisdom will take root in him. Now let us speak of the world’s estates’. Then one of them said, ‘It seems fitting to me that we should honor the high lords somewhat in speech. Therefore we shall speak first concerning them. It seems to me they all sin against virtue. They bring the world to ruin. By rights both great and small among the common folk should model themselves after them. Now they are evil and nothing else. They have all abandoned the straight and narrow path of honor. They should teach their inferiors, but they are all of them stone-blind, and do not in the least follow the righteous path. Like the blind leading the blind, the one follows the other wherever he goes’. One of the elders spoke, wishing to teach them, ‘It is a disgrace among the princes: if one of them turns to evil, an entire people comes to ruin. You may be sure of this: if the head is ailing, then all the limbs will suffer. And I know as well for the truth that the greater always teach the lesser, whether for ill or good. If the rulers behave cruelly their barons show less shame still, otherwise they would not get away with it’.39

I am wondering now whether this episode might not also provide the key to a partial resolution of the problem at hand.40 As Jeanette Koekman observes, Torec is an exemplary hero characterized by bravery, intelligence and moderation. Because it brings to its owner honor and good fortune, the golden circlet symbol-

37 38

39 40

Johnson and Claassens, Dutch Romances III, vss. 3681–3706, pp. 718–21. For a different interpretation of Arthur’s actions here, see Besamusca, Book of Lancelot, p. 132, where he includes Arthur’s wrestling prowess as described in these lines among the characteristics that make the king a ‘superior leader’. This view is developed even further by Van Oostrom, who argues that the characterization of Arthur as a king of tremendous strength was Van Maerlant’s addition (Meerlants Wereld, pp. 249–50). That may indeed be the case, but the question of whether the Compiler viewed this singularly unchivalric proclivity in as positive a light remains an open one. Johnson and Claassens, Dutch Romances III, vss. 2390–2428, pp. 664–67. Other critics have recognized the importance of this passage, among them Koekman (see note 41 below), K. Heeroma, Maerlants Torec als sleutelroman, Mededelingen der Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen, afd. Letterkunde, vol. 36 (Amsterdam, 1973), and W.P. Gerritsen, ‘Wat voor boeken zou Floris V gelezen hebben?’ in Floris V: Leven, wonen en werken in Holland aan het einde van de dertiende eeuw, ed. F.W.N.H. and E.H.P. Cordfunke (The Hague, 1979), pp. 241–61.

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izes the prosperity that ought to accompany kingship, and Torec’s acquisition of it fits his new status as king.41 Through his adventures and battles against a series of opponents, Torec is provided with the practical training he needs in order to rule. His education is completed, as it were, by his visit to the ‘Chamber of Wisdom’, which affords him the opportunity for theoretical schooling. But this schooling gives rise to some pretty severe criticism of the ruling aristocracy: they ‘all sin against virtue’ and ‘bring the world to ruin’ (2404–5); they are ‘evil and nothing else’ (2409), ‘entirely devoid of honor’ (2410), ‘stone-blind’ and they fail to follow the path of righteousness (2412–13). This has led Willem Gerritsen to posit that Jacob van Maerlant originally wrote the romance as a kind of political ‘mirror for princes’, aimed at Floris V.42 That may well have been the case for the poem’s original reception, but the Compiler chose to incorporate this romance into his narrative design, and this raises the interesting question of whether the criticism it contains was perhaps aimed at a different target. The poet’s final comment in this passage constitutes perhaps the most acerbic cut of all: Evil originates with the most powerful. And this is why the common folk do not avoid evil. Bravery has been banished entirely, for there are but few courts where men act in a way that we should now praise, for all virtue has declined.

Had not Arthur and all of his court, with the exception of Walewein, just acted in such a high-handed and unjust fashion against an innocent damsel? Had we not just been reminded of the adulterous relationship between Lanceloet and Genovere in the romance preceding the Torec? And, after all, does not the tale of the fall of Arthur’s kingdom, brought low by Lanceloet and Genovere’s love and the treachery of Mordret, follow immediately upon the Torec? I would suggest that some of the quests, tests, tasks and ordeals written into this manuscript serve as commentary on the larger, familiar trajectory of Arthurian ‘history’. The Compiler’s inclusion of the Torec at precisely this point in the Lancelot Compilation serves to present, I think, a contrasting vision of uncorrupted knighthood that exposes the weakness of Arthur’s court. It makes a statement, as well, about the kinds of quest a respectable knight should pursue, preferably ones ending in harmony and concord, unlike those of the Grail knights or Lanceloet’s often misguided and haphazard pursuits of adventure. Moreover, Torec’s love for Miraude is pure, non-adulterous, and, best of all, it ends in marriage. The Compiler’s insertion of this romance here in the manuscript constitutes his moralizing response to the inevitable and shameful decay of that world in Arturs doet. It is also an implicit statement that there was another model of knighthood, and that Arthur’s kingdom didn’t have to end the way it did. To paraphrase Norris Lacy, the Compiler realizes that ‘the Round Table is now rotting wood beneath a polished veneer’, and includes the tale of Torec as a

41 42

Jeanette Koekman, ‘Torec, een vorstelijk verhaal: Zinvolle verbanden in een complexe tekst’, De nieuwe taalgids, 81 (1988), 11–124, at p. 119. Gerritsen, ‘Wat voor boeken zou Floris V gelezen hebben?’ pp. 83–85.

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proleptic counterpoint to that inexorable decline.43 It looks ahead to the final act of the cycle by underscoring the corruptness of the aristocracy while at the same time making it clear that there was an alternative, one in which wisdom and true love play important roles. It is entirely appropriate, in fact, that the last interpolated romance in the cycle should feature a knight who is not a member of the Round Table, who resists joining it early on, despite Arthur’s almost desperate invitation, and who has to be literally wrestled to the ground and virtually dragged kicking and screaming to court by Arthur before he will become part of that fellowship. But Torec leaves the stage and returns to his own happy kingdom just before Arthur’s realm is torn asunder by the war caused by Lanceloet’s betrayal of his friend and king. Torec’s career, his adventures and deeds, mirror those found elsewhere in the Arthurian corpus so closely that one has little difficulty in accepting him as a worthy member of the Round Table. But the trajectory of that career, from birth to coronation, is altogether more wholesome than that of most of the knights who have survived the Grail quest – especially Lanceloet – and it seems particularly fitting that this good, wise and faithful knight should ride off into the sunset and leave Arthur’s world to fall apart. The Lancelot Compilation remains a true cycle that recounts the rise, flourishing and demise of the Arthurian world and all it stands for. The more I study the Compilation as a whole, the more convinced I become that the Compiler had something more in mind with his additions than mere proliferation of adventure. Many of his changes, in particular the inclusion and placement of the Torec, constitute in my view his subtle critique of the values and ideals of the Arthurian world as they relate to his own reality, or at the very least a comment reflecting his own critical reception of the Arthurian legend. The added quests we encounter in the interpolated texts all participate in the Arthurian romance tradition, and in that regard they are in nature no different from what we find in the other European national traditions. And yet, as I hope to have demonstrated here, a close reading of this expanded cycle as a whole reveals that its architect produced new thematic meaning through judicious and intentional juxtaposition.

43

Norris J. Lacy, ‘The Mort Artu and Cyclic Closure’, in The Lancelot-Grail Cycle: Text and Transformations, ed. William W. Kibler (Austin, TX, 1994), p. 86.

8 Keeping Company: Manuscript Contexts for Reading Arthurian Quest Narratives

CAROLINE D. ECKHARDT

… Nat yore Agon it happede me for to beholde Upon a bok, was write with letters olde, And therupon, a certeyn thing to lerne, The longe day ful faste I redde and yerne. (Chaucer, ‘Parliament’ 17–21)1

Like Chaucer’s narrator, we too look eagerly upon books written with old letters: one of the characteristics of current research in medieval studies is a renewed attention to the manuscript book as a material object whose physical structure, ink, parchment or paper, sequence of adjacent texts, annotations and other traits can constitute guides to the cultural roles that the book played and to questions of ownership, readership and interpretation.2 To mention just two examples, much has been learned about the circulation and transmission of Arthurian historiography, as in Lister Matheson’s study that inventoried the more than 240 manuscripts of the Prose Brut, catalogued most of them in detail, and sorted out the versions; and many individual manuscripts have been shown to preserve information from which the interests of medieval readers can be inferred, as in Elizabeth Bryan’s analysis of the red lettering, including faint traces newly recovered, that reveals a rubricator’s marking of ‘potentially sensational Arthurian material especially surrounding Guinevere’ in the Otho manuscript of Laǟamon’s Brut.3 But much remains to be done, and in this paper I should like to explore the use of manuscript evidence in interpreting Arthurian narratives of questing, especially in the English historiographical tradition. Along the way I will suggest an admittedly speculative explanation for a notable near-absence, the almost complete lack of accounts of the Grail quest in English prior to the

1 2 3

Geoffrey Chaucer, ‘The Parliament of Fowls’, in The Riverside Chaucer, 3rd edn., gen. ed. Larry D. Benson (Boston, 1987), p. 385. I wish to thank Annika Farber for her assistance in the preparation of this chapter. Lister M. Matheson, The Prose Brut: The Development of a Middle English Chronicle (Tempe, AZ, 1998); Elizabeth J. Bryan, Collaborative Meaning in Medieval Scribal Culture: The Otho Laƥamon (Ann Arbor, 1999), esp. ch. 5, ‘The Otho Rubricator’, quotation from p. 111.

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late fifteenth century. My focus will be on the company that these (mostly) nonGrail Arthurian quest narratives keep, in other words on their situatedness in relation to illustrations, annotations and other texts with which they share the space of their manuscript environments. ‘Quest’ is usually a nervous word, suffused with the particular type of anxiety or excitation that is associated with moving into strange territories or pursuing an uncertain goal. From ancient times to the online virtual game-world EverQuest,4 ‘quest’ has appeared in an immense range of manifestations. Medieval usages of the word and the concept of questing reflect the great span of connotations of the Latin terms quaestio (noun) and quaero (verb), which include seeking, desiring, asking, planning, or obtaining, and, in contexts that can include legal proceedings, investigating or interrogating, sometimes under torture. The noun quaestio could signify the matter being investigated or the rhetorical subject of debate – the question at hand – while related terms such as quaestor could refer to those who performed these actions, including the members of a court of law.5 In all of these meanings there are elements of indeterminacy, contingency and doubt: Will a question or petition be answered or a plan be fulfilled? Will an investigation lead to a true answer, or can the investigation, much less the answer, even be clearly articulated? Medieval English usages encompass those meanings and more.6 In legal contexts, as we might expect, ‘quest’ can mean a judicial inquiry or inquest; a body of investigators or inquisitors, or their decree; a request or application; and a testament or legacy, as in the modern term ‘bequest’, so that, for example, when one Adam Fitz Richard refers in the fifteenth-century Godstow Register to ‘the queste of Richard his fadir’, what he means is simply his father’s will.7 And of course Middle English ‘quest’ often means a search or pursuit of something, notably the searching of hounds for game, and also the baying of hounds as they give utterance in the hunt. By a curious extension the noun is used for the sound produced by ‘the varied voices of a choir’, presumably on the assumption that the singers sounded like baying hounds, which was evidently regarded as a very pleasant thing to hear.8 Similarly, ‘questen’ or ‘questien’ as a Middle English verb is what hounds do: they hunt and they bay. Thus Malory explains that the Questing Beast has that name because its belly makes an extraordinary sound, like the baying of forty hounds: ‘in hys body there was such a noyse as

4

5 6 7

8

On EverQuest. see Eric Hayot and Edward Wesp, ‘Reading Game/Text: EverQuest, Alienation and Digital Communities’, Postmodern Culture 14.2 (2004), available online at . Oxford Latin Dictionary, ed. P.G.W. Glare (Oxford, 1982); cf. R.E. Latham, Revised Medieval Latin Word-List (London, 1965). I focus on English usages, given this chapter’s emphasis on the vernacular Arthurian historiographical tradition in England. Middle English Dictionary (University of Michigan, 18 December 2001), , sv. ‘quest(e’, accessed 10 November 2007; cf. The English Register of Godstow Nunnery, II, ed. Andrew Clark, Early English Text Society, o.s. 130 (London, 1906), p. 389. Middle English Dictionary, sv. ‘quest(e’; see 6.c., ‘questis’ in the plural.

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hit had bene twenty couple of houndys questynge, and suche noyse that beste made wheresomever he wente.’9 I have referred to the range of meaning of the word ‘quest’ to emphasize the varied frames of reference within which medieval audiences might have contextualized their narratives about questing, in our usual sense of someone seeking something, literal or metaphorical – which is a textual situation that occurs with great frequency. Helen Cooper’s analysis of English medieval romances, where the quest ‘provides both the subject of a work and its shape’, could be extended to other genres as well, for while romance emphasizes the individual nature of questing, the quest also has a social dimension, as Cooper points out, particularly if the hero eventually becomes king or returns home with an achievement that promises good governance or otherwise benefits society.10 A shift in balance towards the social or public identity of the seeker can bring epic, chronicle, hagiography and other forms into the same purview of narratives of seeking and attempted achievement. Texts in many genres display the condition of those who are somehow impelled to act upon the recognition that their present condition is a mismatch between achievement and desire, or, as Chaucer put it: For bothe I hadde thing which that I nolde, And eek I ne hadde that thing that I wolde.11 [I both had the thing that I didn’t want, and also I did not have the thing that I did want.]

Chaucer’s narrator turns to books and dreams in search of the unarticulated ‘thing’ he would obtain, but in similar conditions of contingency or unease an Arthurian character is more likely to climb onto a horse, get into a ship, collect an army, or take some other form of physical action in quest of whatever is desired, from pragmatic objectives, such as the acquisition of territory or rescue from duress, to the satisfactions of interiority, such as the affirmation of identity or even relief from tedium. The obligations of the quest can be urgent even if unknown, as in the baffling predicament of Balin, who must take up the quest left unfulfilled by an unidentified knight who has been slain by an invisible antagonist.12 The prevalence of all this goal-focused journeying suggests a worldview of both instability and opportunity, in which somebody or something is constantly absent and desired, and individual or social energies must be focused on the effort to fill that absence or repair that loss. To whoever is engaged in the quest, it is not simply a matter of open-ended adventuring: Arthur must confront the traitor Mordred on the battlefield; Sir Gawain must 9

10 11 12

Sir Thomas Malory, The Works, ed. Eugène Vinaver, three consecutively paginated volumes, rev. P.J.C. Field (Oxford, 1990), p. 484. Subsequent references to Malory are to this edition, parenthetically by page. Helen Cooper, The English Romance in Time: Transforming Motifs from Geoffrey of Monmouth to the Death of Shakespeare (Oxford, 2004), pp. 46, 55–57. Chaucer, ‘Parliament’, vss. 90–91. As Balin and a knight he is accompanying ride towards Arthur’s pavilion, ‘there com one invisible and smote the knyght that wente with Balyn … “Alas!” seyde the knyght, “I am slayne … folow the queste that I was in …” “That shal I do”, seyde Balyn, “and that I make avow to God and knyghthode” ’: Malory, p. 80.

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find the Green Chapel or lose his honor; even the king’s seeking for preprandial stimulation seems nonnegotiable, at least to him. One kind of quest, however, as others have noted, is hard to find in England, at least in Middle English texts: the search for the Grail. Medieval Arthurian literature in English is a relative latecomer, belonging mostly to the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries,13 and therefore naturally draws upon the Latin, Celtic, French and Anglo-Norman traditions that had arisen in the meantime. However, the Grail quest is not among the components of the Arthurian legend that crossed the language-line into English either easily or often, for it is represented very sparsely in English prior to Malory’s Morte Darthur (completed 1469–70). There is fuller representation of an analogous quest set much earlier in textual time, the story of Joseph of Arimathea, who allegedly founded a church at Glastonbury in the early Christian era; as the legend of Joseph developed, some versions, though not all, included the Grail. Glastonbury, associated with Arthur since the twelfth century, had long been a site of cultural production in multiple forms, including not only texts but also royal visits, other events, and propaganda supporting the proposition that the Glastonbury church was the oldest in Britain, antedating the arrival of missionaries sent from Rome.14 Aside from accounts of Joseph, there are occasional gestures towards the Arthurian-era Grail quest, which ostensibly took place hundreds of years after Joseph’s time. In the poem Of Arthour and of Merlin (late thirteenth century or early fourteenth century), for example, Merlin tells the dying Uther that in the 13

14

For overviews of English Arthurian texts, see Arthurian Literature in the Middle Ages II: The Arthur of the English, ed. W.R.J. Barron (1999; Cardiff, 2001); on English Arthurian romances, see Helaine Newstead, ‘Arthurian Legends’, in A Manual of the Writings in Middle English 1050–1500, I, Romances, gen. ed. J. Burke Severs (New Haven, CT, 1967), pp. 38–79 and 224–56; on chronicles, see Edward Donald Kennedy, Chronicles and Other Historical Writing, A Manual of the Writings in Middle English 1050–1500, VIII, gen. ed. Albert E. Hartung (Hamden, CT, 1989), esp. ch. 2, ‘Brut Chronicles’, pp. 2611–46 and 2781–2845; for an overview of scholarship see Roger Dalrymple, ‘English Arthurian Literature’, in A History of Arthurian Scholarship, ed. Norris J. Lacy (Cambridge, 2006), pp. 140–57. The dating of individual works is often not firm, but Newstead lists only two Arthurian romances (Of Arthour and of Merlin, c. 1250–1300, and Sir Tristrem, late thirteenth century, p. 13) as dated prior to the fourteenth century; among chronicles, Kennedy attributes only Laǟamon’s Brut (‘between 1189 and the middle of the thirteenth century’, p. 2611) and Robert of Gloucester’s Metrical Chronicle (‘late thirteenth- or early fourteenth-century’, p. 2617) to the earlier period. The association of Arthur with Glastonbury was promulgated beginning in the twelfth century (what purported to be his body was exhumed there in 1191); the association of Joseph with the claim that the Glastonbury church was founded in AD 63 is documented in about 1250, but was not exploited until about a century later, when in 1345 a royal writ was given to search for Joseph’s body there. See Valerie M. Lagorio, ‘The Evolving Legend of St Joseph of Glastonbury’, in Glastonbury Abbey and the Arthurian Tradition, ed. James P. Carley (Cambridge, 2001), pp. 57–68. Toward the end of the fourteenth century, ‘the complete and definitive version of the English legend of Joseph’ was provided in Latin by John of Glastonbury’s Chronicle, ‘an ingenious blend of elements from the apocrypha, Celtic lore, early Grail history, and extant abbey legends’ in which, perhaps because of Church disapproval of the Grail legend as heterodox, the Grail was ‘transmuted into two cruets, or a double relic of the Precious Blood’ (Lagorio, ‘The Evolving Legend’, p. 66). Other detailed studies relating to Glastonbury are included in Carley’s useful volume. It should be noted that the Joseph legend does not always include the Grail. English-language versions of his story are the fragmentary alliterative Joseph of Arimathie, mid-fourteenth century, and Henry Lovelich’s History of the Holy Grail, c. 1450, along with three late versions surviving only in printed forms; see Newstead, ‘Arthurian Legends’, pp. 74–75.

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days of his son Arthur ‘þe meruails of þe sengreal’ will be accomplished (vs. 2750).15 However, the several Grail references in this poem apparently represent only a residue, rather than an emerging interest, for attention to the Grail has actually been reduced in comparison to the French source, the Vulgate Merlin.16 A slightly longer glance at the Grail quest serves to launch the narrative at the beginning of the Stanzaic Morte Arthur (c. 1350–1400): The knightes of the Table Round, The Sangrail when they had sought, Aunters they before them found Finished and to ende brought; Their enemies they bette and bound For gold on life they left them nought. Four yere they lived sound, When they had these workes wrought. Til on a time that it befell The king in bed lay by the queen. (vss. 9–18)17

That brief recapitulation, before attention turns to the bedroom conversation between Arthur and Guenevere that will lead to holding a tournament at Winchester, assumes that the Grail quest is familiar enough to serve as a marker of time and sequence within the overall Arthurian story. But it has been normalized, made nearly ordinary. What is reported is mostly the Round Table knights’ martial prowess: they subdue their opponents, beat them and tie them up, and then display an apparently admirable refusal to let these captives be ransomed, preferring to have them die instead. There seems to be no trace or evocation of an extraordinary search for the Grail as a unique and symbolically weighted object of desire. Similarly, in John Hardying’s verse chronicle (1460s),18 where the Grail quest is not simply referenced but actually recounted, and the Grail has its usual Christian significance, the narrative is nevertheless again adjusted to constitute less of a challenge to the Arthurian kingdom. Galahad, the Grail knight, has a conventional pedigree rather than being the product of a transgressive sexual union, for his father Lancelot is married to King Pelles’s daughter, so that their child, as Hardying takes care to point out, is born of ‘very clene spousage’; and although Galahad dies in the Holy Land, he has Perceval take his heart back to Arthur’s court for burial at Glastonbury, as if renewing his 15 16 17 18

Of Arthour and of Merlin, I, ed. O.D. Macrae-Gibson, Early English Text Society, o.s. 286, 279 (London, 1973, 1979), I.184. Elizabeth S. Sklar, ‘Arthour and Merlin: The Englishing of Arthur’, Michigan Academician: Papers of the Michigan Academy of Science, Arts, and Letters 8.1 (1975), 49–57, esp. 54–56. Le Morte Arthur, in King Arthur’s Death: The Middle English Stanzaic Morte Arthur and Alliterative Morte Arthure, ed. Larry D. Benson (New York, 1974), p. 3. The Chronicle of Iohn Hardyng … Together with the Continuation by Richard Grafton, ed. Henry Ellis (1812; New York, 1974), p. 131, ch. lxxvii. See Helen Cooper, ‘The Lancelot-Grail Cycle in England: Malory and his Predecessors’, in A Companion to the Lancelot-Grail Cycle, ed. Carol Dover (Cambridge, 2003), pp. 147–62; Cooper suggests that Hardyng included the brief account of the Grail quest because it ‘represented the summit of glory of the Arthurian age’ (p. 153). See the thorough study by Edward Donald Kennedy, ‘John Hardyng and the Holy Grail’, Arthurian Literature 8 (1989), 185–206, revised version in Glastonbury and the Arthurian Tradition, ed. James Carley (Cambridge, 2001), pp. 249–68.

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affiliation and ensuring that at least one part of his body will make a physical return. But Hardying’s too is a brief, synoptic retelling. No noteworthy medieval literary development of the Grail quest theme is known in English other than Malory’s. This near-absence is intriguing because of ample evidence that versions of the Grail story in French had long been known in England. Roger Middleton has identified nineteen surviving manuscripts of the French Lancelot-Grail cycle that were in England during the Middle Ages, with at least six of them likely to have been written there, while sources such as wills, inventories and other documents suggest that there were more.19 In 1305, for instance, the abbey of Bordesley was bequeathed forty books, including a volume on the Holy Grail; in 1357 a court document mentions that Isabella, Queen of Edward II, had a book called the Sang Réal, which may be the same as the book called Galaath (Galahad) associated with Richard II.20 Middleton, who has collected these and other examples, suggests that beyond the surviving and attested copies, ‘[i]t is safe to assume that there were many more manuscripts of the Lancelot-Grail [cycle] in England during the Middle Ages.’21 The documented presence in England of French Lancelot-Grail manuscripts, the cultural productions associated with Glastonbury,22 and the brief English versions or references such as those noted above, all suggest awareness of the Grail quest. Its minimal representation in English prior to Malory offers a puzzle that can never finally be answered, given the possibility that texts have been lost.23 However, perhaps one piece of this puzzle consists in the prevalence of other types of quests in the English Arthurian tradition, whose assumptions, as manuscript illustrations and reader commentary sometimes suggest, are not easily compatible with those of the Grail quest. The central factor in this speculative consideration is the enormous cultural penetration, in Britain, of the historiographical version of the Arthurian legend, in other words the Arthurian constructions of Geoffrey of Monmouth’s twelfth-

19

20 21 22

23

Roger Middleton, ‘Manuscripts of the Lancelot-Grail Cycle in England and Wales: Some Books and their Owners’, in A Companion to the Lancelot-Grail Cycle, ed. Carol Dover (Cambridge, 2003), pp. 219–35, here citing p. 223. Middleton, ‘Manuscripts of the Lancelot-Grail Cycle’, pp. 220–21. Middleton, ‘Manuscripts of the Lancelot-Grail Cycle’, p. 220. Although the Glastonbury textual material was primarily in Latin and it was not particularly focused on the Grail, nevertheless the conjunction of Glastonbury with Arthur, with Joseph, and with at least some attention to the Grail may well have given support to general awareness of the Grail story in other contexts too. The fire in Robert Cotton’s library on October 23, 1731 is a well-known example of the accidents of survival, or near-loss: the fire in this unparalleled collection destroyed many manuscripts (estimates vary) and damaged others, including the only known manuscript of Beowulf. The only two manuscripts of Laǟamon’s Brut are both from Cotton’s collection, and one of them was damaged in the fire; the only known copy of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, also a Cotton manuscript, escaped unharmed. On the fire and its aftermath see Andrew Prescott, ‘“Their Present Miserable State of Cremation”: The Restoration of the Cotton Library’, in Sir Robert Cotton as Collector: Essays on an Early Stuart Courtier and his Legacy, ed. C.J. Wright (London, 1997), pp. 391–454. In emphasizing the Brut’s greater popularity, below, I am not ignoring the likelihood of lost copies of other Arthurian works, yet some copies of the Prose Brut were presumably lost too; the relative predominance of the Brut is still likely to obtain.

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century Historia regum Britanniae and its later translations or adaptations, especially the Prose Brut chronicle with its multiple versions in Anglo-Norman, English and Latin.24 Originally composed c. 1300 in Anglo-Norman, perhaps in northern England, towards the latter part of the fourteenth century the Prose Brut was translated into English and into Latin; it also continued to be copied in Anglo-Norman, both in England and on the continent, and acquired continuations in all three languages.25 In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, copies of the Prose Brut in English alone were so numerous that ‘in terms of surviving witnesses for a Middle English text’, the Brut ‘is second only to the Wycliffite translation of the Bible’, as William Marx and Raluca Radulescu have put it.26 Tamar Drukker remarks that ‘[i]t is probable that anyone in England in the fifteenth century who owned more than a single volume, had a copy of the prose Brut.’27 In sharp contrast, works now regarded as the major achievements of medieval English Arthurian literature – Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, the Alliterative Morte Arthure, the Stanzaic Mort Arthur, Malory’s Morte Darthur – apparently had a much more limited manuscript circulation, for each has survived in only one copy, or, in the case of Laǟamon’s Brut, in two. The Arthur whom English-speaking audiences knew, until the beginning of print culture, was almost always the Arthur of the chronicles, a historicized Arthur whose reign was framed within a long sequence of other eras that reached back into the genealogy of the Trojan War and forward into then-contemporary events. In its manuscript environment, Arthurian narrative in the Brut tradition was always keeping company with accounts of non-Arthurian kings. The main Brut narrative begins with the first settlements on the island of Britain in prehistoric times and continues through Celtic, Roman, Saxon, Norman and later eras, presenting traditional figures such as Lear and Merlin and Arthur as well as recent historical personalities and events. The Brut as first composed starts with the arrival in Britain of Brutus (descendant of Aeneas of Troy), the originary figure whose name became a title for the national narrative as a whole. Exiled from Italy and in search of a new homeland, Brutus and his companions come to an island far in the Western Sea, finding it uninhabited except for a race of giants, whom the newcomers kill off as they occupy the land and build cities.

24

25

26

27

Editions are, for the Middle English text, The Brut, or the Chronicles of England, ed. Friedrich W.D. Brie, 2 vols, Early English Text Society, o.s. 131, 136 (1906 and 1908; Milwood, NY, 1987); for the Anglo-Norman text, The Oldest Anglo-Norman Prose Brut Chronicle, an Edition and Translation, ed. Julia Marvin (Woodbridge, 2006). Because the Latin Prose Brut and other versions of the English and Anglo-Norman Prose Bruts remain unedited, statements about this array of chronicle material must necessarily be tentative. On the many Prose Brut manuscripts and versions, see Marvin’s introduction to her edition; Matheson’s study and catalogue, cited in n. 3 above; Kennedy, Chronicles, cited in n. 13 above; and John Taylor, English Historical Literature in the Fourteenth Century (Oxford, 1987), pp. 110–32. William Marx and Raluca Radulescu, ‘Introduction’, in Readers and Writers of the Prose Brut, Trivium 36 (Lampeter, 2006), pp. xiii–xvi, quote from p. xiii; cf. Matheson, pp. 8–9, and the references and comparative data for other texts cited there. Some 180 manuscripts of the English Prose Brut survive today, as catalogued by Matheson. Tamar Drukker, ‘I Read Therefore I Write: Readers’ Marginalia in Some Brut Manuscripts’, in Readers and Writers of the Prose Brut, ed. William Marx and Raluca Radulescu, Trivium 36 (Lampeter, 2006), pp. 97–130, here quoting p. 97.

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However, some versions of the Brut begin earlier, with a prequel to explain the presence of the giants: they are the progeny of a proud princess named Albina and her many sisters, who were exiled from their Mediterranean homeland for disobeying their father and murdering their husbands (or plotting to do so). Anticipating Brutus’s itinerary and quest for land, the narrative explains that the sisters drifted across the sea to the empty island, where they mated with the devil and produced the lineage of giants. In both the Albina and the Brutus episodes, the foundational quest is a journey for territory, followed by the process of consolidating its control, and recent critics have noted the mutual mirroring in these two episodes.28 So did the illustrator of an Anglo-Norman Prose Brut manuscript (London, British Library, MS Royal 19 C. IX, fol. 8), who provided an extraordinary image that ‘reads’ Albina’s voyage in visible relation to that of Brutus (see Fig. 1).29 Where modern critics have tended to emphasize the contrastive or chiasmic structuring in which Brutus’s authoritative arrival restores patriarchy, reversing and countermanding the unruly regime of the transgressive sisters, the medieval illustrator instead represents a curiously decorous similarity between Albina’s expedition and Brutus’s, as if the important, shared characteristic were the repeated sequence of quest, arrival and settlement, not the preferred or differentiated status of either event. The image shows the sisters gesturing towards landfall from their ship at the lower right, the giants walking at the upper left, and Brutus and his companions arriving at the upper right: these sequential moments in time are captured together. Two components of the quest for homeland and settlement, territorial acquisition itself and the impulse towards civilization, seem to be intertwined here and to be distributed across both foundation-narratives, for Albina and her sisters look quite as civilized as Brutus and his men (the women’s garments seem, if anything, the more ‘courtly’ and elaborate), and even the giants could almost be taken for large country gentlemen strolling across a meadow or hillside, rather than the monstrous progeny of the devil. In other words, the Albina and Brutus parallelism is being interpreted more in terms of repetition than of undoing. As is evident from its absorption of this foundation-tale and many other additions, the Prose Brut chronicle was not alien to accretion. Nor does it

28

29

For recent studies of the Albina narrative see Lesley Johnson, ‘Return to Albion’, Arthurian Literature 13 (1995), 19–40; Julia Marvin, ‘Albine and Isabelle: Regicidal Queens and the Historical Imagination of the Anglo-Norman Prose Brut Chronicle’, Arthurian Literature 18 (2001), 143–91; Tamar Drukker, ‘Thirty-Three Murderous Sisters: a Pre-Trojan Foundation Myth in the Middle English Brut Chronicle’, Review of English Studies, n.s. 54 (2003), 449– 63; Lisa M. Ruch, ‘The British Foundation Legend of Albina and her Sisters’, dissertation, Pennsylvania State University, 2006; Christy Desmet, ‘Afterlives of the Prose Brut in Early Modern Chronicle and Literature’, in Readers and Writers of the Prose Brut, ed. William Marx and Raluca Radulescu, Trivium 36 (Lampeter, 2006), pp. 227–46. The manuscript in which this illustration appears, British Library Royal MS 19. C. IX, written in France in the mid-fifteenth century, represents the version of the Anglo-Norman Brut that served as the basis of the main translation into English ‘from which generations of continuations and versions sprang’ (Marvin, p. 51). For the manuscript description see George F. Warner and Julius P. Gilson, Catalogue of Western Manuscripts in the Old Royal and King’s Collections, II (London, 1921), p. 336. I thank Adam Miyashiro, who first called my attention to this illustration.

Figure 1. Illustration of the Albina/Brutus parallelism.

Figure 2. Image of a city (London?) and adjacent countryside, or of England.

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necessarily avoid episodes that might be considered unlikely or arcane. Nevertheless, this chronicle tradition, or ‘network of texts’ in William Marx’s term,30 does not include and could not have easily exploited the Grail quest. The Albina and Brutus illustration, as noted, suggests the importance placed upon structural replication in the construction of history, with one voyage of arrival after another, and other travelers yet to come, and the pattern to be both reversed and reiterated when islanders travel to the continent instead. However, the Grail quest, in its spiritual exceptionalism, resists replication. As Richard Trachsler has noted in studying the sense of time in the Lancelot-Grail cycle, the Brut’s presentation of time is necessarily open-ended, but the Grail quest implies movement towards closure: ‘[w]hereas the Brut suggested [that] time was a succession of dynasties following one another in an endless, unbroken line’, the Grail quest is ‘an eschatological construction with a precise goal to be reached’, and thus with ‘the passing of Arthur’s knights [in whose time the conquest of the Grail would be achieved], Britain has become an empty stage bereft of actors’.31 The Brut’s always-unfinished sequential history of Britain, and the end-game story of the Grail quest, involve distinctly different assumptions about the deployment of events in time. Similarly, the sense of place is different, for while the geography of the Grail quest moves into unfamiliar and distant locales, the Prose Brut and related chronicles display a recurrent pressure towards recognizable places, territorial concerns, and the details of national topography. This pressure towards localization is visually depicted in, for instance, a series of illustrations of cities that accompany a Latin genealogy in a fifteenth-century English Brut manuscript (Trinity College, Dublin MS 505).32 The illustration that stands as a frontispiece to the Prose Brut section of this manuscript (Fig. 2), now somewhat indistinct, is described by John Scattergood as an elaborate full-colour-washed drawing, with the sea or a river in the foreground, in which two sailing ships, with sailors, appear, trees and fields, a shepherd with his sheep, a watermill, a windmill on a hill in the distance,

30

31

32

William Marx, ‘Reception and Revision in the Middle English Prose Brut’, in Readers and Writers of the Prose Brut, ed. William Marx and Raluca Radulescu, Trivium 36 (Lampeter, 2006), pp. 53–69, here quoting p. 53. Richard Trachsler, ‘A Question of Time: Romance and History’, in A Companion to the LancelotGrail Cycle, ed. Carol Dover (Cambridge, 2003), pp. 23–32, here quoting pp. 26–30. Cf. Norris J. Lacy, referring to French romance: despite the penchant of romance for deferral, ‘when Galahad achieves the quest for the Holy Grail, adventures end entirely’ (‘From Medieval to Post-Modern: The Arthurian Quest in France’, South Atlantic Review 65.2 [Spring 2000], 114–33, here citing p. 115). The Grail quest relies upon exceptionalism, as there can be only one Grail. As Norris J. Lacy points out (‘From Medieval to Post-Modern’, p. 115), the film Monty Python and the Holy Grail parodies this uniqueness in a scene suggesting that a French lord, who to the Grail questers’ surprise evidently already has a grail, wouldn’t be much interested in searching for another. These images have been studied by John Scattergood, ‘ “The Eyes of Memory”: The Function of the Illustrations in Dublin, Trinity College Library MS 505’, in Readers and Writers of the Prose Brut, ed. William Marx and Raluca Radulescu, Trivium 36 (Lampeter, 2006), pp. 202–26. For the manuscript description see Marvin L. Colker, Trinity College Library Dublin: Descriptive Catalogue of the Mediaeval and Renaissance Latin Manuscripts, II (Aldershot, 1991), pp. 935–38.

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and a big walled city, full of domestic buildings, towers and two magnificent churches.

The drawing represents either London, or else, Scattergood suggests, ‘England in some sense’, since three roundels report information about ‘Anglia’, its dimensions, number of shires and bishoprics, and other characteristics.33 The Brut tradition’s attention to geography and place correlates with the fact that its main representations of questing also relate to territory, including Arthur’s agenda of consolidating and expanding his control both within Britain and overseas. A different type of evidence for interpretation consists not of illustrations, but of readers’ marks and annotations. Drukker, having examined marginalia in more than sixty Brut manuscripts, points out that many of these books ‘are heavily annotated by scribes and readers’, a characteristic that in itself ‘atttest[s] to their deep interest in the work’: the chronicle was not only copied and owned, but also studied and read.34 Often, as she shows, the annotations consist of ‘signposts’ such as headings or underlinings to help readers locate particular episodes, or dates or names added in the margins to mark points of special interest.35 Drukker reports that [a]n overview of many annotated manuscripts shows that the readers were sensitive to religious episodes … The brief references to King Solomon’s temple in Jerusalem, the birth of Jesus, St Peter’s life and the maryrdoms of St Katherine, St Ursula and St Alban receive readers’ attention while political or diplomatic events in these chapters are ignored.36

Some readers added further Christian detail, such as a comment calculating the age of the virgin Mary at her death – she was sixty-three – or they noted pagan events such as the relocation of Stonehenge from Ireland to Salisbury.37 Nevertheless, none of the annotations that Drukker has presented refers to the Grail. Evidently its absence was not regarded as a lack that needed to be filled, even when annotations accumulated over time and one comment sometimes suggested another. Elizabeth J. Bryan has studied in detail the marginalia of an early modern reader who annotated the Brut copy in Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Hatton 50 toward the end of the sixteenth or beginning of the seventeenth century. This reader (‘Reader 3’) supplied a brief synopsis of the story of Joseph of Arimathea, but is silent about the Grail: The 63 yeare after christes birth came into britanie Joseph of Aramathia & [ii or 11?] other christians who builded them a chaple in the Isle of Avaion & was ther buried which place sense is incresed & newly builded was named Glassenbury.38 33

34 35 36 37 38

Scattergood, ‘ ”The Eyes of Memory” ’, p. 212. The illustration is on p. 86; Colker (Trinity College Library, p. 937) takes it to represent London, a ‘rather detailed representation, showing even boats and their sailors on the Thames’. Drukker, ‘I Read’, p. 98. Drukker, ‘I Read’, p. 102. Drukker, ‘I Read’, p. 106. Drukker, ‘I Read’, p. 107. Cited in Elizabeth J. Bryan, ‘Dialoguing Hands in MS Hatton 50: Reformation Readers of the Middle English Prose Brut’, in Readers and Writers of the Prose Brut, ed. William Marx

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The intent is apparently to record that the reader endorses the claim of great antiquity for the British church through Joseph’s foundation at Glastonbury, an impulse consistent with the Brut’s own grounding in local topographies and its commitment to historical continuities. The Prose Brut, then, which with its multiple versions and wide distribution constituted the predominant medieval Arthurian narrative in English, set forth a paradigm in which the fundamental quest was the effort to obtain territory, to govern it, and to exercise power over others who might wish to control it themselves. In the Brut’s early episodes, two sets of Mediterranean exiles and then other newcomers arrive seeking a homeland to occupy; later invaders follow similar trajectories from the European continent out to the island; Arthur succeeds in reversing the trajectory as he seeks to conquer a huge continental empire, though his achievement is of brief duration. Many other transitions in power, some of them also involving overseas journeys, occur. Within this matrix the Arthurian questing is unique in its extent and, through the defeat of the Romans, in its directionality (the island strikes back), but not in kind, for many of the Brut’s other kings and warriors have similar desires. In terms of the Arthurian section’s immediate adjacencies, the previous reign, that of Uther, includes a quest for a woman and for territory, with battles against the Saxons that Arthur will continue; while the subsequent reign, that of Constantine, begins with the new king’s fulfillment of the final Arthurian contest by eliminating the sons of Mordred. More broadly within the chronicle’s context, Arthur’s error in entrusting Mordred with too much power when he embarks on his imperial venture overseas is anticipated by other such events, among them Lear’s transfer of power to his daughters and their husbands, and each king must then seek to re-acquire what he once had. As a national history, the Brut, including its Arthurian segment, is very much about the exercise of secular power, but the Grail quest typically privileges the opposite, the relinquishment of earthly power. If in the worldview of the continental romances, as Norris J. Lacy has pointed out, the commitment that Chrétien’s Perceval makes to the Grail quest constitutes something ‘tout el’ ‘completely different’, marking ‘the beginning of a repudiation of Arthurian chivalry’,39 then in the worldview of the vernacular Brut chronicles too, the Grail quest would be tout el, an uneasy companion at best; and that is perhaps why, where the Brut is predominant, the Grail quest has mostly gone missing. The English textual dissemination of the historiographical Arthur extends beyond the many copies of the Prose Brut, for several other chronicles, most of them composed in the fourteenth or fifteenth century, were written in the same overall tradition that derives from Geoffrey of Monmouth. Five of these, like the Prose Brut itself, are lengthy: the chronicles of Laǟamon, Robert of Gloucester, Robert Mannyng, and Castleford, along with that of Hardyng, which was mentioned

39

and Raluca Radulescu, Trivium 36 (Lampeter, 2006), pp. 131–87, here quoting p. 152. The brackets in the quote are Bryan’s, reflecting uncertainty about how to read the number. Lacy, ‘From Medieval to Post-Modern’, p. 118.

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above.40 The Brut and the other long chronicles keep company, of course, not only with their own illustrations, marginalia, or other annotations, but also, where the chronicle does not occupy the whole manuscript book, with other texts. These accompanying materials are often historically grounded themselves, such as genealogies, lists of bishops or kings or other institutional personae, further chronicles, or political prophecies; the Latin genealogical material that precedes the Prose Brut in Trinity College, Dublin MS 505, for example, has been noted above. The picture changes, however, when the English Arthurian narrative is short, and especially when it is a romance, for now the Arthurian items tend to keep company with separate texts of many other kinds, being preserved in manuscript compilations, anthologies or miscellanies, where they may constitute only a small part of the whole. Arthurian romances, for example, are scattered among many of the ninetynine manuscripts in which English romances occur, according to Gisela GuddatFigge’s comprehensive inventory.41 Murray Evans has studied the contents of fifteen manuscript miscellanies in which Middle English romances are well represented, with seventy-seven copies (some romances are represented in more than one manuscript); using this survey, he has proposed a taxonomy of thirty-seven other types of works that the romances keep company with, such as saint’s life, historical work, prayer, political work and proverb, with the intriguing category of ‘nonsense’ along the way.42 By far the largest representation consists of religious texts: if Evans’s categories of religious verse, religious prose, verse or prose on Mary, saint’s life, prayer, psalm, religious debate and gospel are combined, there are 231 such items in this set of miscellanies. Clearly, romances are not typically sequestered from other kinds of reading material; and most definitely, the Arthurian texts, romance or chronicle, are not sequestered. It is noteworthy that, with one possible exception, there is no English ‘Arthurian anthology’, which suggests that these narratives were understood as being connected to non-Arthurian works as much as, or perhaps more than, to one another. Each such codicological context is unique, and as space does not permit extensive discussion here, I will use the situatedness of a short verse chronicle preserved in the anthology known as the Auchinleck manuscript to suggest how the positioning of a text within a volume can affect its reading. The Auchinleck manuscript (Edinburgh, National Library of Scotland, Advocates 19.2.1), usually 40

41 42

Layamon: Brut, ed. G.L. Brook and R.F. Leslie, Early English Text Society, o.s. 250, 277 (London, 1963, 1978); The Metrical Chronicle of Robert of Gloucester, ed. W.A. Wright, 2 vols, Rolls Series 86 (London, 1887); The Chronicle [of] Robert Mannyng of Brunne, ed. Idelle Sullens, Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Studies 153 (Binghamton, NY, 1996); Castleford’s Chronicle or The Boke of Brut, ed. Caroline D. Eckhardt, Early English Text Society, o.s. 305, 306 (London, 1996); for Hardyng, see n. 18 above. Gisela Guddat-Figge, Catalogue of Manuscripts Containing Middle English Romances (Munich, 1976). Murray Evans, Rereading Medieval Romance: Manuscript Layout, Decoration, and the Rhetoric of Composite Structure (Montreal, 1995); see the list of manuscripts in Table 1, p. 17, the categories under ‘Kind of Item’ in Table 2, p. 20, and the charts for individual manuscripts on pp. [115–62]. Evans surveys the manuscript characteristics and accompanying contents of Middle English romances of several kinds, not only Arthurian works (and not, except incidentally, chronicles).

