The Mammoth Book of King Arthur

by Mike Ashley

  The stories Erec and Yvain also inspired the Arthurian romance in Germany, and at the same time established the reputation of Hartmann von Aue, who had the same impact in Germany as Chrétien did in France. Hartmann’s version, Erek, is usually dated to the early 1180s, whilst Iwein was not completed until around 1202. There are parts of Erek which agree more with the interpretation of the Welsh Geraint than with Chrétien’s. Since the Welsh version appearing in the Mabinogion had yet to be written, we can only assume either that Hartmann knew of an earlier proto-version, or that the Welsh adapter was aware of Hartmann’s work.

  It seems likely that it was the Tristan story that helped establish the courtly romance, which promptly sucked in the Arthurian story. Certainly by the 1180s the Arthurian setting so epitomized the courtly romance that when Andreas Capellanus wrote a treatise on courtly love, De Amore, he included within it a story by way of example, set at Arthur’s court. Yet although Chrétien’s first three romances include Arthurian characters and settings they were not essential to the story. Chrétien chose to include those elements because it was the vogue to do so. His main intent was to explore the idea of a knight torn between love and adventure, a story that had strong resonance at the time because of the demands on knights caused by the Crusades.

  When Chrétien turned to matters more closely associated with Arthur, as with Lancelot, and Perceval and the Grail, he found it harder, so much so that he was unable to complete either story. Le Chevalier de la charrete, the proper title of the Lancelot story, was completed by Godefroi de Leigny, admittedly from an outline, whilst the Perceval story Conte du Graal was taken up by at least four “continuators”. We do not know why Chrétien did not finish either story. Conte du Graal is regarded as the last of his stories, so he may not have lived to complete it. He may have left it incomplete because his patron, Philippe d’Alsace, Count of Flanders, died on the Third Crusade at Acre in June 1191. As for the Lancelot story, we know that he was writing Yvain at the same time, and it may be that he became too wrapped up in one to finish the other. Yet it is significant that he had problems developing a story beyond his basic formula.

  Chrétien’s patrons are important. The Lancelot story had been commissioned by Marie, countess of Champagne, daughter of Louis VII and his first wife Eleanor of Aquitaine. Marie was thus Henry II’s stepdaughter. Marie’s husband was Henri, count of Champagne, probably Europe’s greatest diplomat of the period. In 1179 Henri, involved in the ill-fated attempt to relieve Tibériade from Saladin’s forces, was captured by the Turks and only freed because of the intervention of the Byzantine emperor. His health was ruined, and he died soon after his return in March 1181. This must have affected Chrétien’s work and might be a factor in why he did not complete Le Chevalier de la charrete. It may also be because he received more urgent commission to write the Grail story.

  That commission came from Philippe d’Alsace, the flamboyant count of Flanders and a cousin of Henry II, who had returned from a visit to the Holy Land in 1179. Chrétien tells us that Philippe gave him a book and asked him to “tell in rhyme the finest story ever related in a royal court.” We do not know what book that was. Was Chrétien trying the same literary device as Geoffrey of Monmouth? The answer is the same as for Geoffrey: why should Chrétien say something about his patron if it wasn’t true? It is more likely that Philippe did have some book, perhaps in Latin, which he wanted adapted into Chrétien’s courtly verse.

  This means that Philippe already had an interest in the Grail. In fact, Philippe was a collector of relics, an interest that may have stemmed from his father Thierry, count of Flanders, who had joined the Second Crusade in 1147 and fought at Damascus. Thierry returned in 1150 with a bowl in which Joseph of Arimathea was reputed to have collected the blood of Christ from the cross. A special chapel was built for the bowl at Bruges, in Flanders, which is called the Chapel of the Precious Blood. Philippe had doubtless come across a story that he believed had some relevance to this relic, and it was from this interest that the Grail story began.

