UC-NRLF 
 
 B 4 D7fl t.D3 
 
GIFT OF 
 YosM S. Kuno 
 
IN QUEST OF 
 THE HOLY GRAAL 
 
Br THE SAME AUTHOR 
 
 IN THE TEMPLE CLASSICS 
 THE HIGH HISTORY OF THE HOLY GRAAL 
 
 2 'vols. Translated from the old French. 
 Clothj 3J. net. Limp Lambskin^ /^s. net. 
 
IN QUEST OF THE 
 
 HOLY GRAAL 
 
 AN INTRODUCTION TO THE 
 STUDY OF THE LEGEND BY 
 
 SEBASTIAN EVANS, LL.D. 
 
 LONDON 
 J. M. DENT AND CO. 
 
 ALDINE HOUSE 
 1898 
 
~^-iir<M-c. y- \Kc.c^<^ 
 
 Edinburgh: T, and A. Constable, Printers to Her Majesty 
 

 TO MY FELLOW- WORKERS, 
 
 ENGLISH AND FOREIGN, IN 
 THE FIELD OF THE GRAAL 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAP. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 I. PERCEVAL 
 
 I 
 
 II. GAWAIN . . . . 
 
 27 
 
 III. KING FISHERMAN . 
 
 51 
 
 IV. ELUCIDATION 
 
 97 
 
 V. THE CURSE OF LOGRES . 
 
 . 133 
 
 VI. ARTHUR . . . . 
 
 • iSS 
 
 Vn. DATES . . . . 
 
 173 
 
 INDEX . . . . 
 
 • 191 
 
PERCEVAL 
 
 Vergente mundi vespere 
 Novum sidus exoritur 
 Et clausis culpe carcere 
 Preco Salutis mittitur. 
 
 Doctrinam evangellcam 
 Spargens per orbis cardinem 
 Pestem fugat heretlcam 
 Novum producens Ordinem. 
 
 In festo B. Dominici. 
 
 A MYSTERY from the first has enshrouded the 
 Legend of the Graal. That the Graal was 
 intended in some way to typify the Sacrament 
 of the Holy Communion is abundantly clear 
 from a thousand passages in the various versions 
 of the story. All beyond this primary indica- 
 tion is indefinite, shadowy, impalpable. Yet 
 we feel as we read that the words employed are 
 intended to convey some deeper meaning than 
 the fiction bears on the face of it. The romance 
 is more than a romance. It is also a secret 
 
2 'The Holy Graal: 
 
 written in cipher. Its mysticism is as marked 
 as its mystery. Throughout, there is a con- 
 tinual suggestion of hidden meanings, a re- 
 current insistence on things seen as types and 
 symbols of things unseen. When Malory tells 
 us that ' thistory of the Sancgreal is cronycled for 
 one of the truest and the holiest that is in thys 
 world,' or an earlier poet that it was written by 
 the hand of Our Lord Himself, it is clear that 
 they meant to draw a clear line of demarcation 
 between this story and the older secular romances 
 of Arthur and his knights. But wherein lies 
 the difference between them ? What is the 
 key of the cipher ? What is the Presence 
 that haunts and hints at every turn in the path 
 that lies through the hallowed ground ? 
 
 Take the groundwork of the story told in 
 the * High History of the Holy Graal.' 
 
 Every incident recorded bears more or less 
 directly on the history of Yglais, the widowed 
 Lady of the Valleys of Camelot, and her three 
 royal brethren — King Fisherman, King Pelles 
 ' of the Lower Folk,' and the King of Castle 
 Mortal. These trace their unrecorded ancestry 
 up to Joseph of Abarimacie, the good soldier of 
 Pilate who took down the body of the Saviour 
 from hanging on the cross. The husband of 
 Yglais was Alain li Gros, the eldest of twelve 
 
Perceval 3 
 
 knights, all of whom died in arms within 
 twelve years of being made knight. They 
 were lineal descendants of ' Nichodemus.' 
 Alain li Gros and Yglais had one daughter, 
 Dindrane, and one son, Perceval, the hero of 
 the romance. 
 
 The theme of the epos is an error rather than 
 a sin of omission. The Rich King Fisher- 
 man dwells in the Castle of the Graal, where 
 the most holy Vessel is enshrined in a most holy 
 chapel. On a time, his nephew, Perceval, visits 
 the Rich King at his castle. The King, his 
 household, and his guests are. served from the 
 Graal itself by a damsel with golden hair. Blood 
 from the point of a lance falls mystically into 
 the holy Vessel drop by drop, but the food dis- ij : - 
 tributed is abundant for all, and the savour is f „ J, 
 sweeter than that of any earthly meat. Perceval 
 partakes with the rest ; but although he beholds 
 the Graal three several times, forbears or forgets 
 to ask what the wondrous food may be, and who 
 may be those to whom it is distributed. This 
 failure to ask the fateful question is the well- 
 spring of sorrow and manifold tribulation. * Of 
 one little word that he delayed to speak came 
 to pass so sore mischance in Greater Britain 
 that all the lands and all the islands fell thereby 
 into much sorrow.' ' All lands were commoved 
 
4 'The Holy Graal: 
 
 to war thereby, nor never thereafter might 
 knight meet other but he should fight with 
 him in arms upon none other occasion.' The 
 Damsel with golden hair becomes suddenly 
 bald, and the Rich King Fisherman falls into a 
 grievous 'languishment ' of which he can never 
 be healed save by another good knight appear- 
 ing at his Castle and asking the question which 
 Perceval left unasked. Gawain arrives, and 
 the Graal twice appears before him, but no word 
 of inquiry passes his lips. Lancelot arrives, but 
 not even a sight of the Graal is vouchsafed to 
 him on account of his love for Guenievre, 
 Arthur's Queen. Before any knight has arrived 
 to break the spell. King Fisherman dies, and 
 his wicked brother, the King of Castle Mortal, 
 usurps the Castle of the Graal. Perceval 
 besieges the castle, which he enters in triumph 
 just as his unrighteous uncle in despair stabs 
 himself to the heart on the topmost wall, and 
 drops headlong into the river beneath, which is 
 the River of Hell. Perceval now enjoys his 
 rightful heritage in peace and honour. The 
 Graal, which has disappeared while the King of 
 Castle Mortal usurps the Castle of the Graal, 
 presents itself again in the most holy chapel, 
 together with the mystic lance, ^ for our Lord 
 God loved the place much.' It has three 
 
Perceval 5 
 
 names — ' Eden,* ' Castle of Joy,* and ' Castle 
 of Souls.' 
 
 This is the pivot of the story. The various 
 episodes incidentally connected with the main 
 story and the continuation of the story itself I 
 do not here propose to discuss. If the central 
 conception of the romance is once clearly under- 
 stood, the rest Vi^ill fall naturally into place and 
 suggest its own interpretation. My principal 
 object is to identify Perceval himself and the 
 group of personages directly associated with 
 him, more particularly King Fisherman and 
 Gawain ; to determine the nature and signifi- 
 cance of the question which Perceval neglected 
 to ask at the Castle of the Graal ; to ascertain 
 what were the ' mischances that fell on Greater 
 Britain,' and to show in what way they were 
 the result of Perceval's neglect. If these cardinal 
 identifications are established, the general drift 
 of the legend will be sufficiently clear to in- 
 dicate its relations to the older legends of 
 Arthur, with which I have nothing here to do. 
 The towers of Camelot and Joyous-Gard, the 
 laundcs and forests of Lyonesse and Broceliand, 
 lie beyond the limits of my quest. Such adven- 
 tures as are here met with befall only either in 
 or between the realm of Logres and the Castle 
 of the Graal. 
 
6 The Holy Graal: 
 
 Who, then, is Perceval, the hero of the story ? 
 He is one of Arthur's knights, but his relations 
 with Arthur are of a wholly different order from 
 those of any other knight. Never once, from 
 first to last, does Perceval take his seat at the 
 Table Round among the other knights of 
 Arthur. Arthur comes to Perceval's Castle of 
 the Graal, but it is as seeker and learner. He 
 is but a humble follower in the footsteps of 
 Perceval. If Arthur and Gawain can be said 
 to achieve the Quest of the Graal at all, it is 
 only by finding it in Perceval's most holy chapel. 
 The story only implies, it does not explicitly 
 tell us, that the Graal appeared to them. Earthly 
 knight and king are never once admitted to 
 the higher level of the spiritual knighthood of 
 Perceval. Lancelot himself never so much as 
 sees the Graal. The story throughout is the 
 apotheosis of spiritual as distinguished from 
 temporal chivalry. 
 
 So much, indeed, is common to all versions 
 of the legend. The superiority of spiritual to 
 temporal knighthood is insisted on as strongly 
 by Malory as by the writer of the High History. 
 But, read in this light, surely the pedigree of 
 Perceval here given offers no impenetrable 
 mystery ? His mother is Yglais. Whose son 
 was the hero of a spiritual romance likely to 
 
Perceval 7 
 
 be, if not of holy Mother Church ? The very- 
 word itself is simply one mediaeval way of spell- 
 ing the modern French eglise. Here, at least, 
 the author has no desire to conceal his meaning. 
 Who Perceval himself may be, he leaves to be 
 inferred from his history, but he will leave no 
 room for doubt that he is a son of Mother 
 Church. Nor, at the time the romance was 
 written, was the name of Perceval's father less 
 easy to understand. Alain li Gros is, in fact, 
 historically and accurately represented as the 
 spiritual father of Perceval. Alan the Great, 
 planus de Insulis, Alain de Plsle, is none other 
 than the once famous Doctor Universalis^ whose 
 history may be read at large in the sixteenth 
 volume of the Histoire Litteraire de la France, 
 Here it is sufficient to note that about 11 74 
 he became a monk at Canterbury, and accom- 
 panied the Archbishop to the memorable 
 Lateran Council of 1179. While at Rome on 
 this occasion, he was commissioned by Alex- 
 ander III. to write against the Albigenses and 
 other heretics, a task to which he brought a 
 keenness of intellect and a knowledge of 
 Latinity only equalled by the fervour of his 
 orthodoxy. In the year of his return from Rome, 
 he was made Prior of Christchurch at Canter- 
 bury ; and in 1186, Abbot of Tewkesbury, 
 
8 The Holy Graal : 
 
 where he wrote his life of S. Thomas of Canter- 
 bury. Finally, he retired to the Abbey of 
 Citeaux, where he died apparently in the year 
 1 201. The dates are noteworthy. The 
 romance was obviously written after Alain's 
 death, but at a time when his name and fame 
 were still in all men's mouths. More note- 
 worthy still is the fact that the work of 
 Perceval's father Alain against the Albigenses 
 formed no small portion of the spiritual 
 armoury of the preachers who wrought and 
 fought in the Albigensian crusade; itself, as 
 will be seen presently, an event closely con- 
 nected with the * High History ' of the Holy 
 Graal. 
 
 The identification of two other members of 
 Perceval's family is not less easy and certain. 
 The Rich King Fisherman is as obviously the 
 Pope as Yglais is obviously the Church. There 
 is only one potentate who bears the title. To- 
 day, as when the story was written, the Pope 
 at times wears the ' Fisherman's ring,' and 
 now, as then, makes use of it to seal a certain 
 portion of his private correspondence. The 
 Romancer could not have hit on a happier 
 title for the Sovereign Pontiff who occupies 
 the throne founded by the fisherman of Galilee. 
 The King of Castle Mortal wears a disguise 
 
Perceval 9 
 
 equally slight. His features are as clearly- 
 drawn and as clearly recognisable. There is 
 'as much bad in him as there is good in his 
 two brethren.' His throne is in the Castle of 
 Mortality, not in the Castle of the Graal. He 
 is the Chief of the temporal world, as his brother 
 is Chief of the spiritual world. If the Rich 
 King Fisherman is the Pope, the King of 
 Castle Mortal can be none other than the 
 Emperor. The first draught of the romance 
 may possibly have been sketched out in the 
 reign of the fourth Otho. It was certainly 
 finished in that of the second Frederic. Either 
 one or the other may well have been the 
 original of the unfavourable portrait drawn by 
 the orthodox romancer. 
 
 The third brother is less easy to identify, 
 because his real history is less familiar than 
 that of Pope or Emperor. The time, more- 
 over, during which even a romancer would 
 be justified in describing him as king at all was 
 very limited. Twenty years before the book 
 was written, it might have been barely possible 
 to regard him as King of the Lesser Folk — // rois 
 de basse gent. Twenty years after, it would 
 ^have been impossible. In his royal capacity 
 he belongs to the age of the romance and to 
 no other. Once identified, however, the identi- 
 
lo The Holy Graal : 
 
 fication is as certain as that of the others. No 
 alternative suggestion is possible. He is the 
 Abbot of Citeaux. 
 
 The extraordinary predominance of the 
 Cistercian Order in the early years of the 
 thirteenth century is one of the marvels of 
 history. From the days of Bernard of Clair- 
 vaux, the re-founder of the Order, if the Pope 
 was the head of the Church Militant, the Abbots 
 of Citeaux had been as generally recognised 
 as the heads of what may be termed the Church 
 Military. All the great semi-monastic Orders 
 of Knighthood, the Templars, the Hospitallers, 
 and many others, were more or less closely 
 affiliated to Citeaux. When a crusade was 
 declared, the necessary arrangements, the 
 preaching, the organisation, the general juris- 
 diction — in the case of the Albigensian Crusade, 
 even the military command — were all delegated 
 to the Abbot of Citeaux. The Cistercian 
 Order, in fact, was the executive of the Papacy 
 in its temporal aspect. The relations between 
 Pope and Abbot are repeatedly referred to in 
 the letters of Innocent iii., the greatest of the 
 Popes and one of the best, to Arnold Amalric, 
 the greatest of the Abbots and one of the worst. 
 In these letters, closely contemporary with the 
 romance of the Graal, these relations are defined 
 
Perceval 1 1 
 
 by Scriptural analogies from the Old Testament 
 and the New. The Pope is Aaron, the High 
 Priest of the Temple. The Abbot is Moses, 
 the Captain of the armies of God. The Pope 
 is the successor of Peter, the Apostle of the 
 Church of the Circumcision. The Abbot is the 
 successor of Paul, the Apostle of the Church 
 of the Gentiles. No illustrations could more 
 aptly define the commanding position held at 
 the time by the Abbot of Citeaux. 
 
 But this was not all. The predominance of 
 the Evangelical party in the Church of England 
 at the time of Negro emancipation, or even of 
 the Puritans in the days of Cromwell, was only 
 a feeble reflection of the predominance of what 
 may be called Cistercianism in the Church at 
 this period. The claims of the Cistercians to 
 superior sanctity, always proclaimed by their 
 preaching, and not unfrequently justified by 
 their practice, were admitted as unquestion- 
 able within, and very frequently without, the 
 'religious world' of the period. Kings and 
 queens, and a vast array of minor nobilities, 
 vied with each other in their benefactions to 
 the Order, and even Emperors were fain to pass 
 into the unknown world clad in the Cistercian 
 habit, proof against the claws of the Evil One. 
 
 Yet more. The world, it was well known. 
 
12 T^he Holy Graal: 
 
 was beginning to ' verge on Antichrist and 
 Doom/ Joachim, Abbot of Flora in Calabria, 
 was a prophet whose utterances were not less 
 divinely inspired than those of Merlin, Rabanus, 
 or the Sibyls. To him it had been revealed 
 that the world should pass through three stages : 
 the first under the more direct governance of 
 God the Father, the second under that of God 
 the Son, and the third under that of God 
 the Holy Spirit. Each stage must have its own 
 Chosen People. In the first they had been the 
 Children of Israel. In the second they had 
 been the disciples of Christ. In the third it 
 needed_np argument to prove that the Chosen 
 People were the Order of Citeaux. The 
 stages overlapped by considerable periods, but 
 the transition from one to another v/as defined 
 by some critical event. At one time Joachim 
 thought that this event would take place in the 
 year 1200, and that the government of the 
 world would then pass into the hands of the 
 Third Person of the Holy Trinity in a manner 
 that none could mistake or deny. He was 
 certain that Antichrist had already been born 
 into the world. He seems to have lived long 
 enough to find that the millennium did not 
 commence with the year 1200, and to adjourn 
 the verification of his predictions to 1 260, a year 
 
Perceval 1 3 
 
 much fancied by later interpreters of prophecy. 
 These were not the idle dreams of an unheeded 
 visionary. They were accepted as revelations 
 of the Everlasting Gospel by all the Cistercians 
 and their friends. Even Innocent could speak 
 a kindly word in season for the Calabrian seer, 
 and a slight taint of peradventure heresy only 
 gave zest to the appetite of the numberless 
 mystics of that age of mysticism. 
 
 At this time, then, when the Abbot of 
 Citeaux was recognised as leader and chief of 
 the most influential organisation in Christen- 
 dom, more actively influential than either 
 Papacy or Empire, when Innocent had pro- 
 claimed him Moses, and the armies of the 
 Albigensian Crusade hailed him as General-in- 
 Chief, the romancer was amply justified in 
 calling him King and making him brother of 
 the Emperor and Pope. Whether the * Lower 
 Folk,' the basse gent^ refers to the monastic 
 brethren of the Order under his rule, or to the 
 actual lay-troops and knights of the crusading 
 army he commanded, may perhaps be doubtful. 
 There is no doubt that the third uncle of 
 Perceval is Arnold Amalric, Abbot of Citeaux, 
 or his successor ; the second. King Fisher- 
 man, Pope Innocent iii., or his successor 
 Honorius iii. ; and the first, the King of 
 
14 'The Holy Graal: 
 
 Castle Mortal, the Emperor Otho iv., or 
 Frederic ii. 
 
 Who, then, is Perceval ? He is a son of the 
 Church and the Church's champion against 
 the Albigenses, Alain de I'Isle. Obviously, 
 therefore, he is an ecclesiastical hero. He is 
 no lay-knight, noble or otherwise. He is to be 
 sought not among the kings or captains of the 
 age, but among the saints of the Church. 
 His knighthood is spiritual, not temporal. 
 Yet a knight he is throughout — according to 
 the romance, the Best Knight in the World. 
 His sonship to Alain suggests that he may be 
 a champion of the Church engaged in the 
 Albigensian Crusade. The romancer gives us 
 his portrait : ' Good knight was he without 
 fail, for he was chaste and virgin of his body, 
 and hardy of heart and puissant . . . not 
 boastful was he of speech, and it seemed not 
 by his cheer that he had so great courage.' 
 Other touches are added later. He is secret 
 in his ways. He is true and loving to his 
 friends, but the vengeance he wreaks upon his 
 enemies knows neither pity nor remorse. 
 Readers of Dante will already have surmised 
 his identity. Bonaventura in Paradise describes 
 him to the poet. He is ' the amorous wooer 
 of the Christian faith, the holy athlete, kindly 
 
Perceval 1 5 
 
 to his own, and harsh to his enemies/ who 
 ^ smote the stocks of heresy with a blow that 
 fell keenest where the resistance was most 
 stubborn,' the vinedresser in the vineyard of 
 the Lord, who, possessing him wholly, willed 
 also that he should be called 'the Lord's own,' 
 Dominic. 
 
 It is even so. Perceval, the Saint of romance, 
 is none other than Dominic, the Knight of the 
 Church. Strange and startling, almost para- 
 doxical, as the collocation of names and the 
 ideas connected with them may be, the close 
 and vital analogy between the champion of 
 the court of Arthur and the champion of the 
 court of Innocent is more than likeness — it is 
 identity. Not a single 'note' of personal 
 appearance, temperament, intellect, or character 
 recorded in the lives of the saint but is faith- 
 fully reproduced in the hero of the romance. 
 He has exchanged what the old author calls 
 ' the armour of religion ' for the armour of 
 knighthood, and that is all. He is the same 
 man. If these few identifications are correct, 
 they cannot but help to unravel no small por- 
 tion of the mystery in which the romance is 
 enshrouded. 
 
 A more illogical foundation for a story than 
 that of the romance it would be hard to con- 
 
1 6 T^he Holy Graal: 
 
 ceive. A young unknown knight comes to 
 the court of a great king, where a strange and 
 holy mystery passes before him. Because he 
 does not then and there demand to be told the 
 meaning of the mystery, the flood-gates of 
 disaster are lifted on Greater Britain and the 
 world at large, and the King himself is smitten 
 with a mysterious malady which in course of 
 time brings him to his grave. No wilder 
 enigma, it is safe to say, was ever propounded 
 to his readers by the writer of any religious 
 novel. Yet the author of the Book of the 
 Graal evidently takes it for granted that the 
 amazing postulate on which his phantasmagory 
 is founded will be accepted as strictly in 
 accordance with the nature of things and the 
 established order of the universe. In the world 
 of which he writes, the fatal ailments of 
 monarchs, illimitable civil war and desolation 
 of kingdoms, are the natural and inevitable 
 results of the shyness of a young military 
 gentleman, who refrains from making inquiries 
 which he feels might be regarded as imper- 
 tinent. It is most unfortunate, but so it is, 
 and under the existing conditions in this 
 strange world cannot be otherwise. 
 
 At first sight, indeed, it seems as if little 
 were gained by substituting Dominic for 
 
Perceval 1 7 
 
 Perceval and Pope Innocent iii. for King 
 Fisherman. It is only in the pages of romance 
 that Innocent takes to his bed because 
 Dominic does not ask questions, or that 
 unheard-of calamities fall upon England for 
 the same fantastic reason. Still, authors of 
 spiritual romances have at times a strange way 
 of putting things. When they chronicle 
 events, they do not use the language of the 
 chroniclers. History wears a different aspect 
 in the spiritual world. A heavy blow to the 
 influence of the Church, for instance, would 
 be likely enough to appear in religious romance 
 as a malady inflicted on the Head of the Church. 
 A far-reaching spiritual calamity in England 
 or elsewhere would almost certainly be de- 
 scribed as a desolation of the kingdom. The 
 problem to be solved, in fact, reduces itself to 
 a sum in historic proportion. As King 
 Fisherman is to the Pope, or S. Dominic to 
 Sir Perceval, so is the malady of King 
 Fisherman or the Desolation of England to 
 the real event recorded. 
 
 Up to this point all that can be predicated 
 about these events is that they resulted from 
 some error of omission on the part of Dominic 
 when on a visit to the Court of Innocent at 
 Rome at some period before the events 
 
 B 
 
1 8 'The Holy Graal: 
 
 recorded in the story are supposed to have 
 taken place. Dominic paid only one well- 
 authenticated visit to Rome before the year 
 121 5, and it is on this first visit that he must 
 have exercised his gift of reticence with such 
 disastrous results. The date of the visit is 
 probably 1204, although some of Dominic's 
 biographers relegate it to the next year. All, 
 however, are agreed as to the main circum- 
 stances in which it took place. In 1203, 
 Alphonso the Noble, King of Castile, was 
 anxious to find a suitable spouse for his eldest 
 son Ferdinand, then a lad of thirteen. He 
 accordingly sent an embassy to the father of 
 'a certain noble lady of the Marches' to 
 request her hand in marriage. The envoys 
 returned with a favourable answer, and were 
 again despatched with a large retinue to bring 
 the bride to Spain. The Lady of the Marches 
 died before their arrival, and the ambassadors 
 with their retinue turned aside to visit Rome 
 on their way back to Castile. 
 
 The chief of the embassy was Diego 
 d'Azeveda, Bishop of Osma in Old Castile, 
 who had brought with him as companion and 
 lieutenant Dominic, sub-prior of the Canons 
 of the same see. Dominic at this time was a 
 man of thirty-three, well known in his own 
 
Perceval 1 9 
 
 scholastic and canonical circles for his eloquence, 
 devotion, and austere purity of life. On their 
 way to the ' Marches,' wherever they may 
 have been, the Spaniards found themselves at 
 Toulouse, where Dominic was lodged in the 
 house of a heretic. Most of the night was 
 spent in earnest converse, and before the morrow 
 dawned the heretic had renounced his heresy. 
 Dominic accepted the omen. The idea which 
 dominated his life, the foundation of an Order 
 of Preachers, had already flashed across the 
 thoughts of others besides Dominic. Here 
 was the divine call to devote himself body and 
 soul to its realisation. A tragic end had cut 
 short the temporal mission of the Bishop and 
 his sub-prior. Both felt that a higher Power 
 than any King of Castile had now charged 
 them with a spiritual mission of far deeper 
 moment to the world and to King Fisherman 
 at Rome. 
 
 The self-imposed mission was to confer with 
 the spiritual monarch of Christendon on a New 
 Way of dealing with the heathen and the 
 heretic. They reached Rome, still accompanied 
 by their Castilian retinue, apparently in the 
 spring or early summer of 1204, and were at 
 once cordially and even affectionately received 
 by Innocent. The New Way they had to 
 
20 T'he Holy Graal: 
 
 propose, so far as it can be deduced from the 
 subsequent conduct of the envoys, was entirely 
 admirable as regards the first step to be taken 
 in reference to the heretics, and entirely 
 detestable as regards the last. Dominic had 
 felt the irrefragable force of one favourite 
 argument of the Albigenses. 'See,' said they, 
 ' how these noble knights of Christ on horse- 
 back go about to teach us poor folk on foot ! 
 How bravely Dives preaches to Lazarus the 
 Gospel of Him who was poor and rejected of 
 men ! ' Dominic's answer was worthy of a 
 saint : ' Let them that preach to this people 
 go among them barefoot in the spirit of 
 humility, the spirit of Christ. Let them be 
 themselves beggars, and bear the good tidings 
 of a crucified Saviour to Lazarus at the gate, 
 clad like Lazarus in misery and rags.' 
 
 Such was the New Way, and so far, it was 
 worthy of all acceptation. But when the 
 preaching was done, what then ? For them 
 that renounced their heresy, public penance, 
 ignominy, or exile — for them that refused to 
 renounce, the sword, the halter, or the stake. 
 In these respects, the New Way was as the 
 old. To justify the system, not to reform or 
 abolish it, was the object of Diego, Dominic, 
 and Innocent. ' You slaughter and burn us,' 
 
Perceval z i 
 
 cried the heretics, ' for not accepting the truth 
 as it is in Christ. How can we accept Christ's 
 truth if you do not preach it to us as Christ 
 preached ? ' Dominic's answer is : ' We admit 
 the justice of your plea. Henceforth we will 
 preach as Christ preached. If you still harden 
 your hearts against the truth, we shall be justi- 
 fied in the eyes of man and God in destroying 
 you utterly. As righteously will men burn 
 your bodies here on earth as God will hereafter 
 burn your souls in hell.' 
 