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dated to between 1327 and 1340, is among the best-studied of medieval English anthologies because of its extensive and important contents, many unique texts and collaborative production.43 Written by six scribes, the manuscript includes forty-four different items, all in English, eighteen of them romances. The accompanying works represent, in addition to romance, forms such as saint’s life, religious verse, religious debate, verses on Mary, prayer, tale, political work, list of barons, moral work, debate, psalm and chronicle, to use Evans’s taxonomy; or ‘hagiography, texts offering basic doctrinal instruction, a chronicle, humorous tales, and poems of satire and complaint’, to use the terminology of David Burnley and Allison Wiggins.44 Among the forty-four items are three Arthurian texts: the romances Of Arthour and of Merlin (item 26) and Sir Tristrem (item 37) and an abbreviated Brut known as the Short Metrical Chronicle (item 40). Four other versions of the Short Metrical Chronicle are known,45 but the Auchinleck copy is the fullest. Like many chronicles in the Brut tradition, it begins with Albina and Brutus and then proceeds through various wars and reigns, such as those of Hengist, Lear, Vortigern and Arthur in ancient times, followed by the Saxon kings, the Norman Conquest and the more recent rulers; it concludes at the start of the reign of Edward III. Its scope is conventional, but this is a strange little chronicle in several respects. Among them is the unusual interest it shows in Hengist, who is king as well as invader here; his career in seeking power and territory, recounted at greater length (vss. 655–876) than Arthur’s (vss. 1044– 1116), includes a number of oddities, such as a project to build a bridge across the English Channel. The chronicle’s Arthurian section is also aberrant, being dominated by an account of the war that arises between Arthur and Lancelot over the queen; Lancelot builds living quarters in caves underneath Nottingham Castle to keep her hidden away from Arthur for a period of three years and ten months.46 This curious passage – which substitutes for the usual chronicle theme of Arthur’s overseas conquest that is cut short by news of Guenevere’s adultery with Mordred – has led Helen Cooper to identify parallels to contemporary events concerning Queen Isabella and her lover Roger Mortimer.47 Arthur’s role

43

44 45

46

47

The Auchinleck manuscript is available in a digital edition, with full images, transcription and bibliography: The Auchinleck Manuscript, ed. David Burnley and Allison Wiggins, National Library of Scotland, Version 1.2, 27 February 2008, accessed 9 July 2008 . Evans, Table A2 [pp. 123–26]; David Burnley and Allison Wiggins, ‘Importance’, . The versions are compared in The Abridged English Metrical Brut, ed. Una O’Farrell-Tate (Heidelberg, 2002), pp. 21–30. Modern editorial titles for this chronicle have varied. In the Auchinleck copy, the scribe’s explicit names it Liber Regum anglie, i.e., Book of the Kings of England; see fol. 317rb in the Burnley and Wiggins edition cited above. An Anonymous Short English Metrical Chronicle, ed. Ewald Zettl, Early English Text Society, o.s. 196 (1935; New York, 1971), an edition that includes readings from the Auchinleck and other manuscripts; see vs. 1071–98, pp. 70–71. For an edition of the version in London, British Library, MS Royal 12 C. XII, see O’Farrell-Tate; this version presents the conventional chronicle-episode in which Arthur returns home because Mordred has betrayed him (there is no mention of Lancelot). Helen Cooper, ‘Lancelot, Roger Mortimer and the Date of the Auchinleck Manuscript’, in Studies in Late Medieval and Early Renaissance Texts in Honour of John Scattergood, ed. Anne Marie D’Arcy and Alan J. Fletcher (Dublin, 2005), pp. 91–99; esp. pp. 94–99; cf. Thorlac Turville-Petre, England the Nation: Language, Literature, and National Identity, 1290–1340

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at this point is less active than that of Lancelot, who has had the underground dwellings made in order to hide Guenever ‘ǟif þe king wald þider come’.48 But evidently Arthur does not come, for there is no mention of his searching for his absent queen, and Lancelot later seems to restore her on his own. Thus a potential narrative of the king’s questing for his wife is hinted at, but remains unrealized. This version of the tale, having incorporated the romances’ ingredient of the love affair between Lancelot and Guenever, immediately juxtaposes to it a halftold satirical scene. Right after Lancelot returns the queen to Arthur at Glastonbury, a great feast is held there – to mark her return? – at which Cradoc49 arrives with the mantle that tests fidelity. Indeed, says the narrator, the mantle can still be seen there: ‘Who so wil to Glastingesbiri gon ariǟt / þat mantel he mai se wel ydiǟt’ (vss. 1111–12). However, it is not said who tried on the mantle, and who passed the test and who failed. Here too, an opportunity for Arthur to act, or even to preside over the actions of others, is foregone. The next lines somewhat abruptly report that Arthur, having reigned for twenty-two years, died at Glastonbury and was buried there (vss. 1113–36). Arthur is not wholly diminished in this chronicle, for until the civil war with Lancelot he is successful in his main quest, which is the achievement of territorial unity and good governance within Britain. He expels the Saxons, wins every battle (‘In ich bateyle he had þe prise’),50 exceeds all others at bearing weapons and leading armies and redistributes wealth among the people: a praiseworthy and conventional warrior-king. Nevertheless, with the episode of Nottingham Castle, the Arthurian narrative has shifted its balance. It has become, within this miniature Brut, less extraordinary and more domestic, in relinquishing Arthur’s quest for an overseas empire, omitting the Mordred-theme with its quest for vengeance and (usual) dramatic familial killing, reiterating the connections to local geography and also (incidentally?) establishing a momentary link between Arthur’s era and that of his energetic predecessor Hengist, who is said to have built caves too, in his case under Glastonbury.51 Thorlac Turville-Petre has argued that the Short Metrical Chronicle has been

48 49

50 51

(Oxford, 1996), pp. 111–12. The addition of this Lancelot-episode is especially interesting given the minimal representation of Lancelot in English. Cf. Cooper, who notes the relative absence of Lancelot in the English tradition and has similarly remarked upon the ‘marked separation of the Arthurian legends into the different languages of medieval England’, with English narratives modeling ‘the biography of Arthur on the quasi-historical tradition’, in which Lancelot did not exist (‘Lancelot’, p. 97); see also Elizabeth Archibald, ‘Lancelot as Lover in the English Tradition Before Malory’, in Arthurian Studies in Honour of P.J.C. Field, ed. Bonnie Wheeler (Cambridge, 2004), pp. 199–216, esp. pp. 203–4. Short Metrical Chronicle, vs. 1086. The manuscript reads ‘cradoc’ (see the facsimile edition, n. 43 above), but this may be a scribal error, as other versions of the mantle-tale, a common version of the medieval chastity test, give the name as Caradoc. Short Metrical Chronicle, vs. 1070. There is even a slight verbal similarity in the two passages on caves. The chronicle reports of Lancelot at Nottingham Castle that ‘Caues mani he made þervnder / Riǟt in þe hard ston. / Chambers he made mani on / þat þe quen miǟt in wone’ (vss. 1082–85); earlier, it has reported of Hengist that ‘Caues he made mani on / At Glastingebirie vnder þe ston, / Woninge stede gode & sounde / Wel depe in þe hard grounde’ (vss. 869–72). The underground dwellings at Glastonbury, whose purpose is unexplained, are not said to be built

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modified to function within the Auchinleck manuscript as a structural guide or ‘backbone to which the anthology’s “historical” texts are attached’ and that within the volume as a whole, the chronicle ‘determines how the romances are to be understood, not just as entertainments but as sources of historical knowledge’.52 Two questions arise here. One pertains to the function of the mantle-test, as it does not seem to contribute to the impression of historicity. Instead it could function to underline the contingent nature of marital fidelity and to open up a potential link between this moment in the chronicle and the account of another public testing-device, in this case a hot iron, that is used to demonstrate Iseult’s fidelity in Sir Tristrem (vss. 2225–92). A second question concerns the chronicle’s placement: if it ‘determines how the romances are to be understood’, its placement near the end of the volume suggests, equally, the opposite: that the romances will in part affect, if not determine, how the chronicle will be understood. There is, of course, no reason to assume that readers of the manuscript book necessarily moved through its contents seriatim, and yet in the absence of any other knowledge about sequencing in the act of reading, it might be assumed that at least sometimes there was an ‘orderly’ reader of that sort. Before encountering the chronicle, with its suppression of Arthur’s overseas quest and the substitution of the Lancelot-Guenevere affair, a hypothetical ‘orderly’ reader of the manuscript would have encountered many other narratives which, in the accumulating process of reading, would become antecedents to the episodes in the chronicle. For example, all but two of the manuscript’s eighteen romances are placed before the Short Metrical Chronicle. A particularly interesting reading-relationship may have occurred with the first Arthurian text in the Auchinleck volume (item 26 in the sequence), which is Of Arthour and of Merlyn, a ‘dynastic romance’ that recounts the begetting of Arthur and his early career, coronation and marriage to Guenevere.53 This too is an idiosyncratic work in some respects; for instance, the enemies who are elsewhere Saxons have here become Saracens. Yet despite such unexpected aspects, the early part of Arthur’s reign is a twice-told ‘echoing’ tale in the Auchinleck manuscript, and its brevity in the chronicle has already been compensated by the extended development in the prior romance. To give just one example, the romance presents a detailed scene in which the young Arthur, before beginning his battles, pulls the sword from the stone as part of establishing his legitimacy to rule, while the chronicle simply explains in about a dozen lines that in order to deal with the ravages of Fortiger (Vortigern), ‘þerls & barouns to Wales went / & to king Arthour þai sent’ – somehow he is already king – and Arthur drives Fortiger out and reigns.54

52 53

54

for a queen, yet queens – Hengist’s daughters, whom he has made queens – are mentioned in the immediately preceding line (‘Quenes he made hem euerichon’, vs. 868). Turville-Petre, England the Nation, p. 112. See the chapter ‘Dynastic Romance’ in Barron, The Arthur of the English, pp. 71–111; Of Arthour and of Merlyn is discussed by David Burnley on pp. 83–90. The romance is edited by O.D. Macrae-Gibson; see n. 15 above. Of Arthour and of Merlin, vss. 2805–3010; Short Metrical Chronicle, vss. 1043–54, quoting vss. 1043–44. On the importance of the representation of Arthur’s subsequent enemies as Saracens, within the context of the Auchinleck manuscript, see Siobhain Bly Calkin, ‘Violence, Saracens, and English Identity in Of Arthour and of Merlin’, Arthuriana 14.2 (2004), 17–36.

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There is no attempt at consistency, but the first of these narratives, in terms of textual sequence, is nevertheless not irrelevant to a reading of the second. Similarly, the hypothetical ‘orderly’ reader, proceeding through the anthology towards the Short Metrical Chronicle, would already have encountered Sir Tristrem (item 37), as mentioned above, with the affair between Tristan and Iseult anticipating that of Lancelot and Guenevere. In addition to shared elements such as the presence in each text of a public test of marital fidelity, the locations where Tristan and Iseult enjoy their love include an earthen house with a secret entrance in the woods (again a cave?), where they stay for ‘Tuelmoneth thre woukes las’, a year minus three weeks.55 There are, of course, great differences between the representations of the two triangular sets of king, queen and knight-lover, yet a residue of familiarity or ‘echoing’ could remain, despite the fact that other texts intervene (although the three Arthurian texts are all in the latter part of the manuscript, the Auchinleck compiler did not decide to keep them together). What the strange treatment of the Arthurian part of the Auchinleck Short Metrical Chronicle accomplishes, among other things, is to link this text to a potential experience of reading that reiterates the recognition of certain types of episodes, including questing, across generic lines, bridging romance and chronicle and gesturing momentarily towards satire as well. In other words, there is a formal as well as a political dimension to the ways in which this Arthurian narrative differs from other versions of the Short Metrical Chronicle. To sum up: whether the presentation of the reign of Arthur is positioned within the long texts of the Brut tradition, or among other, shorter texts within anthologies, the Arthur tale in Middle English almost always represents an adjacency. In other words, with one exception it does not exist by itself in its manuscript environment, but is encountered as a segment of narrative that keeps company, before and after, with other, non-Arthurian, narratives. In the historiographical tradition, including the many copies and versions of the Brut chronicle, the surrounding non-Arthurian narratives construct a world constituted by the careers of other kings and public figures, and the physical characteristics of the manuscripts, such as illustrations or annotations, often suggest that the Arthurian material was read as part of repeating patterns of (con)quest and localization. In the miscellanies, the non-Arthurian narratives may be romances, saints’ lives and other religious texts, even bits of household self-help advice (in the Lincoln Thornton manuscript, Sir Percyvelle is followed by ‘Three Charms for the Toothache’),56 or many other kinds of textual material. This mixture of elements, and the fact that Arthurian texts are not especially grouped together within compilations, argues for the nondifferentiation of Arthurian questing. As discussed above, the one quest that is unlike any other, the Grail quest, is scarcely represented. As for other quests, readers in the English vernacular, whether the book at

55 56

Sir Tristrem, in Lancelot of the Laik and Sir Tristrem, ed. Alan Lupack (Kalamazoo, MI, 1994), vs. 2508, p. 227. See the Thornton facsimile: The Thornton Manuscript (Lincoln Cathedral MS. 91), intro. D.S. Brewer and A.E.B. Owen (London, 1977), p. xvii and f. 176.

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hand was a copy of the Prose Brut or a compilation such as Auchinleck, would have encountered Arthurian quest narratives in structural adjacency with nonArthurian narratives of many kinds. If readers were to ‘[t]urn over the leef and chese another tale’,57 as Chaucer said in a different context, they would be moving in and out of the Arthurian world – until all of a sudden this situation changed, because there was finally a ‘Whole Book’ of Arthurian literature, the Grail quest included. I refer of course to the Morte Darthur of Sir Thomas Malory, among whose many contributions seems to have been, as far as we can tell, to compose the first whole, long, Arthurian book in English. Whether we regard what Malory wrote as one narrative, or as an anthology or sequence of several narratives, part of the cultural work that it accomplished for English literature and the English language was to create an extended reading experience of the entire Arthurian world, long enough to fill a large volume on its own. In this volume the Grail quest and many other types of quest now formed adjacencies to one another, rather than to non-Arthurian narrative worlds; and the inherent disjunctions in worldview between romance, including the Grail, and historiography (in Malory, most nearly represented by the incorporation of the Alliterative Morte Arthure, which reflects the chronicle tradition) have been overcome, or, rather, positively deployed by the writer’s genius. Finally all these components accompany each other, yet without being flattened into consistency, and if their interactivity is at times uneasy, it is a most memorable and productive uneasiness that results. A few years after the completion of Malory’s work, the first English printer, William Caxton, said that he had been visited by ‘many noble and dyuers gentylmen of thys royame of Englond’, who were seeking information about Arthur.58 Having already printed the Prose Brut (entitled Chronicles of England) in 1480 and again in 1482, Caxton responded by printing Malory (Le Morte Darthur) in 1485, and so the full range of Arthurian questing, in romance and in chronicle, was included among the earliest English books to cross the threshold from manuscript into print culture. One might even imagine that on the September day in 1486 when Henry VII’s son Arthur was born, on the desk of some fortunate reader – perhaps a noble gentylman of thys royame – these two remarkable books, Caxton’s two Arthuriads, were keeping company with each other.

57 58

‘Miller’s Prologue’, vs. A3177, ed. Benson, p. 67. In his preface to Malory, Caxton remarks that ‘many noble and dyuers gentylmen of thys royame of Englond’ asked him ‘t’emprynte th’ystorye of the sayd noble king and conquerour Kyng Arthur and of his knyghtes, wyth th’ystorye of the Sayntgreal, and of the deth and endyng of the sayd Arthur’, explaining that there were many such books in other languages but, so far, only ‘somme in Englysshe, but nowher nygh alle’: see William Caxton, ‘Caxton’s Prologue,’ in Caxton’s Malory, ed. James W. Spisak, 2 vols, (Berkeley, CA, 1983), I, pp. 1–2.

9 Grail and Quest in the Medieval English World of Arthur

PHILLIP C. BOARDMAN

The focus of this volume, which perceives the World of Arthur through the dual lenses of the Grail and the Quest, reveals some interesting problems with respect to medieval English Arthurian literature, and in this chapter I want to explore sketchily some of these problems. Our almost reflexive linking of the two terms, in ‘Grail Quest’, assumes a marriage that, in late medieval England at least, is rocky. The quest is certainly an important mode of adventure in the English world of Arthur, with testing as its energetic center. But in England, the search for the Grail has only a marginal importance. To be sure, the Grail itself is well represented in Middle English. Henry Lovelich’s History of the Holy Grail and the alliterative Joseph of Arimathie, along with early printed versions of Joseph in prose – all these survive. Following their French sources closely, they tell the early history of the Grail and the story of Joseph of Arimathea and do not reach as far as the later accounts of Galahad and the Quest.1 The Grail in those French sources was, to varying degrees, the Cup of the Last Supper, the vessel used by Joseph to collect the blood of Christ on the Cross and shown again to Joseph in prison in the Gospel of Nicodemus, a sweat relic, a blood relic or a sacramental vessel of the Eucharist – all connections designed first to account for the graal in Chrétien’s Perceval and then to shape the symbol to doctrinal advantage. The invented history in these versions of the Grail gained some degree of footing in England because, as James Carley and others have argued,2 it well served the interests of the monks at Glastonbury. Already nursing along a mythical association with Avalon, and trading on its reputation as the burial place of King Arthur, Glastonbury saw in Joseph of Arimathea and his Grail, in whatever form, a powerful spur to pilgrimage and influence. The authority of the Abbey increased dramatically by its association

1

2

The portion of Lovelich’s Merlin that survives contains prophetic references ahead to Galahad and the Grail Quest, following his source, the Vulgate Merlin. There is thus the possibility, at least, that Lovelich, a contemporary of Malory, intended a translation of the Queste as well as a completed Merlin, or that he actually did complete them and they have been lost. See James P. Carley’s chapter in this volume and his Glastonbury Abbey: The Holy House at the Head of the Moors Adventurous (New York, 1988), p. 53; Richard Barber, The Holy Grail: Imagination and Belief (Cambridge, MA, 2004), pp. 127–40; Valerie Lagorio, ‘The Evolving Legend of St Joseph of Glastonbury’, Speculum, 46.2 (1971), 209–31.

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with the Grail as an important blood relic at the time the Church was investing the Eucharist with heightened power through the doctrine of transubstantiation. As Richard Barber notes, the Grail romances are saturated with references to the Mass and with allegorical interpretations of the Eucharist.3 This French Grail became the Holy Grail for English readers because of Thomas Malory. Wherever Malory interpolates explanations of his Grail – and he does it infrequently – it is from this ‘Joseph’ tradition,4 although translated mainly from the Queste del Saint Graal, also in the Lancelot-Grail cycle. Malory’s view of the Grail and the way it works in the narrative, however, is decidedly double. When the Grail first appears in Malory, in ‘Launcelot and Elaine’ in Sir Tristram de Lyones, it is in what we might call Malory’s World of Arthur, a solidly physical English world (even if Malory is working from the Vulgate Lancelot by way of the Prose Tristan). The Grail is in the castle of Pelles on a street-corner in the town of Corbyn, even more ‘located’ than when Balin struck the Dolorous Stroke there. This Grail, one is surprised to discover given what it will become, is almost shockingly pedestrian. It is the handy magical vessel in the back room, trotted out whenever guests must be fed, a wounded knight needs to be healed, or someone troubled with madness must be cured: Ryght so there cam by the holy vessell, the Sankegreall, wyth all maner of swetnesse and savoure, but they cowde nat se redyly who bare the vessell. But sir Percyvale had a glemerynge of the vessell and of the mayden that bare hit, for he was a parfyte mayden. And furthwithall they were as hole of hyde and lymme as ever they were in their lyff. … thes foure men and thes ladyes layde honde on sir Launcelot, and so they bare hym into a towre, and so into a chambir where was the holy vessell of the Sankgreall. And byfore that holy vessell sir Launcelot was layde. And there cam an holy man and unhylled that vessell, and so by myracle and by vertu of that holy vessell sir Launcelot was heled and recoverde.5

This Grail resides in the same castle where Pelles and his daughter Elaine, exploiting their knowledge of his affair with Guinevere and presumably with God’s blessing, get Lancelot drunk so that Elaine can have sex with him to conceive Galahad. Although Malory certainly intended these early appearances of the Grail as serious and perhaps consistent with the Grail of the later Quest,6 they for us risk calling up the taunting French knight in Monty Python and the

3 4

5 6

Barber, Holy Grail, pp. 138–40. I will follow the suggestion of Dhira B. Mahoney, who identifies three medieval Grail traditions as the ‘Perceval strain’, the ‘Joseph of Arimathea strain’ and the ‘Queste strain’ in her introduction to The Grail: A Casebook, ed. Dhira B. Mahoney (New York, 2000), pp. 2–5. Sir Thomas Malory, Works, ed. Eugène Vinaver, rev. P.J.C. Field, 3 vols. (Oxford, 1990), II, pp. 816–17, 824 (XI.14; XII.4). P.J.C. Field, elsewhere in this volume, sees in all the appearances of the Grail in Malory the quality of holiness and thus a consistent divine separation from the realm of human experience.

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Holy Grail who is unwilling to join with Arthur’s Grail Quest because the master of the castle has ‘already got one!’7 Malory goes on to write The Tale of the Sankgreall, of course, and it is the Grail of the Quest and not the magical object with a local habitation and a name that ultimately registers with readers of Malory’s works. The Grail Quest was a significant invention of the first generations of continental Arthurian writers; working from their French texts, Malory produced what is the most studied and best understood – although by no means uncontroversial – version of the Grail Quest in English. Malory’s treatment of the French Queste del Saint Graal is, in simplified terms, a pruning of the French, while yet being a closely traceable translation. Sandra Ness Ihle, studying the relationship of the two works, sees the rhetorical task of the Queste as ‘amplification’, while Malory’s is static and dynamic ‘abbreviation’.8 Recent studies have come to considerable agreement that Malory’s cuts and shifts – indeed, his contextualization of the quest in his larger narrative – have a clear focus and point.9 The Queste in the Lancelot-Grail cycle had represented in the flawed character of Lancelot the values of Arthurian chivalry. These values – shown as corrupted by the stain of desire and sexuality – were redeemed by Galahad, who strode through the French World of Arthur like a Colossus of Purity. Galahad in the Queste, a virgin untainted by desire, derived from his purity a prowess beyond the reach of any of the other knights, even Bors and Perceval, who were only almost pure. In Malory’s version of the Grail Quest, even as close as it seems to the ‘French book’, the attack has become more an examination and critique, as Malory’s larger structure depends on displaying and valuing the success of Lancelot even as a ‘synful man’ of prowess in the World of Arthur. Malory achieves this by carefully ordering the Grail Quest and its aftermath. That quest is barely under way when Lancelot is first told that he is no longer the best knight in the world, a conclusion reinforced by his attaining only a partial vision of the Grail itself. But then Malory, in The Book of Launcelot and Guinevere, turns to the relationship of the hero and the queen in earnest, having reserved Lancelot’s first two important defenses of Guinevere until this point, after the conclusion of the Grail Quest. The first defense, when Guinevere is accused of poisoning Sir Patryse in an attempt on Gawain’s life, shows Lancelot as champion of Guinevere’s genuine truthfulness. The second defense, in the episode of the ‘Knight of the Cart’, shows the lovers resorting to an equivocal oath, effectively relying on Lancelot’s strength in arms. Yet this morally ambiguous trial-by-combat is followed by Lancelot’s healing of the ailing knight, Sir Urry, a miracle granted by God as a direct result of Lancelot’s self-effacing prayer. The overall effect of this seventh book, hard on the heels of the Grail Quest,

7 8 9

Norris J. Lacy pays tribute to this scene in another context in ‘From Medieval to PostModern: The Arthurian Quest in France’, South Atlantic Review, 65.2 (2000), 115. Sandra Ness Ihle, Malory’s Grail Quest: Invention and Adaptation in Medieval Prose Romance (Madison, WI, 1983), pp. 23–30. In Vinaver’s much-discussed phrase (Malory, Works, III, p. 1535), Malory tries ‘to secularize the Grail theme as much as the story will allow’. Dhira B. Mahoney, ‘The Truest and Holiest Tale: Malory’s Transformation of La Queste del saint Graal’, in Mahoney, Grail Casebook, p. 380, says that ‘what Malory does to his source is not so much secularize it as anglicize it’.

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is to marginalize the Grail and to diminish the force of its critique of Lancelot and of Arthurian chivalry. For the reader enmeshed in the narrative, the Grail becomes, in retrospect, another narrative call to adventure on the way to the tragic conclusion, without much affecting that conclusion. Malory even undercuts in advance any moral scruples we may feel about Guinevere’s equivocal oath by praising the love of Lancelot and Guinevere, characterized by steadfastness, loyalty and discretion: For men and women coude love togydirs seven yerys, and no lycoures lustis was betwyxte them, and than was love trouthe and faythefulnes. And so in lyke wyse was used such love in kynge Arthurs days. … And therefore all ye that be lovers, calle unto youre remembraunce the monethe of May, lyke as ded quene Gwenyver, for whom I make here a lytyll mencion, that whyle she lyved she was a trew lover, and therefor she had a good ende.10

Lancelot, too, receives the same praise when, at the very end, Sir Ector speaks a threnody over the body of his dead brother: ‘thou were the trewest lover, of a synful man, that ever loved woman.’11 The effectiveness of the tragedy in the eighth and final book depends on the characters’ having the stature to make the fall worthy of consideration. The Book of Launcelot and Guinevere, accordingly, effectively starts the story again, especially as it concerns our leading players. Malory realized that, once the Grail Quest had been incorporated into the larger story of Lancelot and Guinevere – a move that had proved irresistible to the monks in the thirteenth century – it was not easy or even desirable to dispense with it. The French version may make the Grail Quest an episode in Lancelot’s, not Arthur’s, story, as is often said. But to the extent that the achievement of a quest brings stasis or closure to a narrative,12 Malory’s Grail story might be judged in even more limited terms: it is Galahad’s story that comes to an end. Malory’s Grail story is Galahad’s life, but it is only an episode in his father’s. The contrast with the otherworldly Galahad only makes Lancelot seem more fully human. The relations in the court among Lancelot, Gawain, Guinevere and Arthur himself – the focus of the Grail’s critique of morality and chivalry – continue to an ending that might have resulted from the kind of worldliness attacked by the Grail, but in reality, the terms shift and the ‘Dolorous Death’ follows on from other interests of Malory: immorality, certainly, but also treachery, private vengeance and fate. When Lancelot defends Guinevere the third time, by rescuing her from the stake, the lie on which his defense is based – ’I woll feyght for the quene, that she ys a trew lady untyll her lorde’13 – is perhaps less the issue than the web of conflicting loyalties and tribal affinities that have engulfed the characters. It is certainly possible as an intellectual exercise to argue for the centrality of the Grail Quest to Malory’s narrative idea. But

10 11 12

13

Malory, III, p. 1120 (XVIII.25). Malory, III, p. 1259 (XXI.13). Lacy, ‘Medieval to Post-Modern’, pp. 115–16. See also Norris J. Lacy’s ‘The Mort Artu and Cyclic Closure’, in The Lancelot-Grail Cycle: Text and Transformations, ed. William W. Kibler (Austin, TX, 1994), pp. 85–97. Malory, III, p. 1171 (XX.5).

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it is hard to imagine a reader for whom the emotional power of the final book does not make the Grail story a very distant memory. Before Malory the Grail Quest seems not to have caught on in England. There is, amazingly, only one other version of the quest, that found in one of Malory’s minor sources, John Hardyng’s Chronicle of England. Hardyng’s chronicle is written in mediocre verse and comes to us in two versions, the first intended for King Henry VI and written in the 1440s and 1450s. Hardyng, who was born in 1378 and fought in the great victory at Agincourt and then in the Scottish campaigns, became obsessed with the failure of Henry to gain supremacy over the Scots, and he offered advice in his chronicle on how Scotland might be brought under the king’s yoke. Disenchanted with Henry and already an old man, Hardyng then switched sides and revised his chronicle for the education of Richard, Duke of York, who died without taking advantage of Hardyng’s advice, whereupon Hardyng undertook another revision for Edward IV.14 This second full version, completed by 1464, was shorter than the first15 and influential, not as a manual for conquering Scotland, as Hardyng dreamed, but as a source used both by Malory and by Spenser in the next century. Hardyng’s version of Arthur’s reign goes much further than earlier works in this chronicle tradition, and even his own account changes from the Lancastrian version to the later Yorkist version. In the earlier version of the work, Mordred is born of incest, Lucius is killed by Gawain and, as in other chronicles, Arthur is kept from his imperial coronation by news of the treasonous rebellion at home. In the second version, stripped of its praise of the Lancastrians, the incest is gone, Lucius is killed by Arthur himself and Arthur is crowned Emperor before he learns of the treason of Mordred and Guinevere, a development Malory adopts.16 Most startling in both versions, however, is the inclusion of the history of the Grail and Galahad’s quest for the Grail. It is remarkable that Hardyng included the Grail materials, especially the quest, given that he was working in the strong chronicle traditions of Geoffrey of Monmouth, Wace and Layamon. Edward Donald Kennedy has persuasively argued that Hardyng, a vociferous advocate for English primacy over Scotland, wielded both versions of his Chronicle as a weapon in his anti-Scottish campaign.17 The Scots claimed St Andrew’s relics, and Hardyng’s retelling of the Grail’s history minimizes the roles of Joseph’s descendants in favor of Joseph of Arimathea himself, giving Glastonbury a direct connection to the biblical Passion and Crucifixion. Hardyng carefully links the Round Table, made by

14

15

16 17

Felicity Riddy, ‘John Hardyng’s Chronicle and the Wars of the Roses’, Arthurian Literature XII (1993), 91–108, gives a full account of the texts and contexts of the chronicle. See also Richard J. Moll, Before Malory: Reading Arthur in Later Medieval England (Toronto, 2003), pp. 157–97. The first version is 19,000 lines long and survives in a single manuscript. The second version of 12,600 lines is extant in fifteen manuscripts and two printed editions (1543, 1812). My citations will be from the second of these editions: The Chronicle of John Hardyng, ed. Henry Ellis (London, 1812). Ellis’s bracketed emendations are silently accepted and his abbreviations expanded. Edward Donald Kennedy, ‘John Hardyng and the Holy Grail’, Arthurian Literature VIII (1989), 202. Edward Donald Kennedy, ‘Hardyng and Grail’, 185–206.

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Joseph for use of the Grail fellowship, to the table of the Last Supper; the Grail itself is linked to vials of holy sweat or holy blood buried with Joseph. Hardyng has little sympathy for the interlaced episodes of the French romances, and he unpacks the strands so ruthlessly that, when Galahad peels each knight off to take a separate path as they embark together on the Quest, the knights simply disappear from the story (‘Of this mater is nomore to seyne’): This Galaad then rode forth with his route, At euery waye he made a knight for to departe, To tyme they were all seuerally gone oute, And none with hym, so had echone theyr parte; And yf any met another at any arcte, His rule was so, he shuld his felowe tell His auentures, what so that hym befell.

[locality

And also sone as theyr waye laye in sundrywise, They shulde departe and mete nomore agayn, But aduenture it made of exercyse, Of diuers stretes that together layne, Of this mater is nomore to seyne; But when he had his felowes all conueyed, He tooke his waye full like a knight arayed. Of auenture he came to Auelon, Where that he found a shylde that was ful white, A crosse therin of gowlys, by it one A speare also, a sweard of great delyte, The whiche with hym he bare awaye full tyte; He gyrde hym with the swerde anon full ryght, The shylde he hunge vpon his shoulder lyght. The spere he toke on hande ful lyke a knyght; But there he founde in bokes clerely wryten, How Ioseph loste that shylde therin forth ryght, When he there dyed, as then it was well weten; And also in scrypture lefte there wryten, That no man should it beare without mischeue, But one that should the doughteous siege acheue.

[red [without hesitation

[known

[dangerous

That same was wryten ryght there of the swerd, Whiche Vacyan lefte there when he dyed, And of the speare he was nothyng a ferde, All yf the same parell of it was notifyed, Lyke as to fore of it was specifyed; But when that he had laboured so foure yere, He founde in Walys the Saintgraal full clere. (pp. 134–35)

These five stanzas, encompassing Hardyng’s entire Grail quest, are worth looking at closely. The reader will naturally notice first Hardyng’s extremely incisive retelling, more outline than narrative: Galahad’s quest itself, once he has earned his arms, is dismissed in just two lines! The nature of the ‘achievement’ is not revealed, but there is nothing mystical about a lost object found somewhere

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in Wales. Hardyng works rather to connect Galahad’s lineage and his arms back to Joseph himself. The Grail Quest seems initiated by Galahad’s obtaining a shield – a white shield on which is inscribed the Red Cross associated with St George. Felicity Riddy suggests that Hardyng is only vaguely interested in the Grail, and that the shield, with its nationalist associations, is functionally the true focus of Galahad’s quest,18 as it is of Hardyng’s attention. If the shield is indeed discovered ‘of aventure’, that is about the only chance happening in this account of the Grail Quest. Instead, Hardyng focuses distinctively and at length on writing and sources, and, unlike Malory’s French book, these function within the story. Galahad’s quest in the passage quoted above is guided by his knowledge of written records: the old histories tell him about Joseph, about the destinies attached to the shield, sword, spear and ‘doughteous siege’. More important, Galahad himself imposes a rule that any knight on the quest meeting another ‘shuld his felowe tell / His auentures, what so that him befell’. Galahad’s rule closely reflects Arthur’s rule for the Whitsunday gatherings of the whole fellowship: Also their rule was eche one should tell, His owne actes of warrys auenture, Afore the kyng at meate, howe hym byfell In his trauayle, or of his misauenture. The Secretorye should put it in scrypture: For none auaunt it should not then betake, But for his rule to holde, the king then dyd it make. (p. 125)

The purpose of this storytelling, Hardyng goes on, is to move young knights to deeds of worthiness and, interestingly, ‘of dyuerse landes to learne the language’ (p. 125). Even on the Whitsunday when the Grail will appear, Hardyng takes the trouble to observe Arthur’s ritual: ‘And euery knight his auenture that stounde / Had tolde the kyng, as his order was founde; / Whiche aduentures the kyng made all be written / In his register, euer to be knowen and weten’ (p. 131). It is clear that Hardyng, writing in a chronicle tradition, is authenticating the clear provenance of his own history. He is able, he seems to suggest, to trace his own version back to these same authentic written records of events, faithfully recorded in a public ceremony from first-hand accounts delivered without prejudice. Both of the English Grail quests, Malory’s and Hardyng’s, depend on the version of the Grail forged in the doctrinally heated foundry of the thirteenthcentury Cistercians. This Grail was in intention only tenuously attached to the Arthurian stories – it was, rather, part of a backstory invented by monks to transform an ambiguous and highly suggestive literary device into a prop for their campaign of propaganda for purity and against sexuality and worldly glory. In spite of the enticing mystery of the graal itself, in the formative version by Chrétien de Troyes introducing Perceval into the World of Arthur, I think it can be argued that the Grail exists for the quest – it enforces questioning, 18

Felicity Riddy, ‘Chivalric Nationalism and the Holy Grail in John Hardyng’s Chronicle’, in Mahoney, Grail Casebook, pp. 397–414.

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searching for meaning and revelation of character. It is the necessity of the quest to be a journey of initiation and education that forces the Grail in the developing Perceval tradition to take so many forms – fish platter, magical stone from heaven, sacramental cup, head on a platter. As the writers seek a sign to match their meanings, it is the search that becomes consistent, and its stimulus is failure.19 Searching and failure are powerful motives for narrative, especially when driven by a story left unfinished, as Chrétien’s was. Chrétien conceived of the Grail as something strange, light and ambiguous enough to trigger a question. The quest follows almost inevitably: the humiliating failure at the chance encounter leads to the desire for a staged second chance when, as is clear in Wolfram’s version where the repeat performance actually takes place, the reenactment will be a ritual, emblematic of rather than revealing of character. The Grail Quest in the Perceval tradition is distinctly personal and psychological. The failure to understand the Grail deflects the hero from his education in chivalry and sends him out in search of a Grail that is not – like the Grail in the Galahad tradition20 of Lancelot-Grail, Hardyng or Malory – the object of a Round Table quest. In the Perceval story, the Loathly Lady (Cundrie in Wolfram) enters the court and openly humiliates Perceval by exposing his ‘sin’ of failing to ask a question about the Grail. Chrétien’s Lady then issues a challenge to anyone in the court who would win the whole world’s esteem by rescuing a damsel trapped on a mountain. As the knights depart on what we presume should be the Grail quest, we discover that each has vowed only not to refuse any challenge. Perceval alone takes on a different quest: he vows to find the Grail and discover the answers to the questions he had failed to ask. In the Queste del Saint Graal, scattered showings tease nearly all Arthur’s knights into the attempt to see, to find or to ‘achieve’ the Grail, with the game loaded in favor of Lancelot’s son Galahad, conceived just for the purpose of the quest by the monks writing the story. In the Perceval version, the Grail Quest is a private challenge, part of the education of the hero, that gathers into its web knights like Gauvain whose paths he crosses. Surprisingly, given the power of this story to generate romances and continuations on the continent, there is only one Middle English Perceval romance, Sir Percyvell of Gales.21 And Sir Percyvell, amazingly, manages to bring Percyvell to marriage, kingship and a reunion with his living mother – all without the Grail! It used to be cautiously suggested that Percyvell and the Welsh Peredur derived not from Chrétien, but from the kind of Ur-source Chrétien himself claimed to follow when he announced the provenance of his story. The differences seemed crucial for scholars tracking sources.22 In Peredur, at least, there is a ‘Grail scene’

19 20 21 22

Elspeth Kennedy, ‘Failure in Arthurian Romance’, Medium Ævum, 50.1 (1991), 16–32; reprinted in Mahoney, Grail Casebook, pp. 279–99, at p. 283. Mahoney’s ‘Queste strain’ in Introduction, Grail Casebook, pp. 4–5. I cite from the Everyman edition of Maldwyn Mills, Ywain and Gawain, Sir Percyvell of Gales, The Anturs of Arther (London, 1992), pp. 103–60. Anne Wilson, The Magical Quest: The Use of Magic in Arthurian Romance (Manchester, 1988), pp. 98–105, lays out a comparative chart of differences in Chrétien, Wolfram, Peredur and Sir Percyvell.

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structurally parallel to Chrétien’s, with a head in a bloody platter serving as Grail. But in Sir Percyvell the entire Grail context – feast, maiden, quest – is gone, and scenes and motifs familiar from Chrétien’s version are transformed to suit other narrative purposes. In the absence of the Grail, for instance, the cup that the Red Knight takes from Arthur’s court gains enough prominence to feel like a vestigial grail as Percyvell, in a mini-quest, dashes from the court to retrieve it. More recently, critics have been willing to entertain what always seemed somewhat heretical, that the Percyvell-poet’s source was Chrétien’s Perceval.23 Most Arthurians come to Sir Percyvell – if they come to it at all – long after pondering the magical ambiguities of Chrétien’s mysterious object, after being schooled in the flaws and weaknesses of the English popular romances and after being told that Chaucer’s Tale of Sir Thopas is laughing quite specifically at Sir Percyvell. But the exercise of taking the poem on its own terms can lead to a startlingly plain conclusion: that the poet knew Chrétien’s poem and, amazingly, decided that the story could be improved by tossing out the Grail.24 Taken on its own terms, the poem has a coherence and straightforwardness that Chrétien’s poem does not achieve, and not just because Chrétien’s poem is unfinished. Sir Percyvell is, as a few critics have begun to argue, a tighter work and more consistently comic, even moving, than Chrétien’s.25 It is certainly not waylaid by puzzling mysteries. Many of the scenes in Sir Percyvell are designed to foreground the comic exploits of a bumpkin in the code-governed World of Arthur: the only way to get a dead knight out of his armor is to cook him out; the best way to handle a vengeful sorceress mother is simply to toss her onto the fire as well; after slaughtering an entire besieging army, a knight will of course lie down amidst the bodies to sleep. In the overall structure, however, the poet shapes his episodes, and invents some, to lead Percyvell to reconciliation with his mother, who did not die when he left home, as in Perceval. The emblem that signals Percyvell’s (slow) growth is not the Grail, but a ring that passes through the poem. Percyvell’s mother gives him a ring as a token when he leaves home; when he discovers a woman sleeping in a hall, he takes her ring and leaves his mother’s. Later, after he has killed a sultan laying siege to the castle of Maydenlande, Percyvell marries the lady of the castle, Lufamour. After a quiet year of staying at home with his wife, Percyvell undertakes to return home to find his mother. When he discovers the lady with whom he had left his mother’s ring tied up to a tree, he defeats her lover, the Black Knight, in order to retrieve his mother’s

23

24

25

James P. Carley, ‘England’, in Medieval Arthurian Literature: A Guide to Recent Research, ed. Norris J. Lacy (New York, 1996), pp. 22–23, summarizes the changing attitudes toward the poem. It is possible that the poet heard Chrétien’s version and recreates his version from memory, of course, which would make vs. 1273 – ‘Als it was told unto me’ – more than the false disclaimer common in medieval poetry. See especially Ad Putter, ‘Story Line and Story Shape in Sir Percyvell of Gales and Chrétien de Troyes’s Conte du Graal’, in Pulp Fictions of Medieval England: Essays in Popular Romance, ed. Nicola McDonald (Manchester, 2004), pp. 171–96; and Caroline D. Eckhardt, ‘Arthurian Comedy: The Simpleton-Hero in Sir Perceval of Galles’, Chaucer Review, 8.3 (1974), 202–20; repr. with revisions in Perceval/Parzival: A Casebook, ed. Arthur Groos and Norris J. Lacy (New York, 2002), pp. 235–52.

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ring. But the Black Knight has given the ring to the giant who rules Maydenlande, the brother of the sultan whom Percyvell earlier killed. Percyvell slays the giant and retrieves his ring, but he is told that the giant has shown the ring to Percyvell’s mother in order to win her love. Instead, recognizing Percyvell’s ring and thinking him dead, Percyvell’s mother has gone mad. Shedding his knightly clothes and putting on the rustic goat-skins of his forest life, Percyvell seeks out his mother. In a moving scene, Percyvell’s mother recognizes him – ’Siche a sone hade I!’ (vs. 2217) – and he is able to nurse her back to health and take her to meet his wife. Comic elements aside, the structural pattern of this poem works effectively like the Grail story as transformed by Wolfram von Eschenbach. In Wolfram, the question that Parzival fails to ask at the Grail feast – ’What ails you?’ – makes explicit the theme of compassion that is, for many readers, only ambiguously suggested in Chrétien’s ‘Who is being served?’ When Parzival returns to the Grail Castle to fulfill his quest and become king himself, his question in its reenactment as liturgical ritual cannot authentically signify compassion.26 In Sir Percyvell of Gales, the poet removes the Grail as an artificial emblem of moral or spiritual growth and instead offers an image of compassion itself: the mother’s healing is made possible only through Percyvell’s recognition of her condition and his suddenly sensitive willingness to remove the very trappings that had been his quest all along. Much of the poem has been occupied with his selfcentered and arrogant attempt to claim renown as a knight of Arthur’s Round Table. His care for his mother’s condition at the end signals an ‘achievement’ somewhat parallel to those works in the Perceval tradition where the Grail actually appears. It is telling that each of these three English works finds a way to move away from the Grail of its tradition. In Hardyng’s chronicle history, the Grail Quest is subsumed to the political agenda of the author: the Grail no longer represents a critique of knightly values but rather itself becomes an emblem of the chivalry of the ‘old days’, the days of England’s glory. In Malory’s pseudo-history, after the Grail Quest in fact fails to become the climax of the work it pretends to be, Lancelot and Guinevere become fully the focus, and their love becomes one way of redeeming the World of Arthur in the face of treachery, politics and vengeance. And in Sir Percyvell of Gales, the Grail simply disappears in the face of carefully staged adventures in a comic world of accidental achievement and social ignorance. These three works generically map out the three categories that Joerg Fichte suggests are most useful for characterizing medieval Arthurian works.27 Fichte identifies ‘a chronicle tradition, a tradition of historiographical fiction, and a fictional, poetic tradition’, and he argues that the middle category is populated by ‘imaginative poetic elaborations of the historical “facts” as they are presented in the chronicles and histories’, based originally on Chrétien’s

26 27

Elspeth Kennedy, ‘Failure’, pp. 283–86, discusses the writer’s problem in the Perceval tradition of knowing how to bring the hero around to success. Joerg Fichte, ‘Grappling with Arthur or Is There an English Arthurian Verse Romance?’ in Poetics: Theory and Practice in Medieval English Literature, ed. Piero Boitani and Anna Torti (Cambridge, 1991), pp. 149–63.

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ahistorical fictions, but working toward historical realism (p. 156). Fichte puts Malory in this category.28 All three of these works, even with their differing generic strategies, suggest finally that for English writers and their audiences the Grail itself did not carry much currency, even while quests, adventures and marvels continued to exercise a pull on the English imagination. Helen Cooper’s recent study of English romance motifs puts ‘Quests and Pilgrimages’ at the head of the list of central motifs undergoing transformation during the medieval and early modern periods.29 The eight categories of quest she describes are generally thematic (‘Seeking Forgiveness’, ‘Landscapes of Desire and Fear’, for instance) and foreground the journey that impels movement in romance quests. Cooper does not limit herself to Arthurian romances, but her approach exposes the difficulty of finding a structured way of encompassing the myriad adventures in even thirty or so medieval English Arthurian romances. One suspects that there is either one kind of quest – or thirty! Early romances, heroic works and folktales have journeys that might function as the primitive roots of the quest. The archetypal British Arthurian quest may reside in a work like Culhwch ac Olwen, where Arthur’s companions, many with special gifts or powers, accomplish a series of nearly impossible tasks with the goal of helping Culhwch win Olwen – a kind of Welsh Magnificent Seven or Mission Impossible. Another secular quest is hinted at in a brief scene in Caradoc of Llancarfan’s Life of St Gildas, a Latin saint’s life; Arthur is said to have sought Queen Guinevere for a year before discovering where she had been taken by her abductor Melwas. This provocative incident provides the paradigm for countless rescue-quests from Chrétien’s and Malory’s ‘Knight of the Cart’ to the film First Knight, where the scene occurs multiple times. One could argue that the entry of the Grail into the tradition hijacked the notion of ‘questing’ by making it cosmic in importance and therefore necessarily scarce as Arthurian adventures go. To modern readers the fate-laden importance of the ‘capital-Q Quest’ has been reinforced by Frodo’s long and perilous journey to Mount Doom and the explosion of heroic fantasies in his wake. Norris Lacy’s examination of quests in French romances provides a more practical, if informal, approach to the problem.30 He sees ‘adventure’ as falling into four broad categories: quest, test, task and ordeal. While these may seem to fall on a continuum – Lacy, for instance, says the quest ‘represents the most extended and significant category’, while the last he calls ‘simple ordeal’ (p. 116) – he offers the real insight that, in the order he listed them ‘each category generally subsumes all the following ones. Quests, as I said, are invariably tests’ (p. 116). It is important to recognize what this actually means: a Venn diagram would show embedded circles with Lacy’s ‘ordeal’ being the largest circle encompassing all the others

28

29 30

Valerie Lagorio, writing about the Joseph materials, argues that ‘as elsewhere, Malory handled his sources to increase the historical nature of the story’ in ‘The Glastonbury Legends and the English Arthurian Grail Romances’, Neuphilologische Mitteilungen, 79 (1978), 362. Helen Cooper, The English Romance in Time: Transforming Motifs from Geoffrey of Monmouth to the Death of Shakespeare (Oxford, 2004), pp. 45–105. Lacy, ‘Medieval to Post-Modern’, pp. 114–33.

