Sir Thomas Malory's Tale of the Sangreal and the Justification ..., Slides of French Philology

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Thomas
Malory’s
Tale
of
the
Sangreal
and
the
 Justification
of
Violence
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Diana
Catherine
Jefferies
 PhD
Thesis
 Department
of
English
 University
of
Sydney
 2009
 - 2 - Abstract: This thesis argues that the sixth book of Sir Thomas Malory’s Morte Darthur, the Tale of the Sangreal introduces a new idea of chivalry to the knights of the Round Table and challenges them to reform how violence is justified in Arthurian society at the fundamental level. The central issue revolves around the knight’s intentions as they are confronted with situations of violence. In the Grail quest, each knight must demonstrate that he uses his knightly skills for the benefit of the community, not for his own purposes. By contrasting how knights justify violence in terms of Arthurian ideals, which privileges the use of violence for individual gain, with how knights justify violence in terms of Christian ideals, which privileges the use of violence to protect the community, this thesis demonstrates why Arthurian civilization collapsed as civil war engulfed the kingdom. Furthermore, the thesis shows how the Sangreal interacts with the rest of the Morte Darthur. It asks the knights to give up their worldly pretensions to honour and courtly privilege, and to reform their lives radically to comply with Christian ideals. This is achieved as the Grail journeys of the three Grail knights, Perceval, Bors, and Galahad, and the journey of Lancelot are examined closely, producing the spiritual biography of the knights. To demonstrate how far Arthurian civilization had moved from Christian ideals, the final chapter scrutinizes Arthur’s estrangement from God in the early years of his reign. These investigations make it evident that the Sangreal acts as a mirror for the Morte Darthur, proposing a better way of being within the chivalric world by closely analyzing the justification of violence within that world. This demonstrates that the collapse of Arthurian civilization is unavoidable. - 5 - Table of Contents Introduction 6 Chapter One: The Context Of Malory’s Sangreal 33 Chapter Two: Sir Perceval Of Galis 71 Chapter Three: Sir Bors De Ganys 101 Chapter Four: Sir Galahad: The Haute Knight 128 Chapter Five: Sir Lancelot Du Lake 159 Chapter Six: Arthur: King Of All Britain 190 Conclusion 222 Bibliography 225 - 6 - Introduction This thesis argues that the sixth book of Sir Thomas Malory’s Morte Darthur, the Tale of the Sangreal, introduces a major shift in the understanding of how violence is justified in the Morte Darthur. I argue that this shift is so central to the entire text that it explains why Arthurian civilization collapses amidst the chaos of civil war. Although the discussion of the text’s presentation of violence has been a central point in the critical reception of the Morte Darthur, there is a significant gap in the critical examination of how the very different form of knighthood and chivalry found in the Sangreal interacts with the knighthood and chivalry found in the rest of the text. Although I am emphasizing the importance of the Sangreal to an overall reading of the Morte Darthur, I acknowledge that this text cannot be interpreted fully through one monolithic point of view. I will build my argument from this particular case but this does not discount other readings of the entire text. My particular reading will demonstrate that, in the Sangreal, violence, or in Malory’s favoured terms such as outrage, deeds, or prowess, is justified only when the knight’s inner motivation accords with Christian ideals as he confronts potentially violent situations. These Christian ideals demand that the knight use his knightly skills only in the service of God, to protect a Christian community. If a knight is aligned with these Christian ideals, he does not commit an act of violence to profit himself. Thus, the Christian knight can never allow himself to be motivated to fight by a desire to win personal honour or worship, to profit from his opponent, or to enact revenge. In the Sangreal, if a knight is motivated to fight for personal gain or vengeance, he demonstrates that he does not have an acceptance of Christian ideals, and this lack of understanding is a marker of his alienation from God. Of course, in earlier books of the Morte Darthur, especially those portraying the life of knight errantry such as the Tales concerning Lancelot, Gareth, and Tristram, Malory certainly celebrates the worldly form - 7 - of chivalry. But I argue that, if a reader comes to the Morte Darthur initially via the Sangreal, it is a spiritual or Christian form of chivalry that gains prominence. The importance of Christian ideals of violence to an understanding of the Sangreal’s vital role in the Morte Darthur is demonstrated by investigating the journeys of the major knights in the Sangreal, Perceval, Bors, Galahad, and Lancelot. This investigation shows how each knight comes to his personal view of the proper Christian use of violence. Each, with the exception of Galahad, begins his journey in the Grail quest having been alienated from God because he has placed his allegiance in Arthurian civilization. During each knight’s Grail journey, the knight will face a series of trials in which he comes to understand that, if he is to be successful in this quest, his true allegiance must be to God. The knight demonstrates his allegiance by using his prowess only when the motivating force behind his violence is in accord with Christian ideals. Although, historically, Christianity in the medieval period cannot be understood in this monochrome manner, I am using this definition of how violence should be justified to examine the spiritual journey each knight undertakes in the Grail quest. The purpose of simplifying these Christian ideals is to provide a basis from which the different chivalric ideals found in the Sangreal can be differentiated from the chivalric ideals found in other books of the Morte Darthur. It is from this platform that I will argue that the Sangreal and its presentation of knighthood and chivalry are central to an understanding of the entire Morte Darthur. The Grail legend, as Malory presents it, is the spiritual heart of the entire text and, if the entire Morte Darthur is read from this point of view, the spiritual ideal of knightly conduct emerges as highly desirable. The Sangreal’s centrality to the entire text is confirmed by a physical examination of the Malory manuscript, the earliest known version of the text, because nearly every time the word ‘Sangreal’ appears in the manuscript it is rubricated or written in red ink.1 The only other words rubricated consistently are the names of the knights. Helen Cooper discusses 1 Sir Thomas Malory, ‘Malory manuscript, Additional MS 59678 (Digitalised Version) by Humi Project, Keio University’, (London: British Library, 2003). The word ‘Sangreal’ is not rubricated when the Grail appears to Perceval and Ector on folio 334. - 10 - love, frendshyp, cowardyse, murder, hate, vertue and synne’.8 Even though the list mixes obviously good attributes with obviously evil attributes and activities randomly, it does recognize a substantial variance in the behaviour of the knights. From its earliest printing, the Morte Darthur has been seen as a text that presents the attributes and activities of the knights as being variously good and evil. Whereas Caxton portrays the Morte Darthur as a positive influence in the lives of noblemen, despite presenting material that shows the knights doing evil as well as good, Roger Ascham, writing under the influence of humanism and the Reformation in the middle of the sixteenth century, accuses the text of being a corrupting influence on its readership because of the manner in which violence is presented. He says that the Morte Darthur is a text inhabited by knights who, although noble, do commit homicide without sufficient justification, as well as committing adultery by deception. Ascham was concerned that the text would affect adversely the wealthy and young men and women who lived in idleness.9 Unlike Caxton, who saw the Morte Darthur as being morally improving because the readership could learn from both the successes and the failures of the knights, Ascham was worried that reading such a book could lead to depravity. It is of interest that two early commentaries immediately identify the Morte Darthur’s presentation of violence as the key to the text’s moral worth or lack of it, and thus regard it as educational literature. Such a perception influenced who the commentators believed made up the text’s intended readers. Ascham’s scathing comments had a lasting effect on the popularity of the Morte Darthur and William Stansby’s 1634 edition was the last printing for two hundred years. The neo- classical literary tastes of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries judged Malory’s text harshly because of the behaviour of the knights. A mid-eighteenth-century commentary found in the Biographia Britannica and credited to William Oldys (1696-1761) criticizes Malory because the knights are not in command of their passions and behave 8 Caxton, ‘Caxton’ s Preface’, cxlvi. 9 Roger Ascham, The Scholemaster (London: Bell and Dandy, 1863), 81-82. - 11 - adulterously.10 Although this does not judge the moral worth of the text in relation to the presentation of violence, the focus on the sexual immorality of the knights has implications for how the text was viewed. It was no longer regarded as a text that had the educational value for its readership suggested by Caxton. It was viewed as light entertainment for readers who were morally suspect. Samuel Johnson’s view of the Morte Darthur as comprising only stories filled with adventures, giants, dragons, and enchantments, further positioned it as into being simply light entertainment.11 His comments dismissed any suggestion that the Morte Darthur could be a vehicle for a serious discussion of how violence was justified. Occasions of violence within the text were now placed within the world of fantasy and would be read only by those whose lack of education made it impossible for them to be exposed to other more edifying texts such the classical literature of the ancient world or more modern literature of Europe. This readership constructed by Johnson lacked the necessary skills to judge whether or not the Morte Darthur was good literature. Johnson’s comment further removed the Morte Darthur from Caxton’s notion that it was a morally improving work because only undiscriminating readers, who delighted in the magical and enchanting aspects of Malory’s work, would read it. Johnson demonstrates the eighteenth-century bias towards privileging the classical heritage in literature and denying any literary value could be found in the romances of the Middle English period. Another commentator, Thomas Warton, took another tack in his Observations on the Faerie Queen of Spenser and showed that the prized literature of the Early Modern period was influenced by Middle English romance. This encouraged others to take a fresh look at Malory’s work and to re-evaluate the text’s value by examining the text’s sources. He acknowledged Malory’s influence by demonstrating how Spenser directly modelled characters such as Tristan on Malory’s characterizations.12 This new 10 ‘Biographica Britannica’, in Malory: The Critical Heritage, ed. Marylyn Jackson Parins (London and New York: Routledge, 1988), 66. 11 Samuel Johnson, ‘Preface to His Edition of the Plays of W. Shakespeare’, in The Plays of William Shakespeare, ed. George Steevens (London: Otridge and Rackham, 1824), li. 12 Thomas Warton, Observations on the Faerie Queen of Spenser, 2nd edition, 1 (London: printed for R. and J. Dodsley, J. Fletcher, Oxford: English Short Title Catalogue, 1762). Eighteenth Century Collections Online. Gale Group. - 12 - evaluation led to two of the most interesting and positive assessments of the Morte Darthur in the early nineteenth century, one from Sir Walter Scott and one from Robert Southey. Both intended to produce new editions of the Morte Darthur, and their comments on the work mark a watershed in the discussion of the critical reception of the Morte Darthur. Major authors, editors, publishers, and scholars were beginning to perceive the Morte Darthur as a major work of Early English literature, and, despite the earlier accusations about its moral integrity and value as an educational tool, its suitability for wide-ranging readers was recognized. The Early Nineteenth Century Sir Walter Scott’s initial reaction to Malory’s text was brutal. In a letter to Richard Polwhale dating back to 1804, Scott described it as ‘an awkward abridgement of prose romances, themselves founded on more ancient metrical lais and gests’.13 Later, however, he changed his assessment radically writing in his Essay on Romance that ‘Sir Thomas Mallory, indeed, compiled, from various French authorities, his celebrated Morte d’ Arthur, indisputedly the best Prose Romance the language can boast’. He countered Johnson’s claim that the Morte Darthur was of no educational value because it was not related to Classical or European literature, by identifying its sources as French. He went some way to repudiating the claim that the Morte Darthur was morally suspect by writing to Southey in 1809 that he intended ‘to reprint namely the whole [Morte Darthur] from the original Caxton which is extant with all the superstition and harlotrie which the castrator in the reign of Edward VI chose to omit’.14 Scott’s comments demonstrate that he considered the Morte Darthur’s literary, rather than moral, value, first, by promising to include all the material left out since the time of Ascham because it was regarded as morally corrupting, and, second, by identifying the basis of Malory’s text in older European literature. http://galenet.galegroup.com.ezproxy1.library.usyd.edu.au/servlet/ECCO, 16-17, accessed 29th August, 2007 at 10.30am. 13 Sir Walter Scott, as quoted in Malory: The Critical Heritage, ed. Marylyn Jackson Parins (London and New York, NY: Routledge, 1988), 77-81. 14 Sir Walter Scott, Essays on Chivalry, Romance and the Drama, Chandos Classics (London: Frederick Warne, 1887), 80-106. - 15 - surfaces again in the twentieth-century critiques of Malory’s source for the Sangreal, the French Queste del Sainte Graal. An understanding of how critics view the French Queste’s relationship to crusading ideology is inherently significant when considering how the justification of violence is presented in Malory’s Sangreal. Much of the twentieth-century commentary on the Queste concerned the discovery of both the origins of the Grail legend and the historical context of the French source. Commentators argued for a context that connected the work to the debates that surrounded an ideology that was developed to justify the West’s involvement in the crusades in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Although Nutt had previously proposed this line of investigation, the French commentators did not look to the Celtic sources to find the origins of the Grail legend. Instead, they searched for its origins in Cistercian theology, which was intimately connected to the early development of crusading ideology. The main source identified lay in the writings of the highly influential and most famous member of the order, Saint Bernard of Clairvaux. The key text for these commentators’ interest in Bernard was almost certainly his treatise In Praise of the New Knighthood.20 Written in 1135, it defined two categories of knighthood. One was inspired by the monastic principles of Cistercian reform, and the other by the secular concepts of knighthood based on the courts of many European sovereigns. The treatise praised the monastic style of knighthood but condemned the secular style. It was written to gather support for a new military order, the Templars, who had come into being in the Holy Land after the First Crusade. Albert Pauphilet and Étienne Gilson examined the internal evidence found in the Queste and compared it to their knowledge of the Cistercian order and the theology of Bernard. Albert Pauphilet, in his 1921 study of the Queste, argued that the inspiration and perhaps 20 Bernard of Clairvaux, ‘In Praise of the New Knighthood’, in The Works of Bernard of Clairvaux (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian, 1977). All references to this text will be quoted in the English from this edition and will be cited to page number in the body of the text. The original Latin will be quoted in the footnotes and will come from ‘De Laude Novae Militiae’, in Œuvres Complète, XXXI, ed. Pierre-Yves Emery (Paris: Les Éditions du Cerf, 1990). - 16 - authorship of the romance was monastic and Cistercian. The Grail legend, as it was presented in the Queste, was an allegory of man’s search for God. His work is still considered valid, but Karen Pratt has examined and modified his view that the authorship was Cistercian.21 Étienne Gilson argued in 1934 that the theology of the Queste was connected to the mystical theology of Saint Bernard of Clairvaux. Gilson argued that the Queste presented its readers with a search for the goal of Bernard’s mystical theology, an ecstatic union with God.22 He argues in his explanation of Cistercian theology that French courtly literature was preceded and accompanied by many theological explorations of love and states that this movement was initiated by three groups of theologians, which included Bernard and his Cistercian contemporaries. Although a full explanation of Gilson’s ideas is beyond the scope of this critical review, it is important to note that a major scholar has connected the idea of a quest for God’s love with the development of the knightly romances.23 Sister Isabel Mary continued this line of commentary, arguing in 1976 that Cistercian thought influenced the author of the French Queste and that its purpose was to displace the popular romance literature, based on the ideal of courtly love, with a literature of popular appeal based on the ideal of the love of God. She connected the Queste to Cistercian theology by arguing that it presented the life of a Christian as being nothing less than a perpetually renewed response to the divine love of God himself and she connected this theme with Bernard and the Cistercian school. The voice common to religion and knighthood was to be found in the Queste’s depiction of a Christian chivalry because it provided a metaphor that applied equally to the knight and to the monk. By 21 Karen Pratt, ‘The Cistercians and the Queste Del Saint Graal,’ Reading Medieval Studies: Annual Proceedings of the Graduate Centre for Medieval Studies in the University of Reading, 21 (1995), 69-96, 72. 