 At the time this new scheme was laid before 
 Innocent, he was ready to welcome any 
 suggestion for dealing with heresy in 
 Languedoc that promised even a temporary 
 break in the perennial monotony of failure that 
 for generations had attended every effort of the 
 Church in the land of the troubadour. The 
 New Way and the new men should at least 
 have a fair trial. Diego was anxious to make 
 the first experiment of the system on the 
 Comans, just then the heathens most in 
 evidence, whose country lay on the shores of 
 the Black Sea. Dominic asked to be allowed 
 to try it on the heretics in the neighbourhood 
 of Toulouse. Innocent sided with the Sub- 
 prior rather than the Bishop. He decided that 
 the energies of both, instead of being dispersed 
 
22 'The Holy Graal: 
 
 by separation, should be made doubly effective 
 by union ; and further, that the trial of the 
 New Way should be made in conjunction with 
 the efforts of the legates and preachers then at 
 work against heresy in Languedoc. Diego 
 was granted leave of absence from the see of 
 Osma till the end of 1206. Both were to 
 undergo a brief apprenticeship to the methods 
 of the Old Way at Citeaux before entering 
 on their missionary labours. Both were to 
 exercise authority as holding a commission 
 direct from Innocent ; but both were to be 
 under the command of Arnold, Abbot of 
 Citeaux, and his fellow-legates in partibus. 
 
 The plan of campaign was evidently care- 
 fully arranged. First of all, the new system 
 was to be launched in a public manner which 
 could hardly fail to commend it to popular 
 sympathy and enthusiasm. Preaching by bare- 
 foot preachers under vows of poverty, chastity, 
 and obedience was to be carried on for two 
 years at least, and every effort should be made 
 to conciliate the heretics. They should be 
 invited to confer, discuss, and deliberate. 
 Severe measures should for a time remain in 
 abeyance. The Gospel should be preached as 
 Christ preached it. If at the end of the allotted 
 time the heretics still continued obstinately 
 
Perceval 2 3 
 
 unconverted, the last argument of the Church 
 no less than of kings should then be employed. 
 The syllogism was not strikingly logical, but 
 it was sometimes effective. The major premiss 
 was that it is the duty of the Church to extirp- 
 ate heresy. The minor premiss was that it is 
 the duty of the Secular Arm to assist her so to 
 do. The conclusion was that if the Secular 
 Arm failed to do so, it was the duty of the 
 Church to transfer the Secular power from 
 the temporal ruler unwilling or unable to 
 assist the Church to another temporal ruler 
 who both could and would. In actual prac- 
 tice, the major took the form of Interdict, the 
 minor of Crusade, the conclusion of a decree 
 of deposition. 
 
 Interdict as an ecclesiastical weapon has 
 long been obsolete, and the part it once 
 played in both civil and religious history has 
 been very generally misunderstood. It must 
 have held a foremost place among the topics 
 discussed by Innocent with his Spanish visitors 
 before they started on their mission into 
 Languedoc. The very air of Christendom 
 was dark with Interdict. The one aim of the 
 new preachers was to persuade the heretics to 
 attend the ministrations of the Church. The 
 efficacy of Interdict depended on its suspending 
 
24 'Tl^e Holy Graal: 
 
 those ministrations. Some kind of arrange- 
 ment by which the exercise of the power of 
 Interdict could be so limited and controlled as 
 not to interfere too seriously with the practical 
 work of the preachers was a necessity of the 
 case. Interdict of the heretical country, pure 
 and simple, would have been the very suicide 
 of orthodoxy. A certain simple-minded bishop 
 who was among the first to try the experiment 
 of interdicting the Holy Sacrifice throughout 
 his diocese, had been surprised to find that 
 ' the people were none the better ' for the 
 infliction. Two centuries later, in the days 
 of Innocent, the pontiffs and prelates who 
 followed the example were under no such hal- 
 lucination. None knew better than they that 
 Interdict could never tend to godliness of life or 
 the welfare of souls. Innocent freely employed 
 it as a means of coercing powerful delinquents 
 whom it was impossible or impolitic to attempt 
 to coerce otherwise, but neither he nor any of the 
 best of his predecessors ever regarded its exercise 
 as other than a hateful resource only justifiable 
 in the absence of any less objectionable alter- 
 native. Ample proof of this is to be found in 
 the many privileges granted by many succes- 
 sive Popes to certain religious Orders for 
 the special object of mitigating some of the 
 
Perceval 25 
 
 worst evils and hardships which the sentence 
 inevitably entailed. 
 
 Among these Orders, that of the Cistercians 
 naturally held a foremost place, as being at the 
 time the real political executive of the Papacy. 
 Among the many favours granted by Eugenius 
 III. to his old friend and preceptor Bernard, the 
 second and greater founder of the Cistercian 
 Order, may be reckoned the charter of privi- 
 leges granted to the Order in 1 152, and 
 signed by no less than fourteen cardinals as 
 well as the Pope. The thirteenth article of 
 this memorable document runs thus : — 
 
 ' This also hath our sanction, that none of 
 your churches shall be compelled to abstain 
 from divine offices on account of any General 
 Interdict ; but in time of Interdict it shall be 
 lawful for the Cistercians, excommunicated and 
 interdicted persons having been ejected and 
 the doors closed, in a low voice to celebrate 
 the Divine solemnities.' 
 
 This privilege, granted in later years to 
 several other Orders, had at the beginning 
 of the thirteenth century become the com- 
 mon property of the great majority of the 
 regular as distinct from the secular clergy. In 
 Languedoc, however, before the propaganda 
 had been reinforced by the arrival of Diego 
 
26 The Holy Graal 
 
 and Dominic, it had been found necessary at 
 once to modify the right to inflict the sentence 
 of Interdict, and to confer on the Cistercians 
 a far wider privilege of which they enjoyed an 
 absolute monopoly. 
 
II 
 
 GAWAIN 
 
 Ad im occaso quasi ed ad un orto 
 
 Bugea slede e la terra ond' io ful, 
 Che fe del sangiie suo gla caldo il porto. 
 
 Folco mi disse quella gente, a cui 
 Fu noto il nome mio j e questo cielo 
 
 Di me s'impronta, com' io fe di liii. 
 
 (Paradiso, IX.) 
 
 The Albigensian Crusade, like the French 
 Revolution, is a hideous sequence of crimes 
 against humanity. Like the Revolution, it is 
 also much more. It must be remembered that 
 a large proportion, probably a large majority, 
 of the Albigensian heretics did really hold 
 doctrines at least as incompatible with morality 
 and social civilisation as those of the Mormons, 
 though in a diametrically opposite direction. 
 Carried into practice in the England of to-day, 
 such doctrines would bring their professors 
 into immediate collision with the police and 
 law courts, the gaol and the lunatic asylum. 
 The methods actually adopted against them 
 
 27 
 
28 T'he Holy Graal: 
 
 were the methods of the thirteenth century ; but 
 the suppression of heresy of the kind by some 
 method or other would be as necessary to the 
 community to-day or to-morrow as in any 
 yesterday of civilised life. The non-Walden- 
 sian heresies, indeed, could only have thriven 
 as they did in a community of low social 
 organisation. They found a congenial home 
 in 'Le Midi,' a kingdom without a king, a 
 country without a name, a territory without 
 a frontier, a people without a nationality. 
 ' Languedoc ' and ' the Albigenses ' are mere 
 approximate definitions. 
 
 As early as April 1198, Innocent had com- 
 menced the operations against the heretics of 
 Languedoc which culminated in the Albigen- 
 sian Crusade. He sent a Legate, Rayner, into 
 the 'infected' provinces with a chosen band of 
 colleagues, urgently commending him to all 
 the spiritual and temporal authorities who 
 could render any assistance. The Interdict 
 difficulty had pressed hardly on former lega- 
 tions against the heretics. Innocent now cut 
 the knot by delegating to Rayner absolute power 
 of excommunication and interdict in the parts 
 to which he was accredited j and not only was 
 this power confided to the Legate, but the 
 further privilege of disregarding any sentence 
 
Gawain 29 
 
 of excommunication or interdict pronounced 
 by any other authority whatsoever save only 
 Innocent himself. There had been many 
 changes in the Legation since the first mission 
 of Rayner ; and at the time Diego and Dominic 
 were conferring with Innocent, Arnold of 
 Citeaux was the acting chief, with Peter of 
 Castelnau and Rayner, both also Cistercians, as 
 his colleagues. But any changes which had 
 been made in the system pursued were in 
 favour of enlarging rather than retrenching 
 the privileges both of the Legation and the 
 Order. Practically the absolute power of deal- 
 ing with the heretics was in the hands of the 
 Cistercians ; and in talking over the general 
 state of affairs in Languedoc, it was hardly 
 likely that Diego or Dominic would inquire 
 very curiously into the distinction between the 
 privileges granted to the Cisterciansgenerallyand 
 those specially granted to the Cistercian Legation 
 then militant in Languedoc. Still less probable 
 was it that either of them would ask for the 
 extension of the special privileges enjoyed by 
 the Legation to the Order generally. Doubt- 
 less, had such a contingency as the great 
 English Interdict been in contemplation at 
 the time, they would have suggested that if the 
 sins of King John against the Church demanded 
 
30 'The Holy Graal: 
 
 the suspension of divine service and of the 
 administration of the Sacraments throughout 
 the country, at least the Order specially intrusted 
 vv^ith the task of preaching the Gospel should be 
 allowed under certain conditions to continue its 
 ministrations and be free to fulfil its special func- 
 tions in its ovv^n way. Had such a suggestion 
 been made at this time, it is clear from Innocent's 
 own distinct declarations in after days that 
 the boon would not have been refused. But 
 Innocent was not asked. The Albigensians 
 and the Albigensian Legation were uppermost 
 in the minds of all present ; and, as regarded 
 these, all difficulties in case of Interdict had 
 already been removed. A remote future 
 contingency under altered conditions was 
 most unlikely to suggest itself as demanding 
 immediate attention. Perceval left the Castle- 
 Palace of King Fisherman, and the momentous 
 question of Cistercian privilege in case of 
 Interdict, discussed and settled long since in 
 the case of Languedoc, was left undiscussed 
 and unsettled in the case of any other country. 
 The question to whom the Graal should be 
 served remained unasked. A few short years, 
 and all England, all the Cistercian Order 
 throughout the world, would be plunged into 
 lamentation and mourning and woe because of 
 
Gawain 3 1 
 
 the missed opportunity. The 'one little word' 
 had not been spoken, and 'thereby happened such 
 mischance in Greater Britain that all the land 
 fell into sore sorrow.' 
 
 A careful reader of the ' High History ' will * 
 perhaps note that the question which Perceval ( 
 omitted to ask is presented under two phases. 
 He is rebuked apparently not only for not 
 having asked unto whom the Graal is served, but 
 also whereof it served. The first question in 
 the mouth of Dominic would, I apprehend, have 
 taken, if it had been asked, a form of this kind : 
 ' In time of Interdict, will it be lawful for the 
 Cistercians to celebrate mass, and to adminis- 
 ter the Holy Sacrament to such as they may 
 consider worthy ? ' The second question has 
 reference to the Sacrament itself, but in special 
 connection with the method of dealing with the 
 heretics of Languedoc. The dogma of Tran- 
 substantiation was not declared de Fide until 
 the Lateran Council of 121 5. It had, however, 
 been steadily growing into favour ever since the 
 days of Hildebrand and Paschasius Radbert 3 
 and by the time that Innocent ascended the 
 Papal throne, had commended itself to general 
 acceptance by the faithful. Technically, there- 
 fore, it was still possible before 1215 to hold 
 views at variance with the dogma without 
 
32 The Holy Graal: 
 
 necessarily being heretical. It followed that those 
 who held such views could not legally be con- 
 victed of heresy and handed over to the Secular 
 Arm for punishment as heretics unless they were 
 also guilty in some other respect. Now, some 
 considerable number of the Waldenses — always 
 to be carefully distinguished from the Albigenses 
 — seem to have held, nominally at least, all the 
 doctrines of the Church with the one exception 
 of Transubstantiation. What was to be done 
 with them ? Had Dominic asked the question 
 in this concrete form and obtained a reply, he 
 would have saved himself a good deal of trouble 
 and the commission, apparently, of a good deal 
 of illegality. Innocent seems to have been 
 urged more than once by others to make an 
 authoritative declaration on the subject ; but 
 his answer was always that he intended shortly 
 to call a General Council which would decide the 
 matter definitively in the name of the Church. 
 Meanwhile, he did not conceal his own opinion, 
 but simply left each case in which the question 
 arose to be dealt with by those whose duty it 
 was to deal with it. It is easy to see how the 
 two questions came to be confused in the mind 
 of a Cistercian romancer who was weaving into 
 his romance the history of both the Albigensian 
 Crusade and the English Interdict. The real 
 
Gawain 
 
 33 
 
 omission of Dominic in the eyes of the romancer 
 and the Cistercians generally was not so much 
 his not asking this question or that, but neglect- 
 ing so favourable an opportunity of coming to 
 a clear understanding with Innocent as to the 
 Mass and its celebration generally. Had he 
 done so, it would materially have lightened 
 the labours of the Legation in Languedoc ; it 
 would still more materially have mitigated the 
 horrors of the Interdict in England. 
 
 The history of the Albigensian Crusade itself 
 lies beside my present purpose ; but its close 
 connection with the English Interdict has never 
 received the attention it deserves, and a sketch 
 of the events that led up to it may assist 
 towards a clearer understanding of both events. 
 In the early spring of 1205, Dominic, Diego, 
 and their royal Castilian retinue left Rome for 
 Citeaux to be initiated into Cistercian ways, if 
 not into the Order itself. Not for nothing did 
 they travel in pomp for the last time. Their 
 progress through Genoa and Turin and over the 
 passes of the Alps and the Jura into Burgundy 
 announced that they were authorised envoys 
 not so much of the King of Castile as of the 
 Holy See, and that their mission was of moment 
 to all the temporal and spiritual powers in 
 Christendom. Whether the Abbey of Citeaux 
 
 c 
 
34 'TJ^^ Holy Graal : 
 
 was burdened with the entertainment of the 
 escort does not appear, but the brotherhood 
 certainly could not fail to be impressed by 
 the imposing dignity of their Spanish visitors 
 arriving in such state from the Castle of King 
 Fisherman. The guests on their part were 
 delighted with Citeaux. Everything was en- 
 chanting except the absence of Abbot Arnold, 
 who had at that particular juncture retired for 
 a short time from his duties as Legate in 
 Languedoc to implore help against the heretics 
 from King Philip 'Augustus ' in Paris. Diego, 
 always enthusiastic and effusive, insisted on 
 donning the habit of the Order forthwith. 
 Dominic, not less enthusiastic, but more re- 
 strained, preferred not to bind himself to a new 
 obedience which might embarrass his action in 
 the future. After a stay of some weeks, during 
 which both were duly instructed in manners 
 and customs Cistercian, they continued their 
 princely progress southward to Montpelier. 
 The headquarters of the Legation against the 
 heretics were just now at Castelnau, the old 
 Sustantion, some two miles outside the city, a 
 stronghold belonging to the family of Peter of 
 Castelnau, Archdeacon of Maguelonne, one of 
 the three legates now in charge. His colleagues 
 were Brother Ralph, Abbot of Fontfroid, 
 
Gawain 3 5 
 
 and Arnold of Citeaux himself, just returned 
 from his conference with Philip. 
 
 All three were sorely depressed — spiritless, 
 baffled, and beaten. More than two years 
 Peter and Ralph had laboured in vain. They 
 had summoned Raymond of Toulouse to expel 
 the heretics. They had made the capitouls of 
 Toulouse swear to maintain the Catholic faith. 
 They had suspended the Bishop of Beziers. 
 They had accused Berenger, Archbishop of 
 Narbonne, of negligence, and had made him 
 disgorge the most scandalous of his pluralities. 
 But, as against the heretics they were none the 
 forwarder, and wrote earnestly to Innocent 
 requesting him to relieve them of their hopeless 
 legation. Innocent refused, and urged them 
 to new efforts, sending Arnold, then lately 
 elected Abbot of Citeaux, as a colleague. The 
 ' Secular Arm ' was again invoked. Peter ii. 
 of Arragon was at the time overlord of half 
 Montpelier, Innocent himself being overlord 
 of the other half. Peter was accordingly called 
 on to assist the legates, and Innocent assured 
 him free sovereignty over all the territory he 
 could win by force of arms from heretic lords. 
 Peter accordingly took the Castle of Lescure 
 from an Albigensian noble, but showed himself 
 lukewarm in the matter of general persecution ; 
 
36 The Holy Graal: 
 
 and before Innocent issued a commission con- 
 sisting of the Bishop of Pampeluna and the 
 three legates to inquire into a matrimonial suit 
 pending between Peter and his wife Mary of 
 Montpelier (June 1206), all hope of finding 
 him an efficient champion of orthodoxy had 
 been abandoned. 
 
 Philip of France, wariest of European diplo- 
 matists, save Innocent himself, was still wroth 
 with Innocent for upholding, by a long in- 
 terdict on his country, his marriage with 
 Ingebiorg of Denmark. The refusal of a 
 divorce had been the death of Agnes of Meran, 
 the only woman that Philip had really loved. 
 After her death, Innocent had hastened to 
 legitimate her children, but his wise and cour- 
 ageous resolution to lend no countenance to 
 royal adultery rankled, and continued to 
 rankle, in Philip's heart. Still, Philip was 
 statesman as well as lover. His quarrel with 
 Innocent was personal. If Innocent could 
 only appeal strongly enough to his ambition 
 — and the creation of a larger united France 
 was surely no ignoble ambition — Philip might 
 consent to co-operate with him in abolishing 
 heresy from Languedoc. 
 
 The object of Arnold's conference with 
 Philip was to renew and strengthen an offer 
 
Gawain 37 
 
 made more than once before. If Philip would 
 only send an army to invade Le Midi and lend 
 the legates the assistance of his powerful 
 ' Secular Arm ' in extirpating heresy, he should 
 be free to annex the whole of the conquered 
 territory to the crown of France with Inno- 
 cent's hearty goodwill. If he himself cannot 
 come, let him send his son. Only let heresy 
 be extinguished, and no hindrance to the tem- 
 poral aggrandisement of France will be offered 
 by the Papacy. His armies shall enjoy all the 
 indulgences and privileges granted to crusaders 
 against the Saracen ; and as all the existing 
 temporal princes in the ' infected ' provinces 
 will be declared excommunicate and deposed, 
 he need have no scruple as sovereign in in- 
 vading the lands of his vassals. Every argu- 
 ment, we may be sure, in favour of immediate 
 armed interference, was urged by Arnold on the 
 King's attention. Philip, we may be equally 
 sure, saw that Languedoc could be annexed to 
 France at a cheaper rate. Arnold returned 
 discomfited to his colleagues. Before they 
 were joined by Diego and Dominic, they had 
 once more written to Innocent in despair, 
 petitioning to be released from the legation. 
 
 A council of war was held with the new- 
 comers the day after their arrival. The legates 
 
38 T'he Holy Graal : 
 
 stated their case, and pointed out the insuper- 
 able difficulty of converting the heretics until 
 the ' Secular Arm ' could be healed of its in- 
 veterate palsy. It was Diego d'Azeveda's turn 
 to speak \ and the manner of his coming, no 
 less than the letters he brought from Innocent, 
 invested his speech with an authority that even 
 three legates could not lightly gainsay. ' You 
 legates,' said he, ' begin at the wrong end. 
 You come to your work swaggering on your tall 
 horses followed by bedizened footmen as if you 
 were so many princes of the blood. Look at 
 these damnable heretics ! Withtheirfair-seeming 
 poverty and humility they beat you all hollow ! 
 How can it be otherwise ? Meet them with 
 their own weapons ! It is not preaching, but 
 practice, that converts to the truth ! ' It was 
 probably Arnold of Citeaux who was first to 
 grasp the irony of the situation. ' That is all 
 very well, my Lord Bishop, but how about this 
 gallant cavalcade of your own ? — these footmen 
 in the courtyard, these horses in the stables ? 
 We are quite at one with you as to the price- 
 less worth of example, but what are we to do 
 — here and now ? ' ' Do ? ' retorts Diego ; ' do 
 as I do ! ' Out he strides forthwith to summon 
 the whole company of retainers, knights and 
 squires, cooks, sergeants, and grooms, and packs 
 
Gawain 3 9 
 
 them ofF bag and baggage, horse and foot and 
 sumpter mule. 'Back to Castile, every 
 mother's son of you. Bear loyal and humble 
 greeting to my Lord the King, and tell him 
 his servants are minded as for the next two 
 years at least to go on foot preaching to the 
 poor, even as Christ preached, on the hither 
 side the mountains ! ' The hour has come. 
 The ' New Way ' has been inaugurated by a 
 symbolic ceremony worthy of the influence it 
 is hereafter to exercise on human destinies. 
 The first friar has made his entrance on the 
 world's stage. Dominic has set his hand to the 
 work under the protection of Citeaux. Per- 
 ceval has taken his new shield from Arthur's 
 court. Dominic will fight in loyal comradeship 
 with Citeaux, but will never become Cistercian. 
 Perceval will fight for Arthur, but never take 
 his seat at the Table Round. 
 
 It was July when the new preachers joined 
 the legates. In the middle of September 
 Arnold had to be back at Citeaux to preside 
 over the Annual Chapter of the Order. Innocent 
 sent a letter to the united brethren on this 
 occasion, which may perhaps have lingered in 
 the memory of the romancer when he bestowed 
 the title of King Fisherman on the occupant 
 of the Roman See. ' Ever since we were 
 
40 T'he Holy Graal: 
 
 raised by the call of the Lord to the office of 
 Fisherman, we have piloted over the sea the 
 bark intrusted to us so as to loose our net, 
 according to the v^^ord of the Lord, for the 
 taking of fishes. But this great and spacious 
 sea, lashed by the roaring of a most pitiless 
 storm, hath begun to surge against our bark in 
 billows so many and so huge, that not only are 
 we somewhat hindered from following our 
 craft of fishing, but the control and steering of 
 the bark have become well-nigh impossible. 
 . . . Yet, albeit we were hemmed round with 
 difficulties, we have been heedful to steer with 
 such seamanship as we could, and now and again 
 have so spread our fisherman's net in the sea 
 as to enclose therein certain fish of no ordinary 
 bigness. Nevertheless, what time we trusted 
 to take them forth at the haven, sundry of them 
 burst the net, and not only slipped away them- 
 selves forthwith into the bowels of the deep, 
 but compelled others to slip back after them. 
 . . . But what these things may be, most 
 beloved sons, whereof we speak thus figura- 
 tively, will not, we trust, be hidden from your 
 prudence, so you exercise the keenness of your 
 discreet consideration in searching them out 
 narrowly. . . .' 
 
 It is a strained and strangely laboured parable 
 
Gawain 4 1 
 
 that King Fisherman sends as his message to 
 the Cistercian congress, but no great keenness 
 of discreet consideration is needed to interpret 
 these paragraphs. Peter of Arragon and Philip 
 of France were assuredly fish of no ordinary 
 bigness ; and both, to name no others, had just 
 slipped back into the bowels of the deep at the 
 moment he had thought to land them. But 
 the Fisherman does not despair. In concluding 
 his piscatory eclogue, he intimates that he 
 knows a fetch that will bring them all safe 
 home with a seine-net full of fish. Legate 
 Arnold must have enjoyed a good time when 
 he expounded the true inwardness of the mes- 
 sage to the assembled Abbots, when he revealed 
 the secret of the New Way, and invited volun- 
 teers to join the standard of the new apostles. 
 He returned to Montpelier with twelve devoted 
 brethren of the Order, eager only to preach 
 the Gospel to the heretics as Christ had preached 
 it, barefoot and in rags. The Order of 
 Preachers was not formally instituted until 
 after the death of Innocent. It was already in 
 active existence. 
 
 Diego had promised to return to his bishopric 
 at Osma before the end of the year 1206. 
 It would seem from the actual sequence of 
 events that this was also the term fixed for 
 
42 ' The Holy Graal : 
 
 ending the trial of the New Way in Languedoc. 
 Until that time, the interference of the Secular 
 Arm should be welcome, indeed, but should not 
 again be urgently invoked. The red right 
 hand of vengeance should be stayed until the 
 sinners had been allowed time to repent. After 
 the truth had been preached as Christ preached 
 it, Divine justice would be dealt out to the 
 stifF-necked generation, and Christendom would 
 hail with joy the doom that should fall on the 
 faithless. The success of the preachers as 
 regarded the Waldenses, though far from equal- 
 ling their hopes, had been considerable. Their 
 failure as against the Albigenses had been total 
 and ignominious. Before starting homeward, 
 Diego challenged the heretics to a final confer- 
 ence at Pamiers. It was held in the castle of 
 Raymond Roger, Count of Foix, and was 
 attended by Fulke, Bishop of Toulouse, 
 Navarre of Conserans, and a troop of abbots, 
 all anxious to cheer the departure of the apostle 
 of the New Way by at least one decisive 
 victory. Raymond Roger was a prominent 
 heretic champion. His wife was a Waldensian, 
 and of his two sisters, one was Waldensian, 
 while the other, Esclarmonde, was a Catharist 
 ' Perfect.' At the conference, Esclarmonde rose 
 to speak. One of the new preachers, Brother 
 
Gawain 43 
 
 Stephen de Minia, interposed : ' Go, my Lady, 
 to your distafF and spin ! No right have you to 
 speak on these matters.' Diego ' prayed God 
 to smite the heretics with His strong right hand, 
 for never would they open their eyes till they 
 had tasted of the cup of His wrath.' 
 
