The Grail story, Weston points
out, met with hostility from the Church. So also did the entire Matter of
Britain. But then, in the early thirteenth century, the Arthurian saga was
taken up and rewritten in the cloister by Cistercian monks, an order at forefront
of the Reform movement. Their version is known as the Vulgate cycle. In five
interrelated books it tells the entire story in the form best known today,
starting with the origin of the Grail itself in L'Estoire del Saint Graal,
and ending with the collapse of Arthur's kingdom in La Mort le Roi Artu.
The story of the finding of the Grail is told in La Queste del Saint Graal,
and it is here we meet Sir Galahad for the first time.
After decades of denouncing Arthurian tales the Reformers decided to write
their own. No scholar pretends that the Vulgate cycle is a tale told for amusement.
It is, quite frankly, Cistercian propaganda. But why would the monks have chosen
such an unlikely vehicle to propagate their views on sex and spirituality?
Loomis, still the most influential academic on the subject of Arthurian legend,
suggested a change of heart on the part of the clerics: "Though scorned
and denounced by the clergy, these conteurs finally won their opponents over".[1] Jessie Weston had put forward an entirely different view: “The remodelling
is so radical that it seems most reasonable to conclude that it was purposeful,
that the original author of the Queste had a very clear idea of the real nature
of the Grail, and was bent upon a complete restatement in terms of current
orthodoxy.”[2]
The Vulgate’s Queste departs considerably from earlier versions
of the story. The Grail knight is now neither Perceval nor Gawain, though both
figure
in the tale in various stages of transformation. The character of Gawain is
completely blackened. From Chrétien's perfect chivalrous knight, foil
to the gauche Perceval - a reputation he retained in English romances - Gawain
in later French stories had already degenerated into a comic character, lead
astray by lust. But the Vulgate transforms him into a lecherous violent lout
who ends up slaughtering his dearest friends - a monkish caricature of the
vices of knighthood. Perceval fares better: He retains the naivety of his earlier
incarnations, but now a virgin, accompanied not by his beloved but by his
virgin sister, he is a mere sidekick to the new hero, Galahad.
Galahad is not a traditional character with roots in Celtic pagan tradition.
He is a purely literary invention, with no existence prior to the Vulgate cycle.
The Cistercian writers make him the son of Lancelot by the daughter of King
Pelles (magically disguised as Guinevere), who is conceived specifically to
accomplish the task from which his father, though the best knight in the world,
is debarred because of his sin with the Queen. Galahad himself is immune to
lust. He is a flawless virgin with no imperfections of character, and predestined
for his task, so though his story retains the title 'La Quest del Saint Graal',
it is not actually a quest any more. There is no initial failure and subsequent
success, no development of character through the experience of hardship and
disappointment, there is simply an inevitable progress towards an inevitable
finale, with a running commentary on the action from a host of moralizing hermits.
Most significantly, where once the achievement of the quest brought blessings
on all, restoring the Waste Land, now we have the opposite effect.
When Galahad reaches the Grail an apparition of Christ, emanating from it,
announces the Grail is to leave Logres 'this same night' because the dissolute
inhabitants 'neither serve nor honour it as is its due'. Galahad's vision of
the Grail benefits only himself: having delivered the sacred vessel, as instructed,
to the holy city of Sarras, he rules reluctantly for a year before his prayer
is granted and, dying, he is translated into beatitude. But Arthur's realm
is damned by his achievement, and the stage is set for the destruction of the
Round Table.
In Weston’s view the writers of the Vulgate knew perfectly well what
the Grail signified, and deliberately inverted the story. Others argue that
the Grail had no meaning before the Cistercians imposed their own on it. Richard
Barber defines the Vulgate story as a “radical rethinking of the idea
of the Grail from the hints and half-thought-out ideas of earlier writers.”[3] Richard Cavendish states that the Vulgate cycle “imposed order and coherence
on the whole rambling Matter of Britain" and that the surviving Grail
romances are not, as Weston thought, half understood remnants of an heretical
legend, but “stages in the making of a Christian myth.”[4] Yet
it is demonstrably the case that the Vulgate did deliberately invert the themes
of Courtly Love so prominent in the original Grail stories.