22 Étienne Gilson as cited in Fanni Bogdanow, ‘An Interpretation of the Meaning and Purpose of the Vulgate Queste Del Saint Graal in the Light of the Mystical Theology,’ in The Changing Face of Arthurian Romance : Essays on Arthurian Prose Romances in Memory of Cedric E. Pickford : A Tribute by the Members of the British Branch of the International Arthurian Society, ed. Armel H. Diverres Alison Adams, Karen Stern and Kenneth Varty, Arthurian Studies 16 (Cambridge: Boydell, 1986), 23-46, 24. 23 Étienne Gilson, The Mystical Theology of Saint Bernard, trans. A.H.C. Downes (New York, NY: Sheed and Ward, 1940), 2. - 17 - describing monastic life in military terms, as well as describing knightly behaviour in monastic terms, the distinction between the two was collapsed and both knight and monk were, in effect, milites Christi or ‘soldiers of Christ’. Sister Isabel Mary described the Queste as expanding this metaphor into an allegory in which the world was conceived as a battlefield and every man was engaged in a personal struggle for holiness. This, argued Sister Isabel Mary, had already occurred with the development of the military orders, whose very nature was shaped by the writings of Saint Bernard and the early Cistercian order. 24 In 1979 Pauline Matarasso also interpreted the French Queste through a monastic and scriptural light refracted in the lens of Cistercian theology. Examining the biblical allusions throughout the text, Matarasso came to the conclusion that allegory was the only technique through which the author could illustrate spiritual truths in a fictional form to produce a morally edifying literature. She stated that the ‘reward promised in the Queste to those who seek with a pure heart is endorsed by the testimony of scripture mediated through the allegory’. This assessment comes into line with those earlier writers who insist on Cistercian authorship of the text, when Matarasso says that the author was ‘aiming at a universal statement … that man’s true end is the desire for and ultimate possession of God’.25 Fanni Bogdanow agrees that the author of the Queste not only drew upon the scriptures for inspiration but also turned to the moral and mystical thoughts of Bernard. In 1986 she argued that the purpose of the text was to encourage the readers to turn away from evil by presenting ‘the rewards they might expect if they heed God’s call to repentance and … the dire consequences that await them if they fail to do so’. 26 Significantly, Bogdanow connected the critique of violence and chivalry in the Queste with the collapse of the 24 Sister Isabel Mary, ‘The Knights of God, Citeaux and the Quest of the Holy Grail’, in The Influence of Saint Bernard: Anglican Essays with an Introduction by Jean Leclercq OSB, ed. Sister Benedicta Ward (Oxford: SLG Press, 1976), 53-88, 55-56. 25 Both quotations are from Pauline Matarasso, The Redemption of Chivalry: A Study of the Queste Del Saint Graal (Geneva: Droz, 1979), 242-243. 26 Bogdanow, ‘An Interpretation of the Meaning and Purpose of the Vulgate Queste Del Saint Graal in the Light of the Mystical Theology’, 26. - 20 - Stephen Knight reiterated this by arguing that the Grail story was a mythic fiction that sought to compensate for the loss of the holy places in Jerusalem. This compensation, according to Knight, was explained in terms of the Eucharist because, even if the place of Christ’s death and resurrection in Jerusalem were lost, the Holy Presence can be created anywhere at the moment of transubstantiation. Knight finds this movement of a geographical location of the Holy Presence to an universal location presented in Robert de Boron’s forerunner to the Arthurian Grail story, known as Joseph d’Arimathie or Le Roman de l’Estoire dou Graal. He argues that Malory’s source, the Queste del Saint Graal, is linked to the Fourth Crusade, and that the introduction of the perfect knight, Galahad, is the ultimate sophistication of the Grail tradition. This ‘Christ-like’ character represented views of the Fourth Crusade held by the pope and other ecclesiastical authorities who criticized the lovers of booty. This, as Knight notes, is the tale that has come down to the modern world, with its rejection of earthly values and its prizing of a noble and Christianized chivalry.31 Again, it is this tradition that has been handed down to Malory and which appears in the Sangreal. Malory’s portrayal of Galahad as the epitome of chivalric excellence in the Grail quest sets the standard for the other knights to follow. What makes Adolf’s and Knight’s comments about the Queste even more remarkable in relation to the Sangreal is that they help to explain the importance of the penitential theme in the Grail legend. It can be argued that the stories of Bors’s and Lancelot’s Grail quests represent two penitential journeys: one, involving full penitence, is a success because Bors is invited to join the Grail fellowship, and the other, involving partial penitence, is a partial success because Lancelot receives a partial view of the Grail ceremony. However, this penitential theme in the Sangreal is presented in a manner different from this theme in the Queste. Mary Hynes-Berry explains this difference by stating that Malory did not see the central 31 Stephen Knight, ‘From Jerusalem to Camelot: King Arthur and the Crusades’, in Medieval Codicology, Iconography, Literature, and Translation: Studies for Keith Val Sinclair, ed. Peter Rolfe Monks and D.D.R. Owen (Leiden: Brill, 1994), 223-232. - 21 - disjunction found in the French Queste between worldly and heavenly chivalry. Instead, she argues that being a good knight made him also a good Christian, and chivalry is treated as a vocation, one founded in patience and humility.32 According to Hynes-Berry, Malory is not describing an ideal spiritual chivalry but a chivalry to be practised in the light of Christian values, even if it does not fully live up to the ideal. But, having put in place this disjunction between the ideal and the actual, Malory has given the knights of the Round Table a standard by which the other knights can explore their past motivations for violence and seek to do penance for harm caused. What this exploration of the Grail legend and its connection to the crusades suggests is that it is not so much that the events of the crusades themselves that are encoded in the various versions of the Grail legend as that the ideology of the crusades has been appropriated into the story of the Arthurian civilization. Although many commentators since Nutt have specifically cited the crusades and the background Cistercian theology as the historical inspiration of the Grail legends, commentators on Malory’s Sangreal have observed its affinity with the Queste. In the commentary devoted to The Tale of the Sangreal in the third edition of The Works of Sir Thomas Malory produced in 1990 by revising the former editions by Eugène Vinaver, this tale is described as being translated more closely to its original source than any other Tale in Malory’s text.33 But Vinaver’s assessment of the tale in Malory’s version in comparison with the French Queste del Saint Graal led him to conclude that Malory’s revision of the French original changed the nature of the tale. In Vinaver’s view, Malory’s version could no longer be described ‘as a means of contrasting earthly and heavenly chivalry and condemning the former,’ it was ‘an opportunity offered to the 32 Mary Hynes-Berry, ‘A Tale Breffly Drawyne Oute of Freynshe’, in Aspects of Malory, ed. Toshiyuki Takamiya and Derek Brewer, Arthurian Studies 1 (Cambridge: Boydell and Brewer, 1981), 93-106, 95-102. 33 Vinaver as quoted in Malory, Works, 1534. Although there has been scholarly debate about how Malory revises the Sangreal from its source, the Queste, I take the position of Eugène Vinaver that the Sangreal is the least original of all the books in the Morte Darthur. Other commentators such as Sandra Ness Ihle examine the difference between the two texts based on the actual representation of the Grail, but, in my opinion, Malory’s revisions to the Queste do not affect the overall thrust of the argument in this thesis that the presentation of how violence should be justified can be traced back to Bernard’s ideal of the new knight. - 22 - knights of the Round Table to achieve greater glory in this world’.34 Vinaver argues that Malory secularized the story of the Grail. Vinaver’s various comments about the purpose of Malory’s Grail story set the agenda for much of the commentary that surrounded both the Morte Darthur and The Tale of the Sangreal for many years to come. The Question of Structure One of the most controversial assertions made by Vinaver in 1947 was that the various tales of the Morte Darthur were separate entities. He based this claim on the Malory manuscript found in Winchester College by librarian W.F. Oakeshott in 1934 but he does not explain how he reached this conclusion in his Preface to his edition of the manuscript. Having decided that the Morte Darthur was comprised of eight separate tales, he suggested that commentators should look to the merits of each tale rather than to the entire text as a focus of their commentary. This was debated in the commentary throughout the latter half of the twentieth century. Vinaver believed that this manuscript was a more complete and authentic version of the text than Caxton’s printed edition because the manuscript was closer to what Malory had written. He proceeded to assert that the single book produced by Caxton was not representative of the author’s intention, which was to produce a series of eight separate romances.35 Vinaver’s conception of Malory’s work as eight separate tales, rather than as one complete entity, led to his decision to rename the entire work as The Works of Sir Thomas Malory. Because this thesis argues that the Sangreal is central to an understanding of the entire text, it is important to follow the thread of this particular argument and assess whether or not the Morte Darthur is one text or a series of eight different tales. In 1964, a collection of critical essays, Malory’s Originality: A Critical Study of the Le Morte Darthur, edited by Roger Lumiansky, was published with the express purpose of arguing against Vinaver’s assertion. In his Introduction, Lumiansky wrote that Malory’s final objective in writing the Morte Darthur was to produce one entire text and that each 34 Vinaver as quoted in Malory, Works, 1535. 35 Vinaver, ‘Preface to the First Edition (1947)’, in Malory Works, ix. - 25 - P.J.C. Field gives another view of the unity of the Morte Darthur. He uses internal evidence from the work to show that Malory intends it to be the whole story of King Arthur and his knights of the Round Table. He argues that the readers can find Brewer’s cohesion in the many minor characters, the internal unity of the plot, and in the symmetry of the rise and fall of Arthurian civilization.44 Although the eight different tales present the Arthurian world from eight distinct points of view, the text deals with one subject area, chronologically charting the legend from the birth to the death of Arthur. It seems to have been agreed at the beginning of this century that the entire Morte Darthur should be viewed as one entire work. Before moving on to an examination of the current threads of commentary, I would summarize the three major areas of critical appraisal of the Morte Darthur and the Sangreal that have been discussed as the following themes. First, despite Caxton’s claim that the work was a significant piece of literature for the English nation in 1485, its value as literature was not considered to be important until the Romantic period in the early nineteenth century, when Sir Walter Scott and Robert Southey re-evaluated the text’s worth. Much of the early criticism revolved around how violence was presented in the text as a whole. Although Caxton saw the text as being a positive influence on others because it presented examples of both the proper and improper use of violence, Ascham rejected Caxton’s view and saw the text as having an adverse effect on the young who enjoyed it because it not only displayed unreasonable violence but, because Lancelot was an adulterer. Second, when Southey’s more scholarly assessment of the work identified the sources of the Grail, commentators began to examine how the supposed Cistercian background of the Sangreal’s source, the Queste del Sainte Graal, influenced how the violence portrayed in the Tale should be viewed. It was not long before this violence was connected to the crusades and the justification of violence in crusading ideology. Third, having established that Malory’s direct source for the Sangreal was influenced by Cistercian views of violence, the final critical debate rested upon whether the Sangreal 44 P.J.C. Field, ‘Malory and His Audience’, in New Directions in Arthurian Studies, ed. Alan Lupack, Arthurian Studies 51 (Cambridge: Brewer, 2002), 21-32, 27. - 26 - was an essential part of the overall structure of the Morte Darthur, or whether it was just one of the eight separate tales with little to contribute to any of the other tales. All these arguments continue to influence the recent critical debate surrounding the Morte Darthur, which will now be examined. Recent Criticism of the Sangreal Current commentary has taken on various themes as it narrows its focus to the Sangreal and attempts to make meaning of this particular book within the Morte Darthur. Sandra Ness Ihle examines the Grail itself to come to an understanding of the tale. She claims the Grail functioned as a ‘ spiritual symbol’ since its inception by Chrétien de Troyes in the late twelfth century in his unfinished romance, Le Conte du Graal. She begins her commentary by supporting another of Vinaver’s arguments about the Sangreal, that Malory has removed the Grail legend from a monastic environment into a secular or chivalric environment. To show the distinction between the two versions of the Grail legend she examines the significance of the object in both texts. In the Queste the meaning of the Grail lies behind its partial manifestations. The final secrets remain hidden to all but Galahad, who cannot express what he sees and is taken to heaven immediately. Malory narrows the descriptions of the Grail in order to make it into something we can know. He attempts to restrict the description of the Grail to what is appropriate for the Eucharistic vessel. The Grail in Malory has become symbolic of the mysteries of Christ as they are expressed in the Eucharist, and this association makes the Grail accessible to human sight and understanding. In the Sangreal, the Grail experience becomes available to any knight who is ‘clene of hys sinnes’ (869.3) making it available to all who live a good Christian life.45 Ness Ihle’s assessment of the Grail as it is presented in the Sangreal suggests that it remains a guide to the Christian life for all, without acknowledging that it has any particular meaning for those engaged in a military life. 45 Sandra Ness Ihle, Malory’s Grail Queste; Invention and Adaptation in Medieval Prose Romance (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1983), 31-43. - 27 - Dhira B. Mahoney, however, argues that the Sangreal does embody a military ethos and uses this theme to create meaning. She says that Malory’s decision to use the French Queste, rather than the more secular Prose Tristan, was not to secularize the Grail story but to reinterpret traditional chivalric values in the light of spiritual values demonstrating that the active life of the knight in fifteenth-century England had as much spiritual value as had the contemplative life of the monk in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Mahoney also tackles the claims made about the structure of the Morte Darthur, arguing that it was in fact one entire