 The arbiter on this occasion was one of the 
 secular clergy, Master Arnold de Campranhan, 
 a friend of the Waldenses, and trusted in their 
 camp. He and a large number of other 
 Waldensians recanted their heretical tenets 
 either at or immediately after the conference. 
 Among them was Durand de Huesca, the 
 founder of an orthodox Waldensian Order, if 
 the communities established by him and others 
 can be called an Order, within the pale of the 
 Church, and under the special protection of 
 Innocent. This was the last conference of the 
 kind. At Pamiers, Diego was already on his 
 way to Osma. Some of the preachers walked 
 with the old man barefoot across the passes of 
 the Pyrenees. He arrived at Osma wayworn 
 and weary, in the last days of 1206, and died 
 February 6, 1207. 
 
 Legate Ralph had died shortly before Diego's 
 departure. Legate Arnold of Citeaux was 
 absent on a second mission to Philip Augustus, 
 destined to be of incalculable historic moment. 
 
44 ^^^ Holy Graal : 
 
 Legate Peter of Castelnau found abundant 
 occupation in harassing Raymond of Toulouse 
 by the exercise of every ecclesiastical weapon 
 of ofFence, personal excommunication, interdict 
 of his dominions, declaration of Crusade. This 
 last step was taken in November. Raymond 
 quailed, again promised obedience to the legate's 
 impossible demands, and summoned him to S. 
 Gilles. Peter obeyed, but only for the pur- 
 pose of adding insult to injury. After the 
 interview, he and his companions left S. Gilles 
 and passed the night in a village on the banks 
 of the Rhone, intending to cross the river on 
 the morrow. They were about to enter the 
 ferry-boat after hearing mass in the morning, 
 when a knight of the family of the Porcellets, 
 retainers of Raymond, avenged the insult 
 offered to his lord by running the legate 
 through the body with a spear. 
 
 The murder took place on January 15, 1208. 
 In the absence of Arnold, the legation in 
 Languedoc was without a legate, and conse- 
 quently shorn of more than half its authority. 
 A meeting was held of all the remaining mem- 
 bers of the legation, and it was decided to send 
 two of their number at once to Rome to inform 
 King Fisherman of the murder, and to urge 
 the necessity of launching the crusade against 
 
Gawain 45 
 
 Raymond and his heretic subjects without a 
 moment's further delay. The enterprise to 
 the Castle of the Graal was forthwith joyously 
 undertaken by Fulke, Bishop of Toulouse, and 
 Navarre, Bishop of Conserans. \j 
 
 Fulke had been consecrated Bishop of ' 
 Toulouse shortly before the arrival of Diego 
 and Dominic, the three legates having deposed 
 Raymond of Rabastens, the former bishop. 
 By metropolitical right, the see of Toulouse 
 was suffragan to the archbishopric of Nar- 
 bonne. The legates, rightly considering Ber- 
 enger of Narbonne scandalously unfitted for 
 the post of Archbishop, had wrongfully caused 
 Fulke to be consecrated by the Archbishop of 
 Aries, a proceeding which sufficiently indicates 
 the absolute power exercised at the time by the 
 Cistercian champions in Languedoc. Fulke 
 was a man with a history. His father, a 
 wealthy Genoese merchant, died, leaving him a 
 considerable fortune. Money-grubbing had no 
 attractions for the youth in comparison with 
 the gai saber ; and he made his first appearance 
 on the world's stage as a gallant retainer of the 
 viceregal court at Aix in Provence, at that 
 time presided over by Raymond Barral of 
 Marseilles, as Governor under Alphonso, the 
 first Count of Provence, but the second King 
 
46 'The Holy Graal: 
 
 of Arragon of that name. Raymond Barral of 
 Marseilles was the third of five brothers who 
 shared among them the viscounty of that city, 
 a viscounty originally created for a cadet of the 
 house of Provence. Neither he nor his wife 
 Azalais of Roquemartine, also a Porcellet, 
 and perhaps a sister of Peter's murderer, was 
 wealthy, and all the joint-viscounts in later 
 years agreed to sell their titles and rights to the 
 city of Marseilles, each receiving an annual 
 pension, a sum down, and the right to keep the 
 title for life. It has never been explained how 
 the young troubadour came by the title of 
 Fulke of Marseilles. It seems likely that it 
 really represents a money transaction between 
 Raymond Barral and himself. When Fulke 
 ' entered religion,' the title may have reverted 
 to Raymond Barral, to be subsequently resold 
 to the city. 
 
 Be this as it may, Barral of Marseilles 
 became ' my good Lord ' to Fulke \ and Fulke, 
 as in troubadour duty bound, made poetic love, 
 possibly platonic, to Barral's wife Azalais. 
 The friendship between Barral and Fulke 
 seems to have remained unbroken. The lady, 
 however, either with or without reason, seems 
 to have waxed wroth with the poet, and he 
 certainly left Aix vowing never again to write 
 
Gawain 47 
 
 a line of verse. The gods have a kindly by- 
 law relative to the broken oaths of poets and 
 lovers, but the Monk of Montaudon insists on 
 poking fun at the ' perjury ' of the ' merchant ' 
 troubadour when he catches him rhyming 
 again to another love. Before 1187, Fulke 
 was received into the household of William of 
 Montpelier ; and one of his poems is written at 
 the command of the 'Empress,' to wit, Eudoxia, 
 William's wife, who was repudiated by her 
 husband in that year. Barral's wife Azalais 
 died about the same time, and Fulke may have 
 had a hand in bringing about Barral's second 
 marriage with the infant Mary of Montpelier. 
 It has been inferred from a poem he wrote in 
 1 1 89, excusing Richard of England when he 
 was excommunicated for not starting on the 
 Crusade, that Fulke was at that time with 
 Richard at Poitiers. The inference is perhaps 
 too liberal from premisses so scanty. The same 
 may be said of his alleged presence at Alarcos 
 on July 18, 1 195, when Alphonso ix. was 
 defeated, and Christianity seemed on the eve 
 of extinction in the Spanish peninsula. He 
 certainly wrote a stirring sirvente on the 
 occasion, but it affords no proof that he was 
 himself one of the defeated warriors. 
 
 Shortly after this event, Fulke decided to 
 
48 The Holy Graal : 
 
 retire from the world and don the Cistercian 
 habit. His old friends and patrons were dead. 
 Troubadour life had palled on the passions of 
 middle age. Religious sentiment was ripening 
 into religious enthusiasm, and the humble 
 penitence of the sinner, which inspired some of 
 his noblest verses, was rapidly fermenting into 
 the fanaticism of the persecutor. The century- 
 was drawing to a close, and the last days were 
 at hand. Christendom was defeated in Syria 
 and Spain, and the deadly cancer of heresy was 
 eating into the very heart of the world. It 
 was the eve of a new era. Fulke would fain 
 devote his every faculty of body and soul to the 
 extermination of the enemies of God. Even 
 in that hour of darkness he knew no terror. 
 It was not the darkness of coming night, but 
 the darkness before the dawn. 
 
 It is at this point in Fulke's career that we 
 hear for the first time of certain encumbrances 
 not usually regarded as necessary to a trouba- 
 dour — a legitimate wife and two sons. Who 
 the lady may have been remains a mystery. 
 There she was, and the only honourable means 
 of getting rid of her was to send her to a 
 nunnery. Perhaps she too desired nothing 
 better. At any rate, father, mother, and sons 
 all entered the * religion' of Citeaux 3 and in 
 
Gawain 49 
 
 January 1197, Fulke was able to sign himself 
 Abbot of Thoronet, a Cistercian foundation in 
 the diocese of Frejus. >^ 
 
 In the year 1300, in the sphere of human 
 love purified and hallowed, between Cunizza 
 da Romano and Rahab the harlot, Dante saw 
 and spoke with the beatified spirit of Fulke of 
 Marseilles. Cunizza pointed him out to the 
 poet with a true prophecy. The year that fulfils 
 a century shall five times return, and the fame of 
 the troubadour who renounced the earthly for 
 the heavenly love shall still be remembered. 
 Even such glory, she said, awaiteth him that 
 on suchwise striveth after excellence, and 
 entering on a new life leaveth the sinful life 
 behind him for ever. Even before his name is 
 spoken, Dante recognises that radiant joy of 
 the third heaven glittering like a balass-ruby 
 in the sun for the gladness that is in him ; for 
 even as smiles are born on earth, so in heaven 
 is brightness born of delight. 
 
 Petrarca also beheld his spirit in vision, but 
 the vision is of the troubadour, not of the beati- 
 fied minister of divine judgment. Folchetto — 
 Petrarca may use the 'diminutive of affection ' 
 — is one of the slaves that wait upon the 
 Triumph of Love. He marches captive 
 between Giraud de Borneilh and GeofFry 
 
 D 
 
50 The Holy Graal 
 
 Rudel of Blaye, the Pilgrim of Love, in the 
 troop of Provencal singers headed by Arnaud 
 d'Aniel. But Petrarca knows his greatness and 
 his repentance. It is he who took from Genoa 
 and gave to Marseilles the glory of his name 
 — who thus symbolically exchanged his habit 
 and his life, and became a citizen of the nobler 
 fatherland. 
 
 This is the man, amorous, courteous, and 
 chivalrous, past master in the art and mystery 
 of love, long versed in the ways of the court 
 and the camp, yet burning with the devout 
 zeal of a convert, who has now emprised his 
 way to the Castle of the Graal to confer with 
 King Fisherman. Those who know Sir 
 Gawain in all the earlier legends of the Graal 
 will, like Dante, have recognised him before 
 his name is spoken. Those who only know 
 Sir Gawain in the later and ignobler legends 
 will understand how such a character would be 
 smirched and sullied when touched by the 
 adulterous finger of the baser age. N 
 
Ill 
 
 KING FISHERMAN 
 
 Nove remiis specie! 
 Rete novum datur ei. 
 
 Forma navis alia ; 
 Nam si remus celi clavis 
 Rete verbum, Petri navis 
 
 Presens est Ecclesia. 
 (Attributed to Adam of S. Victor.) 
 
 At the time Fulke arrived in Rome on his 
 mission from Languedoc, affairs in England 
 might well have suggested the expediency of 
 extending the privileges enjoyed by the Cis- 
 tercian legation in Le Midi to the Order in 
 Greater Britain. After the death of Hubert, 
 Archbishop of Canterbury in 1205, a majority 
 of the monks of Christchurch had elected their 
 sub-prior to the vacant see. King John, the 
 bishops-suffragan of the province, and the 
 dissentient brethren of the convent, elected 
 John de Gray, Bishop of Norwich, to the 
 primacy. Innocent, for valid reasons in both 
 
 51 
 
52 T'he Holy Graal : 
 
 cases, had set aside both elections ; and, after 
 some fruitless correspondence with John on the 
 subject, consecrated Stephen Langton, Cardinal- 
 priest of S. Chrysogonus, Archbishop of Canter- 
 bury at Viterbo on June 17, 1207. John 
 refused to allow Langton to set foot in 
 England, drove out the monks of Christchurch, 
 quartered a troop of soldiers in their cloisters, 
 and confiscated their broad lands to the Crown. 
 Innocent in vain implored John to accept the 
 new Archbishop. John was obdurate. 
 Innocent threatened excommunication and 
 interdict. John swore by the teeth of God, 
 and indulged in one of those fits of maniac fury 
 which the sons of Eleanor believed that they 
 inherited from a veritable she-demon of the 
 Pit, wooed and won by an ancestral Count of 
 Guienne. It was the one inheritance that 
 John knew how to keep. 
 
 On August 25, 1207, Innocent had appointed 
 three bishops — William of London, Eustace 
 of Ely, and Malger of Worcester — to act as 
 Commissioners of Interdict. They were to 
 exhort John to accept Stephen as Archbishop, 
 and to show him due reverence and honour. 
 If he still refused, they were to promulgate a 
 sentence of interdict forbidding all offices of 
 religion, save only the baptism of infants, and 
 
King Fisherman 53 
 
 shrift for the dying. If even this infliction 
 does not bring him to his senses. Innocent 
 adds : ' We will take heed to make heavy our 
 hands against him.' In November the letters 
 had been issued declaring the Albigensian 
 Crusade, and calling on Philip Augustus, as 
 well as all dukes, counts, knights, and the 
 faithful generally, to assist the Church in the 
 extirpation of heresy. All the goods and 
 belongings of the crusaders were taken under 
 the direct protection of the Holy See. All 
 indulgences granted to other crusaders were 
 extended to those willing to take arms against 
 the heretics, and all crusaders who could seize 
 were entitled to hold the lands of any heretic 
 lord. At the very same time — the letters are 
 dated the next day — the Interdict Commis- 
 sioners had been strictly enjoined to promulgate 
 the Interdict throughout England and Wales, 
 and a notable addition had been made to their 
 instructions. All the churches of all the 
 Orders, even those of the Hospitallers and 
 Templars, were to be included in the Interdict. 
 No exception was to be made in favour of the 
 Cistercians or any other. No privilege was to 
 be allowed to the regular clergy any more than 
 to the secular. 
 
 This difference in the methods adopted in the 
 
54 The Holy Graal : 
 
 two cases is indeed signal. In Languedoc, the 
 Cistercians had been allowed a free hand in the 
 matter of Interdict, and had exercised it with 
 absolutely despotic independence. In England, 
 not only had the whole conduct and management 
 of the Interdict been transferred from the Cister- 
 cians to a body of Episcopal Commissioners, but 
 the Cistercians had been denied even their usual 
 privileges in times of Interdict. The pheno- 
 menon is strange, but far enough from being 
 inscrutable. For years past, Aaron at Rome 
 had felt that Moses at Citeaux was encroaching 
 perilously on his prerogatives. The executive 
 of the Papacy was gradually supplanting the 
 Papacy itself. Innocent was not the man to 
 allow himself to become a Koi faineant while 
 Arnold, Mayor of the Palace, usurped the real 
 sovereignty. More than once or twice already 
 he had remonstrated with Arnold on the 
 subject of his high-handed proceedings, and 
 had asserted his own right to dictate the line 
 of policy, if not the practical measures, to be 
 adopted. At this moment the two were in 
 direct conflict on a vital question of European 
 politics. Philip Augustus of France, following 
 in his father's footsteps, had devoted himself 
 to the noble ambition — none the less noble 
 because the means employed were at times 
 
King Fisherman 55 
 
 ignoble — of creating a greater and united 
 France. The full realisation of his idea would 
 have been to transfigure the comparatively 
 petty territory he had inherited into an Empire 
 mightier than that of Charlemagne, and the 
 Kings of France into Emperors of Christen- 
 dom, the monarchs of the temporal world, 
 as the Pope was of the spiritual. But Philip 
 was above all things a practical statesman. 
 His methods were businesslike, and his policy 
 that of prosaic common-sense. The murder 
 of Prince Arthur by his uncle King John of 
 England had afforded him an excellent oppor- 
 tunity of carrying out his long - cherished 
 intention of annexing Normandy and much 
 besides to the crown of France. The next 
 question was. In which direction lay the most 
 promising prospect of extending his frontiers ? 
 Languedoc was not a matter of pressing impor- 
 tance. In a vague and nominal way, it was 
 already mostly a French fief. Its geographical 
 situation and the natural course of events would 
 inevitably sooner or later make it an integral part 
 of the French kingdom. But England ? Was 
 a more favourable opportunity of invading 
 England itself likely to occur ? John was 
 rich, but that was all. He could no more 
 hold England against a determined attack by 
 
56 The Holy Graal : 
 
 Philip than he had held Normandy. He was 
 a convicted murderer, and the seizure of his 
 lands would be applauded by the sense of 
 justice of all Christendom. 
 
 Abbot Arnold of Citeaux, when he left his col- 
 leagues in Languedoc, had a tempting offer to lay 
 before Philip: 'Help us to extirpate the heretics 
 in Languedoc, and we will help you to conquer 
 England.' The temptation was irresistible. To 
 enlist the Cistercian brotherhood on his side 
 was to forestall success. They counted for much 
 more than an army. They would be an assurance 
 to the world that the Church and righteousness 
 itself were on the side of Philip. For the 
 time-being, Philip believed that in securing the 
 services of Arnold of Citeaux he had secured 
 the influence of Innocent. Arnold believed 
 that in securing the secular arm of Philip, he 
 had secured the victory of the Church in 
 Languedoc, and that he had compromised 
 Innocent beyond escape in case he should 
 prove recalcitrant. The result of the compact 
 between the French King and the King of 
 the Lower Folk is writ large in the Albi- 
 gensian Crusade and the twin-crusade against 
 John of England led by Philip's son Lewis. 
 
 Meanwhile, both were reckoning without 
 their host. Innocent's policy was not the 
 
King Fisherman 57 
 
 policy of either. He, too, was anxious that 
 France, the Eldest Son of the Church, should 
 be strong ; but at this time, at least, he had no 
 mind that the Empire should be transferred to 
 France. He had acquiesced, probably with 
 satisfaction, in the transfer of Normandy to 
 France. He desired that Le Midi should 
 become a part of the French kingdom. He 
 would have raised no objection to Philip's 
 absorbing all the continental possessions of the 
 kings of England. He drew his line where 
 Nature had drawn hers — along the 'silver 
 streak.' At a later day, sore against his will, 
 he found himself compelled to sanction the 
 project of an English invasion, but he soon had 
 reason to repent the false step he had taken ; 
 and his successful effort to retrace it and undo 
 the mischief he had done deserves, though it 
 is far enough from ever having received, the 
 gratitude of England. These events, however, 
 are still in the future. At present, his prime 
 object is to check the growth of Cistercian 
 predominance. Arnold's insubordination had 
 already verged closely on mutiny. It was high 
 time to read him a lesson in obedience. 
 
 When Fulke was at Rome, if any question 
 were to be asked of Innocent in reference to 
 the extension of Cistercian privileges, there was 
 
58 T^he Holy Graal : 
 
 obviously no time to lose. It was then or never. 
 Already it was too late to ask for the control 
 of the Interdict to be committed to the Cister- 
 cians. It was not too late to ask that their 
 privileges in regard to the celebration of Mass 
 should be respected. It can well be understood 
 that the Cistercian brethren in Rome would 
 urge upon Fulke the necessity of asking the 
 momentous question ; well understood that 
 they should feel warmly indignant with Fulke 
 when he refrained from asking it. But 'the 
 Master of the Knights ' may summon him 
 by word of mouth to put the question to the 
 damsels of the Graal. Gawain forgets, and 
 the desolation falls upon the kingdom of 
 Logres. 
 
 The murder or martyrdom of Peter of 
 Castelnau precipitated the measures long con- 
 templated against John of England no less than 
 those against Raymond of Toulouse. Raymond 
 had married a Plantagenet among his many 
 other wives, the sister of John of England ; 
 but the connection between the two potentates 
 was closer than that of a mere former union 
 between the families dictated by political ex- 
 pediency. They were not only on terms of 
 intimate friendship, but they were united in 
 a common cause against a common danger. 
 
Khig Fisherman 59 
 
 Raymond's crime was contumacy in not abolish- 
 ing heresy. John's crime was contumacy in 
 not accepting Langton. In both cases, the 
 crime was against the Church. In both cases, 
 the Church had threatened confiscation of the 
 territory ruled by the contumacious Princes. 
 In both cases, Philip of France was the secular 
 power to be called upon to execute the sentence 
 decreed by the Church. \ 
 
 In the Book of the Graal, Gawain bears with 
 him to the Castle of King Fisherman the sword 
 wherewith John the Baptist was beheaded. In 
 real history, Fulke brought to Rome full tidings 
 of the martyrdom of one who had heralded the 
 advent of the new preachers. Innocent had 
 waited for a favourable opportunity to issue the 
 signal for the final explosion. The news that 
 Fulke brought determined the moment. On 
 March 10, 1208, Innocent writes to Philip and 
 the whole temporal and spiritual hierarchy of 
 France setting forth the story of the martyrdom, 
 and urging immediate invasion of Raymond's 
 dominions. 'Up, Knight of Christ ! Up, most 
 Christian Prince ! . . . Hearken to the voice 
 of the blood of the just that cries aloud to you ! 
 Gird on the shield of faith for the protection 
 of the Church against the tyrant and the enemy ! 
 . . . Let the sword of the spirit and the sword 
 
6o "The Holy Graal : 
 
 of the flesh each come to the succour of the 
 other ! ' The Albigensian Crusade is akeady 
 on the march. 
 
 Precisely at this point a highly important 
 piece of evidence comes into view, to which 
 none of our historians seem to have directed 
 their attention. The order for proclaiming 
 the French Crusade is dated November 17, 
 1207, and that for promulgating the English 
 Interdict the next day. The final letter to 
 Philip and the French nobles proclaiming the 
 actual commencement of the crusade is dated 
 March 8, 1208, but there is no corresponding 
 document in the papal archives actually pro- 
 claiming the commencement of the English 
 Interdict. As a matter of fact, the Interdict 
 was promulgated in England on March 23, 
 1208 ; and if any decisive order for its promul- 
 gation was ever issued from the papal chancery, 
 it must have been dated at the very least a full 
 month before, in order to allow time for the 
 messenger to reach England, and for the 
 Commissioners to make the necessary arrange- 
 ments. It is true that even an important 
 document of the kind might have been lost, 
 although it is unlikely that there would be no 
 record of its existence either in the register of 
 papal letters or the pages of English chroniclers. 
 
King Fisherman 6i 
 
 Direct evidence, however, exists, which shows 
 clearly that the document has not been lost 
 from the Roman archives. 
 
 Just at the time that he wrote his final 
 injunctions to Philip to march on Languedoc, 
 probably on the same day or the next, Innocent 
 wrote also to the Cistercian Abbots of Persigny 
 and du Pin. His instructions to them were to 
 see both Philip of France and John of England 
 personally, and to urge upon both the necessity 
 of concluding a truce for two years in order 
 that the crusade against Raymond and the 
 heretics might be carried through without 
 hindrance. The letter is one that marks its 
 own date, because it mentions the murder of 
 Peter of Castelnau as affording good reason for 
 prosecuting the crusade with greater activity. 
 Such a letter, obviously, would not be issued 
 from the papal chancery either contempor- 
 aneously with or later than a letter giving the 
 final order for putting the Interdict in force 
 in John's dominions. Yet that the final order 
 was issued before March 8, is clear from the 
 fact that the Interdict was actually promulgated 
 in England on March 23. The inference, 
 then, seems clear, that the final order on which 
 the Interdict Commissioners acted did not 
 emanate from the Roman chancery. But 
 
62 T'he Holy Graal : 
 
 if not, there is but one other source from 
 which it can have emanated — to wit, from 
 Arnold of Citeaux, the recognised chief of the 
 papal executive. It may be urged — and this 
 *is the view of Lingard and others — that in 
 giving full powers to the Interdict Commis- 
 sioners in the previous November, Innocent 
 left it to them to decide when the Interdict 
 should actually commence, and that the choice 
 of March 23 was the date they fixed on their 
 own authority without any further reference 
 to Rome being made. This certainly is 
 possible, but exceedingly improbable. After 
 receiving their instructions in November, the 
 three Bishops had had an interview with John, 
 who had laughed at their menace, and sworn 
 by the teeth of God to slit the noses and tear 
 out the eyes of any traitor who should dare to 
 publish the Interdict. They knew that their 
 lives were in jeopardy, and, brave men as they 
 were, they were exceedingly unlikely to proceed 
 to the last extremity without definite orders 
 from headquarters. At least, as men of 
 common-sense as well as courage, they would 
 not run the gratuitous risk of being accused of 
 having acted precipitately. The real fact seems 
 to me to be that Arnold deliberately forced 
 Innocent's hand. Innocent was anxious, as his 
 
King Fisherman 63 
 
 letter to the two Abbots indicates, to get matters 
 settled in Languedoc first, and to postpone for 
 the time any extreme measures in England. 
 Arnold, sold body and soul for the time-being 
 to Philip of France, and jealous beyond measure 
 at the management of the English Interdict 
 having been taken out of his hands and placed 
 in those of the Bishops, was determined, if 
 possible, to unite the Interdict and the Crusade, 
 and carry on the war simultaneously in England 
 and Languedoc in the interests of Philip. 
 
 This view of the case exactly coincides with 
 the known facts. The murder of Peter of 
 Castelnau took place January 15, 1208, when 
 Arnold was absent from Languedoc negotiating 
 with Philip somewhere within Philip's own 
 dominions. The news would probably reach 
 Arnold from S. Gilles a very few days later, 
 as his immediate return into Languedoc would 
 be absolutely indispensable at such a juncture. 
 On receiving the tidings, Arnold's first business 
 would be to seek another interview with 
 Philip. On discussing the new situation 
 created by the murder, it could not fail to be 
 seen how decisively Philip's cause must be 
 strengthened in Languedoc by that event ; 
 and Arnold, it may safely be assumed, would 
 exhort Philip by every temporal and spiritual 
 
64 T'he Holy Graal : 
 
 consideration he could urge, not to let slip so 
 golden an opportunity of at once commencing 
 the double campaign against Raymond of 
 Toulouse, and Raymond's brother by marriage 
 and by community of crime, John of England. 
 That Philip and Arnold before parting had 
 come to a definite understanding with regard 
 to the policy to be pursued is certain. What 
 that policy was may be gathered with almost 
 equal certainty from the subsequent conduct 
 of both. 
 
 His final negotiations with Philip would 
 probably not detain Arnold more than forty- 
 eight hours at most, and his next business 
 would be to rejoin the band of preachers in 
 the South at the earliest possible moment. 
 Before his arrival, Fulke and Navarre were 
 already on their way to Rome. Arnold, 
 however, drew up and despatched what may 
 be termed the official report of the martyrdom, 
 which re-appears in Innocent's letters to Philip 
 of March 8, and which, consequently, must 
 have reached Rome some days before. If, as 
 I believe was the case, Arnold despatched at 
 the same time a peremptory order to the 
 Commissioners in England to commence the 
 Interdict, the absence from the papal registers 
 of any order for commencing it, the actual 
 
King Fisherman 65 
 
 date of the commencement, and, above all, 
 Innocent's ignorance of the fact that any order 
 for its commencement had been issued, are all 
 simply and naturally explained. Nor, suppos- 
 ing Arnold to have issued such an order, vi^as 
 he guilty of any disobedience. The only 
 offence w^ith v^hich he could be charged by 
 Innocent was * presumption "* in acting ultra 
 vires in a matter which might well be regarded 
 as within his jurisdiction. ' Moses,' Arnold, 
 was the recognised executive of ' Aaron,' Inno- 
 cent. Plenary power in reference to Interdict 
 in Languedoc had been formally conferred 
 upon him. He had just concluded preliminary 
 negotiations with Philip. Surely, it would be no 
 unpardonable stretch of authority for Arnold to 
 dictate the time for commencing the Interdict 
 in England. 
 