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in order. The quest is the smallest category, although, among adventures it is indeed the ‘most extended and significant’. The English Arthurian romances, though few in number, actually bear out this analysis, for they offer a full range of adventures, from the silly – Sir Percyvell lops off both hands and a leg of the giant in a scene that anticipates Monty Python and the Holy Grail by about 500 years – to the religious pageant of Malory’s Grail Quest. Most often the works themselves provide the terms that both define the adventure and give a sense of how it should be evaluated. In Ywain and Gawain (after Chrétien’s Yvain), Colgrevance tells the court about his encounter with a knight: Than he asked, onone right, What man I was; I said, a knyght That soght aventurs in that land, My body to asai and fande: ‘And I the pray of thi kownsayle, Thou teche me to sum mervayle’.31

[straight away

[test, try [direct

Colgrevance’s adventures are bodily trials that test his mettle, and they seem to arise most often from diverting marvels, of the kind that Percyvell sought when he set out in his romance, ‘Moo sellés to see’ (vs. 482). Colgrevance’s view is quite amoral: the terms of the test and the nature of the marvel are left open, and there is no hint of the moral valence that characterizes Malory’s more elaborate specification of the knightly vocation: [Arthur] charged them never to do outerage nothir mourthir, and allwayes to fle treson, and to gyff mercy unto hym that askith mercy, uppon payne of forfiture [of their] worship and lordship of kynge Arthure for evirmore; and allwayes to do ladyes, damesels, and jantilwomen and wydowes [socour:] strengthe hem in hir ryghtes, and never to enforce them, uppon payne of dethe. Also, that no man take no batayles in a wrongefull quarell for no love ne for no worldis goodis.32

This oath is cast in surprisingly negative terms: with minimal guidance about how to behave, the knight promises what he will not do in a behavioral code that suggests why the best English romances have adventures that are less bodily trials than tests of judgment. Nevertheless, the Round Table oath reflects the intentionality that shapes the activity in Malory’s sense of knight-errantry: someone comes into the court with a cause or a challenge, and the knight goes out on a quest. Malory’s knight leads a purpose-driven life. This is so strong a pattern that Arthur enshrines it in his holiday ritual – he will not eat until an adventure presents itself. For Arthur and the court, if not for the summoned hero, the adventure is itself a marvel and will remain so – something to be seen and wondered at. A green knight on a green horse will send Sir Gawain to face an inevitable decapitation a year hence. A damsel requesting aid

31 32

Mills, Ywain, vss. 313–18. Malory, I, p. 120 (III.15).

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– an infinite number of damsels are fed to this pattern – will reluctantly give the untried kitchen helper Beaumains many chances to prove himself. Both these types of adventure – the purposeful task and the aimless encounter – appear as a balanced pair in the Alliterative Morte Arthure. No sooner does King Arthur pitch his tents in Normandy on his way to engage the Emperor Lucius than he is told of the cannibalistic giant of Mont-St-Michel who for seven years has been eating Arthur’s subjects and has now seized the Duchess of Brittany in order to rape her. Arthur answers this challenge himself, undertaking a dangerously digressive single combat, as if impelled not just by the Round Table oath of Malory, but by the higher ‘common profyte’ invoked in Hardyng’s version of the knightly rule: theyr rule was wronges to oppresse With their bodyes, where lawe might not redresse The faith, the church, maydens, and widowes clene, Chyldren also that were in tender age, The common profyte euer more to sustene. (pp. 124–25)

The scene of Arthur’s facing the giant is telling also because its place in the rising action of the poem, the campaign against Lucius, is matched in the falling action, the morally ambiguous siege of Metz, by a scene in which Sir Gawain’s adventure is an aimless encounter. Just as Arthur’s fight with the giant is preceded by a sudden extended description of spring (vss. 920–32), this scene is signaled by a strangely lyrical description of a ‘misty morning’ in a flowery meadow – this after Kay and Bedivere have been slain, Arthur has killed Lucius and Arthur has been strutting dangerously beneath the fortified walls of Metz: Then wendes out the warden, sir Gawain himselven, Als he that wise was and wight, wonders to seek; Then was he ware of a wye, wonder well armed, Baitand on a water bank by the wood eves, Busked in breny bright to behold.33

[strong [man [grazing his horse [hauberk

It is typical of this kind of adventure that Gawain, although he is supposed to be on a foraging party to plunder food for the hungry troops, quickly engages this unknown knight in the kind of common single combat intended to display alpha-male dominance. Although Gawain’s enlisting of Priamus on Arthur’s side is the after-the-fact strategic justification for this aimless joust, it is actually only incidental to the impending battle with the forces of Lorraine. This little episode, buried in a chiefly heroic work, is saturated in the topoi of romance; it may even be a parody of earlier romances, but to an ambiguous end. Gawain acts according to a set of principles quite at odds with the precipitancy he displayed, say, in the earlier scene in Lucius’s court where he rashly lopped off the head of Sir Gayous, or near the end when he will leap from the boat to engage Mordred’s forces prematurely. Gawain’s actions in the Priamus

33

Larry D. Benson, ed., King Arthur’s Death: The Middle English Stanzaic Morte Arthur and Alliterative Morte Arthure (Indianapolis, 1974), vss. 2513–17.

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episode are irrational in just the way suggested by Colgrevance. In the face of the ideology of the poem’s realistic political world, Gawain’s lack of rashness here seems to raise the question: Why would a warrior deliberately act this way? Gawain fights incognito and, without any real point in the poem, lies to Priamus about his identity. To strengthen the resolve of his French troops, he withholds his support until their losses will require his intervention. He courteously offers to yield to the decision of the inexperienced Sir Florent, who has inexplicably been given command of the foraging party. In all these cases, Gawain’s behavior is a tic, a way of deciding enforced by the romance itself. But importantly, the upshot of this romance deliberation is the same as his earlier heroic rashness: he engages the massive force of the Duke of Lorraine against the specific and rational counsel of Priamus, who urges withdrawal and who must later cause his own followers to switch sides in order to save Gawain’s men. This episode is set directly parallel to Arthur’s single combat with the giant of Mont-St-Michel. The poet seems to intend a comparison of the two scenes: Kay and Bedivere – not Gawain – accompany Arthur on his solitary mission, but when the old lady tries to warn Arthur away, she says that he would fail even had he more prowess than Wade or Gawain (vs. 964). The deus ex machina of the magic elixir that Priamus uses to cure both himself and Gawain after the mutual mutilations of their fighting has none of the realistic tension of the parallel scene on Mont-St-Michel. When Arthur, having slain the giant, also falls, apparently dead, the hardened warriors Kay and Bedivere, deeply dismayed, nevertheless expertly search his wounds. Finding him unhurt, they exchange jocular puns about seeking such saints in the future (vss. 1162–71), revealing their profound relief by continuing the pilgrimage metaphor of Arthur’s original boasting vow to challenge the giant (vss. 937–38). As the scene above suggests, it is Gawain who is most fully tested in the English works, just as Lancelot is in the French and in Malory. In the English romances that are not simply based on episodes in the French romances,34 Gawain is the preeminent knight, the best of Arthur’s court. His adventures exemplify the highest possibilities of the court as a whole, or, if you will, they provide a test of Arthurian chivalry. In the best of the Gawain-romances – the Ragnelle story and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight – chivalry is tested in all its courtly ramifications, and battlefield prowess scarcely figures as an issue. The Wedding of Sir Gawain and Dame Ragnelle (with variants in Chaucer’s ‘Wife of Bath’s Tale’, John Gower’s ‘Tale of Florent’ and the ballad The Marriage of Sir Gawain, among others) has at its center the folktale motif of the questionquest. This quest dispenses with deeds of prowess altogether, in favor of the fundamental riddle of women’s desires. In Ragnelle, Gawain’s undertaking the quest reflects his courtesy as he acts on Arthur’s behalf. In Chaucer’s version, the unnamed Gawain-character has committed rape, and the quest initiates

34

A good example is The Jeaste of Sir Gawain, based on an episode in a French Perceval Continuation, in which Gawain interrupts his love-making with a willing young maiden to fight with her father and three brothers, who are defending their property rights. ‘The Jeaste’, ‘The Wedding of Sir Gawain and Dame Ragnelle’ and ‘The Marriage of Sir Gawain’ can be found in Sir Gawain: Eleven Romances and Tales, ed. Thomas Hahn (Kalamazoo, MI, 1995).

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a kind of penance through which he will learn the nature of true nobility. In both versions the hero’s success in the question-quest entails a further test – the marriage itself – with the magical consequence of a happy ending. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, the most sophisticated of medieval English romances, parades a virtual catalog of tests, with Gawain run through his paces: Gawain steps forward to take the challenge so that Arthur will be relieved of the shame of a cowardly court; Gawain meets the challenge of time (common in folktales and romances) by embarking on his journey in time for his appointment in the Green Chapel; he struggles to keep ‘trouthe’ with his conflicting loyalties and yet avoid offense to the lady; he engages in the ‘exchange of winnings’ game with his host; he refuses to escape with his reputation intact; and he faces the certain death by axe-blow without defending himself. In the ultimate irony of testing in the poem, Gawain prepares for his big test – his final exam, as it were – by steeling himself for the final blow of the axe, only to discover that this part of the game is not the test, but the grade! He has already been tested. Looking at the nature of the ‘adventures’ in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, we can see how far Gawain goes beyond Colgrevance, whose definition of adventure was cast, we remember, in physical terms: ‘My body to asai and fande’. Gawain, by contrast, faces tests of skill, of courtesy, of loyalty and of nerve – of trouthe. When his guide to the Green Chapel offers him an escape with his reputation intact, Gawain responds that if he were ‘to fle in forme that thou telles, / I were a knight cowarde, I myght not be excused’.35 Gawain’s words show the extent to which the shame code of knights like Colgrevance has been transformed into an interior sense of identity and honor, highly charged by the possibility, sometimes the inevitability, of failure. The English romances, in this respect, prefer testing to questing. Only the Victorians among the English warmed to Galahad, the model gentleman or Boy Scout. Modern writers and audiences have found Galahad too self-righteously ‘finished’ to continue as a hero for the Grail Quests confronting the twentieth century and beyond, and they have turned back to Perceval as a more companionable modern searcher. Just so, English medieval audiences found in Sir Gawain an attractive and precarious presence of courtesy tested and prowess challenged. And Gawain had the additional virtue of not being permitted a vision of the Grail.

35

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, ed. J.A. Burrow (Harmondsworth, 1972), vss. 2130–31.

10 Malory and the Grail: The Importance of Detail

P.J.C. FIELD

The word grail is generally used nowadays to mean something unknown but supremely important and desirable, which, if it can be discovered, will transform the world in which the grail exists. So, for instance, it could be said that the Holy Grail of twentieth-century physics was a ‘Theory of Everything’. This use of the word grail is a metaphorical development of stories that grew up in the Middle Ages within the Arthurian legend. The metaphorical sense fits all of them, but they have little else in common. As R.S. Loomis said, they seem to delight in contradicting each other on important points: on the number of kings in the Grail castle, their names, their physical state, the cause and exact nature of ‘the Waste Land’, the name of the successful hero, and the form and attributes of the Grail itself. We might add to Loomis’s list that they also disagree about the objects and ceremonies associated with the Grail, where it is to be found, what the hero has to do to ‘achieve’ it and the nature of the transformation that the achievement will bring about. Their treatment of the Grail itself illustrates that range of variation. Richard O’Gorman, in an essay in the standard reference work, listed the forms that the grail takes in the principal texts.1 His list presents some problems, but they do not affect the present argument. He notes that the earliest surviving Grail romance, Chrétien de Troyes’s Perceval, introduces the central object not as the Grail but as a grail,2 which suggests that it was not unique but a member of a class of objects that Chrétien’s audience would be able to visualize. A near contemporary called Hélinand described a grail as a wide, moderately deep dish, usually made of silver or some other precious metal, used for serving expensive meats in their broth to the rich, ‘one morsel after another’.3 That takes us some way towards being able to visualize Chrétien’s Grail too. Within a generation, however, the word was being used for some very different objects. O’Gorman says that Robert de Boron, who wrote for a Frenchspeaking audience in Chrétien’s part of France, describes the Grail as a cup for drinking wine, remarkable for the way it was used – to collect the blood that 1 2 3

‘Grail’, in The New Arthurian Encyclopedia, ed. Norris J. Lacy et al. (New York, 1991), pp. 212–13. Le Roman de Perceval, ed. Keith Busby (Tübingen, 1993), vs. 3220. Richard Barber, The Holy Grail: Imagination and Belief (Cambridge, MA, 2004), p. 94.

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Christ shed on the Cross – but not apparently for its appearance.4 Wolfram von Eschenbach said that the Grail was a stone or lapsit exillis, whatever a lapsit exillis might be.5 The Welsh Peredur said the Grail was a large salver, big enough to contain (and which did in fact contain) a man’s head swimming in blood; it took two damsels to carry it. The French Prose Lancelot made the Grail into a chalice, the vessel used to hold the wine consecrated in the Mass. In the Queste del Saint Graal, according to O’Gorman, the Grail ‘becomes synonymous with the beatific vision’, and he adds that the same is true in Malory’s Morte Darthur. We may add that medieval artists who portray the Grail do not always follow their authors faithfully. What an author says is a dish, his illustrator may present as a chalice, and what an author says is a chalice, his illustrator may present as a ciborium or a pyx, which are vessels used for containing the hosts consecrated at Mass. (They have lids, chalices do not.6) There are even cases of artists portraying the Grail in different forms in the same manuscript.7 These disagreements suggest that authors and artists of the period did not have a firm belief that a grail was a serving dish, perhaps because the word was not as widely current among French speakers generally as it had been in Chrétien’s circle. They therefore re-imagined the grail directly or indirectly on the basis of Chrétien’s story, and usually associated it with the Eucharist, no doubt because Chrétien had said that the Grail was ‘a holy thing’ that contained the single consecrated host that kept the Maimed King alive,8 and perhaps also because he introduced that explanation by saying that the Grail did not contain a pike or a lamprey or a salmon. Early Christian iconography used a fish as the symbol for Christ because the Greek word ̛̝̙̐̏ (‘fish’) was an acronym of ‘Jesus Christ, Son of God, Saviour’. That produced a tradition of representing the Last Supper with a serving dish in front of Christ that contains a fish, to show that he has changed the bread in the dish into his body.9 The fish of course is merely a visual code signifying that what would have looked like bread was neither bread or fish, but the Body of Christ. Chrétien’s absent fish may have done the same, and also reminded his audience that the dish into which Christ and Judas dipped their hands at the Last Supper would have been a dish like the Grail. The iconography of the fish would have reminded any of his audience who were sufficiently historically minded to reflect that the tableware used by

4

5

6

7 8 9

As an example of the problems with O’Gorman’s list, Richard Barber (The Holy Grail, p. 41) says that Robert says clearly that the Grail is the ‘vessel’ in which Christ broke bread at the Last Supper, which should make it a dish rather than a cup (cf. Matt. 26:23, Mk 14:20), but that he then goes on to associate the Grail with the chalice, patten and corporal used in the Mass and to call the chalice ‘the vessel of the sacrament’. See Timothy McFarland, ‘The Emergence of the German Grail Romance: Wolfram von Eschenbach, Parzival’, The Arthur of the Germans: The Arthurian Legend in Medieval German and Dutch Literature, ed. W.H. Jackson and S.A. Ranawake (Cardiff, 2000), pp. 54–68, at p. 57. At various points in the Mass, a patten (a small plate used to catch any fragment that falls from the host) is put on top of the chalice. The patten then acts as a lid, but one easily distinguished from the lid of a pyx or ciborium. Seen from the side, the latter are dome-shaped, topped by a knob, a cross, or other decorative feature that serves as a handle. If the patten has any convexity, it is slight and in the opposite direction; the priest holds it by the edge. For examples, see Martine Meuwese’s paper in this volume. Perceval, vss. 6417–25 (pp. 271–72). Matt. 26:23–26, Mk 14:20–22; Barber p. 143 and Appendix 2.

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an itinerant Palestinian preacher and his followers would hardly have been of the ‘silver or some other precious metal’ specified by Hélinand,10 and that those who were served from them were not ‘the rich’, that the contents of that dish made it the most precious in the world, whatever it was made from, and made those who were served from it correspondingly rich in the only way that really mattered. The story might have evolved straightforwardly from that point if Robert de Boron had not complicated it by bringing into it the other vessel recorded as having been used at the Last Supper, the cup filled with wine that Christ blessed and gave to the apostles, saying ‘This is my blood’.11 With both the dish and the cup in the story, the options proliferated and have at times left even modern scholarship in a tangle. No less a work than the Oxford English Dictionary defines the Grail as being ‘in mediaeval legend’ the platter used at the Last Supper, in which Joseph of Arimathea received Christ’s blood at the Crucifixion.12 That is an unhappy combination of incompatible versions of the legend. The crucifixion part comes from Robert de Boron, the platter (more or less) from Chrétien. One has to say ‘more or less’ because a platter is a flat plate,13 and no cook would serve broth on a flat plate, nor would anyone in his right mind try to collect blood on one. Nevertheless, it was thought at one time that Chrétien’s audience would have visualized a grail as a platter, and the Oxford lexicographers were not alone in failing to register the contradiction. O’Gorman himself, in his article about the Grail both quotes the document that shows grails were used to hold liquid and speaks of Chrétien’s Grail as a platter. Faced with such confusion, I should like to try seeing what is really said about the Grail in the best known Grail story in English, Malory’s Morte Darthur.14 The most striking feature of Malory’s Grail is its elusiveness. It is not even mentioned for a long time – longer, in fact, than in almost any of the other Grail stories we have considered15 – and when it is mentioned, what is said is at first quite unrevealing. The first of the eight tales that make up the Morte Darthur begins by telling how Arthur becomes king and puts down a series of rebellions. After that, Merlin makes a monument containing statues of Arthur’s defeated enemies, each holding a candle that burns day and night. He says the candles will go out ‘aftir the adventures of the Sankgreall that shall com amonge you and be encheved’ (78). The Sankgreall is of course the Holy Grail in Malory’s sort of French. Merlin then says that Arthur’s best knight, Balin, will strike the Dolorous Stroke, ‘whereof shall fall great vengeaunce’. Most of the references to the Grail in this tale are connected with Balin. They form part of a network of 10 11 12 13 14

15

A point strongly made in the film Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, dir. Steven Spielberg (Paramount,1989). Matt. 26:28, Mk 14:24. Oxford English Dictionary, 3rd edn, grail2. OED, platter1. Sir Thomas Malory, The Works, ed. Eugène Vinaver, three consecutively paginated volumes, rev. P.J.C. Field (Oxford, 1990). References to Malory are to this edition, parenthetically by page. The exception, both absolutely and relatively, is the Prose Lancelot, if it is considered as an independent work rather than as part of the Vulgate Cycle.

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prophecy and allusion between Balin and Galahad, the eventual Grail-winner in the sixth tale, which is the densest network of cross-references in Malory’s book,16 but the references forward to the story of Galahad raise more questions than they answer. The next reference to the Grail comes while Balin is on a quest, and a damsel who is accompanying him gives blood to heal a lady who has been ill for many years (82). The attempt fails, but the narrator remarks that it says later ‘in the Sankgreall’ that Sir Perceval’s sister succeeded, but died doing so. Then, at the critical point in Balin’s quest, he wounds King Pellam of Lystenoyse, and the narrator comments that Pellam lies ill for many years, until ‘Galaad the Hawte Prynce’ heals him in the quest of the Sankegreall (85). Soon afterwards, Balin is killed, and Merlin fixes Balin’s sword into a stone that will float down-river to Camelot on the day that Galahad the Haute Prince arrives there, as it says ‘in the booke of the Sankegreall’ (92). In the next episode, when Arthur seems unwilling to listen to a warning from Merlin, Merlin changes the subject, ‘turn[ing] his tale to the adventures of the Sankegreal’ (97). Several episodes later, a discontented knight who has left Arthur’s court comes across ‘a braunche of holy herbe that was a signe of the Sancgreall’ in a forest, and the narrator says that ‘no knyght founde no suche tokyns but he were a good lyver and a man of prouesse’ (132). Finally, at the end of this tale, we are told that Pelleas, the hero of one of the final episodes, ‘was one of the foure that encheved the Sankgreall’ (180). These seven passages tell us nothing about the Grail and very little about anything connected with it, except that the adventures of the Grail, whatever they are, lie many years in the future. When we do know something – about Galahad and Perceval’s sister, for instance – we do not know if it is important or not. Merlin’s knowledge emphasizes our ignorance. ‘The Book of the Sankgreal’ might tell us more, but we do not know what it is. It might be Malory’s own Grail story, the sixth tale of the Morte Darthur. It might be a French Grail story thought of as a continuation of Malory’s current source, and if so, since his current source is the Post-Vulgate Suite de Merlin, ‘the Book of the Sankgreal’ might be the Post-Vulgate Queste del Saint Graal.17 But there are other possibilities, as we shall see. As usual, Malory gives very little explanation, a technique that contrasts strikingly with John Steinbeck’s disastrous attempt to relate the same events with explanations in his Acts of King Arthur.18 Malory’s style makes his story even more opaque than it is in his sources. His paratactic prose creates a vivid factual-seeming narrative, but one that tends to leave causes and relationships obscure.19 What Merlin says about the Grail and about the Dolorous Stroke, for instance, seem quite unrelated. We only discover that there is a relationship

16 17

18 19

Murray J. Evans, ‘Ordinatio and Narrative Links: The Impact of Malory’s Tales as a “hoole book” ’, Studies in Malory, ed. James W. Spisak (Kalamazoo, MI, 1985), pp. 29–52. See La Version Post-Vulgate de la ‘Queste del Saint Graal’ et de la ‘Mort Artu’, ed. Fanni Bogdanow, 4 vols in 5 (Paris, 1991–2001). The episode of Perceval’s sister and the leper lady is at §§ 433, 435–39. The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights, ed. Chase Horton (New York, 1976). For Malory’s grammar, see Bonnie Wheeler, ‘Romance and Parataxis and Malory’, Arthurian Literature XII (Cambridge, 1993), 109–32.

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when Balin comes to King Pellam’s castle and is drawn into his fight with the king. His sword breaks and he flees through the castle until he comes to a rich chamber containing a bed with someone in it and a wonderful spear on a gold table.20 Balin seizes the spear and strikes Pellam down, whereupon the whole castle collapses and most of its inhabitants are killed by the dolorous stroke’ (85). The narrator then says, And Kynge Pellam lay so many yerys sore wounded, and myght never be hole tylle that Galaad the Hawte Prynce heled hym in the queste of the Sankgreall. For in that place was parte of the bloode of Oure Lorde Jesu Cryste, which Joseph off Aramathy brought into thys londe. And there hymselff lay in that ryche bedde, and that was the spere whych Longeus smote Oure Lorde with to the herte. And Kynge Pellam was nyghe of Joseph his kynne, … and grete pité hit was of hys hurte, for thorow that stroke hit turned to grete dole, tray, and tene. (85)

This is the longest passage of explanation about the Grail in the first two-thirds of the Morte Darthur. It tells us something about the relationship between the Grail and the Dolorous Stroke, and other passages nearby tell us about of the trail of death and disaster that gives the Dolorous Stroke its name: the stroke causes King Pellam’s wound, the deaths of most of the people in his castle and, as we discover a few lines later, the deaths of so many other people in the region that three countries are said to have been ‘destroyed’. Once again, however, more questions arise. A reader who knew the Grail stories might expect the Grail to be standing on that table, but it is not mentioned. Any reader might expect the new people and things introduced by this passage, Galahad the Hawte Prynce, Joseph of Arimathea, Longeus, the Holy Blood and the spear that pierced Christ’s heart, to be put into context in some way, but hardly any context is given. Compare these things with the terse reference to St Paul’s Cathedral in London in the opening pages of the Morte Darthur (12). We accept that because we know or guess that St Paul’s exists outside Malory’s book, and we could find out more if we chose to. Similarly the reference to Uther Pendragon in Malory’s very first sentence (7): Uther may be pseudo-historical, but there are documents that agree on the broad outlines of a (pseudo-)biography, which we could investigate if we chose. It is difficult, however, to do the same for the new names in the passage we have been considering, because, although they appear in other Grail stories, those stories disagree radically about them. That problem might be solved if the Morte Darthur showed us how to choose among those divergent voices. Malory’s ninety or so respectful references to his ‘French books’, that is, to his major sources,21 might do that. What he says about his French books is not always true, but it would be worth checking if that is the case for the French book on which he based his Grail story, the Vulgate 20

21

In Malory’s source, the spear stands in an orcele of gold and silver: ‘The Dolorous Stroke (from MS. Cambridge Add. 7071)’ in Fanni Bogdanow, The Romance of the Grail (Manchester, 1966), pp. 241–49, at p. 245. An orcele is a holy water stoup; its etymology suggests they were usually made of earthenware. See Robert H. Wilson, ‘Malory’s “French Book” Again’, Comparative Literature 2 (1950), 172– 81.

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Queste del Saint Graal, since he praised it more highly than any of his other sources, introducing it as ‘a tale chronicled for one of the truest and one of the holiest that is in this world’ (847). He also followed it more closely than any of his other sources, with the result that his Grail story and the Vulgate Queste say very similar things about characters and objects named in this passage, and as it happens, several of his other sources either agree with or make harmonious additions to what Malory and the Queste say. The passage we have been considering, however, is strangely at odds with that happy consensus. The passage says that Galahad the Hawte Prynce takes part in the grail quest: the other texts say that he dies beforehand, and the Galahad who takes part in the Grail quest is Lancelot’s son. The passage says that the Galahad who takes part in the Grail quest heals King Pellam of Lystenoyse: the other texts say he heals a maimed king called Pelleans, the father of Pelles, who is called ‘the king of the foreign country’ (793, 989–90, 1026–30).22 They also say that Galahad heals a second maimed king called Evelak, who was converted to Christianity by Joseph of Arimathea, but struck blind for presumption and confined to a sick bed for four hundred years, until Galahad healed him too (907–8, 1026). In addition, at the end of this tale, Malory says that Pelleas will be one of four knights who achieve the Holy Grail, but the other texts say there are three successful Grail knights, and Pelleas is not among them. A plausible biographical explanation is not hard to find. It seems likely that Malory had not read the Vulgate Queste for some time, and that his memory of it was not reliable. So he confused the two Galahads and slid spectacularly from Pellam to Pelleans to Pelles to Evelak to Joseph of Arimathea. Similarly, at the end of this tale, he not only confused Pelleas with Perceval but turned the three successful Grail knights in the Queste (Galahad, Perceval and Bors) into four by unconsciously promoting his favourite knight Launcelot, who hangs between success and failure in Malory’s own Grail story and in his source. A biographer might feel positive about all this, because it suggests that the eight tales of the Morte Darthur were written in the order in which they now stand, something that is often assumed, but for which there is very little hard evidence. The biographer’s pleasure, however, would be a lonely one. Mere readers of the Morte Darthur are faced with an extra difficulty: when Malory’s book speaks of the Holy Grail, it is not only unforthcoming and enigmatic, but self-contradictory. We shall have to return to this. After Malory’s first tale, his grail becomes even more elusive. After the seven references in the first tale, which runs to some 50,000 words,23 it is only mentioned once in the next 180,000 words,24 which constitutes more than half the total length of the Morte Darthur.25 It is not mentioned at all in the second, third, or 22 23 24 25

The French forms of Pellam and Pelleans are sufficiently similar to be taken as different versions of the same name, but they are wounded in quite different ways. My estimate is 51,300. My estimate is 176,200 words from the beginning of the second tale to the end of what Vinaver called the ‘Sir Palomides’ section of the fifth tale. The Morte Darthur is 343,119 words long according to Tomomi Kato, A Concordance to the Works of Sir Thomas Malory (Tokyo, 1974), p. 1659.

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fourth tales, although a reader familiar with the literature of the Grail might feel as if the shadow of the Grail was passing by in one episode in the third: T.S. Eliot apparently did so.26 That episode, the Chapel Perilous story, does not name the Grail, but it stands out among adventures largely concerned with chivalry because of the prominence in it of the supernatural, and of strange vices and of destinies operating by a system of causality that is not of this world. These features come straight from Malory’s source, an episode from Perlesvaus, a Grail romance that he seems to have known quite well.27 The single explicit reference to the Grail in this part of the Morte Darthur comes in the middle of the long fifth tale (614–15). The good knight Dinadan rescues Arthur’s worthless nephews Aggravayne and Mordred from the villainous Brewnys Saunce Pité, only to have them try to kill him because of an old feud. Dinadan unhorses both of them without difficulty; but the narrator observes that aftir, in the queste of the Sankgreal, cowardly and felonsly they slew sir Dynadan, whyche was a grete dammage.

Although this passage is as uninformative as the references to the Grail in the first tale, it has important implications. The only Grail story in which Mordred and Aggravayne murder Dinadan is one of the versions of the French Prose Tristan.28 It seems therefore that Malory’s grail narrative draws on at least four Grail romances: the Vulgate, the Post-Vulgate, the Prose Tristan and Perlesvaus. It may draw on others as well.29 26

27

28

29

Eliot’s notes to The Waste Land call lines 385–94 of the poem ‘the approach to the Chapel Perilous’ and refer his readers to Jessie Weston’s From Ritual to Romance, which has a chapter called ‘The Perilous Chapel’ that reconstructs an archetypal episode about the chapel from elements of six Old French romances. Eliot’s word-order, however (Chapel Perilous rather than Perilous Chapel), must surely derive from the Morte Darthur: cf. Works pp. 279–80. P.J.C. Field, ‘Malory and Perlesvaus’, in Malory: Texts and Sources (Cambridge, 1998), pp. 224–35. To that, add that Malory’s statement that the French book does not say whether or not the greatest church in London in Arthur’s day was St Paul’s Cathedral (12.26–27) is likely to have been prompted by Perlesvaus saying that St Paul’s was newly built in Arthur’s day: Le Haut Livre du Graal: Perlesvaus, ed. W.A. Nitze and T.A. Jenkins, 2 vols (Chicago, 1932–37), I, p. 30. Eilert Löseth, Le Roman en prose de Tristan, le roman de Palamède, et la compilation de Rusticien de Pise: Analyse critique d’après les manuscrits de Paris (Paris, 1890), §§ 609–13 for the murder; cf. Emmanuèle Baumgartner, Le ‘Tristan en prose’: Essai d’interprétation d’un roman médiéval (Geneva, 1975), pp. 71–76 for the relevant version of the Tristan (‘Version IV’). The PostVulgate Queste names Dinadan without details in a list of those killed during the quest by Gauvain, Agravain and Mordred; see Bogdanow, §362. Some elements of the passage quoted above from the first tale may come from the Estoire del saint Graal, one of several romances that say that Joseph of Arimathea brought the Holy Blood to Britain, but the only one to imply that Galahad’s grandfather King Pelles was a kinsman of Joseph’s (specifically, a descendant of Joseph’s brother-in-law); see G.D. West, An Index of the Proper Names in French Arthurian Prose Romance (Toronto, 1978), s.vv. Joseph1, Bron and Josue2. Most of the relationship is implied by a passage near the end of the Estoire (see The Vulgate Version of the Arthurian Romances, ed. H.O. Sommer, 8 vols (Washington, D.C., 1908–16), I, pp. 289–90), but Malory would have had to read the remainder of the romance with some care to find the rest. The name ‘Longeus’ (i.e., Longinus) in the passage must derive from another source. John Hardyng’s Chronicle may have suggested that the Grail was to be found in Wales, an idea compatible with Malory’s Pelles being king of ‘the forayne contré’ (793–94) and his castle of Blyaunte being not in England (827.12), yet both country and castle apparently being reachable without a sea-crossing.

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That means that if Malory is unclear or contradicts himself, there is no single text we can turn to knowing that what it says on the issue will be what Malory wanted his book to say. That state of uncertainty, however, fits in with the way Malory habitually presents himself, as a storyteller of limited knowledge and abilities.30 It is natural enough that such a person should have to choose between competing sources, and that both he and the sources he chooses – even the sources he is most enthusiastic about – may make mistakes. Fallibility in a narrator is entirely compatible with a powerful story.31 In the last part of the fifth tale, everything suddenly changes. A hermit appears in Arthur’s court at Pentecost and reveals that the destined Grail knight is about to be conceived. Soon Launcelot comes to King Pelles’s castle of Corbenic and finds himself at a meal at which a dove flies in carrying a golden censer in its beak, the air is filled with sweet smells, the tables are miraculously covered with food and drink and a damsel enters the hall carrying ‘a vessell of golde betwyxt her hondis’ (793). The vessel is the Holy Grail, and although it appears on nine other occasions, this is the fullest description we get. Soon afterwards, Launcelot’s cousin Bors comes to Corbenic and the Grail appears again, in a very similar scene (798). Later still, Perceval, questing in a nameless forest, fights another knight and they give each other what seem to be mortal wounds (815). When he commends himself to God, however, the Grail appears and heals them both. We are told that Perceval is able to see the vessel and the damsel who is carrying it ‘in both her hondys’ because of his faith and chastity. His opponent (who is Launcelot’s brother Ector), however, seems to know more about what is happening, although he sees nothing at all. He explains, Hit is an holy vessell that is borne by a mayden, and therein ys a part of the bloode of Oure Lorde Jesu Cryste. But hit may nat be sene … but yff hit be hy a parfyte man.

The Grail appears for the fourth and last time in this tale when Launcelot, who has gone mad, comes by chance to Corbenic (824). He is carried into a chamber in a tower where the Holy Grail is, a holy man uncovers it and Launcelot is immediately healed. Even from these four brief appearances, it is clear that O’Gorman was wrong to say that Malory’s Grail is the beatific vision. It has a physical existence as a gold dish that can be carried by one young woman, who needs to use both hands to carry it. That we are told so little, however, suggests that its physical appearance is unimportant. Similarly, the variety of circumstances in which it appears suggests that its circumstances too are unimportant. In some stories, it appears only in an elaborate procession in the Grail Castle, but in the Morte Darthur it appears in different places, accompanied by different objects, with or without a bearer, who may or may not be visible. What is constant about 30 31

P.J.C. Field, Romance and Chronicle (London, 1971), pp. 142–59; and ‘Author, Scribe and Reader in Malory: The Case of Harleuse and Peryne’, Malory: Texts and Sources, pp. 72–88. I do not, however, share Phillip Boardman’s view, presented elsewhere in this volume, of a discrepancy between a magical Grail in his fifth tale and a supernatural one in his sixth.

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Malory’s Grail is that it is holy. Everywhere, both words and symbols constantly stress its holiness. Malory always names it as the Sankegreall or the Holy Grayle; and when he describes it, speaks of it as ‘the holy vessel’, with a few exceptions for what appear to be special reasons. Holiness denotes the qualities that constitute the divine nature, and its root meaning suggests that those qualities are distanced in one way or another from the world of human experience.32 Whether within a Judaeo-Christian frame of reference or that of another religion, the holy is likely to be mysterious, and its operations hard to predict beforehand and to explain afterwards. Many Christian concepts – justification, for example – have developed precise meanings with profound implications for the way the believer lives and sees the world, but holiness pushes in the opposite direction. That fits in well with Arthurian romance, which generally eschews intellectual precision, and nowhere more than in theology. Some Arthurian romances, however, are exceptions to this rule, and Malory used two of them. Perlesvaus contains echoes of the writings of Peter the Venerable that endorse a Cluniac view of life, and the Vulgate Queste is packed with echoes of Bernard of Clairvaux that endorse Cistercian spirituality.33 The Queste is particularly important to the Morte Darthur because Malory’s sixth tale followed its story closely, but he seems to have felt uncomfortable with its thoroughgoing condemnation of secular life. He humanized it considerably, largely by drastically pruning the severe sermon-commentaries of a series of authority figures,34 while at the same time keeping and even increasing its stress on holiness (847). In consequence, his narrative is left to a great extent to speak for itself, but what it says leaves much unexplained. The ever elusive Holy Grail plays a key part in shaping the implied message of the story, producing a stream of supernatural effects, generally positive ones like healing, miraculously abundant food, sweet smells and prophetic dreams, but also including ferocious punishments, especially for presumption. These events must be seen as miracles – that is, as divine interventions in the natural order – produced by a powerful supernatural being who is directing events in detail, but the story avoids generalizing about the nature and intentions of that being. Such explanations as we are given focus not on theology, but on what individuals are required to do. Where Chaucer had speculated at length on the compatibility of divine foreknowledge and human freewill, Langland on the salvation of the virtuous pagan, and the Gawain-poet on whether a venial sin became a mortal sin if you mistakenly believed it was mortal,35 Malory emphasizes that Launcelot needs to wear a hair shirt and stop committing adultery (897, 927). Although the Morte Darthur offers so little in the way of religious explanation, 32 33

34 35

OED, holy, a (n), 2. William Roach, ‘Eucharistic Tradition in the Perlesvaus,’ Zeitschrift für Romanische Philologie, 59 (1939), 10–56, at pp. 53–56, citing Nitze 2:86–8; Fanni Bogdanow, ‘An Interpretation of the Meaning and Purpose of the Vulgate Queste del Saint Graal in the Light of the Mystical Theology of St Bernard’, The Changing Face of Arthurian Romance, ed. Alison Adams et al. (Woodbridge, 1986), pp. 23–46. Cf. Eugène Vinaver, ed., Works of Sir Thomas Malory, pp. 1535–38. Geoffrey Chaucer, Troilus and Criseyde 4:953–1085 (= The Riverside Chaucer, ed. Larry D. Benson, 3rd edn [Boston, 1987], pp. 550–52 and notes); William Langland, The Vision of Piers the Plowman: A Complete Edition of the B-Text, ed. A.V.C. Schmidt (London, 1978), pp. 334–35

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the fifth tale endorses one religious practice that has theological implications. The effects that the Grail produces are very much what the late Middle Ages expected from relics, and the inhabitants of Corbenic, who know more than anyone else about the Grail, treat it as a holy relic, like the bones of a saint or a fragment of the True Cross. This would have been uncontroversial in Malory’s time, when almost everyone believed that relics were localized embodiments of God’s power and favour, but it is remarkable partly because Malory gives so few explanations, explicit or implied, and partly because he seems to have invented this one. His source, the French Prose Tristan, says that the two knights are healed by the vessel from which Our Lord ate the Lamb on the day of Pasques with his disciples,36 in other words by the dish that contained the bread that Christ consecrated at the Last Supper. Malory, however, has the cure effected not by the vessel but by what it contains, the blood of Christ, the holiest relic imaginable, and a relic to which Malory may have had a personal devotion.37 Malory’s change has a double effect: we know a little more about the history of the Grail, because Malory’s wording endorses at least in part the story that he mentions twice elsewhere (85, 846) of Christ’s blood being brought to Britain by Joseph of Arimathea, but we know a little less about the Grail itself, because Malory’s words do not authorize us to imagine it as a particular type of vessel – as a dish, for instance, rather than a cup. Let us now consider what further clarifications, if any, may be added by the sixth tale. The tale opens by saying that it is about the Holy Grail, but the Grail appears only six times. The first time is in Arthur’s court at the beginning of the quest, amid thunder and a supernaturally bright sunbeam that illuminates everyone present with ‘the grace of the Holy Goste’ (865). They are all transfigured, but unable to speak. The Grail appears, apparently unsupported, produces the familiar abundance of food and drink, and vanishes, whereupon they find themselves able to speak again. The phrase about grace is in a linguistic register that Malory normally avoids, that of theology, and the beginning of the scene echoes the description of the descent of the Holy Ghost on the apostles at the beginning of the Acts of the Apostles (2:1–13). Together they suggest an explicitly Christian interpretation, but the rest of the scene does not develop this as might be expected. In the scene in Acts, those present promptly speak in tongues, whereas the way Arthur’s knights lose and recover their speech recalls rather the conception and birth of John the Baptist (Luke 1:18–64). The mysterious disappearance of the Grail has no counterpart in Acts, but perhaps echoes the disappearance of Christ after the meal at Emmaus (Luke 24:31). The transfiguration of Arthur’s household recalls the Transfiguration of Christ, but only if the story is associated with statements in the New Testament that those

36

37

(note to XI.140); P.J.C. Field, ‘A Rereading of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight’, Studies in Philology, 68 (1971), 255–69. ‘li vaissaus u Nostres Sires menja l’aignel le jour de Pasques avoeuques ses desciples’: Le roman de Tristan en prose, vol. 6, ed. Emmanuèle Baumgartner and Michèle Szkilnik (Geneva, 1993), p. 183 (= § 65). See, for instance, Richard Barber, ‘Malory and the Holy Blood of Hailes,’ The Medieval Book and a Modern Collector, ed. T. Matsuda et al. (Cambridge, 2004), pp. 279–84.

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who are saved will become like their redeemer (Matthew 17:2, Revelation 21:1). After suggesting an interpretation in Christian terms, the scene seems to refuse to settle on a paradigm that would provide a basis for actual judgements. The next episodes involve Launcelot. Early in the quest, he finds himself at an old chapel (893). A broken door keeps him out, so he lies down to sleep outside and falls into a trance, in which he sees a sick knight carried towards him on a litter. The Grail appears on the silver table that Launcelot saw it standing on at Corbenic, the knight crawls towards it, touches it and is healed; and it disappears into the chapel. Launcelot remains unable to move, and the sick knight’s squire says that the trance must have been caused by an unconfessed mortal sin. The next episode confirms that. The next encounter with the Grail comes towards the end of the tale. Launcelot is carried by a supernaturally controlled ship to Corbenic, where his prayers open a door in the keep, and he sees a brilliant light, in the middle of which is the Grail on its silver table surrounded by angels, with a priest in front of it, apparently at the consecration of a Mass (1014). Launcelot sees three men above the priest’s hands, the youngest of whom is put into the priest’s hands by the other two, and the priest raises him up like the consecrated host, for the congregation to see. Launcelot thinks the priest is going to drop his burden, and despite a supernatural warning, runs forward to help him, but is struck down by a blast of fire that leaves him deaf, blind and paralysed. The inhabitants of Corbenic find Launcelot and care for him for twenty-five days. He then wakes up and says he has seen the ‘mervayles of secretnesse’ of Jesus Christ, which no tongue can tell and no heart can think. He also says that he would have seen even more but for his earlier sins, but accepts that he will see no more now. At his last meal in Corbenic, the table is filled with every kind of food by the Grail, but it is not described and may not be visible (1018). During the meal, the doors and windows close without human agency to shut out an unworthy knight, who turns out to be Launcelot’s brother Ector. Much of what happens in these encounters with the Grail is unexplained, as usual, but one element is very clear. What Launcelot sees in the Grail Chapel in Corbenic is a symbolic representation of a number of dogmas central to Catholic Christianity: the Trinity, the Incarnation and transubstantiation. Perhaps surprisingly, Malory, who rarely shows much interest in intellectual precision, takes the trouble to make his source’s representation of transubstantiation slightly more orthodox. The Queste says that its Lancelot sees the two men put the third into the priest’s hands when he raises his hands at the elevation of the host: Malory says they do it when the priest says the words of consecration. In the Morte Darthur, therefore, there is no question of the elements being transformed by the faith of the congregation rather than by the priest’s words.38 The remaining three appearances of the Grail all centre on Galahad. The first

38

Works, pp. 1015.30–31, cf. Pauline Matarasso, trans. The Quest of the Holy Grail (Harmondsworth, 1969), p. 262n. What the Queste says would be compatible with a form of ‘receptionism’: cf. The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, ed. F.L. Cross (London, 1966), ‘Receptionism’; K.B. McFarlane, Wycliffe and English Nonconformity (Harmondsworth, 1972), p. 81.

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comes when the destined knights arrive at Corbenic (1027). Appropriately, it is the fullest of all, and is enhanced by several other Grail-related adventures that reach their fulfilment at the same time. When the knights are in the Grail Chapel, Joseph of Arimathea appears to them, carried down from heaven, dressed as a bishop, in a throne-like chair carried by angels. (I assume we should imagine something like the papal sedes gestatoria.) The angels carry him to the silver table on which the Grail stands and bring in candles, which they put on the table, a towel, which they put over the Grail, and a spear dripping blood, which they stand upright in the Grail. Joseph then begins the consecration part of a Mass. He takes a host out of the Grail, consecrates it and elevates it, and the knights see a child with a face like fire ‘smite himself’ into the host. Joseph puts the host back in the Grail, gives Galahad the Kiss of Peace and vanishes; Christ himself then appears out of the Grail, recognizable by the signs of his Passion, and gives the knights Holy Communion from the Grail. He tells Galahad that what he is holding is ‘the holy dysshe wherein I ete the lambe on Estir Day’, but that although Galahad has seen what he desired to see, he and his companions must go to the city of Sarras to see it more openly. He then blesses them and vanishes. The companions leave Corbenic and find a ship where the Grail is already waiting for them, standing on its silver table covered in red samite (1032). Their voyage is apparently supernaturally controlled by the Grail, because after what seems to be their first night’s sleep they wake up off the city of Sarras, which Arthurian geography put in or near the Holy Land.39 When they go ashore, the three knights set about carrying the table into the city. When they have difficulties, Galahad tells a crippled old man to help, and as soon as he tries to do so he is miraculously restored to health, echoing a well-known cure in the gospels (Matthew 9.6). Rumours of the cure lead the king, who is a pagan, to throw them into an oubliette, but the Grail feeds them until the king is dying, whereupon he repents and sets them free. A supernatural voice then tells the citizens to make Galahad king, and he puts the Grail in a place of honour and makes a tabernacle of gold and precious stones to house it.40 A year later, he and his companions come to their improvised chapel and find a man dressed as a bishop kneeling before the Grail, surrounded by angels (1034). He says a Mass of Our Lady, then tells Galahad to come forward to see what he has desired to see. We are not told what that is, only that Galahad trembles when he sees it, and asks God to be allowed to die. He receives Holy Communion, kisses Perceval and Bors and duly dies; and they see his soul carried up to heaven by angels, and a hand come down and take the Grail to heaven for ever. There is a curious antithesis in Launcelot and Galahad’s experiences of the Grail: as their knowledge increases, ours tapers off. Even with Launcelot’s experiences, the combination of Malory’s enigmatic style with Launcelot’s statement that he has seen things that no tongue can tell and no heart can think makes us aware that we do not know whether the ‘mervayles of secretnesse’ 39 40

West, Index, Sarras2. The Middle English Dictionary cites tabernacle in this sense from 1425.