book rather than a selection of tales. She bases her reasoning on the characterization of Lancelot as the doctrinal pivot of the text. By linking his only partial success in the Grail quest to his love for Guinevere, his search for the spiritual values of the Grail quest continues until after Arthur’s death and Guinever’s rejection release him from his duties to the court as a knight.46 Mahoney has, in effect, summed up much of the commentary based upon both the Morte Darthur and The Tale of the Sangreal. She identifies the Sangreal as a text based on military values governed by Christian ideals of the proper role of the knight in a Christian society, and she shows also that the Sangreal is an integral part of the entire text. Beverly Kennedy agrees with Mahoney that the readers may interpret the Sangreal as an exhortation to the knights of the Round Table to live according to Christian principles. The knights do not abandon their worldly obligations to Arthur and Christendom to achieve this aim but use prayer and mediation to strengthen their spiritual lives. She argues that the appearance of the Grail at Camelot represents an instance of God’s special grace to Arthurian civilization. This special grace challenged the knights to ‘respond properly’ because all knew that if they did not, the special grace would not come again. Kennedy characterizes all the knights mentioned in the Grail quest as belonging to one of three knightly types: the heroic, the worshipful, and the true knight. The three knights who return to Camelot after the Grail quest, Gawain, Lancelot, and Bors, are 46 Dhira B. Mahoney, ‘The Truest and Holiest Tale: Malory’s Transformation of La Queste Del Sainte Graal’, in Studies in Malory, ed. James W. Spisak (Kalamazoo, MI: Western Michigan University Press, 1985), 109-128, 110-121. - 30 - overall part in the meaning of the entire text, that it is concerned with how violence is portrayed through a chivalry based on spiritual ideals and it uses the characterization of one of its knights to make its point. Modern commentators all agree that the Sangreal represents the spirituality of the Morte Darthur, and most link this with the function of violence. With the exception of Sandra Ness Ihle and Beverly Kennedy, all the commentators examine Lancelot’s characterization in the Grail journey to explain this. But this view ignores how the other prominent knights in the Sangreal also contribute to our understanding of the place of spiritual values in Arthurian civilization and how each contributes to the overall question of how violence should be justified. How this problem is addressed will be explained in the final part of this introduction. Structure of This Thesis In my thesis I propose that in the Morte Darthur violence can be justified only when it is based upon the spiritual ideals articulated in the Sangreal. I argue that the model of violence explained in the Sangreal shows how the knights of the Round Table should have used violence in their activities and that the Grail quest is effectively a last-ditch effort to reform the activities of the knights of the Round Table, by teaching them the correct use of violence. Because only a few knights are successful in the quest and only one Grail knight returns to Camelot, the lessons of the Grail are not learned and the Arthurian kingdom destroys itself under the weight of the unjustified use of violence. In line with this argument, I argue against Vinaver’s view that Malory saw the Grail quest as an Arthurian adventure that offered the knights of the Round Table an opportunity to achieve greater glory.52 The Sangreal is integral to the overall meaning of the entire Morte Darthur, its ideological heart, because it presents a version of chivalry that could have saved Arthurian civilization if it had been adhered to in the events of the final two books. 52 Vinaver as quoted in Malory, Works, 1535. - 31 - Although recent commentators have focused on Lancelot’s Grail journey, I expand this approach and examine the Grail journey of the three successful Grail knights, Galahad, Bors and Perceval, as well as Lancelot, to demonstrate how each represents a different kind of spiritual expression within the world. These individual examinations show that each spiritual expression has important implications for how the knights of the Round Table justify the use of violence. I begin in Chapter One by examining the history of the church’s attitude to violence and the development of a crusading ideology demanding that violence could be justified only when it was used to further Christian objectives. I examine how crusading ideology had a direct impact on the earliest known Grail literature, Chrétien de Troyes’s Le Conte du Graal or Perceval and, by looking at how the story of Perceval was changed in the text attributed to Robert de Boron, and how Grail literature became christianized. Both these texts were the basis of Malory’s direct source the Queste del Sainte Graal. In Chapter Two, I begin a series of examinations of individual knightly journeys through the Grail quest. The spiritual biography focuses on each knight’s journey as he struggles to return to spiritual ideals and a primary allegiance to God. The first spiritual biography, in Chapter Two, is of Perceval, and of how his Grail journey prepares him for a life lived in monastic orders. Chapter Three concerns Bors, and examines the Grail journey of a knight firmly committed to living his spiritual ideals within the world. Chapter Four concerns Galahad, an exemplar of the spiritual ideals of the Grail, and demonstrates why Arthurian chivalry is so spiritually lacking. These chapters have presented views of the various paths taken by successful Grail knights, but the next two chapters will examine why others were not successful. Lancelot’s journey in Chapter Five demonstrates that Lancelot’s choices in situations that require him to make a decision about the use of violence prohibit him from becoming a member of the exclusive Grail fellowship. Although Lancelot was not invited to become a Grail knight, his spiritual journey extends far beyond what is presented in the Sangreal. To have a full understanding of his spiritual biography, his complete portrayal throughout the Morte Darthur must be taken into account. Chapter Six examines the kingship of Arthur and his estrangement from spiritual ideals at the beginning of his reign. This thesis will show that, from the very beginning, - 32 - Arthurian civilization was doomed to fail because the spiritual ideals represented by the Grail were not incorporated into the chivalry practised at the Arthurian court. What will be established will be the overall importance of the Sangreal in any assessment of the Morte Darthur. Without an understanding of how integral this particular book is to the overall text, the significance of the spiritual factor in the Arthurian civilization cannot be appreciated. - 35 - This dramatic shift in the focus of chivalry in the Morte Darthur mirrors the development of how violence might be justified across the medieval period. It is even more remarkable in view of the acknowledged fact that Malory’s direct source of the Sangreal, the French Queste Del Sainte Graal,56 was written at the end of the period when ideas about the proper use of violence were being formulated in the light of the crusading movement.57 A large contribution to this debate was made by the most famous member of the Cistercian order, Bernard of Clairvaux, whose treatise In Praise of the New Knighthood clearly distinguishes between knights who act upon their own needs and desires and knights who act for Christ and the good of the community. Thus Malory’s Sangreal is informed by the historical debate on how violence is presented in the Queste. How these conclusions were reached can be determined only through an examination of the historical context surrounding the justification of violence. The Justification of Violence in a Christian Society What singled out an individual knight as a knight of Christ in a Christian society is best explored by examining how violence was reconciled with Christianity in the medieval period. The correct use of violence was a subject that had long concerned many thinkers in the Christian era, arguably from the apostle Paul, through Augustine of Hippo, to Bernard of Clairvaux. The issue of the correct use of violence in society was confused by the pacifism preached by Christ in the gospels. For example, in Matthew 5.38-9, Christ preaches in the Sermon on the Mount that those who follow him should turn the other cheek in response to a violent act against them: You have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth. But I say to you not to resist evil: but if one strikes thee on thy right cheek, turn to him also the 56 Vinaver writes that Malory’s Sangreal is the least original of all the books in the Morte Darthur. He describes it as a translation of the Queste Del Sainte Graal, although he admits that there are many omissions and minor alterations. These omissions and alternations have been the subject of much scholarly interest since Vinaver’s comments were written in 1947. See Malory, Works, 1534. 57 David Wallace, ‘Imperium, Commerce, and National Crusade: The Romance of Malory’s Morte’, in New Medieval Literatures 8, ed. Rita Copeland, David Lawton, and Wendy Scase (Turnhout: Brepols, 2006), 45-65, 61. Wallace describes Malory’s Sangreal as being crusade-like without requiring the Grail knights to leave English territory. - 36 - other.58 Paul in the apostolic period had written in Romans 12.19 that all vengeance lay in the hands of God and in verse 21 had advised the followers of Christ: Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil by good. 59 However, a Christian society still had to maintain law and order as well as protect itself from those who would destroy its fabric from both inside and outside. To justify violence in a Christian society, the violence had to be described as an act of good overcoming an act of evil. It was this issue that Augustine, Bishop of Hippo, addressed in the fifth century. Augustine’s ideas about violence came from both the Christian tradition shaped by Christ’s Sermon on the Mount and the Natural Law tradition inherited from Stoic Philosophy and Roman Law. Natural Law accepted that violence was necessary to enforce law and order, and accordingly Ambrose, Bishop of Milan, writing in the fourth century, praised the people both for protecting their country in a time of war, as well as defending the weak and protecting their friends from robbers in a time of peace.60 Augustine, working within both the Christian and Roman legal traditions, built upon Ambrose’s statement regarding the necessity of violence to protect society. On one hand he concluded that sin caused violence, but on the other hand he countered this with the idea that violence was also a remedy for sin. What ensured that the violence was conducted as a remedy for sin was that it was performed by divine command: The act, the agent, and the authority for the action are all of great importance in the order of nature. For Abraham to sacrifice his son of his own accord is shocking madness. His doing so at the command of God proves him faithful and submissive.61 58 The Holy Bible: Translated from the Latin Vulgate (Dublin: Gill, 1846). All further references will be to this version of the Bible. In the Latin, ‘audistis quia dictum est oculum pro oculo et dentum pro dente ego autem dico vobis non resistere malosed si quis te percusserit in dextera maxilla tua praebe illi et alteram’. Robert Weber, ed., Biblica Sacra Iuxta Vulgata Versionem (Stuttgart: Bibelgesellschaft, 2005). All further Latin quotations from the Vulgate will be from this version of the text and found in the footnotes. 59 In the Latin, ‘noli vinci a malo sed vinci in bono malum’. 60 Stephen C Neff, War and the Law of Nations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 45-46. 61 Augustine of Hippo, ‘Reply to Faustus the Manichaean’, in Writings in Connection with the Manichaean Controversy, ed. Philip Schaff, A Select Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene - 37 - From this standpoint, Augustine argued that it was not war that was intrinsically evil. What made war evil was that it could be accompanied by sins committed by those who conducted the violence. These particular sins could include a love of violence and cruelty or greed and the lust for power. To explain the attributes of a warrior who conducted violence correctly, he stipulated that the warrior should act under God’s command. Furthermore, the warrior’s intention in conducting this violence was to be obedient to the divine will without any unnecessary ferocity. Augustine turned to the example of Moses to demonstrate his point of view: [The] account of the wars of Moses will not excite surprise or abhorrence, for in wars carried on by divine command, he showed not ferocity but obedience; and God, in giving the command, acted not in cruelty, but in righteous retribution giving to all what they deserved, and warning those who needed warning.62 Augustine’s thinking was also inspired by other Old Testament examples of violence, such as Judges 5, where violence is conducted under the instruction of the divine as a punishment for sins and crimes. 63 Verses 31 and 32 articulate this effectively: ‘So let all thy enemies perish, O Lord! But let them that love thee shine, as the sun shineth in his rising.’ And the land rested for forty years. 64 This particular passage shows that justifiable violence must have the purpose of bringing peace by removing what is essentially designated as evil. According to Augustine, the Fathers (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1887), book 33 (73), 300. In the Latin, ‘tantum interest in ordine naturali, quid a quo agatur, et sub quo quisque agat. Abraham si filium sponte immolaret, quid, nisi horribilis et insanus? Deo autem jubente, quid, nisi fidelis et devotus apparuit’. See Augustine of Hippo, ‘Episcopi Contra Faustum Manichaeum Libri triginta tres’, col. 0446 Jacques-Paul Migne’s Patrologiae cursus completus 42 (Paris: Garnier, 1844-1893). All other references in Latin are to this version of the text and quoted in the footnotes. 62 Augustine of Hippo, ‘Reply to Faustus the Manichaean’, Book 33 (74), 300. In the Latin, ‘nec bella per Moysen gesta miretur aut horreat, quia et in illis divina secutus imperia, non saeviens, sed obediens fuit: nec Deus, cum jubebat ista, saeviebat: sed digna dignis retribuebat, dignosque terrebat’. Augustine of Hippo, ‘Episcopi Contra Faustum Manichaeum Libri triginta tres’, col. 0447. 63 M.H. Keen, The Laws of War in the Late Middle Ages (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1965), 9. 64 In the Latin, ‘sic pereant omnes inimici tui Domine qui autem diligent te sicut sol in ortu suo splendet ita rutilant quievitque terra per quadragintannos’. - 40 - aim of the First Crusade as a process of divine correction:72 Since, Oh sons of God, you have promised Him to keep peace among yourselves and to faithfully sustain the rights of Holy Church more sincerely than before, there still remains for you, newly aroused by God’s correction, an urgent task which belongs to both you and God, in which you can show the strength of your good will. For you must hasten to carry aid to your brethren dwelling in the East, who need your help for which they have entreated.73 The many instances of unjustified violence in Europe are to be supplanted by the justified and church-sanctioned violence in the Holy Land. Baldric of Dol clearly lists the unjustified violent activities that will be eradicated in Europe if knights fight in the First Crusade. The unjustified acts of violence include the oppression of children, the plundering of widows, homicide and sacrilege, and the robbery of other’s rights. Knights who indulge in such destructive activities are urged to give up the shredding of Christian blood and to go to the East to fight the infidel. Baldric calls the crusade an act of charity, or caritas, because the knights will no longer be raising their hands against their Christian brothers but will be fighting a righteous war against the Saracens.74 According to Robert the Monk the reward for their service will be the remission of all sins and they can be sure of attaining the glory of the kingdom of heaven.75 As Malcolm Barber argues, the layman believed that the indulgence granted to crusaders was a passport to heaven if he was killed in battle or by the hardships of the journey.76 72 Fulcher of Chartres, A History of the Expedition to Jerusalem, trans. Frances Rita Ryan (Knoxville, TN: University of Tennessee Press, 1969), 63. 73 Fulcher of Chartres, A History of the Expedition to Jerusalem, 65-66. 74 Baldric of Dol as quoted in August C. Krey, The First Crusade: The Accounts of Eye-Witnesses and Participants (Gloucester: Peter Smith, 1958), 35. 75 Robert the Monk, Robert the Monk’s History of the First Crusade, trans. Carol Sweetenham (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005), 81. 