  According to Noel Currer-Briggs in The Shroud and the Grail, the real reason for Philippe’s visit to the Holy Land had been to secure a marriage between one of the sons of his favourite vassal Robert de Bethune, and one of the sisters of Baldwin IV, king of Jerusalem. Philippe’s attempt failed, but he would have made some interesting connections in Jerusalem.

  One of those he would have met was William, Archbishop of Tyre. William (c 1130–1190) was also Chancellor of Jerusalem, effectively running the kingdom on behalf of the young Baldwin IV. He had been Baldwin’s tutor, as well as principal advisor to Baldwin’s father Amalric I. William had been born in the Holy Land, the son of a French or Anglo-Norman family who had settled there, and was fluent not only in French, English and Latin but also in Greek and Arabic.

  As archdeacon, it was William who blessed the marriage in 1167 between Amalric and Maria Comnena, daughter of the Byzantine emperor Manuel. Currer-Briggs tells us that in 1171 Amalric visited Manuel in Constantinople, accompanied by William of Tyre, who recorded the event. We learn that Amalric (and possibly William) was given a full tour of the palace at Constantinople, and would have seen a very special relic we now call the Shroud of Turin.

  There is little doubt that with his interest in relics Philippe of Flanders would have learned of the shroud from William. When Philippe returned from the Holy Land in 1178, he went via Constantinople. He may not have had an opportunity to see the shroud, but he would doubtless have tracked down other items, possibly including the book he gave Chrétien.

  Of course, the shroud was not the first great relic to be seen in the East. In 1098, during the First Crusade, the monk Peter Bartholomew was supposed to have had a vision that led him to discover the Holy Lance in St. Peter’s cathedral in Antioch. This was reputedly the spear which pierced Christ’s body on the cross, variously called the Lance of Longinus (the name of the centurion) or the Spear of Destiny. Many were sceptical that this was the true spear – after all, one was also supposed to have found its way to the court of Charlemagne, whilst another (or a fragment of the same one) was in the church of Hagia Sofia in Constantinople. Nevertheless, the discovery of the lance was a spiritual boost to the Crusaders and spread dissension through the Muslim ranks, so no one investigated it too thoroughly.

  Armed with a book, details of Philippe’s father Thierry’s pearl-rimmed relic, “Precious Blood”, and the stories of the shroud and the Holy Lance, Chrétien had more than enough to inspire his story of Perceval and the Grail, (I discuss this in more detail in Chapter 16, and return to William of Tyre later). Suffice it to say that regardless of the interest that Chrétien’s work had already created in the Arthurian romance, it was as nothing to the storm that would start with the appearance of the unfinished Grail Story.

  We have seen that in the quarter century from 1155 to 1180 Chrétien’s stories, especially Erec and Yvain, established the Arthurian world as the preferred setting for the courtly romance for the next three hundred years. However, in terms of the development of the Arthurian legend as we know it, it was Le Chevalier de la charrete and Conte du Graal – stories inspired by the Crusaders through the influence of Henri de Champagne and Philippe d’Alsace – that were most important.

  5. Robert de Boron and Wolfram

  Le Chevalier de la charrete and Conte du Graal set in train a sequence of romances that within a generation would come together in the massive Roman du Graal. The story of Lancelot went through a slightly strange evolution (see Chapter 17), but the Conte du Graal was like a virus. Once it was released on the world there was no holding it back, perhaps all the more because it was left unfinished. Two poets – alas, their identities are uncertain – added their own versions of the ending, one following Gawain’s story and one Perceval’s, whilst the Welsh version, Peredur, cut it back to basics. The author of the second continuation was once believed to be Wauchier (or Gautier) de Denain, and although no clear attribution has been made no better candidate ha
s come forth.