 The tension between Innocent and Arnold 
 soon reached an acuter stage. The Interdict 
 began in England on March 23, 1208. In 
 some cases, it seems to have begun the day 
 before ; in others, a day or several days later ; 
 but, on the whole, the incidence of the Curse 
 on the Kingdom of Logres from Land's End 
 to the Border was practically simultaneous. 
 John's first impulse was revenge. His second 
 was compromise. Hugh, Abbot of Beaulieu, 
 
 E 
 
66 'The Holy Graal : 
 
 John's own Cistercian foundation in the New 
 Forest, was chosen as his fittest diplomatist to 
 plead his cause with Innocent. According to 
 custom, the Archbishops of Canterbury received 
 the regalia of their office from the King, and 
 their pallium from the Pope. John intrusted 
 the regalia to Hugh's charge, bidding him tell 
 the Pope to dispose of them as he pleased 
 The Abbot left injunctions to the brethren of 
 Beaulieu not to obey the Interdict within the 
 precincts of the abbey so lately founded by his 
 royal master, and started at once for Rome. 
 That the orders were punctually obeyed 
 appears from the minutes of the next General 
 Chapter of the Order held in the following 
 September. On this occasion, all the English 
 Abbots who had presumed ' to obey the 
 sentence of Interdict against the immunities 
 of the Order' were enjoined three days' 
 penance, one on bread and water, for the 
 oiFence. The three Abbots, however, of 
 Margan, Meaux, and Beaulieu were exempted 
 * because they stood up for the liberty of the 
 Order.' When the General Chapter of 
 Citeaux inflicts penance on the English 
 Abbots for obeying the commands of Rome 
 and the Commissioners appointed by Rome, 
 it is clear that the relations between Innocent 
 
King Fisherman 67 
 
 and Arnold are not precisely those that ought 
 to exist between Moses and Aaron, or Paul and 
 Peter. 
 
 Hugh's mission at first seemed to promise 
 well. On May 27, Innocent writes to John. 
 Hugh, he says, 'has told me that you are 
 prepared to accept Stephen Langton as Arch- 
 bishop, to make restitution for what you have 
 plundered from the Church, and to allow the 
 monks of Canterbury to return in peace. He 
 has further placed the regalia in my hands 
 with the message that I am to do with them 
 what I please. When I asked the Abbot why 
 you would not confer the regalia yourself, he 
 said that you could not at present bring your 
 mind to receive the Archbishop into grace 
 with any feeling of fellowship. In consequence, 
 after taking counsel with my brethren, I think 
 the best way of proceeding will be for me to 
 receive them without prejudice to your rights 
 or mine, and deliver them to the Bishops of 
 London, Ely, and Worcester' — the Com- 
 missioners of the Interdict — ' to confer on the 
 Archbishop on my behalf, if you really cannot 
 make up your mind to confer them yourself. 
 This done, and the Archbishop enthroned at 
 Canterbury, they will then relax the Interdict ; 
 and I have written to the Archbishop himself 
 
68 The Holy Graal : 
 
 so to behave towards you as to deserve your 
 favour to the profit of the Church committed to 
 his care. I do, however, again most earnestly 
 beseech and exhort your Majesty as a personal 
 favour to confer the regalia yourself, as an 
 act more honourable alike to you and to the 
 Church. But however this may be, I do 
 most confidently commend the Archbishop 
 and the Church of Canterbury to God most 
 high ; and, through the Archbishop, do in 
 absolute good faith commend myself to you, 
 well knowing that he will show himself 
 worthy of your confidence and favour.' 
 
 At this time, clearly. Innocent saw no in- 
 superable difficulty in the way of relaxing the 
 Interdict. It had been begun earlier than he 
 had intended, but he thought he already saw 
 a way out of the difficulty. The situation, 
 however, was complicated as well as difficult. 
 John's eldest half-brother, the Archbishop of 
 York, Geoffry the turbulent, had resisted one 
 of John's many unconstitutional exactions. In 
 revenge, John had laid hands on the ecclesias- 
 tical revenues of the see, and driven the Arch- 
 bishop into exile. The province of York had 
 consequently been laid under a special interdict 
 of its own shortly before the wider general 
 interdict had been laid upon the whole kingdom. 
 
King Fisherman 69 
 
 At this juncture, therefore, the Archbishops of 
 both provinces were excluded not only from 
 their sees, but from the country, and John was 
 plundering both churches in order to carry on 
 the war against the Church. Abbot Hugh had 
 not been instructed to say anything about the 
 business of the northern Archbishopric. Inno- 
 cent, however, had no mind to dissociate the 
 North from the South in coming to a settle- 
 ment with John. On the same day, therefore, 
 that he wrote to John, he wrote also to the 
 Commissioners of the Interdict in the province 
 of York, the Bishops of London and Rochester, 
 and the Dean of Lincoln, warning them that 
 they were not to relax the Interdict in the 
 province of York until the Archbishop had 
 been restored to the see, and restitution made 
 to the Church. If Stephen were admitted to 
 Canterbury, the Interdict would be lifted from 
 England, but the antecedent Interdict in the 
 province of York would still remain in force, to 
 be relaxed only when GeofFry should be restored 
 to York. 
 
 These letters were written at the end of 
 May. On June 21 an event occurred which 
 profoundly affected the policy of Innocent, 
 Philip, and John. This was the assassination 
 of the Suabian Emperor, Philip, son of Frederic 
 
70 T^he Holy Graal : 
 
 Barbarossa. For a moment, Philip of France 
 seems to have contemplated competing for the 
 vacant throne of the Empire. If he did, no 
 long reflection was needed to convince him 
 that it was more expedient to defer his ambi- 
 tion. John still had broad lands in the South. 
 His wealth was still supposed to be inexhaustible. 
 He was still confident of recovering the con- 
 tinental provinces he had lost. Ferrand of 
 Flanders, less powerful than John, was no less 
 deadly a foe. Philip had sworn that Flanders 
 should be French, and the invasion had already 
 begun. Raymond of Toulouse was still friendly, 
 but the crusade against the Albigenses was 
 nothing less than a masked invasion of the 
 South ; and as soon as Raymond understood the 
 truth, his enmity must be expected. Burgundy, 
 Lombardy even, he might hope to win by 
 patience, but to grasp at the Empire would be 
 to imperil, perhaps destroy, all hope of future 
 success. 
 
 There were three principal competitors for 
 the Imperial Crown — Otho of Brunswick, the 
 young Frederic of Sicily, and Henry of Brabant. 
 Philip of France favoured the last and assisted 
 him with funds. Both Innocent and John 
 declared in favour of John's nephew, Otho of 
 Brunswick. This coincidence of interest in a 
 
King Fisherman 71 
 
 matter of such vital interest to both naturally 
 tended for the time-being to mitigate the 
 asperities of the conflict on the subject of the 
 Interdict. Each was anxious to conciliate the 
 other so long at least as the election of Emperor 
 was still pending. Innocent flattered himself 
 that he could employ the occasion as a lever to 
 open the door for Stephen and GeofFry to take 
 possession of their sees. John flattered himself 
 that he could employ it as an instrument for 
 Innocent's discomfiture. 
 
 The mollifying influence of this community 
 of interest is perceptible throughout all the 
 earlier stages of the Interdict. On July 14, 
 letters of safe-conduct were granted by John to 
 Stephen's brother, Simon Langton, as well as 
 to the three Interdict Commissioners, to pass 
 freely to and fro between Dover and the Con- 
 tinent till September 8, and the permission was 
 subsequently extended to the end of the month. 
 In the beginning of August, Innocent writes 
 again to John, but his letter breathes no hint of 
 Interdict. Now is the time for John to come 
 forward with a subvention on behalf of Otho 
 worthy of the richest king in Christendom. 
 If he will only behave like a generous uncle on 
 the occasion, writes Innocent, John will not 
 only help his nephew immensely, but also 
 
72 The Holy Graal : 
 
 magnify himself beyond anything that it is 
 expedient to put into black and white in a 
 letter. In this particular matter, John was 
 quite willing to oblige. He knew he could 
 rely on Otho to turn traitor to Innocent at the 
 earliest opportunity. He even sent promises 
 of making full satisfaction for his sins against 
 the Church. In September, letters of safe- 
 conduct were granted by John to Stephen 
 himself for three weeks ; but the Archbishop, 
 doubtless for good reason, forbore to make any 
 use of them. 
 
 Before this time, Innocent had become aware 
 that in addition to his difficulties with John, 
 he had to reckon with the intrigues not only of 
 Philip of France, but of Philip's ally, Arnold of 
 Citeaux. On August 22, he writes again to 
 the Interdict Commissioners. Certain * angels 
 of evil ' have been suggesting that he is about 
 to relax the Interdict. He will do nothing of 
 the kind until John has accepted his conditions 
 and given adequate security for their fulfilment. 
 * This,' he writes, ' is the tenor of our mandate 
 according to the discreet and simple under- 
 standing thereof, clearly expressed in our former 
 letters, and carefully explained to our dearly 
 beloved son the Abbot of Beaulieu, the envoy 
 of the foresaid king. Wherefore we hold it 
 
King Fisherman 73 
 
 not only an unworthy but an impious act of 
 any man sacrilegiously to assert or believe that 
 we have explained our intentions in one way to 
 one, and in another to another.' The 'angels 
 of evil ' responsible for the slander are not 
 mentioned by name, but the chief culprit is 
 clearly indicated in a later passage of the same 
 letter : ' But you ought to know that this 
 hath reached our ears. After all the monks of 
 the Cistercian Order, in common with the 
 others, had begun to observe the sentence of 
 Interdict ; within the course of a few days, 
 certain of them celebrated Mass on their own 
 authority, while others, at a considerably later 
 period, began to celebrate in accordance with 
 a mandate from the Abbot of Citeaux, others 
 again still observing the Interdict. Now, as 
 we remember to have made answer to you in 
 former letters, supposing it had been allowed 
 from the beginning for monks to celebrate 
 divine service according to the tenor of their 
 privileges, with closed doors, without ringing 
 of bells, and in a low voice, it would have been 
 neither offensive nor disagreeable to us. But 
 now, if the sentence is hereby to be impaired 
 and the business shorn of its vigour, whatsoever 
 may be the grounds on which certain of the 
 monks have proceeded to celebrate — whether 
 
74 'T^^^ Holy Graal : 
 
 it be on account of that clause granted them 
 by the Apostolic See, to wit, that no letters 
 obtained against the tenor of their apostolic 
 privileges shall have validity as against the 
 Cistercians unless the name of the Order be 
 expressly mentioned therein — or whether on 
 account of the answer that was formerly sent, 
 which haply has reached them through some- 
 body revealing it, — in any case, you may 
 confidently rely on our authority in making 
 any ordinance you may consider that the 
 business demands, and in causing your ordi- 
 nance to be firmly observed by ecclesiastical 
 censure without appeal. Moreover, you will 
 discreetly admonish and efiiciently urge the said 
 King to carry out without delay or demur all 
 that the Abbot of Beaulieu promised and 
 offered on his behalf as above expressed, seeing 
 that, without doubt, it is as much to his 
 practical advantage as to his safety that he 
 should be regarded by all as having obtained 
 the plenary grace and favour of the Apostolic 
 See. Nor can we disguise the fact that we 
 shall make heavy our hands against him if haply 
 his heart shall continue so hardened that he 
 doth not take heed to make satisfaction to God 
 and the Church.' 
 
 To Arnold himself he writes much in the 
 
King Fisherman 75 
 
 same terms with regard to the action taken by 
 the Commissioners, but rates him roundly for 
 having incited the Cistercians to disobey the 
 rescript issued by them: * When you were 
 consulted on the matter, you made answer to 
 the inquirers that they could defend themselves 
 as against the said Commissioners by inter- 
 posing an appeal, unless a copy of the rescript 
 had been actually delivered to them, or in case 
 it should appear that the rescript had been 
 clandestinely obtained. No doubt, according to 
 the strict letter of the law, it was open to you to 
 suggest a quibbling subterfuge of the kind by 
 way of answer ; but you had no right to suspect 
 dignitaries and prelates of such high character 
 and merit of rashly arrogating to themselves an 
 authority we had not conferred upon them, or 
 of maliciously wresting such authority after it 
 had been conferred to other purposes. In this 
 case, when it was your duty to measure other 
 men's motives by your own, it was specially 
 unseemly on your part to suggest a suspicion 
 of the kind ; for, if the Commissioners had 
 stumbled on a like suspicion as against your- 
 self, you would have been likely enough to infer 
 that their own consciences supplied the stone.' 
 He then formally ratifies the rescript, and 
 commands its exact observance. The real 
 
76 T^he Holy Graal : 
 
 sting of the rebuke is not revealed in the 
 letter. In the first years of the century, the 
 Abbey of Moleme had lapsed into a state of 
 temporal and spiritual decay. Letters had 
 been obtained from Innocent appointing 
 Arnold as visitor ; and under his rule the 
 Abbey had been rapidly restored to its former 
 prosperity. Shortly before the date of 
 Innocent's letter to Arnold, the convent had 
 petitioned Innocent to be relieved from 
 Arnold's annual visitation. It was surrepti- 
 tiously obtained, they said, in the first instance, 
 was now not only useless but unduly expensive, 
 and there was good reason to fear that under 
 pretence of visitation, Citeaux would usurp 
 the right of ordering their affairs in perpetuity. 
 Innocent sent the Bishop of Troyes to 
 inquire into the allegations and grant the 
 petition. Arnold, he writes to the Abbot and 
 convent, is now engaged in his duties against 
 the heretics in Languedoc, and cannot under- 
 take the business of visitation, even if it were 
 expedient; and moreover, 'as you observe in 
 your petition, it is necessary to take precautions 
 against his turning the visitation into a pretext 
 for usurping the regulation of the monastery in 
 perpetuity.' He does not in so many words 
 accuse Arnold of having obtained the letters 
 
King Fisherman jj 
 
 clandestinely, but he leaves it to be clearly 
 inferred that he did so. It was Moleme from 
 whence the first founder of Citeaux had gone 
 forth with his companions. The letter to the 
 Abbot was written only a few days after that 
 to Arnold, and the evidence of Arnold's having 
 obtained the letters surreptitiously must have 
 been before Innocent at the time he penned 
 the rebuke. 
 
 With the year 1209, the Interdict in 
 England and the Crusade in Languedoc 
 entered on a new phase. On January 12, 
 Innocent writes to warn John that three 
 months after he has either received or refused to 
 receive the present letter, sentence of anathema 
 will be pronounced against him unless he is 
 then prepared to fulfil all the promises he made 
 through the Abbot of Beaulieu. Between 
 the personal excommunication thus threatened 
 and the actual launching of a Crusade against 
 him there was but a single step, the declaration 
 of deposition and the release of his subjects 
 from their allegiance. John knew perfectly 
 what he had to expect in case of continued 
 contumacy. A copy of the letter to John was 
 sent to the Commissioners with strict injunc- 
 tions to them punctually to carry out the 
 threat if John continued stubborn. In another 
 
78 T'he Holy Graal : 
 
 letter of the same date he informs the Com- 
 missioners that Archbishop Stephen has 
 petitioned that in those conventual churches 
 which have so far strictly obeyed the Interdict, 
 leave may be given to celebrate Mass under 
 the usual Interdict conditions. He will not 
 interfere himself, but leaves the matter to their 
 discretion. A copy of the letter to John is 
 still extant with the note in a probably 
 contemporary hand : ' Done in the year of 
 grace 1209, at the time the community of the 
 faithful started on its way against the Albigen- 
 sian heretics.* The coincidence of the two 
 events, which the old scribe obviously regarded 
 as significant, seems to have escaped the notice 
 of later historians. 
 
 A fortnight later, February 3, another vast 
 budget of letters issued from the papal chancery. 
 The first was addressed to Philip urging him 
 to appoint by royal authority some man, 
 energetic, prudent, and faithful, to be sole 
 captain of the host assembled for the exter- 
 mination of the Provencal heretics, *one 
 capable of leading them that fight the battle of 
 the Lord under God's protection and under 
 your banner.' As a matter of history, the ' sole 
 Captain ' appointed at this time was none other 
 than Arnold of Citeaux himself. The next 
 
King Fisherman 79 
 
 letters are addressed to the hosts of the faithful 
 generally : ' Onward, ye most puissant Knights 
 of Christ ! Onward, ye doughtiest champions 
 of Christian soldierhood ! Aforetime, haply, 
 ye have fought for transitory glory — fight ye 
 now for glory everlasting! Ye have fought 
 for the body — fight ye now for the soul ! Ye 
 have fought for the world — fight ye now for 
 God ! Not for any earthly hire do we exhort 
 you to so great service to God, but for the 
 kingdom of God, which we do most confidently 
 promise shall be your reward ! ' 
 
 With this somewhat dithyrambic farewell, 
 the Crusaders may be left for the present. 
 Before starting as generalissimo of the armies 
 of God in Languedoc, Arnold did his best to 
 raise the devil in England. A letter of Inno- 
 cent's to all the English Bishops was issued on 
 February 21, and records the result : — 
 
 * Whereas the monasteries of the Cistercian 
 Order established throughout England had 
 begun to observe strictly the ecclesiastical 
 Interdict therein generally promulgated by our 
 authority in the matter of the Church of 
 Canterbury, yet since then, as we have heard, 
 certain of them, under pretence of an appeal 
 which they are said to have interposed on the 
 ground of their privileges, have rashly violated 
 
8o T'he Holy Graal : 
 
 the Interdict, not only according to the terms 
 of their privileges, but have actually presumed 
 to celebrate divine service with more than 
 usual solemnities, with pealing of bells and 
 shouting of hymns, with open doors, and with 
 invitations to others, not Cistercians, to join in 
 the Communion. Albeit, therefore, we find 
 it hardly possible to believe that men of 
 religion should be guilty of such presumptu- 
 ous audacity, yet, since if what is asserted be 
 true it is impossible but that the vigour of 
 canonical discipline should be thereby weak- 
 ened, to the grievous peril of ecclesiastical 
 freedom, we do hereby enjoin and strictly 
 command every one of you most diligently to 
 inquire into the truth of this report, to suspend 
 the Abbots and Priors of such monasteries as 
 you shall find thus to have celebrated divine 
 service, and compel them to come before our 
 presence by ecclesiastical censure without 
 contradiction or the interposition of any 
 appeal, there to make satisfaction for so gross 
 a contempt. The monasteries themselves also 
 you shall compel by like censure inviolably to 
 observe the Interdict aforesaid according to the 
 ordinance of our venerable brethren the Bishop 
 of London and his co-executors, any privilege 
 to the contrary notwithstanding, inasmuch as 
 
King Fisherman 8i 
 
 no privilege can prevail against the mandate of 
 the Apostolic authority, privileges of the kind 
 being always granted with a reservation of its 
 rights.' 
 
 Writing to Arnold himself, Innocent throws 
 upon him the entire responsibility for the state of 
 things described, and characterises his conduct 
 as unkind and unworthy. After rehearsing 
 his letter to the Bishops, Innocent proceeds: 
 ' We feel the indignity thus offered by the 
 Cistercian Order all the harder to bear because 
 both the Apostolic See and ourselves have so 
 little deserved that our grace should be repaid 
 by injury, and the honour we have done the 
 Order by contempt. Indeed, were it not that 
 the earnest sincerity of the love we bear 
 towards you and other religious of the Order 
 restrains the natural impulse of our mind, we 
 should have taken care to punish those guilty 
 of a temerity of this kind with a heavier chas- 
 tisement. . . . We are hurt and grieved that 
 so gross a contempt should be, as it seems to 
 be, the result of your exhortations. It is true, 
 as you observe in your last letter to us, and we 
 in ours to you, that when we discussed the 
 matter familiarly in private, we found it im- 
 possible to come to any agreement. You will 
 nevertheless please to accept what is stated 
 
 F 
 
82 The Holy Graal : 
 
 above on the understanding that you are to 
 prevent others of your Order from committing 
 a like offence, lest haply a like punishment or 
 one heavier than that now inflicted should 
 chance to befall them ; for, assuredly, in case 
 you attempt to act otherv^^ise, which we do not 
 believe you will, we will punish both head and 
 members with condign chastisement according 
 to the guilt of head or members. 
 
 This is ' faithful dealing.' Arnold and the 
 Order had no choice but to submit. Arnold's 
 time and energies were just now absorbed in 
 fulfilling the duties of Military Commander- 
 in-Chief, and the Order could not hope in his 
 absence to continue the struggle against Inno- 
 cent in England. The Cistercian Abbots, how- 
 ever, pleaded their apology and their cause 
 with Innocent in the shape of a petition to 
 which he replied on March 6. In this petition 
 they set forth their case and defended the 
 action they had taken on four principal grounds. 
 The first prayer is that their privilege to cele- 
 brate in time of Interdict may be allowed. 
 The privilege, they assert, has been approved 
 by ancient custom never hitherto violated, and 
 they have done nothing to deserve its violation 
 now. To this Innocent answers that he would 
 have been pleased if the Commissioners had 
 
King Fisherman 83 
 
 seen their way to allowing the privilege ; but 
 as they were invested with Apostolic authority, 
 he was not in a position to interfere. The privi- 
 lege was granted originally 'without prejudice' 
 to the Apostolic authority, which consequently 
 was free to override it whenever expedient. 
 The privilege itself and the custom founded on 
 the privilege remained intact. In this particu- 
 lar case, the Apostolic authority, as it had a 
 perfect right to do, had set the privilege aside. 
 It was perhaps to be regretted that the Com- 
 missioners took the view they did, but the 
 decision rested with them, not with either 
 Rome or Citeaux. They had decided, and 
 their decision must at all costs be upheld. 
 The words Innocent employs are remarkable : 
 ' You seem to have remembered to ask when 
 it was too late. You yourselves began by 
 observing the Interdict without paying heed 
 either to the privilege or the custom, and now 
 you come running back to us with your 
 belated petitions.' 
 
 Quite apart from technical and legal con- 
 siderations, however. Innocent has good grounds 
 for refusing the petition. If it were granted, 
 would not the king with whom we are wrest- 
 ling, feeling our grip slacken, gather strength 
 from our weakness ? Would not the secular 
 
84 T^he Holy Graal : 
 
 clergy and the monks of other Orders be 
 sorely scandalised ? ' They are always more or 
 less jealous of your Order, because you receive 
 the tithes that they have to pay, and, just now, 
 when they are deriving some small comfort 
 from having you as companions in misfortune, 
 would they not feel doubly sore were they to 
 see you resuming the celebration of divine ser- 
 vice while they are still condemned to keep 
 silence ? ' They are all eager to abolish the 
 invidious distinctions that you enjoy over them- 
 selves. Surely this is not the time to empha- 
 sise and exaggerate them ? Again, think of 
 the slight that would be cast upon the Com- 
 missioners. They have dared the king's wrath 
 — they have suffered exile — they are ready to 
 suffer to the death. Would it not be intoler- 
 ably mean to rebuke them for their good 
 deeds ? 
 
 You state in your petition that the breach of 
 the custom of celebration may result in the 
 dissolution of your Order. The danger, if 
 danger it be, is comparatively small. The 
 struggle is for the liberty of the Church uni- 
 versal, and it is obviously better that a part 
 should suffer than that the whole should be 
 destroyed. Innocent's consolatory style is 
 delightful. There is no fear, he adds, of your 
 
King Fishermmi 85 
 
 not being otherwise strong enough by God's 
 help to preserve yourselves from dissolution of 
 any such kind. 
 
 The last point in your petition is that the 
 w^rath of God, in whose hands is the heart of 
 the king, will be sooner appeased by your 
 celebrating the sacrifice of the Holy Eucharist. 
 There is no harm in holding a pious opinion of 
 the kind. It is to be hoped, however, that if 
 you bear with patience the unmerited punish- 
 ment that has befallen you, the Spirit which 
 ever pleadeth for you with groanings unspeak- 
 able will speedily obtain a happy ending from 
 Him who hath redeemed us by suffering punish- 
 ment undeserved. Wherefore, most beloved 
 sons, since this business is even now as it were 
 at an end, we pray and beseech you that you 
 interfere not to disturb it, but rather pray God 
 that He so soften the doer of the sin as that 
 he may pardon them that inflict the punish- 
 ment, in the certain hope that a worthy recom- 
 pense for unworthy punishment is reserved for 
 you not only by God, but by ourselves. 
 
 On the same day that he sent this epistle 
 in answer to the Cistercian petition, Inno- 
 cent wrote also to the Interdict executors, 
 asking them, if it could be done without grave 
 scandal or too great a breach of ecclesiastical 
 
86 The Holy Graal : 
 
 discipline, kindly to relax the severity of the 
 Interdict so far as to allow the Cistercians the 
 exercise of their customary privilege. ' It w^ould 
 have been acceptable to us,' he writes, ' if the 
 rigour of the Interdict had been modified from 
 the beginning in accordance with their privi- 
 lege.' He had reason to regard Arnold as a 
 traitor and an enemy ; but Arnold's exuberant 
 energy would be well employed in Languedoc, 
 and Innocent sincerely loved the Order whose 
 services he found so indispensable. 
 