76 Malcolm Barber, The New Knighthood: A History of the Order of the Temple (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 42. James Muldoon argues that during the eleventh and the twelfth centuries. The idea of a pilgrimage or a journey to a Holy site to expiate sins acquired a new aspect when crusaders travelled to the Holy Land and freed Jerusalem. The crusaders earned a plenary indulgence, and would be forgiven for all the temporal punishment they earned by their sins. The crusaders who travelled with right intentions were granted salvation. See James Muldoon, ‘Crusading and Canon Law’, in The Crusades, ed. Helen Nicholson (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2005), 37-57, 45-46. - 41 - Throughout these accounts of Urban’s speech a clear distinction arises between the sinful activities of the knights who fight private wars at home and the glorious deeds of knights who go to the Holy Land and fight for Christ. In Urban’s letters written in the year following the Council of Clermont, he addresses the issue of right intention when an act of violence is considered. Knights who join the crusade because of their devotion, and without the hope of worldly gain, will be freed from all penance relating to sins for which honest and complete confession has been made.77 What emerges from the reports of the Council of Clermont and from Urban’s letters is that the behaviour and activity of knights are to be based on Christian ideals of the proper use of violence. This theme is explored further in the clerical writing of the twelfth century. Bernard of Clairvaux made the most explicit statement on the distinction between the two models of knightly activity. Bernard exercised an extraordinary influence on spiritual and temporal matters during his lifetime and wrote extensively in support of the military order of the Templars. This was an order of knights who abandoned any possibly of worldly reward and focused their attention to heavenly rewards, raising knighthood to the status of a spiritual vocation. This is the major theme of Bernard’s treatise In Praise of the New Knighthood, written while he was the abbot of the Cistercian monastery of Clairvaux in 1135. His treatise was addressed to Hugh of Payens, who was perhaps the first Grand Master of the Order of the Templars, and its aim was to combine the spirit of monastic life with knighthood and provide protection for pilgrims in the Holy Land. In his treatise, Bernard depicts two models of knighthood and identifies the motivation to knightly acts of violence as the major indicator of how a knight can be classified within this system. The first model of knighthood is described as worldly. Such a knight is driven by his own selfish desires and does not consider the consequences of his actions upon the community. He is the knight who, in the reports of Urban’s speech at the Council of Clermont, is so vividly described by his crimes against others. Bernard takes this a step further and analyzes the causes of the violent act. This knight is motivated to commit violence because of ‘unreasonable flashes of anger, the thirst for empty glory or 77 Robert Somerville, Papacy, Councils and Canon Law in the 11th -12th Centuries, 328-329. - 42 - the hankering after some earthly possession’.78 The physical appearance of this knight shows his attachment to the physical and material rewards he may gather through his knightly activities: You cover your horses with silk, and plume your armour with I know not what sort of rags; you paint your shields and your saddles; you adorn your bits and spurs with gold and silver and precious stones; and then in all this glory you rush to your ruin with fearful wrath and fearless folly (133).79 A knight’s ostentatious clothing, horse and armour demonstrate that he is interested only in his own well-being and not in the well-being of his community. This attitude has dire consequences for the knight if he becomes involved in a violent situation, because in Bernard’s view, he should be more concerned about the state of his soul than the state of his body, because, if he has not sinned, his soul will not die with the body (131). A spiritual victory for a knight, or the hope of salvation, depends on the disposition of his heart rather than on the fortunes of war. A knight killed while seeking to kill another is considered a murderer, as is one who successfully overcomes, but accidentally kills a man. Because the sins of wrath and pride have overtaken him, this knight will not achieve salvation. The second model of knighthood described by Bernard, the New Knighthood, is a new order, consisting of knights who have given their entire will to God. The knights trust that God will bring them victory or defeat depending upon his providential plan. Although they are not monks, these knights are identified by the discipline and obedience regulating their whole life. Bernard demonstrates this by describing their daily activities in this way: the knights ‘will come and go at the bidding of their superior’,80 ‘they wear 78 Clairvaux, ‘In Praise of the New Knighthood’, 116. All further references in English will be to this edition of the text and cited in the body of the text. Bernard of Clairvaux, Œuvres Complètes, trans. Pierre-Yves Emery, 31 (Paris: Les Éditions Du Cerf, 1990), 58. In the Latin, ‘irrationabilis iracundiae motus, aut inanis gloriae appetites, aut terrenae qualiscumque possessionis cupiditas’. All further references in Latin will be to this edition of the text and will be cited in the footnotes to page number. 79 In the Latin, ‘operitis equos sericis, et pendulos nescio quos panniculus loricis superinduitis; depingitis hastas, clypeos et sellas; frena et calcaria auro et argento gemmisque circumornatis, et cum tanta pompa pudendo furore et impudenti stupora ad mortem properatis (56)’. 80 In the Latin, ‘itur et reditur ad nutum eius qui praeest (66)’. - 45 - restrain the impudence of these tyrants.92 The church, however, responded in another way to the threat to its own property and to the poor by civil disorder. Two clerical movements known as the Peace of God and the Truce of God called for a reform of knightly activities throughout the eleventh century, a reform whereby knights who took up weapons against the church were vilified and excommunicated, but knights who ensured the safety of the church were praised and blessed.93 New ways of thinking were instituted about the role of the knight in society. Clerics called councils in many provinces of France, such as Aquitaine, Arles, Lyons and Burgundy, in the presence of the people in order to denounce violence against the church, its ‘sacred things’ and the poor.94 The councils did not deny that knights had a right to fight; what was condemned at these councils was the unjust pillage of the churches and the poor. In the earliest stages of the Peace of God the councils wanted to contain violence to approved places and social categories, but, as the movement grew, so did its reforming spirit. The councils began to advocate a much more penitential character whereby their aim became to appease the wrath of God, to combat disaster, and to fend off famine and pestilence. The Peace of God had become a direct pact with God, in the hope of appeasing him with promises of voluntary abstinence, of being purified of sin, and of following the monastic example. The pact demanded that the sinner put down his weapons as he renounced his worldly goods, made a vow of chastity and commenced a pilgrimage of redemption. For those whose calling was to bear weapons, the knights, the Peace of God demanded that they associate themselves with the universal task of renunciation. They were required to do more than just respect the laws by not attacking churches, the clerics, and the poor during military operations or while performing their seigniorial duties; they were required to deprive themselves of the pleasure of fighting and pillaging in the same way a cleric deprived himself of eating foods that gave too much pleasure. The knights were also 92 Kaeuper, Chivalry and Violence in Medieval Europe, 11-17. 93 John Flori, ‘Ideology and Motivations in the First Crusade’, in The Crusades, ed. Helen Nicholson (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2005), 15-36, 16. 94 George Duby, The Chivalrous Society, trans. Cynthia Postan (London: Arnold, 1977), 123-125. - 46 - expected to do this in the spirit of poverty.95 In this understanding of the role of the knight, war became a sin or a guilty pleasure and knights were asked to renounce it during times like Lent, the Sabbath, or holy days. What this truce came to represent was the knight’s willingness to show his love of Christ by not drawing his sword during these designated times. An example of how this abstinence from violence on holy days worked is found in a contemporary biography of Bernard of Clairvaux, written by his friend and associate, William of St Thierry. A group of knights called to see Bernard at Clairvaux on their way to a tournament. Bernard asked them to refrain from fighting for the few days left before the beginning of Lent but the knights refused. Bernard answered their refusal with the exhortation that God would grant him the truce that they denied. Bernard called for beer and blessed it by proposing a toast to their souls. When the knights left the monastery, many found that they were compelled to return because their hearts were burning within them and they offered themselves for the knighthood of the Spirit.96 In short, Bernard convinced these knights that their worldly love of violence would ultimately lead to damnation. Although these particular knights chose to protect their souls by putting down their swords and joining a monastery, other knights chose a different path. Knightly confraternities were becoming more common during the eleventh century. These were groups of knights who banded together and pooled their assets in order that all members could be supplied with military equipment. The purpose of these fraternities was again a fusion of military and religious ideals because they would commit themselves to protecting churches and monasteries against bandits.97 In 1095 the Peace of God extended itself to a much greater and more universal focus when Urban II announced the First Crusade. By the eve of the twelfth century the approved role of the knight in society was twofold. The knight’s first duty was to protect the church and the poor, and second duty was to 95 Duby, The Chivalrous Society, 125-130. 96 William of St Thierry, Bernard of Clairvaux: Early Biographies, Centennial Edition 1090- 1990, trans. Martinus Cawley (Lafayette, OR: Guadalupe Translations, 1989), 67-70. 97 Helen Nicholson, The Knights Templar: A New History (Stroud: Sutton, 2001), 22. - 47 - fight the enemies of Christ.98 A Christian ideal of how violence could be justified had created a new spiritual conception of the role of the knight in society. Violence, as Augustine stated, was justified when its intention was to restore peace and Christian ideals. Later movements would institute a penitential aspect to the knightly code. It was the knight’s inner motivation that determined whether or not his violence conformed to Christian ideals. If a knight committed an act of violence in order to remove those who pulled a community away from Christian ideals, the act would be perceived as the will of God. This was especially true if the act of violence was successful as, for example, the taking of Jerusalem by the First Crusaders. If, however, a knight committed an act of violence for his own benefit, whether to increase his own personal wealth through the taking of plunder, to increase his prestige at the court of his own sovereign, or for his own personal pleasure, he was seen as being the worldly knight described by Bernard in In Praise of the New Knighthood. Therefore knighthood could be divided into two separate positions: those knights who used violence to satisfy their own needs and desires, and knights who used violence because they were inspired by spiritual ideals. Christian Ideals of the Correct Use of Violence and the Grail Although thinking around the correct use of violence in society would continue to develop in Canon Law, Christian ideals of justified violence also appeared in literature. They are presented through the characters and activities of the knight protagonists. It has been also argued that the historical events occurring in the Holy Land had a profound effect upon how violence was portrayed. Stephen Knight argues that the Grail entered the stories about King Arthur when Jerusalem was lost to the Islamic forces of Saladin in 1187 at the Battle of Hattin.99 Before the battle, the inclusion of Jerusalem in Western Christendom represented an opportunity to reform the worldly knights of Europe by sending them to do the work of God in the Holy Land. Jerusalem was portrayed as the centre of the crusading ideal and the First Crusaders who captured the city in 1099 were increasingly idealized as models of spiritual and chivalric excellence. Once the city was 98 Duby, The Chivalrous Society, 131-135. 99 Knight, ‘From Jerusalem to Camelot: King Arthur and the Crusades’, 223. - 50 - forgotten in the society where their quest begins. Therefore, an examination of their spiritual biographies will show whether or not the individual knights do, in fact, live up to the exacting ideals derived from such sources as Bernard’s vision of the New Knighthood. How Earlier Versions of the Grail Legend Shape this Analysis of Malory’s Sangreal The idea of alienation from and a return to spiritual ideals is a feature of the Grail legend that existed from its earliest form in Chrétien de Troyes’ le Conte du Graal. A feature that makes this early version of the story intriguing is that it begins with a striking criticism of knighthood at the court of Arthur. Recent scholarship has identified an alternative view of the Arthurian world from the English chronicle tradition beginning with Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia Regum Britanniae and suggests that Chrétien’s sources are unknown and may have been from the oral tradition. Unlike Geoffrey, Chrétien does not see the Arthurian civilization as a glorious example of chivalry, but rather as a civilization in decline, perhaps maintaining its past glory through its reputation rather than through its reality. Donald Maddox argues that the five romances of Chrétien de Troyes depict a progressive decline in the Arthurian community, and in Chrétien’s last romance, le Conte du Graal, illustrates this decline in the opening court scene.102 Brigitte Cazelles adds that Perceval’s story in Chrétien becomes a progressively anti-Arthurian, privileging the Grail fellowship as the centre and source of chivalric excellence. The definition of chivalry in the Grail court is markedly different from the definition of chivalry found at Arthur’s court. The Arthurian court presents itself as being a centre of chivalric excellence but the description of the court when Perceval first arrives resists this reputation. Arthur sits dejected in his hall surrounded by feasting knights who appear oblivious to the threat from the Red Knight (924-929). Chrétien’s Grail court insists on the importance of distinguishing between the appearance and the reality of a situation, which, as Cazelles says, invites the 102 Donald Maddox, The Arthurian Romances of Chrétien De Troyes: Once and Future Directions, ed. Alastair Minnis, Cambridge Studies in Medieval Literature, 12 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 83. - 51 - aristocracy to avoid violence and to take on the role of peacemaker in society. The reader is left in no doubt that if Perceval had asked the required question and the maimed king had been restored to health, peace and order would return to the land (3554-3555). This, according to Cazelles, indicates that the chivalry of the Arthurian court promotes violence, the chivalry of the Grail court promotes peace and the challenge facing Perceval requires that he discards the chivalric ideals he has learned from those associated with the Arthurian court and embrace the chivalric ideals found at the Grail court.103 Finally, Jean Frappier closely relates the description of Chrétien’s patron, Philip of Alsace, Count of Flanders, in the Prologue, to the chivalric goal of Perceval throughout which the attainment of worldly glory gives way to the realization of Christian humility and divine love.104 If this point of view is accepted, there is a gulf separating knightly activities at Arthur’s court and the spiritual ideals of the Grail court. Le Conte du Graal by Chrétien de Troyes Even in its earliest known conception, le Conte du Graal, the Grail legend has an agenda of reform because it is concerned with the moral development of the knight. There is a clear distinction between a knight’s achievements as a force for good or a force for evil. Initially this is presented through the eyes of Perceval, then through the eyes of his mother as she recounts the family’s chivalric history and finally through Perceval’s knightly activities. To the original readers of Chrétien’s text, the object of a grail had no transcendent meaning outside this text, and presumably due to the author’s untimely death, its meaning is not fully elucidated.105 The use of the indefinite article, ‘un’ grail, throughout the story, rather than the definite article, ‘le’ grail, signifies that at this stage of the legend’s development it concerned itself with secular values of knighthood because 103 Brigitte Cazelles, The Unholy Grail: A Social Reading of Chrétien De Troyes Conte Du Graal, Reading Medieval Culture (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1996), 115-178. 