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that Launcelot sees are simply what he saw in his vision in the Grail chapel or something more that he saw during his twenty-five-day trance, or a more profound understanding of one or the other or both. In Galahad’s first encounter in the Grail chapel, the vision conveys in a different image the same message as Launcelot’s earlier vision in the same place about one of the doctrines involved (transubstantiation), and nothing at all about the others. What Galahad sees at Sarras we simply do not know: we see only its effects on him. The sequence suggests that Galahad is leaving ordinary sinful mortals behind. He progresses to a state in which he can grasp as much of the divine mysteries as the human mind is capable of: we are left with images that provide an emotional equivalent to familiar ideas. Both these images and the occasional religious terms in the story that verge on the technical language of learned clerks rather than lay people are entirely orthodox in terms of religion as Malory knew it. Both are therefore familiar even if, given the paradoxes at the heart of Christianity, the ideas they convey are also intrinsically mysterious. At one point, however, Malory goes beyond his source and beyond familiar truths expressed in familiar images to achieve a level of sublimity that he never achieves elsewhere. As we have seen, the most authoritative voice in his story, Christ himself, explains what the Grail is. It is ‘the holy dysshe wherein I ete the lambe on Estir Day’. Malory’s source had explained (in the third person) that it was ‘the platter in which Jesus Christ partook of the lamb on the day of Pasques with his disciples’.41 This is almost the same wording as the source of Malory’s fifth tale used in the passage that we considered earlier. In both French texts, Pasques, which normally means Easter, must, as the reference to the disciples shows, refer to the Jewish Passover, from which the word derives,42 and specifically to the Passover during which Christ instituted the sacrament of his body and blood, the first Maundy Thursday. Malory changed both these statements, but in very different ways. Like the earlier change, this one seems to have been prompted by a personal religious devotion, but the choice of devotion may have been effectively decided by Malory’s limited command of French.43 It seems likely that he translated Pasques as Eastir Day because he did not know its other meaning (in which case we may be dealing with the most fortunate translation error in medieval literature), but that the status of Easter in his time then prompted him to a spiritual insight unparalleled in the Morte Darthur. Easter in late medieval England was elaborately prepared for and enacted by each community as the high point of the year, remembering Christ’s Passion, celebrating – above all in the reception of Communion – its own togetherness, and looking forward to eternity.44 The reference here must be to eternity: since Christ did not repeat on the first Easter Sunday what he had done at the Last Supper, and the celebrant in the Easter Sundays of Malory’s life would have 41 42 43 44

‘l’escuele ou Jhesucriz menja l’aignel le jor de Pasques o ses deciples’: La Queste del saint Graal, ed. Albert Pauphilet (Paris, 1923), p. 270.28–29. Early Christians saw Easter Sunday as the Christian Passover (cf. I Cor. 5:7). Margaret Malpas and P.J.C. Field, ‘French Words and Phrases in Sir Thomas Malory’s Le Morte Darthur’, Malory: Text and Sources, pp. 32–46. Eamon Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars (New Haven, CT, 1992), pp. 19, 30–31, 91–95, 126, and passim.

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been the parish priest, the Estir Day spoken of in this passage must be heaven, imaged as the mystical Supper of the Lamb beyond time and space. It was an easy transition to make, when every aspect of the religious worship, from the Easter communion to the ceremony of beating the parish bounds at Rogationtide, set the earthly community of the parish in the context of the eschatological community of heaven.45 Nevertheless, Malory’s narrative gain raises many questions that it leaves us quite unable to answer. We can at least say that the verb ete must be a continuous present, but we cannot say, for instance, whether the dish we see in this visionary scene is the one that was used at the Last Supper, or even whether it has the same mode of existence. Our inability to answer such questions, however, is both theologically appropriate (I Corinthians 2.9) and dramatically appropriate to Malory’s story and his status within it as a far from omniscient narrator. The homely and sublime image he provides fits precisely with his religious inclinations, extending his Grail story beyond the chosen few of his source, whose pursuit of perfection may put them in a different class even from the saved (cf. Matthew 19:16–21) to embrace those with whom the community of every parish in Malory’s lifetime symbolically identified itself every Easter, all those who would be saved: a great multitude, which no man could number, of all nations, and tribes, and peoples, and tongues, standing before the throne, and in the sight of the Lamb, clothed with white robes, and palms in their hands: [crying] in a loud voice, saying ‘Salvation to our God, who sitteth upon the throne, and to the Lamb.’ (Revelation 7.9–10)

It is natural to suppose that the disciples who were present at the Last Supper – or eleven of them, at any rate (Matthew 26:24, Mark 14:21) – are among the great multitude, but they would form such a small part of it that it is not surprising that Malory cut his source’s mention of them. Congruent as such a reading may be with Malory’s views of this world and the next, it was not to be available to his audience for four hundred years. His first printer, William Caxton, thought Estir Day was a mistake and corrected it, as he corrected many other readings in the Morte Darthur that he thought erroneous. Whether prompted by his knowledge of the gospels and the sixth tale’s emphasis on transubstantiation, or by one of what he called ‘the noble volumes of Saynt Graal’ that he had seen ‘beyonde the see’46 which said that the Grail was the dish used at the Last Supper, his changes made Christ say that the Grail is ‘the holy dysshe wherin I ete the lambe on sherethursday’. Sherethursday is Maundy Thursday, the day of the Last Supper.47 This reading was reproduced in all editions of the Morte Darthur until the Winchester manuscript was discovered in 1934. Its most important effect may be that David Jones

45 46 47

Duffy, pp. 136, 188. William Caxton, Epilogue to The Order of Chivalry (c. 1484) and Prologue to Le Morte Darthur (1485), in Caxton’s Own Prose, ed. Norman Blake (London, 1973), pp. 126.30, 107.74–76. shere is ‘shining’, ‘clean’, because Maundy Thursday was the day for confession before one’s Easter communion.

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used Caxton’s ‘Sherethursday’ as the title of a major section of his poem Anathemata, arguably the outstanding Arthurian poem of the twentieth century.48 The Winchester manuscript, however, makes it possible for us to see that Malory saw the Grail differently. He did not invent and it is hard to believe that he could have invented the mystical sublimity of the heavenly banquet, any more than he could have invented the doctrinal complexities figured in Launcelot’s vision at Corbenic. He might, however, have cut them both, as he did so much else, even in the Vulgate Queste. Instead, he took the doctrine from his source and the image of the heavenly banquet from the devotional practice of his time, and combined them into a statement that becomes the climax of the reader’s experience of Malory’s Grail story, which is the highest quest in Arthur’s ‘adventurous kingdom’. The scene is developed in a way particularly appropriate to the narrator of the Morte Darthur, who seems to stumble into his unique moment of illumination in much the same way as his favourite knight had stumbled into the Grail Chapel, to receive a measure of grace beyond his deserving. The references to the Grail in the last two tales of the Morte Darthur are retrospective, as of course they had to be. There are only three of them, but they remind us both positively and negatively of the power of the Grail. During the great roll-call of Knights of the Round Table who try to heal Urry of Hungary at the end of the seventh tale, the narrator remarks sorrowfully on the absence of Galahad and Perceval, who had died in the quest of the Holy Grail (1149), and the story of Launcelot and Guenivere that provides the leading theme in these tales is framed by remarks by Launcelot that remind readers that if he had kept to the resolve he made during the Grail quest, the whole tragedy of the Round Table would have been averted (1045, 1253).

48

David Jones, The Anathemata (London, 1952).

11 Glastonbury, the Grail-Bearer and the Sixteenth-Century Antiquaries1

JAMES P. CARLEY

As its title suggests, this chapter deals with the world of the printed book, when the Arthurian story was known in England primarily through Malory’s encyclopedic Morte Darthur. Although Caxton’s edition of the Morte continued to be reprinted throughout the sixteenth century, the comments of Queen Elizabeth’s tutor Roger Ascham in The scolemaster are representative of the mid-Tudor response to Malory. Ascham roundly condemned Le Morte d’Arthur, the whole pleasure of which booke standeth in two speciall poyntes, in open manslaughter and bold bawdrye: in which book they are counted the noblest knights that do kill most men without any quarrel, and commit fowlest adultries by subtlest shiftes: as Sir Launcelote with the wife of King Arthur his master.2

1

2

My topic, at least as far as it pertains to the theme of this collection, must be one of absence. The moment the Grail entered Glastonbury tradition it disappeared or at least was transmuted beyond recognition. Its guardian Joseph of Arimathea remained prominent both in the English context and internationally, however, and it is Joseph deprived of his Grail who forms the basis of my contribution. This essay forms a companion piece to my ‘Arthur and the Antiquaries’, in The Arthur of the Scholars: the Development and Dissemination of the Arthurian Legend in Medieval Latin, ed. Siân Echard, forthcoming. The locus classicus for the medieval accounts remains Valerie M. Lagorio’s ‘The Evolving Legend of St Joseph of Glastonbury’, in my Glastonbury Abbey and the Arthurian Tradition (Cambridge, 2001), pp. 55–81. (This, as well as all the other essays in Glastonbury Abbey and the Arthurian Tradition from which I quote, are reprinted, with or without revision, from elsewhere, but I do not give the original citations.) See also Daniel Scavone, ‘Joseph of Arimathea, the Holy Grail, and the Edessa Icon’, Arthuriana 9.4 (1999), 3–31. The scolemaster was completed shortly before Ascham’s death in 1568 and was printed in 1570. I quote from the second edition fol. 27r and v. There are hints of this negative attitude towards the Arthurian legend as early as 1539 when the ‘Declaration of the Faith, and a Justification of the Proceedings of King Henry the Eighth in matters of Religion; or a Summary Declaration of the Faith, Uses, and Observances in England’ stated in connection with the publication of the Great Bible and the royal injunctions of 1538 that: ‘Englishmen have now in hand in every Church and place, almost every Man, the Holy Bible and New Testament in their Mother Tongue, instead of the old fabulous and phantasticall Books of the Table round, Launcelot du Lake, Huon de Bourdeux, Bevy of Hampton, Guy of Warwick, &c, and such other, whose impure Filth and vain Fabulosity the Light of God has abolished utterly.’ Quoted in Joshua Phillips, ‘Chronicles of Wasted Time: Anthony Munday, Tudor Romance, and Literary Labor’, English Literary History, 73 (2006), 781–803, at p. 788.

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The criticism here, as befitted a schoolmaster, was a moral one. Unappealing to readers in the sixteenth century, Catholic and Protestant alike, were the literary accretions rather than the so-called historical realities that lay behind them, and it is with these latter that I shall be concerning myself in this chapter.3 It has long been fashionable to maintain that the British history as most fully articulated by Geoffrey of Monmouth fell into disrepute after a brief flowering under Henry VII as a result of emerging humanist methods of research – this is a view most influentially put forward by Sidney Anglo – but recent scholarship has shown just how important the ‘Arthur of history’ was in legal and political circles throughout the sixteenth century. In the Act in Restraint of Appeals to Rome of April 1533, Arthur’s imperium in the sense of his right of sovereignty over his own undivided kingdom was implicitly invoked as precedent for rejecting papal authority in England, and in the reign of Elizabeth the scholar and magus John Dee cited ‘Kinge Arthur his wonderful trivmphant fame’ at length in his argument concerning his royal descendent’s right of empire (in the sense we use the term) over North America. Dee’s claim was, moreover, taken seriously by Elizabeth’s advisors.4 Arthur, then, was by no means viewed as a fictional character in the political realm and his saintly ancestor was equally central to religious debate.5

Background Around 1191 Arthur’s putative remains, along with those of his second wife Guenevere, were discovered in the ancient cemetery at Glastonbury Abbey. Contemporary chronicles give conflicting accounts concerning who suggested the excavation, and modern scholars continue to debate the motives behind the event.6 There is almost certainly a connexion with the devastating fire which destroyed much of the monastery including the famous Old Church in 1184.

3

4 5

6

See Christopher Dean, Arthur of England (Toronto, 1987), p. 107: ‘Arthur’s appeal came under attack for many reasons after 1500, and it is ironic that one of them was the newly aroused interest in him as a historical figure, which came about through his being used to bolster the claims of the reigning Tudor monarchs to the throne … this concern for him as a historic figure actually made him less suitable as a character in works of fiction, since all authors, not just those interested in establishing his place in British history, tended to avoid the romantic and supernatural elements in his story.’ See ‘Arthur and the Antiquaries’. On Arthur’s descent from Joseph see The Chronicle of Glastonbury Abbey. An Edition, Translation and Study of John of Glastonbury’s ‘Cronica siue Antiquitates Glastoniensis Ecclesie’, ed. James P. Carley, trans. David Townsend (Woodbridge, 1985), p. 54. See John Carmi Parsons, ‘The Second Exhumation of King Arthur’s Remains at Glastonbury, 19 April 1278’, in Glastonbury Abbey and the Arthurian Tradition, pp. 179–83, at p. 179 for a summary: ‘It has been argued that he [Henry II] merely sought to prove that Arthur was indeed dead or, in the wake of Becket’s murder, either to offer Glastonbury as an alternative site for the origins of British Christianity, or to foster a secular royalist cult to rival those of Becket and the recently-canonized Edward the Confessor, whose reputed devotion to St Peter could have had awkward implications for Henry.’

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It is also likely, as Charles Wood has argued, that there is a link with Richard Lionheart’s designation of his nephew Arthur as his successor in 1190: to inform Richard that the bones of the man after whom his heir had been named … had been rediscovered at Glastonbury thanks only to the bardic intervention of his father [as one of the accounts put it] was none too subtly to remind the crusading king that the time had come for the generosity of the father to be renewed by the son. It was an outrageous ploy but it worked.7

Likewise, the discovery of tangible relics of this last of the British rulers put paid to the ‘sleeping king’ motif that was circulating in the Celtic realms and it emphasized the historical accuracy of the accounts put forth by the AngloNorman chroniclers, William of Malmesbury and Geoffrey of Monmouth in particular. It also formed a fit conclusion to their narrations, since these earlier writers had not known where Arthur, a man of flesh and blood, had been buried. Henceforth the name of Arthur – at least the historical Arthur – was inextricably linked to Glastonbury Abbey. According to the thirteenth-century Glastonbury monk and chronicler Adam of Damerham the Arthurian remains were translated soon after their disinterment to the Great Church (for which they were meant to provide finances) and placed in a mausoleum after an appropriate epitaph had been composed.8 They became the object of pilgrimage and two English kings, Edward I and Edward III, travelled to Glastonbury to pay respect to their illustrious ancestor. On both occasions there was an underlying political dimension. At the time of the visit by Edward I and Queen Eleanor in April 1278 the bones were exhumed and prepared for reinterment in a prominent position in front of the High Altar, a place normally reserved for the founding saint.9 This followed hard on the heels of Edward’s Welsh campaign, and Arthur’s relics had acquired new significance as tangible evidence of Edward’s claim that he was the legitimate successor to the Arthurian imperium that included Scotland and Wales. Bare bones, in other words, trumped sleeping kings. Edward I also cited Arthur during the crisis over the Scottish succession at the end of the thirteenth century, alleging in his famous letter to Pope Boniface VIII of 1301 that Arthur’s overlordship included Scotland.10 Like his grandfather, Edward III had trouble with his northern neighbours, and he visited Glastonbury with his wife Philippa in Advent 1331, just a year after his repudiation of the treaty of Northumberland with the Scots. Soon after

7 8

9

10

Charles T. Wood, ‘Guenevere at Glastonbury: A Problem in Translation(s)’, in Glastonbury Abbey and the Arthurian Tradition, pp. 83–100, at pp. 88–89. See Michelle P. Brown and James P. Carley, ‘A Fifteenth-Century Revision of the Glastonbury Epitaph to King Arthur’, in Glastonbury Abbey and the Arthurian Tradition, pp. 193–204, at pp. 194–95. As Parsons points out, moreover, ‘That the exhumation took place at Easter, with its overtones of resurrection, further suggests that Edward meant to imply more than just his rights as Arthur’s legitimate successor’ (‘The Second Exhumation of King Arthur’s Remains’, p. 182). See James P. Carley and Julia Crick, ‘Constructing Albion’s Past: An Annotated Edition of De origine gigantum’, in Glastonbury Abbey and the Arthurian Tradition, pp. 347–418, at p. 362.

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this pilgrimage the Glastonbury monk John Seen incorporated the mission to Glastonbury of Joseph of Arimathea, the rich merchant who provided a tomb for Christ, into his account of the early history of the abbey. Perhaps inspired to some degree by Edward’s visit, this equation stood to profit the king as well as the monastery, since Joseph provided a foil to the apostle Andrew, whose evangelization of Scotland was proclaimed in the Declaration of Arbroath of 1320. Edward’s interest in Arthur’s overlordship over Scotland began to fade soon afterwards, however, when he turned his mind to his claims in France. In 1344, nevertheless, he held a magnificent festival at Windsor which culminated with his pledge to found an Order of the Round Table.11 In spite of this public pledge, the Order did not come into being, and in 1348 Edward established instead the Order of the Garter.12 Why, however, did Joseph’s name, with or without the Grail, become ‘officially’ associated with Glastonbury at this particular juncture? Perhaps as early as c.1000, it had been suggested in the Life of St Dunstan by ‘B’ that the Old Church, whose destruction in the 1184 fire was such a major catastrophe, dated back to apostolic times. Who these primitive evangelizers might be was not revealed, however, until well after the 1191 discovery, probably sometime around in the mid- to late-thirteenth century, when the following marginal note was added to one of the manuscripts of William of Malmesbury’s De Antiquitate Glastoniensis Ecclesie: Ioseph ab Arimathia nobilem decurionem cum filio suo Iosephes dicto et aliis pluribus in maiorem Britanniam, que nunc Anglia dicta est, uenisse et ibidem uitam finisse testatur liber de gestis incliti regis Arturi … Item in sequentibus in inquisicione uasis quod ibi uocant Sanctum Graal idem refertur fere in principio ubi albus miles exponit Galaat, filio Lancelot, misterium cuiusdam mirabilis scuti quod eidem deferendum commisit quod nemo alius sine graui dispendio ne una quidem die poterat portare. [The book of the deeds of the famous King Arthur bears witness that the highborn decurion Joseph of Arimathea, together with his son Joseph and very many others, came into greater Britain, now called England, and ended his life there … Again in a later part of the book, about the search for a vessel called there the Holy Grail, almost the same thing is recorded where a white knight explains to Galahad, son of Lancelot, the mystery of a certain miracu-

11 12

See Julian Munby, Richard Barber and Richard Brown, Edward III’s Round Table at Windsor. The House of the Round Table and the Windsor Festival of 1344 (Woodbridge, 2007). Although this new Order was not meant as a recreation of the Arthurian Court, there were analogies. In the 1520s, for example, the author of the Black Book of the Garter connected the two: ‘After this Manner our Sovereign [the third Edward] at first instituted his Knights, that when they were called upon, either to eat or consult together, they should sit at, or stand round the same Table together, following this Method, the Example of the illustrious Knights of the noble Arthur’. Quoted by Pamela Tudor-Craig, ‘Iconography of the Painting’, in King Arthur’s Round Table. An Archaeological Investigation, ed. Martin Biddle (Woodbridge, 2000), pp. 285–333, at p. 331.

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lous shield which he entrusts to him to bear because no one else could carry it, even for a day, except at great cost.]13

The information to which the note alludes in its citation of ‘the book of the deeds of the famous King Arthur’ is found in the French Vulgate Cycle of Arthurian romances, but here it is given in Latin rather than French, and ‘the book of the deeds’ is used as a factual source rather than a literary construct. The metamorphosis from courtly aventure to monastic chronicle is a crucial one, and the claim for Joseph’s mission to Glastonbury/Avalon made by this brief note would have reverberations over the next three centuries and beyond. Paralleling the manner in which Arthur’s unknown resting place in the mysterious Avalon was given a local habitation c. 1191 – his body soon to be enshrined before the High Altar – the Grail, named as such in this note, soon found itself transformed from a mysterious floating vessel into a Christian relic, that is, two vials holding the blood and sweat of Jesus, transported by Joseph from the Holy Land to England.14 The whole process took less than fifty years, and this is the account that became fully elaborated at Glastonbury at approximately the time of Edward III’s visitation through the ‘fragmentary’ prophecy of Melkin the ancient British Bard which, in turn, was incorporated into John of Glastonbury’s official history of the house: Et iacet in linea bifurcata iuxta meridianum angulum oratorii … Habet enim secum Ioseph in sarcophago duo fassula alba et argentea, cruore prophete Ihesu et sudore perimpleta. Cum reperietur eius sarcophagum integrum illibatum, in futuris uidebitur et erit apertum toto orbi terrarum. [And he (Joseph) lies on a forked line close to the southern corner of the wattled chapel … Joseph has with him in the tomb two white and silver vessels filled with the blood and sweat of the prophet Jesus. When his tomb is found, it will be seen whole and undefiled in the future, and will be open to all the earth.]15

By Melkin’s account Joseph, like Arthur, was buried in the ancient cemetery, but there is no indication precisely where or when his remains might be revealed. Nevertheless, one year after Edward III returned to Glastonbury in May 1344, John Blome of London obtained a royal writ to search for Joseph’s body at Glastonbury.16 Blome, apparently, was unsuccessful in his mission.

13 14

15 16

The Early History of Glastonbury. An Edition, Translation and Study of William of Malmesbury’s ‘De Antiquitate Glastonie Ecclesie’, ed. and trans. John Scott (Woodbridge, 1981), pp. 46–47. In his Chronica maiora (ed. H.R. Luard, 7 vols; RS 57 [1872–84], IV. 641, 643; VI. 142) Matthew Paris described a vial of the Precious Blood brought by the Templars to London in 1247 as ‘quodam uase argente in quo positus est sanguinis Christi’. It seems highly likely that the Templar relic provided an analogy for the metamorphosis of the Grail at Glastonbury. The Chronicle of Glastonbury Abbey, ed. Carley, pp. 30–31. My translation varies slightly from that given in the printed text. On Edward’s 1344 visit see Caroline Shenton, ‘Royal Interest in Glastonbury and Cadbury: Two Arthurian Itineraries, 1278 and 1331’, English Historical Review, 114 (1999), 1249–55, at p. 1254.

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Soon after Edward’s death in 1377 the recently appointed abbot John Chinnock rededicated an ancient chapel in the cemetery to St Michael and St Joseph. He also had a large hinged wooden frame constructed on which parchment was pasted recounting the history of the monastery beginning with St Joseph’s mission. This was made available for pilgrims to consult in the abbey church.17 But still no relics of the saint himself were mentioned. During Chinnock’s abbacy the Great Schism occurred.18 This alarming situation strengthened the Conciliarist movement which would claim that it was Church Councils rather than the pope that held supreme power within the Church. As a result, the position of national churches at the councils became a crucial issue and during the Council of Constance (1414–18) the English argued for separate status as a fifth natio principalis in the face of severe opposition by the French delegate. By the early fifteenth century, then, Joseph’s mission to England was no longer simply a local religious issue but a national political one: if Joseph really did evangelize Britain and if he really were buried at Glastonbury, in other words, this was of great use to the English at a conciliar level. It was more or less inevitable, therefore, that in 1417 the English delegate Thomas Polton argued in favour of England’s status as a principal nation specifically on the grounds of Joseph’s arrival in Glastonbury. Without relics, however, the case was a slightly dubious one and pressure was brought to bear on the Glastonbury community. In 1419, possibly at the request of Henry V himself, the monks undertook an excavation in their ancient burying ground, where the pyramids supposedly indicating Arthur’s burial site still dominated the landscape, and soon afterwards they sent a cryptic letter to the king which seems to suggest that the remains had been found and would soon be revealed to the world. In 1424 the president of the English nation, Richard Fleming, reported at the Council of Pavia-Sienna that three years earlier, ‘to prove mistaken the malice of enemies’, Joseph’s almost intact body had been found in a tomb with a leaden plaque on which was written, ‘Here lies that decurion Joseph of Arimathea, who was worthy to take Christ down from the Cross and soon afterwards introduced his faith and baptism into England’.19 Fleming’s report, however, appears to have been overly optimistic and written sources rather than ‘archaeological’ evidence were cited concerning Joseph’s mission at the later Council of Basel. When William Worcestre visited the monastery in 1480, he reported that ‘Opposite the second window [of the abbey church] on the southern side in the cemetery two stone crosses were hollowed out where they concealed the bones of King Arthur

17

18

19

See Jeanne Krochalis, ‘Magna Tabula: the Glastonbury Tablets (Parts 1 and 2)’, in Glastonbury Abbey and the Arthurian Tradition, pp. 435–567: ‘The fifteenth-century pilgrim who could read Latin by the candlelight available in the abbey would be thoroughly informed about what Glastonbury considered its authentic history, and the spiritual benefits he or she could gain from being there’ (p. 435). For the following discussion see my ‘A Grave Event: Henry V, Glastonbury Abbey and Joseph of Arimathea’s Bones’, in Glastonbury Abbey and the Arthurian Tradition, pp. 285–302; also Chrisopher Allmand, Henry V (London, 1992), pp. 417–19. ‘A Grave Event’, pp. 294–95 (my translation).

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[and] where Joseph of Arimathea lies in a bifurcated line’ (emphasis mine).20 Unlike Arthur’s, Joseph’s remains were still absconditus, their revelation to be in futuris. Although Henry VIII never visited Glastonbury, his father spent a night at the newly finished king’s quarters in 1497/8, that is, during the abbacy of Richard Bere (1493–1524). Bere was deeply interested in the history of the monastery and had several copies made of John of Glastonbury’s chronicle. He also had the crypt under the Lady Chapel hollowed out and rededicated as a Chapel to St Joseph. But still the relics remained ‘unrevealed to the world’, and long after the Dissolution in 1539 the former acolyte (and later Jesuit) William Good, who had received his education at the hospice of St Joseph of Arimathea, affirmed that the monks never knew for certain the place of burial of this saint: They said the body was hidden most carefully, either there [at Glastonbury], or on a hill near Montacute, called Hamden Hill, and that when his body should be found, the whole world should wend their way thither on account of the number and wondrous nature of the miracles worked there.21

The Reign of Henry VIII and the Dissolution As David Starkey has shown, Henry VIII’s self-identification with King Arthur was more encompassing than has been traditionally assumed. In the late 1520s, when the question of the legality of his marriage to Catherine of Aragon, the king’s so-called ‘Great Matter’, was not showing itself susceptible to easy solution, Henry and his advisors began to take up the question of the relationship between pope and monarch, and turned to Arthurian precedent.22 Arthur himself was not named in the defiant 1533 Act in Restraint of Appeals to Rome, which justified the break with papal authority on the evidence of ‘divers sundry old authentic histories and chronicles’. Nevertheless, Arthur, that is Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Arthur, is tacitly evoked when the Act states ‘this realm of England is an empire, and so hath been accepted in the world, governed by one supreme head and king having the dignity and royal estate of the imperial crown of the same’.23 Just over a month after the proclamation of the Act and almost immediately after the coronation of Anne Boleyn on 1 June 1533, the antiquary John Leland began the first of his extended tours of monastic libraries, carrying with him some sort of letter from the king himself that acted as a laisser-passer to even

20

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‘Et ex opposito secunde fenestre ex parte meridionali sunt in cimiterio due cruces lapidee concauate ubi ossa Arthuri Regis recondebant vbi in linea bifurcata iacet Josephus ab Arimathia’ (William Worcestre, Itineraries, ed. and trans. J.H. Harvey [Oxford, 1969], p. 298). See my ‘The Discovery of the Holy Cross of Waltham at Montacute, the Excavation of Arthur’s Grave at Glastonbury Abbey, and Joseph of Arimathea’s Burial’, in Glastonbury Abbey and the Arthurian Tradition, pp. 303–8, at p. 306. On this topic see ‘Arthur and the Antiquaries’. The Tudor Constitution: Documents and Commentary, ed. G.R. Elton, 2nd edn (Cambridge 1982), p. 353.

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the most inaccessible libraries. One of his first destinations was Glastonbury Abbey, where he was stunned by the antiquity and the comprehensiveness of the library. He was particularly impressed by the Arthurian remains, literary and archaeological, and listed these in some detail. Leland, who to some degree was acting in an official capacity, was well aware of the importance of Henry’s illustrious ancestor in England’s volatile political situation and took careful note of what he saw. One year after Leland’s enlightening trawl through the Glastonbury archives, the Italian humanist Polydore Vergil’s much anticipated and much delayed Anglica Historia at last appeared in print. In this text Arthur, the chief focus of so many medieval accounts, was disposed of in just one paragraph which concludes with the ironic statement that ‘A few years ago a magnificent tomb for Arthur was erected in the monastery of Glastonbury, that posterity might understand that he was worthy of all ornaments, since in Arthur’s day that monastery had not yet been founded’.24 Although Polydore was disputing Geoffrey of Monmouth’s accounts, along with their Glastonbury-spawned accretions, rather than Arthur’s existence as such, the English response was swift and acrimonious, much of it focusing on the attack on Glastonbury’s antiquity. Leland himself reacted within a year and began composition of his De uiris illustribus in which there were a multitude of bitter allusions (many later to be deleted) to Polydore’s efforts, including a long section in defence of Geoffrey against Polydore: Quanquam, ne solus sapere uideretur, eum inter reges in sua historia ponit, potius ut genti nostrae morem gerat quam quod tale quicquam ex animo scribat, id quod facile apparet cum ex aliis locis tum etiam ex illo ubi lepide et festiue, ut sibi uidetur, in eius sepulchrum, quod est Glessoburgi Smertarum, iocatur. [Nevertheless, so that (Polydore) may not seem to be alone in having sense, he does place (Arthur) among the kings in his history, more to pay lip-service to the custom of our race than because he believes it in his heart. This will be readily apparent from the passage, among others, in which he pokes merry and witty fun, or so he thinks, at Arthur’s tomb, which is at Glastonbury in Somerset.]25

What, however, did Polydore really mean when he interrogated the antiquity of the monastery at Glastonbury and how does this relate to Joseph whose

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‘Abhinc item paucos annos positum fuit Arthuro in Glasconiensi coenobia sepulchrum opere magnificum, quo posteri intelligerent illum omnibus ornamentis dignum fuisse, quando Arthuri tempore coenobium illud nondum erat conditum.’ Polydore Vergil, Anglica Historia Book III. c. 13: see . Both the text, taken from the 1555 edition, and the translation are by Dana F. Sutton. Subsequent references are to this hypertext edition. This passage, taken from Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Top. gen. C.IV, p. 151, has never been published, but will be printed in my edition and translation of Leland’s De uiris illustribus to be published by the Pontificial Institute of Mediaeval Studies in 2009.

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putative mission brought him to Avalon/Glastonbury? During the reign of the pagan king Arviragus, according to Polydore, Joseph cum non paruo comitatu in Britanniam uenit, ubi tam ipse quam eius socii, cum de euangelio praedicarent atque dogma Christi sedulo docerent, multi per haec ad ueram pietatem traducti, salutiferaque fruge imbuti, baptizati sunt. Isti uiri certe diuino spiritu afflati, cum a rege parum terrae ad inhabitandum proxime Welliam oppidum circiter millia passuum quatuor dono accepissent, ibi nouae religionis prima iecerunt fundamenta, ubi hodie est templum magnificum coenobiumque monasticae familiae diui Benedicti ordinis nobile. Loco nomen est Glasconia. Haec omnino Christianae pietatis in Britannia extitere primordia, quam deinde Lucius rex, sicut paulo post dicemus, prope extinctam baptismi fonte sublatus mirabiliter accendit pieque adauxit. Nam Gildas testis est Britannos iam inde ab initio orti euangelii Christianam recepisse religionem. [came into Britain with no small company of followers, where both he and his companions earnestly preached the Gospel and the teaching of Christ. By this many men were converted to true piety, filled with this wholesome fruit, and were baptized. Those men were assuredly full of the holy spirit, since they received as a king’s gift a small plot of land about four miles from the town of Wells, where they laid the first foundations of the new religion, and where today there is a magnificent church and a Benedictine monastery. The name of the place is Glastonbury. These first beginnings of Christian piety existed in Britain, and then King Lucius, as I will relate a little further, having been baptized, did wonderfully kindle and piously increase after it had become all but extinct. For Gildas bears witness that the Britons received the Christian religion from the first publication of the Gospel.]26

By Polydore’s interpretation – based on Gildas’s claim that Christianity had been brought to England in the last years of the reign of the emperor Tiberius (AD 14–37) and supplemented by the Glastonbury tradition of Joseph’s apostolic foundation – there was, nevertheless, no unbroken continuity of Christian worship at Glastonbury from the earliest period. Christianity had become virtually extinct when Eleutherius sent his missionaries. As Polydore relates in Book IV, it was only during the reign of King Ine of Wessex (688–726) that the church and Benedictine monastery were established: Eo loci memorauimus secundo huius operis uolumine famam esse Ioseph Arimathiensem, cui Christum sepeliuerat, paruulum sacellum condidisse. Quare arbitror Inam ob eius rei celebritatem illud ibidem coenobium posuisse. [In Book II of this work I recorded the tradition that Joseph of Arimathea, after having buried Christ, erected a small chapel. And I imagine that the reason why Ina placed the monastery there is because of its fame for this.]

26

Polydore’s edition of De excidio et conquestu Britanniae, perhaps undertaken in part to undermine Geoffrey of Monmouth’s account of Arthur, was published (likely) in Antwerp c. 1526/27. In this edition the information on the earliest arrival of Christianity in Britain, concerning which Polydore makes marginal comment, is found on sig. Aviiv–Aviiir.

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It was not Arthur’s historical existence, then, that Polydore interrogated, but rather the assumption that he would have been buried at Glastonbury, which would have been a wilderness at the time of his death in the sixth century. Nor is there any indication that Polydore rejected ‘the tradition’ of Joseph’s mission either, about which as an archdeacon of Wells, just a few miles from Glastonbury, he would have been deeply familiar. For a variety of reasons Leland held back the publication of his De uiris illustribus – in fact it did not appear in print for more than a hundred and fifty years after his death – and started out on a new set of travels around 1537, this time to examine places rather than libraries.27 After Henry VIII’s declaration of war on Scotland in 1542, for which Leland appears to have composed a now lost tract, he returned to Arthurian matters and wrote a long and somewhat rambling Assertio inclytissimi Arturii regis Britanniae against Polydore, which was printed in 1544 (RSTC 15440). In this treatise Leland described in detail the 1191 excavation and he attested that he himself had handled the leaden cross.28 He also wished to establish the antiquity and continuity, challenged by Polydore, of the church at Glastonbury. One of the documents he cited was the Charter of St Patrick, in which the fifth-century Irish saint attested that when he arrived at Glastonbury he had come across a community which was founded by St Phagan and St Deruvian. According to the Charter, Patrick also saw documents written by Phagan and Deruvian which in turn traced the church back to the apostolic era, documents ‘in which it is recorded that twelve disciples of St Philip and James had built that ancient church, at the instruction of the archangel Gabriel’.29 The names of these twelve were not, however, given and Leland did not speculate about their identities. Nor did Joseph’s name appear anywhere in the Assertio. In the De uiris illustribus, however, there is a chapter on Melkin, c. XXV, in which Leland observed that: Sed ut ingenue fatear id quod sentio, non tam approbo ea quae de sacro coemiterio Glessoburgensi, loco antiquitatis plane uenerandae, scripsit, quam improbo quae, sine certo aliquo autore, de Iosepho Arimathiano adfirmat. Nam ego facile credere non possum Iosephum Christi Optimi Maximi discipulum Glessoburgi sepultum esse. Crediderim tamen sanctissimum aliquem eiusdem nominis eremitam ibidem sepultum, atque inde natum hunc esse errorem.

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On this topic see most recently Jennifer Summit, ‘Leland’s Itinerary and the Remains of the Medieval Past’, in Reading the Medieval in Early Modern England, ed. Gordon McMullan and David Matthews (Cambridge, 2007), pp. 159–76, 259–63. In a deleted section of De uiris illustribus, and in his unpublished ‘collectiones de Britannia, eiusque populis et moribus’ (now British Library, MS Julius C.vi, fol. 9v) Leland quoted Juvenal Satire iii. 29–30: ‘Viuat Arturius istic, / Et Catulus.’ Beside the quotation in Julius C.vi Leland has noted: ‘Sic enim scribendum est et nomen regis Britanni non Arturus ut apparet in inscriptione crucis plumbeae Glessoburgi’ [It should be written thus and the name of the king of Britain was not Arturus as it appears on the inscription of the leaden cross at Glastonbury.] ‘in quibus continebatur quod XII discipuli sanctorum Philippi et Iacobi ipsam uetustam ecclesiam construxerunt … per doctrinamentum beati archangeli Gabrielis’: see The Early History of Glastonbury, ed. Scott, pp. 54–57, at p. 56; The Chronicle of Glastonbury Abbey, ed. Carley, pp. 60–64, at p. 62.

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[To be quite frank, I do not agree with what (Melkin) writes about the sacred cemetery at Glastonbury, old and venerable though it is, and I reject what he claims, without any certain authority, about Joseph of Arimathea. For I myself cannot easily believe that Joseph, the disciple of Christ, the Best and Most High, was buried at Glastonbury, although I could believe that some very saintly hermit of the same name was buried there and that this gave rise to the error.]30

In a discussion of the second-century mission found in a different chapter (c. XIII) he observed that Certe constat ex libris de antiquitate Glessoburgensis monasterii scriptis duodecim heremitas homines Christianos, duce quodam Iosepho, sed non illo, nisi ego plurimum fallor, Arimathiano, e Gallia in Britanniam anno a Christo nato LXIII uenisse ut euangelium praedicarent, sedemque in Aualonia loco Somarianae prouinciae paludoso posuisse. [Certainly it is clear from the books on the antiquity of Glastonbury that in the sixty-third year after the birth of Christ twelve Christian hermits led by a certain Joseph – but not the famous Joseph of Arimathea, unless I am much mistaken – came from Gaul to Britain to preach the Gospel and settled in a marshy place in Somerset named Avalon.]

The substitution of an otherwise unattested hermit for his Biblical namesake is, of course, a major one and it undermined England’s apostolic status. It was, one might think, even more subversive to national propaganda than Polydore’s reticence about Arthur and is at first glance deeply puzzling. Leland did, after all, have the ear of the king, or at least of his advisors, and he must have known what he was doing. He would not have challenged this foundation story without reason. And there is, I think, an explanation. Henry’s break with the papacy was based on political concerns in the most general sense rather than theological ones. Henry was thus questioning the jurisdiction of the pope – hence his appeal to Arthur and to Lucius (who, according to Henrician interpretation, had implicitly retained the right to resume any powers he had granted the papacy) – rather than the Catholic church, as he viewed it, in general.31 As

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He also pointed out that ‘Quanquam nemo nescit, Christi discipulos “per uarios casus et per tot discrimina rerum” ad gentes remotissimas peruenisse et aliquot ex Philippi apostoli discipulis e Gallia in Britanniam commigrasse’ [It is common knowledge that the disciples of Christ reached some very remote nations ‘through various crises and so many calamities’ (Vergil, Aeneid, i. 204) and that some of the disciples of the Apostle Philip travelled from Gaul to Britain’]. On the putative role of Lucius in the evangelization of Britain see the important article by Felicity Heal, ‘What Can King Lucius Do for You? The Reformation and the Early British Church’, English Historical Review, 120 (2005), 593–614. Heal (p. 599) notes that Eleutherius’s letter to Lucius was quoted three times in the Collectanea Satis Copiosa assembled during Henry’s divorce crisis, once at the head of a section entitled ‘Institutio officium et potestas Regum Anglie’. See also Heal, ‘Appropriating History: Catholic and Protestant Polemics and the National Past’, Huntington Library Quarterly, 68 (2005), 109–32. In John Foxe’s translation of Eleutherius’s letter, ‘the pope appears to give precedence to the sovereign work of God in the conversion of the English, and to be ready to give assistance, if appropriate, in

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Starkey has observed ‘[Henry VIII’s providential history] argued that England’s pre-eminence consisted, not in being the eldest daughter of the Roman Church, but in properly being independent from it … the English Church was as selfgoverning and autonomous as the English State’.32 Hence the importance of King Lucius’s active role in bringing Christianity to Britain and the irrelevance of Joseph’s mission.

Post-Henrician Bifurcation Leland’s De uiris illustribus remained in manuscript until the eighteenth century, and it did not have a wide circulation outside antiquarian circles.33 Polydore’s Anglica historia, on the other hand, was well known – the 1534 edition was revised and reissued in 1546, and there was a third edition in 1555. It provoked considerable response in England, most of which was highly critical of the Italian’s attack on Geoffrey.34 In 1547, the first year of Edward VI’s reign, Arthur Kelton’s A chronycle with a genealogie declaryng that the Brittons and Welshemen are linealiye dyscended from Brute was printed by Richard Grafton (RSTC 14918).35 In this treatise Kelton defended the British History against Polydore: ‘We speake to you, Master Polidorus / Whose ingratitude, we greatly complain’.36 Kelton’s sources for the reign of Arthur, who was of the ‘line and true succession’ of Brutus, included unnamed chronicles, Werner Rolewinck’s Fasciculus Temporum and Ranulph Higden’s Polychronicon. On a contemporary note he observed that In the thirtie yere, or there aboute Of our soueraigne, kyng Henry theight [c. 1538/39, i.e. the time of the final dissolutions] Ye blinded Romains, to put out of doubte The cause made plain, perfect and streight A crosse was founde, of full greate waight In Glastenbury, with letters of golde Grauen full depe, with this sentence olde.

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setting up a legal infrastructure in the Church and realm. Such an interpretation would tend to vindicate Canterbury’s right of secession’: Victor Houliston, ‘Robert Persons’s Comfortable History of England’, in Martyrs and Martyrdom in England, c. 1400–1700, ed. Thomas S. Freeman and Thomas F. Mayer (Woodbridge, 2007), pp. 180–202, at p. 194. David Starkey, Elizabeth: Apprenticeship (London, 2000), p. 173. See Oliver Harris, ‘ “Motheaten, Mouldye, and Rotten”: the Early Custodial History and Dissemination of John Leland’s Manuscript Remains’, Bodleian Library Record, 18.5 (2005), 460–501, at pp. 478–80. See my ‘Polydore Vergil and John Leland on King Arthur: the Battle of the Books’, in King Arthur: A Casebook, ed. E.D. Kennedy (New York, 1996), pp. 185–204. See William A. Ringler, Jr., ‘Arthur Kelton’s Contributions to Early British History’, Huntington Library Quarterly, 40 (1976–77), 353–56. A chronycle, sig. c.iiiiv.

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Here lieth Arthur, the worthy kyng Depe in the grounde, his body to hide Sometyme in Britaine, famously reignyng God of his mercie, for hym prouide His solle vnto rest, to be his guide For a more concordaunce of yearthly fame For euermore, florishe mought his name.37

Although Kelton was concerned to prove the historicity of Arthur by means of the burial at Glastonbury, he made no mention of Joseph at all or of Glastonbury as a first-century centre of Christianity. Even more significantly, in his A Commendacion of Welshmen (RSTC 14919; London, 1546), Kelton affirmed that the Welsh received Christianity under Lucius ‘The fyrst Cristen kyng / In britayne reynyng’.38 Joseph is thus conspicuous by his absence. Joseph continued to be sidelined in Mary’s reign. On 18 December 1554, the Queen’s Printer John Cawood issued A compendious treatise in metre declaring the firste originall of sacrifice, and of the buylding of aultares and churches, and of the firste receauinge of the Christen fayth here in Englande by George Marshall (RSTC 17469), about whom nothing is known for certain apart from his aversion to schism. By Marshall’s account Christianity was brought to England in the reign of Lucius: Fiftene hundred yeares past we in writing find39 Synce Lucy was kyng of Englande by kynde Whyche sent to the Pope called Elentherius That he woulde send or els sone come This realme to conuerte to holy Christendome Which sent Damian with his fellow Forganus Then was this realme to Christ conuerted Which we agayne hath falsely subuerted.40

It was this latter fall into heresy that Mary had rectified when she restored orthodoxy to the kingdom: ‘[Things] The which were before by falsehead subuerted, / Agayne to Gods glorie, she hath them conuerted’ (sig. C.iiiiv). When Reginald Pole formally reconciled England to Rome in November 1554 he also invoked Lucius’s mission rather than Joseph’s: England was first to receive the Gospel ‘from the Apostolyke sea universallye, and not in partes as other countreyes, nor by one and one, as clockes encrease theyre howres by distinction of tymes but altogether at once, as it were in a moment’.41 Here it is the conversion of

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A chronycle, sig. c.viir. This is, to my knowledge, the unique reference to such a discovery and it is impossible to ascertain Kelton’s source. sig. d.viiir. Marshall gave sources in the margin and here he has ‘Poli’, i.e., Polydore Vergil. A compendious treatise, sig. B.iiir. Both scribes and printers had difficulty in their rendering of the names of the protagonists in the second-century mission. Quoted from John Foxe’s Acts and Monuments in Heal, ‘What Can King Lucius Do for You?’, pp. 600–1.