 There is no need at present to follow either 
 Crusade or Interdict further. King Fisherman 
 himself has revealed the nature of the question 
 left unasked : ' You seem to have remembered 
 to ask when it was too late. You yourselves 
 began by observing the Interdict without 
 paying heed to the privilege or the custom, and 
 now you come running back to us with your 
 belated petitions.' So writes King Fisherman 
 to the Cistercian brotherhood. The echoes of 
 the words reverberate through all the winding 
 alleys of all romances of the Graal. In those 
 familiar discussions with the King of the Lower 
 Folk to which he refers, he might well have 
 stated his case a little more fully. ' Years 
 ago, when Dominic was here in Rome, he 
 petitioned me to grant him a commission to 
 
King Fisher mail 87 
 
 come to your assistance in Languedoc. He 
 was anxious that his new scheme of preaching 
 should have a fair trial, and was careful to 
 stipulate that all the privileges enjoyed by your 
 Cistercians In partibus hcereticorum should be 
 extended to the new preachers. But he breathed 
 no word about privileges for you or himself in 
 partihus fidelium. Fulke of Marseilles, too, our 
 dear brother of Toulouse, was here but a day 
 or two since to bring tidings of our Legate 
 Peter's blessed martyrdom and to ask me to 
 appoint new Legates to take the place of Peter 
 and Ralph ofFontfroid. Here is your Crusade 
 ready to start ; and in discussing the requisite 
 provision to be made during the campaign, 
 the question of your privileges during Interdict 
 were carefully considered. We talked, too, 
 long and earnestly about the Interdict in 
 England, but still not a word did he say about 
 your privilege at such a time. If either one 
 or the other had remembered to make inquiry, 
 you know hov/ gladly I would have granted any 
 boon in reason to my dear Cistercian brethren. 
 But it is now too late to appeal to me. My 
 honour is pledged to the Commissioners to 
 uphold their decision on every point connected 
 with the Interdict. I would make any sacrifice 
 but that of honour and religion to alleviate as far 
 
88 rhe Holy Graal : 
 
 as possible the curse I have reluctantly found it 
 necessary to inflict on the land of Logres, but 
 what you now ask is already beyond my power. 
 You speak too late ! ' Substitute the name of 
 Perceval for that of Dominic, and Gawain for 
 Fulke of Marseilles, and we have here the 
 groundwork of the story of the Graal. There 
 is, indeed, in Innocent's letters but little trace 
 of the ' languishment ' into which King Fisher- 
 man falls on account of the unasked question, 
 but the metaphor aptly expresses the meaning 
 of the Cistercian romancer. The ' languish- 
 ment ' that overtakes the Head of the Church 
 is simply his way of indicating the unrelieved 
 spiritual desolation that fell with the Interdict 
 on the Church in England. 
 
 I do not propose to follow any further the 
 story either of the Crusade or the Interdict. 
 My object here is simply to throw light on the 
 origin and motive of the story of the Graal, 
 not to analyse its various episodes or to trace 
 their correspondence with actual events recorded 
 in history. If my suggestions as to the time 
 and place in which the drama is supposed to be 
 enacted, and my identifications of some of the 
 principal dramatis personce^ are correct, the 
 reading of the play itself will at least present 
 far fewer difficulties to the student. The lock 
 
King Fisherman 89 
 
 of the old legend is rusty, and a considerable 
 accumulation of old oil, dirt, and cobwebs has 
 gathered among the springs and wards ; but if 
 the key is the true key, it will still turn the 
 bolt and allow free entrance into the haunted 
 chamber to examine the furniture and tapestries 
 at leisure. 
 
 It may be useful here to put together the 
 parallels already traced between the personages 
 and events that figure in the romance of the 
 Graal and the personages and events that find 
 a place in the history of the first decade of the 
 thirteenth century. In the romance : King 
 Fisherman dwells in a castle where blood falls 
 drop by drop into a holy vessel called the Graal. 
 The contents of the Graal are served to the 
 inmates of the castle and to any guests that 
 have approved themselves worthy to partake of 
 them. The food is abundant for all, and the 
 savour is sweeter than that of any earthly 
 meat. King Fisherman has a sister, Yglais, 
 and two brothers, the King of Castle Mortal 
 and the King of the Lower Folk. Once upon 
 a time Perceval, the son of Yglais by her 
 husband Alain li Gros, comes as a guest to the 
 Castle of the Graal. To him, as to the house- 
 hold of the castle, the contents of the Graal 
 are served, but he forbears to ask what the 
 
90 l^he Holy Graal : 
 
 contents may be, or to whom they are of right 
 administered. In consequence of the omission, 
 a grievous misfortune falls upon England, all 
 Christendom is plunged into a state of civil 
 war, and King Fisherman is afflicted with a 
 fatal ' languishment.' At a later period, Gawain 
 also arrives at the castle, bearing with him the 
 sword wherewith John the Baptist was be- 
 headed. The Graal is revealed to him, but, 
 like Perceval, he forgets to ask the question, 
 although he has been repeatedly admonished 
 to do so, by King Fisherman himself among 
 others, who in consequence of the omission 
 falls into even more grievous ' languishment ' 
 than ever. 
 
 In actual history : Dominic arrives at Rome 
 in order to confer with Pope Innocent iii. at a 
 time when Innocent and almost the whole 
 Catholic world had already approved of the 
 doctrine of Transubstantiation, but when the 
 doctrine had not yet been declared de Fide. 
 Dominic is a true son of Yglais, the Church, 
 and spiritually of the Doctor Universalis^ Alanus, 
 or Alain li Gros, whose arguments against the 
 Waldenses and Albigenses he is anxious to 
 employ in preaching to the heretics themselves. 
 At this time, Innocent's Cistercian legates in 
 Languedoc had already been granted absolute 
 
King Fisherman 91 
 
 power in the matter of Interdict. A bishop or 
 archbishop might lay this or that church or 
 parish, or even his whole diocese or province, 
 under Interdict ; but the Legates could, if so 
 minded, not only disregard it but abrogate it, 
 and lay a stronger interdict of their own on 
 the puisne prelate. Their old privilege entitled 
 the Cistercians to celebrate mass during In- 
 terdict privately and under certain conditions. 
 Their privilege in Languedoc entitled them to 
 celebrate it publicly and without conditions. 
 Innocent conferred on Dominic the right to 
 share in all the Cistercian privileges in Langue- 
 doc. He could not in the circumstances do 
 otherwise, as Dominic's commission was to 
 preach in co-operation with the Cistercian 
 Legates. Dominic, intent on his own work, 
 never thought of the question of privilege to 
 celebrate mass during Interdict elsewhere than 
 in his own special field of labour. His neglect 
 to do so was unobserved until some few years 
 later, when England was laid under Interdict. 
 It was then felt that if he had only broached 
 the question at the time of his visit, Innocent 
 would, as he himself bears witness, have been 
 glad to confirm at least all the ordinary privileges 
 of the Cistercians in times of Interdict, not 
 only in Languedoc, but throughout Christen- 
 
92 The Holy Graal : 
 
 dom. Had Dominic thought of the matter, 
 the severity of the Interdict would have been 
 mitigated to a great extent. Not only the 
 Cistercians but the friends of the Cistercians 
 would have still been able to partake of the 
 Holy Eucharist, the denial of which to all was 
 the heaviest part of the sentence. 
 
 Just on the eve of the Crusade and Interdict, 
 Fulke of Marseilles also visited Rome, bearing 
 full tidings of the death of Peter of Castelnau. 
 At such a moment, it might well have been 
 expected that the question of privilege during 
 Interdict in England would have been raised. 
 Fulke, however, at the time was wholly preoc- 
 cupied by the Albigensian Crusade, and English 
 affairs had less interest for him than for either 
 Innocent or Arnold ofCiteaux. The question 
 was not asked, in spite of hints from various 
 quarters, and, quite possibly, from Innocent 
 himself. The Interdict was put into force in 
 England in all its rigour only a few days later, 
 and the Cistercians no less than others were 
 forbidden to celebrate Mass. All but three 
 monasteries at first obeyed the ordinance. A 
 little later, by the advice of Arnold of Citeaux, 
 many of them began to celebrate in accordance 
 with their old privilege, some in accordance 
 with the larger privileges enjoyed in Languedoc. 
 
King Fisherman 93 
 
 Innocent commanded instant obedience and 
 the punishment of the principal offenders. 
 The Cistercians thereupon ' came running back 
 to him with their belated petitions' to be 
 allowed to celebrate Mass, but were met with 
 the response that they had remembered to ask 
 the boon too late. 
 
 This is not a mere similarity, it is identity. 
 The persons and things are the same both in 
 the Romance and in the History. Innocent 
 describes himself as called to the office of 
 Fisherman. King Fisherman is the guardian 
 of the Graal. He has the power of with- 
 holding the celebration of the Mass by Interdict 
 or granting it by privilege. Dominic is in 
 simple fact the spiritual son of the Church and 
 of Alanus. The Interdict is as a matter of 
 history the sorest spiritual mischance that had 
 ever befallen Great Britain. It is on authentic 
 record that the failure to obtain any settle- 
 ment of the question as to the celebration 
 of the Holy Sacrament during Interdict did 
 lead to serious strife in the Church, and very 
 materially aggravated the hardships of the curse 
 that fell upon the kingdom of Logres. Innocent 
 himself bears witness that he would have been 
 only too pleased to grant a favourable answer 
 had the question been raised in time. It 
 
94 T'^^ Holy Graal : 
 
 is no ordinary allegory. The story-teller 
 calls Innocent King Fisherman and Dominic 
 Perceval, just as he would call a fox Reynard, 
 or a bear Bruin. John Bunyan's ' Giant Pope ' 
 is a personification of the Papacy as an insti- 
 tution. The Romancer's King Fisherman is 
 the Pope himself, who happens just now to be 
 Innocent iii. 
 
 Coincidences of the kind I have pointed out 
 do not happen fortuitously. There are far too 
 many of them all pointing at once in the same 
 direction for them to be the result of accident. 
 The central idea of the story, the conception 
 of illimitable warfare and desolation, of smitten 
 kings, and kingdoms groaning under the curse 
 of Heaven as the disastrous consequences of 
 a young knight inadvertently omitting to 
 ask a question which might well seem to be 
 impertinent at the court of a highly devout 
 King who happened to be a Fisherman, is on 
 the face of it grotesque, unintelligible, in- 
 credible, incoherent as lunacy itself. It is 
 an idea that no poet or romancer would have 
 hit on a priori as his theme. It could not have 
 occurred to him before the event had happened 
 in reality. The event itself, too, never 
 happened, never could happen, but once. It 
 is absolutely unique in the world's history. 
 
King Fisherman 95 
 
 Consequences of not asking a question at the 
 right time have perhaps been even more dis- 
 astrous. No other heavy curse ever fell on 
 the kingdom of Logres because of a question 
 unasked at the court of a King who vi^as also 
 a Fisherman. No other event could possibly 
 have suggested the Romance as it stands. No 
 figment so v^^ild was ever so true to actual fact. 
 Had no other interpretation ever been placed 
 upon the legend, I venture to believe that no 
 other would ever have obtained even a tempor- 
 ary acceptance from those to whom the history 
 of the time is as familiar as the legend of the 
 Graal itself. 
 
IV 
 ELUCIDATION 
 
 Car voiis n'oistes ains parler 
 Veraiement ne raconter j 
 Et si fii grans noise et grans bruis 
 Coment et por coi fu destruis 
 De Logres li rices pais ; 
 Moult en sot-an parler jadls. 
 
 (Elucidation de l'hystoire du 
 Graal, 23.) 
 
 So far, attention has been called only to the 
 central idea as set forth in the ' High History 
 of the Holy GraaL' There are, however, a 
 number of other versions of the story, and it 
 may, perhaps, be reasonably surmised that the 
 interpretation of some of these is not to be 
 found in the events to which I have referred. 
 This, however, is not the case. Each version 
 has its own special and peculiar key, but the 
 master-key unlocks them all. In all. King 
 Fisherman, by whatever name he may be 
 called, is the Pope. In all which make mention 
 of the curse that fell upon Logres, 'the event 
 
 G 
 
98 T'he Holy Graal : 
 
 referred to is the Interdict. In all, Perceval 
 is none other than Dominic. Innumerable 
 accretions, variations, transpositions, substi- 
 tutions, superfluities, are to be found, but these 
 elements remain constant. They underlie 
 alike the versions redacted by Malory and the 
 Parzival of Wolfram von Eschenbach. 
 
 For the purposes of this introduction, it will 
 be enough to examine one fragment only of 
 another version of the story, chosen from the 
 immense mass of material still extant, because 
 it has already for more than three centuries 
 and a half been recognised as an ' Elucidation ' 
 of the story of the Graal. The original from 
 which I translate is the beginning of the second 
 volume of Perceval le Gallois^ edited by M. Ch. 
 Potvin for the Societe des Bibliophiles Beiges^ 
 Mons, 1866. M. Potvin prints it as part of 
 the work by Chrestien de Troyes, to whose 
 poem on the history of Perceval it serves as 
 an introduction. The question as to its true 
 authorship need not be here discussed. It is 
 agreed on all hands that it is part of a very 
 early version of the story, and, as such, it was 
 with the rest of the poem turned into prose 
 and published in Paris in 1530, with the side- 
 note, ^Elucidation de Phystoire du GraaW The 
 date I assign to the lines here rendered in 
 
Elucidation 99 
 
 literal prose is somewhere between 1220 and 
 1225 : — 
 
 * By way of a noble commencement thereof, 
 here worshipfully beginneth a Romance of the 
 most delightsome story that may be, to wit, 
 the story of the Graal, the secret whereof may 
 no man tell in prose nor rhyme, for such a 
 thing might the story turn out to be before it 
 were all told that every man might be grieved 
 thereof albeit he had in nowise misdone. 
 Wherefore it is that the wise man leaveth it 
 aside and doth simply pass on beyond, for, and 
 Master Blihis lie not, the secret should no man 
 tell. 
 
 * Now listen to me, all ye my friends, and ye 
 shall hear me set forth the story that shall be 
 right sweet to hearken unto, for therein shall 
 be the seven Wardens that hold governance 
 throughout the whole world, and all the good 
 stories that any hath told according as the 
 writing shall set them forth -, what manner 
 folk the seven Wardens should be, and how 
 they took unto them a chief, and whom they 
 took, for never aforetime have ye heard tell 
 the story truly set forth, and how great noise 
 was there and great outcry, and how and for 
 what cause was destroyed the rich country of 
 Logres whereof was much talk in days of yore. 
 
loo , T'he Holy Graal : 
 
 ' The kingdom turned to loss, the land was 
 dead and desert in suchwise as that it was 
 scarce worth a couple of hazel-nuts. For they 
 lost the voices of the wells and the damsels 
 that were therein. For no less thing was the 
 service they rendered than this, that scarce any 
 wandered by the way, whether it were at 
 eventide or morning, but that as for drink and 
 victual he would go so far out of his way as to 
 find one of the wells, and then nought could 
 he ask for of fair victual such as pleased him 
 but incontinent he should have it all so long as 
 he had asked in reason. For straightway, I 
 wis, forth of the well issued a damsel — none 
 fairer need he ask — bearing in her hand a cup 
 of gold with larded meats, pasties, and bread, 
 while another damsel bore a white napkin and 
 a dish of gold or silver wherein was the mess 
 which he that had come for the mess had asked 
 for. Right fair welcome found he at the well, 
 and if so it were that his mess did not please 
 him, divers other they brought him all made to 
 his wish with great cheer and great plenty. 
 The damsels with one accord served fair and 
 joyously all wayfarers by the roads that came 
 to the wells for victual. 
 
 'King Amangons, that was evil and craven- 
 hearted, was the first to break the custom, for 
 
Elucidation i o i 
 
 thereafter did many others the same according 
 to the ensample they took of the King whose 
 duty it was to protect the damsels and to 
 maintain and guard them within his peace. 
 One of the damsels did he enforce, and to her 
 sore sorrow did away her maidenhead, and 
 carried oiF from her the cup of gold that he 
 took along with him, and afterward did make 
 him every day be served thereof. Well 
 deserved he to come to mishap thereby. For 
 thenceforth never did the damsel serve any 
 more nor issue forth of that well for no man 
 that might come thither to ask for victual. 
 And all the other damsels only served in such 
 sort as that none should see them. 
 
 ' The other vassals that held of the King's 
 honour, when they beheld this of their Lord that 
 he enforced the damsels wheresoever he found 
 them comeliest, did all in like manner enforce 
 them and carried ofF the cups of gold in such- 
 wise that thereafter did no damsel issue forth 
 of the wells nor none did service. This wot 
 ye well, my Lords, that on this wise did the 
 land turn to its downfall, and an evil end 
 withal did the King make and all the others 
 after him that had wrought the damsels sore 
 annoy. In such sort was the kingdom laid 
 waste that thenceforth was no tree leafy. 
 
I02 T'he Holy Graal : 
 
 The meadows and the flowers were dried up 
 and the waters were shrunken, nor as then 
 might no man find the Court of the Rich 
 Fisherman that wont to make in the land a 
 glittering glory of gold and silver, of ermines 
 and minever, of rich palls of sendal, of meats 
 and of stuffs, of falcons gentle and merlins 
 and tercels and sparrow-hawks and falcons 
 peregrine. 
 
 ^Then, when the Court was found, through- 
 out the country was so great plenty of all 
 manner riches such as I have named that I 
 warrant you all men marvelled thereat both 
 rich and poor. Thenceforward, as before it 
 had lost every whit, so now in the kingdom 
 of Logres was all the richesse in the world. 
 
 'The Peers of the Table Round came in the 
 time of King Arthur. So good as they were 
 none ever seen. Knights were they so good, 
 so worshipful, so strong, so proud, so puissant, 
 and so hardy, that when they had heard the story 
 of the adventures, they were fain incontinent 
 to recover the wells. All with one accord 
 sware an oath to protect the damsels that had 
 been put out of them and the cups that had 
 been carried away, and to destroy root and 
 branch the kindred of them that had wrought 
 them harm. For these dwelt so nigh the wells 
 
Elucidation 103 
 
 that the damsels came not forth 3 and if it were 
 that they could catch any of them, her made 
 they be slain by the sword or hanged. Alms 
 made they and prayer to God that He would 
 recover back the wells in such stablishment as 
 they were aforetime, and that for His honour 
 He would do them the service they asked of 
 Him. Before they bethought them of asking 
 so much, they could find nought. Never a 
 voice could they hear from the wells, nor would 
 no damsel issue therefrom. 
 
 ' But thereafter such adventure found they 
 that they did very mightily marvel thereat. 
 For in the forest found they damsels — fairer 
 none would you ask — with whom were knights 
 right well armed upon their destriers that 
 protected the damsels. Together fought they 
 against them that would fain have carried them 
 off. Many a knight did they make die, for the 
 damsels, I wis, had many a battle in the land. 
 King Arthur thereby lost many a good knight 
 without recovery, and many a good one did he 
 gain thereby, as the story will tell you. 
 
 * The Knight first conquered had to name 
 Blihos Bliheris, and him did Messire Gauwains 
 overcome through the great prowess whereof 
 he is fulfilled. Him sent he to yield himself 
 up to King Arthur ; whereupon he mounted 
 
I04 T'he Holy Graal : 
 
 his horse as he that hath no mind to tarry; and 
 when he came to the Court did yield himself 
 up, albeit never was he there known of the 
 King, nor none did he know. But right good 
 stories he knew, such as that none could ever 
 be aweary of hearkening to his words. They 
 of the Court asked him of the damsels that 
 rode by the forest albeit it were not yet 
 summer, and good right had they so to ask 
 and demand answer. And he knew how to 
 tell them as much so that right willingly gave 
 they ear to him, and many a night together 
 were the damsels and the knights fain to 
 hearken to him and seek him out. 
 
 ' He saith to them : " Much marvel have ye 
 of the damsels that ye see go among these 
 great forests, and never make ye an end of 
 asking in what country we are born. I will 
 tell ye the truth hereof. All we are born of 
 the damsels, and never in the world were 
 fairer, whom King Amangons did enforce. 
 Never on any day of the world shall those 
 wrongs be amended. The Peers of the Table 
 Round of their courtesy and honour, of their 
 prowess and valiance, are fain by force to 
 recover the wells whereof these be the squires 
 and knights and nobles. I will tell you the 
 sum of the matter. These all shall journey 
 
Elucidation 105 
 
 in common, and the damsels in likewise that 
 wander at large through this country by forest 
 and field behoveth it thus to fare until such 
 time as God shall give them to find the Court 
 from whence shall come the joy whereby the 
 land shall again be made bright. To them 
 that shall seek the Court, shall befall adventures 
 such as were never found nor told of in this 
 land afore." Much to their liking was this that 
 he said and sung unto them, and right well 
 were they pleased. 
 
 'Thereafter was no great delay or ever the 
 good knights of the Court held a great parlia- 
 ment whereunto each made ready to repair 
 straightway. Right stoutly then sought they 
 the Court of the Rich Fisherman that could 
 much of nigromancy, insomuch that a hundred 
 times changed he his semblance in such sort 
 that whoso should have seen him in one guise 
 should not know him again when he showed 
 him as another man after another guess fashion. 
 
 ' Messire Gauwains found the Court what 
 time Arthur was King, and sojourned thereat 
 in very sooth. That shall be well recounted 
 before you, and the joy that he had there, 
 whereof all the kingdom was the better. But 
 afore him, the first to find it was a young 
 knight that was right little of age, albeit none 
 
io6 T^he Holy Graal : 
 
 more hardy of courage was not to be found in 
 all the world. Then came to the Table Round 
 the young man of whom I tell you that in 
 prowess did overpass all that ever were or now 
 are throughout all the countries of the world. 
 Of no account was he held at first, yet after- 
 wards was his accoutrement right noble, and so 
 thoroughly did he search out amidst the land 
 them that went about to conquer it, that he 
 found the Court. This is the sooth, and many 
 of ye know it. Perceval li Galois was he. He 
 asked whereof the Graal served, but demanded 
 not as to the Lance, when he saw it, wherefore 
 it should bleed, nor of the Sword whereof the 
 one-half was taken away and the other lay in 
 the bier over one dead after the manner of a 
 great swooning. But I tell you of a certainty 
 that he made inquisition as to what was the 
 treasure that was in the hall and the rich cross 
 of silver that came foremost of all. 
 
 * By the space of three hours three times a 
 day was therein lamentation so sore that no 
 man, were he never so hardy, but and if he 
 should hear it he should be stricken with fear. 
 Then did they hang four censers at four rich 
 candlesticks that were at the horns of the bier. 
 When they had done the service, straightway 
 the cries continued again, and every man evan- 
 
Elucidation 1 07 
 
 ished away. The hall that was great and wide 
 remained void and astonied, and the stream of 
 blood ran from the vessel where was the Lance 
 through the rich channel of silver. 
 
 ' Then forthwith was the palace filled of the 
 folk and the knights. Then was the fairest 
 victual of all the world made ready. Then 
 issued forth in all his apparel the King that was 
 unknown. From a chamber came he forth 
 robed. In right noble attire he came, inso- 
 much as that none could declare the robe nor 
 the apparelling so overpassing rich was it, and 
 on his finger had he a ring exceeding good, and 
 his arms had he straitly folded, and upon his 
 head a circle of gold whereof the stones are 
 worth a treasure, and therewithal a full seemly 
 buckle and girdle. Never so comely man on 
 live could no man find. Right little might 
 any surmise that this was he whom he had seen 
 that day attired as a fisherman. 
 
 'So soon as the King was seated, then might 
 you see all the knights seated at the other high 
 tables. Then full swiftly was the bread set on 
 and the wine placed in presence in great cups 
 of gold and silver. Thereafter might ye see 
 the Graal without servitor and without seneschal 
 come through the door of a chamber and serve 
 right worshipfully in rich dishes of gold that 
 
io8 The Holy Graal : 
 
 were worth a great treasure. The first mess 
 did it set before the King, and then did it serve 
 all the others round about, and nought less was 
 it than a miracle of the messes that it brought 
 them and the victual that it gave them. And 
 then came the great miracle of all, whereunto 
 is none other to be compared. 
 
 *■ Natheless hereof will you never hear me 
 speak, for Percevaus ought to tell it hereafter 
 in the midst of the story, seeing that great 
 churlishness is it and great shame to rehearse a 
 good story piecemeal otherwise than as of right 
 it ought to go. When the Good Knight" shall 
 come that found the Court as three times, then 
 shall you hear me recount point to point with- 
 out feigning ought the truth as concerning 
 the wells, whereunto they served, whereof 
 these were the knights j and of the Graal 
 wherefore it served, and all the manner of the 
 Lance that bled will I tell you, and wherefore 
 the sword was on the bier. All will I tell you 
 in suchwise as that nought will I leave out, the 
 lamentation, the evanishment, all will I tell 
 such folk as shall hear me speak, in such sort as 
 that they shall know thereafter how this work 
 ought of right to go. 
 
 ' My lords, a proven sooth it is that seven 
 times was the Court found in the seven Cloaks 
 
Elucidation 1 09 
 
 of the story. But as yet ye know not what 
 this may signify. You must understand, then, 
 that the seven Cloaks are in truth the seven 
 Wardens. Each of these Wardens in his turn 
 will tell you how he found the Court, and before- 
 hand ought it not to be told. Now behoveth me 
 in this writing to name all the seven Wardens, 
 for none would I fain overpass. Wherefore 
 ought I rather to name them clearly and speak 
 of them in the order wherein they are to be 
 set forth. 
 
 'The seventh Branch, which is the most 
 pleasant. This is concerning the Lance 
 wherewith Longis smote in the side the King 
 of holy majesty, and the sixth, without fail, of 
 the great content of the travail. In the fifth, I 
 shall recount ye the wrath and the loss of 
 Huden. The story of Heaven is the fourth, 
 for no craven was he, the knight Mors del 
 Calan that came first to Glomorgan. The 
 next is the third, of the warrior of whom 
 Castrars had the great affright. Pecorins the 
 son of Amangons carried always the scar in his 
 forehead. Now have I named the third to you. 
 The second is not done into verse according to 
 the witness of good story-tellers. It would be 
 the story of the great sorrows, how Lanselos 
 dou Lac was there where he lost his virtue. 
 
1 1 o "The Holy Graal : 
 
 And afterward comes the last. Forasmuch as 
 I have undertaken the task, behoveth me tell it, 
 and you shall hear me begin without delay. 
 It is the adventure of the Shield, never was a 
 better. 
 