104 Jean Frappier, ‘Perceval or Le Conte Du Graal’, in The Grail: A Casebook, ed. Dhira B. Mahoney, Arthurian Characters and Themes, 5 (New York, NY and London: Garland, 2000), 175-200. 105 David F. Hult, ‘From Perceval to Galahad: A Missing Link?’ in ‘De Sens Rassis’ Essays in Honour of Rupert T.Pickens, ed. Keith Busby, Bernard Guidot, Logan E. Whalen (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2005), 170. - 52 - there is nothing intrinsically holy about this grai1.106 Although this version of the legend remains unfinished, it categorizes knighthood in the same way Christian theories of the justification of violence do. This is a story of a chivalric education, told from the point of view of Perceval, in which his journey from what he believes is the settled world of the country estate to the court of King Arthur. Its purpose is to define the qualities required in a knight in the courtly sphere, and begins by characterising Perceval as an innocent ignorant of that courtly world.107 Although Gauvain (Gawain in the English romance tradition) is featured extensively in le Conte du Graal, an analysis of his role is beyond the scope of this study because he is not one of the knights examined in the later chapters of the thesis. In Chrétien’s early version, Perceval’s mother criticizes the courtly world because its intrinsic violence has killed her husband and two other sons as well as destroying the income potential of their estate. His mother’s point of view influences his reaction to his first encounter with the knights of King Arthur’s court. In this early version, when Perceval makes a positive assessment of the knights as a force for good, he defines them as angels, whereas when he makes a negative assessment of the knights as a force for evil, he defines them as devils. His challenge is to ensure that he uses his knightly skills as a force for good. This is to be tested by his ability to make discerning choices that reveal his ability to judge any situation that has the potential for violence correctly based on his understanding of the qualities that are required in a knight at the court of King Arthur. In short, Perceval must learn that his knightly prowess is to be used to benefit, not destroy, the surrounding community. Chrétien initially portrays Perceval as a child of nature whose widowed mother has isolated him from the influence of the court and chivalry. He lives on his mother’s estate and is involved with its administration. He pursues courtly pastimes, such as hunting, but knows of nothing outside this world. His perception of the role of knights in the outside world begins with his first encounter with them. Chrétien uses a sensory model to 106 Mann, ‘Malory and the Grail Legend’, 203. 107 Matarasso, The Redemption of Chivalry: A Study of the Queste Del Saint Graal, 96. - 55 - described by St Bernard. The prologue to the le Conte du Graal describes the natural qualities associated with this form of knighthood as he details the characteristics of his patron, ‘the most worthy man in all the Empire of Rome, Philip of Flanders’ (11-13).113 He describes Philip as a man who loves true justice, loyalty and the church and despises all that is wicked (25-27).114 Chrétien bases his assessment on the text of Matthew 6:2-4, which discusses how men close to God should distribute largesse: Therefore when thou dost an alms-deed, sound not a trumpet before thee, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets that they may be seen by men. Amen, I say unto you, they have received their reward. But when thou dost alms, let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doth. That thy alms may be in secret, and thy father who seeth in secret will repay thee.115 Chrétien says that Philip is a man who gives charity without boasting, which makes Philip near to God because ‘God is charity’ (47).116 Philip’s gifts to those in his service can be described as gifts of love because they are given by the urgings of Philip’s heart in hope of doing a good deed to another.117 Chrétien’s pun on the word charity, taking its meaning as both love and charity, or associating love with Philip’s largess and generosity to those he employs, places this version of the Perceval story firmly in the courtly world, as well as linking that world to God. In the established order of the period, Chrétien’s gift to Philip, his story of the Grail, which he describes as ‘the best story/ that has ever been told in royal court’ (64-65),118 is written for the glory of Philip, who has shown great love for Chrétien. But he hopes that Philip will show his love in a material way because this is how Philip expresses his love for those in his service. 113 In the Old French, ‘Qu’il le fet por le plus prodome/ Qui soit an l’empire de Rome/ C’est li cuens Phelipes de Flanders’. 114 In the Old French, ‘Li cuens aimme droite justise/ Et leaute et sainte Iglise, / Et tote vilenie het’. 115 In the Latin, ‘cum ergo facies elemosynam, noli tuba canere ante te, sicut hypocritae faciunt in sysagogis et in vicis ut honorificentur ab hominibus. amen, dico vobis receperunt mercedem suam te autem faciente elemosynam nesciat sinistra tua quid faciat dextera tua. ut sit elemosyna tua in abscondito et Pater tuus qui videt in abscondito reddet tibi’. 116 In the Old French, Dex est Charitez. 117 Topsfield turns to Bernard of Clairvaux to explain this way of thinking. He uses a Bernardine concept to describe Philip’s behaviour as voluntas communis or caritas that is willing to share good things with others, as opposed to voluntas propria or self will that refuses to share. See Topsfield, Chrétien De Troyes, 217. 118 In the Old French, ‘Par le comandement le conte, / Qui soit contez an cort real’. - 56 - In this fictional world, charity is love expressed by material rewards given for good service by the governing lord. If Perceval learns to become a successful knight in the courtly sphere, he too can share in these material rewards, so evident in the gleaming armour and equipment he saw when he first caught sight of Arthur’s knights. When this episode is read from this angle, it is possible to see the material rewards of the courtly world as a sign of God’s goodness. These knights have received their wealth from a king who gives generously and who is near to God, just as Philip of Flanders is near to God because of the charity he bestows on those who serve him well. The education that Perceval receives requires that he performs good and correct service for his lord, but in Chrétien’s story this will not be based on his physical prowess but on the choices he makes when he is confronted by different situations that test his commitment to chivalry. He must learn to become like Philip, a man, as Chrétien describes him in the prologue, who is fond of even temper, good faith, the church and who despises everything immoral but also a man who can give generously and support his subjects. These are the qualities that separate the knights who are righteous from the knights who are destroyers of the land. Chrétien juxtaposes his assessment of Philip as being near to God to the assessment of chivalry provided by Perceval’s mother. By reciting Perceval’s family history, she demonstrates how the activities of knighthood can destroy their nobility and wealth. Her reaction to Perceval’s excitement at meeting the knights is: Fair son, I commend you to God, for I am most afraid on your account: you have seen, as I believe, the angels men complain of, who kill whatever they come upon (378-382).119 Perceval’s father had sustained a wound between his legs, which had crippled him and his lands and treasure began to fall away (417-423).120 This wound, identified as castration by modern commentators, intimately links the virility of the lord with the 119 In the Old French, ‘Biax filz, a Deu te rant, / Que mout ai grant peor de toi:/ Tu as veü, si con je croi, / Les Enges don la gent se plaignent, / Qui ocïent quan qu’il ataignent’. 120 In the Old French, ‘Vostre peres, si nel savez, / Fu par mi les haunches navrez, / Si que il mahaigna del cors. / Sa granz terre, ses granz tresors, / Que il avoit come prodom, / Ala tot a perdicïon, / Si cheï an grant povreté’. - 57 - fertility of the land.121 Without this innate masculine strength provided by the landholder, the wealth and profitability of the land, which sustained an entire community could not be maintained and, in consequence, the family had lost its fortune. Since this family could no longer sustain itself by agriculture, Perceval’s brothers were forced to leave the estate and find their fortunes elsewhere. Both of these brothers became knights and died in combat. Grief killed Perceval’s father, and in Perceval’s mother’s eyes, only Perceval was left to regenerate the flagging fortunes. In Chrétien’s version of the Grail legend, the maintenance of order over the land is closely connected with good governance and peace. If the profitability and wealth- generating qualities of the land are lost, young men will search elsewhere for wealth and glory, leading them into knightly occupations and all the risks inherent in this life. If Perceval’s father had not been wounded he could have maintained good governance of his estate and the family and tenants would have benefited. Perceval, his mother’s last hope of maintaining the estate, has now been drawn away by the glamour of the knights. This potent motif, of a land devastated by the effects of knightly violence, is continually explored throughout the Tale. The effects of Perceval’s actions at the Grail castle mirror the devastation of the land caused by the wound of his husband and the death in battle of his two brothers. If a young knight can be educated in chivalric ideals, his knightly activities can help restore peace and justice to the land and to its communities. A particular episode during Perceval’s journey to the Grail castle demonstrates that violence can be justified if motivated by the right intention. Motivating this intention is love, and Perceval fights a righteous battle to restore the peace and posterity of the community governed by his love- interest. This episode describes both the effects of violence driven by evil intentions and violence in a righteous cause, that restores peace. Having recently completed a basic training in knightly pursuits and having been dubbed a knight by Gornemant de Goort, 121 Richard Cavendish, The Arthurian Legends and Their Meanings (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1978), 140. - 60 - is severely impaired and the decision he makes has dire consequences for the surrounding communities and the land. Perceval arrives at the castle of the Grail ruled by the Rich Fisher King and he will be tested in the chivalric arts of diplomacy, but he fails because he does not make a discerning decision. Perceval receives sumptuous hospitality and is surrounded by luxury but he discovers that his host is frail and cannot stand up to greet him (3073-3075).127 The Rich Fisher King gives Perceval a gift, a rare sword made from the finest Greek or Arabian gold with a scabbard made with Venetian embroidery (3128-3131).128 Perceval is confronted with an entirely new situation. Whereas, in the other situations, a weak or frail ruler who cannot exercise military strength generally rules over a community that cannot support its inhabitants economically, in the Grail castle, a seemingly weak ruler presides over a castle that displays the wealth normally found in the castles of kings, counts, and emperors (3282-3283).129 This suggests that Perceval has now entered a realm where supernatural forces are at work and that the lessons he has been taught in chivalric conduct in the world may not operate effectively in this otherworldly castle. Perceval accepts this hospitality gratefully and behaves in a socially acceptable manner as he has been taught, but in this particular situation Perceval needs to follow the instincts of his heart, as he had done previously when he first encountered the knights in the forest and when he saved the lady’s castle from the evil Clamadeu. Perceval watches the Grail regalia pass in astonishment and although all his instincts tell him: But did not dare ask/ who was served from the grail (3209-3210).130 Perceval thinks of the warning given to him by his old master, Gornemant de Goort, not to say too much because talking too much can be a sin (1634).131 What Perceval does not 127 In the Old French, ‘Amis, ne vos soit grief/ Se ancontre vos ne me lief, / Que je n’an sui pas aeisiez’. 128 In the Old French, ‘Li ponz de l’espee fu d’or / Del meillor d’Arrabe ou de Grece; / Li fuerres d’orfrois de Venece: / Si richemant apareille’. 129 In the Old French, ‘Li mangiers fu et biax et buens: De toz les mes que rois ne cuens ne empereres’. 130 In the Old French, ‘Et n’osa mie demanda/ Del graal, cui l’an an servoit’. - 61 - understand is that he must now learn to follow his instincts and to make the point even more succinct the authoritative narrator remarks: That at times it is just as wrong/ to keep too silent as to talk too much (3216-3217).132 Although the true significance of the Grail here in Chrétien cannot be ascertained due to the author’s presumed untimely death, read within this context it appears to denote that the education Perceval has been undertaking should not impede the instinctual truth that has so far allowed him to be successful in previous episodes. The Grail is paraded past Perceval several times during the course of the dinner but he still does not ask this pivotal question, even though he wishes to know (3268-3269).133 Perceval’s state of confusion remains with him as he attempts to reach a decision. He finally decides to follow his instincts but procrastinates when he decides to ask the question the following morning. When he awakes, he finds the castle empty and leaves. Eventually he meets a girl in the forest and the consequences of his decision to not ask about the Grail are explained to him. If Perceval had faith in his own instincts, rather than allowing confusion to cloud his judgement and had asked the question, the Rich Fisher King’s wounds would have been healed, and he would have been able to rule in an effective manner (3554-3556).134 Perceval had been surrounded by luxury and had dined like an emperor at the Rich Fisher King’s table, but he did not realize that this situation could be an illusion. Although the Grail castle seemed economically viable, the Rich Fisher King had demonstrated his frailty and weakness. This was perhaps the sign that Perceval should have interpreted that not all was well. It is this that demonstrates Perceval’s lack of compassion and judgment. Perceval was shown the true nature of the Grail castle when he awoke the next 131 In the Old French, ‘Qui trop parole pechié fet.’ This statement is particularly poignant when it is read against Proverbs 10:19. In the Vulgate, ‘in multiloquio peccatum non deerit qui autem moderatur labia sua prudentissimus est’ [In the multitude of words there shall not want sin: but he that refraineth his lips is most wise]. 132 In the Old French, ‘Quausi bien se puet an trop taire/ Con trop parler, a la foiee’. 133 In the Old French, ‘Mes il ne set cui l’an an sert, / Et si le voldroit mout savoir’. 134 In the Old French, ‘Que toz eüst regaaigniez/ Ses manbres et terre tenist, / Et si granz biens en avenist’. - 62 - morning and found it empty and abandoned. In its true form, the castle becomes a mirror to Perceval’s family estate and his lack of compassion and judgment serve to remind the reader of his desertion of the family estate and his mother. In both cases the answer to the lack of economic viability rests with Perceval; he must assume responsibility as an effective ruler in order to return both the Grail castle and his family estate to a peaceful and just existence. In Chrétien’s unfinished version, Perceval does not have the opportunity to redeem himself. But within thirty years of Chrétien’s death, other authors had not only finished the tale but had also attempted to define the mysterious object at its centre, the Grail. The four works that attempt to bring to a conclusion his unfinished version are known as the Continuations. The first is by an anonymous author, and the other three are by Wauchier de Denam, Gerbert de Montreuil and Manessier. Chrétien’s version is at the heart of these works and any diversions from him can be traced to borrowings from other romances.135 But another version would sacralize the object of the Grail itself and would take the question of governance into the spiritual province. The version of the Grail legend attributed to Robert de Boron not only supplied a new spiritual emphasis, at which the unfinished version of Chrétien’s romance hinted, but was also the first to combine the Arthurian narratives in a cycle that gave a complete pseudo-history to the story of the Grail extending back to the crucifixion and forward to a future that would serve as a resolution to the entire Arthurian story.136 His story of Perceval ends with the death of Arthur and the destruction of the fellowship of the Round Table.137 135 Richard Barber, The Holy Grail: Belief and Imagination (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004), 27-38. 