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the whole kingdom by Roman agency that mattered, not putative individual missions that may or may not have occurred earlier. After the death of Pole and Mary herself (both on 17 November 1558) her bishops used the same historical arguments as Pole had done to emphasize the continuity of England’s Catholic tradition. In 1559 Nicholas Heath, archbishop of York, voted in the Lords against the Act of Supremacy and the Act of Uniformity. In his speech he argued that we have receyved no other gospell, no other doctrine, no other faithe, no other sacraments, than were sent us from the churche of Rome; first, in kinge Lucius his dayes, at whose humble epistle the holy martyr Elutherius, then bisshoppe of Rome, did send unto this realme two holy monkes, Faganus and Damyanus, by whose doctrine we were fyrst put to knowledge of the faithe of Jesus Christe, of his gospell, and of his most blessed sacraments.42

Heath was very specific. Christianity came ‘First in King Lucius’ days’; it was and continued to be exclusively Roman. According to Strype, five of the deprived Marian bishops, including Heath, wrote to Elizabeth on 4 December 1559, pleading with her not to ‘be led astray through the inventions of those evil counsellors, who are persuading your ladyship to embrace schisms and heresies in lieu of the ancient catholic faith, which hath been long since planted within this realm, by the motherly care of the church of Rome’. In her reply of 6 December, the queen stated that whereas you hit us and our subjects in the teeth, that the Romish church first planted the catholic faith within our realms, the records and chronicles of our realms testify the contrary; and your own Romish idolatry maketh you liars: witness the ancient monument of Gildas; unto which both foreign and domestic have gone in pilgrimage there to offer. This author testifieth Joseph of Arimathea to be the first preacher of the word of God within our realms. Long after that, when Austin came from Rome, this our realm had bishops and priests therein, as is well known to the wise and learned of our realm by woful experience, how your church entered therein by blood; they being martyrs for Christ and put to death, because they denied Rome’s usurped authority.43

The historical underpinnings for this speech can be found in the Anglica historia, although Gildas’s terse statement that Christianity first came to England under Tiberius has been conflated with Polydore’s more elaborate articulation of the

42

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Quoted by John Strype, Annals of the Reformation, 4 vols (Oxford, 1824), I.2, 404. According to Heath, Augustine’s was the second mission and Pole’s the third: see Heal, ‘What Can King Lucius Do for You?’, p. 601. Marshall had also commented on Augustine’s mission in 1554: ‘Yet was not this realme fully conuerted / Which was before by infidelitie subuerted / Tyll Gregorye in Rome Pope was there … Then sent to Augustine with good intent / Which dyd aryue at Tanette in Kent / The kynge and the subiectes he conuerted there’ (sig. C.ir). See Strype, Annals of the Reformation, I.1, 216–18. The Privy Council Register for this period is missing, but Strype gave as his source the papers of Sir Henry Sidney.

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mission. By Elizabeth’s account, which makes no reference to Eleutherius, Augustine’s mission was a destructive as well as a corrupting one.44 It is in Elizabeth’s reign, then, that Joseph begins to be portrayed as an alternative to the Roman mission, his primitive church pure and apostolic in contrast to Augustine’s violent Roman ‘colonization’.45 This is a major shift, and Joseph takes on a political importance that he did not have since the early fifteenth-century. It is at this time, too, that John Leland’s quondam disciple, John Bale, turned on his former master in the account of Joseph of Arimathea in his Protestant alternative to Leland’s De uiris illustribus: Ioannes Lelandus, Antiquarius ille, hunc alium ab Arimathiano, Iosephum Hebraeum fuisse putat. Et ego a Philippo Euangelista, non Apostolo [as Leland had it], Iosephum praedictum missum crederem, si non obstaret Freculphi, Isidori, & Nennii authoritas. … Vnde Gildas monachus testatur, Brytannos ab initio orti Euangelii, Christianam accepisse religionem. Et quamuis (inquit) a quibusdam incolis tepide suscepta fuerit, apud quosdam tamen interea usque ad Diocletiani tyranni persecutionem remansit. [The antiquary John Leland thinks that this Joseph was different from the Hebrew Joseph of Arimathea. And I too would have believed that the aforesaid Joseph was sent by Philip the Evangelist, not the Apostle, if the authority of Freculf, Isidore and Nennius did not contradict it. … Whence the monk Gildas testifies that the Britons received the Christian religion from the first publication of the Gospel. And although, as he says, it was received by certain natives in a lukewarm manner, it remained nevertheless until the persecution of the tyrant Diocletian.]46

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The reference ‘by blood’ is to the slaughter of 1,200 monks at the Battle of Bangor in 604. In his famous letter to Matthew Parker of 30 July 1560, John Bale also referred to this ‘horryble slaughter’. William Harrison would observe that ‘Thus we see how the pope no soner entreth then persequuteth and showeth himself a sheder of blood’: see G.J.R. Parry, ‘William Harrison and Holinshed’s Chronicles’, The Historical Journal, 27 (1984), 789–810, at p. 808. In the dedicatory epistle to Queen Elizabeth of his translation of Bede’s Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum as The history of the Church of Englande (RSTC 1778; Antwerp, 1565) the Catholic controversialist Thomas Stapleton alleged that a few of the queen’s counsellors had misinformed her about the history of her nation but that Bede would show the true sequence of events: see Heal, ‘Appropriating History’, p. 117. Scriptorum Illustrium maioris Brytanniae, quam nunc Angliam & Scotiam uocant, Catalogus, 2 vols (Basel, 1557–59), I.16. (The copy in the Grenville Library in the British Library has a dedication to Elizabeth.) See also his statement in The Actes of Englysh Votaryes (Antwerp, 1546) that ‘in the yeare from Christes incarnacyon lxiii was Joseph of Arimathe and other dyscyples sent ouer of the seyd Philip to preache Christ’ (fol. 14r). On the introduction of Freculf as a witness to St Philip’s mission to Gaul into the Glastonbury tradition see The Chronicle of Glastonbury Abbey, ed. Carley, p. 278, n. 68. Among Protestant writers in Elizabeth’s reign, as Heal notes (‘Appropriating History’, p. 118), one ‘approach [as in the case of the Cambridge theologian William Fulke] was to take the legends of the earliest British Christianity – as founded by St Paul, Joseph of Arimathea, or Simon Zelotes – as evidence of the inception of a true local church, which was later simply concealed by the growing error of its visible counterpart’.

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Bale also observed that after his death in AD 76 Joseph was buried at Avalon. Later his body was transferred to the monastery and placed in a precious tomb (‘preciosa theca’). Glastonbury Abbey had, of course, been dissolved in 1539 and its treasures, including Arthur’s remains, dispersed. For Bale and other Protestant historians of the church this was, ironically, something of a bonus. It was no longer necessary, in other words, to explain why Joseph’s body could not be found in the cemetery since the cemetery itself no longer existed and one could not have been expected to find bones in it. It is a very neat solution to the absence that had been so troubling in the early fifteenth century at the time of the conciliar debates.47 Writing in 1577 John Dee would lament the fall of Glastonbury in the following terms: O Glastonbury, Glastonbury: the Threasory of the Carcasses of so famous, and so many rare Persons … How Lamentable, is thy case, now? How hath Hypocrisie and Pride, wrought thy Desolation? Though I omit (here) the names of very many other, both excellent holy Men, and Mighty Princes (whose Carcasses are committed to thy Custody), yet, that Apostlelike Ioseph, That Triumphant BRYTISH ARTHVR, And now, this Peaceable, and Prouident Saxon, King Edgar, do force me, with a certayn sorrowfull Reuerence, here, to Celebrate thy Memory.48

For Dee, Arthur and Edgar provided the justification for Elizabeth’s imperial claims and Joseph is an apostolic equivalent. Glastonbury, moreover, becomes a crucial symbol of the corruption of the Roman church: it was the hypocrisy and pride of the Catholics that led to its destruction and, as well, the dispersal of the relics it was meant to guard. As I began my quest, then, so do I end with absence: it is the disappearance first of the Grail that allowed Joseph to be

47

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Bale was part of the circle of Matthew Parker, archbishop of Canterbury who in his own De antiquitate Britannicae ecclesiae (RSTC 19292; London, 1572) paraphrased the Glastonbury account of England’s first evangelization as found in the revised De antiquitate Glastoniensis ecclesie of William of Malmsbury and fully laid out in John of Glastonbury’s chronicle, affirming that Joseph founded the first church at Glastonbury in AD 63 during the reign of Arviragus and that he was given the Twelve Hides to support the struggling foundation, which then fell into ruins until it was re-established under Phaganus and Deruvianus. This was a position also taken by John Jewel in his A defence of the Apologie of the Churche of Englande (RSTC 14600; London, 1567) who argued, as Heal has observed (‘What Can King Lucius Do for You?’ p. 605), ‘that the Arimathean story showed that Christians were already domiciled [in Britain] and it must have been through them that Lucius received his initial knowledge of the Gospel’. Likewise in his Historicall Description of the Island of Britain prefacing the first volume of Holinshed’s Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland (RSTC 13568; London, 1577) William Harrison asserted that it was Joseph who saved Britain from idolatry. In his ‘Address to the Welsh Nation’, which prefaced the Welsh translation of the New Testament (1567) Richard Davies, bishop of St Davids, described the initial conversion by Joseph of Arimathea, and maintained that the Welsh refused to have anything to do with the Saxons after their conversion from paganism by Augustine, so abhorrent were the superstitions introduced by Rome. John Dee, General and Rare Memorials Pertayning to the Perfect Arte of Navigation (RSTC 6459; London, 1577), p. 56.

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appropriated to English historical tradition; it was the absence of his relics that caused such difficulties in the fifteenth century; and finally it was the absence of the monastery itself that allowed him to be so gloriously celebrated by the Elizabethan historians and Protestant theologians.49

49

In ‘What Can King Lucius Do for You?’ Heal has shown that Catholic writers in the Elizabethan period continued to favour Lucius’s mission over Joseph’s: ‘First, not only was Lucius baptized by the Roman missionaries but also it was a public conversion, an act of kingly initiative which bound the realm to the centre of the Church. Secondly, the doctrine preached by Faganus and Duvianus was the same as that of later Catholicism in all its essentials, with the mass at its heart’ (p. 602). In his A Treatise of Three Conversions of England from Paganisme to Christian Religion (RSTC 19416; 3 vols [St Omer], 1603–04), written in response to Sir Francis Hastings’s A Watch-word to all religious, and true-hearted English-men (RSTC 12927; London, 1598), the Jesuit Robert Persons allowed the possibility of missions in apostolic times, perhaps including one by Joseph (less important than that attributed to St Peter himself), but pointed out that this did not ‘overthrow’ his contention that the Britons were converted under Pope Eleutherius and the Saxons under Pope Gregory, since ‘they proove only that before these two publike conuersions, which we owe to the Church, and Popes of Rome, there might be some sparkles of christian faith also in Britany by other meanes’ (I.6). (On Persons in general see most recently Victor Houliston, Catholic Resistance in Elizabethan England: Robert Persons’s Jesuit Polemic, 1580 – 1610 [Aldershot, 2007].) In the same year as Persons brought out A Treatise of Three Conversions, James VI of Scotland succeeded Elizabeth as James I. Both Catholics and Scots (as vulnerable minorities) were concerned about the ramifications of the new regime and some time before 1602 the prominent Scottish lawyer and jurist Sir Thomas Craig (1538?–1608) composed his De hominio disputatio adversus eos qui Scotiam feudum ligium Angliae, regemque Scotorum eo nomine hominium Anglo debere asserunt, in which he claimed the ancient independence of the Scottish kingdom. As in the fourteenth century, when the Scots asserted St Andrew as an alternative to Joseph, the earliest evangelization was a thorny issue. Cutting to the very heart of the matter Craig, who questioned both the Brutus and the Arthur stories, challenged Joseph’s very existence: ‘Nor is there any Reason to be more favourable to the Story of Ioseph of Arimathea’s coming to preach in Britain. Or if our Neighbours think otherwise, let them, or any others who patronize those Fables, tell me whence they had those things, what Writer or Author conveyed them down to Posterity, and where they found it writ, painted, or suggested, and I shall willingly yield. For my own part, there’s nothing of which I am more desirous than that Britain’s Glory should be consecrated to everlasting Fame; but I am not well pleased to have Fables obtruded upon us instead of Truth.’ (I quote from the translation by George Ridpath as Scotland’s soveraignty asserted being a dispute concerning homage, against those who maintain that Scotland is a feu, or fee-liege of England, and that therefore the king of Scots owes homage to the king of England [Edinburgh, 1695], p. 312.) In his response to Persons, The subuersion of Robert Parsons (RSTC 23469; London, 1606), Matthew Sutcliffe (who defended Joseph) was, however, dismissive of the ‘fables’ cited by Persons in defence of Lucius: ‘This historie therefore of king Lucius may well be paragoned with the tales of king Arthur, Sir Tristram, and Lancelot du lac, or of Gregorie the Pope de gestis Romanorum ca. 81. or of Rowland and Oliuer in the legend of Romish Saints’ (p. 9). As with Ascham, then, the Arthurian romances provide for Sutcliffe the benchmark for unreliability.

12 The Grail Quest: Where Next?

RICHARD BARBER

It seems extraordinary to think that when I finished my book on the Grail five years ago, no one had ever heard of The Da Vinci Code. Perhaps the world was a better place without it, but the book’s immense popularity catapulted the Grail into the public consciousness even more effectively than Monty Python and the Holy Grail had done two decades earlier. I would like to take a look at the world of recent Grail scholarship, where I hope that such fantasies have not yet taken root. Let us take as a starting point a book published fifty years ago in Paris. This is the proceedings of a conference on the Grail romances in the literature of the twelfth and thirteenth century, an international colloquy held in Strasbourg in 1954. It was a time when, as Mario Roques declared in his opening address, ‘on the question of the Grail our knowledge has marked time for the past thirty years’.1 He promised that the discussions would be aimed at showing those then working in the field where to direct their efforts. Now Peter Field, in his contribution to this volume, has pointed out the dangers of presumption in Grail quests, and I make no such sweeping claims for this chapter, which aims only to do a little exploration. At the end of the Strasbourg colloquy, Jean Fourquet summarised the desiderata for Grail scholarship as he saw them. In brief, he asked for proper editions of texts and a close linguistic analysis of the result. In the field of interpretation, he saw the priority as the study of the themes and structures of Grail romances; it was also crucial to analyse the religious background of the Grail scrupulously. Problems of chronology and what we now call intertextuality came next on his list, and finally, the problem of the sources required stronger links into disciplines which a historian of literature could not be expected to possess, and for which he might need specialist guidance. I shall use these headings as a broad framework for the same kind of overview for today: where do we go next? The Strasbourg conference opened, quite rightly, with close linguistic analysis of the word ‘grail’ itself. Now I am not aware of any great debate on Grail etymology currently in progress: on the whole, we are unlikely to advance the Grail quest by concentrating again on this area. The 1

Les Romans du Graal aux xiieet xiiie siècles, Colloques Internationaux du Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique III (Paris, 1956), p. 5.

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word itself has been well explored, and is generally accepted to be a rare, but not unknown, word for a large dish, a point to which I shall return. This is not to deny that linguistic studies can be extremely interesting for students of the Grail, and indeed, I shall attempt to prove the point by offering a very small piece of etymological research at this point, just to show that none of the tools of scholarship can be totally disregarded when it comes to the Grail quest. It concerns the notorious equation of the Holy Grail with the sang real, the royal blood, and the idea that the French royal family is descended from the children of Mary Magdalene and Jesus. Now I have no wish to hand ammunition to the authors of The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail, for them to produce a new edition of their book which Dan Brown can pilfer for his sequel to The Da Vinci Code. The crux of the research is this: queen Isabella of England, daughter of Philip IV of France, owned a book at her death in 1361 entitled De sanguine regalis, On the royal blood. It was evidently part of her collection of romances, as the inventory of her possessions survives in the National Archives at Kew,2 and reads as follows (I translate from the Latin): A great book covered in white vellum of the deeds of Arthur A similar book on the royal blood A book of Tristan and Isolt

Now a book on the royal or holy blood in the possession of a medieval queen of France would be manna from heaven to the fantasists. In fact, it is clear from the context that the book is actually a romance of the San Greal, and that the treasury clerk sent to catalogue it simply misread the title as sangreal, divided it wrongly and translated it accordingly. A similar error occurs in Italy a century later, when the clerk who made an inventory of the Visconti-Sforza library at Pavia in 1459 translated what was probably the Estoire du saint Graal as ‘historia sanregalis’.3 There is a more serious and interesting point here. The misreadings imply that sangreal appeared on the books as a single word; did it appear elsewhere in this form? It would seem that it did. John Lydgate’s Fall of Princes, written for John duke of Bedford, regent of France, in the 1430s, contains an account of Arthur’s career taken from Nicholas Laurent’s translation of Boccaccio’s De casibus illustrorum virum.4 Lydgate adds to Laurent’s version of the Round Table a note about the empty seat at the Table, saying that it was ‘called the se perilous, as Sang Real [capitalised] doth playnli determine’. This reading occurs in one manuscript: others read ‘seyn | Greal’ and ‘Sank | Riall’. It looks as if this is the same misreading, and probably for the same reason. It was probably Lydgate who was the source for John Hardyng’s passage in his Chronicle about the Round Table in the mid-fifteenth century. Hardyng, notoriously and eccen-

2 3 4

National Archives, Kew, E101/393/4, fol. 8. Gloria Allaire, ed. and trans., Il Tristano panciatichiano, Arthurian Archives, Italian Literature, I (Woodbridge, 2002), p. 21. John Lydgate, The Fall of Princes, ed. H. Bergen, Early English Text Society Extra Series 123 (Oxford, 1924), l. 2788.

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trically, turns the Grail quest into a kind of secular order of knighthood, and is the forerunner of all modern holy blood theories. Now all these instances could arise from a badly spaced text, and this is almost certainly the reason for the misreadings from inventories. But one author does consistently use a single word for the Holy Grail, and this is Sir Thomas Malory. My involvement in this area stems from an e-mail from a student some months ago asking if ‘sangreal’ appeared as a single word in the French texts from which Malory worked; and I have been unable to find a single genuine instance of it. Furthermore, Henry Lovelich, translating the Estoire du Saint Graal in the 1450s, is quite clear in his use of the form ‘seint | Graal’.5 Malory uses the compound form in the majority of instances, either as sankgreal (with a k) or sangreal(l), the word picked up by Victorian writers.6 Caxton occasionally makes this sancgreal (with a ‘c’). But this is more than just a curiosity of orthography. The deformation of the name of one of the central topics of Arthurian romances tells us something about the audience for the romances. The clerks who catalogued libraries and drew up inventories seem to have been unfamiliar with the stories of the grail. Lydgate knows more about it, but his scribe does not, while Hardyng, for his own purposes, wilfully manipulates it, reasonably sure that his readers will not reject his story. As for Malory, this is perhaps part of his idiosyncratic, if not cavalier, treatment of proper names. (A comparative study of Wolfram von Eschenbach’s playfulness with French names and what Malory does to them would be an interesting exercise.) If close linguistic study has something to offer, what about texts? Most of the major gaps have been filled, with the completion of Roach’s edition of the Continuations of Perceval, and with the emergence of the edition of the PostVulgate Cycle. Other texts have been re-edited, and in an age when the multilingual scholar is increasingly a rare breed, translations have proliferated, and the Grail source material is generally well covered. We have Nigel Bryant’s versions of Perceval and its continuations, the Perlesvaus and Robert de Boron. These, taken with the wonderful Lancelot-Grail edited by Norris Lacy, give us eight volumes which put most of the French material in reach of the non-French speaker. There is of course a problem with translations, of which I hardly need to remind the reader. They are one interpretation of a text, and we must not forget to go back to the original, preferably with expert help, if we require a proper overview of the context and meaning of passages which we need for our arguments. And what may be a good literary translation may not be as helpful to the scholar. Wolfram’s Parzival is a case in point: if you compare A.T. Hatto’s vivid rendering, with its stylised language and high rhetoric, against Cyril Edwards’s much closer version which gives us all Wolfram’s quirks transmuted into English, you will get a good idea of why recourse to the original text is always needed – and in the case of Wolfram’s obscurer passages you may well be none the wiser!

5 6

E.g., Henry Lovelich, The History of the Holy Grail, ed. Frederick J. Furnivall, Early English Text Society Extra Series 24, 28, 30, 95 (Oxford, 1874–1905), p. 216, l. 44. E.g., Sir Thomas Malory, The Works of Sir Thomas Malory, ed. Eugène Vinaver, rev. P.J.C. Field (Oxford, 1990), pp. 1036, 856.

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What about Fourquet’s next point, the question of interpretation? Reading Wolfram needs interpretation at a very early stage; it is a question of linguistics as much as criticism, but when we turn to the higher levels of interpretation we are on much more difficult ground. Fashions have never been so influential in the field of literary criticism; the fundamental problem facing a critic, which was well put by James Fenton in the Times Literary Supplement twenty-five years ago, is more acute than ever: he is talking about Hamlet, but his remarks apply to any well-thumbed Arthurian masterpiece: The academic critic, finding to his despair that most of the sensible things have been said, roots out a few of the less sensible things, or invents a new language, in which the content of his criticism may be happily obscured.

If the popular writing on the grail runs off all too readily into the lunatic fringe, academic criticism on the same subject, one sometimes feels, is equally prone to extreme solutions. The difficulty that Fenton raises is a real one: take Chrétien de Troyes, Malory, or outside the Arthurian field, Chaucer, and it is increasingly difficult – I do not say impossible – to find new and striking things to say about the texts themselves. But it is important to distinguish between the invention of new critical languages, and the refinement of new approaches. If we are uneasy about what real contribution we can make to the study of the mainstream romances, the alternative is of course to look at the more obscure texts. The problem is that the material is generally going to be less valuable as literature, and therefore less appealing. And a minor romance will generally offer fewer opportunities for useful critical insights. Yet there is a great deal to be done off the beaten track, particularly on topics such as the grail in the Prose Tristan, both in French and in its Italian version. Indeed, the history of Italian Arthurian literature is probably one of the most rewarding areas at the moment. I say history advisedly, as this leads into the intriguing area of the circulation of Arthurian material. I believe that Anglo-Italian links may prove to be well worth exploring, for instance. Rusticiano da Pisa’s claims to have used a book of romances which had belonged to Edward I when he went on crusade have a ring of truth about them. The marriage of Edward III’s son Lionel to the daughter of Galeazzo Visconti in Milan in 1368, brief though it proved to be, is another important connection. There were English embassies to Italy throughout the mid-fourteenth century, including Chaucer’s journey in 1372. And there was continual traffic from the merchants of Florence who provided Edward with his finances. The literary connections are intriguing, but difficult to decipher. Boccaccio was the first person – to my knowledge – to write down the statutes of the ‘order’ of the Round Table, in the 1350s:7 could there be a link with Edward III’s proposed imitation of the Arthurian Round Table, inaugurated at Windsor in 1344? And how did Filippo Maria Visconti come to be presented in the midfifteenth century with a Latin condensation of Geoffrey of Monmouth which contained that strange account of Arthur’s death, the De Vera Historia de Morte

7

Julian Munby, Richard Barber and Richard Brown, Edward III’s Round Table at Windsor (Woodbridge, 2007), pp. 78, 146.

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Arthuri, which is otherwise found in only one full text of the Historia Regum Britannie, and only occurs as a separate text in English manuscripts?8 There is still much to explore in the Arthurian network. Returning to the grail, I wonder if readers can identify the romance in which the following passage occurs. I certainly had never heard of it until recently. The author of the romance is magically transported to Avalon, where he meets King Arthur and asks him why, since the chronicles say that he reigned for ninety or more years, he has the appearance of a vigorous thirty-year-old. Arthur replies: Dear friend, I have as yet lived here in peace and joy; nothing in this world is displeasing to my heart, and thus, healthy and purified, I am fed by the Holy Grail, whose quest I undertook. For this reason it comes to me each year on that sacred feast of Pentecost. It is filled with a holy food which men praise as manna from heaven. The food is so pleasant that I have tasted nothing else since God sent it to me!

Arthur seems to have turned into the aged father of the keeper of the Grail in Chrétien and Wolfram, or one of the Grail knights in Perlesvaus, sustained by the magic of the Grail. This story comes from a Majorcan book, La faula, literally The Fable, written in a mixture of Catalan and French, probably soon after the Majorcan kingdom ceased to be independent in 1349 and became part of Aragon again.9 The author, Guillem de Torroella, made such an impact with this fairly brief work that his branch of the family were known as the Faula Torroellas, from the title of the poem. Joan Martorell appears to have known it, and used ideas from it in his great Catalan romance Tirant lo Blanc; but even the fact that he used the grail stories is unexpected.10 The Grail figures on Tirant’s helmet, surmounted by the very secular emblem of a comb which belongs to his beloved. This in turn leads us to the tournament helm designed by Pisanello – painter of the Arthurian frescoes at Mantua – for Alfonso V of Aragon about 1448.11 This helm modelled the Siege Perilous, which Alfonso adopted as one of his badges. It was of course Alfonso who presented the cup of the Last Supper to Valencia cathedral. If this seems to be turning into a scholarly shaggy dog story, I am only trying to reinforce this concept of the Arthurian network, this time focusing specifically on the grail. We have here another nexus of knowledge of the Grail romances, and the interest lies in how the stories are interpreted in very unexpected ways. It may be a dead end, one of those fascinating yet inconsequential pieces of research which can distract us from worthier quests; but it may yet link to Spanish version of the Grail story in ways as yet unexplored, and even shed light on the Catalan images of Mary holding a dish or pyx. 8 9 10 11

Unpublished; there are two manuscripts, Paris, BnF, MS Lat. 6041D, and Palermo, 2.Qq.C 102. Guillem de Torroella, La favola, ed. Anna Maria Compagna (Rome, 2004), pp. 134–35, ll. 1075–90. Joan Martorell, Tirant lo Blanc, trans. David H. Rosenthal (London, 1984), p. 327. Luke Syson and Dillian Gordon, Pisanello: Painter to the Renaissance Court (London, 2001), pp. 67–68.

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A larger and much more substantial critical undertaking would be to try to look again at how the medieval reader encountered the Grail story. Take, for example, Chrétien’s Perceval. Read it in a modern edition or translation, and you will almost always encounter just the ‘old Perceval’ as the manuscripts label it, the work of Chrétien himself. But the medieval reader is unlikely to have read the work in this form. Of the fifteen manuscripts, eleven contain the continuations in varying combinations, and this was therefore the way in which Perceval was usually read. Three manuscripts containing Perceval by itself all date from before 1250; after 1250, the standard form is the original plus three continuations. Only two related manuscripts contain all four continuations. The ‘canonical’ version of Perceval is therefore a copy of the text which brings the story to a conclusion. Any reader encountering Perceval after 1250 was likely to regard it as a complete version of the Grail story which could be put alongside the Vulgate Cycle. A similar study of the Vulgate Cycle shows that it was read mostly in single-volume copies of the individual parts. We can also look at how the Grail stories came into being, and who might have commissioned or encouraged them. The ‘complete’ Perceval leads us on to another theme well worth exploring further. The creation of the ‘complete’ Perceval seems to have been due to the active sponsorship of the counts of Flanders, following on from the dedication of the first part to Philip of Flanders. It might be worth exploring whether the manuscripts of the Vulgate Cycle can be given any kind of patronage context which might be linked to its development. This is a long shot, but it is worth noting – though I stand open to correction on this – that there is no good published listing of the Vulgate Cycle manuscripts which discusses the question of provenance and ownership. Micha’s extensive survey of these manuscripts in Romania is totally silent on the subject, saying nothing about any surviving inscriptions or other evidence. Finally, may I suggest another scholarly quest which would be worth pursuing. This is the question of the subsequent versions of the Grail stories which modify or adapt the Vulgate Cycle (or Lancelot-Grail), which I take to be the ‘canonical’ form of the Grail story. How far do these reflect changing attitudes, both to religion and romance? Peter Field has situated Malory’s version of the Grail in the context of fifteenth-century English lay piety; but what are we to make of the odd story about the Grail flying in pursuit of poisoned fish which have been accidentally taken from a river, and returning them to the water before Arthur and his court can eat them?12 More seriously, we should look again at the Dolorous Blow, which appears in the Post-Vulgate as a kind of gloss on Chrétien, taking up a theme which he merely hints at, and which may be no more than a poetic metaphor. What are the religious attitudes behind this strange story, and how does it sit with the religious ideas about the Grail in the Vulgate Cycle itself? This brings us to one crucial area where more work is still badly needed. Dhira Mahoney, reviewing The Holy Grail in Arthuriana, reproached me for making the ‘purely speculative’ suggestion that the Grail 12

Anne Berthelot, ‘Le Graal nourricier’, in Banquets et manières de table au Moyen Age, Senefiance 38, Centre Universitaire d’Etudes et de Recherches Médiévales d’Aix (Aix-en-Provence, 1996), 464, from BnF, MS fr. 24400. The text is not cited, and no folio reference is given.

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was based on Christian belief.13 My suggestion about the intentions of an author (Chrétien) who did not complete his work must of course be ‘purely speculative’, but the strongly religious background of any twelfth-century writer is hardly in doubt, and the interest in the Host and the cult of the Holy Blood are clearly documented. If we are prepared to follow this line of thought, there is one real problem to be faced, which may shed some light on the evolution of ideas about the Grail. This is the topic which Martine Meuwese treated in visual terms, and which needs revisiting in terms of the text: the distinction between the grail as secular dish when it first appears in Chrétien, and the Grail supposedly as Christian cup in later works. I entirely agree that in Chrétien’s description of the grail, it is a large dish, and this is confirmed by Hélinand de Froidmont, who defines it as ‘a broad dish, not very deep, in which precious meats in their juice are customarily served to the rich, one morsel after the other in different orders’.14 But in terms of the nature of the grail, Chrétien either reveals his idea of the grail or develops it when he calls it ‘such a holy thing’ later in the story.15 This seems to me to be the crux. If he is developing the idea and adding the concept of holiness, the way is open for some precedent in folklore – not necessarily Celtic. However, I personally believe that the scene between Perceval and his uncle is not a development, but tells us what Chrétien had in mind from the outset: but I cannot prove it. If this is the case, we have to explain how the dish which holds the mass wafer becomes the Holy Grail. In Perlesvaus and the Vulgate Cycle that phrase is used regularly; in the History of the Holy Grail, the first part of the Vulgate Cycle it is almost invariably prefaced by ‘holy’. But Robert de Boron does not use the phrase, and in the majority of romances, it is far more frequently called ‘the rich grail’, from the description in Chrétien’s original text, where it is portrayed as studded with the most precious of jewels. One problem is that writers so rarely describe the grail: the reader is expected to be able to envisage it – in which case I would assume they would think of it in terms of the graal equals dish concept for which there is independent twelfthcentury evidence. Dhira Mahoney’s words made me go back to the text, and I am now very doubtful that Robert de Boron envisaged the Grail as a cup. He calls it ‘the vessel in which He [Christ] had made the sacrament’.16 The Gospel refers to both a cup and a dish at the Last Supper, and veissel means vase (in the broad sense of something which can hold liquid) or vessel; in Perceval, vaisselemente is used to mean plates or platters. But the Latin version of the Gospel speaks of the cup as a calix. If Robert de Boron had wished to indicate the cup of the Last Supper, he would probably have used the word calice. We cannot be

13 14 15 16

Arthuriana, 16.4 (2006), 79. Helinand of Froidmont, Chronicon, in Patrologiae cursus completus. Series Latina, ed. J.-P. Migne (Paris 1844–1902), pp. 212, 814–15. Chrétien de Troyes, Le Roman de Perceval ou le Conte du Graal, ed. William Roach (Geneva, 1959), vs. 6425. Robert de Boron, Joseph d’Arimathie: A Critical Edition of the Verse and Prose Versions, ed. Richard O’Gorman, Studies and Texts 120 (Toronto, 1995), pp. 61, 127–28. The sacrament was the breaking of bread.

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sure of the author’s mental image of the Grail at this point, but since it contains the host, we would expect it to be a dish. In Perlesvaus, there is a striking passage in Gawain’s first visit to the Fisher King’s castle, when he thinks that he sees in the Grail ‘a chalice, which at that time was a rare sight indeed’. He then has two further visions of figures within the Grail, ‘the shape of a child’, and, when ‘the Grail was high up in the air’, a crowned king nailed to a cross with a spear thrust in his side; both of these images, as we shall see, are among the visionary attributes of the chalice of the mass.17 But these could equally well related, as in Malory, to the transubstantiation of the Body rather than the Blood of Christ. Perlesvaus is a romance which is definitely concerned with liturgy: it has a fascinating passage on the absence of bells in Britain in Arthur’s day, describing how the congregation were summoned by the sound of a horn or a drum. For once, there may be a genuine Celtic background to this: the bell played a very important part in the Celtic church, and in Celtic art monks and saints are often distinguished by the bell by their side. Could this be a reminiscence of the Normans’ first encounter with Celtic monks? Another speculation, you will say, but there may be something here. For those who want to pursue it into stranger territory, I was led to this issue by a passage in William Dalrymple’s wonderful travel book From the Holy Mountain, in which he is looking at the indebtedness of the Celts to the Coptic church of Egypt, part of which is said to be the extensive use of bells.18 Ultimately, any discussion of the nature of the Grail as envisaged in medieval literature depends on a relatively small number of passages in the romances where it is actually described; indeed, there are almost as many visual representations of the Grail in medieval manuscripts as there are descriptive passages in the texts. My last offering is the table which follows, an attempt to classify and analyse the verbal descriptions of the Grail and the context in which it appears. If we set this alongside the excellent work done by Martine Meuwese on the versions of the Grail to be found in medieval manuscripts, we should have a reasonably clear idea of how the Grail was envisaged in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, and of the form which this imaginary object took in the mind of writers and artists of the time.

17 18

Le Haut Livre du Graal: Perlesvaus, ed. William A. Nitze and T. Atkinson Jenkins (Chicago, 1932), p. 119. William Dalrymple, From the Holy Mountain (London, 2005), pp. 418–19.

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Appendix Since this chapter was written, a hitherto unpublished Grail scene has come to light, which has no known parallel in any other Grail romance. It was described by Pierre Breillat in 1938. The manuscript, copied by Zuliano di Anzoli, who completed it on 20 July 1446, has elegant pen drawings which form a copious visual commentary on the text. While this element has been studied by a number of scholars, less attention has been paid to the text, which lays heavy emphasis on the Holy Blood; the lance of the Crucifixion is actually contained within the Grail, into which the drops of blood run down from its tip. It is referred to as ‘the holy blood grail’ (lo sancto sangue gradale). The scene quoted below occurs after the mass at the castle of Corbenic; the voyage to Sarras should follow it, but the writer compresses the narrative drastically at this point, and the three knights arrive at ‘Saroche’ by unspecified means. Despite the presence of the lance and the blood which it produces, the Grail is described earlier in the romance as lo santo vasello o vero ampolla là dove la terra là dove era caduto il santo sangue delle piaghe di Cristo; e anche v’era lo vino con che furono lavate le dette piaghe; e’l sangue non v’era, imperò che, lo dì che Cristo risucitò, il santo sangue si partì dalla tera e ricongiunsesi collo corpo o colla divinità. [The holy vessel or true ampulla, in which was the earth where the holy blood had fallen from the wounds of Christ; and the wine was also there in which those wounds were washed; and the blood was not there, because the day that Christ rose again, the holy blood left the earth and rejoined the body and the divine nature. (Breillat, 351)]

This is discussed by Breillat in terms of Dominican theology, and would undoubtedly repay further study. All in all, the Florence version of La Tavola ritonda deserves to be better known, as one of the most interesting fifteenth-century revisions of the Grail story. For the transcription and translation which follows, I am most grateful to Margherita Pampinella-Cropper, who improved my rough draft out of all recognition. Images of the manuscript are currently available (2008) on the website of the Biblioteca Nazionale, Florence. [f.150v] Lo nostro libro pone e la istoria lonra che dapoi che messer Galasso Borzo e Princivallo ebeno receuto la grazia dillo sangue gradale elli se partino dali e andono alla marina e trovorno una gresia molto anticha et avea una crota soto tera in la quale persona nesuna noli posiva intrare perche era tropo tenebrossa cossa e lli tre chavalieri dismontano da cavallo e intrano in la crota ccomo a dio piacque diseseno molto avalle e questo per grande peza forno desenduti et elli oditeno grandi canti et angieli e giongiendo zoso viteno una pizola capella in la quale erino molti dopieri acesi et in mezo era uno altare e suso questo altare era lo sancto sangue gradale. In prima ci era lo sancto vasello e dentro intra lo vasello la lanza che tuta gozolava e da luna parte stava la corona delle spine e da laltra parte stava li giodi con li quali fo ingiodado lo

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nostro signore iesu cristo e llo martello e le tenalgie e lla sponga e queste cosse volse dio che foseno private per fino [f.151r] allo tempo de costoro dalle mane delli zudey e quando li tre chavalieri viteno questo se inzenogiano davanti allo altare e staveno inzenochiati e regraciaveno dio che li avea conzieduta tanta grazia di si alta ventura. Estando in tale maniera le dite cosse se levano da si medesime e vegnivano di fora dilla trotta e lli tre chavalieri li vano drieto e quando sono fora di quella gresia viteno quella nave la dove stati erano et alora viteno lo leto e llo corpo dilla sora di Percinvallo e dallo suo corpo stava lo santo vasello unde stava lo preciosso sangue e lla corona e lli giodi e llo martello e lle tenalie e lla sponga che dio volse condure lei alla sancta inchestia cosi como loro pero che ne fo degna e tute queste cosse staveno appresso di ley alora li [f.151v] tre chavalieri si preseno lo sangue gradalle e preseno lo corpo della sora di Percinvalo e lo portono alla citade de Saroche e reposeno lo santo sangue gradalle in una capella chappresso sepelino lo corpo dilla donzella davanti allo pavelione spirituale. [Our book says and history honors that after Galasso, Borzo and Princivallo had received the grace of the blood grail, they left that place and went down to the sea shore, where they found a very ancient church; and it had a cave underground which no-one could enter because it was too dark. The three knights dismount from their horses and enter the cave as it pleased God. They descended for a long way and when they had gone down a good distance they heard great singing and angels. Reaching the bottom, they saw a little chapel in which there were many lighted candelabra and in the middle there was an altar; on the altar was the holy blood grail. Firstly there was the holy vessel and inside the vessel was the lance all dripping and on one side was the crown of thorns and on the other were the nails with which our Lord Jesus Christ was nailed and the hammer and the pliers and the sponge, and these things God wished to be taken until the time of these from the hands of the Jews. When the three knights saw these things, they kneel down before the altar and they were kneeling down and thanking God for granting them such a grace of such a high adventure. While they stayed in such fashion, the said things rise of their own accord and came out of the cave. The three knights follow after them, and when they emerge from that church they saw the ship in which they had been, and then the bed and the body of Percinvallo’s sister; and around her body were the holy vessel where the precious blood was, and the crown and the nails and the hammer and the pliers and the sponge because God wished to lead her to the holy quest just like them as she was worthy and all these things were near her. And then the three knights took the blood grail and they took the body of Percinvalo’s sister and carried it to the city of Saroche and placed the holy blood grail in a chapel near which they buried the body of the damsel in front of the spiritual pavilion.]

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Bibliography I am most grateful to Peter Field, David Johnson, Barbara Miller, Margherita Pampinella-Cropper and Norris Lacy for their contributions to this table. Allaire, Gloria, ed. and trans., Italian Literature: I. Tristano panciatichiano, Arthurian Archives VIII (Cambridge, 2002). Berthelot, Anne, ed., Les Prophesies de Merlin. Bibliotheca Bodmeriana Textes VI (Geneva, 1992). Bogdanow, Fanni, ed., La Folie Lancelot, Beihefte zu Zeitschrift für Romanische Philologie 109 (Tübingen, 1965). Bonilla y Saint Martin, Adolfo, ed., La demanda del Sancto Grial in Libros de caballérias, Primera part, Ciclo artúrico – Ciclo carolingio, Nueva Biblioteca de Autores Españoles VI (Madrid 1907) Breillat, Pierre, ‘Le manuscrit Florence Palatin 556: La Tavola ritonda et la Liturgie du Graal’, Mélanges d’archeologie et d’histoire publiés par l’École française de Rome, LV, 1938, 341–373. Bryant, Nigel, trans., The High Book of the Grail: A Translation of the Thirteenth Century Romance of Perlesvaus (Cambridge, 1978). —— trans., Chrétien de Troyes, Perceval: the Story of the Grail [includes excerpts from the Continuations], Arthurian Studies V (Cambridge, 1982). —— trans., Merlin and the Grail: Joseph of Arimathea, Merlin, Perceval: The Trilogy of Prose Romances Attributed to Robert de Boron, Arthurian Studies XLVIII (Cambridge, 2001). Cerquiglini, Bernard, ed., Robert de Boron, Le Roman du Graal: Manuscrit de Modène (Paris, 1981). Claassens, Geert H.M., and David Johnson, eds, King Arthur in the Medieval Low Countries, Mediaevalia Lovanensia series 1, Studia 28 (Leuven, 2000). Crescini, Vincenzo, and Venanzio Todesco, eds, La versione catalana della inchiesta del San Graal Biblioteca Filologica de l’Institut de la Llengua Catalana X (Barcelona, 1917). Goldschmidt, Moritz, ed., Sone von Nausay, Bibliothek des Litterarischen Verein in Stuttgart CCXVI (Tübingen, 1899). Heijkant, Marie-Jose, ed., La tavola Ritonda, Biblioteca Medievale 1 (Milan, 1998). Jonckbloet, W.J.A., ed., Roman van Lancelot (XIIIe eeuw) naar het (eenig-bekende) handschrift der Koninklijke bibliotheek (The Hague, 1846–49). Kalinke, Marianne, ed. and trans., Norse Romance: II. Knights of the Round Table, Arthurian Archives IV (Cambridge, 1999). Kibler, William W., trans., The Elucidation, The Camelot Project, . Kluge, Reinhold, ed., Lancelot, nach der Heidelberger Pergamenthandschrift Pal. Germ. 147, Deutsche Texte des Mittelalters LXIII (Berlin, 1974). Lachmann, Karl, ed., Wolfram von Eschenbach: Lieder, Parzival und Titurel (Berlin, 1952).

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Lacy, Norris J., gen. ed., Lancelot-Grail: The Old French Arthurian Vulgate and PostVulgate in Translation (New York, 1993–96). Magne, Augusto, ed., A demanda do Santo Graal (Rio de Janeiro, 1944). Matarasso, Pauline, trans., The Quest of the Holy Grail (Harmondsworth, 1969). Menard, Philippe, et al., eds, Le Roman de Tristan en prose, 9 vols (Geneva, 1987– 97). Micha, Alexandre, ed., Lancelot, 9 vols (Geneva, 1978–83). Nitze, William A., ed., Robert de Boron, Le Roman de l’Estoire dou Graal (Paris, 1927). —— and T. Atkinson Jenkins, eds, Le Haut Livre du Graal: Perlesvaus (Chicago, 1932). Passage, Charles. Wolfram von Eschenbach, Titurel: Translation and Studies (New York, 1984). Pauphilet, Albert, ed., La Queste del saint Graal: Roman du XIIIe siècle, Classiques français du moyen âge (Paris, 1923). Pietsch Karl, ed., Spanish Grail Fragments: El Libro de Josep Abarimatia, La Estoria de Merlin, Lancarote, Modern Philology Monographs (Chicago, 1924–25). Ponceau, Jean-Paul, ed., L’Estoire del saint Graal, Classiques français du moyen âge (Paris, 1997). Roach, William, ed., The Didot Perceval According to the Manuscripts of Modena and Paris (Philadelphia, 1941). —— ed., The Continuations of the Old French Perceval of Chrétien de Troyes, 5 vols in 6 (Philadelphia, 1949–83). —— ed., Chrétien de Troyes, Le Roman de Perceval ou le Conte du Graal (2nd edn, Geneva, 1959). Scholl, Gottlob Heinrich Friedrich, ed., Heinrich von dem Türlin, Diû Cröne, Bibliothek des Litterarischen Verein in Stuttgart XXVII (Stuttgart, 1852). Shaver, Anne, trans., Tristan and the Round Table: A Translation of La Tavola ritonda, Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies (Binghamton, NY, 1983). Sodmann, Timothy, ed., Jacob van Maerlant, Histore van den Grale und Boek van Merline nach der Steinfurter Handschrift, Niederdeutsche Studien 26 (Cologne, 1980). Thomas J.W., trans., The Crown: A Tale of Sir Gawein and King Arthur’s Court (Lincoln, NE, 1989). Thompson A.W., ed., The Elucidation Prologue (Chicago, 1931). Vinaver, Eugène, ed., The Works of Sir Thomas Malory, rev. P.J.C. Field (Oxford, 1990). Williams, Mary, and Marguerite Oswald, eds, Gerbert de Montreuil, La Continuation de Perceval, Classiques françaises du moyen âge (Paris 1922–75). Wolf, Werner, and Kurt Nyholm, eds, Albrechts von Scharfenberg Jüngerer Titurel, Deutsche Texte des Mittelalters, 6 vols (Berlin 1955, 1968, 1985, 1992, 1997).