 ' These be the seven natural stories whereof 
 all do move of the Graal. Such joy did this 
 adventure bring about, that thereupon did 
 the people repeople the land after the great 
 destruction. In very truth it was this finding 
 of the Court and the Graal whereby the realm 
 was repeopled, in suchwise that the waters 
 which ran not, and the fountains which flowed 
 not, for that they had been dried up, ran forth 
 amidst the meadows. Then were the fields 
 green and bountiful, and the woods clad in 
 leaves the day that the Court was found. 
 Throughout the country were the forests so 
 great and thick, so fair and fresh, that every 
 wayfarer journeying through the land did 
 marvel thereat. 
 
 'Then came back a folk full of right sore 
 despiteousness, they, to wit, that had come 
 forth of the wells but were not cooks. These 
 made castles and cities and burghs and strong- 
 holds, and made for the damsels the rich 
 Castle of Maidens. The Bridge Perilous 
 made they also, and the great Castle Orguel- 
 
Elucidation 1 1 1 
 
 lous. For noblesse, moreover, and for lordship 
 made they an Order of the Peers of the Rich 
 Meinie, through great pride was it begun as 
 against the Table Round. Well was it known 
 of all the world that each of them had his 
 mistress therein, and right little fair life did 
 they lead. Three hundred and threescore and 
 six were they that did maintain the castle, and 
 each of these had a score knights, whereof he 
 was lord ; to the number, I ween I mistake 
 not, were they of seven thousand six hundred 
 and fourscore and six. But wot ye well, that 
 all for nought did these make a stir in the 
 world, for never a one may any longer be found 
 therein. They rode through the land and 
 made war upon King Arthur, and the good 
 knights of the Court went forth to make assay 
 of them, and wot ye well that when they 
 caught one they loosed not their hold till they 
 had slain him. 
 
 ' King Arthur was fain to go and throw 
 down the castle and destroy it, but all they 
 that then did hate him did right at this very 
 point assail him and deliver battle in such 
 sort, that no need had he to go seek it for 
 the nonce. So great were the wars as at this 
 time, that they lasted a good four year, as the 
 story telleth us. 
 
1 1 2 T^he Holy Graal : 
 
 ' He also that did make the book, and so I tell 
 ye one by one. He willeth that ye show to each 
 man as concerning the Graal whereunto it 
 served, for the services it wrought should be 
 shown of a good Master, lest the good things 
 that it serveth be not known but hidden, for 
 freely will He teach it unto all people, even as 
 ye have heard. 
 
 ' This King Arthur of whom I speak held 
 war against the folk of his land four years. 
 But all this draweth he to an end, so that no 
 man nor neighbour was there that did not his 
 will therein, either, ye wot, of force or of good- 
 will. This was proven truth. But wot ye 
 moreover this, that was spoken to their shame 
 and to the honour of the King, as most of ye 
 know, that on the very day the Court and the 
 Rich Meinie were set free, they went a-hunt- 
 ing in the forest, and they that would fain go 
 a-hawking followed the good rivers. This is 
 how folk be of manner. Some will only have 
 to do with disport, and others with how they 
 shall apparel them. Nought did they but make 
 merry the winter through until the summer,' 
 
 I have given this Elucidation in full, because 
 it is not easily accessible, and is, I believe, the 
 only fragment extant of contemporary exegesis 
 
Elucidation 1 1 3 
 
 on the story of the Graal. By far the greater 
 part of it, however, refers directly to the 
 identity of King Fisherman with the Pope, 
 and of the curse that fell on the kingdom of 
 Logres with the English Interdict. The 
 metaphors of the * Elucidation ' are easily con- 
 vertible into plain English ; and if it is lament- 
 able to be obliged to substitute historic prose 
 for the poetry of romance, the process at least 
 vindicates the character of the Damsels of the 
 Wells, somewhat unjustly compromised by the 
 metaphorical exigencies of the case. For who 
 are the Damsels, and what are the Wells ? The 
 immediate cause of the * Great Destruction,' we 
 are told, was the violation of one of the Dam- 
 sels by King Amangons, and all are in some 
 way closely connected with the Court of King 
 Fisherman. While the Court remains in the 
 land, their voices are heard from the Wells, and 
 their hospitality is freely oiFered to all comers. 
 When the Court is withdrawn, they cease to 
 serve at the Wells, and their voices are no more 
 heard. Many of them are driven out to wander 
 in the forest, not a few are killed outright, and 
 the rest remain close hidden in the recesses of 
 the Wells. When the Court is restored, the 
 wanderers also are restored, and the Wells are 
 served as before. Surely we need be at no loss 
 
 H 
 
1 1 4 T^he Holy Graal : 
 
 to recognise the Wells as the churches of the 
 land, and the Damsels with their golden cups 
 as the benefices thereunto belonging ? In very- 
 truth the churches were wells in more than 
 one sense. William of Newbury writes of 
 Fountains Abbey : ' The place is called " Foun- 
 tains," where, then and thereafter, as it were 
 from the fountains of the Saviour so many have 
 drunk of the waters springing up into everlast- 
 ing life.' In every church, too, was the bap- 
 tismal font, the well of water sanctified to the 
 mystical washing away of sins. In this case, 
 at least, the metaphor verges closely on the 
 synonym. 
 
 Nor is the identity of the Damsels harder to 
 detect. The headings to the chapters in the 
 Authorised Version of the ' Song of Songs, 
 which is Solomon's * may be regarded as indi- 
 cating how generally the Church has been 
 regarded as the Bride of Christ. This primary 
 spiritual wedlock was not less universally held 
 to be symbolised in the relation subsisting 
 between any spiritual cure and the ecclesiastic 
 who held it. The ceremony of conferring a 
 benefice — especially in those cases where it 
 was accompanied by the delivery of a staff and 
 ring — was always recognised as in a certain 
 sense a solemnisation of matrimony. The 
 
Elucidation 115 
 
 Bishop was the husband of his bishopric, the 
 parish priest of his benefice or cure. From 
 this point of view, the whole country was par- 
 titioned out among the spiritual wives of the 
 clergy, while the lands belonging to the various 
 ecclesiastical foundations were specially re- 
 garded as sponsalia or marriage dowries. King 
 Fisherman himself comments on his own 
 marriage to the Church. ' A marvellous thing 
 is it,' writes Innocent, ' that I who have vowed 
 celibacy, have nevertheless contracted wedlock. 
 But this wedlock hindereth not celibacy, nor 
 doth the fruitfulness of the wife take away the 
 chastity of her maidenhood.' An ecclesiastical 
 romancer, writing of a time when most of the 
 Bishops were in exile, and a number of Abbots 
 and beneficed clergy robbed of their revenues 
 and ousted from their charges, would naturally 
 picture the stricken churches as forlorn damsels 
 wandering by fell and forest. Those, more- 
 over, who wrought and fought to restore the 
 Damsels to the Wells, could hardly figure 
 otherwise, if the metaphor were to be main- 
 tained, than as the chivalrous knights who 
 came to the succour and protection of the 
 Damsels. It is a sore shock to the imagina- 
 tion to discover that the Damsels of the 
 Wells, among the fairest creations of mediaeval 
 
1 1 6 The Holy Graal : 
 
 romance, represent, after all, only an over- 
 strained metaphor of church and glebe and 
 parish and diocese and ecclesiastical revenue. 
 But this ruthless ' elucidator ' really leaves no 
 room to doubt his meaning. His ' golden 
 cups ' are the incomes of the clergy, and he 
 means us to understand it clearly. Quite 
 incidentally, however, his prosaic elucidation 
 certainly solves two considerable difficulties. 
 He satisfactorily accounts for the abnormal 
 number of forlorn damsels that haunted the 
 forests ' in the days of King Arthur,' and effec- 
 tually clears their character, even when he 
 imputes to them conduct that transgresses the 
 limits even of mediaeval ' propriety.' 
 
 The services the Damsels rendered freely to 
 all wayfarers are no metaphor. That every 
 wanderer might actually claim ' bit and sup ' 
 at the doors of many monasteries and other 
 religious foundations was a happy accident due 
 to the kindly provision of some pious founder, 
 patron, or brother. That all who would and 
 could might hear Mass and partake of the Holy 
 Sacrament at the churches was a franchise of 
 Christendom, the privilege and birthright of 
 every child of Christ and Holy Church. At a 
 time when the churches and religious houses 
 were practically the schools and school boards, 
 
Elucidation 117 
 
 the lecture-rooms and places of public meeting, 
 the hotels and theatres of our forefathers, no 
 less than sanctuaries of worship, the phrases 
 employed by the romancer to describe the 
 blessings conferred by the Damsels of the 
 Wells are hardly exaggerated. 
 
 A monastic writer of romance, especially a 
 Cistercian, could not but be familiar with the 
 figure of speech which converted religious 
 foundations into damsels. Of one mother- 
 monastery, for instance, we read that her three 
 ' eldest daughters ' have power over their 
 mother in the way of visitation and correction, 
 and may, on good cause shown, depose her 
 Prior and elect another. A letter of Innocent 
 III. bids the Abbot of Pontigny receive the 
 Church of S. Martin as his 'special daughter.* 
 Citeaux itself had four such * special daughters,' 
 of whom Clairvaux is the best known. The 
 four collegiate churches of Paris are ' daughters ' 
 of the Cathedral Church, as is also the case at 
 Autun and elsewhere. Sometimes the meta- 
 phor reads even more grotesquely in monastic 
 annals than in the romance, as when the 
 Abbot of Bonfont is solemnly sentenced by the 
 General Chapter of Citeaux to do penance * for 
 not having visited his daughter this year ' 
 (1201), or another Abbot (1207) for having 
 
1 1 8 The Holy Graal : 
 
 taken money * what time he visited his 
 daughters,' or a third because he was wont ' to 
 visit his daughter by his monks instead of 
 personally ' (1210). We still talk of ' Mother 
 Church ' and a mother-church, but the ideas 
 connected with the words are parochial,national, 
 or Catholic. In the thirteenth century, every 
 church in the land, mother, daughter, sister, or 
 bride, was still a ' damsel,' not merely in the 
 imagination of romancers, but in the ecclesias- 
 tical common parlance of the time. Well-nigh 
 seven centuries have passed since the old poet 
 saw the Damsels of the Wells riding homeless 
 through the forests ' in the days of King 
 Arthur,' but the ages have spared their beauty 
 and their youth. Very fair are they still in the 
 realm of Logres, and loud and sweet as ever are 
 their voices to-day, voices of counsel and com- 
 fort, of prayer and praise and thanksgiving ; 
 voices, too, of other kinds that speak without 
 words in the sound of bells and the music of 
 organs — many voices and various, yet ever and 
 again uniting in the burden : ' Come ye to the 
 wells, whosoever will, and take freely of the 
 water of life ! ' 
 
 But if the churches of the land be the 
 Damsels of the Wells, who is Amangons, the 
 King that was evil and craven-hearted ? He is 
 
Elucidation 1 1 9 
 
 not far to seek. Matthew Paris speaks of him 
 in much the same terms, as does almost every 
 other chronicler of his own or of after-time, 
 and with one accord they all bluntly call him 
 King John. The damsel he enforces is none 
 other than the Church of Canterbury, and the 
 golden cup of which he plunders her the 
 revenues of the see, ' whereof he did afterward 
 make him every day be served.' The desolat- 
 ing vengeance that fails upon the country in 
 consequence of the King's sin is the great 
 English Interdict. King Fisherman is, of 
 course. Innocent iii., and his Court the entire 
 hierarchy of the Church in England. The 
 Peers of the Table Round are the allied leaders 
 of the twin Crusades against Raymond of 
 Toulouse and John of England. Perceval 
 again is Dominic, and Gawain Fulke of Mar- 
 seilles. Other identifications, such as that of 
 Pecorins, son of Amangons, with Henry iii., the 
 son of John, are obvious. Others, such as that 
 of Blihos Bliheris, may perhaps be conjectured. 
 Others, such as that of Huden, are probably 
 lost beyond recovery. 
 
 In order to avoid unnecessary complication, 
 I refrain from any comment on the personages 
 and events referred to in the ' Elucidation ' not 
 connected with the central plot of the ' High 
 
I20 'The Holy Graal : 
 
 History.' Those, however, who care to search 
 the records of the time will find no insuperable 
 difficulties in the way of obtaining satisfactory 
 information as to the rich Castle of Maidens, 
 the Bridge Perilous, the great Castle Orguel- 
 lous, and the Order of the Peers of the Rich 
 Meinie. All are historic, albeit they find no 
 place in any of our so-called ' Histories of 
 England,' and their identification will be found 
 to be simply an extension of the identifications 
 here suggested to men and matters outside my 
 present purview. Here it will be sufficient to 
 show how vividly the elucidator elucidates and 
 confirms the identification of King Fisherman 
 with the Pope, and the Great Destruction of 
 Logres with the Interdict. 
 
 In the * Elucidation,' it is noteworthy that 
 neither King Arthur nor King Fisherman is 
 King of Logres. Amangons is King of Eng- 
 land. Arthur's knights, indeed, adventure 
 forth to avenge the wrongs of the Damsels 
 of the Wells, but they set out not by command 
 of their King, but in pursuance of a decision 
 arrived at by a Parliament of their own body. 
 They are enemies of Amangons ; but what- 
 ever may be their secret instructions or hostile 
 intentions towards him, their avowed object 
 is not to conquer or reconquer England for 
 
Elucidation 121 
 
 Arthur, not to establish or restore its allegiance 
 to him, but simply to find and re-instate the 
 Court of King Fisherman, an object to which 
 the succouring of the Damsels is merely in- 
 cidental. The situation indicated, perplexing 
 and unintelligible in the romance, becomes not 
 only intelligible, but strictly accurate, when 
 interpreted by history. At the time the 
 Interdict was declared, it will be remembered 
 that Arnold of Citeaux had been taking counsel 
 with Philip of France as to the policy to be 
 pursued both in Languedoc and England. 
 Innocent was anxious to conclude the Crusade 
 against the Albigenses before declaring a crusade 
 against John, if, indeed, such a crusade should 
 be found necessary. Arnold and Philip, on the 
 other hand, were anxious to convert the In- 
 terdict in England at once into a crusade, and 
 to prosecute both Crusades together. This, 
 however, was prevented by the diplomacy of 
 Innocent, and all that Arnold at the time could 
 do was to precipitate the actual infliction of 
 the Interdict, and to induce the General 
 Chapter of Citeaux — the 'Parliament ' referred 
 to — to send a number of preachers into England 
 whose business was to succour the dispossessed 
 clergy and their churches — the Damsels of the 
 Wells. The Crusade against John not being 
 
122 "The Holy Graal : 
 
 yet declared, all that the preachers thus sent 
 could do was to thunder against the iniquities 
 of John, proclaim the impossibility of restoring 
 the usual services of the Church until John had 
 either made full restitution or been deposed, 
 foment agitation generally, and, in the 
 meanwhile, exercise and exceed Cistercian privi- 
 leges during Interdict, by public celebration of 
 Mass whenever and wherever an opportunity 
 presented itself. The romancer speaks in 
 figures, it is true, but somehow he contrives 
 to convey a truer picture of that disastrous 
 time than is to be found in the narrative of any 
 professed historian. 
 
 His portrait of Innocent is specially remark- 
 able. He loves the Papacy, but he hates the 
 Pope. None of the other versions of the story 
 so much as hint at the sinister trait in Inno- 
 cent's character to which he gives conspicuous 
 prominence. ^ He could much of nigromancy.' 
 The very fact, however, that such a charge 
 should be brought against King Fisherman 
 suffices to reveal his real identity. For what 
 else is the indictment but the cry of the ages 
 against the Church, the one accusation which 
 rightly or wrongly her friends have urged 
 against her as insistently as her foes ? Is it 
 not the charge of simony, the traffic in things 
 
Elucidation 1 2 3 
 
 spiritual for lucre, the very sin to which the 
 arch-necromancer Simon Magus unwittingly 
 bequeathed his name ? Innocent may have 
 been in deed, as in name, innocent of the 
 crime, but he did not escape the charge. It is 
 a contemporary of Innocent who cries against 
 the Church that she 
 
 ' Sets aloft on Peter's throne knaves to keep her under, 
 Simon's own apprentices only swift to plunder ' ; 
 
 and years later Matthew Paris, a master in the 
 art of disparagement, is careful to leave the 
 same sin at Innocent's door. 
 
 Matthew notes also another characteristic of 
 King Fisherman to which the romancer calls 
 special attention. ' He changed his semblance 
 a hundred times,' says the elucidator. Matthew 
 Paris chimes in with : ' A very various Pope ! ' 
 — multum varius Papa. In his capacity as 
 Fisherman, moreover, Innocent evidently fails 
 to commend himself to the approval of the 
 expounder. He who saw King Fisherman in 
 one guise would never recognise him in 
 another, we are told j and in simple fact, one 
 who had watched that wary angler for big fish 
 in troubled waters might well be startled to find 
 that the man in the boat was in reality none 
 other than the successor of S. Peter, the Vicar 
 
124 '^^^ Holy Graal : 
 
 at once of God and humanity. Perhaps, after 
 all, taking into account the natural feelings of 
 a Cistercian writer towards a Pope who had 
 effectually bitted and bridled his Order, it is 
 creditable not to have indulged in more open- 
 mouthed dispraise of Innocent. 
 
 The scene in which the King, like the sun 
 of the Psalmist, ' cometh forth like a bridegroom 
 out of his chamber,' needs little comment. It 
 is no temporal monarch that sits crowned at 
 the high table above his knights while the 
 Graal is served to all without servitor or 
 seneschal. We are present at a ceremonial 
 rite even more sacred than the celebration of 
 pontifical High Mass. The voice of lamen- 
 tation has ceased, and into the hall left void 
 and astonied have thronged ' the Princes of 
 the Churches, the victorious paladins of war, 
 the knighthood of the Court of Heaven, the 
 guiding lights of the world,' in preparation for 
 the holiest Sacrament of all, the Communion 
 of the Church Militant on earth with the 
 Church Triumphant in heaven. No hands are 
 they of man nor angel that serve of the Graal 
 at that transcendent Last Supper, no voice of 
 man nor angel repeats the words, ' Take, eat, 
 this is My body which is given for you.' 
 The secret that the romancer fears to tell 
 
Elucidation 125 
 
 is breathed in the far-ofF chant of the ' choir 
 invisible.' 
 
 The mystery of the Graal is the mystery of the 
 Holy Eucharist, and is as fitly expressed in the 
 language of the High History or the Elucidation 
 as in any other. The Blood that flowed from 
 the Saviour's side when pierced by the lance of 
 Longinus falls drop by drop into the Graal, and 
 is there transubstantiated into the wine of the 
 Holy Sacrament. The prohibition of the Sacra- 
 ment during Interdict is the disappearance of 
 the Graal ; the entire removal of Interdict is the 
 full achievement of the Graal -, the relaxation 
 of Interdict so far as to allow the Cistercian 
 privilege of celebrating Mass is the adventure 
 of the Graal. If this privilege were allowed, 
 the Blood from the lance of Longinus would 
 still fall drop by drop into the Graal, and the 
 Graal would still be served to the Cistercians 
 and their friends. There is still extant one 
 Latin line which can with absolute certainty 
 be attributed to Walter Mapes, the Archdeacon 
 of Oxford, who is generally credited with being 
 not a mere poet, but a very Corpus Poetarum^ 
 Latin and French. In this line, as was his 
 inveterate habit, he falls foul of the Cistercians. 
 The rest of the poem is lost — 
 
 'Lance of Longinus ! White flock ! Unspeakable Order ! ' 
 
126 T'he Holy Graal : 
 
 The ' white flock ' and ' unspeakable Order ' 
 refer clearly, as may be gathered from the 
 angry answer of a Cistercian brother to the 
 Archdeacon's taunt, to the white monks of 
 the Order of Citeaux. The meaning of the 
 nickname * Lance of Longinus,' whether 
 conferred by Walter or assumed by the 
 Cistercians themselves, is equally obvious. 
 During Interdict the Cistercians, in virtue of 
 their privilege, were the Lance of Longinus 
 from which the Blood still dripped into the 
 Holy Graal. 
 
 The Elucidation supplies a still more curious 
 illustration of Cistercian privilege during 
 Interdict. ' The hall that was great and wide 
 remained void and astonied, and the stream 
 of blood ran from the vessel where was the 
 Lance through the rich channel of silver.' 
 At first sight this would seem inconsistent with 
 the sacramental character of the Blood from 
 the Lance of Longinus. In reality, this inci- 
 dental mention of ' the rich channel of silver ' 
 is a striking additional proof of the identity of 
 the Graal with the cup of the Eucharist. The 
 entire passage, it will be observed, refers to a 
 state of Interdict. The void hall, the cries 
 and lamentations repeated thrice daily, point 
 obviously to a time of lamentation and mourn- 
 
'Elucidation 1 27 
 
 ing and woe — in a word, to a time of Interdict, 
 during which the Cistercians enjoyed the 
 privilege of celebrating Mass. The apparent 
 difficulty is solved at once by a reference to 
 Cistercian usage. According to immemorial 
 custom, the brethren of Citeaux partake of the 
 sacramental wine through a silver tube. The 
 custom, indeed, was not confined to the Cis- 
 tercians, nor were the Cistercians monopolists 
 of the privilege of celebrating during Interdict ; 
 but it is simply a historic fact that wherever 
 the terms of Interdict were obeyed, no wine 
 from the Eucharistic cup passed the lips of the 
 faithful except through ' the rich channel of 
 silver.' An ' undesigned coincidence ' of this 
 kind seems to me conclusive evidence not only of 
 the identity of the Graal with the Eucharist, but 
 of the 'Great Destruction ' with the Interdict. 
 It will not have escaped notice that in the 
 Elucidation, Perceval is said to have asked 
 certain questions during his visit to the Castle 
 of the Graal, of which no mention is made in 
 the High History. The elucidator records not 
 only one, but two unasked questions in addition 
 to several others to which, apparently, Perceval 
 received satisfactory answers. ' He asked whereof 
 the Graal served — {^de coi li Greaus servoit) — but 
 demanded not as to the lance when he saw 
 
128 The Holy Graal : 
 
 it, wherefore it should bleed [por cot sainnd).^ 
 Rendered in the language of history, I take 
 these words to mean that Dominic, in his inter- 
 views with Innocent, made careful inquiries 
 with regard to the doctrine of Transubstantia- 
 tion, and the legality of treating as heretics 
 those who dissented from a dogma not yet 
 declared de Fide j but did not inquire as to the 
 privilege of celebrating during Interdict. So 
 far the two accounts tally ; but the elucidator 
 adds that Perceval also neglected to ask any 
 question as to * the Sword whereof the one half 
 was taken away, and the other lay in the bier 
 over one dead after the manner of a great 
 swooning;.' The two versions are not incon- 
 sistent. The later romance supplies fuller 
 details, but it confirms the earlier one so far 
 as relates to the question of privilege. The 
 unasked question in relation to the Sword only 
 preserves for us an additional circumstance of 
 the story. Here, as throughout, history sup- 
 plies the only intelligible interpretation of the 
 fiction. King Fisherman falls into Manguish- 
 ment ' on account of the first question not 
 having been asked. The omission to ask the 
 second has caused the King of the Lower Folk 
 to fall into a deadly swoon. He lies there in 
 the void hall on a bier, like a veritable corpse, 
 
Elucidation 129 
 
 half his sword carried away, the other half with 
 the hilt lying, like a crucifix, on his breast. 
 He will rise and grasp and wield the broken 
 blade to bloody purpose presently, but the 
 other half v/ill not be welded on as yet. Just 
 now, Arnold of Citeaux is in sore disfavour. He 
 had thought to fight the Crusade in Languedoc 
 and England at the same time. Half his 
 sword, the English Crusade, has been broken 
 off. The other half is only waiting for him to 
 arise from swoon. If only Dominic had be- 
 thought him to ask Innocent to allow the 
 Cistercians and their allies a free hand in 
 England as in Languedoc, that sword would 
 be whole, and that seeming lifeless King leading 
 the armies of God and Holy Church to victory. 
 Here, as in the case of the ' languishment ' of 
 King Fisherman and fifty other cases, it has 
 only to be remembered, in order to render the 
 narrative clearly intelligible, that the romance 
 is not a continued allegory, but simply a 
 sequence of metaphors, often incongruous, and 
 sometimes conflicting. Metaphors as a rule are 
 apt to be foundered in the off hind leg, and in 
 driving a four-in-hand of them the halting of 
 one is sometimes enough to throw the whole 
 team out of gear. In this particular instance, 
 however, there is not even a jumble of 
 
 I 
 
130 T^he Holy Graal : 
 
 metaphors. The High History makes Perceval 
 omit to ask only one question. The Elucidation 
 makes him omit two. A third or a fiftieth 
 version might make him omit a thousand just 
 as easily. The point of the High Historian is 
 that the omission brought about the English 
 Interdict. The point of the Elucidator is the 
 same, but with the addition that another 
 omission at the same time also brought about 
 another misfortune. 
 
 Two additional questions, he further tells us, 
 Perceval remembered to ask : one as to the 
 treasure — // denies — that was in the hall, the 
 other as to the rich cross of silver that came 
 foremost of all. As to the first, I am in doubt 
 what the word denies may mean in this con- 
 nection. It may perhaps have reference to 
 the ' Peter's pence ' collected in England and 
 other countries, to oblations made at Mass, or 
 to a dozen other kinds of offerings known as 
 ' pennies.' The meaning, however, of the 
 passage seems clearly to be that Dominic before 
 starting on his mission came to an understanding 
 with Innocent as to the funds necessary for 
 carrying on the campaign. The rich cross of 
 silver which came foremost I take to be a 
 reference to the Cistercians. The high day of 
 the Order, the annual general meeting of the 
 
'Elucidation 1 3 1 
 
 Chapter, was September 14, the day of the 
 ' Exaltation of the Cross.' The phrase, in all 
 probability, means nothing more than that 
 Dominic, before undertaking his mission under 
 the wing of the Order, was desirous of ascer- 
 taining the position of the Cistercians in 
 relation to the Papacy, and obtained an assur- 
 ance of the powers that had been intrusted 
 to them in Languedoc. 
 
