The Mammoth Book of King Arthur (53 page)

Chrétien’s earliest surviving romances cleverly play around with the basic concept of love versus valour.
Erec et Enide,
begun in the late 1160s, is about a knight who wins a
bride because of his daring and bravery, and settles down to married life. After his friends begin to believe that he has become a coward, he sets out again to prove himself.
Cligés,
from the early 1170s, tells of a knight who is in love with a woman who is promised to another. To forget about her, he goes to Arthur’s court but is later
reunited with
his love, using a twist on the Tristan theme. In
Yvain: Le Chevalier au lion
(late 1170s), Yvain falls in love with the widow of a lord he has just killed. She agrees to marry him if he will
stay with her and guard the castle and its spring. He does so, but soon yearns for adventure and risks losing his love in order to return to Arthur’s court.

Chrétien’s influence cannot be underestimated. Both
Erec et Enide
and
Yvain
reappeared in Welsh literature, and were grouped into the
Mabinogion,
renamed
Geraint ab Erbin
and
Owain
(also known as
The Lady of the Fountain).
Arguments have raged over whether the Welsh versions were based on Chrétien’s stories, or if
both drew their inspiration from a common Celtic story. My own view is that there must have been a Celtic original, either Welsh or Breton, because we find that Chrétien borrows so many of
his names from the earlier tales. This must be the case for
Erec et Enide,
because at the end of Chrétien’s story, when Erec sets out again on his quests, he takes Enide with
him but behaves very strangely towards her. He will not let her speak and rebukes her if she does, even though she is trying to save Erec from danger. For a courtly romance, Erec is exceedingly
uncourtly. The Welsh version makes more sense. In it, Geraint is led to believe that his wife has been unfaithful and so takes her with him on his adventures in order to keep an eye on her. It is
probable that the original Celtic story was along these lines, and Chrétien adapted it for his own purpose, and that the Welsh version remained more faithful to the original. The Welsh
versions are also notable for their lack of courtly intrigue. These are basic stories, clearly with no desire for all that romantic nonsense.

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 has 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.