  It was left to Robert de Boron to give new shape and direction to the Grail story. Robert produced at least three Arthurian romances, which gave some background to Chrétien’s work. The only one that survives is the first, known as Joseph d’Arimathie, but which Robert may have called L’Estoire dou Graal. He followed this with Merlin, of which only a fragment survives, and probably wrote a now-lost Perceval, of which a version may survive in a later prose copy known as the Didot-Perceval (after the one-time owner of the manuscript). It was Robert who Christianised the Grail story; Chrétien had left it open to interpretation. Robert specifically links the Grail to the “vessel” at the Last Supper, and suggests that this vessel is more like a cup, since Joseph captures blood from Jesus’s wounds in it after the body is removed from the cross. Chrétien had described the Grail as more of a dish, or platter. Robert also introduces the veil of Veronica, clearly influenced by the Shroud of Turin.

  Robert did not go quite so far as to say that Joseph and the Grail came to Britain. The implication is that they went to the West, to the “vale of Avalon”. Although Avalon was rapidly becoming associated with Glastonbury, it was not an immediate connection at the time. After all, Avallon in central France was only about a hundred kilometres away from the village of Boron, where Robert presumably lived or was born. Robert, probably at the wish of his patron, may have been making the claim that the Grail had come to the Holy Roman Empire, thus giving it a superiority over Flanders or England.

  Robert is believed to have been a cleric in the court of Gautier de Montbéliard, in the territory of Montfaucon in the Jura. That might suggest that he was sufficiently removed from the courts of Champagne and Flanders to have no connection, but not so. In the world of the Crusades everyone was connected (see Tables 12.2 and 12.3). In 1202, he left for the Crusades and married Burgundia, daughter of Amalric II, king of Jerusalem and Cyprus. Burgundia’s half-sister (and sister-in-law!) was Alice de Champagne, granddaughter of Marie de Champagne, and her uncle was Jean d’Ibelin, who would hold the first known Round Table pageant.

  We don’t know if Robert de Boron accompanied Gautier to Cyprus. It’s possible, because Joseph d’Arimathie shows knowledge of the cultures of the Middle East, especially Georgia and Armenia, with which Amalric de Lusignan (Gautier’s father-in-law) was connected, and where the Ossetian legends circulated. The Crusades and the European alliance in Palestine were becoming reflected in the growing Grail story.

  Robert’s purpose was to show how the Grail would eventually enable Arthur to recover Rome. From what we know of his Perceval and Merlin, Robert seems to have portrayed Merlin as the medium who helped engineer Arthur as the individual who would conquer Rome and regain it for the Holy Roman Empire. Although Robert doesn’t say so, it seems evident that Arthur’s conquest of Rome is intended to equate to a recovery of the Eastern Empire, Byzantium, which by the early 1200s had become a fragmented mess, carved up between the leaders of the Crusades and the Turks. The appalling Fourth Crusade in 1204, which served only to destroy Constantinople, may or may not have happened when Robert was working on his trilogy, and we cannot be sure if he was using the conquest of Rome as an analogy for recovering Jerusalem or conquering Constantinople, but I suspect the latter. His trilogy was demonstrating how, through the power of the Grail (and thus by divine influence), Arthur would reunite the Eastern and Western Empires, thereby creating the next stage in the evolution of the Holy Roman Empire. Robert developed an intriguingly linked sequence revealing a secret, sacred history of how the power of Christ, through the Grail, might yet reunite the world.

  Table 12.2 The Kings of Jerusalem

  Note: dates given are for the reigns as king/queen of Jerusalem only

  Table 12.3 Constantinople and Jerusalem

  The Angevin connection

  This is not an idle concept because the intent behind the very first Crusade, in 1096, had been to foster links with Constantinople with a view to establishing a united Christian Empire with the Pope as its head, rather than simply a secular empire. Nevertheless, it is pretty certain that at the time of the Third Crusade, in 1189, a secular empire was uppermost in the mind of the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick I, known as Barbarossa because of his flaming (though now somewhat grizzled) red beard.