V 
 
 THE CURSE OF LOGRES 
 
 Ardentes anime 
 Flent sine fine : 
 Ambulant per tenebras 
 Dicuntque singiile : 
 * Ve ! Ve ! Ve ! quante 
 Sunt tenebre ! ' 
 
 (MoNE. I. 407.) 
 
 The Elucidator's description of the desolation 
 wrought by the Interdict is metaphorical, no 
 doubt, but in this case the metaphor is at least 
 as old as the days of Isaiah, and has long since 
 passed into the poetic language of all countries : 
 ' The highways lie waste, the wayfaring man 
 ceaseth ; the earth mourneth and languisheth. 
 Lebanon is ashamed and hewn down ; Sharon 
 is like a wilderness, and Bashan and Carmel 
 shake ofF their fruits.' The trouveur is well 
 within his rights when he pictures the Interdict 
 as the Great Destruction. Nearly seven hundred 
 
 years have come and gone since then, and we 
 
 133 
 
134 T^he Holy Graal : 
 
 Englishmen of to-day, a lay-minded folk much 
 misguided of philosophic historians, find it hard 
 to understand how heavy a curse it was. The 
 following document, every paragraph of which 
 bears the stamp of its authenticity, is, I believe, 
 not referred to by any ' standard historian,' and 
 is here printed in English for the first time. 
 It will be found to convey a far clearer idea of 
 the real suffering inflicted by the Interdict than 
 any extant account of that event. No better 
 commentary can be written on the curse that 
 falls on the realm of Logres in the romances 
 of the Graal : — 
 
 ' This is the Form of the General Interdict 
 constituted throughout England by Innocent 
 III. on account of the contumacy of John the 
 King. 
 
 ' That whensoever they will, so it be with- 
 out solemnity or music of any kind, the clergy 
 may say all the Hours and read the Gospel in 
 the churches, but with doors closed so that no 
 laic may enter, neither for prayer nor other- 
 wise, save it be some powerful person not 
 excommunicated who in all devotion may ask 
 to enter, and whom to repulse might cause 
 grievous injury to the Church. In such case 
 let him then go in alone, but nought let him hear 
 of the priest save the word of preaching, that 
 
The Curse of Logres 135 
 
 he is to obey God rather than marij and other 
 the like things. 
 
 ' Also, let the Chaplains call together their 
 parishioners every Lord's Day and the principal 
 festivals at some cross in the town or in the 
 churchyard, and with all diligence preach to 
 them patience and obedience, how Christ was 
 made obedient to the Father, etc. And let them 
 teach that God is rather to be obeyed than man ; 
 fear not them that have power to kill the body, 
 and the like. When the preaching is done, 
 let the priests most devoutly say prayers for 
 the peace of the Church and for the lord King, 
 that the Lord Jesus Christ may direct his feet 
 into the way of salvation, and give him the 
 spirit of counsel that he may see what things 
 ought to be done according to God, and may 
 be strong to fulfil what he shall see. Let 
 them say prayers, moreover, both for the living 
 and the dead as they have been accustomed, all 
 with bended knees, and let them right diligently 
 admonish the people that by day and night 
 they pray instantly in like manner so that they 
 may supply the want of Masses by vigils and 
 prayers ; for all they that shall be obedient to the 
 Church of God do enter also into the way of 
 salvation, but they that shall prove rebellious 
 may well dread the vengeance of God, for 
 
136 'The Holy Graal : 
 
 accursed is the child that with his fist resisteth 
 his mother when she scourgeth him. 
 
 ' Let the Chaplains give notice of feasts, but 
 let them make neither bread nor holy water. 
 Also, let little ones be baptized in the houses 
 with chrism and unction and with all due 
 solemnity. And let all Archdeacons and Deans 
 assemble together on the Day of the Supper 
 as they have been accustomed, and there let 
 it be told them what it may behove them to 
 do ; but let the old chrism everywhere be 
 preserved.^ 
 
 ^ Parish priests are often called ' Chaplains,' capellani^ as 
 having charge of the church or chapel (-z/. Dii Cange, s.-v. 2). 
 The chrism used in baptism — olive-oil impregnated vk^ith frank- 
 incense — was always made and consecrated on 'the day of the 
 Supper,' Maundy Thursday, in sufficient quantity to last for 
 the year. A Canon of the Council of Meaux in 845 forbids its 
 being made at any other time {^. Du Cange, s.v. Coena Domini). 
 In John Myrc's Instruction for Parish Priests, Early Eng. Text 
 Soc. 1868, p. 20, we read : — 
 
 * Uche yere ones chawnge thy cremc 
 And that as sone as thow may 
 Anon after Schere Thursday ; 
 Thow moste chawnge thyn oyle also . . .' 
 
 See also p. 4 of the same tractate. A text, Imple mandata 
 Domini in coena Ipsius, seems to have been in very early days 
 quoted as an authority for the practice, and in modern days as 
 having originated the word ' Maundy.' I cannot trace the text, 
 and misdoubt the etymology {jv. Hampson, Kal. Med. ^vi. 
 s.v.') 
 
The Curse of Logres 137 
 
 ' Let the parishioners have a common vessel 
 for baptizing children that can be carried 
 from one house to another, but let the 
 water of baptism be honourably set aside, and 
 let the vessel be honourably kept in proper 
 custody. 
 
 'Whosoever shall request confession, let 
 him have it whensoever he will, and let him 
 make lawful testament and with all solemnity, 
 but without the Eucharist and without Extreme 
 Unction. 
 
 ' Let the bodies of the defunct, as well clerics 
 as laics, be placed wheresoever their friends 
 will, without the churchyard, and especially 
 where passers-by may be moved at the sight 
 thereof, but so that no priest be present at the 
 funeral of laics, albeit while the corpse lieth in 
 the house, a priest may privately make com- 
 mendation of the soul, though without the 
 cross and without holy water. 
 
 'Clerics defunct may well be laid aside in 
 sealed trunks or in leaden vessels on the trees 
 of the churchyard or on the wall, and let the 
 bodies of religious be placed within their own 
 precincts without opening the ground of the 
 churchyard. Also let the altars in the churches 
 be made bare. 
 
 ' Moreover, women shall not be admitted 
 
138 T'he Holy Graal : 
 
 for purification. Espousals and marriages may 
 not be contracted, 
 
 ' Wheresoever ye shall see or hear of violence 
 done in matters ecclesiastical, ye shall forthwith 
 cause the damage to be appraised and com- 
 mitted to writing, and the names of such evil- 
 doers shall ye set down in writing, publicly 
 denouncing them moreover as excommunicate, 
 who if they shall repent them, let them be sent 
 to the Bishop. 
 
 ' Let the masters of schools, if they be per- 
 mitted of the laity, be received worshipfully, 
 and let them read and teach. 
 
 ' Moreover, to them that might have re- 
 ceived the Body of the Lord and, having notice 
 that they should receive it, did nevertheless 
 despise the warning, it is not allowed to eat 
 flesh-meats without counsel of the Bishop or 
 some other person having authority, neither on 
 Easter Day nor thereafter. Moreover, of this 
 shall ye give them notice publicly, but vv^ithout 
 reproof. 
 
 ' Chapters may be held by the Deans, and as 
 far as may be crimes as well of clerics as of laics 
 may be rooted out, but offenders may also be 
 punished by excommunication. Moreover, let 
 the Chapters be held in the churchyards or in 
 the priests' houses, and not in the church itself. 
 
'T'he Curse of Logres 139 
 
 ' Moreover, saving the person of the lord 
 King, and the Queen, and the person of the 
 Justiciar of the lord King, all the Bishops of 
 England shall solemnly excommunicate any 
 person whosoever that shall lay violent hands 
 on the churches or goods or chattels of clerics, 
 or any that against the w\\\ of the clerics shall 
 buy aught of their goods from robbers, or shall 
 receive from the house of evil-doers, or remove, 
 or carry away to take care of the same save 
 with the goodwill of the clerics or on their 
 behalf. This let the Chaplains publicly an- 
 nounce as often as they preach. 
 
 ' Let the Body of the Lord, wheresoever any 
 shall have been left over, be worshipfully pre- 
 served in the church until it shall be declared 
 what is to be done with it, so that it be taken 
 of none, neither priest nor other. 
 
 ' Let the clergy store their goods in the 
 churches and churchyards, that so by God's 
 gift they shall there have peace. 
 
 ' If the days of the Hospitallers shall betide, 
 let the priests diligently admonish the people to 
 come together without the church to their 
 preaching, and most devoutly pay heed to the 
 Brotherhood ; but let the doors of the church 
 not be opened to them, nor let them be allowed 
 to bury any person in the churchyard, but 
 
140 T^he Holy Graal : 
 
 otherwise in whatsoever manner they may, let 
 the clerics manifest them their helpers, and let 
 the priests point out to them that this Interdict 
 is of the lord Pope whom none may resist. So 
 general is it and so stringent that no privilege 
 nor permission of Masses nor of no other liberties 
 can be observed. Let the parishioners never- 
 theless be held to the payment of alms and ful- 
 filment of promises lest God on account of their 
 hardness be the more hardly wroth with them ; 
 and when God shall give peace to the Church, 
 all things shall be repaid alike to quick and 
 dead. 
 
 * Fugitives also, whosoever shall flee for 
 refuge to the peace of the Church, let them be 
 admitted to the protection of the Church. 
 
 ' It is allowed to use blessings at meat and to 
 say grace as usual. Farewell.' ^ 
 
 ^ Martene, Thes. Anecd. i. 812, from a ms. of *S. Michael 
 in Peril of the Sea,' i.e. Mont S. Michel in Normandy. It is 
 reprinted in Migne, Patrol. Op. Inrioc. iii. vol. iv. col. 190, and 
 in Dumont, Corpus univ. dipl. i. i. 385. It is referred to in 
 Potthast, Reg. i. 286, under date March 22, 1208. 
 
 The Knights Hospitallers every year sent preachers round the 
 country to collect subscriptions for the hospital at Jerusalem. 
 They were entitled by their privilege to hold a service once a 
 year in any parish church for the purpose, and these * days of 
 the Hospitallers ' were generally observed as high holidays in the 
 towns they visited. Their preachers were eloquent, and the 
 indulgences granted to those that gave alms were large. The 
 
The Curse of Logres 141 
 
 Such is the ' form ' of the Interdict, and such 
 in the main was the substance. Perhaps no 
 other legal document in the world contains a 
 gallery of pictures at once so vivid, so various, 
 and so sombre. The ' powerful person ' whom 
 to gainsay might be a grievous harm to the 
 clergy, entering the disgarnished church at his 
 castle gates alone, and then only to hear the 
 preacher rolling out his solemn denunciations 
 — the parish priest, if indeed he be not the 
 king's prisoner in his own parsonage, crying 
 aloud his jeremiads at the market-cross, and 
 giving notice of festivals that cannot be observed 
 — the baptisms in the portable fonts in private 
 houses — the anguish and terror of the dying 
 penitent as he turned his face to the wall, not un- 
 houselled, indeed, but disappointed and unaneled 
 — the despair and indignation of lover and lass 
 forbidden to consecrate their love by union in 
 holy matrimony — the compassion of passers-by 
 moved by the sight of the coffined or uncoffined 
 corpses that fringed the highway, the ' sealed 
 trunks' on the churchyard walls, and the * leaden 
 
 abuse of their privileges was a frequent cause of scandal in the 
 Church. The founder of our modern * Hospital Sunday,' the 
 late Mr. T. B. Wright of Birmingham, was probably unaware of 
 the antiquity of the custom he revived. 
 
142 T^he Holy Graal : 
 
 vessels' among the branches of the yew-trees, — 
 all these and a hundred other shapes of misery 
 rise before us as we read — a phantasmagory of 
 suffering undeserved, in which the most honest 
 and religious, the wisest and the best of the com- 
 munity, are called on to undergo a martyrdom 
 that falls more lightly on the thoughtless ne'er- 
 do-weel, the scoffer, the hypocrite, and the 
 knave. 
 
 No doubt the degree of severity with which 
 the Interdict was enforced varied to some 
 extent in the different dioceses, archdeaconries, 
 and parishes. The provision, in reference to 
 betrothals and marriages more particularly, 
 seems to have been frequently construed in a 
 sense less subversive of public morality than the 
 bare words of the ' form ' might seem to imply. 
 If, in spite of ecclesiastical prohibition, Robin 
 and Marion ventured to ' contract ' espousal 
 and matrimony, and declared themselves ready 
 to undergo any penance that might be enjoined 
 for the infringement of the Interdict, there 
 was nothing in the actual letter of the law to 
 prevent Robin giving Marion a wedding-ring 
 at the church-door, nothing to prevent a kindly 
 Father Gervase or Brother Bernard pronounc- 
 ing them man and wife, or whispering a 
 blessing on their union. The sin lay with 
 
T'he Curse of Logres 143 
 
 the contracting parties, and in most cases, 
 probably, was capable of being compounded 
 for on terms considerably short of generally 
 prohibitive. 
 
 It would be a mistake, however, to assume 
 that there was any general laxity in the 
 enforcement of the Interdict, at least during 
 the earlier years of its infliction. The interest, 
 not only of the spiritual power, but of the 
 hostile temporal power, lay, or was supposed 
 to lie, in making the Interdict absolutely 
 intolerable. Innocent's object was to coerce 
 John, John's to coerce Innocent. When John 
 found it impossible to counteract the Interdict 
 by the issue of royal edicts and ordinances 
 forbidding its observance, he adopted the policy 
 of redoubling its severity with a view to 
 exasperating the nobility and the people against 
 the tyranny of the Church. He celebrated, 
 for instance, his Christmas at Bristol in 1209 
 by forbidding the national sports of hunting 
 and hawking, and at the same time throwing 
 down the fences and filling up the ditches 
 round the royal forests, to the ruin of all crops 
 and the general devastation of the country for 
 thousands of square miles. He had sacked the 
 revenues of the Church, and kept the clergy 
 close prisoners in their own parsonages. He 
 
144 '^^^ Holy Graal : 
 
 had thrown into gaol, not without a dash of 
 grim Angevin humour, all those flesh-and-blood 
 Damsels of the Wells who acted as housekeepers 
 to a nominally celibate clergy, and demanded 
 exorbitant blackmail for setting them at 
 liberty. But he was determined that the 
 Court of King Fisherman and its hangers-on 
 should not be the only sufferers. Not an earl 
 should hunt in the forest, not a churl should 
 dance at a fair. Always sordid, butcherly, and 
 treacherous, he twisted the Interdict into a 
 licence to loot his subjects at large, and the 
 personal excommunication that followed on 
 the heels of the Interdict into a full release 
 from all the obligations of humanity. Measured 
 by the amount of physical and moral suffering 
 inflicted on the community, not the anarchy in 
 the days of Stephen, not the Norman Con- 
 quest itself, can be compared with the Curse 
 that fell on Logres from Land's End to 
 the Border during the Interdict in the reign 
 of John. 
 
 There is no need to linger over the details 
 of the Interdict either in history or romance. 
 Month after month the years went by, and the 
 duel a outrance between Pope and King was 
 still maintained inexorably and implacably by 
 both combatants. From the first, Arnold of 
 
'The Curse of Logres 145 
 
 Citeaux had done all that any King of the 
 Lower Folk could do to convert the Interdict 
 into a Crusade. Sorely against his will, but 
 compelled by what seemed to be the absolute 
 necessity of the case. Innocent finally yielded 
 to the pressure directly and indirectly brought 
 to bear upon him by Arnold. He excom- 
 municated John personally, released his subjects 
 from their allegiance, proclaimed a Crusade 
 against him, and specially commissioned Philip 
 of France to undertake the congenial task of 
 carrying out the Crusade by the conquest of 
 England. Hardly was the mandate issued 
 before Innocent saw how fatal was the blunder 
 to which he had committed himself. 
 
 The dearest wish of his heart was to unite 
 the princes of Christendom against the paynims 
 of Palestine. Thanks to the force of circum- 
 stances and Arnold of Citeaux, he now found 
 himself involved in three separate Crusades 
 against three Christian potentates. The three 
 were Raymond of Toulouse, John of England, 
 and the now excommunicated Emperor Otho. 
 All three were closely connected by family bonds 
 and many common political interests. All three 
 were enemies whose downfall was necessary to 
 the ambitions of Philip of France. A far less 
 wary pilot than Innocent must have seen the 
 
 K 
 
146 The Holy Graal : 
 
 breakers ahead towards which the bark of Peter 
 was drifting so ominously. With but a few com- 
 paratively insignificant exceptions, Philip had 
 already wrested from John all his continental 
 dominions, and the Albigensian Crusade had 
 practically established his sovereignty in the 
 South of France. Philip as conqueror of 
 England must inevitably be to all practical 
 intents the Dictator, possibly the acknowledged 
 Emperor, of Western Christendom. With the 
 declaration of a crusade against John, the 
 practical control and direction of ecclesiastical 
 afFairs in England passed out of the hands of 
 Innocent and the Interdict Commissioners into 
 those of Arnold of Citeaux, the usual and re- 
 cognised Chief of the Papal executive into 
 whose department naturally fell all matters 
 connected with Crusade. Innocent, it seems 
 clear, who knew that Arnold had his hands full 
 in Languedoc, had not calculated the possible 
 results of the Abbot's hostility in relation to 
 the English Interdict. He now began to 
 realise that he could no more rely on the 
 Order of Citeaux than on the Abbot. The 
 Order was loyal to Arnold, and Arnold was 
 loyal to Philip of France. The Roman Aaron, 
 in fact, felt that he had commissioned a 
 mutinous Moses to act in the interests of a 
 
The Curse of Logres 147 
 
 French Pharaoh, and that the Cistercian 
 children of Israel were disposed to follow 
 Moses rather than Aaron. 
 
 By a strange and strangely momentous 
 coincidence of unlikely events, the liberties 
 of England, won by the efforts of the French 
 Abbot to counteract the policy of the Pope, were 
 secured and confirmed by the efforts of the 
 Italian Pope to counteract the policy of the 
 Abbot. The histories which tell us how the 
 sealing of Magna Charta was wrung from John 
 by the ' Army of God and Holy Church ' all fail 
 to tell us that this is the official title of a 
 crusading army and none other. All fail to 
 tell us that the invasion of England attempted 
 and in great part carried out by Philip's son 
 Lewis was part and parcel of the same Crusade, 
 and that from the moment of John's submission 
 to Innocent the Crusade was carried on by 
 the Cistercians and their allies in the teeth of 
 Innocent's denunciations. They fail to tell 
 us, moreover, that the army which finally 
 drove Lewis out of England and established 
 Henry of Winchester on the throne was also 
 a crusading army, and that in this case the 
 Crusade was forced by Innocent on the re- 
 calcitrant Cistercians, whom he compelled to 
 undo the work of their own hands, to accept the 
 
148 'The Holy Graal : 
 
 policy of Rome, and to renounce the policy of 
 Citeaux. 
 
 As far as I can judge, Innocent's urgent 
 appeals to John to admit Stephen Langton, and 
 at a later period to become a homager of Rome, 
 were dictated by a sincere desire to save John 
 in spite of himself, not for John's own sake, 
 but for the sake of the Papacy j and I fail to 
 see in what manner he could have interfered 
 eftectively without securing in the first place 
 a clear right according to feudal law and custom 
 to interfere at all. The moment that John 
 laid his crown at Pandulph's feet and became 
 the liegeman of the Pope, Innocent was not 
 merely justified in championing his cause — 
 he was bound in feudal honour so to do. That 
 in fighting his vassal's battle he fought for his 
 own hand ; that in the course of the fight he 
 cursed Magna Charta, excommunicated the 
 barons, suspended the ^ patriot ' Archbishop, 
 and played havoc generally with the parchment 
 constitution and its propounders cleric and lay, 
 is no doubt true. That the liberties of England 
 were really at stake ; that the conflict between 
 John and the barons was the supreme crisis 
 of English freedom, is also true. None the 
 less true is it that those liberties were far safer 
 in the hands of Innocent than in those of the 
 
The Curse of Logres 149 
 
 ' patriot ' barons who, despairing of the republic, 
 ' sought for a new King, and sought for him 
 beyond the sea.' None the less true is it that 
 if from that day to this our freedom has broad- 
 ened slowly down from precedent to precedent, 
 we owe it to ' the interference of an Italian 
 priest ' in the darkest hour of our peril. We 
 may hold that the conquest of England by 
 Lewis, even if it had been successful, could in 
 the nature of things have been only temporary ; 
 but at least let us take off our hats gratefully 
 and reverently to the Roman statesman who 
 saved us from that threatened humiliation. 
 
 The Interdict was solemnly dissolved on 
 June 29, 1 2 14. Two years later, July 16, 
 121 6, Innocent died in the midst of the great 
 battle that still raged in England, and his death 
 suspended for a time the active measures he 
 had taken to prevent the projected invasion of 
 England either by Philip or his son Lewis. 
 Innocent's successor, Honorius in., inherited 
 his policy, if not his genius ; and happily 
 Arnold of Citeaux had now for some few years 
 become Archbishop, and, more questionably, 
 Duke of Narbonne, a rise in dignity coupled 
 with a loss of political power which materially 
 altered his views of men and things. On his 
 promotion, the most influential personage at 
 
150 'The Holy Graal : 
 
 the Cistercian Round Table, although in 
 technical strictness not a Cistercian himself, 
 was Stephen Langton ; but Stephen's influence 
 had been to a great extent paralysed by the 
 suspension of his archiepiscopal functions, a 
 sentence which not only impaired his authority, 
 but involved his absence from the scene of 
 action on a journey to Rome. Innocent's death 
 precipitated and assisted the enterprise of Lewis; 
 and by the time that the Papal legate Gualo 
 arrived in England, London and a great part of 
 the country were already in the hands of the 
 French invader and his allies the King of 
 Scotland and the 'patriot ' barons. But Hono- 
 rius was resolute, and Gualo was a capable and 
 devoted lieutenant. The kingdom of Scotland 
 and those parts of England which acknowledged 
 the sovereignty of the French Prince were at 
 once laid under Interdict. Then came the 
 death of John, a fortunate event for which the 
 Cistercians claimed, and perhaps deserved, the 
 credit. A little later followed the new Crusade 
 against Lewis, Gualo himself being the first to 
 take the cross. Then followed the 'Fair of 
 Lincoln,' the defeat and departure of Lewis, 
 and the final allegiance of the barons to Henry 
 of Winchester, Pecorins the son of Amangons, 
 the sheepish son of a wolfish father. 
 
T^he Curse of Logres 1 5 1 
 
 The words of the Elucidation in reference 
 to the events here referred to are worth careful 
 attention: 'This King Arthur of whom I 
 speak held war against the folk of his land four 
 years.' The romancer, clearly, is not speaking 
 of the well-known traditional King Arthur of 
 Britain, who is nowhere recorded to have held 
 war against the folk of his land. The Arthur 
 of whom he speaks is an Arthur who makes 
 war on Britain for four years, and is not 
 successful after all. The war is over at the 
 time the romancer is writing. ' But all this 
 draweth to an end, so that no man nor neigh- 
 bour was there that did not his will therein, 
 either of force or of goodwill.' King Arthur 
 has not conquered Britain, but his own people 
 and their neighbours are on terms of peace, and 
 the King of Logres is anxious to maintain 
 friendship with Arthur and to avoid giving him 
 any cause of offence. It was in the first days 
 of 1214 that the Crusade of Philip against 
 John was solemnly promulgated. It was in 
 the first days of 1218 that Philip finally re- 
 nounced his intention of invading England. 
 In the autumn of 121 7, after the crushing defeat 
 at Lincoln, Philip's son Lewis had sworn to 
 depart with his Frenchman from England 
 never to return. He had promised further to 
 
152 T'he Holy Graal : 
 
 do all that lay in his power to induce his father 
 to respect the rights of the young Henry of 
 Winchester in his dominions oversea. He had 
 been granted an alms of ^5000 by the City of 
 London to relieve his pressing necessities, and 
 had been conducted to Dover by the Earl 
 Marshal. He had returned to his father's court 
 defeated and disgraced ; but it v/as not till the 
 beginning of 121 8 that it was known for 
 certain in England that Philip would acquiesce 
 in the failure of the enterprise on which he had 
 staked so much, and allow the realm of Logres to 
 re-establish peace and order within its frontiers 
 undisturbed by enemies from without. 
 
 When he speaks of King Arthur holding 
 war for four years against the folk of his land, 
 the elucidator is explicit enough in his reference, 
 but has his reasons for reticence as to the later 
 episodes of the story. He has no such reasons 
 when he comes to describe the concluding 
 scenes of the Interdict itself. On the very 
 day the Court and the rich Meinie were set 
 free, the folk of the land went a-hunting in the 
 forest, and they that would fain go a-hawking 
 followed the good rivers. Nought did they 
 but make merry the winter through until the 
 summer. The actual release from the Interdict 
 took place on June 29, 1214, after the curse 
 
'The Curse of Logres 153 
 
 had lasted, as the chroniclers are careful to 
 record, six years, three months, and fourteen 
 days, but John's retaliatory ordinances had been 
 repealed some months before. Nicholas, Car- 
 dinal Bishop of Tusculum, and Legate of the 
 Holy See, had been despatched by Innocent in 
 the autumn of 121 3 to ratify and confirm what 
 had been already done by the envoy Pandulph, 
 and to conclude all matters in relation to the 
 Interdict as ambassador-plenipotentiary. John 
 received him with all honour, repeated his oath 
 of fealty, did homage for his kingdom, and 
 made the first payment of a thousand marks to 
 his acknowledged feudal lord. It was at this 
 time that John formally revoked his edicts 
 against hunting and hawking, and that those 
 whose sporting instincts were stronger than 
 their regard for ecclesiastical proprieties found 
 themselves once more free to enjoy their 
 favourite pastimes. The romancer evidently 
 felt that sport of any kind was a thing to be 
 sternly discountenanced during Interdict. He 
 recounts the lamentable fact that hunting and 
 hawking did actually take place to the shame 
 of the folk of Logres, and counts abstention 
 from the sports of the field for righteousness to 
 the folk of Arthur, but he is not disposed to 
 seem unreasonably austere. Some men are 
 
154 'T^^ Holy Graal 
 
 made that way. Everybody is not a Cistercian, 
 and it takes some of all sorts, even sportsmen 
 and dandies, to make a world. To the reader 
 of to-day, the striking point in the narrative is 
 that it is obviously written while the circum- 
 stances were still freshly remembered. * Most 
 of ye know,' says the Trouveur^^t\\z.\. these things 
 were so.' He is no retailer of forgotten or 
 half-forgotten legends. He is simply bearing 
 witness to a matter of public notoriety in the 
 presence of an audience to whom he can appeal 
 to check and verify his statements. We may 
 safely accept it as a historic fact, albeit else- 
 where unrecorded, that there were folk in 
 England who took advantage of the revoca- 
 tion of John's edicts in the late autumn of 
 1 213 to make merry the winter through till 
 the relaxation of the Interdict itself in the 
 summer of 12 14. 
 