An incident from the adventures of Sir Bors provides a sufficient illustration.
Bors is Lancelot’s cousin, one of the companions who comes close to achieving
the Grail. The Queste tells how, after many tribulations, he finds rest in
an abbey where the saintly abbot is able to explain to him the significance
of his experiences, and the meaning his dreams. Bors had dreamt he saw a rotten
stump about to totter, and two lilies, one of which leaned to other and "would
have robbed it of its whiteness"[5] but that a venerable old man parted
them so that neither touched the other, and both grew into trees laden with
fruit. This dream, the abbot explained, related to one of his earlier adventures,
in which he rescued of a maiden from her abductor.
The rescuing of a maiden is of course a commonplace of Arthurian romance, and
the usual result would be that the hero is rewarded by her love and her hand
in marriage. But not so in the Vulgate Quest. Bors never touches the girl.
He is a pure soul on a spiritual quest; he has known a woman only once in his
life and he deeply regrets his error. But though he had made no lustful mistake
in his conduct towards this particular maiden, his conscience is still troubled.
For in order to rescue the girl Bors had been forced to abandon his own brother
to the mercies of his brutal captors. He had done no wrong, the abbot assures
him, for which was it better to let perish, the rotten stump or the lilies?
His sinful brother Lionel was the rotten stump. The lilies were the maiden
and her abductor. The old man was Our Lord, whose instrument Bors had been.
That both lilies grew into fruit-laden trees indicated that great lineages
would arise from these two. But this could not have happened if Bors had not
parted them. If the knight had succeeded in ravishing the girl, if by this
foul deed she had lost her maidenhead, the wrath of God would have condemned
them to sudden death and eternal damnation - that's both of them, the rapist
and his victim.
Weston suggested the Vulgate’s perversion of the original meaning of
the Grail was quite deliberate. Of course she is right. P M Matarasso, in the
introduction to her translation of the Queste, actually describes it as an ‘anti-romance’: "The
stage is the same and so are the players, but all the accepted values are inverted."[6] The Vulgate writers were not won over. They adopted the Matter of Britain,
not because it was a suitable vehicle for their teachings, but precisely in
order to subvert a propaganda weapon aimed at themselves. Not only their Grail
quest but their entire Arthurian story is a deliberate perversion of the original.
The tragic fall of Camelot, the loss of Arthur's Golden Age, is the culmination
of the Vulgate story. In Geoffrey's history it is political intrigue and treachery
which bring this about. In the Vulgate version, it is due to exactly that lay
conduct which most exercised the Reformers, the sin which, they claimed, brought
defeat on the second crusade - sex: Arthur's kingdom is destroyed by adultery,
incest, and, most especially, by Courtly Love.
The principal courtly lovers are, always, Sir Lancelot and Queen Guinevere.
The best known element of the Arthurian saga is the tale of how their love
destroys the fellowship of the Round Table. But the story is familiar because
of the Vulgate rewrite. The Vulgate formed the basis of Malory's Mort d'Arthur
and Malory in turn inspired Tennyson. The monks' version of Arthur's doom is
the one that has come down to us, but there is nothing of this tale in earlier
versions.
True, Guinevere is a traitress and adulteress in Geoffrey's history, but her
co-conspirator is Mordred: Geoffrey knows nothing of Lancelot. For his account
of Guinevere's conduct Geoffrey is drawing on Welsh originals, we know, for
fragments survive. But in these Welsh tales Guinevere is as likely to be assaulted,
raped, or kidnapped as to willingly take off with Arthur's rival. It is accepted
that she is, in fact, a symbol of sovereignty, even Sovereignty personified,
so that adultery or abduction of his Queen are mytho-poetic references to an
attempted usurpation of Arthur's throne. The Lancelot story is something entirely
different.