Appendix: The Grail on Film KEVIN J. HARTY

The history of cinema arthuriana begins with a search for the Holy Grail. In 1904, Thomas Edison attempted to capitalize on the popularity of a 1903 Christmas production of Wagner’s Parsifal at New York’s Metropolitan Opera. The resulting film under the direction of Edwin J. Porter proved an artistic failure and eventually had to be withdrawn from circulation because of issues related to copyright infringement. Nonetheless, the Porter–Edison Parsifal inaugurated a rich tradition of cinematic searches for the Holy Grail. The following filmography lists only narrative films about the Holy Grail.1 Details about documentaries, films of staged opera productions and individual episodes of television series that present versions of the Grail story can be found in Olton’s Arthurian Legends on Film and Television, which is listed below under general studies.

General Studies The following studies offer more general discussions either of cinema arthuriana or of cinema medievalia that also include discussions of film versions of the legend of the Holy Grail. Aronstein, Susan. Hollywood Knights: Arthurian Cinema and the Politics of Nostalgia. New York, 2005. Attolini, Vito. Immagini del medioevo nel cinema. Bari, 1993. de la Bretèque, François Amy. L’Imaginaire médiéval dans le cinéma occidental. Paris, 2004. Dover, Carol. ‘Towards a Modern Reception of the Lancelot-Grail Cycle’. In Carol Dover, ed. A Companion to the Lancelot-Grail Cycle. Cambridge, 2003, pp. 237–53. Harty, Kevin J. ed. King Arthur on Film, New Essays on Arthurian Cinema. Jefferson, NC, 1999.

1

I am grateful to Professor Ulrich Müller of the University of Salzburg for providing me with a copy of Richard Blank’s Parzival and to Professor Juan Miguel Zarandona Fernández of the University of Valladolid for providing me with a copy of Daniel Mangrane’s Parsifal.

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——. The Reel Middle Ages: American, Western European, Middle Eastern and Asian Films About Medieval Europe. Jefferson, NC, 1999. —— ed. Cinema Arthuriana: Twelve Essays. Jefferson, NC, 2002. ——. ‘Parsifal and Perceval on Film: The Reel Life of a Grail Knight’. In Arthur Groos and Norris J. Lacy, eds. Perceval/Parsifal: A Casebook. New York, 2002, pp. 301–12. Kawa-Topor, Xavier, ed. Le Moyen Age vu par le cinéma européen. Les Cahiers de Conques 3. Conques: Centre Européen d’Art et de Civilisation Médiévale, 2001 Kiening, Christian, and Heinrich Adolf, eds. Mittelalter im Film. Berlin, 2006. Olton, Bert. Arthurian Legends on Film and Television. Jefferson, NC, 2000.

The Films For more widely distributed films, the listings of reviews and additional discussions provided below are selective. There are a number of additional films which at least by title would seem connected to the legend of the Holy Grail – for example, Arthur Hotaling’s 1915 Awakening Percival, Lee Beggs’s 1914 The Evolution of Percival, Kurt Volkan’s 2002 The Grail, Nate Watt’s 1916 Persistent Percival and Henri Herman’s 1983 Where Is Parsifal? – but none of these films has any connection to the legend.

Das Blut der Templer (2004), Germany, Rat Pack Film/GFP Medienfonds Dir.: Florian Baxmeyer; screenplay: Stefan Barth and others from the novel by Wolfgang Hohlbein; cast: Catherine H. Flemming, Harald Krassnitzer, Mirko Lang; alternate title: Code of the Templars. As Jerusalem falls to the Saracens during the Crusades, the Knights Templar take possession of the holy relics, including the spear of Longinus, Christ’s burial shroud and the Holy Grail. Soon, however, a schism develops between Templars who wish to protect the relics, especially the Grail, and those who wish to use them for personal gain. The latter secure the shroud and form the rival Priory of Sion, but the Templars hide the spear and Grail. Thus begins a centuries-long battle between the two groups until, in 1985, the Grand Master of the Templars is unknowingly seduced by the Prioress of Sidon, who bears their son, David. The boy is secreted away in a monastery for eighteen years until he suddenly finds himself possessed of supernatural curative powers. Through his veins flows the sacred blood (the Holy Grail here is both ‘blood royal’ and ‘holy cup’) since he is the last linear descendant of the children of Jesus and Mary Magdalene (cf. The Da Vinci Code). Torn between his mother and the members of the Priory and his father and the remaining Templars, David follows a series of clues that lead him to the Holy Grail, which is buried in the tomb of Constantine beneath the Vatican. His father is killed by members of the Priory, and his mother dies when she drinks from the Grail – more a bowl or serving dish than cup – and withers away (cf. Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade). David then reseals the tomb and locks the Grail away, presumably forever.

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Reviews Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung 15 June 2004, 46; Frankfurter Rundschau 9 December 2004, 17; German Film Quarterly 2 (2004), 38–39; Süddeutsche Zeitung 9 December 2004, 19; Die Welt 9 December 2004, 30.

Les Chevaliers de la table ronde (1990), France, Les Films du Jeudi Dir.: Denis Llorca; screenplay by Denis Llorca and Philippe Viadèles based on their epic twelve-hour stage production; cast: François Berreur, Benoit Brione, Maria Casarès, Alain Cuny, Nadine Darmon, Valérie Durin, Gilles Geisweiller, Denis Llorca, Alain Macé, Jean-François Prévaud, Catherine Rétoré; alternate title: Knights of the Round Table. Like its much longer source, this film attempts to tell the whole of the Arthuriad from the birth of Arthur to his death in a final battle with Mordret. Throughout this version of an often familiar tale, special attention is paid to the stories of Galaad, the Fisher King and the quest for the Holy Grail.

Reviews Année du cinéma 15 (1991), 216; Cahiers du cinéma 437 (November 1990), 85; Film français 16 October 1990, 85; Image et son 465 (November 1990), 29; Positif 359 (January 1991), 44–45; Revue du cinéma [La Saison cinématographique] hors série 37 (1990), 27; Studio [Paris] 43 (November 1990), 24.

Additional discussions Films français; Paris: Unifrance International Films, 1990. Gorgievski, Sandra. ‘From Stage to Screen: The Dramatic Compulsion in French Cinema and Denis Llorca’s Les Chevaliers de la table ronde (1990)’. In Harty, ed. Cinema Arthuriana, pp. 163–76. Heymann, Danièle, and Pierre Murat. L’Année du cinéma (1991). Barcelona, 1991. Leguèbe, Eric. Cinéguide 2001. Paris, 2000. Tous les films 1990. Paris, 1991.

Code of the Templars see Das Blut der Templer

Cup of My Blood (2005), United States, X-Ray Productions Dir.: Lance Catania; screenplay: Lance Catania and Ken Nilsson; cast: Roger Anderson, Janina Gavankar, Lance Mulvaney, Allie Smith, Daniel Patrick Sullivan. As the dark times of the Apocalypse descend on earth, a pornographer (his latest feature is entitled The Second Cuming) finds himself reluctantly cast as the latest in a long series of protectors of the Holy Grail – here a wooden goblet housed in a battered box with a brass plate that reads ‘Kyrie’ – who are charged with protecting the vessel from those who would destroy or misuse it.

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Reviews Chicago Sun-Times 19 August 2005, 32; Fangoria 247 (October 2005), 40.

The Da Vinci Code (2006), United States, Columbia Pictures Dir.: Ron Howard; screenplay: Akiva Goldsman from the novel by Dan Brown; cast: Paul Bettany, Tom Hanks, Ian McKellen, Alfred Molina, Jean Réno, Audrey Tautou. A gruesome murder in the Louvre leads Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon in league with French police officer Sophie Neveu to undertake a chase across France and England in search of the Holy Grail. The two are pursued by members of Opus Dei who have suppressed the true story of the Grail: it is a person, not a vessel. That person is Mary Magdalene, who married Jesus and bore him a child, whose direct lineal descendant turns out to be Neveu, whose first and last names suggest that she is the ‘new wisdom or truth’.

Reviews America 194 (19–26 June 2006), 20; Arthuriana 16 (Winter 2006), 83–85; Christian Century 123 (13 June 2006), 8; Empire 206 (August 2006), 36; Entertainment Weekly 907 (17 November 2006), 105; Film Review 670 (June 2006), 155 and 671 (July 2006), 124–25; New York 39 (29 May 2006), 66; New York Times 18 May 2006, E1; New Yorker 82 (29 May 2006), 76; Newsweek 147 (29 June 2006), 52; Premiere [US] September 2006, 50–51; Sight and Sound 16 (July 2006), 52; Time 167 (29 May 2006), 70; Variety 22 May 2006, 40.

Additional discussions Brett, Anwar. ‘Code of Silence’. Film Review 670 (June 2006), 52–60. Chumo, Peter N. ‘Akiva Goldsman’s Beautiful Career’. Creative Screenwriting 13 (May 2006), 48–54. Fordham, Joe. ‘Overview: Angus Bickerton on The Da Vinci Code’. Cinefex 106 (July 2006), 25–32. Goldsman, Akiva. The Da Vinci Code, Illustrated Screenplay. New York, 2006. Gunn, Mike, et al. The Da Vinci Code Adventure: On the Trail of Fact, Legend, Faith, and Film. Burien, WA, 2006. Nathan, Ian. ‘The Last Crusaders’. Empire 204 (June 2006), 92–103. Thomson, Patricia. ‘Secret History’. American Cinematographer 87 (June 2006), 38–53.

Excalibur (1981), United States; Orion Pictures Dir.: John Boorman; screenplay: John Boorman and Rospo Pallenberg; cast: Robert Addie, Gabriel Byrne, Nicholas Clay, Cherie Lunghi, Helen Mirren, Nigel Terry, Nicol Williamson. Putatively indebted to Malory, Boorman and Pallenberg are rather free with their sources, conflating materials as they see fit. Arthur is the Grail King, but the sacred vessel is stripped of any real Christian associations. Rather, because

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the king and the land are one, the Grail here is the central symbol in an at times murkily defined pagan fertility ritual.

Reviews Cahiers du cinéma 326 (July–August 1981), 61–62; Film Journal 84 (6 April 1981), 13–14; Films in Review 32 (July 1981), 377; Los Angeles Times 27 March 1981, 6.1–2, 5 April 1981, Calendar 28, and 17 June 1981, Calendar 1; Monthly Film Bulletin 48 (June 1981), 112; New York 14 (13 April 1981), 50–52; New York Times 10 April 1981, 3.11 and 10 May 1981, 2.13; New Yorker 57 (20 April 1981), 146–51; Newsweek 97 (13 April 1981), 82; Positif 242 (May 1981), 34–37; Sunday Times [London] 5 July 1981, 40; Sunday Times Magazine [London] 28 June 1981, 675; Time 117 (13 April 1981), 96; Times [London] 28 June 1981, 36 and 3 July 1981, 11; Times Literary Supplement [London] 17 July 1981, 812; Variety 8 April 1981, 18.

Additional discussions Bartone, Richard C. ‘Variations on Arthurian Legend in Lancelot du Lac and Excalibur’. In Sally Slocum, ed. Popular Arthurian Traditions. Bowling Green, OH, 1992, pp. 144–55. Burns, E. Jane. ‘Nostalgia Isn’t What It Used to Be: The Middle Ages in Literature and Film’. In George Slusser and Eric S. Rabkin, eds. Shadows of the Magic Lamp, Fantasy and Science Fiction in Film. Carbondale, IL, 1985, pp. 86–97. Ciment, Michel. John Boorman. Trans. Gilbert Adair. London, 1986. Clegg, Cynthia. ‘The Problem of Realizing Romance in Film: John Boorman’s Excalibur’. In George Slusser and Eric S. Rabkin, eds. Shadows of the Magic Lamp, Fantasy and Science Fiction in Film. Carbondale, IL, 1985, pp. 98–111. de Weever, Jacqueline E. ‘Morgan and the Problem of Incest’. In Harty, ed. Cinema Arthuriana, pp. 54–63. Foury, Marie-Hélène, ‘Excalibur de J. Boorman, quête originelle d’un imaginaire contemporain’. In Xavier Kawa-Topor, ed. Le Moyen age vu par le cinéma européen, 2001, pp. 239–60. Fries, Maureen. ‘How to Handle a Woman, or Morgan at the Movies’. In Harty, ed. King Arthur on Film, pp. 67–80. Kennedy, Harlan. ‘The World of King Arthur According to John Boorman’. American Film 6 (March 1981), 30–37. Lacy, Norris J. ‘Arthurian Film and the Tyranny of Tradition’. Arthurian Interpretations 4 (Fall 1989), 75–85. ——. ‘Mythopoeia in Excalibur’. In Harty, ed. Cinema Arthuriana, pp. 34–43. Miller, Barbara D. ‘“Cinemagicians”: Movie Merlins of the 1980s and the 1990s’. In Harty, ed. King Arthur on Film, pp. 141–66. Nickel, Helmut. ‘Arms and Armor in Arthuriana Films’. In Harty, ed. Cinema Arthuriana, pp. 235–51. Osberg, Richard H., and Michael E. Crow. ‘Language Then and Language Now in Arthurian Film’. In Harty, ed. King Arthur on Film, pp. 39–66. Purdon, Liam O., and Robert J. Blanch. ‘Hollywood’s Myopic Medievalism: Ecalibur [sic] and Malory’s Morte d’Arthur’. In Sally Slocum, ed. Popular Arthurian Traditions. Bowling Green, OH, 1992, pp. 156–61.

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Shichtman, Martin B. ‘Hollywood’s New Weston: The Grail Myth in Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now and John Boorman’s Excalibur’. Post Script 4 (Autumn 1984), 35–49. Whitaker, Muriel. ‘Fire, Water, Rock: Elements of Setting in John Boorman’s Excalibur and Steve Barron’s Merlin’. In Harty, ed. Cinema Arthuriana, pp. 44–53.

The Fisher King (1991), United States, Tri-Star Pictures Dir.: Terry Gilliam; screenplay: Richard LaGravenese; cast: Jeff Bridges, Michael Jeter, Amanda Plummer, Mercedes Ruehl, Robin Williams. Radio ‘shock-jock’ Jack Lucas is in part responsible for the death of the wife of a professor of medieval history named Parry. Parry subsequently goes insane, becomes a street person, and thinks he must go on a quest for the Holy Grail to redeem himself. That quest becomes a double quest for both Jack and Parry, twin Parsifal-like figures lost in the urban wasteland of contemporary Manhattan.

Reviews American Film 16 (September–October 1991), 50–51; Cahiers du cinéma 448 (October 1991), 74; Cineaste 18 (December 1992), 46–47; Empire 30 (December 1991), 20–21; Entertainment Weekly 84 (20 September 1991), 84 and 111 (27 March 1992), 78–80; Film Journal 94 (October–November 1991), 57–58; Films in Review 43 (January– February 1992), 44–46; Los Angeles Times 20 September 1991, Calendar 1, 15; New York 24 (30 September 1991), 60; New York Times 20 September 1991, C10 and 22 September 1991, 2.13; Newsweek 118 (23 September 1991), 57; Positif 368 (October 1991), 47; Revue du cinéma 475 (October 1991), 24–26; Sight and Sound NS 1 (November 1991), 42–43, NS 2 (November 1992), 60, and NS 3 (January 1993), 61; Sunday Times [London] 10 November 1981, 6.8–9; Time 138 (23 September 1991), 68; Times [London] 7 November 1991, 19; Times Literary Supplement [London] 22 November 1991, 17; Variety 16 September 1991, 89–90.

Additional discussions Blanch, Robert J. ‘The Fisher King in Gotham: New Age Spiritualism Meets the Grail Legend’. In Harty, ed. King Arthur on Film, pp. 123–29. Harty, Kevin J. ‘The Fisher King: A List of Critical Reviews and Other Discussions’. In Keith Busby, ed. The Arthurian Yearbook III. New York, 1993, pp. 273–76. Hoffman, Donald L. ‘Re-framing Perceval’. Arthuriana 10 (Winter 2000), 43–56. Homan, Richard L. ‘The Everyman Movie, circa 1991’. Journal of Popular Film and Literature 25 (Spring 1997), 21–30. LaGravenese, Richard. The Fisher King, The Book of the Film. New York, 1991. [Screenplay.] McCabe, Bob. Dark Knights & Holy Fools: The Art and Films of Terry Gilliam. New York, 1999. Magid, Ron. ‘The Fisher King’s Logistical Knight-Mare’. American Cinematographer 72 (December 1991), 70–77.

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Miller, Barbara D. ‘ “Cinemagicians”: Movie Merlins of the 1980s and the 1990s’. In Harty, ed. King Arthur on Film, pp. 141–66. ——. ‘The Filmic Quixote of The Fisher King: Sancho as Radio Talk-Show Host’. In Zenia Sacks DaSilvia, ed. The Hispanic Connection: Spanish and SpanishAmerican Literature in the Arts of the World. Westport, CT, 2004, pp. 121–31. Morgan, David. ‘Terry Gilliam: The Millimeter Interview’. Millimeter 19 (March 1991), 43–53. Osberg, Richard H. ‘Pages Torn from the Book: Narrative Disintegration in Gilliam’s “The Fisher King.”’ In Leslie J. Workman and Kathleen Verduin, eds. Medievalism in England II. Studies in Medievalism 1995. Cambridge, 1996, pp. 194–224. ——, and Michael E. Crow. ‘Language Then and Language Now in Arthurian Film’. In Harty, ed. King Arthur on Film, pp. 39–66. Panek, Richard. ‘A Writer’s Dream’. Premiere [US] 4 (May 1991), 86–92. Sternberg, Doug. ‘Tom’s a-cold: Transformation and Redemption in King Lear and The Fisher King’. Literature/Film Quarterly 22 (July 1994), 160–69. Stukator, Angela. ‘ “Soft Males,” “Flying Boys,” and “White Knights”: New Masculinity in The Fisher King’. Literature/Film Quarterly 25 (July 1997), 214– 21.

The Grail (1915), United States, Laemmle/Universal Films Dir.: William Worthington; screenplay: L.V. Jefferson; cast: Ann Little, Herbert Rawlinson, William Worthington. The theme of Galahad’s quest for the Holy Grail runs throughout this film about a bank clerk who blames his daughter’s fiancé for his own embezzlement. When the clerk and his daughter end up stranded in the desert, they are rescued by the fiancé, who is then cleared of the charges against him.

Reviews Bioscope 2 September 1915, supplement vii; Moving Picture World 3 July 1915, 66.

The Grail (1923), United States, Fox Films Dir.: Colin Campbell; screenplay: Charles Kenyon from a stage play by George Scarborough; cast: Léon Barry, Alma Bennett, Dustin Farnum, James Gordon, Frances Raymond, Jack Rollens, Peggy Shaw, Carl Stockdale. Farnum, who had played the title role in the first film version of The Virginian, is here typecast as a Texas Ranger, disguised as an itinerant preacher in pursuit of two outlaws who have killed a fellow ranger during the Texas cattle wars. The Grail of the title is not an object, but the Texas Rangers’ devotion to their motto: ‘they knew their duty and they did it’.

Reviews Moving Picture World 29 September 1923, 430; Variety 20 December 1923, 26.

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Additional discussions Kenneth W. Munden, ed. The American Film Institute Catalog of Motion Pictures Produced in the United States, Feature Films 1921–1930. New York, 1971. William Fox Presents Dustin Farnum in ‘The Grail’. New York, 1923. [Pressbook.]

Der Heilige Berg (1926), Germany, UFA Dir.: Arnold Fanck; screenplay: Arnold Fanck; cast: Ernest Petersen, Leni Riefenstahl, Luis Trenker; alternate titles: The Holy Mountain, Peaks of Destiny, The Sacred Mountain, and The Wrath of the Gods. A classic example of the German Bergfilm (‘mountain film’), which in the 1920s and the 1930s were purpose-made to celebrate Nazi ideals of outdoor athleticism, this film marked Riefenstahl’s screen debut in front of the camera. Here she plays an exotic dancer torn between two lovers, one of whom dies when he falls from an Alpine mountain top. (Riefenstahl would later say Hitler fell in love with her when he saw her dance in this film.) Never previously classified as a Grail film, Der Heilige Berg is clearly further evidence of the Nazi fascination with and appropriation of the Grail: the one lover’s death is preceded by a dream sequence where he and Riefenstahl walk through a cathedral of ice that is a troubling cinematic expression of the National Socialist vision of the Grail.

Reviews Berliner Morgenpost 16 December 1926, n.p.; Bioscope 2 June 1927, 38; Chicago Daily Tribune 21 December 1927, 33; Classic Images 340 (October 2003), 44, 344 (February 2004), 37, and 352 (October 2004), 24; Frankfurter Zeitung 4 March 1927, 1; Harrison’s Report 10 (3 March 1928), 34; Motion Picture News 21 January 1928, 213; New York Times 29 November 1927, 31; Pathéscope Monthly (June–July 1933), 8–9; Sight and Sound 14 (August 2004), 78; Sunday Times [London] 29 May 1927, 6; Variety 30 November 1927, 19; Washington Post 23 August 2003, D4; Die Weltbühne 11 January 1927, 64–65; Westminster Gazette 28 May 1927, 7.

Additional discussions Bach, Steven. Leni: The Life and Work of Leni Riefenstahl. New York, 2007. Fanck, Arnold. Er Führte Regie mit Gletschern Stürmen und Lawinen. Munich, 1973. Horak, Jan-Christopher, and Gisela Pichler, eds. Berge, Licht und Traum: Dr. Arnold Fanck and der Deutsche Bergfilm. Munich, 1997. Kracauer, Siegfried. From Caligari to Hitler, A Psychological History of the German Film. Princeton, NJ, 1947. Rentschler, Eric. ‘Mountains and Modernity: Relocating the Bergfilm’. New German Critique 51 (Autumn 1990), 137–61. Salkeld, Audrey. A Portrait of Leni Riefenstahl. London, 2007. Strathausen, Carsten. ‘The Image as Abyss: The Mountain Film and the Cinematic Sublime’. In Kenneth S. Calhoon, ed. Peripheral Visions: The Hidden Stages of Weimar Cinema. Detroit, 2001. Trimborn, Jijrgen. Leni Riefenstahl, A Life. 2002. Trans. Edna McCown. New York, 2007.

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The Holy Mountain see Der Heilige Berg (1926)

Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989), United States, LucasFilm/Paramount Pictures Dir.: Steven Spielberg; screenplay: Jeffrey Boam; cast: Sean Connery, Alison Doody, Denholm Elliott, Harrison Ford, Julian Glover, River Phoenix, John Rhys-Davies. The third in the trilogy but the first chronologically in its recounting of the hero’s life and adventures, here archaeologist Indiana Jones joins forces with his medievalist father, Dr Henry Jones, to keep the Holy Grail from falling into the hands of the Nazis.

Reviews Cahiers du cinéma 424 (October 1989), 51–52; Film Comment 25 (July–August 1989), 32–33; Films and Filming 417 (July 1989), 40–41; Los Angeles Times 25 May 1989, B8; New York 22 (5 June 1989), 25; New York Times 24 May 1989, 3.5 and 14 January 1990, 2.32; New Yorker 65 (12 June 1989), 103–5; Newsweek 113 (29 May 1989), 69; Positif 344 (October 1989), 70–71; Revue du cinéma 453 (October 1989), 14–16; Sight and Sound NS 3 (January 1990), 59; Sunday Times [London] 2 July 1989, C9; Time 133 (19 May 1989), 82; Variety 24 May 1989, 34.

Additional discussions Aronstein, Susan. ‘“Not Exactly a Knight”: Arthurian Narrative and Recuperative Politics in the Indiana Jones Trilogy’. Cinema Journal 34 (Summer 1995), 3–30. Brown, Christine, and Lynne C. Boughton. ‘The Grail Quest as Illumination’. Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies 9.1–2 (1997), 39–62. Eisenberg, Adam. ‘Father, Son and the Holy Grail’. Cinefex 40 (November 1989), 46–67. Freer, Ian. The Complete Spielberg. London, 2001. Heuring, David. ‘Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade’. American Cinematographer 70 (June 1989), 57–66. Iaccino, James F. Jungian Reflections with the Cinema, A Psychological Analysis of Sci-Fi and Fantasy Archetypes. Westport, CT, 1998. MacGregor, Ron. Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. New York, 1989. [Novelization with an extensive set of black and white stills.] Martin, Les. Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. New York, 1989. [Novelization with an extensive set of black and white stills.] Miller, Barbara D. ‘ “Cinemagicians”: Movie Merlins of the 1980s and the 1990s’. In Harty, ed. King Arthur on Film, pp. 141–66. Osberg, Richard H., and Michael E. Crow. ‘Language Then and Language Now in Arthurian Film’. In Harty, ed. King Arthur on Film, pp. 39–66. Perry, George. Steven Spielberg: The Making of His Movies. New York, 1998. Pfeiffer, Lee, and Michael Lewis. The Films of Harrison Ford. 3rd edn New York, 2002.

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Shichtman, Martin B. ‘Whom Does the Grail Serve? Wagner, Spielberg, and the Jewish Issue of Appropriation’. In Debra N. Mancoff, ed. The Arthurian Revival, Essays on Form, Tradition, and Transformation. New York, 1992, pp. 283–97. Shreve, Adam. ‘“Buenos Noches, Mein Führer”: A Look a Nazism in Popular Culture’. Journal of Popular Culture 35 (Spring 2002), 103–12. Taylor, Phillip M. Steven Spielberg. London, 1992. White, Armond. ‘Keeping Up with the Jones’. Film Quarterly 25 (July–August 1989), 9–11.

Knights of the Round Table (1953), United States, MGM Dir.: Richard Thorpe; screenplay: Talbot Jennings, Jan Lustig and Noel Langley; cast: Felix Aylmer, Stanley Baker, Anne Crawford, Mel Ferrer, Ava Gardner, Maureen Swanson, Robert Taylor. MGM claimed Malory as a source for this curious jumble of arthuriana in which Modred is Morgan Le Fay’s paramour. Both are locked in a battle with Arthur for control of England. Among the subplots, Perceval is the Grail knight whose sister Elaine marries Lancelot; their son is Galahad. Perceval is granted a vision of the Grail, which is denied Lancelot because of his passion – unrequited except for a brief kiss – for Guinevere. But, in the film’s closing scene, a heavenly voice promises Lancelot that he will be redeemed by the actions of his son Galahad.

Reviews Film Daily 23 December 1953, 6; Films and Filming 5 (June 1963), 37; Films in Review 5 (February 1954), 90–91; Harrison’s Reports 26 December 1953, 208; Kinematograph Weekly 20 May 1951, 19–20; Monthly Film Bulletin 21 (July 1954), 100–1; Motion Picture Herald 193 (26 December 1953), Product Digest Section 2117; New York Times 8 January 1954, 17; New Yorker 29 (19 January 1954), 85–86; Newsweek 43 (18 January 1954), 88; Time 63 (26 April 1954), 112; Times [London] 14 May 1954, 8 and 15 May 1954, 12; Today’s Cinema 13 May 1954, 7–8; Variety 23 December 1953, 6.

Additional discussions de la Bretèque, François Amy. ‘Le Table ronde au far-west: “Les Chevaliers de la table ronde” de Richard Thorpe (1953)’. Cahiers de la cinémathèque 42–43 (Summer 1985), 97–102. Kelly, Kathleen Coyne. ‘Hollywood Simulacrum: The Knights of the Round Table (1953)’. Exemplaria 19 (Summer 2007), 270–89. Knights of the Round Table, A Souvenir Booklet. New York, 1954. Richards, Jeffrey. Swordsmen of the Screen from Douglas Fairbanks to Michael York. London, 1977. Sullivan, Joseph M. ‘MGM’s 1953 The Knights of the Round Table and its Manuscript Context’. Arthuriana 14 (Fall 2004), 53–68. Knights of the Round Table (1990) see Les Chevaliers de la table ronde (1990)

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Knights of the Square Table; or, The Grail (1917), United States, Edison Films Dr. Alan Crosland; screenplay: James Austin Wilder; cast: Thomas Blake, Yale Boss, Andy Clark, Paul Kelly, George Romaine, James Austin Wilder. Edison teamed up here with the Boy Scouts to produce a film about rival groups of boys, one ne’er do wells and the other Scouts. The leader of the former, whose prize possession is a book about King Arthur, is forced to take part in a robbery but is rescued by a knight in shining armor, granted a vision of the Grail, mends his ways and joins the Scouts.

Reviews Moving Picture World 4 August 1917, 849 and 11 August 1917, 955–57; New York Dramatic Mirror 4 August 1917, 18; Scouting 5 (15 July 1917), 11; Wid’s 26 July 1917, 474.

Additional discussions ‘Boy Scouts’ Endorsement’. New York Dramatic Mirror 25 August 1917, 26. Hanson, Patricia King, ed. The American Film Institute Catalog of Motion Pictures Produced in the United States, Feature Films, 1911–1920. Berkeley, CA, 1988. Harty, Kevin J. ‘The Knights of the Square Table: The Boy Scouts and Thomas Edison Make an Arthurian Film’. Arthuriana 4 (Winter 1994), 313–23. ‘Praise for Scout Film’. New York Dramatic Mirror 4 August 1917, 24.

Lancelot du lac (1974), France, Mara Films Dir.: Robert Bresson; screenplay: Robert Bresson; cast: Vladimir Antolek-Oresk, Humbert Balsan, Laura Duke Condominas, Luc Simon; alternate title: Lancelot of the Lake. Much of the film’s plot is indebted to the Mort Artu as Arthur’s knights return from the search for the Holy Grail – which never appears in the film – emptyhanded. Their failure on this spiritual quest soon leads to the total failure of the Arthurian ideal and the final apocalyptic battle that marks the collapse of the Arthurian world.

Reviews Avant-scène du cinéma 408–9 (January–February 1992), 102–8; Ecran 29 (October 1974), 57–59; Film Comment 35 (July–August 1999), 46–48; Film français 6 September 1974, 14; Film Review [London] November 1994, 22; Image et son 285 (June–July 1974), 29, 291 (December 1974), 98–102, and 292 (January 1975), 2–3; Los Angeles Times 26 August 1975, 4.12; Monthly Film Bulletin 42 (September 1975), 199–200; New York 8 (19 May 1975), 80; New York Times 1 October 1974, 33 and 5 June 1975, 50; New Yorker 51 (9 June 1975), 117–18; Newsweek 84 (14 October 1974), 131–33; Positif 162 (October 1974), 55–57 and 163 (November 1974), 71–74; Revue du cinéma 291 (December 1974), 98–102; Sight and Sound 43 (Summer 1974), 128–30; Sunday Times [London] 23 October 1974, 10.54, 17 November 1974, 35, 4 January 1975, 36, 31 August 1975, 24, and 7 September 1975, 36; Times [London]

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20 October 1994, 37, 14 November 1974, 14, and 5 September 1975, 7; Variety 12 June 1974, 24.

Additional discussions Bartone, Richard C. ‘Variations on Arthurian Legend in Lancelot du Lac and Excalibur’. In Sally Slocum, ed. Popular Arthurian Traditions. Bowling Green, OH, 1992, pp. 144–55. Codell, Julie F. ‘Decapitation and Deconstruction: The Body of the Hero in Robert Bresson’s Lancelot du Lac’. In Debra Mancoff, ed. The Arthurian Revival, Essays on Form, Tradition, and Transformation. New York, 1992, pp. 266–82. Dempsey, Michael. ‘Despair Abounding: The Recent Films of Robert Bresson’. Film Quarterly 34 (Fall 1980), 2–15. Estève, Michel. Robert Bresson. Rev. edn Paris, 1974. Reader, Keith. Robert Bresson. Manchester, 2000. Rider, Jeff, et al. ‘The Arthurian Legend in French Cinema: Lancelot du Lac and Perceval le Gallois’. In Harty, ed. Cinema Arthuriana, pp. 149–62. Sloan, Jane. Robert Bresson: A Guide to References and Resources. Boston, 1983. Séguy, Mireille, ed. Lancelot. Paris, 1996. Thompson, Kristin. Breaking the Glass Armor: Neoformalist Film Analysis, Princeton, 1988. Williams, Alan. ‘On the Absence of the Grail’. Movietone News 47 (January 1976), 10–13.

Lancelot of the Lake see Lancelot du Lac (1974) The Legend of Perceval see The Quest for the Holy Grail (1993) The Light in the Dark (1922), United States, Associated First National Pictures Dir.: Clarence Brown; screenplay: William Dudley Pelley; cast: Lon Chaney, Therese Maxwell Conover, Hope Hamilton, E.K. Lincoln, Dorothy Walters; alternate title: The Light of Faith. A wealthy playboy finds ‘Tennyson’s Grail’ in the ruins of an English church and brings it to New York where its healing powers cure his critically ill former girlfriend. A sequence in the film transports the two back to the Middle Ages where, as Grail maiden and knight, they reenact an elaborate ceremony in which the faithful are healed of a variety of ailments and infirmities.

Reviews Kinematograph Weekly 10 May 1923, 68; Motion Picture News 9 September 1922, 1295; Moving Picture World 9 September 1922, 128; Variety 1 September 1922, 42.

Additional discussions Blake, Michael F. A Thousand Faces. Vestal, NY, 1995.

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Munden, Kenneth W., ed. The American Film Institute Catalog of Motion Pictures Produced in the United States, Feature Films 1921–1930. New York, 1971. O’Dell, Scott. Representative Photoplays Analyzed. Hollywood, CA, 1924. Pelley, William Dudley. The Door to Revelation. Asheville, NC, 1939.

The Light of Faith see The Light in the Dark (1922) Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975), Great Britain, Python Pictures Dir.: Terry Gilliam and Terry Jones: screenplay and cast: Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle, Terry Jones, Michael Palin. The Python troupe lampoon earlier treatments (cinematic and otherwise) of the search for the Grail. Against carefully chosen backdrops of castles and their ruins and with the incorporation of manuscript illuminations both faux and real, the film presents what may at first appear to be only the broad satire and farce that are the Python trademark. But there is clearly method to the madness here. The film abounds in conventions from and threads of the Arthurian legend, as well as in take-offs on Hollywoodesque swashbuckling adventures, spectacles and fights to the death as Arthur and his knights follow a divine command to find the Holy Grail.

Reviews Cinéma [Paris] 205 (January 1976), 143; Film Review 25 (June 1975), 8–9; Films and Filming 21 (May 1975), 40; Films Illustrated 4 (May 1975), 326; Los Angeles Times 23 July 1974, 4.1; Monthly Film Bulletin 42 (April 1975), 84–85; Motion Picture Herald 14 May 1975, Product Digest Section 94; New York 8 (5 May 1975); 76; New York Times 28 April 1975, 34 and 1 June 1975, 2.15; New Yorker 51 (5 May 1975), 115–17; Newsweek 85 (19 May 1975), 90–91; Positif 171–72 (July–August 1975), 68; Revue du cinéma 301 (December 1975), 117 and 309–10 (October 1976), 247–48; Time 105 (26 May 1975), 58; Times [London] 10 May 1975, 9; Variety 19 March 1975, 32.

Additional discussions Bishop, Ellen. ‘Bakhtin, Carnival and Comedy: The New Grotesque in Monty Python and the Holy Grail’. Film Criticism 15 (Fall 1990), 49–64. Burde, Mark. ‘Monty Python’s Medieval Masterpiece’. In Keith Busby, ed. The Arthurian Yearbook III. New York, 1993, pp. 3–20. Burns, E. Jane. ‘Nostalgia Isn’t What It Used to Be: The Middle Ages in Literature and Film’. In George Slusser and Eric S. Rabkin, eds. Shadows of the Magic Lamp, Fantasy and Science Fiction in Film. Carbondale, IL, 1985, pp. 86–97. Day, David D. ‘Monty Python and the Medieval Other’. In Harty, ed. Cinema Arthuriana, pp. 127–35. Gorgievski, Sandra. ‘Le Mythe comme objet de déconstruction dans Monty Python and the Holy Grail’. In Raphaëlle Cosat de Beauregard et al., eds. Le Cinéma et ses objects. Poitiers, 1997, pp. 247–54. Hoffman, Donald L. ‘Not Dead Yet: Monty Python and the Holy Grail in the Twenty-first Century’. In Harty, ed. Cinema Arthuriana, pp. 136–48.

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McCabe, Bob. Dark Knights and Holy Fools: The Art and Films of Terry Gilliam. New York, 1999. Meuwese, Martine. ‘Die Animatie van Margedecoratie in Monty Python and the Holy Grail’. Madoc: Tijdschrift over de Middeleeuwen 12.1 (1998), 2–13. Monty Python and the Holy Grail (Book). New York, 1977. [Screenplay and related documents.] Murrell, Elizabeth. ‘History Revenged: Monty Python Translates Chrétien de Troyes’s Perceval, or The Story of the Grail (again)’. Journal of Film and Video 50 (Spring 1998), 50–62. Neufeld, Christine M. ‘ “Coconuts in Camelot”: Monty Python and the Holy Grail in the Arthurian Literature Course’. Florilegium 19 (2002), 127–47. Osberg, Richard H., and Michael E. Crow. ‘Language Then and Language Now in Arthurian Film’. In Harty, ed. King Arthur on Film, pp. 39–66. Rosello, Mireille. ‘Interviews with the Bridge-Keeper: Encounters Between Cultures as Phantasmagorized in Monty Python and the Holy Grail’. In Bainard Cowan and Jefferson Humphries, eds. Poetics of the Americas: Race, Founding, and Textuality. Baton Rouge, LA, 1977, pp. 105–22.

The Natural (1984), United States, Columbia Tri-Star Productions Dir.: Barry Levinson; screenplay: Phil Dusenberry and Roger Towne from the novel by Bernard Malamud; cast: Kim Basinger, Wilfred Brimley, Glenn Close, Robert Duvall, Barbara Hershey, Robert Prosky, Robert Redford. Roy Hobbs, an aging baseball player, returns at the invitation of Pop Fisher to play for the New York Knights, but his past, which is explored in terms of the Arthurian legend and of the story of the Holy Grail, comes to haunt him. The film changes the ending of the novel and downplays many of the medieval parallels and connections.

Reviews Cineaste 13 (October 1984), 45–46; Films and Filming 357 (June 1984), 42 and 361 (October 1984) 44, Films in Review 35 (August–September 1984), 427; Los Angeles Times 11 May 1984), 65; Monthly Film Bulletin 51 (November 1984), 337–38; Motion Picture Digest 11 (30 May 1984), 94; New York 17 (21 May 1984), 94–95; New York Times 1 April 1984, 5.2, 6 May 1984, 2.1, 11 May 1984, C8, and 12 June 1984, C17; New Yorker 60 (28 May 1984), 100–1; Newsweek 103 (28 May 1984), 22; Positif 286 (December 1984), 67–69; Revue du cinéma 397 (August 1984), 30–31; Time 123 (14 March 1984), 91; Variety 9 May 1984, 10.

Additional discussions Griffith, James. ‘Say It Ain’t So: The Natural’. Literature/Film Quarterly 19 (July 1991), 157–63. Lupack, Barbara Tepa. ‘The Retreat from Camelot: Adapting Bernard Malamud’s The Natural to Film’. In Harty, ed. Cinema Arthuriana, pp. 80–95. Saperstein, Jeffrey. ‘Irony and Cliché: Malamud’s The Natural in the 1980s’. Literature/Film Quarterly 24 (January 1996), 84–87.

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Silberman, Rob. ‘Mr. Smith Goes to the Ballpark’. Jump Cut 31 (March 1986), 5–6. Turchi, Peter. ‘Roy Hobbs’ Corrected Stance: An Adaptation of The Natural’. Literature/Film Quarterly 19 (July 1991), 150–56.

Parsifal (1904), United States, Edison Films Dir.: Edwin J. Porter; screenplay: Edwin J. Porter (?) from the opera by Richard Wagner. Cast: Adelaide Fitz-Allen and Robert Whittier. Edison’s film is the first attempt to bring the Grail legend to the screen in a series of scenes drawn from the production of Wagner’s opera that was the highlight of the 1903–04 season at New York’s Metropolitan Opera. A worthy effort and interesting failure because there was still no way to synchronize film and recorded sound, the film ran into further difficulties and was withdrawn from circulation when Edison was successfully sued for copyright infringement.

Reviews The National Gallery of Art Film Calendar [Washington, DC] Summer 1993, n.p.; New York Clipper 12 November 1904, 895; Optical Lantern and Cinematography Journal 1 (1905), 1.

Additional discussions Musser, Charles. The History of American Cinema 1: The Emergence of Cinema: The American Screen to 1907. New York, 1990. ——. Before the Nickelodeon. Berkeley, CA, 1991. Niver, Kemp R. Motion Pictures from the Library of Congress Paper Print Collection, 1894–1912. Berkeley, 1967. ——. The First Twenty Years, A Segment of Film History. Los Angeles, 1968. ‘Parsifal’. Edison Films July 1906, 50–53. Savada, Elias. The American Film Institute Catalog of Motion Pictures Produced in the United States, Film Beginnings, 1893–1910. Metuchen, NJ, 1995.

Parsifal (1912), Italy, Ambrosio Films Dir.: Mario Caeserini; screenplay: Arrigo Frusta loosely using Wagner; cast: Mario Bonnard, Filippo Castamagna, Vitale De Stefano, Oreste Grandi, Antonio Gristanti, Lia Negro, Dario Silvestri, Maria Cleo Tarlarini, Serafino Vite. The Knights of Monsalvata, charged with keeping the St Graal, prepare to appoint Amfortas as the sacred vessel’s guardian. When Amfortas proves unworthy because of sin, a vision promises the eventual arrival of Parsifal as worthy keeper of the cup. After surviving a series of trials and temptations, Parsifal arrives to take his rightful place and to forgive Amfortas.

Reviews Bioscope 30 October 1913, 427 and 27 November 1913, 811–13; Kinematograph Monthly Record 20 (December 1913), 59–60; Moving Picture World 28 December 1912, 1307–8; Picturegoer 1.10 (1913), 136.

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Additional discussions Jarratt, Vernon. The Italian Cinema. London, 1951. Lephrohon, Pierre, The Italian Cinema. Trans. Roger Greaves and Oliver Stallybrass. New York, 1972. Weinberg, Herman G., ed. Fifty Years of Italian Cinema. Rome, 1955.

Parsifal (1951), Spain, Cine-Español Dir.: Daniel Mangrane; screenplay: Francisco Naranjo loosely using medieval legends and Wagner; cast: José Bruguera, Félix de Pomés, Alfonso Estela, Gustavo Rojo, Ludmilla Tchérina. As barbarians invade fifth-century France, a royal child is orphaned and subsequently raised by wolves unaware of his pedigree. Eventually, he becomes a knight, rescues his country from the invading barbarians and learns that he is destined to become the guardian of the Holy Grail. The film, clearly made on a low budget, offers a pastiche of costumes and settings that are variously late medieval, Viking and seemingly prehistoric.

Review Film français 448 (13 November 1953), 20.

Discussion Perucha, Julia Pérez, ed. Antología Crítica del Cine Español 1906–1995: Flor en la sombra. Madrid, 1997.

Parsifal (1982), Germany, Gaumont-TMS Dir.: Hans-Jürgen Syberberg; screenplay: Gretl Zeilinger from the opera by Richard Wagner; cast: Edith Clever, Aage Haugland, Armin Jordan, Karin Krick, Michael Kutter, Robert Lloyd, Martin Speer. In this controversial film version of Wagner’s opera, Syberberg uses elaborate sets (some oversized, some miniature), puppets, expert dubbing and the daring conceit of having the title characters played alternately by a man and woman. The film, which runs 255 minutes, is set in a claustrophobic labyrinth constructed out of the cracks and crevices of an enormous model of the composer’s death mask

Reviews Avant-scène du cinéma 338 (July–August 1982), 51–55; Cinéma [Paris] 283–84 (July–August 1982), 95; Film Journal 86 (19 February 1983), 41; Image et son 374 (July–August 1982), 78–80; Los Angeles Times 20 July 1983, 6.3; Monthly Film Bulletin 50 (May 1983), 24–26; New York 16 (31 January 1983), 54–56; New York Times 23 January 1983, 1.46 and 11 February 1984, 3.8; Newsweek 101 (31 January 1983), 54–56; Opera 34 (June 1983), 686–88; Opera News 47 (12 March 1983), 42–43; Positif 259 (September 1982), 65–66; Sunday Times [London] 3 April 1983, 39; Time 121 (24 January 1983), 84; Times [London] 26 March 1983, 11 and 31 March 1983,

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10; Times Literary Supplement [London] 8 April 1983, 252; Variety 26 May 1982, 16; Wagner News 22 (April–May 1983), 11–15.

Additional discussions Citron, Marcia J. Opera on Screen. New Haven, CT, 2000. Hoffman, Donald L. ‘Re-Framing Perceval’. Arthuriana 10 (Winter 2000), 45–46. Kleis, John Christopher. ‘The Arthurian Dilemma: Faith and Works in Syberberg’s Parsifal’. In Harty, ed. King Arthur on Film, pp. 109–22. Müller, Ulrich. ‘Blank, Syberberg, and the German Arthurian Tradition’. In Harty, ed. Cinema Arthuriana, pp. 177–84. Nattiez, Jacques. Wagner Androgyne. Princeton, NJ, 1993. Solveig, Olsen. Hans-Jürgen Syberberg and His Film of Wagner’s Parsifal. Lanham, MD, 2006. Stanbrook, Stan. ‘The Sight of Music’. Sight and Sound 56 (Spring 1987), 132–35. Syberberg, Hans-Jürgen. Parsifal: Ein Filmessay. Munich, 1982. Tambling, Jeremy. Opera, Ideology and Film. New York, 1987.

Parzival (1980); (then West) Germany, West Deutsche Rundfunk Dir.: Richard Blank; screenplay: Richard Blank from Wolfram von Eschenbach’s medieval poem; cast: Wolfram Kinkel and Eva Schuchardt. This made-for-television film presents a group of contemporary actors staging a fairly straightforward and accessible, ninety-minute truncated version of Wolfram’s poem – a rare film source for the legend – in an attic, on stage and out in an urban setting.

