Merlin and the Grail

by Robert de Boron

  ARTHURIAN STUDIES XLVIII

  MERLIN AND THE GRAIL

  It is hard to overstate the importance of this trilogy of prose romances in the development of the legend of the Holy Grail and in the evolution of Arthurian literature as a whole. They give a crucial new impetus to the story of the Grail by establishing a provenance for the sacred vessel – and for the Round Table itself – in the Biblical past; and through the controlling figure of Merlin they link the story of Joseph of Arimathea with the mythical British history of Vortigern and Utherpendragon, the birth of Arthur, and the sword in the stone, and then with the knightly adventures of Perceval’s Grail quest and the betrayal and death of Arthur, creating the very first Arthurian cycle. Ambitious, original and complete in its conception, this trilogy – translated here for the first time – is a finely paced, vigorous piece of storytelling that provides an outstanding example of the essentially oral nature of early prose.

  NIGEL BRYANT is head of drama at Marlborough College. He has also provided editions in English of the anonymous thirteenth-century romance Perlesvaus, published as The High Book of the Grail, and Chretien’s Perceval: The Story of the Grail.

  ARTHURIAN STUDIES

  ISSN 0261–9814

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

  Contents

  Introduction

  The Modena manuscript

  Authorship and sources

  Sacred relics

  The trilogy’s construction

  Style

  Further reading

  Joseph of Arimathea

  Merlin

  Perceval

  Related Titles

  Copyright

  Three for three:

  Sally, Jevan and Will

  Introduction

  ‘With the obvious exception of Chrétien de Troyes, the most influential writer within the French romance tradition may well be Robert de Boron.’ So Norris J. Lacy has written;1 and it is surely no exaggeration. Not only in the development of the Grail legend, but in the evolution of Arthurian literature as a whole, it would be hard to overstate the importance of this trilogy of prose romances. Relatively short though they may be, these works attributed to Robert de Boron not only gave a vital new impetus to the story of the Grail left unfinished by Chrétien de Troyes, but were also to prove an inspiration to later writers, showing the way forward by combining a series of narratives to create the very first cycle of Arthurian tales. For the redactor of the version translated here was not content merely to take the Grail as the object of a chivalric quest and go back in time to tell the story of its origins in the Biblical past; nor was he content to move on and see the Grail quest brought to a conclusion; he went further, and gave his audience a resolution to the whole Arthurian story by finishing his Perceval with an account of the betrayal and death of Arthur and the end of the knights of the Round Table. This trilogy is astonishingly ambitious, original and complete in its conception.

  The Modena manuscript

  The Joseph of Arimathea has survived in seventeen manuscripts, most of which also contain Merlin, but only two go on to contain the entire trilogy of Joseph, Merlin and Perceval: manuscript E. 39 of the Biblioteca Estense in Modena, and nouv. acqu. no. 4166 of the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris (formerly named the ‘Didot’ manuscript after a past owner – hence the title Didot-Perceval often applied to the third part). These manuscripts have not necessarily been used as the bases for modern editions: both Richard O’Gorman in his parallel edition of the verse and prose versions of Joseph (Toronto, 1995) and Alexandre Micha in his edition of Merlin (Geneva, 1979) argue at length for the superiority of other manuscripts, each editor finally opting for a different text. But Bernard Cerquiglini, in his edition of the complete trilogy,2 follows the text simply of the Modena manuscript. Uncritical though some may feel this to be, it has the great virtue of presenting a medieval reality: it gives a single, complete text as it would have been experienced by a contemporary audience.

  Of the two manuscripts that contain the complete trilogy, the Modena text is unquestionably the better – notably in the Perceval section. In his fine edition of the Perceval, William Roach refers to the Modena redactor as ‘a careful and thoughtful workman... [whose manuscript] gives a straightforward, clear text, admirably suited to conveying the impression that the Joseph – Merlin – Perceval – Mort Artu tetralogy is a unified and harmonious whole... [while the Paris ‘Didot’ manuscript, although it tells essentially the same story, contains]... hopelessly garbled passages.... The text of the [Didot] manuscript is so corrupt that the reader may often wonder whether some of its readings do not represent misprints or errors of transcription on the part of the editor.’3

  This, therefore, is a translation of the trilogy (or tetralogy, if you think of the Mort Artu as a separate section) as compiled by the anonymous writer of that specific manuscript, now in the library at Modena, and as it would have been read – or, more probably, performed and heard – by a specific group of people in the thirteenth century.