Lancelot is Queen's champion, a position first held by Gawain - one romance
tells how both men attempt to rescue her from an abductor. Queen's champion,
the young knight who serves Sovereignty and courts her, is not Arthur's rival
but his heir: Gawain is his sister's son. This symbolic meaning may have been
lost in the continental romances, but Lancelot, before the Vulgate got hold
of him, is never Arthur's enemy. No harm comes to Camelot from his love of
the Queen. Their love story originally ended with Lancelot’s elevation
to the kingship. On Guinevere's death, broken-hearted, Lancelot determined
to leave Arthur's court and return home to Brittany. So Arthur and his knights
elect to accompany their friend and assist him in wresting his father's throne
from the clutches of the usurper Claudas.
The familiar story of Arthur’s demise at the hands of his own son, product
of an insestuous union with Morgan le Fay, also originates with the Vulgate
storytellers. Mordred’s earliest appearance as Arthur’s enemy is
in Geoffrey of Monmouth’s History of the Kings of Britain, for which,
as usual, that writer had a source, the Camlann entry in the Welsh Annals which
says both Arthur and ‘Medraut’ died in that battle, though it doesn’t
specify that they were on opposite sides. Geoffrey’s Mordred is Arthur’s
nephew, the son of his siter Anna by her legitimate husband, Loth of Lodonesia,
and the brother of Gawain. During Arthur’s absence on the Continent fighting
the Romans, Mordred attempts to usurp both his throne and his Queen, but this
original Mordred is no nemesis prepared for Arthur by his own sin. Though Arthur
the leacher and fornicator was already a part of ecclesiastical legend by Geoffrey’s
time, appearing in that character in the Welsh Saints Lives, it was the Cistercian
writers of the Vulgate Cycle who conceived of an Arthur who had sex with his
sister. The story is an illustration of the dangers inherent in any unregulated
union. When sex occurs outside marriage, purely on the impulse of the participants
and with no cleric present to check the genealogies of the offending couple,
there is no telling what evil may follow. The consequence in this case was
the destruction of a country. But then of course, Britain was already damned
by the achievement of the Grail.
The original Matter of Britain was directed against the Reformers, and well
they knew it. They subverted the story because they feared its influence would
undermine their own preaching. We have further evidence of their concerns in
the Jeu d'Adam, a twelfth-century play designed to be performed in church and
directed at precisely the same audience as the Arthurian romances, the nobility.
It is a play for four characters, Adam, Eve, God and the Devil. It presents
the original paradisial state of Eden as being due to these characters observing
the correct feudal relationships: Adam is God's vassal, Eve is Adam's vassal,
God's sub-vassal. But the Devil enters in, introducing equality between man
and wife, and suggesting to Adam "you will be the Creator's peer".
Adam at first resists his blandishments, but is finally persuaded by his wife
to eat the apple, remarking "I will believe you because you are my peer".
Adam's sin is to treat his wife as an equal. The fall from grace, the origin
of suffering and sin, is all down to this subversion of the natural hierarchy.
The play ends on a warning - beware of poets![7]
The Reformers knew what they were up against. The Grail legend was indeed directed
against the papacy, like the rest of the Matter of Britain and the ideal of
Courtly Love itself. And as those who opposed the papacy were, by definition,
heretics, ineluctably it was heretical. But what exactly was the Grail heresy?
Heretic Emperor: The Lost History of King Arthur
Copyright © V M Pickin 2005
1. R S Loomis, The Grail: From Celtic Myth to Christian Symbol, p273
2. Jessie Weston, From Ritual to Romance, p207
3. Richard Barber, King Arthur, Hero and Legend, p75
4. Richard Cavendish, King Arthur and the Grail, pp167 &128
5. The Quest of the Holy Grail, trans. P M Matarasso, p198
6. The Quest of the Holy Grail, P M Matarasso, Introduction, p15
7. George Duby, The Knight, the Lady and the Priest, p213-6