Discussions Müller, Ulrich. ‘Parzival 1980 – auf der Bühn, im Fernsehen und im Film’. In Jürgen Kühnel et al., eds. Mittelalter-Rezeption II. Göppingen, 1982, pp. 623– 40. ——. ‘Wolfram, Wagner, and the Germans’. In Will Hasty, ed. A Companion to Wolfram’s Parzival. Columbia, SC, 1999, pp. 245–58. ——. ‘Blank, Syberberg, and the German Arthurian Tradition’. In Harty, ed. Cinema Arthuriana, pp. 177–84. Wagemann, Anke. Wolfram von Eschenbachs ‘Parzival’ im 20. Jahrhundert. Göppingen, 1998.

Peaks of Destiny see Der Heilige Berg (1926) Perceval (1978) see Perceval le Gallois (1978) Perceval le Gallois (1978), France, Gaumont-Les Films du Losange Dir.: Eric Rohmer; screenplay: Eric Rohmer from Chrétien de Troyes; cast: MarieChristine Barrault, Arielle Dombrasie, André Dussollier, Marc Eyraud, Fabrice Luchini; alternate title: Perceval.

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Arguably the most authentically ‘medieval film’ yet made, Rohmer’s screen version of Chrétien de Troyes’s twelfth-century le Conte du Graal cuts from the poet’s unfinished text the adventures of Gawain in order to focus exclusively on Perceval. In the film’s final scene, Rohmer has Perceval take the central role in a version of a medieval passion play, where the eponymous hero’s spiritual rebirth is shown as a true union with Christ.

Reviews Cahiers du cinéma 299 (April 1979), 41–46; Continental Film Review 25 (August 1978), 16–17; Film Quarterly 33 (Winter 1979–1980), 49–52; Films in Review 76 January 1979), 53–54; Image et son 334 (December 1978), 109–12; New York Times 6 October 1978, n.p.; Newsweek 92 (30 October 1978), 95; Positif 216 (March 1979), 74; Télérama 1517 (10–16 February 1979), 86–89; Time 114 (20 November 1978), 104; Times [London] 14 November 1979, 10; Variety 23 October 1978, 23.

Additional discussions Adair, Gilbert. ‘Rohmer’s Perceval’. Sight and Sound 47 (Autumn 1978), 230–34. Angeli, Giovanna. ‘Perceval le gallois d’Eric Rohmer et ses sources’. Cahiers de L’Association internationale des études françaises 47 (1995), 33–48. Beatie, Bruce. ‘The Broken Quest: The “Perceval” Romances of Chrétien de Troyes and Eric Rohmer’. In Debra Mancoff, ed. The Arthurian Revival, Essays on Form, Tradition, and Transformation. New York, 1992, pp. 248–65. Burns, E. Jane. ‘Nostalgia Isn’t What It Used to Be: The Middle Ages in Literature and Film’. In George Slusser and Eric S. Rabkin, eds. Shadows of the Magic Lamp, Fantasy and Science Fiction in Film. Carbondale, IL, 1985, pp. 86–97. Callahan, Leslie Abend. ‘Perceval le Gallois: Eric Rohmer’s Vision of the Middle Ages’. Film & History 29. 3–4 (1999), 46–53. Cormier, Raymond J. ‘Rohmer’s Grail Story: Anatomy of a French Flop’. Yale French Review 5 (Winter 1981), 391–96. Crisp, C.H. Eric Rohmer: Realist and Moralist. Bloomington, IN, 1988. Rohmer, Eric. ‘Perceval le gallois’. Avant-scène du cinéma 221 (1 February 1979), 9–64. [Screenplay.] Grimbert, Joan Tasker. ‘Aesthetic Distance in Rohmer’s Perceval le Gallois’. In Maud S. Walther, ed. Proceedings of the Purdue University Fifth Annual Conference on Film [October 30–November 1, 1980]. West Lafayette, IN, 1980, pp. 53–58. ——. ‘Distancing Techniques in Chrétien de Troyes’s Li Contes del Graal and Eric Rohmer’s Perceval le Gallois’. Arthuriana 10 (Winter 2000), 33–44. Heinemann, David. ‘Reinventing Romance’. Film Comment 36 (November– December 2000), 50–54. Hoffman, Donald L. ‘Re-Framing Perceval’. Arthuriana 10 (Winter 2000), 45–56. Movshovitz, Howard P. ‘Rohmer’s Perceval: Narrative Time and Space in Medieval Literature and Film’. In Maud S. Walther, ed. Proceedings of the Purdue University Fifth Annual Conference on Film [October 30-November 1, 1980]. West Lafayette, IN, 1980, pp. 66–72. Quast, Brunu. ‘Eric Rohmer: Perceval le Gallois (1978)’. In Christian Kiening and Heinrich Adolf, eds. Mittelalter im Film. Berlin, 2006, pp. 319–31.

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Rider, Jeff, et al. ‘The Arthurian Legend in French Cinema: Lancelot du Lac and Perceval le Gallois’. In Harty, ed. Cinema Arthuriana, pp. 149–62. Smith, Sarah. ‘Rohmer’s Perceval as Literary Criticism’. In Maud S. Walther, ed. Proceedings of the Purdue University Fifth Annual Conference on Film [October 30–November 1, 1980]. West Lafayette, IN, 1980, pp. 59–65. Tesich-Savage, Nadja. ‘Rehearsing the Middle Ages’. Film Comment 14 (September–October 1978), 50–56. Williams, Linda. ‘Eric Rohmer and the Holy Grail’. Literature/Film Quarterly 11 (April 1983), 71–82.

The Quest of the Holy Grail (1915), United States, Triangle Productions Dir.: D.W. Griffith; screenplay: D.W. Griffith. For this projected, but never realized, spectacle to be based on the series of fifteen murals by Edwin Austin Abbey that decorate the Book Delivery Room in the Boston Public Library, Griffith obtained the necessary rights from Abbey’s widow but, for reasons never explained, abandoned the project.

Discussions ‘Film Flashes’. Variety 28 May 1915, 16. ‘Griffith to Make Holy Grail Picture’. Moving Picture World 1 May 1915, 769. Stern, Seymour. An Index to the Creative Work of David Warwick Griffith. Part II: The Art Triumphant. (B) Triangle Productions: 1915–1916. Special Supplement to Sight and Sound. London, 1946.

The Quest for the Holy Grail (1993), United States, Gateway Films Dir.: Judith Bost; screenplay: Janeen Robertson and Joan Thiery; cast: (the voice of) Stephen Titra; alternate title (for video and DVD release): The Legend of Perceval. Loosely based on medieval versions of the story of the Grail, this narrated comic strip tells the story of Perceval from his birth until he becomes a true Grail seeker.

The Sacred Mountain see Der Heilige Berg (1926) The Silver Chalice (1954), United States, Warner Brothers Dir.: Victor Saville; screenplay: Lesser Samuels from the novel by Thomas B. Costain; cast: Pier Angeli, Lorne Greene, Walter Hampden, E.G. Marshall, Virginia Mayo, Paul Newman, Jack Palance. Joseph of Arimathea and Luke the Evangelist commission Basil, a famous silversmith, to fashion an ornate silver chalice in which to place the cup that Jesus drank from at the Last Supper. At the same time, Simon the Magician in league with a band of armed rebels called ‘the Assassins’ bent on overthrowing Roman rule seeks to establish himself as a new messiah. Basil and Simon journey

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to Rome – the former to find the Apostle Peter, the latter to widen his fame and influence. When the eventually insane Simon falls to his death from a great tower out of which he hoped to fly to prove his messianic claim, riots break out in Rome and Basil’s chalice and the cup of the Last Supper disappear. At the film’s conclusion, the Apostle Peter prophesies that the cup of the Last Supper will remain hidden for centuries but will eventually bring hope to mankind in the future when the cup’s solace is needed most.

Reviews Film Daily 20 December 1954, 6; Films and Filming 1 (June 1955), 20; Harrison’s Reports 25 December 1954, 206; Hollywood Reporter 17 December 1954, 3; Kinematograph Weekly 28 April 1955, 22; Monthly Film Bulletin 257 (June 1955), 85; Motion Picture Herald 197 (25 December 1954), Product Digest Section 257; New York Times 27 December 1954, 22; New Yorker 30 (January 1955), 70; Newsweek 45 (17 January 1955), 87; Time 65 (10 January 1955), 82; Variety 22 December 1954, 6.

Additional discussions O’Brien, Daniel. Paul Newman. London, 2004. Quirk, Lawrence J. The Films of Paul Newman. New York, 1971. ——. Paul Newman. Dallas, 1996.

Sir Galahad of Twilight (1914), United States, American Film Manufacturing Company Dir.: Sydney Ayres; screenplay: Marie Layet; cast: Perry Banks, B. Reeves Eason, William Garwood, Jack Richardson, Vivian Rich, Harry von Meter. On Twilight Mountain, two rivals for the hand of a young woman go on a quest to prove who is her true Sir Galahad.

Reviews Bioscope 3 December 1914, supplement i.; Moving Picture World 7 November 1914, 789.

Stalker (1979), USSR, Mosfilm Studios Dir.: Andrei Tarkovsky; screenplay: Arkadi and Boris Strugatsky from their novel Picnic on the Road; cast: Alice Friendlich, Nickolai Grinko, Alexander Kaidanovsky, Anatolii Solonitsin. In a sepia-tinted post-Apocalyptic wasteland, the Parsifal-like Stalker lives with his wife and severely crippled daughter, the Monkey. The daughter appears to have been born without legs, perhaps because of the massive amounts of air-, water- and earth-borne pollutants that surround them. The Stalker leads the cynical Writer and the cowardly Scientist on a quest into the Zone, a richly colored enclosure at the center of which lies the Room, where one’s dream are revealed and one’s deepest desires are realized. The two visitors return disappointed; indeed, the Scientist at one point tries to destroy the entire Zone with a

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nuclear warhead for fear that its power would be used by a tyrant to wreak even further havoc on earth. The Stalker, however, returns to the Zone with his wife, who calls her husband ‘just God’s fool’, and with his daughter, who appears in a richly brocaded golden headscarf riding on her father’s shoulders and demonstrates her telepathic powers to show that she has internalized the power of the Zone and that at least the Stalker’s quest has been successful.

Reviews Cahiers du cinéma 330 (December 1981), 41–42; Cinefantastique 13 (September 1983), 104; Cinématograhe 72 (November 1981), 60–61; Ecran fantastique 23 (1982), 19; Empire 190 (April 2005), 36; The Listener 12 February 1981, 224; Monthly Film Bulletin 48 (January 1981), 10–11; New York Times 25 May 1980, 2.1 and 20 October 1982, C23; Observer [London] 8 February 1981, 36; Sight and Sound 50 (Winter 1980–81), 8–9, 63–64, NS 12 (July 2002), 61, and NS 15 (March 2005), 30–33; Soviet Film 10 (1980), 33–35; Sunday Times [London] 8 February 1981, 39; Télérama 29 May 1985, 25; Times [London] 6 February 1981, 11; Times Literary Supplement [London] 27 February 1981, 228; Variety 19 September 1979, 19; Village Voice 26 October 1982, 60.

Additional discussions Carrère, Emmanuel. ‘Troisième plongée dans l’océan’. Positif 247 (October 1981), 16–22. De Baecque, Antoine. Andrei Tarkovski. Paris, 1989. Dempsey, Michael. ‘Lost Harmony: Tarkovsky’s The Mirror and The Stalker’. Film Quarterly 35 (Autumn 1981), 12–17. Frezzato, Achille. ‘Stalker di Andrej A. Tarovskij’. Cineforum 203 (April 1981), 46–54. Gillespie, David. Russian Cinema. Harlow, UK, 2003. Green, Peter. ‘The Nostalgia of The Stalker’. Sight and Sound 54 (Winter 1984–85), 50–54. Johnson, Vida T., and Graham Petrie. The Films of Andrei Tarkovsky. Bloomington, IN, 1994. Lawton, Anna. Kinoglasnost: Soviet Cinema in Our Time. New York, 1992. Le Fanu, Mark. The Cinema of Andrei Tarkovsky. London, 1987. McNab, G.C. ‘Tarkovsky, Andrei’. In Tom Pendergast and Sara Pendergast, eds. International Dictionary of Films and Filmmakers, Vol. 2: Directors. 4th edn, Detroit, 2000. Menashe, Louis. ‘The Stalker’. Magill’s Survey of Cinema: Foreign Language Films. Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1995. Petric, Vlada. ‘Tarkovsky’s Dream Imagery’. Film Quarterly 43 (Winter 1989–90), 28–34. Roguiski, Krzysztof. ‘Les Voix dans les ténèbres’. Avant-scène du cinéma 427 (December 1993), 1–9. Tarkovsky, Andrei. The Stalker. Paris: Avant-scène du cinéma, 1993. [Screenplay and selected Reviews all in French repr. from Avant-scène du cinéma 427 (December 1993), 10–80.]

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——. Sculpting in Time: Reflections on the Cinema. Trans. Kitty Hunter-Blair. Austin, TX, 1989. Tassone, Aldo. ‘Entretien avec Andrei Tarkovski (sur Stalker)’. Positif 247 (October 1981), 23–26. Totaro, Donato. ‘Time and Film Aesthetics of Andrei Tarkovsky’. Revue canadienne d’études cinématographiques/Canadian Journal of Film Studies 2.1 (1992), 21–30. Turovskaya, Maya. Tarkovsky: Cinema as Poetry. Trans. Natasha Ward. London, 1989.

To Parsifal (1963), United States, Canyon Cinema Co-op Dir.: Bruce Baillie; screenplay: Bruce Baillie; cast: Bruce Baillie. Set in and around San Francisco, Baillie uses Parsifal and the quest for the Grail as the basis for a typically 1960s meditation on the environment and on the role of myth in the modern world. Baillie envisioned his film as a tribute to Wagner’s opera as well, though there is as large a debt here to T.S. Eliot’s The Wasteland as there is to the work of the German composer.

Review Harbinger 1 (July 1967), 27–28.

Additional discussions Nygren, Scott. ‘Myth and Bruce Baillie’s To Parsifal’. Field of Vision 13 (Spring 1985), 3–4. Polt, Harriet. ‘The Films of Bruce Baillie’. Film Comment 2 (Fall 1964), 50–53. Whitehall, Richard. ‘An Interview with Bruce Baillie’. Film Culture 47 (Summer 1969), 16–20.

The Wrath of the Gods see Der Heilige Berg (1926)

Index The index references significant characters, places and motifs, though passing allusions to a person or item are generally omitted. With the exception of anonymous works, titles simply refer the reader to their authors (and film directors). Modern scholars are included if there is discussion of, or significant quotation from, their work, but not if there is only passing mention of their names and titles. Wherever the distinction was in doubt, we have chosen to include them. abduction motif in Tristan-like stories, 78–79 Absalon, 42 Acglovael, 95, 97 Act in Restraint of Appeals to Rome, 162 Acts of King Arthur, see Steinbeck, John Adam collecting Christ’s blood, 17 Adam of Damerham, 158 adventure, categories of, 136; meaning of word, 5 Agravain (Aggravayne), 5; murder of Dinadan, 147 Aire (Aire-sur-la-Lys), 40 Alain, 18, 19 Alans, 1n Albina, 116, 121 Albrecht, 22–23 Alexandre III, Pope, 40 Alfonso V of Aragon, 177 Alliterative Morte Arthure, 115, 125, 138 Alphasem, King, 18 Altressi con l’orifanz, see Rigaut de Barbezieux Altressi con Persavaus, see Rigaut de Barbezieux Amalric, 32, 33, 35, 39, 42 Anathemata, see Jones, David Andronicus, 31 Anfortas, 22, 59 Antapodosis, see Liudprand Ark of the Covenant, 17, 18 Arthur, King as Grail King, 188 battle with giant, 138, 139 battle with Mordred, 111 begetting of, 123 buried at Glastonbury, 122, 126 crowned Emperor, 130 descent from Joseph, 157n discovery of remains, 112n, 157; doubts concerning discovery, 164–65 draws sword from stone, 123 error in trusting Mordred, 119 evoked to support English claims to Empire status, 162 in Avalon, 10, 177

marriage to Guinevere, 123 survival of, 11 war with Lancelot, 121 Arthur, nephew of Richard Lionheart, 158 Arthur, son of Henry VII, 125 Arturs doet, 92, 95, 100, 103, 106, 108 Arviragus, 164 Ascham, Roger, 156 Assertio inclytissimi Arturii regis Britanniae, see Leland, John Auchinleck Manuscript, see manuscripts Augustine, St, 25 Auslegungsspielraum, 98 Avalon, 10, 177 Awakening Percival, see Hotaling, Arthur Ayres, Sydney, 204 Baillie, Bruce, 206 Baldwin I, King, 34, 39 Baldwin IV, King, 30, 31, 35, 39, 44 Baldwin V, King, 44 Bale, John, 170 Balin, 111, 143–45 Barber, Richard, 2, 10, 12, 13n, 127 Barnes, Geraldine, 79–80 Barthelme, Donald, 11 Baruc, 50 baseball, 198 Basel, Council of, 161 Baudolino, see Eco, Umberto Baumgartner, Emmanuèle, 20n Baxmeyer, Florian, 186 Beatus Apocalypses, Spanish, 17 Beaumains, 138 Bedivere, 139; death of, 138 Beggs, Lee, 186 Belakane, 50 Bere, Richard, 162 Bernard of Clairvaux, 52–56, 60, 149 Besamusca, Bart, 93, 98n Black Book of the Garter, 159n Blanchefleur, 67 Blank, Richard, 201

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Bleeding Lance, see Lance Blensinbil, 82 Blenziblý, 82–83, 90 Blome, John, 160 Blut der Templer, see Baxmeyer, Florian Boccaccio, Giovanni, 174 Boleyn, Anne, 162 Boniface VIII, Pope, 158 Book of Launcelot and Guinevere, 128; see also Malory, Sir Thomas Book of Sir Tristram, see Malory, Sir Thomas Boorman, John, 1, 9, 188 Bors, 148; as Grail knight, 146 Bost, Judith, 203 Boy Scouts, 195 Breillat, Pierre, 181 Bresson, Robert, 195 Brewnys Saunce Pité,147 Brown, Clarence, 196 Brown, Dan, 13, 173, 174 Brut, see Laǟamon, Prose Brut, Wace Brutus, 115–16 Bryan, Elizabeth, 109, 118 Bryant, Nigel, 175 Burnley, David, 121 Brynhildr, 86 Caesarea, 40 Caeserini, Mario, 199 Campbell, Colin, 191 Caradoc of Llancarfan, 136 Catalan churches, possible Grail images in, 24–26 Catania, Lance, 187 Catherine of Aragon, 162 Caxton, William, 125, 154, 156, 175 Chair of Dagobert, 43 Chamber of Wisdom, 102, 105–6 Chambers, Frank, 63n Chapel Perilous, 147 Chase, Carol, 19n Chaucer, Geoffrey, 95, 111, 125, 139, 149, 176 Chevalier au Lion, see Chrétien de Troyes Chevalier de la Charrette, see Chrétien de Troyes Chevaliers de la table ronde, see Llorca, Denis Chinnock, John, 161 chivalry, Arthurian, 139; critique of, 54–55, 119, 129; earthly and celestial, 7; testing of, 139; values of, 238 Chrétien de Troyes, 28–29, 52, 62, 95, 119, 126, 132, 176; see also Continuations works Chevalier de la Charrette (Lancelot), 44 Cligés, 42, 44 Erec et Enide, 76, 83 Conte del Graal (Perceval) as ‘old Perceval’, 178 challenge to knights in, 133 chivalry, Perceval’s deficiencies in, 54–55 description of Grail in, 142 Fisher King in, 10

geography in, 49 God forgotten by Perceval, 58 Grail procession in, 14 illustrated manuscripts of, 14–15, 27 influence of, 64 invention of Grail, 2 invention of Perceval, 132 Palace of Marvels, 42–44 successors to, 50 Yvain (Chevalier au lion), 64, 137 Christ appearing in Grail, 21, 152 Chronica civitatis Ianuensis, see Jacopo da Varagine Chronicle of England, see Prose Brut Chronique de Ernoul et de Bernard le Trésorier, 29 Chronycle with a genealogie declaryng that the Brittons and Welshemen are lilnealiye dyscended from Brute, 167 Cistercians, 55; spirituality of, 149 Classens, Geert H.M., 92n, 94 Cligés, see Chrétien de Troyes Clinschor, 43 closure, deferral of, 99 Code of the Templars, see Das Blut der Templer Colgrevance, 137, 139, 140 Commendacion of Welshmen, see Kelton, Arthur Compiler (of Dutch Lancelot Compilation), 93–98, 100, 102, 106–7 Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, see Twain, Mark Constance, Council of, 161 Conte del Graal, see Chrétien de Troyes Continuations of Chrétien de Troyes’s Conte del Graal, 2–3, 15, 55, 178; Gerbert de Montreuil’s (third) Continuation, 3, 44; Manessier Continuation, 15, 32, 47, 55 Cook, Walter, 24 Cooper, Helen, 111, 121, 122n, 136 Corbenic, 19, 148, 150, 151, 181 Crône, see Heinrich von dem Türlin Crosland, Alan, 195 Crucifixion scenes in manuscripts, 21 Crusades, 28–47, 48, 54, 56, 186 Culhwch ac Olwen, 36 Cundrie, 133 Cup of My Blood, see Catania, Lance Da Vinci Code, see Brown, Dan; Howard, Ron Dalrymple, William, 180 De Antiquitate Glastoniensis Ecclesie, see William of Malmesbury de Riquer, Martín, 29 De casibus illustrorum virum, see Boccaccio, Giovanni De sanguine regalis, 174 De Vera Historia de Morte Arthuri, 176–77 De viris illustribus, see Leland, John Deal, Babs H., 11 Dean, Christopher, 157n Declaration of Arbroath, 159 Dee, John, 157, 171 Demus, Otto, 24

INDEX Dinadan, 147, 147n Dolorous Stroke, 127, 143, 144–45 dwarf, 95 Drukker, Tamar, 118 Easter (Estir Day in Malory), 153; ‘corrected’ by Caxton, 154 Ecclesia, triumph of, 25 Eco, Umberto, 11 Ector, see Hector Edison, Thomas, 185, 195, 199 Edward I, 158, 176 Edward III, 121, 158–60, 161, 176 Edward VI, 167 Elaine, married to Lancelot, 194 Eleanor, Queen, 158 Eliot, T.S., 147, 147n Ensenhamen, see Guiraut de Cabrera equivocal oath, see oath Erec et Enide, see Chrétien de Troyes Escalot, damsel of, 5 Estoire de Eracles, 29 Eulalia d’Estaon, 26 Evans, Murray, 120 Evelak, 146 EverQuest, 110 Evolution of Percival, see Beggs, Lee Excalibur, see Boorman, John Fall of Princes, see Lydgate, John Fanck, Arnold, 192 Fasciculus Temporum, see Rolewinck, Werner Faula, see Torroella, Guillem de Feirefiz, 22, 59–60 Fenton, John Carmi, 157n Fichte, Joerg, 135–36 fidelity test, see mantle test of fidelity Field, P.J.C., 173, 178 fish as symbol of Christ, 142 Fisher King, 10, 14, 29, 45; in John Boorman, 9; in Perlesvaus, 9; versions of, 11; wound (in Chrétien), 34–35 Fisher King, see Gilliam, Terry Fitz Richard, Adam, 110 Fleming, Richard, 161 floating stone, see sword in floating stone fornaldarsögur, 85 fortune, ring of, 8 French books, Malory’s reference to, 145 From Ritual to Romance, see Weston, Jessie From the Holy Mountain, see Dalrymple, William Fulk of Anjou, 32 Gahmuret, 51 Galahad, 3–5, 7, 56, 113, 133, 144 arrival at Camelot, 144 as Grail king, 152 as redeemer, 128 conception of, 127 death of, 21, 152 directing Grail quest, 131 focus of Grail scenes (Malory), 151–52

209

Grail quest in Hardyng, 130–32 healing of maimed King Pelleans, 146 in Grail Chapel, 153 Malory’s contradictions concerning, 146 sits in Perilous Seat, 20 Victorian view of, 140 Galasso, see Galahad Gaunt, Simon, 62n, 63n Gawain (Gauvain, Gawan, Gawein, Walewein), xv, 29, 42, 44, 51, 56, 57, 60, 95–96 courtesy and prowess of, 140 eager for combat, 138 Grail vision of, 180 in Grail Castle, 15 irrational, 138–39 lack of rashness, 139 role in quest, 5 search for Green Chapel, 111–12 superior to Parzival, 8 tested, 139 undertaking of question-quest, 139 valorization of, 99 Gawain poet, see Sir Gawain and the Green Knight Genoa Grail, 26, 40–41 Geoffrey of Monmouth, 114–15, 119, 130, 157, 158, 176–77 Gerbert de Montreuil, see Continuations Gerritsen, Willem, 96n, 98n Geste des Chiprois, 30 giants in Britain, 116 Gildas, 164, 169 Gilliam, Terry, 190, 197 Glastonbury Abbey, 112, 113, 122, 130, 156–172; John Seen’s history of, 159 Godfrey of Bouillon, 30 Godstow Register, 110 Goering, Joseph, 24–26 Good Friday, 41–42, 57, Mass, 54 Good, William, 162 Gottfried von Strassburg, 76, 81 Gower, John, 139 Graal Flibuste, see Pinget, Robert grace, two kinds in the Queste del saint Graal, 7 Grail absence from Sir Percyvell of Gales, 133 achievement of, 5 appearances in Malory, 150 as athletic accomplishment, 11, 12 as Christian relic, 38, 150 159 as common noun, 14, 37–38, 141 as hoax, 11 as private challenge, 133 as producer of food, 18, 22 as term for anything important, 141 as tragic, 4 as weapon, 11 description by Chrétien, 142, 143 description by Robert de Boron, 141–42 early history of, 126 explained by Christ, 153 floating in air, 20 forms of, 13, 133, 141

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ceramic pot, 21 chalice, xv, 13, 15, 17, 20, 27, 26, 126 ciborium, 18, 19, 20, 21, 24 pyx, 14, 15, 16, 18, 19 stone, 22, 27 guardians of, 57 hidden by Templars, 186 history of word, 173 in manuscripts, 13–22 in medieval art, 13–26 in Tennyson, 10 invented on Continent, 128 Mass, 19, 20–21 power of, 7 procession, 14, 30, 35, 148 purpose of, 133 pursuit of poisoned fish, 178 quest, 112 question, 2, 3; lack of question in Vulgate Cycle, 6 rarity in English before Malory, 109–25 receiving Christ’s blood, 17, 126 references in Occitan, 6, 65 sphere of influence, 58 studies, desiderata, 173 sustaining life, 10 test, 13 Grail Castle, 22, 29–30, 51, 59, 60 Grail Chapel, 151, 152, 153; in cave, 181–82 Grail, see Campbell, Colin; Crosland, Alan; Deal, Babs H.; Volkan, Kurt; Worthington, William Great Schism, 161 Green Chapel, 140 Grettis saga, 77–78, 80 Griffith, D.W., 203 Guðrún, 85, 86 Guinevere (Guenevere, Guenever, etc.), 94, 95, 102; accused of poisoning a knight, 128; adultery with Mordred, 121; affair with Lancelot, 123; love for Lancelot, 4; see also Lancelot and Guinevere Guiraut de Cabrera, 62 Gunnarr, 86–87 Guy of Lusignan, 46 Hákon Hákonarson, 76 Hardyng, John, 113–14, 119, 130–33, 135, 147n, 174–75 Hartmann von Aue, 76 Harvey, Ruth, 62n, 63n Hatto, A.T., 175 Heath, Nicholas, 169 Hector (Ector) 15, 129, 151 Heilige Berg, see Fanck, Arnold Heinrich von dem Türlin, 7–8 Hélinand (de Froidmont), 141, 143, 179; description of grail, 141 Hengist, 121; living underground beneath Glastonbury, 122 Henry II, 157n Henry V, 161 Henry VII, 157

Henry VIII, 162, 167; self-identification with King Arthur, 162; war on Scotland, 165 Heraclius, Patriarch, 46 Herman, Henri, 186 Hirmer, Max, 24 Herzeloyde, 51, 60 Higden, Ranulph, 167 Historia rerum in partibus transmarinis gestarum, see William of Tyre ‘historia sanregalis’, 174 History of the Holy Grail, see Lovelich, Henry Holy Blood, 145, 147n, 150, 160n, 179, 181 Holy Blood and the Holy Grail, 174 ‘Holy Grail’, see Tennyson, Alfred, Lord Hotaling, Arthur, 186 Howard, Ron, 188 Hughes of St Amand, 40 Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, see Spielberg, Steven Ine, King, 164 Isabella, Queen, 114, 121, 174 Iser, Wolfgang, 98 Iseult, affair with Tristan, 124 Íslendingasögar, 76, 80, 85 Ísodd, 87–88, 89–90; drinking of potion, 88; Ísodd the Dark, 80 Jacobus de Voragine, 26 Jaufré, 63 Jeaste of Sir Gawain, 139n John of Glastonbury, 162 John, St, 25 Johnson, 92n Jones, David, 154 Jones, Terry, 197 Joseph d’Arimathie, see Robert de Boron Joseph of Arimathea appears in Grail Castle, 152 as Grail guardian, 156 brings Holy Blood to Britain, 147n, 150 buried at Glastonbury, 118, 160; remains purportedly remain there, 161 collects Christ’s blood, 14, 126, 143 converts Evelac, 146 entrusted with Grail, 13, 16, 23, 156 founding of church at Glastonbury, 112, 118 in John Leland’s De uiris illustribus, 170 mission to Glastonbury, 159, 160–61, 164 provides connection of Glastonbury to scripture,130 wandering with Grail, 17, with Grail, beneath Cross, 24 Joseph of Arimathie, 126 Josephe, 18–19, 20 Judas, 142 Jüngerer Titurel, see Albrecht Kalegras, 80–81, 83 Kanelangris, 81–82, 83 Kay (Keye), 96, 139; death of, 138 Kelly, Douglas, 1

INDEX Kelton, Arthur, 167–68; argues for historicity of Arthur, 168 Kennedy, Edward Donald, 130 Kennedy, Elspeth, 36 King, see Barthelme, Donald Kjartan, 85–86 Knights of the Round Table, see Thorpe, Richard Knights of the Square Table, see Crosland, Alan Koekman, Jeanette, 98, 105 Kormákr, 79 Kormáks saga, 78–79, 80, 88 Kuhn, Charles, 24 Kyot, 51 Lacy, Norris J., 97, 99, 106, 117n, 119, 136–37, 175 Lady Chapel (Glastonbury), 162 lance, bleeding, 14, 29, 42, 65, 181; curative power of, 21; of Longinus, 19, 38, 145, 186 Lanceloet en het Hert met de Witte Voet, 93, 96, 100–101, 102, 104, 108 Lanceloet, see Roman van Lanceloet Lancelot (Lanceloet, Launcelot), 94, 95, 102, 107, 113; see also Lancelot and Guinevere affair with Guinevere, 123 as champion of the queen, 128 at Grail Chapel, 151 deaf, blind and paralysed, 151 deceived by Elaine, fathers Galahad, 127 defense of Guinevere, 129 denied access to Grail Chapel, 20 flawed character of, 128 heals Sir Urry, 128 living in caves, 121, 122 love for Guenevere, 4 returns queen to Arthur, 122 war with Arthur, 121 Lancelot and Guinevere, their love praised by Malory, 129; love as way to redemption of Arthurian world, 135; see also Lancelot; Guinevere Lancelot Compilation, 92–108 Lancelot do Lac, see Non-Cyclic Lancelot Lancelot du Lac, see Bresson, Robert Lagorio, Valerie, 112n, 156n Langland, John, 149 Lauber, Diebold, 22 Laurent, Nicholas, 174 Laxdæla saga, 85 Laǟamon, 109, 114n, 115, 119 Leach, Henry Goddard, 80 Leaden Cross, 165 Lear, 121 Legend of Perceval, see The Quest for the Holy Grail Lejeune, Rita, 62n, 63n, 65n Leland, John, 162–63, 165, 167, 170; visit to Glastonbury, 163; refutation of Polydore Vergil, 162, 165; claim to have seen excavation and Leaden Cross, 165; discussion of Melkin, 165–66 Leper King, see Baldwin IV Les Vies des plus célèbres et anciens poètes provensaux, see Nostredame, Michel de

211

Levinson, Barry, 198 Liber ad milites Templi de laude novae lmilitiae, see Bernard of Clairvaux Life of St Dunstan, 159 Life of St Gildas, 136 Light in the Dark, see Brown, Clarence Light of Faith, see Light in the Dark Lilja, 81 Limentani, Alberto, 63 Lit de la Merveille, 42 Liudprand, Bishop of Cremona, 43 Llorca, Denis, 187 Loathly Lady, 133 Longeus, 145 Longinus, see lance Longsword, William, see William of Montferrat Loomis, R.S., 23–24, 141 Lovelich, Henry, 126 Lübeck murals, 23–24 Lucius, 130, 138, 166n, 168, 172n Lufamour, 134 Lydgate, John, 174, 175 Maerlant, Jacob van, 96, 106 Mahoney, Dhira, 8–9, 178–79 Maimed King, 142, 146 Malory, Sir Thomas, 112, 115, 145–55, 176, 178 Ascham’s criticism of, 156 ‘Book of the Sankgreal’, 144 effort to shape reader response, 99 explanation of Questing Beast, 110–11 Grail as ‘sangreal’, 175 Grail in, 143 Grail quest in, 132–33 his the only full Arthurian story in Middle English, 125 his the only major Grail romance in Middle English, 114 inconsistencies in, 8–9 ‘Knight of the Cart’, 128, 136 ‘Launcelot and Elaine’, 127 question of work’s unity, 93 Sir Tristram de Lyones, 127 treatment of Lancelot, 127–29 Mancoff, Debra N., 10 Manessier, see Continuations Mangrane, Daniel, 200 Mannyng, Robert, 119 Mantel mautaillé, 95 mantle test of fidelity, 122 Mantua murals, see Pisanello manuscripts Amsterdam, Biblioteca Philosophica Hermetica, BPH 1, 16, 18 Arras, Médiathèque Municipale, Ms. 49/94, 17 Bonn, Universitätsbibliothek, S 526, 18, 20 Edinburgh, National Library of Scotland, Advocates 19.2.1 (Auchinleck Manuscript), 120–21, 123–24 Florence, BN, Pal. lat. 556, 21

212

INDEX

Lincoln Cathedral MS 91 (Thornton Manuscript), 124 London, British Library, Add. 10292, 18 London, British Library, Add. 10293, 15 London, British Library, Add. 59678 (Winchester manuscript), 154–55 London, British Library, Cotton Otho C. XIII (Otho manuscript of Laǟamon), 109 London, British Library, MS Royal 12 C. XII, 121 London, British Library, MS Royal 19 C IX, 116 Manchester, Ryl., fr. 1, 20 Mons, BU, 331/206, 15 München, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Cgm. 19, 22 München, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Cgm. 8470, 23 Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Hatton 50, 118 Paris, Bibl. de l’Arsenal 3479, 20 Paris, Bibl. de l’Arsenal 5218, 21 Paris, Bibl. de l’Arsenal 3142, 16–17 Paris, Bibl. de l’Arsenal 3480, 17 Paris, BnF, fr. 95, 16, 21 Paris, BnF, fr. 96, 19 Paris, BnF, fr. 99, 20 Paris, BnF, fr. 101, 15 Paris, BnF, fr. 105, 19 Paris, BnF, fr. 112, 21 Paris, BnF, fr. 113, 16, 19 Paris, BnF, fr. 116, 20 Paris, BnF, fr. 120, 17, 20 Paris, BnF, fr. 343, 21 Paris, BnF, fr. 344, 18, 19 Paris, BnF, fr. 1453, 15 Paris, BnF, fr. 12576, 15 Paris, BnF, fr. 12577, 14, 15 Paris, BnF, fr. 19093, 24, 25 Paris, BnF, fr. 19162, 16 Rennes, BM, 255, 18 The Hague, Koninklijke Bibliotheek Hs. 129 A 10, 92 Trinity College, Dublin, MS 505, 117, 120 Udine, Biblioteca Arcivescovile, MS. 177, 21 Utrecht, Universiteitsbibliotheek, MS. 32, 25 manuscript context of arthuriana in Middle English, 120 Markis, 78, 81, 82 Marriage of Sir Gawain, 95, 139 Martorell, Joan, 177 Marx, William, 115, 117 Mary Magdalene and Jesus, descendents of, 174, 186, 188 Mary of Antioch, 43 Mary, Catalan image of her holding Grail (?), 24–26, 177 Matheson, Lister, 109 Melisende, Queen of Jerusalem, 44 Melkin the Bard, 160, 165–66 Melwas, 136 Merlin, 143 Merlin, 63; see also Vulgate Cycle

Micha, Alexandre, 178 Miraudijs, 96 Monty Python and the Holy Grail, 1, 117n, 127–28, 137, 173; see also Gilliam, Terry; Jones, Terry Mordred, 5, 121; battle with Arthur, 111; born of incest, 130; murder of Dinadan, 147; treason with Guinevere, 130 Moriaen, see Roman van Moriaen Moródd, 82–83, 87–90 Mort Artu, see Vulgate Cycle Morte Darthur, see Malory, Sir Thomas Mortimer, Roger, 121 NASA (National Aeronautic and Space Agency), 12 Natural, see Levinson, Barry Nazi interest in Grail, 192, 193 Nicodemus, 16, 26 Nitida saga, 87 Njáls saga, 86 Non-Cyclic Lancelot, 3n Nostredame, Jean de, 68–69, 73–74 Nostredame, Michel de, 69 Novellino, 67 O’Connor, Ralph, 83 O’Gorman, Richard, 141–43, 148 oath, equivocal, 77–78, 90, 128; Round Table, 137 Occitan literature, 62–75; oral literature, Arthuriana in, 62 Of Arthur and of Merlin, 112, 121 Olton, Bert, 185 Opus Dei, 186, 188 Order of the Garter, 159 Palace of Marvels (in Chrétien), 42–44, 46 Pampinella-Cropper, Margherita, 181 Paris, Matthew, 160n Parker, Matthew, 171n Parsifal, see Caeserini, Mario; Mangrane, Daniel; Porter, Edwin J.; Syberberg, Hans-Jürgen Parzival, see Blank, Richard; Wolfram von Eschenbach Patryse, Sir, 128 Pavia–Sienna, Council of, 161 Peaks of Destiny, see Fanck, Arnold Peleans, 146 Pellam, King, 145, 146 Pelleas, 144 Pelles, 113, 146, 147n, 148, 127 Perceval (Parzival, Perchevael, Percyvell), 2, 22–23, 51, 56–59, 32, 45, 54–55, 119; see also Perceval’s sister as Grail knight, 146 as naïf, 31 failure (by Parzival) to ask question, 135 heart buried at Glastonbury, 113 his Grail vision, 15 in film, 201–2, 206 in Middle Dutch, 97 in Malory, 8

INDEX mother of, 134–35 notion of chivalry, 2 sister of, 21 Perceval, see Chrétien de Troyes Perceval le Gallois, see Rohmer, Eric Perceval’s sister, 21, death of, 17n, 182 Peredur, 1n, 41, 133; ‘Grail scene’ in, 133 Perilous Seat, 4, 20; as badge of Alfonso V, 177 Perlesvaus, xvi, 3, 9–10, 147, 149, 180 Persistent Percival, see Watt, Nate Peter Bartholomew, 36–37 Peter the Hermit, 42 Peter the Venerable, 149 Philip of Alsace (and Flanders), 28, 29–33, 42, 178; death of, 47; steals head of St Jacques, 39–40 Philippa, wife of Edward III, 158 Pinget, Robert, 11 Pisanello, 177 Pitimont, 23 plan to bridge English Channel, 121 Pole, Reginald, 168 Polton, Thomas, 161 Polychronicon, see Higden, Ranulph Porter, Edwin J., 185, 199 portraiture in Icelandic sagas, 84–87 Post-Vulgate Cycle, as source for Malory, 147; Post-Vulgate Queste del saint Graal, 144; Suite de Merlin, 144 Priamus, 138–39 Prins s’Jacob, Johanna, 94 Priory of Sion, 186 Prose Brut, 109, 115–20, 125 Prose Joseph, 126 Prose Tristan, 6, 147, 150, 176; manuscript of, 15 Queeste vanden Grale, 92, 94, 95, 99, 100, 102, 108 quest, eight categories of, 136; for bride, 84, 87–88, 97; for father, 97; for parents, 96; for stag’s foot, 96; meanings of word, 110–11, question-quest, 139–40; relation to test, 97, 136–37 Quest for the Holy Grail, see Bost, Judith Quest of the Holy Grail, see Griffith, D.W. Queste del saint Graal, see Vulgate Cycle Questing Beast, 110–11 question-quest, 139–40 Radulescu, Raluca, 115 Raymond, Count of Tripoli, 44 Repanse de Schoie, 22; baptism of, 60 Ricart, José Gudiol, 24 Richard Lionheart, 158 riddarasögar, 76 Riddere metter Mouwen, 96, 97, 98n, 102, 108 Riefenstahl, Leni, 192 Rigaut de Barbezieux, 63–71 Roach, William, 175 Robert de Boron, 2n, 14–15, 52, 76, 141, 143, 179; description of the Grail, 141–42, 142n Robert of Gloucester, 119 Rohmer, Eric, 201

213

Rolewinck, Werner, 167 Roman d’Alexandre, 29, 38, 41 Roman de Brut, see Brut Roman van Lanceloet, 92, 97, 99, 102, 108 Roman van Moriaen, 95, 97, 99, 101, 108 Roman van Perchevael, 99, 108 Roman van Torec, 96, 97, 98n, 102–7, 108 Roman van Walewein, 99n romances as aggression management, 48–49 Roques, Mario, 173 Round Table, linked to tables of Last Supper and Grail, 130–1; marginalized, 102–3; oath, 138 Rudel, Jaufre, 66 Rusticiano da Pisa, 176 Sacro Catino, see Genoa Grail Saga af Tristram ok Ísodd, 77, 79–81, 87, 90 Sagas of Icelanders, 76; punishments in, 77 Sagas of Poets, see skáldasögur Saladin, 38, 39, 46 San Pere de Burgal, 26 sangraal, 26, sang real, 174; Sankgreall (in Malory), 143, 149; see also Grail Sanson, 38 Sarmatians, 1n Saroche, 181, 182; see also Sarras Sarras, 20, 21, 152, 181 Saville, Victor, 2–3 Scattergood, Jon, 117–18 Schach, Paul, 79 Scolemaster, see Ascham, Roger Seen, John, 159 Short Metrical Chronicle, 121, 122–23, 124 Siege Perilous, see Perilous Seat Sigurðr, 86 Silver Chalice, see Saville, Victor Sir Galahad of Twilight, 204 Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, 114n, 115, 139, 149; multiple tests in, 140 Sir Percyvell of Gales, 133–35; source of, 134; humor in, 134 Sir Percyvelle, 124 Sir Tristram de Lyones, see Malory, Sir Thomas Sir Tristrem, 121, 124 sister of Perceval, see Perceval’s sister skáldasögur, 78 Solomon’s ship, 20 Spenser, Edmund, 130 Spes, 77 Spielberg, Steven, 13, 19, 193 St Jacques (St James), 40, 41 Stalker, see Tarkovsky, Andrei Stanzaic Mort Arthur, 115 Starkey, David, 162 Steinbeck, John, 144 Steingerð, 78–79 Stonehenge, relocated from Ireland to Salisbury,118 Stones, Alison, 21 sword given to Perceval, 30 sword in floating stone, 4, 4n, 5, 7, 144

214

INDEX

Syberberg, Hans-Jürgen, 200 Sybilla, 32–33, 44 Tahull, 25–26 ‘Tale of Florent’, see Gower, John Tale of the Sankgreal, see Malory, Sir Thomas Tarkovsky, Andrei, 204 Tavola ritonda, 6, 21–22, 181 Templars, 44, 52, 53, 186 Tennyson, Alfred, Lord, 10–11 test, of love, 95–96; relation to quest, 97, 136–37 Þarvaldr, 79 Thomas of England (or of Britain), 76, 81, 83 Thornton Manuscript, see manuscripts Thorpe, Richard, 194 Þorsteinn, 77 Tiberius, 164, 169 Tirant lo Blanc, see Martorell, Joan Titurel, see Wolfram von Eschenbach To Parsifal, see Baillie, Bruce Torec, see Roman van Torec Torrez chevalier au cercle d’or, 96 Torroella, Guillem de, 10, 177 Tower of David, 30 translations of Arthurian texts, 175 transubstantiation, 151, 154, 180 Trevrizent, 57, 59, 60 Tristan and Iseult, love affair, 124 Tristan (Tristram, Tristran), as greatest of knights, 6; acculturation in Sagas of Icelanders, 77–79, 81, 91; bridal quest by, 87–88, 89; in Scandinavian texts, 78, 87–90; drinking of potion, 88; killing of dragon, 88 Tristan, see Gottfried von Strassburg Tristrams saga ok Ísöndar, 76–77, 78–79, 81, 83, 90–91; as parody, 79 Tristran, see Thomas of England Twain, Mark, 10–11 Tyolet, 96, 100–101 Urban II, Pope, 28 Urry, Sir, 155, healed by Lancelot, 128 Uther Pendragon, 145 Utrecht Psalter, 25 Valencia Grail, 26, 177 Vengeance Raguidel, 95 Vergil, Polydore, 163–165 Villard de Honnecourt, 24 virginity, two kinds of, 8 Visconti, Filippo Maria, 176 Visconti-Sforza library in Pavia, 174 Volkan, Kurt, 186 Völsunga saga, 86 Vortigern, 121