  Authorship and sources

  But what exactly did the redactor whose work is preserved in the Modena manuscript do with Robert de Boron’s material? What exactly did Robert himself write?

  A simple account would have it that this trilogy is a translation into prose of a trilogy originally written by Robert in verse. However, only one manuscript of his verse version survives,4 and it contains only Joseph and the first 502 lines of Merlin. Whilst it might be reasonable to conjecture that Robert wrote a complete verse Merlin that is sadly lost, this is by no means certain; and there is no reason at all to suppose that he ever wrote a verse Perceval. Indeed, there is a very good reason to think that he did not: in the course of this prose Merlin we come across a passage in which the redactor comments that ‘my lord Robert de Boron, who tells this story, says, like Merlin, that it is in two parts, for he could not know the story of the Grail’ (below, here). It is true that an ambiguity in the sentence structure at this point makes it just about possible that it is Merlin who ‘could not know’ – but it would be a strange thing to say about a being who has knowledge of all things past and future, and I have translated the sentence to make it clear that it is Robert who ‘ne pot savoir le conte dou Graal’.

  But what exactly did he ‘not know’? Some scholars have suggested that Robert did not even know Chrétien de Troyes’ unfinished Perceval which, in the mid-1180s, introduced the Grail to an intrigued world. However, given the degree of excitement generated by Chrétien’s tantalising, unresolved theme, which prompted the composition of no fewer than four direct Continuations and other brilliant developments in, for example, Perlesvaus and The Quest of the Holy Grail, it does not seem likely that any writer interested in Arthurian matters in the 1180s and 1190s would have been unaware of Perceval. In any case, if Robert did not know Chrétien’s work – or they were writing simultaneously – it would be difficult to explain the phrase ‘and so the rich Fisher King departed – of whom many words have since been spoken’ (below, here, which corresponds to a similar passage in the verse Joseph, vv. 3456-8).

  It must be said, however, that it is almost certain that neither the Fisher King nor the Grail was exactly Chrétien’s invention. Robert refers to a ‘high book’ as his source (below, here), just as Chrétien in his dedicatory prologue speaks of ‘the book’ given to him by his patron Count Philip of Flanders as the basis of his Perceval. Many motifs and narrative elements in Arthurian romances have been attributed to Celtic oral tradition, and this has long been assumed to apply also to the Grail. R. S. Loomis was notably sure that ‘Chrétien did not invent his story, and later romancers, even when they knew and drew upon his poem, drew also on an amo
rphous mass of traditional material.... The legends of the Grail are a conglomerate of materials paralleled in the literature and lore of Ireland, Wales and Brittany.’5 It is certainly possible that Robert drew on this independently of Chrétien; but I believe it most likely, amidst all the speculation, that he knew the contents of Chrétien’s Perceval as well as something of the ‘amorphous mass of traditional material’, and was prompted by both to the idea for his hugely influential story of Joseph of Arimathea. I would suggest, therefore, that the prose redactor’s reference to his ‘not knowing’ the story of the Grail was to Robert’s being unable, perhaps because of his own death, to know the way the Grail theme had subsequently been developed in, for example, the Second Continuation, from which several episodes in the prose Perceval are derived.