136 After an extensive literature search, I could not find any relevant commentary on this text. The following comments made regarding Robert de Boron’s version of the Perceval story are based on my own reading of the text. 137 Nigel Bryant, Introduction, Robert De Boron, Merlin and the Grail: Joseph of Arimathea, Merlin, Percival: The Trilogy of Prose Romances Attributed to Robert De Boron, trans. Nigel Bryant, Arthurian Studies 48 (Cambridge: Brewer, 2001), 1. This manuscript version of the entire work (commonly known as the Modena Manuscript) is a single and complete text, while the other complete manuscript (known as the Didot-Perceval) has passages that are so corrupted that modern scholarship questions whether these passages are errors of transcription. All further references will be to this version of the text in English and cited to page number. - 65 - significant departure from Chrétien’s version because she does not provide a family history and becomes a literary device to highlight Perceval’s sin. Second, his success at the tournament held at Pentecost convinces Perceval that he has the right to take the empty seat at the Round Table that is ‘destined for the finest knight in the world’ (119).145 Perceval is given this seat and immediately this glorious and abundant world of Arthur changes. Neither the stone beneath the seat nor the Fisher King will be whole again until ‘the finest knight in the world’ has many chivalric achievements and is led to the house of the Fisher King where he will watch the passing parade of the Grail regalia to ask who or what does the Grail serve. All of the peoples of Britain suffer because the land is placed under many enchantments until this prophecy is fulfilled (119-120).146 As the author increasingly spiritualizes Chrétien’s version of the legend, the nature of the deterioration of the economic viability of the land and the community it supports is increasingly tied to the land’s relationship with God. Since Arthur has shown his disobedience to God’s will, the land of Britain has become a wasteland. Economic viability becomes coupled with sin. To explain Perceval’s sin, the reader must turn to an episode in the first tale of this trilogy, Joseph of Arimathea. After Joseph leads his people out of the Holy Land and into the desert, the community surrounding Joseph becomes sinful. Their sinning has an immediate effect on the land when harvests fail and the people experience increasing hunger. When Joseph appeals to God and the Virgin Mary for a solution, a seat at a table blessed with abundance becomes a testing site for the sins of the people. This seat is a 145 In the Old French, ‘«Biaus amis, il senefie grant cose, car il i doit seoir li mieldres cevaliers del monde» (204)’. 146 In the Old French, ‘Et saces, rois Artus, que nostre Sire vos fait savoir que icil vaissiaus que nostre Sire douna a Joseph en le prison, saces que il est eb cest païs, et est apelés Graaus. Icil Rois Peschiere, si est cheüs en grant maladie et est cheüs en grant enfermeté [infirmité], et bien saces que rios n’ara jamais garrison, ne sera il piere rasoldée del liu de la Table reounde u Percevaus s’asist dusqu’adont que [jusqu’à ce que] uns cevaliers ait tant fait d’armes et de bontés et de proueces de çaus meïsme quisont assis a cele Table. Et quant cil cevaliers sera si essauciés sor tos homes, et ara le pris de ls chevalerie del siecle, quant il ara tant fait, si l’asenera Deus [dieu le guidera] a le maison le rice Roi Pescheor. Et lors quant il avra demandé que [ce que] on en fait et cui on en sert cel Graal, lors quant il ara çou demandé, si sera li Rois Peschiere garis, et sera li piere rasoldée del liu de le Table Reounde, et charont li encantement [et disparaîtront les enchantements] qui hui cest jor sont en le terre de Bretagne (205-206)’. - 66 - signifier of the place of Judas lscariot at the Last Supper, and, therefore, represents the betrayal of Christ (35).147 Only those without sin can come to this seat, and the consequences of disobeying the God’s will are shown when a sinner called Moyse sits in the seat and is swallowed by the earth into the abyss (37-38).148 Although Perceval has demonstrated his knightly capacities at the tournament held at Pentecost, his demand to sit at a seat designated for the finest Knight in the world shows that he does not understand the moral and spiritual virtues associated with chivalry. Arthur’s complicity in this act of disobedience exposes the kingdom’s lack of understanding in spiritual matters. While knightly prowess is privileged, the moral and spiritual aspects of chivalry are ignored. The effect of this action is to expose the sins of the kingdom and to plunge the land into suffering. This state is represented by the enchantments that come to Britain and in the state of the Fisher King, the descendent of the saintly Joseph of Arimathea. The family of Joseph of Arimathea is the land’s spiritual mirror. This elected family of Grail keepers, who hold the Holy Presence within the land, saves Perceval from the fate of Moyse, but because of Arthur’s involvement in this sin, the entire land suffers and this suffering is personified in the Rich Fisher King. His wholeness or lack of wholeness is a measure of the Arthurian world’s connection with God. As Arthur and his knights become increasingly disobedient to the laws of God, the health of the Fisher King deteriorates. Arthur should recognize that his kingdom is blessed by the presence of the Grail, whose goodness protects the kingdom with such abundance and he should give thanks for this blessing by maintaining God’s law. Although the court will continue to function, its spiritual shadow, the court of the Fisher King, becomes debilitated. This situation cannot be reversed until Perceval makes suitable repentance, and the Grail quest becomes a process of penance. 147 In the Old French, ‘Et saces que cil lius senefiera le liu don't Judas s’osta, quant il sot que il m’ot traï (55)’. 148 In the Old French, ‘Et quant il furent tout assis, Moÿs fu en estant [debout] et ot paor et alaentor la table, ne il ne set u il s’asiece fors les Joseph [sinon à côté de Joseph], si assist. Et quant il fu assis, si fu fondus tant tost et sambla que il n’eüst onques esté. Et quant cil qui seoient a table virent çou, si en furent molt esmaié de celui qui ensi fu perdus entre aus (59-60)’. - 67 - This turn of events does have immediate repercussions for Arthur’s Round Table when all the knights declare that they will set out on the Grail quest. The state of the Round Table parallels the state of weakness in the Fisher King. As the Fisher King is no longer whole, the fellowship of the Round Table breaks down as each knight departs on his own separate quest to find the Grail castle, enduring, as the author says, many hardships (120). But the author chooses to follow Perceval’s story because, ultimately, in this version of the legend he is the Grail hero, who is destined to heal the Fisher King and remove the enchantments from the land. This is prophesied in the Tale concerning Joseph of Arimathea that his grandson, Alain li Gros, is destined to father ‘a male child to whom my vessel is to come’ (38).149 This makes Perceval the heir to the Fisher King’s spiritual realm, but he cannot fulfil this destiny while he remains in a state of sin. This episode is emblematic of the state of the kingdom. Both the king, Arthur, and his spiritual shadow, the Fisher King, have become debilitated by the sins of the kingdom, which are represented by the Round Table’s emphasis on knightly prowess as a measure of success in chivalric terms. Perceval’s quest is to find the Grail castle and to heal the Fisher King, so that the spiritual values that provided the kingdom with so much abundance can be restored. The readers are led to the crux of these spiritual issues when Perceval approaches the Grail castle and has a vision of paradise. Two children are playing in the tree, and, after Perceval prays for guidance, the Holy Spirit speaks through one of the children. He is told that everyone belongs to God, but they are exiled from paradise because of the sin that came into the world when Adam ate the forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden. The purpose of the Grail quest is to lead God’s creatures back to a state of earthly paradise, if they are worthy to receive this gift. The way to Paradise is represented as a path to the right, and if Perceval remains on this path he will achieve all that he has set out to do in the Grail quest (139).150 What is emphasized is Perceval’s responsibility for his own 149 In the Old French, ‘Et li di que de lui doit issir uns hom malles a cui mes vaissiaus doit repairier [et dis lui que de lui doit naîtreun enfant male à qui mon vase doit revenir] 65’. 150 In the Old French, ‘«Cevaliers qui nous as conjures, saces que de par Diu vivons nous. Et saces que de cel paradis terrestre don't Adan fu jeté venimes nos por parler a toi par le congié del saint Esperit. Tue s entré en le queste del Graal que Bron tes taions a en garde, que on apele en - 70 - Chrétien and Robert provide the framework for Malory to portray the knight’s journeys through the wilderness landscape of the Grail quest as a spiritual journey, in which they either return to God or remain alienated from God. Perceval remains naïve in the Sangreal and is saved from sin by grace, and not his own actions. His story, as Malory presents it based on his source material in the Queste, presents a young knight who is so vulnerable to worldly temptations that he leaves knighthood to become a monk. How this transformation occurs is shown in the next chapter of this thesis. Before proceeding with the chapters concerning the individual journeys of the knights, it is important to state how these journeys are investigated. Key situations with the potential to generate violence are identified, and the knight’s response is described in terms of whether or not it involves violence on his part. The focus here is on the intentions that inform his decision, because it is his intentions that reveal whether or not he is worthy to join the exclusive fellowship of the Grail. The intentions underlying his response are either selfish or unselfish, with the implication that his ideals, at this stage, are either worldly or spiritual, respectively. What this investigation shows, I will argue, is that the Grail fellowship is distinguished by its concern for the community in contrast to the Round Table fellowship of Arthurian civilization, which is too often concerned with the individual knight, and the pursuit of his personal needs and desires. This case is argued through the detailed examination of each knight’s journey that follows. - 71 - Chapter Two Sir Perceval of Galis Finally, brethren, be strengthened in the Lord, and in the might of his power. Put you on the armour of God, that you may be able to stand against the deceits of the devil. For our wrestling is not against flesh and blood; but against principalities and powers, against the rulers of the world of this darkness, against the spirits of wickedness in the high places Ephesians 6:10-12.157 Introduction In its discussion of the nature of his new spiritual knighthood, Bernard of Clairvaux’s In Praise of the New Knighthood opens with a description of two types of milites Christi or new knights. The first fights enemies of flesh and blood on an earthly plane who threaten the physical and material well-being of the faithful community of God. The second fights the spiritual enemies of the community who threaten its very existence by leading this community away from its Christian values. As Bernard says, armour of steel protects the first and armour of faith protects the second.158 Bernard’s descriptions correspond to two differing vocations frequently found in the landscape of medieval romance. First, he describes the role of the knight and second, he describes the role of the monk. Therefore the first soldier of Christ continues to live in the world and seeks to maintain his Christian values within secular institutions such as the court, whereas the second soldier of Christ withdraws from the world and seeks to maintain his Christian values in religious organizations such as monastic communities. When Perceval’s Grail quest ends successfully and he becomes a member of the exclusive Grail fellowship, he does not return to the court of Arthur. Following the death of Galahad, Perceval chooses to join a monastic community in Sarras and takes religious clothing (1034.28). He abandons the 157 In the Latin, ‘de cetero fratres confortamini in Domino et in potentia virtutis eius induite vos arma Dei ut possitis stare adversus insidias diaboli quia non est nobis conluctatio adversus carnem et sanguinem sed adversus principes et potestates adversus mundi rectores tenebrarum harum contra spiritalia nequitiae in caelestibus’. 158 Clairvaux, ‘In Praise of the New Knighthood’, 29-31. In the Latin, ‘Et quidem ubi solis viribus corporis corporeo fortiter hosti resistitur, id quidem ego tam non iudico mirum, quam nec rarum existimo. Sed et quando animi virtute vitis sive daemoniis bellum indicitur, ne hoc quidem mirabile, etsi laudabile dixeram, cum plenus monachis cernatur mundus (50)’. - 72 - life of a knight in order to become a monk. His journey through the Grail quest can be read as a preparation for his change in vocation, but what is central to both the interpretation of the knight and the monk in this context is that the purpose of both vocations is to fight evil forces threatening to destroy Christian communities. The story of Perceval’s transition from the life of a knight living in the world to the life of a monk living within a monastic order is found in chapter three of Malory’s Tale of the Sangreal. An examination of the justification of violence within his story shows how these principles work in the spiritual, rather than material, realm. Perceval’s use of violence revolves around his own internal battle to determine whether his faith in Christ is greater than his desire for physical pleasure and chivalric honour. His enemies are not flesh and blood knights to be defeated by his superior knightly prowess, but demonic beings attempting to draw him away from spiritual ideals of chivalry, enticing him with the sensual delights of the world. This battle has consequences for both Perceval and for Arthurian civilization. On a personal level, if he allows his own desires and appetites to override his obedience to the will of God, he becomes an agent of the devil rather than an agent of Christ and damns himself. But, more significantly for the entire Arthurian civilization, if he submits, he becomes the devil’s champion and is destined to do battle with Christ’s champion, Galahad. Perceval’s decision about whether he will give his allegiance to the devil and the values of this world, or to Christ and the values of heaven, is quasi-apocalyptic when it is read against Revelations 12:7. And there was a great battle in Heaven. Michael and his angels fought with the dragon, and the dragon fought and his angels.159 To avoid becoming the devil’s champion, Perceval turns his back upon the Round Table when he joins the exclusive fellowship of the Grail. Both the physical delights of the court and the rewards of honour tempt him away from the path of Christ. Throughout his journey Perceval undergoes an extraordinary education, which encourages him to rely 159 In the Latin, ‘et factum est proelium in caelo Michahel et angeli eius proeliabantur cum dracone et draco pugnabat et angeli eius’. - 75 - placed all his faith in the values of the Round Table, especially since the knight he wishes to please, Gawain, is his father’s murderer. Furthermore he intends to maintain this allegiance despite Lancelot’s warning that disobeying the demands found in the sword’s inscription could lead to a physical injury. Thus, before the knights have left Camelot to pursue the truth of the Grail in the Sangreal Perceval has demonstrated his lack of spiritual understanding. In order to become a member of the exclusive Grail fellowship, as Perceval ultimately does, he must receive an education in the spiritual values of chivalry. Perceval must forego worldly ideals of chivalry and transfer his allegiance from Arthur and his fellow knights of the Round Table to Christ. To do this, he must learn to place his trust entirely in Christ. The new spiritual attitude Perceval has to adopt in order to become a Grail knight parallels the experience of the early Fathers of the Church who left the relative comforts of the cities to venture into the deserts, originally in Egypt but in later times to any unsettled area, to develop their relationship with God.162 Like these early Church Fathers, Perceval must ward off the temptations of evil spirits who threaten to draw him into sin, thereby destroying his relationship with God. Perceval must give up the pleasures and rewards of the court, which lead him away from his unwavering devotion to Christ, through asceticism. Perceval’s success in this process of education is shown in two ways. First, he achieves a vision of the Grail, and second, he chooses to join a religious community at the end of the quest rather than return to Camelot. In the episode of the sword in the red marble, however, Perceval still wants to maintain his links with the court, that is the world, rather than looking past this life to his relationship with God, and this is characteristic of Perceval’s entire journey to the Grail castle. A change in Perceval’s allegiance is signalled in the wilderness landscape of the Grail journey. As I will demonstrate, he 162 Peter Brown, The Body and Society: Men, Women and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 1988), 213-240. Perceval’s experience in the Grail quest mirrors much of the Desert Father’s experience as his final temptation is of a sexual nature. - 76 - switches his allegiance from Gawain to Galahad and indicates his desire for a spiritual rather than knightly life. This transition begins when both Perceval and Lancelot are defeated in a joust by Galahad. A hermit cries out to Galahad, ‘God be with the, beste knight of the worlde!’ (893.7). Perceval’s instinctual, but still unconscious, understanding of spiritual principles is shown when he decides not to follow Galahad further into the wilderness, as Lancelot does, and instead to turn to the hermit for advice. Yet even his desire to keep company with Galahad represents only a partial understanding of the ideals of spiritual chivalry, because his motive is not entirely right. Perceval must find his own spiritual reward. Therefore his instinct to follow Galahad is only the beginning of his education in the spiritual ideals of the Grail’s particular form of chivalry. As he is still longing for the human companionship of Galahad, rather than the spiritual companionship of Christ, this desire to maintain a fellowship with Galahad becomes the mechanism by which the devil attempts to seduce Perceval away from the ideals of the Grail. The devil will do this by encouraging Perceval’s natural and instinctive envy for the title of best knight in the world, a title that will indeed belong to Perceval if he defeats Galahad in battle. Perceval’s Spiritual Instincts Two opposing aspects of Perceval’s character have been identified. On the one hand, Perceval has spiritual instincts that inform his choices during the Grail quest as shown when he turns to the hermit for advice after Galahad defeats him. On the other hand, Perceval is influenced by his own passions and desires, of which the most significant is his desire to maintain his fellowship with other knights and his longing for the title of the best knight in the world. How these opposing aspects come into play is best explained by an examination of Perceval as he is introduced into the Morte Darthur in the Book of Sir Tristram de Lyones. This examination demonstrates that Perceval is introduced to the Round Table as a knight with much spiritual potential, but his family has been decimated by their involvement with the Round Table fellowship. Both Perceval’s father and brothers have been killed in their quest for chivalric honour. Perceval’s choice during the Grail quest is between remaining a knight and suffering the same fate as his father and brothers or becoming a monk and breaking this family cycle of death and destruction, by - 77 - removing himself from the temptations of the court and his own desire to achieve chivalric honour. When Perceval is first introduced to the court of Arthur and the Round Table, the miraculous signs surrounding his introduction point out that he is destined to live the life of the spirit, although he has the correct family credentials to become a member of the Round Table. His introduction acutely delineates how Arthur selects a knight for service to the Round Table and how a knight’s spiritual potential is assessed. The difference between the ideals of the Round Table and the ideals of the Grail become clear. Perceval is introduced into the Morte Darthur by the formulaic method of a young man coming to the court in the company of an older and more experienced member of his family who has been inducted previously into the Round Table (610.32). The ideas of the Arthurian court are illustrated immediately when the king asks ‘Of what lygnage is he come?’ (610.35). The knight accompanying Perceval explains that he is the son of King Pellynore, who has done service for Arthur, and that his brother is Sir Lamorak de Galys, who is described as a good knight (610.4). Arthur judges that Perceval is a suitable candidate for the order of knighthood and membership of the Round Table because he has been born into as aristocratic family who have shown their loyalty to the king by their past knightly deeds. What Arthur prioritizes in the selection of knights is shown further when Perceval is to sit ‘amonge meane knyghtes,’ those knights who have not established themselves as outstanding in their knightly feats at the court of Arthur (611.17). At this stage in his knightly career, Perceval has not yet established his credentials on the tournament field or the battlefield and thus is judged to be the same as all young aristocratic men who come to court seeking the rewards of honour and sensual delights. The standards by which he is judged by Arthur’s court are essentially worldly. Perceval’s true destiny, however, is established by a supernatural event. A maiden from the Queen’s court, who is described as being unable to speak and who comes from a high aristocratic lineage, leads Perceval away from the mean knights. She, miraculously, announces that he is not only a noble knight but that he is also God’s knight, and she leads him to the Sege Perillous (611.24-25). This momentous and mysterious event is - 80 - using reason, it is faith that brings the hope of new life and peace. This bias towards faith is demonstrated further in the Sangreal when Ector is denied access to the Grail castle when the Grail is visible (1019.9-10). Through this demonstration of his faith in prayers, Perceval distinguishes himself from the other knights of the Round Table. He distinguishes himself further by his decision to remain a virgin (816.35-36). The role of virginity in the Grail quest is perhaps best explained by examining how virginity was viewed by early Fathers of the Church such as Origen who lived in the first half of the third century. Origen wanted to find a solution for the old Platonic problem of how the diversity observed in the material world could emerge out of the original unity of the world of the Ideas.166 He believed that any difference in the created being reflected a precise degree of decline from or progress to a common and original perfection. Every being was originally created as an equal to angels and God intended that these beings would stand forever in a rapt contemplation of his wisdom. But, if a being made a decision from his free will to neglect this contemplation, he was rejecting the life-giving warmth of God’s presence. All that was left for these beings was a dull numbness and a feeling of unrelieved discontent. Only by learning to recover its earliest yearnings could the being open itself up again to the love of God. The world was filled with spirits who could lead the being either into sin or back to God. Piety and a firm resolve demonstrated a commitment to follow the angelic spirits back to God. If a being gave in to the temptations of the body, such as the desire for food or the sexual drive, it indicated a decision to cooperate with demons and to remain distant from God. Virginity was, therefore, a symbol of the original state of humankind before an individual’s decisions had alienated him from God and from God’s wisdom.167 If Perceval is to live up to his spiritual potential, he must maintain his virginity in order to be able to receive the wisdom of God. In the context of the ideals of spiritual chivalry, Perceval’s faith in God and his purity as a virgin brings the vessel of grace to both Perceval and Ector and prevents an 166 Brown, Body and Society, 163. 167 Brown, Body and Society, 163-170. - 81 - unnecessary feud between his own family and the family of Lancelot. Furthermore, the healing properties of the Grail provide evidence that faith is rewarded by grace. A sharp distinction has been drawn between the rewards of chivalry found at the Arthurian court, where prowess in battle is rewarded by honour or sensual delights, and the rewards of chivalry as dictated by the Grail, where peace and the healing of wounds are the rewards of faith. Perceval’s prayers have facilitated this gift of grace. His journey through the Grail quest, however, teaches him that this grace is only available to those who are willing to devote their life to God. In Perceval’s own particular case, he is placed in situations that resemble the adventures he may encounter in the world of the Arthurian court: his challenge is to prove that he can maintain his faith in this world. If he succeeds he becomes a member of the exclusive Grail fellowship. Perceval’s Instruction in Spiritual Ideals Perceval’s spiritual education comprises a series of temptations in which he has to demonstrate that he can recognise the fiendish and devilish creatures that attempt to lead him into mortal sin, as well as those with saintly qualities who would keep him on a path to spiritual understanding. He is challenged to explore his inner psychological motivations when he considers the use of violence. To be successful he must reject the catalysts of violence that are now associated with the devil because they have been ignited and exacerbated by his worldly desires and appetites. To receive God’s special grace in the Grail quest, Perceval has to learn to exist in the faith of Christ, which will educate him in a new set of values that redefine what forms of violence can be justified. He must forego his allegiance to Arthur and the Round Table and be prepared to fight his own internal battle against the rewards and delights of the court, which feed his carnal cravings. Perceval is only partially successful in his quest because he comes to recognise how easily he can be tempted by the rewards of honour and sensual pleasures of the court. To protect himself from this danger he chooses not to return to Camelot at the end of the Sangreal but to live in a monastic community. His spiritual education teaches him that it is only through the grace of God that he avoids falling into mortal sin. Perceval’s - 82 - education in the Grail quest reveals to him that the rewards gained through a life lived in the spirit can give equal satisfaction to the rewards gained through a life lived in the world. Perceval’s first two encounters in the wilderness, arguably, provide a blueprint for the life of a monk, a life lived in the spirit rather than the flesh, is lived. The first episode begins when Perceval encounters his aunt, a female hermit (905. 10-12). She was once called the Queen of the Wast Landis, and she describes herself as ‘the queen of moste rychnesse in the worlde’ (905.29). It is, however, her decision to forgo all her wealth and live in poverty that gives her true happiness (905.29-30). Without the trappings and responsibilities of the world, she can devote her life to God. The name of her former kingdom, the Waste Land, is incongruent. She associates this land with vast wealth, which, in terms of worldly ideals, would make this land far from ‘waste’. But within the new spiritual ideals of the Grail, it is the distracting element of worldly riches that removes this land from the true devotion to God, and as a result the land is most certainly laid waste. Perceval’s aunt’s begins his education in the life of the spirit in two ways: first she provides a practical demonstration in asceticism, and second she acts as an historian of Perceval’s family and the Round Table. Furthermore, in this capacity she outlines the appropriate application of violence within the ideals of spiritual chivalry. The appropriate use of violence relates to Perceval’s and Lancelot’s recent encounter with Galahad who had defeated them both (892.30-893.19). Perceval accepts guidance in a manner which foregrounds his spiritual potential. Whereas Lancelot has ridden off to catch up with Galahad, Perceval returns to the female hermit to seek her advice because she previously admonished both that if they knew Galahad as well as she herself, they would not have fought with him (893.9-1). Perceval reveals that he is still acting on worldly values when he announces to his aunt that he is so ashamed of his defeat by Galahad that he wants to find him and fight him again so he can regain the honour he has lost in their previous encounter (905.19-21). In essence, he believes that he can regain his honour only by another violent confrontation. Perceval’s aunt explains to him that this desire for worldly honour was the cause of his father’s death under similar circumstances. If Perceval continues down this path, he will experience the same fate (905.23-24). His - 85 - mother to join the Round Table and has led to her death as a result of the grief she suffered when he left the family. Perceval’s only comfort, having learned of his mother’s death, is the knowledge that she died shriven (906.4-6). Perceval was, until this time, unaware that his mother had departed this life, precisely because of his entrapment in the world of the Round Table (906.24-26). This is the turning point in Perceval’s story, as he becomes aware that his knightly activities are having a devastating effect upon those whom he loves. He must forgo the values of the Round Table that were so evidenced by his behaviour in the episode of the sword in the red marble stone, when he was anxious to maintain the fellowship of his father’s murderer. He must commit himself to the spiritual path that he was destined to take when the maiden led him to the Sege Perillous when he was first introduced to the court at Camelot. Having realised this truth about the pursuit of worldly honour at the court of Arthur, Perceval’s education in the life of the spirit can begin in earnest. When Perceval’s story is read from this point of view, the corrupting influence of the Arthurian court becomes obvious. During the Grail quest, Perceval must come to realize how courtly influences corrupt his spiritual nature. He will not be given the opportunity to display his physical prowess. Instead he will encounter a series of supernatural beings who will aim to tempt him into sin. This move into the supernatural raises the stakes in the Grail quest. If Perceval is seduced by the temptations he will be giving his allegiance to the forces of the devil. Furthermore, if Perceval elects to join forces with the devil, he will become the devil’s champion, and he will fight Galahad as Christ’s champion for the title of the best knight in the world. However, if Perceval resists the devil’s temptations he will be giving his allegiance to God and will join the fellowship of the Grail knights, whose ultimate goal is to heal the land by restoring strong and righteous authority to sovereign rulers. His aunt explains the temptations that Perceval must resist. Merlin, who had made the Round Table, prophesied that three fellows of this table would achieve the Grail adventure, but that two of the fellows would be virgins while the other would live in chastity. Moreover, he decreed that one of these knights would surpass his father ‘as much as the lyon passith - 86 - the lybarde’ (906. 34-35). Since Galahad has been identified as the knight who surpasses all others when he sat in the Sege Perillous at Pentecost, Perceval must resist any urge to fight him to become the best knight. He must also safeguard his virginity. If he can achieve this, he will win his battle against the devil’s forces and remain a knight of Christ. At this point Perceval resolves not to fight Galahad but to ‘love the felyship of hym’ (907. 