Vulgate Cycle (Lancelot-Grail), xv; 24, 27, 55, 56, 108, 160; as source for Malory, 147; as template for Grail romances, 52; manuscripts of, 6, 114, 178; translation into Dutch, 92, 95 Estoire del saint Graal, 27, 147n; illustrated manuscripts of, 16–19, 21 Merlin, 63 Lancelot (Lancelot Proper), 15, 95 Queste del saint Graal, alterations in Dutch translation, 95; critique of chivalry, 94; extension of allegory, 55; Grail in, 133; Grail Mass in, 151; illustrated manuscripts of, 19–21; source for Malory, 145–46, 155; source of Dutch translation, 92 Mort Artu, 5, 94, 100, 108 Wace, 98 Wagner, Richard, 185, 199, 200, 201 Walewein ende Keye, 96, 98n, 104, 108 Walewein, see Gawain Walewein, see Roman van Walewein waste forest, 54 Waste Land, see Eliot, T.S. Watt, Nate, 186 Wedding of Sir Gawain and Dame Ragnell, 95, 139 Weston, Jessie, 147n Where is Parsifal?, see Herman, Henri Wife of Bath’s Tale, see Chaucer, Geoffrey Wiggins, Allison, 121 William Longsword, see William of Montferrat William of Malmesbury, 158, 159–60, 171n William of Montferrat, 32 William of Tyre, 26, 29, 30, 33, 34, 36, 39, 40, 42; poisoned, 46 Winchester manuscript, see manuscripts Winchester tournament, 113 Wolfram von Eschenbach, 27, 41, 48–61, 175; Grail as stone, 22; Grail question in, 3, 135; illustrated manuscripts of, 22; influence of, 7; prologue to Parzival, 50; reenactment of Grail quest, 133; sources in Chrétien, 76; translations of, 175 women superior to men, 82 Worcestre, William, 161–62 Worthington, William, 191 Wrake van Ragisel, 95–96, 97, 100, 108 Yder, 95 Yvain, see Chrétien de Troyes Ywain and Gawain, 137 Zimel, Roel, 101 Zuliano di Anzoli, 181

ANALYSIS OF GRAIL SCENES

FRENCH Title: Conte del Graal Date: 1181-90 Hero: Perceval Name of grail: un graal Nature of grail: dish Procession: yes Movement: carried by girl Attendants, associated objects and situations: squires, bleeding lance, silver tailleoir, candlesticks Place: Fisher King’s castle Setting: hall Religious aspects and descriptions: sainte chose Edition: Roach 3190-3251 Translation: Bryant 35 Title: Conte del Graal Date: 1181-90 Hero: Perceval Name of grail: le graal Nature of grail: Procession: Movement: Attendants, associated objects and situations: Place: Setting: Religious aspects and descriptions: Edition: Roach 6392–6431 Translation: Bryant 69 Title: Perceval: First Continuation (short version) Date: before 1210 Hero: Gawain Name of grail: graal Nature of grail: Procession: yes Movement: moves through air without support Attendants, associated objects and situations: bleeding lance, tailleoir, dead knight Place: Setting: hall Religious aspects and descriptions: grail and lance relics of passion (?interpolation) Edition: Roach III, 7240-7291 Translation:

i

Analysis of Grail Scenes Title: Perceval:First Continuation (long version) Date: before 1210 Hero: Gawain Name of grail: graal Nature of grail: Procession: yes Movement: Attendants, associated objects and situations: bleeding lance, tailleoir Place: Setting: hall Religious aspects and descriptions: Edition: Roach II, 3775-3877 Translation: Title: Perceval: First Continuation (short version) Date: before 1210 Hero: Gawain Name of grail: riche graal Nature of grail: Procession: yes Movement: moves through air without support Attendants, associated objects and situations: bleeding lance, dead knight Place: Setting: Religious aspects and descriptions: grail and lance relics of passion (?interpolation) Edition: Roach II, 17348-17410 Translation: Title: Perceval: First Continuation (mixed version) Date: before 1210 Hero: Gawain Name of grail: Nature of grail: saint graal Procession: yes Movement: Attendants, associated objects and situations: bleeding lance, tailleoir, broken sword Place: Setting: Religious aspects and descriptions: grail and lance relics of passion (?interpolation) Edition: Roach I, 1327-1423 Translation: Bryant 111–112 Title: Perceval: First Continuation (mixed version) Date: before 1210 Hero: Gawain Name of grail: riche graal Nature of grail: Procession: yes Movement: moves through air without support Attendants, associated objects and situations: bleeding lance, dead knight Place: Setting: hall Religious aspects and descriptions: grail and lance relics of passion (?interpolation) Edition: Roach I, 13278-13347 Translation: Bryant 129–130

ii

Analysis of Grail Scenes Title: Perceval: Second Continuation Date: after 1210? Hero: Perceval Name of grail: graaux, graal Nature of grail: Procession: Movement: Attendants, associated objects and situations: Place: Setting: Religious aspects and descriptions: grail relic of passion, blood collected at Crucifixion Edition: Roach IV, 25791-25805 Translation: Bryant 160 Title: Perceval: Second Continuation Date: after 1210? Hero: Perceval Name of grail: saint graal Nature of grail: Procession: yes Movement: Attendants, associated objects and situations: bleeding lance Place: Fisher King’s castle Setting: hall Religious aspects and descriptions: Edition: Roach IV, 32396-32425 Translation: Bryant 191 Title: Perceval: Second Continuation Date: after 1210? Hero: Perceval Name of grail: Graal Nature of grail: Procession: Movement: Attendants, associated objects and situations: bleeding lance Place: Setting: Religious aspects and descriptions: grail and lance relics of passion, blood collected at Deposition Edition: Roach IV, Appendix XI, 1-40 Translation: Title: Perceval: Third Continuation Date: 1220-30 Hero: Perceval Name of grail: Li Graaus, Saint Graal Nature of grail: Procession: yes Movement: Attendants, associated objects and situations: bleeding lance, tailleoir Place: Fisher King’s castle Setting: hall Religious aspects and descriptions: grail and lance relics of passion (?interpolation) Edition: Roach V, 32613-32811 Translation: Bryant 271-3

iii

Analysis of Grail Scenes Title: Perceval: Third Continuation Date: 1220-30 Hero: Perceval Name of grail: Li Graaus, Saint Graal Nature of grail: Procession: yes Movement: Attendants, associated objects and situations: bleeding lance, tailleoir Place: Fisher King’s castle Setting: hall Religious aspects and descriptions: blood collected by Joseph at Crucifixion Edition: Roach V, 41936-41975 Translation: Bryant 298 Title: Perceval: Third Continuation Date: 1220-30 Hero: Perceval Name of grail: Li Graaus, Saint Graal Nature of grail: Procession: yes Movement: Attendants, associated objects and situations: bleeding lance, tailleoir Place: Corbenic Setting: hall Religious aspects and descriptions: Edition: Roach V, 42488-42520 Translation: Bryant 301-2 Title: Perceval: Continuation of Gerbert de Montreuil Date: 1226-30 Hero: Perceval Name of grail: Graal Nature of grail: Procession: yes Movement: Attendants, associated objects and situations: bleeding lance, broken sword Place: Fisher King’s castle Setting: hall Religious aspects and descriptions: Edition: Williams & Oswald I, 2-3 Translation: Bryant 194 Title: Perceval: Continuation of Gerbert de Montreuil Date: 1226-30 Hero: Perceval Name of grail: Saint Greal Nature of grail: Procession: yes Movement: Attendants, associated objects and situations: bleeding lance Place: Fisher King’s castle Setting: hall Religious aspects and descriptions: Edition: Williams & Oswald III 17019-17037 Translation: Bryant 269

iv

Analysis of Grail Scenes Title: Roman de l’Estoire dou Graal Date: 1205–20 Hero: Joseph of Arimathea Name of grail: veissel Nature of grail: Procession: Movement: Attendants, associated objects and situations: Place: Pilate’s house Setting: Religious aspects and descriptions: grail relic of passion, dish of Last Supper Edition: Cerquiglini (prose) 24; Nitze 507-518 Translation: Bryant 18 Title: Roman de l’Estoire dou Graal Date: 1205–20 Hero: Joseph of Arimathea Name of grail: veissel Nature of grail: Procession: Movement: Attendants, associated objects and situations: Place: Golgotha Setting: Religious aspects and descriptions: grail relic of passion, blood collected by Joseph at Deposition Edition: Cerquiglini (prose) 24-5; Nitze 562-72 Translation: Bryant 19 Title: Roman de l’Estoire dou Graal Date: 1205–20 Hero: Joseph of Arimathea Name of grail: veissel Nature of grail: Procession: Movement: Attendants, associated objects and situations: Place: prison Setting: Religious aspects and descriptions: grail relic of passion, blood collected by Joseph at Deposition Edition: Cerquiglini (prose) 29-31; Nitze 851-960 Translation: Bryant 21-23 Title: Roman de l’Estoire dou Graal Date: 1205–20 Hero: Joseph of Arimathea Name of grail: veissel Nature of grail: Procession: Feast: yes Movement: Attendants, associated objects and situations: Place: Setting: Religious aspects and descriptions: grail relic of passion

v

Analysis of Grail Scenes Edition: Cerquiglini (prose) 54-57; Nitze 2555-2686 Translation: Bryant 35-36 Title: Roman de l’Estoire dou Graal Date: 1205–20 Hero: Joseph of Arimathea Name of grail: veissel Nature of grail: Procession: Movement: Attendants, associated objects and situations: Place: Setting: Religious aspects and descriptions: grail relic of passion Edition: Cerquiglini (prose) 62; Nitze 2873-2910 Translation: Bryant 39 Title: Roman de l’Estoire dou Graal Date: 1205–20 Hero: Joseph of Arimathea Name of grail: veissel Nature of grail: Procession: Movement: Attendants, associated objects and situations: Place: Setting: Religious aspects and descriptions: grail relic of passion Edition: Cerquiglini (prose) 64; Nitze 3001-3147 Translation: Bryant 40 Title: Roman de l’Estoire dou Graal Date: 1205–20 Hero: Joseph of Arimathea Name of grail: veissel Nature of grail: Procession: Movement: Attendants, associated objects and situations: Place: Setting: Religious aspects and descriptions: grail relic of passion, blood collected in it Edition: Cerquiglini (prose) 68; Nitze 3170-3406 Translation: Bryant 42-3 Title: Elucidation Prologue Date: 1200-1225 Hero: Gawain Name of grail: Graal, Greaus Nature of grail: Procession: Movement: Attendants, associated objects and situations: Place: Setting:

vi

Analysis of Grail Scenes Religious aspects and descriptions: Edition: Thompson 225-230 Translation: Title: Elucidation Prologue Date: 1200-1225 Hero: Perceval Name of grail: Nature of grail: Procession: yes Movement: moves through air without support Attendants, associated objects and situations: bleeding lance, dead knight, broken sword Place: Setting: hall Religious aspects and descriptions: Question to be asked: de coi li Greaus servoit Edition: Thompson 241-339 Translation: Title: Perlesvaus Date: 1200-1210 Hero: Name of grail: saintisme vessel Nature of grail: Procession: Movement: Attendants, associated objects and situations: bleeding lance Place: Setting: Religious aspects and descriptions: grail relic of passion, blood collected at Crucifixion Edition: Roach 28-35 Translation: Bryant 19 Title: Perlesvaus Date: 1200-1210 Hero: Gawain Name of grail: Saint Graal Nature of grail: Procession: Movement: Attendants, associated objects and situations: Place: Fisher King’s castle Setting: chapel Religious aspects and descriptions: liturgy, blood collected in Grail Edition: Roach 1708-1729 Translation: Bryant 61 Title: Perlesvaus Date: 1200-1210 Hero: Gawain Name of grail: saintisme Graal Nature of grail: Procession: yes Feast: yes Movement:

vii

Analysis of Grail Scenes Attendants, associated objects and situations: bleeding lance Place: Fisher King’s castle Setting: hall Religious aspects and descriptions: grail relic of passion, vision of Christ in Grail Edition: Roach 2424-2470 Translation: Bryant 79-80 Title: Perlesvaus Date: 1200-1210 Hero: Name of grail: Sains Graaux Nature of grail: Procession: Movement: Attendants, associated objects and situations: bleeding lance Place: Chastel des Ames/Armes/Edem/Joie Setting: chapel Religious aspects and descriptions: Edition: Roach 6252-6270 Translation: Bryant 172-3 Title: Perlesvaus Date: 1200-1210 Hero: Arthur Name of grail:Graal Nature of grail: Procession: Movement: Attendants, associated objects and situations: Place: Chastel des Ames/Armes/Edem/Joie Setting: chapel Religious aspects and descriptions: vision of Christ in Grail Edition: Roach 7209-7231 Translation: Bryant 195-6 Title: Perlesvaus Date: 1200-1210 Hero: Perlesvaus Name of grail: sainz Graauz Nature of grail: Procession: Movement: Attendants, associated objects and situations: Place: Setting: Religious aspects and descriptions: Edition: Roach 10121-10139 Translation: Bryant 264 Title: Perceval en prose Date: 1205-1210 Hero: [Perceval] Name of grail: Graaus, Graal Nature of grail: Procession:

viii

Analysis of Grail Scenes Movement: Attendants, associated objects and situations: Place: Setting: Religious aspects and descriptions: Edition: Roach, E 203-224, D 176-192 Translation: Bryant 119-20 Title: Perceval en prose Date: 1205-1210 Hero: Perceval Name of grail: vaissel, Graal Nature of grail: Procession: yes Movement: Attendants, associated objects and situations: bleeding lance, two tailleoirs Place: Fisher King’s castle Setting: hall Religious aspects and descriptions: Edition: Roach E 1216-1236, D 1076-1100 Translation: Bryant 141-142 Title: Perceval en prose Date: 1205-1210 Hero: Perceval Name of grail: vaissel, Graal Nature of grail: Procession: yes Movement: Attendants, associated objects and situations: bleeding lance, two tailleoirs Place: Fisher King’s castle Setting: hall Religious aspects and descriptions: grail relic of passion, blood collected by Joseph; spear of Longinus Edition: Roach E 1831-1887, D 1501-1543 Translation: Bryant 154-155

Title: Lancelot proper1 Date: 1220-30 Hero: Gawain Name of grail: riche vaissel Nature of grail: Procession: Feast: yes Movement: Attendants, associated objects and situations: Place: Corbenic Setting: hall Religious aspects and descriptions: Edition: Micha II, 376-8 Translation: LG III,100 1 Middle High German Lancelot, 14th century: a literal translation of the French Vulgate Lancelot and Queste; not separately analysed. Kluge, III, 380-4 for the German text of the final scene of the Queste, which has minimal variants.

ix

Analysis of Grail Scenes Title: Lancelot proper Date: 1220-30 Hero: Gawain Name of grail: vaissel Procession: yes Feast: yes Movement: Attendants, associated objects and situations: Place: Corbenic Setting: hall Religious aspects and descriptions: grail relic of passion, blood collected in it Edition: Micha II, 383-5 Translation: LG III,100-3 Title: Lancelot proper Date: 1220-30 Hero: Lancelot Name of grail: riche vaissel Nature of grail: Procession: yes Feast: yes Movement: Attendants, associated objects and situations: Place: Corbenic Setting: hall Religious aspects and descriptions: Edition: Micha IV, 205-6, Tristan VI, 119-20 Translation: LG III,163 Title: Lancelot proper Date: 1220-30 Hero: Bors Name of grail: Nature of grail: Procession: Feast: yes Movement: Attendants, associated objects and situations: Place: Corbenic Setting: hall Religious aspects and descriptions: Edition: Micha IV, 270-1 Translation:LG III, 179 Title: Lancelot proper Date: 1220-30 Hero: Bors Name of grail: Saint Graal, Saint Vessel Nature of grail: Procession: Movement: Attendants, associated objects and situations: bleeding lance Place: Corbenic Setting: hall Religious aspects and descriptions: Edition: Micha V, 255–271; Tristan VI, 145-8 Translation: LG III, 268–271

x

Analysis of Grail Scenes Title: Lancelot proper Date: 1220-30 Hero: Perceval & Hector Name of grail: Sainz Graaux, Vessel Nature of grail: Procession: Movement: Attendants, associated objects and situations: Place: forest Setting: Religious aspects and descriptions: grail relic of passion, dish of Last Supper Edition: Micha VI, 204-5; Tristan VI, 182 Translation: LG III, 328 Title: Lancelot proper Date: 1220-30 Hero: Lancelot Nature of grail: Procession: Movement: Attendants, associated objects and situations: Place: Corbenic Setting: Religious aspects and descriptions: Edition: Micha VI, 224; Tristan VI, 199 Translation: LG III, 333 Title: Queste del Saint Graal Date: 1220-1230 Hero: Name of grail: Sainz Graal; Santo Graal, Santo Vesso (Portuguese) Nature of grail: Procession: Feast: yes Movement: moves through air without support Attendants, associated objects and situations: Place: Camelot Setting: hall Religious aspects and descriptions: Edition: Pauphilet, 15-16; Crescini, 12; Bogdanow, 37-39 Translation: Matarasso 43-4, LG V,119 Title: Queste del Saint Graal Date: 1220-1230 Hero: Lancelot Name of grail: Saint Vessel, Saint Graal, Vessiaus; Saint Vaxel (Catalan) Nature of grail: Procession: Movement: moves through air without support Attendants, associated objects and situations: Place: waste land Setting: chapel Religious aspects and descriptions: Edition: Pauphilet, 58-61; Tristan VIII, 82-5; Crescini, 44-45 Translation: Matarasso 83-4

xi

Analysis of Grail Scenes Title: Queste del Saint Graal Date: 1220-1230 Hero: Lancelot Name of grail: Saint Vessel; Sant Grasal, Sant Vexel (Catalan) Nature of grail: chalice Procession: Movement: Attendants, associated objects and situations: Place: Corbenic Setting: chamber Religious aspects and descriptions: liturgy, vision of Christ in Grail Edition: Pauphilet, 254-6; Tristan IX, 236-7; Crescini, 186-8 Translation: Matarasso 262-3 Title: Queste del Saint Graal Date: 1220-1230 Hero: Galahad, Perceval, Bors Name of grail: vessel Nature of grail: chalice Procession: Movement: Attendants, associated objects and situations: bleeding lance Place: Corbenic Setting: hall Religious aspects and descriptions: liturgy, grail relic of passion, dish of Last Supper, vision of Christ in Grail Edition: Pauphilet, 268-71; Crescini, 197-8; Magne II, 373-81 Translation: Matarasso 274-8; LG V, 278 Title: Queste del Saint Graal Date: 1220-1230 Hero: Galahad Name of grail: Saint Vessel Nature of grail: chalice Procession: Movement: Attendants, associated objects and situations: Place: Sarras Setting: Religious aspects and descriptions: possibly Edition: Pauphilet, 277-9, Tristan IX, 270-7; Crescini, 204-5; Magne II 412-3 Translation: Matarasso 282-3; LG V, 287-8 Title: Estoire del Saint Graal Date: 1230-1235 Hero: Joseph Name of grail: Nature of grail: Procession: Movement: Attendants, associated objects and situations: Place: Golgotha Setting: Religious aspects and descriptions: grail relic of passion, blood collected by Joseph at Deposition, dish of Last Supper Edition: Ponceau I, 24-25 Translation: LG I, 10

xii

Analysis of Grail Scenes Title: Estoire del Saint Graal Date: 1230-1235 Hero: Josephus, Joseph Name of grail: sainte escüele Nature of grail: Procession: Movement: Attendants, associated objects and situations: bleeding lance Place: Sarras Setting: Religious aspects and descriptions: grail relic of passion Edition: Ponceau I, 72 Translation: LG I, 24-26 Title: Estoire del Saint Graal Date: 1230-1235 Hero: Nascien Name of grail: sainte escüele, saint vaissiel, Graal Nature of grail: Procession: Movement: Attendants, associated objects and situations: bleeding lance Place: Setting: Religious aspects and descriptions: Edition: Ponceau I, 163-4 Translation: LG I, 50 Title: Estoire del Saint Graal Date: 1230-1235 Hero: Name of grail: saint Graal, saint vaissiel, Graal Nature of grail: Procession: Movement: Attendants, associated objects and situations: bleeding lance Place: Setting: Religious aspects and descriptions: Edition: Ponceau I, 167 Translation: LG I, 51 Title: Estoire del Saint Graal Date: 1230-1235 Hero: Mordrain Name of grail: seint Vaissel Nature of grail: Procession: Movement: Attendants, associated objects and situations: Place: Setting: Religious aspects and descriptions: grail relic of passion, vision of Christ in Grail Edition: Ponceau II, 473 Translation: LG I, 135

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Analysis of Grail Scenes Title: Estoire del Saint Graal Date: 1230-1235 Hero: Alain Name of grail: saint vaissel Nature of grail: Procession: Movement: Attendants, associated objects and situations: Place: Setting: Religious aspects and descriptions: Edition: Ponceau II, 484 Translation: LG I, 137 Title: Estoire del Saint Graal Date: 1230-1235 Hero: Josephus Name of grail: saint Graal Nature of grail: Procession: Feast: yes Movement: Attendants, associated objects and situations: grail relic of passion Place: Setting: Religious aspects and descriptions: Edition: Ponceau II, 491; Spanish Grail 36-7 (scene where Josephus approaches ark of Grail) Translation: LG I, 139 Title: Estoire del Saint Graal Date: 1230-1235 Hero: Arphasan Name of grail: saint vaissel Nature of grail: Procession: Movement: Attendants, associated objects and situations: Place: City of Malte in Terre Foraine Setting: Religious aspects and descriptions: Edition: Ponceau II, 561 Translation: LG I, 158 Title: Estoire del Saint Graal Date: 1230-1235 Hero: Arphasan Name of grail: Seinz Greaus Nature of grail: Procession: Movement: Attendants, associated objects and situations: Place: Corbenic Setting: Religious aspects and descriptions: grail relic of passion Edition: Ponceau II, 563 Translation: LG I, 159

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Analysis of Grail Scenes Title: Post-Vulgate Merlin Date: c.1230-40 Hero: Balin Name of grail: Sainz Graaux, Saint Grahaal, Saint Vessel, Sainz Vexiaux Nature of grail: Procession: Movement: Attendants, associated objects and situations: Lance Aventureuse, Lance Vencheresse Place: Perilous Palace Setting: room Religious aspects and descriptions: Edition: Bogdanow 256 ff (Romance of the Grail) Translation: LG IV, 212 Title: Post-Vulgate Queste del Saint Graal Date: c.1230-40 Hero: Lancelot Name of grail: Saint Graal, Saint Vaissel Nature of grail: Procession: yes Feast: yes Movement: carried by girl Attendants, associated objects and situations: Place: Corbenic Setting: hall Religious aspects and descriptions: si saincte chose Edition: Bogdanow, Folie Merlin 62 Translation: LG V, 75 Title: Post-Vulgate Queste del Saint Graal Date: c.1230-40 Hero: Galahad Name of grail: Nature of grail: Procession: yes Movement: yes Attendants, associated objects and situations: bleeding lance Place: Corbenic Setting: room Religious aspects and descriptions: si saincte chose Edition: Magne II 375 Translation: LG V, 278 Title: Sone de Nausay Date: Late C13 Hero: Sone de Nausay Name of grail: gréalz, saint vaissiel, saint greal Nature of grail: Procession: Movement: Attendants, associated objects and situations: lance; kept at burial place of Joseph of Arimathea Place: Galoches (abbey) Setting: Religious aspects and descriptions: relics of crucifixion Edition: Goldschmidt, 4888, 4894, 16939-16941 Translation:

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Analysis of Grail Scenes Title: Prophesies de Merlin Date: mid C14 Hero: Name of grail: le graal Nature of grail: Procession: Movement: moves of its own accord Attendants, associated objects and situations: noise like thunder, fish taken in error from magic river Place: near Salesbierres Setting: river bank Religious aspects and descriptions: Edition: Berthelot 331 Translation: ENGLISH Title: Le Morte Darthur Date: c.1469/70 Hero: Launcelot Name of grail: The Holy Sankegreall Nature of grail: Procession: Movement: yes Attendants, associated objects and situations: carried by girl Place: Corbyn Setting: hall Religious aspects and descriptions: Edition: Vinaver/Field, 793 Translation: Title: Le Morte Darthur Date: c.1469/70 Hero: Bors Name of grail: Sankgreall Nature of grail: Procession: Movement: yes Attendants, associated objects and situations: carried by girl Place: Corbyn Setting: hall (implied) Religious aspects and descriptions: Edition: Vinaver/Field, 798 Translation: Title: Le Morte Darthur Date: c.1469/70 Hero: Perceval & Ector Name of grail: Sankegreall Nature of grail: Procession: Movement: yes Attendants, associated objects and situations: carried by girl Place: a forest Setting:

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Analysis of Grail Scenes Religious aspects and descriptions: Edition: Vinaver/Field, 816-17 Translation: Title: Le Morte Darthur Date: c.1469/70 Hero: Launcelot Name of grail: Sankgreall Nature of grail: Procession: Movement: does not move Attendants, associated objects and situations: Place: Corbyn Setting: a chamber in a tower Religious aspects and descriptions: liturgical element; grail at present contains relic of blood of Christ Edition: Vinaver/Field, 824 Translation: Title: Le Morte Darthur Date: c.1469/70 Hero: Arthur?/Galahad? Name of grail: The Holy Grayle Nature of grail: Feast: yes Procession: Movement: no visible carrier Attendants, associated objects and situations: Place: Camelot Setting: hall Religious aspects and descriptions: Edition: Vinaver/Field, 865 Translation: Title: Le Morte Darthur Date: c.1469/70 Hero: Launcelot Name of grail: Sankgreall Nature of grail: Procession: Movement: no visible carrier Attendants, associated objects and situations: Place: waste land Setting: near chapel Religious aspects and descriptions: Edition: Vinaver/Field, 894 Translation: Title: Le Morte Darthur Date: c.1469/70 Hero: Launcelot Name of grail: Sankgreall Nature of grail: Procession: Movement: does not move Attendants, associated objects and situations:

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Analysis of Grail Scenes Place: Carbonek [Corbenic] Setting: chamber in the ‘chief fortress’ Religious aspects and descriptions: liturgy; host and vision of Christ in Grail Edition: Vinaver/Field, 1014 Translation: Title: Le Morte Darthur Date: c.1469/70 Hero: Launcelot Name of grail: Sankegreall Nature of grail: Procession: yes Movement: ?invisible Attendants, associated objects and situations: Place: Carbonek [Corbenic] Setting: hall (‘chief salle’) Religious aspects and descriptions: Edition: Vinaver/Field, 1018 Translation: Title: Le Morte Darthur Date: c.1469/70 Hero: Galahad Name of grail: Sankgreall Nature of grail: Procession: yes Movement: does not move Attendants, associated objects and situations: Place: Carbonek [Corbenic] Setting: hall Religious aspects and descriptions: liturgy; grail dish of Last Supper, host and vision of Christ in Grail Edition: Vinaver/Field, 1029 Translation: Title: Le Morte Darthur Date: c.1469/70 Hero: Galahad Name of grail: Sankgreall Nature of grail: Procession: Movement: carried by ship Attendants, associated objects and situations: Place: Carbonek to Sarras, sea Setting: ship Religious aspects and descriptions: Edition: Vinaver/Field, 1032 Translation: Title: Le Morte Darthur Date: c.1469/70 Hero: Galahad Name of grail: Sankgreall Nature of grail: Procession: Movement: does not move

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Analysis of Grail Scenes Attendants, associated objects and situations: Place: Sarras Setting: Palace Religious aspects and descriptions: liturgy, host and vision of Christ in Grail Edition: Vinaver/Field, 1034 Translation: GERMAN Title: Parzival Date: 1200-10 Hero: Parzival Name of grail: der Grâl Nature of grail: precious stone Procession: yes Feast: yes Movement: carried by Repanse de Schoye Attendants, associated objects and situations: 24 ladies, bleeding lance, knives, lights Place: castle Setting: hall Question to be asked: yes Religious aspects and descriptions: Edition: Lachmann st.231-240, pp.116-20 Translation: Edwards 74-77 Title: Jungerer Titurel Date: c. 1270 Hero: Titurel Name of grail: Nature of grail: dish made from precious stone, ‘jasper and flint’ Procession: Movement: Attendants, associated objects and situations: Place: Grail temple Setting: Religious aspects and descriptions: grail dish of Last Supper, preserved by Joseph of Arimathea Edition: Wolf and Nyholm, sts. 6292-6, IV.477 Translation: Passage 48-9 Title: Diu Krône Date: c.1220-40 Hero: Gawein Name of grail: grâle Nature of grail: made of a single jewel and the finest gold; it resembled a reliquary on an altar containing bread: ‘einer kefsen war es glich’ Procession: yes Feast: yes Movement: carried by lady Attendants, associated objects and situations: bleeding lance, candlesticks, tailleoir (toblier) Place: Castle of Illes Setting: hall Religious aspects and descriptions: Question to be asked: yes: ‘waz disiu grôz hêrschaft und daz wunder bediute’ Edition: Scholl vv.29340-29554 Translation: Thomas 327-8

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Analysis of Grail Scenes NORWEGIAN Title: Parcevals Saga Date: c.1226-63 Hero: Parceval Name of grail: Graull ‘in the French language, gangandi greidi ‘in our language’ Nature of grail: Procession: yes; (‘a processional provision’) Feast: yes Movement: carried by girl as if it were a gospel-book Attendants, associated objects and situations: bleeding lance, tailleoir, dead knight Place: Setting: hall Religious aspects and descriptions: Edition: Kalinke, Norse Romance II 148-51 (includes translation) Translation: ITALIAN Title: Tavola ritonda Date: 1330-1335 Hero: Galeasso Name of grail: Sangradale, santo Vasello, Ampolla Nature of grail: Procession: yes Feast: yes Movement: carried by hands, but no one could see who carried it Attendants, associated objects and situations: Place: Camelotto Setting: hall Religious aspects and descriptions: grail contained the earth where the Holy Blood had fallen, and the wine with which his wounds were washed Edition: Heijkant, 448-52 (CIX-CX) Translation: Shaver, 273-279 Title: Tavola ritonda Date: 1330-1335 Hero: Galeasso, Bordo, Prezzivalle Name of grail: sancto sangue gradale, santo vasello Nature of grail: Procession: Movement: Attendants, associated objects and situations: grail on altar with lance, crown of thorns and instruments of passion Place: Shore near Corbenicche Setting: chapel Religious aspects and descriptions: relics of passion appear on altar including grail, and then vanish Edition: Breillat 367 (MS Florence Palatin 556) Translation: Title: Tavola ritonda Date: 1330-1335 Hero: Galeasso, Bordo, Prezzivalle Name of grail: Sangradale, santo Vasello

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Analysis of Grail Scenes Procession: yes Feast: yes Movement: carried by angel Attendants, associated objects and situations: Joseph as the first Christian bishop, and four angels; bleeding lance, tailleoir, four vermilion candles, cross, dead knight, broken sword Place: Corbenicche Setting: chapel Question to be asked: yes Religious aspects and descriptions: lance relic of passion; grail dish of Last Supper; vision of Christ in Grail Edition: Heijkant 485-6 (CXXI) Translation: Shaver, 294-305 Title: Tristano panciatichiano Date: Mid C14 Hero: Galeotto Name of grail: San Gradale Nature of grail: Procession: yes Feast: yes Movement: carried in a vessel on the horns of a white deer Attendants, associated objects and situations: four men in white vestments, white samite cloth , white deer tied with four golden chains Place: Camelotto Setting: hall Religious aspects and descriptions: Edition: Allaire, 26-41 (1-5) Translation: Allaire, 26-41 Title: Tristano panciatichiano Date: Mid C14 Hero: Lancialotto Name of grail: San(c)to Gradale, Sancto Vagello Procession: yes Movement: on a silver table, which moves Attendants, associated objects and situations: silver candelabra Place: Waste Forest Setting: stone cross Edition: Allaire, 96-105 (59-66) Translation: Allaire, 96-105

DUTCH Title: Historie van den Grale Date: 1261 Hero: Joseph Name of grail: nap [cup], grael, vat [vessel] Nature of grail: cup, vessel Procession: Feast: yes Movement: Attendants, associated objects and situations: Place: Setting:

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Analysis of Grail Scenes Question to be asked: yes Religious aspects and descriptions: Edition: Sodmann I.365,I.781, I.875, I.885, I.1525 Translation: Claassens & Johnson (summary) 196-197; Sodmann 1462, 1496 Title: Queeste van den Graal Date: ca. 1280 Hero: Name of grail: dat heilege grael Nature of grail: Procession: Feast: yes Movement: probably no visible carrier, moves through air Attendants, associated objects and situations: Place: Carmeloet Setting: hall Religious aspects and descriptions: Edition: Jonckbloet, II, 628-657 Translation: Claassens & Johnson (summary) 216-222 Title: Queeste van den Graal Date: ca. 1280 Hero: Lanceloet Name of grail: dat heilege grael Nature of grail: Procession: Movement: invisible Attendants, associated objects and situations: Place: waste land Setting: chapel Religious aspects and descriptions: Edition: Jonckbloet, II, 2787-2810 Translation: Claassens & Johnson (summary) 216-222 Title: Queeste van den Graal Date: ca. 1280 Hero: Lanceloet Name of grail: dat heile vat Nature of grail: Procession: Movement: Attendants, associated objects and situations: Place: castle Setting: chamber Question to be asked: yes Religious aspects and descriptions: grail dish of Last Supper Edition: Jonckbloet, II, 9815-9894 Translation: Claassens & Johnson (summary) 216-222 Title: Queeste van den Graal Date: ca. 1280 Hero: Galaat, Perchevael, Bohort Name of grail: dat heilege grael, dat heilege vat Nature of grail: Procession: Movement:

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Analysis of Grail Scenes Attendants, associated objects and situations: bleeding lance Place: Corbenic Setting: hall Religious aspects and descriptions: liturgy; blood collected at Deposition; dish of Last Supper Edition: Jonckbloet, II, 10458-10507 Translation: Claassens & Johnson (summary) 216-222 Title: Queeste van den Graal Date: ca. 1280 Hero: Galaat Name of grail: dat heilege vat Nature of grail: Procession: Movement: Attendants, associated objects and situations: Place: Sarras Setting: Religious aspects and descriptions: Edition: Jonckbloet, II, 10915-11012 Translation: Claassens & Johnson (summary) 216-222

SPANISH

Title: Josep Abarimatia Date: 1469-70 Hero: Galaat Name of grail: santa escodilla, Sancto Grial Nature of grail: Procession: Movement: Attendants, associated objects and situations: bleeding lance, symbols of passion; grail kept in closed ark Place: Palace of king Evolat Setting: Religious aspects and descriptions: blood collected at Deposition Edition: Pietsch, I 35-39 Translation: Title: Demanda del Sancto Grial Date: 1535 Hero: Galaz Name of grail: sancto Grial Nature of grail: Procession: yes Movement: moves through air, no visible carrier Attendants, associated objects and situations: Place: Palace of king Arthur Setting: hall Religious aspects and descriptions: Edition: Bonilla y San Martin 171 Translation:

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Analysis of Grail Scenes Title: Demanda del Sancto Grial Date: 1535 Hero: Galaz, Boores, Perseval Name of grail: sancto Grial Nature of grail: Procession: Movement: Attendants, associated objects and situations: Place: Palace of Grail Setting: Religious aspects and descriptions: liturgy (vespers and communion) Edition: Bonilla y San Martin 309-10 Translation:

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ARTHURIAN STUDIES I ASPECTS OF MALORY, edited by Toshiyuki Takamiya and Derek Brewer II THE ALLITERATIVE MORTE ARTHURE: A Reassessment of the Poem, edited by Karl Heinz Göller III THE ARTHURIAN BIBLIOGRAPHY, I: Author Listing, edited by C. E. Pickford and R. W. Last IV THE CHARACTER OF KING ARTHUR IN MEDIEVAL LITERATURE, Rosemary Morris V PERCEVAL: The Story of the Grail, by Chrétien de Troyes, translated by Nigel Bryant VI THE ARTHURIAN BIBLIOGRAPHY, II: Subject Index, edited by C. E. Pickford and R. W. Last VII THE LEGEND OF ARTHUR IN THE MIDDLE AGES, edited by P. B. Grout, R. A. Lodge, C. E. Pickford and E. K. C. Varty VIII THE ROMANCE OF YDER, edited and translated by Alison Adams IX THE RETURN OF KING ARTHUR, Beverly Taylor and Elisabeth Brewer X ARTHUR’S KINGDOM OF ADVENTURE: The World of Malory’s Morte Darthur, Muriel Whitaker XI KNIGHTHOOD IN THE MORTE DARTHUR, Beverly Kennedy XII LE ROMAN DE TRISTAN EN PROSE, tome I, edited by Renée L. Curtis XIII LE ROMAN DE TRISTAN EN PROSE, tome II, edited by Renée L. Curtis XIV LE ROMAN DE TRISTAN EN PROSE, tome III, edited by Renée L. Curtis XV LOVE’S MASKS: Identity, Intertextuality, and Meaning in the Old French Tristan Poems, Merritt R. Blakeslee XVI THE CHANGING FACE OF ARTHURIAN ROMANCE: Essays on Arthurian Prose Romances in memory of Cedric E. Pickford, edited by Alison Adams, Armel H. Diverres, Karen Stern and Kenneth Varty XVII REWARDS AND PUNISHMENTS IN THE ARTHURIAN ROMANCES AND LYRIC POETRY OF MEDIEVAL FRANCE: Essays presented to Kenneth Varty on the occasion of his sixtieth birthday, edited by Peter V. Davies and Angus J. Kennedy XVIII CEI AND THE ARTHURIAN LEGEND, Linda Gowans XIX LA;AMON’S BRUT: The Poem and its Sources, Françoise H. M. Le Saux XX READING THE MORTE DARTHUR, Terence McCarthy, reprinted as AN INTRODUCTION TO MALORY XXI CAMELOT REGAINED: The Arthurian Revival and Tennyson, 1800–1849, Roger Simpson XXII THE LEGENDS OF KING ARTHUR IN ART, Muriel Whitaker XXIII GOTTFRIED VON STRASSBURG AND THE MEDIEVAL TRISTAN LEGEND: Papers from an Anglo-North American symposium, edited with an introduction by Adrian Stevens and Roy Wisbey XXIV ARTHURIAN POETS: CHARLES WILLIAMS, edited and introduced by David Llewellyn Dodds XXV AN INDEX OF THEMES AND MOTIFS IN TWELFTH-CENTURY FRENCH ARTHURIAN POETRY, E. H. Ruck XXVI CHRÉTIEN DE TROYES AND THE GERMAN MIDDLE AGES: Papers from an international symposium, edited with an introduction by Martin H. Jones and Roy Wisbey

XXVII SIR GAWAIN AND THE GREEN KNIGHT: Sources and Analogues, compiled by Elisabeth Brewer XXVIII CLIGÉS by Chrétien de Troyes, edited by Stewart Gregory and Claude Luttrell XXIX THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SIR THOMAS MALORY, P. J. C. Field XXX T. H. WHITE’S THE ONCE AND FUTURE KING, Elisabeth Brewer XXXI ARTHURIAN BIBLIOGRAPHY, III: 1978–1992, Author Listing and Subject Index, compiled by Caroline Palmer XXXII ARTHURIAN POETS: JOHN MASEFIELD, edited and introduced by David Llewellyn Dodds XXXIII THE TEXT AND TRADITION OF LA;AMON’S BRUT, edited by Françoise Le Saux XXXIV CHIVALRY IN TWELFTH-CENTURY GERMANY: The Works of Hartmann von Aue, W. H. Jackson XXXV THE TWO VERSIONS OF MALORY’S MORTE DARTHUR: Multiple Negation and the Editing of the Text, Ingrid Tieken-Boon van Ostade XXXVI RECONSTRUCTING CAMELOT: French Romantic Medievalism and the Arthurian Tradition, Michael Glencross XXXVII A COMPANION TO MALORY, edited by Elizabeth Archibald and A. S. G. Edwards XXXVIII A COMPANION TO THE GAWAIN-POET, edited by Derek Brewer and Jonathan Gibson XXXIX MALORY’S BOOK OF ARMS: The Narrative of Combat in Le Morte Darthur, Andrew Lynch XL MALORY: TEXTS AND SOURCES, P. J. C. Field XLI KING ARTHUR IN AMERICA, Alan Lupack and Barbara Tepa Lupack XLII THE SOCIAL AND LITERARY CONTEXTS OF MALORY’S MORTE DARTHUR, edited by D. Thomas Hanks Jr XLIII THE GENESIS OF NARRATIVE IN MALORY’S MORTE DARTHUR, Elizabeth Edwards XLIV GLASTONBURY ABBEY AND THE ARTHURIAN TRADITION, edited by James P. Carley XLV THE KNIGHT WITHOUT THE SWORD: A Social Landscape of Malorian Chivalry, Hyonjin Kim XLVI ULRICH VON ZATZIKHOVEN’S LANZELET: Narrative Style and Entertainment, Nicola McLelland XLVII THE MALORY DEBATE: Essays on the Texts of Le Morte Darthur, edited by Bonnie Wheeler, Robert L. Kindrick and Michael N. Salda XLVIII MERLIN AND THE GRAIL: Joseph of Arimathea, Merlin, Perceval: The Trilogy of Arthurian romances attributed to Robert de Boron, translated by Nigel Bryant XLIX ARTHURIAN BIBLIOGRAPHY IV: 1993–1998, Author Listing and Subject Index, compiled by Elaine Barber L DIU CRÔNE AND THE MEDIEVAL ARTHURIAN CYCLE, Neil Thomas LII KING ARTHUR IN MUSIC, edited by Richard Barber LIII THE BOOK OF LANCELOT: The Middle Dutch Lancelot Compilation and the Medieval Tradition of Narrative Cycles, Bart Besamusca LIV A COMPANION TO THE LANCELOT-GRAIL CYCLE, edited by Carol Dover LV THE GENTRY CONTEXT FOR MALORY’S MORTE DARTHUR, Raluca L. Radulescu

LVI PARZIVAL: With Titurel and the Love Lyrics, by Wolfram von Eschenbach, translated by Cyril Edwards LVII ARTHURIAN STUDIES IN HONOUR OF P. J. C. FIELD, edited by Bonnie Wheeler LVIII THE LEGEND OF THE GRAIL, translated by Nigel Bryant LIX THE GRAIL LEGEND IN MODERN LITERATURE, John B. Marino LX RE-VIEWING LE MORTE DARTHUR: Texts and Contexts, Characters and Themes, edited by K. S. Whetter and Raluca L. Radulescu LXI THE SCOTS AND MEDIEVAL ARTHURIAN LEGEND, edited by Rhiannon Purdie and Nicola Royan LXII WIRNT VON GRAVENBERG’S WIGALOIS: Intertextuality and Interpretation, Neil Thomas LXIII COMPANION TO CHRÉTIEN DE TROYES, edited by Norris J. Lacy and Joan Tasker Grimbert LXIV THE FORTUNES OF KING ARTHUR, edited by Norris J. Lacy LXV A HISTORY OF ARTHURIAN SCHOLARSHIP, edited by Norris J. Lacy LXVI MALORY’S CONTEMPORARY AUDIENCE: The Social Reading of Romance in Late Medieval England, Thomas H. Crofts LXVII MARRIAGE, ADULTERY AND INHERITANCE IN MALORY’S MORTE DARTHUR, Karen Cherewatuk LXVIII EDWARD III’S ROUND TABLE AT WINDSOR: The House of the Round Table and the Windsor Festival of 1344, Julian Munby, Richard Barber, Richard Brown LXIX GEOFFREY OF MONMOUTH, THE HISTORY OF THE KINGS OF BRITAIN: An edition and translation of the De gestis Britonum [Historia Regum Britanniae], edited by Michael D. Reeve, translated by Neil Wright LXX RADIO CAMELOT: Arthurian Legends on the BBC, 1922–2005, Roger Simpson LXXI MALORY’S LIBRARY: The Sources of the Morte Darthur, Ralph Norris

Contributors

LACY (ed.)

RICHARD BARBER · PHILLIP BOARDMAN · JAMES P. CARLEY CAROLINE D. ECKHARDT · P. J. C. FIELD · ANTONIO FURTADO KEVIN J. HARTY · WILL HASTY · DAVID F. JOHNSON MARIANNE E. KALINKE · MARTINE MEUWESE NORRIS J. LACY · RICHARD TRACHSLER

BOYDELL & BREWER Ltd PO Box 9, Woodbridge IP12 3DF (GB) and 668 Mt Hope Ave, Rochester NY 14620-2731 (US) www.boydell.co.uk / www.boydellandbrewer.com

The GRAIL, the QUEST and the WORLD OF ARTHUR

The GRAIL, the QUEST and the WORLD OF ARTHUR

Exploring French, Dutch, Norse, German, and English texts, literary scholars and art historians discuss medieval quest themes, especially but not exclusively the quest for the Holy Grail. A number of the essays trace the relationship, often negative, between Arthurian chivalry and the Grail ethos. Whereas most of the contributors reflect on the popularity of the Grail quest, several examine the comparative rarity of the Grail in certain literatures and define the elaboration of quest motifs severed from the Grail material. An appendix to the volume offers a filmography that includes all the cinematic treatments of the Grail, either as central theme or minor motif. Contributors: See back of jacket

Jacket: The Grail Procession, from Chr Chrétien de Troyes, Le conte du Graal. Paris, BnF, fr. 12577, fol.18v, with permission.

D. S. BREWER

Grail Quest Wld Arthur.indd 1

Edited by NORRIS J. LACY

09/10/2008 08:26:36