  Robert’s inspirational idea was to make the Grail clearly, unambiguously Christian by giving it a Biblical early history. It is very easy, especially when coming to Arthurian literature for the first time, to forget that the so-called ‘Holy Grail’, connected with Christ, the Last Supper and the Crucifixion, is not explicitly Christian in the first Grail romance. It is not the famous holy chalice – in fact it is not a chalice at all, and not exactly referred to as holy.6 In Chrétien de Troyes’ Perceval it is even introduced on its first appearance with an indefinite article – ‘un graal’ – and in a most downbeat way at the start of a sentence:

  Un graal entre ses deus mains

  Une damoisele tenoit.7

  What kind of vessel this grail is Chrétien never specifies, though he does tell us that it is made of pure gold and encrusted with surpassingly beautiful jewels, but in a later passage Perceval’s hermit uncle tells him:

  Don’t imagine that [the one who is served from the grail] is given pike or lamprey or salmon; he’s served with a single host....8

  Chalices are not ideal for serving fish: Chrétien’s grail is implicitly a dish or platter.9

  Some might go as far as to say that nothing, in fact, in Chrétien’s ‘grail procession’ is explicitly Christian – and certainly, nothing is in an orthodox sense: there are golden candlesticks, the grail, a silver trencher, and a lance that sheds blood from its tip.

  But the ‘unchristian’ nature of Chrétien’s grail and its accompanying procession can be – and has been – overstated. In relation to the bleeding lance, for example, although it is true that Chrétien makes no definite mention of the lance that pierced Christ’s side on the cross, and although there has long been the suggestion that the bleeding lance is an echo of a pagan fertility ritual,10 I think it inconceivable that an audience in the 1180s would have failed to think – instantly – of that relic sensationally found on the First Crusade, the Holy Lance. Moreover, Chrétien’s grail contains a host. 11 Now, Leonardo Olschki, in his forthright monograph The Grail Castle and its Mysteries (Manchester, 1966), declares that ‘there is not the slightest reference to Christian liturgy in the whole procession’ (pp. 14-15) and emphatically denies that the grail and its host are eucharistic: he is convinced that Chrétien had in mind the doctrines of the Cathars. His grail, he says, ‘is a heterodox symbol, sacred, but not liturgical, and as such belongs to a ritual vaguely connected with the traditions of Christian worship, yet with a profoundly different meaning. The host contained in [Chrétien’s] Grail signifies something quite different from the Eucharist of Catholic worship, which in the twelfth century was itself still an object of theological debate and widespread doubt concerning the concepts of the ‘corpus verum’ and ‘corpus mysticum’ of the ‘impanatio’ and ‘transubstantiatio’: all of which were resolved only after a great deal of controversy by the Lateran Council of 1215 ... Chrétien’s host brings to mind the consecrated bread that was broken and distributed to the faithful in the sacramental banquets that constituted the sole ceremony normally celebrated by Catharist communities.... This was the so-called ‘supersubstantial bread’, only apparently related to the historical Jesus and quite different from the ‘corpus Christi’ of Catholic worship...’ (pp. 24-5).

  Stimulating and intricately argued though Olschki’s monograph is, it is ultimately hard to see why Chrétien, who was able to refer to ‘the false Jews, who should be put down like dogs’, 12 should be so mild and reasonable towards heretics, especially given that he was writing at the behest of a patron, Philip of Flanders, who, in Olschki’s own words, ‘after 1168, when he took over control of Flanders... proceeded to take more effective and more violent measures of repression against this centre of heretical expansion than the king of France had hitherto dared to employ’ (pp. 60 – 1). Is there really anything dangerously undesirable or untoward about the Grail Castle, the contents of its procession, or the Fisher King himself? If they were intended to represent, in Olschki’s words, ‘the religious aberrations that menaced the orthodoxy of courtly society’ (p. 45), one would expect Chrétien to be rather less gentle in his correction of them. And Olschki’s argument becomes much less convincing when he refers to Perceval’s hermit uncle as ‘the one who has found the way of salvation by remaining within the true faith, to which he causes Perceval to return, while the magic castle [of the Fisher King and the grail procession] disappears forever, as a symbol of that illusion and error which the young hero, now redeemed, definitely renounces:

  De Perceval plus longuemant

  Ne parole li contes ci.13

  Such,’ says Olschki, ‘would appear to be... the basic allegory of Chrétien’s poem’ (p. 30). This is very odd. The two lines Olschki quotes do not conclude business at the Grail Castle at all; there is no reason whatever to say that it ‘disappears forever’: Olschki is somewhat bizarrely overlooking the two verses which immediately follow, in which Chrétien says ‘You’ll have heard a great deal about Sir Gawain before I tell of him [Perceval] again.’14 There is every reason to suppose that, had Chrétien’s death not prevented the poem’s completion, the Fisher King would then have been revisited. Chrétien’s Continuators certainly thought so: none of them saw matters finished like Olschki; they are all at pains to bring Gawain and Perceval back to the castle to do what Perceval had left undone.

  And one thing is certain: when these later poets do revisit the Grail Castle, they are significantly under the Christianising influence of Robert de Boron, incorporating his idea of the Grail and its Biblical origins as described in his story of Joseph of Arimathea – without a hint of heresy. The decisive Christianisation of the Grail is Robert’s vital contribution; because although I doubt that Chrétien was making deliberate and systematic heretical references and creating, in Olschki’s words, ‘a drama between heresy and faith’ (op. cit., here), Olschki may well be right to show how open Chrétien’s mysterious story could have been to non-orthodox interpretation. It must be said that it is very noticeable that Robert de Boron goes out of his way in the opening paragraphs of Joseph (which are, significantly, uncharacteristically heavy handed) to emphasise absolutely orthodox ideas about the incarnation of Christ, the power of baptism in water and the authority of the ministers of Holy Church – all rejected by the Cathars, who were soon to be the objects of the Albigensian Crusade launched by Innocent III in 1209. Even more insistent are Robert’s positive references to the Holy Trinity: as early as the 1140s Bernard of Clairvaux had found a denial of the Trinity prevalent in the Cathar heartland of Toulouse. Could it be that Robert was indeed aware of the possibility of non-orthodox interpretations of Chretien’s extraordinarily potent story, and saw the need to claim it absolutely for orthodoxy?

  Whether or not this is the case, I believe that Chrétien’s combination of the mightily suggestive lance (even though Robert does not mention it in Joseph) and a radiant vessel suddenly, briefly and tantalisingly revealed to be containing a host inspired Robert de Boron to his crucial idea of making the mysterious grail unequivocally Christian by giving it an origin in the Biblical past. 15 This idea makes his Joseph of Arimathea, in the words of William Roach, ‘one of the most important documents in the history of the legend of the Holy Grail�
�.16

  Robert, drawing partly on the canonical gospels and importantly on fragmentary stories of Joseph of Arimathea in the apocryphal Gospel of Nichodemus, created in his Joseph an ingenious early provenance for the grail. In writing what could almost be described as a new apocryphal gospel – carefully validated in a passage (below, here) in which he explains why the other gospels do not mention certain incidents involved – Robert makes the grail the vessel used by Christ at the Last Supper, given to Pilate and passed on by him to Joseph of Arimathea, who uses it to collect the blood that flows from the crucified Christ’s wounds; then, when Joseph is subsequently imprisoned, Christ brings the vessel to him and entrusts it to him and his successors. The reader will then see how Robert introduces the Fisher King (and explains the name) and carefully accounts for the vessel and its guardians finding their way to Britain.

  But it is a Britain in which Arthur, let alone Perceval, is yet to be born, and the Merlin proceeds to bridge the gap in time by telling a rich story of the land’s early history. Significant parts of this material (and the Mort Artu section of the Perceval) are derived from Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Latin History of the Kings of Britain and/or from one of its adaptations into French such as the Roman de Brut by the Jerseyman Wace. One of the central ideas in Merlin is the Biblical ‘source’ of the Round Table, as Robert states that it is a symbolic reflection of the table of the Last Supper. Interestingly, Wace was the first to mention the Round Table in vernacular literature, and although its origins probably lie in Celtic tradition – perhaps from the memory of chieftain and warriors seated in a circle around a central fire – it is intriguing that an amazing relic, a round table reputed to be that of the Last Supper, had been reportedly seen by Crusaders in the Holy Land.17