11). Having now come to the spiritual realisation that he must see Galahad as an example of a knight of Christ, Perceval leaves his aunt to follow his spiritual quest. The next episode serves as his second lesson in spiritual instruction, in which he will learn of the dire consequences that will occur if he returns to a life governed by the ideals of worldly chivalry. This episode also confirms that the Grail’s presence in the kingdom is to ensure that the land maintains the principles of Christianity. Perceval attends Mass the following morning and he sees a figure enclosed in an iron pew, later identified as Evelake. Evelake was the pagan king of Sarras, who, after his conversion to Christianity, accompanied Joseph of Arimathea and the Grail into this land. His wounds, inflicted by Christ’s enemies, demonstrate that he is a properly pious character. His constant prayer reinforces his piety (908.3-18). Evelake is marked as a sinner because his blindness also indicates that he has disobeyed the will of God when he approached the Grail too closely (908.21- 24). Four hundred years have elapsed since these events and Evelake endures life, sustained only by the Eucharistic host, until, through God’s mercy, he receives a kiss from the knight who will achieve a full vision of the Grail. This illustration of Evelake carries important lessons for Perceval. He sees that a life lived in the world, rather than the spirit, means that he will suffer because he will be tempted to sin and if he does fall into sin, it will inflict wounds which often remain unhealed. This can be avoided only by an absolute faith in Christ. The reward for this faith is that Christ will supply all of Perceval’s worldly needs. It illustrates that disobedience to the will of Christ also carries a heavy penalty. Like Perceval, Evelake was divided between the life lived in the spirit and the life lived in the world. On one hand, Evelake has proven himself to be a knight of Christ because - 87 - he has suffered many wounds in battle against pagan enemies who would draw the people of the kingdom away from their true faith in Christ. But, on the other hand, he was also steeped in the quagmire of worldly ideals because in his pride he disobeyed the will of God and drew too close to the Grail. The result of this disobedience is a voluntary penance of living in the world and continuing to suffer from his many wounds until he meets the knight who will achieve the vision of the Grail, Galahad. If Perceval chooses to follow worldly ideals by following Galahad and, perhaps, fighting him for the honour of being known as the best knight in the world, he will also be left to suffer in the world because he has alienated himself from the will of God. He must, therefore, conquer his desire to search for Galahad and concentrate on finding his own spiritual path. Perceval’s Spiritual Battles Having now received this spiritual instruction, Perceval’s testing as a worthy candidate for the exclusive Grail fellowship begins. Galahad shows he is a knight of superior physical prowess when he saves Perceval’s life. On leaving the abbey Perceval meets twenty knights who are carrying a dead knight (909.8-10). Perceval succeeds in defeating the first knight, but seven others overcome him. Without Galahad’s intervention, he would most certainly have been killed. Galahad demonstrates that he has not been overcome by emotion because he does not kill the knights, but forces a retreat. Perceval can no longer entertain ideas of defeating Galahad in combat and becoming the best knight in the world because he owes his life to Galahad. Thus Perceval’s desire changes. Realizing that he will never defeat Galahad on the battle or tournament field, Perceval decides that he wishes to keep company with Galahad. He becomes determined to follow the spiritual example of Galahad. The spiritual education Perceval is to receive during the Grail quest requires still further learning so that he comes to understand his own spiritual path. He is prevented from following Galahad when his horse is killed in the previous battle. In terms of chivalric ideals, the value of a knight’s horse cannot be over-emphasized because all knightly warfare was conducted from horseback. Without a horse, a man engaged in military activities could not be defined as a knight because he could not fight as a knight. This - 90 - temptations that will endanger his soul (912.8). He comes to understand in a conscious manner that if he is to survive he must make decisions based on his faith in God. Demonic forces will continue to tempt him to become their champion against the peerless Galahad. They will do this by placing him in situations where worldly delights will make him forget his faith. Perceval has agreed already to a demonic pact; this occurred when in the depths of his misery he agreed to answer the lady’s summons as payment for the fiendish horse. Thus Perceval’s dilemma is made clear. Throughout the Morte Darthur Perceval is described as a knight blessed with divine favour as is shown in the descriptions of his adventures in the Tale of Tristram. But he is also a knight who could either be classified as a force for good if he successfully withstands the devil’s temptations, or a force for evil if he is seduced by the devil. He will be confronted with a stark choice where he must choose to either place his allegiance with God or with the devil. Following this decision he will face his final temptation where he must guard his virginity, the sign that he is close to God, as the devil literally attempts to seduce Perceval. If he can maintain his virginity and not give in to the demonic temptations, he will prove himself worthy to join the exclusive fellowship of the Grail. Perceval’s spiritual preparation for this final battle occurs on top of a mountain on a remote island inhabited only by wild beasts. His geographical isolation will test his ability to make discerning choices. This isolation from the world of the court to a world inhabited only by wild beasts means that he will show that he can follow God from an instinctive, rather than reasoned, response. This response is demonstrated when he sees an old serpent carrying a young lion being chased by another lion. Perceval comes to the rescue of the young lion because his instinct tells him that the lion is ‘the more naturall beste’ (912.25). This episode shows that Perceval’s natural loyalty is to spiritual, rather than worldly, ideals because he has read the spiritual signs surrounding this test correctly. To understand how Perceval’s decision is correct, an analysis of the lion’s meaning in medieval bestiaries is required. The lion is the most common of bestiary animals and he carries his symbolic meaning as ‘the king of the beasts’ into the world of heraldry. It is often positioned first in the - 91 - bestiaries. The opening miniature of the ninth-century Bern Physiologus is the earliest extant lion entry and depicts Jacob blessing the lion of the tribe of Israel.169 The association of the lion with the tribe of Judah is explained in Genesis 49: 8-10. Jacob, who has called all his sons together, prophesies the future of each of the tribes his sons will found. Of the tribe of Judah he says: Juda, Thee shall thy brethren praise: thy hands shall be on the necks of thy enemies: the sons of thy father shall bow down to thee. Juda is a lion’s whelp: to the prey, my son, thou art gone up: resting thou hast couched as a lion, and as a lioness, who shall rouse him? The sceptre shall not be taken away from Juda, nor the ruler from his thigh, till he come that is to be sent, and he shall be the expectation of nations.170 This passage describes the history of the kings of Israel who will come from the tribe of Judah and whose bloodline will produce the king of all nations in the future. In other words this is a prophecy of the coming of Christ and the lion is directly associated with his incarnation on earth. In Revelations 5:5 the lion is directly associated with Christ again: And one of the ancients said to me: Weep not; behold the lion of the tribe of Juda, the root of David, hath prevailed to open the book, and to loose the seven seals thereof.171 Another important image of the lion in bestiaries associates him with Christ. This is the image of the lion’s whelps being born dead and being revived by their father three days after birth, associating the lion cubs with Christ who died on the cross and after three days was revived by the Father.172 169 Margaret Haist, ‘The Lion, Bloodline and Kingship’, in The Mark of the Beast: The Medieval Bestiary in Art, Life and Literature, ed. Debra Hassig, Garland Medieval Casebooks, 22 (New York, NY and London: Garland, 1999), 3-16, 3. 170 In the Latin, ‘Iuda te laudabunt frates tui manus tua in cervicibus inimicorum tuorum adorabunt te filii patris tui Catulus leonis Iuda a praeda fili mi ascendisti requiscens accubuisti ut leo et quasi leaena quis suscitabit eum Non auferetur sceptrum de Iuda et dux de femoribus eius donec veniat qui mittendus est et ipse erit expectatio gentium’. 171 In the Latin, ‘et unus de senioribus dicit mihi ne fleveris ecce vicit leo de tribu Iuda radix David aperire librum et septum signacula eius’. 172 Other images associating the lion with Christ in the Bern Physiologus include the lion erasing its tracks with its tail and sleeping with its eyes open. Haist, ‘The Lion, Bloodline and Kingship’, 4-5. - 92 - During the twelfth century an addition was made to the lion entries in the bestiaries. In the St Petersburg’s Bestiary a passage accompanying the image describes how men should emulate the character of the lion. Like the lion, rational men must not allow themselves to become angered and to oppress the innocent, in fact, men should follow the lion’s example and spare the lives of those who prostrate themselves and ask for mercy. This develops a new theme to the lion images that mercy and tolerance are important and necessary aspects of justice.173 Although Perceval does not seem to understand the biblical associations of the lion, he thanks God for the lion’s company as the lion acts more like a pet dog than a fierce wild beast in his company (912.35): Whan the lyon saw that, he made no sembelante to fyghte with hym but made hym all the chere that a beest myghte make a man. (912.28-30). In this short episode, Perceval’s dilemma is solved. At the beginning of Malory’s Tale of the Sangreal, Perceval is so concerned about the issue of fellowship that he attempts to remove the sword destined for Galahad from the stone. His reason for doing this is to keep fellowship with Gawain. Later his aunt explains the nature of the Round Table to him. It is a table of fellowship that celebrates the best knights in the world, but a belief in Christ is not a necessary requirement for membership as the Table also admits heathens to its fellowship. Finally, Perceval had to examine his desire for fellowship with Galahad. This desire had led Perceval into making a less than discerning decision to accept the fiendish horse of the lady that nearly led to his death and damnation. Now Perceval has found true fellowship with the lion. Symbolically he has discovered the fellowship of Christ. This episode illuminates Perceval’s own spiritual path, which is that he must look to Christ for fellowship and not to others who will draw him away from his faith. Now that Perceval has discovered his own personal spiritual truth he is praised in these terms: 173 Haist, ‘The Lion, Bloodline and Kingship’, 7. - 95 - Perceval denies all responsibility for any injury suffered by the old lady for the death of her serpent, she asks him to become her man to make amends for his actions. Perceval is in danger of damnation but his spiritual instruction has taught him that he has to avoid this danger by refusing the lady’s request. The Old Lady riding on the Beast can be read as a representation of the Whore of Babylon in the Book of Revelation 17. Her purpose is to turn men away from the path of Christ to follow the path of the devil and how she achieves this aim is revealed in the following. See Revelation 17:2: With whom the kings of the earth have committed fornication; and they who inhabit the earth, have been made drunk with the wine of her whoredom.178 The old lady sees Perceval’s absolute faith in Christ (914.13), but vows to take him when he has forgotten his service to God (914.15) because he will become drunk on the sensual delights of courtly life. Therefore, Perceval’s final temptation is not a test of his physical strength and fighting ability as he would expect. It is a test of his ability to avoid those worldly temptations that will encourage him to forget his commitment to Christ. At this point in the narrative, Perceval is fully committed to following the path of Christ and his reward for making this discerning choice is further spiritual instruction. He sees a ship covered in white samite, or a heavy silken cloth, coming towards the island. On board is a man dressed as a priest. The priest assures Perceval that he is as a true knight as required by the order of chivalry (914.31-32) and that he must remain true or the enemy he is about to encounter will kill him (914.34-35). To explain his point, the priest tells Perceval that the young lady on the lion was an illustration of the new law of the Holy Church. She represented faith, good hope, belief and baptism, and she seemed young because she was born of Christ’s death and resurrection. It was for the great love of the Church that she came to warn Perceval of the great battle that he must now fight. On the other hand the old lady on the serpent represented the old law, and that the serpent that Perceval had killed was, indeed, the devil. If Perceval had agreed to become the old 178 In the Latin, ‘cum qua fornicati sunt reges terrae et ebriati sunt qui inhabitant terram de vino prostitutionis eius’. - 96 - lady’s man, he would have left the service of Christ. His return to the fellowship of the lion indicates that he has chosen to maintain his faith in Christ. Perceval has now been fully prepared for his last and most dreadful temptation. His enemy is described in his Grail quest as a battle with the most dreadful enemy in the whole world (915.14). The test will occur in a court setting, asking Perceval to demonstrate that he can maintain these ideals when surrounded by the many rewards and temptations associated with the ideals of worldly chivalry. He must show that the luxuries of the court, with their physical pleasures and promises of worldly rewards such as honour and glory, will not corrupt the pure nature signified by his virginity. His final temptation is a direct assault on his virginity, the particular quality that distinguishes him as having a true faith in Christ and identifies him as having an essential attribute to qualify for the status of a Grail knight. If Perceval withstands the temptations of the court and keeps his virginity, he will join Galahad and Bors on the ship that carries the Grail knights to Castle Corbenic and Sarras. He will gain the very thing that he has craved most throughout his Grail journey: the companionship of other knights as a member of the spiritual fellowship of the Grail knights. This final temptation begins when another ship arrives. Perceval should be alerted to the exact nature of the ship as being a product of fiendish forces because its description evokes the same image as the horse that attempted to carry Perceval to his death earlier in the chapter. Like the earlier fiendish horse, the ship is described as being as if ‘all the wynde of the worlde had dryven it’ (915.32-33) and being ‘coverde with sylke more blacker than ony [beré] (915.35). To emphasize that it is the court that presents so many dangers to Perceval, he is confronted with temptations of the court as soon as the ship arrives. The first temptation is the sight of the gentlewoman on board who is described as being of great beauty and richly clothed. She immediately appeals to Perceval’s physical appetites when she reminds him that he could die of hunger and mischief in such a desolate wilderness. Perceval’s conscious understanding that he must remain firm in his resolve not to leave the service of Christ occurs when he reminds the lady of his faith by quoting from the Gospel of Matthew 7:7: - 97 - In hys service He woll nat suffir me to dye, for who that kno[ck]ith shall entir, and who that askith shall have; and who that sekith Hym, He hydyth Hym not unto Hys wordys (916.7-9).179 But the second temptation occurs when the lady offers to take Perceval to Galahad. This reference to Galahad makes Perceval forget his faith, and he readily agrees to become the lady’s champion (916.10-22). Realizing that Perceval is succumbing to temptation as she arouses his envy, the lady continues to tempt him further by taunting him with a direct comparison between his own prowess and that of Galahad.180 Perceval is told that, whereas the grace of God had saved Perceval when the fiendish horse came to the rough water, Galahad survived the incident because of his great prowess and had escaped into the land (916.28). Although Perceval is glad to hear of Galahad’s survival, the lady has penetrated through Perceval’s spiritual armour and can now lead him away from his faith. The third temptation begins as the lady appeals to Perceval’s physical appetites, reminding him of the lack of food he has endured since his arrival on this island and offers him food. Perceval says that he has been refreshed by the words of the priest on the first ship, the lady convinces him that this man ‘ys an inchaunter and a multiplier of wordis’ (916.31-917.2). Perceval had seen the example of Evelake, the king had been sustained for four hundred years by his faith in Christ as his only physical nourishment had been the host he received daily from the mass; Perceval has allowed his own desires to overwhelm him and he begins to fall prey to the lady’s seduction. The lady tells him that he will starve to death on the rock and be eaten by wild beasts (917.3-4). Perceval not only forgets the comfort and fellowship he had received from the lion, he also falls into the sin of gluttony.181 179 See Matthew 7:7 In the Latin, ‘petite et dabitur vobis quaerite et invenietis pulsate et aperietur vobis. In the English, ‘Ask, and it shall be given you: seek, and you shall find: knock, and it shall be opened to you’. 180 Proverbs 14: 30 explains how envy affects a person. In the Latin, ‘vita cranium sanitas cordis putredo ossuum invidia’ In the English, ‘Soundness of heart is the life of the flesh: but envy is the rottenness of the bones’. 181 The dangers of gluttony are explained in Proverbs 23: 1-3. In the Latin, ‘quando sederis ut comedas cum principe diligenter adtende quae posita sunt ante faciem tuam’. In the English, ‘When thou shalt sit to eat with a prince, consider diligently what is set before thy face. And put a knife to thy throat, if he be so that thou have thy soul in thy power. Be not desirous of his meats,