  The Third Crusade is the one most people remember because it involved Richard the Lionheart and Saladin, who captured Jerusalem in 1187. The two other main European leaders at the time were the French king, Philippe II and Frederick I. Of all the rulers in Europe, Frederick came closest to exemplifying the romantic image of the chivalric King Arthur. At the celebration of Pentecost in Mainz in 1188, Frederick was duly inspired and took the Cross. I strongly suspect that when Frederick led his vast army of some 100,000 men (Saladin believed it totalled a million!) out from Ratisbon in May 1189 – probably the largest and best equipped army ever to venture on a Crusade – he believed himself to be Arthur reborn. I also suspect that the latest generation of romancers had Frederick in mind when they wrote about Arthur.

  Unfortunately, Frederick’s crusade ended in disaster. The Byzantine Emperor Isaac Angelus had colluded with Saladin to hamper the overland route from Europe through Constantinople to the Holy Land, and Frederick’s army had been forced to make a difficult crossing over the Bosporus, and through the mountains of Cilicia in southwest Turkey. Attempting to help his son, who was battling the Armenians at a bridge over the River Calycadnus (modern Göksu), Frederick rode his horse across the river, but was carried away in the current and drowned. Although dispirited, Frederick’s men took his body to the Holy Land and buried it at Antioch. However, just as in the legend of Arthur, rumours abounded that Frederick had not died but been washed away, and that he was presently sleeping and would return again to rule Germany.

  Despite taking the Arthurian legend forward significantly by linking it to the legend of the Grail and Joseph of Arimathea, Robert was not a great writer, and his story is bland and straightforward. It required someone else to rework Chrétien’s Perceval in a more inspired form, and that someone was Wolfram von Eschenbach. Wolfram referred to himself as a minnesänger, the German equivalent of a French troubadour. He joked about his own illiteracy, although that may simply mean he was not well versed in French or Latin. Wolfram probably came from somewhere near the town of Anspach, in Bavaria in southern Germany, and from about 1203 onwards was under the patronage of Hermann, Landgrave (count) of Thuringia, at his court at Wartburg in Eisenach. Hermann was a renowned patron of the arts, and we know that sometime around 1210 he commissioned Wolfram to translate the French Aliscans into the epic poem Willehalm. This non-Arthurian story of a young man’s rise to knighthood and eventual retirement to a monastery is set against the background of Charlemagne’s war against the Saracens, and was powerful Crusader fiction.

  We do not know who commissioned Wolfram’s Parzival, but Hermann probably played a part, since Wolfram was attached to his court at the time. The work appears to have been composed in two parts, since Wolfram stopped at the end of Book VI and asked for anyone else to continue it. He may have written these first six books at the behest of a patroness with whom he then fell out, and only continued the work when at the court of Hermann after 1203.

  Like the continuators in Flanders, Wolfram was drawn to finish Chrétien’s Conte du Graal. However, he was no slavish imitator. He even chides Chrétien’s misuse of his source material, saying: “If Master Christian of Troyes has done wrong by this story, Kyot, who sent us the authentic tale, has good cause to be angry.” Kyot, according to Wolfram, was a Provençal author and traveller who had found the manuscript – written in Arabic by an astronomer called Flegetanis – in Toledo. This may be a fictional device, but it gives an air of authenticity to a story that has many Arabic features. Wolfram’s patrons, especially Hermann’s son Ludwig who had been to the Holy Land with Henri of Champagne (the son of Marie, countess of Champagne), could easily have brought back any number of ancient documents. Wolfram used the idea of a
more accurate source in order to explain the differences between his story and Chrétien’s, and to allow it to develop along his own lines, whilst still contriving to relate it to the same subject. It was very effective.

  There was a contemporary French writer, Guiot de Provins, but there is no reason to believe that Wolfram was suggesting Guiot as his source, despite the similarity of the name to Kyot, as nothing written by Guiot (a one-time jongleur turned monk who wrote social satire) has any connection with the Grail or the Holy Land. Yet Guiot did have some interesting connections. He was from Champagne (Provins is midway between Troyes and Paris), but had connections with Spain as one of his patrons was Pedro II of Aragon. Pedro’s wife Maria was the granddaughter of the Byzantine Emperor Manuel. Guiot may well have known Chrétien, but there is no way of knowing if he knew Wolfram.