VI 
 
 ARTHUR 
 
 Ecce Judas alter, Herodes ecce secundus, 
 Qui pueros inter Messiam perdere querens 
 Ne regnum perdat, proprios occidere natos 
 Postea non veritus, et regnum perdidit et se. 
 Sic tibi continget Arthuri morte, Johannes ! 
 Ejus per vitam metuisti perdere regnum, 
 Ejus per mortem vita regnoque carebis ! 
 
 (Philippis, vi.) 
 
 It will have been observed not only that the 
 King Arthur of the Graal legend is not the 
 traditional King Arthur of GeofFry of Mon- 
 mouth, but that in some way ' this King 
 Arthur ' of whom the Trouveur speaks is 
 identified with King Philip of France. The 
 process by which the Breton or British legendary 
 hero was transmuted into a French monarch is 
 not only capable of a simple and easy expla- 
 nation, but vividly illustrates the accuracy of 
 the general hypothesis here propounded. 
 
 When Richard i. of England died, the young 
 
 155 
 
156 The Holy Graal : 
 
 Prince Arthur, son of Richard's brother GeofFry, 
 had a rightful claim to succeed his uncle in all 
 his dominions in preference to Richard's brother 
 John, who was younger than Geoffry. This 
 claim, recognised by the feudal common law 
 of Christendom, was only legally and consti- 
 tutionally defeasible by the Great Councils 
 of England, Normandy, and the other great 
 fiefs which Richard had held. In the legal 
 exercise of their functions, the Great Council 
 of England promptly decided to set aside the 
 hereditary claim of Arthur in favour of the 
 remoter hereditary claim of John, and from 
 that moment Arthur's perfectly valid inchoate 
 right to the Crown of England absolutely 
 ceased and determined in law. 
 
 In Normandy and the other great fiefs over- 
 sea the case was different. The Great Councils, 
 in theory at least, had the same right of setting 
 aside the next heir in favour of one more 
 remote, but the right was conditional, not 
 absolute. The Dukes of Normandy were 
 * men ' of the Kings of France ; and before any 
 claimant could legally be invested with the 
 Duchy, he was bound to do homage and swear 
 fealty to the French King, who, on sufficient 
 cause shown in his own High Court, had a 
 right to veto the election of the Norman 
 
Arthur 157 
 
 Baronage. Richard died April 6, 1199. On 
 the 25th, John had been girt with the sword 
 and crowned with the coronet of Normandy, 
 'entwined with little golden roses,' at Rouen, 
 and had made solemn oath on the Holy 
 Gospels before clergy and people that he 
 would maintain the rights of Mother Church, 
 exercise right justice, do away bad laws and 
 institute good. But he was not yet lawful 
 Duke of Normandy. Philip of France lost no 
 time in reminding him of the fact by provision- 
 ally receiving homage from Arthur not only 
 for Normandy, but for Anjou, Poitou, Maine, 
 and Touraine as well as Brittany. Philip, how- 
 ever, was at this time fighting with only his 
 left hand free, his right being engaged in his 
 duel with the Papacy on the question of his 
 marriage. In the spring of 1200, he was fain 
 to make peace with John, admitting him to do 
 homage and swear fealty for Normandy and 
 the other fiefs as the rightful heir of Richard. 
 
 It was John's marriage with Isabella of 
 Angouleme that determined the manner of 
 his doom. Isabella had long been betrothed 
 to Hugh le Brun, Count of la Marche, but even 
 yet had scarcely reached an age to be married 
 in the face of the Church. John, who had 
 divorced his first wife Hawise of Gloucester, 
 
158 T^he Holy Graal : 
 
 on the ground of consanguinity, had sent an 
 embassy to Lisbon to demand the hand of the 
 Infanta of Portugal. Before his envoys had 
 returned, he had seen and been smitten with an 
 infatuated passion for Isabella, and both the 
 unfulfilled contracts were forthwith flung to 
 the winds. The King of Portugal complained, 
 Hugh of la Marche threatened. John carried 
 ofF his bride, and was solemnly crowned a 
 second time with her at Westminster, October 
 8, 1200. 
 
 The next year saw John and Isabella sump- 
 tuously lodged in Philip's own palace at Paris, 
 and Philip ostentatiously showering gifts of 
 wines and embroideries, Spanish destriers and 
 rich jewels, on his royal and amorous guests. 
 It was not thus that Philip treated his friends. 
 In this year (1201) Hugh le Brun complained 
 to Philip of the outrage John had committed 
 in carrying ofF his affianced bride, and a 
 number of others who had suffered wrong at 
 the hands of John appealed to John's over-lord 
 for vengeance and protection. Philip accord- 
 ingly summoned John as his liegeman for 
 Anjou, Poitou, Aquitaine, and Touraine to 
 appear at his Court in Paris on the second 
 Sunday after Easter 1202 to answer the charges 
 brought against him. 
 
Arthur 1 5 9 
 
 The Court met, but John did not appear. 
 The Dukes of Normandy might be bound to 
 appear on the citation of the Kings of France, 
 but only on the march between kingdom and 
 duchy — not at Paris. Finally, the Court found 
 John guilty of contumacy for his non-appear- 
 ance, and sentenced him to confiscation of all 
 the lands which he or his predecessors had held 
 of the Kings of France. Whether the Court 
 was legally justified in passing this sentence, 
 or Philip in at once proceeding to execute it, 
 are questions which after-events very soon 
 deprived of any practical interest or import- 
 ance. If the sentence and its execution were 
 legal, they were confirmed \ if illegal, they 
 were superseded by a second sentence, the 
 legality of which in all essential respects, as 
 legality was understood at the time, seems to 
 be indisputable. 
 
 The story of Prince Arthur's capture at 
 Mirebeau, his imprisonment at Falaise and 
 Rouen, and his final disappearance about Easter 
 1203, is too well known to need repetition. 
 That John murdered him with his own hand 
 seems on the whole to be the likeliest story of 
 his death. That directly or indirectly John 
 was guilty of murdering his nephew is ab- 
 solutely certain. The murder afforded Philip 
 
i6o The Holy Graal : 
 
 an admirable opportunity of re-asserting his 
 title in such a form as to render it legally 
 unassailable. Nothing should be left undone 
 that could secure his lawful right at least to 
 the England oversea. Arthur had died Count 
 of Brittany. A meeting of the Great Council 
 of Brittany was therefore necessary. Arthur 
 died homager to Philip, and his death involved 
 questions of the highest moment to the realm 
 of France. A meeting of the Great Council 
 of the realm therefore became necessary. 
 Arthur died under circumstances of which the 
 Court of Rome claimed the right of taking 
 cognisance. The meeting of a Legatine 
 Council therefore became necessary. Three 
 meetings were held accordingly — one of the 
 Great Council of Brittany at Vannes on 
 April 1 8, 1203 ; one of the Great Council of 
 France at Mantes on August 22, 1203; and 
 one of a Council summoned by the Papal 
 Legate at Meaux in the late spring or early 
 summer of 1204. 
 
 Both the date and the place of meeting of 
 the Great Council of France seem to be signifi- 
 cant. John had pleaded as his excuse for not 
 appearing when cited the year before that the 
 notice given was insufficient, and that the 
 Dukes of Normandy were not bound to appear 
 
Arthur 1 6 1 
 
 when cited by the Kings of France except on 
 the frontiers of the duchy and the kingdom. 
 In this case, accordingly, the notice given seems 
 to have been three months, three w^eeks, and 
 three days, and the place chosen was one where 
 a meeting could easily be arranged on the 
 bridge over the Seine between Mantes and 
 Limay, without requiring Duke or King to set 
 foot within his enemy's territory. 
 
 There were many counts in the indictment 
 against John, and the record of the proceedings 
 is fragmentary and incomplete. The general 
 outline of the case, however, is distinctly trace- 
 able. John was accused of ' that worst kind 
 of homicide which is called murder.' He was 
 found guilty and sentenced to death. This 
 sentence carried with it the forfeiture of all 
 his goods and possessions in France to the 
 Crown of France. But Philip was not merely 
 the sovereign to whom the belongings of the 
 murderer were forfeit. He was also the right- 
 ful successor to the belongings of the murdered 
 man. Arthur was his ' man ' in respect of 
 many fiefs ; and Arthur dying without heirs, 
 the fiefs escheated to Philip as his lord. A 
 third point raised before the Great Council 
 related, not to the actual possessions of either 
 John or Arthur, but to the allegiance of the 
 
 L 
 
1 62 'The Holy Graal : 
 
 vassals who held under them. One of the 
 articles in the last peace concluded between 
 Philip and John had provided that if either of 
 them should break the peace against the other, 
 the liegemen of the party so breaking it should 
 be ipso facto absolved from their allegiance to 
 him. The murder of Arthur was held to be 
 against the peace of our lord King Philip, his 
 crown and dignity, and consequently all of 
 John's * men ' were held to be thereby released 
 from their allegiance to John. 
 
 John refused to appear before the Great 
 Council in person, but he seems to have been 
 represented at it, probably, I think, by the 
 Papal Legate or one or more of those attached 
 to the Papal Legation. The defence, appar- 
 ently, was a plea of ' confession and avoidance.' 
 The homicide was not denied, but it was urged 
 that it did not amount to murder. Arthur had 
 been taken in arms against his liege lady, his 
 grandmother Eleanor, and his liege lord, his 
 uncle King John. Under such circumstances, 
 for the liege lord to kill his rebellious vassal, 
 even by a secret and shameful death, was 
 not murder according to the accepted feudal 
 code. This view of the law applicable to this 
 particular case is distinctly laid down by no 
 less accomplished a lawyer than Innocent him- 
 
Arthur 163 
 
 self a dozen years later, when the legality of 
 the sentence passed was again under discussion, 
 and may be regarded as technically correct. 
 The Great Council, however, thought fit to 
 override the objection, and it would, perhaps, 
 be as difficult in theory as it was impossible in 
 practice to question their competence to do so. 
 Other pleas were advanced ; that John had not 
 been summoned to the Council j that he had 
 not been tried by his peers ; that he was con- 
 demned in his absence ; that even assuming 
 him to have been contumacious in not appear- 
 ing, the punishment of contumacy was not 
 death, but the loss of the fief or some minor 
 penalty. All these, however, were little better 
 than mere quibbles. The question for the 
 Council to decide was whether the crime com- 
 mitted by John was murder, and they decided 
 that it was. 
 
 What Philip regarded as included in the 
 forfeiture and escheat is left indefinite in such 
 records of the trial as have come down to us. 
 That he interpreted the sentence as conferring 
 on himself a rightful claim to the Crown of 
 England as well as to John's dominions oversea 
 seems to be clear. The annalist of Margam 
 tells us how Philip summoned John to his court 
 according to the wont of the Dukes of Nor- 
 
164 The Holy Graal : 
 
 mandy to answer for the slaying of so great a 
 man as Arthur, and adds : ' So great a man, I 
 say, for he was the legitimate heir of England, 
 Count of Brittany, and son-in-law of the King 
 of France.' The statement that Arthur was 
 the legitimate heir of England was inaccurate 
 after John's election by the Great Council, and 
 the statement that he was Philip's son-in-law 
 was inaccurate, inasmuch as Arthur was be- 
 trothed only, not actually married, to Mary of 
 France. Both inaccuracies, however, bear 
 witness to the wish of the Cistercian chronicler 
 to make the most of the claims of Philip as 
 the representative of Arthur. He nevertheless 
 distinctly negatives the supposition that the 
 Crown of England was declared forfeit by the 
 Council. 'John,' he says, 'was condemned 
 by the judgment of the King's Court and of 
 the French Princes, and was disinherited with 
 all his heirs of all the lands and honours he 
 held of the Crown of France. This was 
 the sentence awarded, and a just sentence 
 it was.' 
 
 The justice of the sentence, however, did 
 not commend itself to Innocent's Legates or to 
 Innocent himself, and a determined effort was 
 made to interpose an appeal to the Court of 
 Rome on the subject. Philip, at imminent risk 
 
Arthur 165 
 
 of being excommunicated by Innocent, main- 
 tained that no appeal could lie from a decision 
 of the Great Council of France to the Roman 
 Curia, and at once set about the execution of 
 the sentence. Up to this time he had been 
 executing, as far as lay in his power, the sen- 
 tence of 1202 against John. Both sentences 
 were to all practical intents and purposes 
 identical. The difference was that he now 
 resumed as the avenger of Arthur the task he 
 had undertaken as the avenger of Hugh de la 
 Marche and other of his aggrieved vassals, the 
 thoroughly congenial task of driving John out 
 of France. All John's liegemen oversea were 
 now released from their allegiance, and John 
 himself was formally branded as the murderer 
 of his own kith and kin. The sentence had 
 the effect, and more than the effect, of excom- 
 munication. It legalised rebellion against John, 
 while it paralysed his powers of resistance. 
 The extraordinary rapidity and ease with which 
 Philip carried out the sentence of confiscation 
 bears witness not only to his skill as a general, 
 but to a widespread popular belief in the right- 
 eousness of his cause. Probably it was well for 
 him that John gave him no opportunity of 
 carrying out the sentence of death as well as 
 that of confiscation. 
 
1 66 The Holy Graal : 
 
 By the time that the Legatine Council was 
 held at Meaux in 1204, with a view to bring- 
 ing about a peace between Philip and John, 
 Philip had already given practical effect to the 
 sentence of forfeiture. A decision of the 
 Council, however, seems to have been arrived 
 at favourable to the claims of John in reference 
 to Poitou, and perhaps to other of his former 
 possessions. On this occasion, Philip himself 
 interposed an appeal to the Court of Rome. 
 He had refused to allow an appeal from his own 
 Great Council to Rome ; but an appeal from 
 a Papal Council to the Pope himself was 
 well in accordance with law, and, moreover, he 
 was now able to base his appeal not only on 
 the righteousness of his cause, but on the logic 
 of events. The appeal was never formally 
 heard. There was no occasion to hear it. 
 Some months after the Council at Meaux, the 
 Archbishop of Rouen applied to Innocent for 
 instructions. Philip, he writes, who is now 
 King, has received homage and fealty from the 
 barons and lay-folk all, and alleges that he has 
 acquired Normandy in pursuance of the sen- 
 tence of his Court. What are we poor Church- 
 men to do ? Innocent answers his dear 
 bewildered brother on March 7, 1205 : You 
 know the facts better probably than I. Act 
 
Arthur 167 
 
 accordingly as you think best in the interests 
 of the Church. 
 
 Normandy, in fact, to say nothing of John's 
 other continental fiefs, was already once more 
 part and parcel of France. Philip had won it, 
 and he had won it fairly. According to feudal 
 law, custom, and tradition as understood and 
 accepted at the time, he was now as rightfully 
 King of Normandy as he was King of France. 
 After the death of Richard of England, Philip 
 had accepted homage and fealty from Arthur 
 for Normandy and other of Richard's fiefs. 
 He subsequently found it expedient to divest 
 Arthur of his temporary vassalage to himself, 
 and to invest John with the great continental 
 fiefs. He did so, however, only under practical 
 compulsion and against his will. As soon as 
 John's marriage to Isabella of Angouleme had 
 given just ground of complaint to Hugh de la 
 Marche, and John's other outrages on others 
 of his vassals had driven them into making 
 common cause with Hugh, Arthur again 
 became an invaluable stalking-horse for Philip's 
 designs. The decree of 1202, which declared 
 all John's continental possessions forfeit, was 
 virtually a declaration of Arthur's right to 
 them, and of Philip's determination to vindicate 
 that right. At the very outset of his final 
 
1 68 The Holy Graal : 
 
 conquests from John, Philip was already the re- 
 presentative, the champion knight, of Arthur. 
 
 The decision of the Court at Mantes in 1203 
 laid a still more significant emphasis on the 
 fact. Arthur was murdered. John was the 
 murderer, Philip the avenger of Arthur. It 
 was Arthur's right that John had usurped and 
 had forfeited. It was Arthur's right that now 
 vested in Philip, and that Philip would vindi- 
 cate. It was Arthur's right for which Philip 
 fought, Arthur's right in which he made 
 conquest after conquest of the dominions that 
 should have been Arthur's, Arthur's right in 
 which he re-united them to the sovereignty of 
 France. A little later, the Albigensian Crusade 
 would give him the opportunity of asserting 
 in Languedoc those rights of Arthur which 
 Arthur's uncle Richard and grandfather Henry 
 had been so solicitous to maintain ; and a few 
 years later yet, Philip by his son Lewis would 
 claim in Arthur's right, and well-nigh succeed 
 in winning, the sovereignty of England itself. 
 Philip and Philip's men, Prelates and Princes of 
 France, Dukes and Counts, and Viscounts and 
 Lords, Arnold of Citeaux and his invincible 
 brotherhood of Cistercian Abbots, the Barons 
 of England who have renounced their allegiance 
 to John, — they are all now Knights of Arthur. 
 
Arthur 169 
 
 Their Chiefs, cleric and lay, are the Paladins of 
 a new Table Round. For all of them the name 
 of Arthur is more than the memorial of a crime 
 they have sworn to avenge. It is the symbol 
 of a mystery, the watchword of a Cause. 
 
 In both the Greater and the Lesser Britain 
 the name of Arthur had been already con- 
 secrated in immemorial tradition. His young 
 Plantagenet namesake was now definitely 
 identified in the popular imagination with 
 the mysterious Breton and British Emperor. 
 The nameless but almost contemporary Canon 
 of Barnwell who supplemented the history of 
 Walter of Coventry writes of the murdered 
 Prince : ' The Bretons, as it were taking 
 augury from the name, continually made it 
 their boast, as impudent as it was imprudent, 
 that in him the ancient Arthur had again been 
 brought to life, and that the slaughter of the 
 English and the transfer of the sovereignty 
 through him to the Bretons was already im- 
 minent.' This is evidently the original source 
 of Speed's account : ' The Britaines then, 
 fascinated with his ominous Name, dreamed 
 that the ancient Great Arthur was risen againe 
 in him, and that the Translation of the English 
 Kingdome was now by him to be effected.' 
 Nor was the name the only coincidence. Walter 
 
170 T'he Holy Graal : 
 
 of Coventry himself writes : ' Arthur in the 
 prison of his uncle King John of England, 
 by what chance is doubtful, was done away 
 from the midst, nor, as it is said, hath his 
 sepulchre been found unto this day.' 
 
 Many of those who wrought and fought for 
 Philip and Lewis doubtless believed in all good 
 faith that the murdered Prince was none other 
 than the old-world Arthur reborn into the 
 world of living men. Many more shared 
 Philip's presentiments of a united France and 
 his aspirations towards the Empire of Christen- 
 dom. For the former, the Arthur whom the 
 then present generation had seen and known 
 was the Arthur of the past ; for the latter, the 
 Arthur of the future. To the Order of 
 Citeaux, to the patriot Barons of England who 
 ' sought for a new king, and sought for him 
 beyond the sea,' the royal soul of the great 
 Arthur might well seem for a little space to 
 have returned from Avalon clad in the out- 
 ward semblance of Lewis the son of Philip of 
 France. 
 
 One connecting link between the Prince 
 Arthur of history and the King Arthur of ro- 
 mance may perhaps be found in the posthumous 
 history of Prince Arthur's sister Eleanor. An 
 anonymous continuation of the Brut of Wace, 
 
Arthur 171 
 
 printed by F. Michel, records that she was kept 
 in prison during the whole reign of John, and 
 that after his death Henry iii. sent her from 
 one place of captivity to another until her death 
 at Bristol. She was first buried in the Priory 
 of S. James in that city ; but afterwards, by the 
 King's desire, her remains were translated to 
 Amesbury. Whether the translation suggested 
 to romancers a connection of Amesbury with the 
 story of Arthur and Guenievre, or whether, as is 
 more probable, the connection between Ames- 
 bury and the Arthurian story suggested to Henry 
 the choice of her last resting-place, is a question 
 of little importance. In either case, the fact 
 bears witness to the recognition of some con- 
 nection between the legendary and the historic 
 Arthurs. 
 
VII 
 DATES 
 
 L'en ne doit Crestien de Troies 
 Ce m'est vis pas raison blasmer, 
 Qui sot dou roi Artu conter, 
 De sa cour et de sa mesniee 
 Qui tant fu loee et prisiee, 
 Et qui les fez des autres conte, 
 Et onques de lui ne tient conte : 
 Trop ert preudon a oblier. 
 
 (^Dou Cke<valier a VEspee, Meon i. 128.) 
 
 It is beyond my present purpose to point out 
 
 the many historical persons and events that 
 
 masquerade, often in the slightest of disguises, 
 
 through the many versions of the Graal legends. 
 
 They v^^ill nearly all be found to be closely 
 
 connected with the Albigensian Crusades, 
 
 the Interdict and Crusade against John of 
 
 England, the Crusade and war against the 
 
 Emperor Otho terminating with the battle of 
 
 Bouvines, and the final Crusade against Philip 
 
 and Lewis for the purpose of maintaining the 
 
 independence^ and indeed the very political 
 
 173 
 
174 ^^^ Holy Graal : 
 
 existence, of England as a European power. 
 There are episodes referring to other events — 
 some, indeed, that are merely trouveur stories 
 or Dominican ' examples ' woven with more or 
 less skill into the narrative; but the greater part 
 of the earlier versions will be found to be no- 
 thing more nor less than contemporary history 
 in metaphor. If the knights of Arthur are 
 sought for in the ranks of the 'soldierhood of 
 Christ ' that fought on the side of the Cistercians 
 and Philip of France, the task of identification 
 will not be found difficult by those acquainted 
 with the original records of the time. 
 
 Two identifications, however, may here be 
 indicated by way of illustration — that of Lance- 
 lot with the elder Simon de Montfort, and that 
 of Galahad with Francis of Assisi. The proofs 
 of these identifications I do not propose to 
 adduce. They will be found in plenty, those 
 in reference to Lancelot more particularly in 
 the earlier versions of the story, those referring 
 to Galahad in the later exclusively, as it is only in 
 these that his name appears at all. The name 
 of Lancelot, as of Gawain, figures in Arthurian 
 romance before the date at which the parent 
 river received the mighty tributary stream of 
 the Graal legend. This fact, however, in no 
 way militates against the accuracy of the iden- 
 
Dates ' 175 
 
 tifications suggested. The original writers of 
 the Perceval legends were led partly by the 
 coincidence of name and partly by other con- 
 siderations into accepting King Arthur as the 
 metaphorical name of Prince Lewis of France, 
 and all that Prince Lewis represented or was 
 supposed to represent by those who fought for 
 his cause. But obviously the romancer could 
 not stop here. If he adopted King Arthur at 
 all, he must adopt also all the well-known 
 characters in previous fiction connected with 
 King Arthur. If he found in earlier Arthurian 
 romance a character like that of Lancelot, he 
 would naturally cast about among the living 
 men whose adventures he proposed to relate 
 to find one whom he could fitly describe under 
 the name of Lancelot without violating any 
 special characteristics by which the elder hero 
 had been distinguished in popular fiction. The 
 adventures in which the new Lancelot would 
 figure would be mostly themselves new, and 
 new traits would be added to the character in 
 order to render the portrait more lifelike, but 
 the general outline would not be altered in any 
 material respect. The very conditions under 
 which the new romance would be written 
 would necessarily involve a distinct similarity 
 between the new character drawn from life and 
 
176 'The Holy Graal : 
 
 the old character drawn from imagination, what- 
 ever difference in detail might be introduced. 
 
 The identification of Galahad with S. Francis 
 of Assisi really offers the only intelligible key to 
 the most remarkable modification introduced 
 into the legend of the Graal. In all the earlier 
 versions, Perceval is the principal hero of the 
 story. In all the later, Perceval is relegated to 
 a secondary though still honourable place, and 
 Galahad the High Prince is assigned an almost 
 divine pre-eminence. Dominic and Francis 
 are almost exact contemporaries. Dominic's 
 apostolic career began a little earlier than that 
 of Francis ; but at the Lateran Council of 1215, 
 that other disciple did outrun Dominic, and 
 the Order of S. Francis was formally established 
 by Innocent, while the Order of S. Dominic, 
 approved by Innocent, was only formally 
 established by Innocent's successor Honorius. 
 The earlier versions of the Graal legend were, 
 it seems to me, obviously written by partisans 
 of Dominic and the Cistercians. The later 
 versions seem to me as obviously the work of 
 partisans of Francis. The rivalry between 
 Dominican and Franciscan is reflected with 
 striking and impressive accuracy in the differ- 
 ences between the earlier and the later versions, 
 and the temporary waning of the star of Dominic 
 
Dates 1 77 
 
 before the star of Francis from about the year 
 1 21 8 onwards is as clearly legible in the 
 modifications of the legend as in any other 
 record of the time. 
 
 Dominic, as we have seen, was Knight of a 
 Table Round at which sat a King of France 
 among his princes, and dukes, and prelates, 
 abbots and monks, preachers and fighters, great 
 men and masterful, grave men and holy, all 
 intent on eradicating heresy and remodelling 
 the politics of Christendom. Francis tells us 
 that he himself was a Knight of another Table 
 Round of a somewhat different kind. His 
 words are : ' My brethren of the Table Round 
 are they that hide them in the wilderness and in 
 lonely places that they may give them the more 
 diligently to prayer and meditation, bewailing 
 their own sins and those of others, living simply 
 and conversing humbly, they whose holiness is 
 known of God albeit at times unknown of their 
 brethren and of men. The souls of such, what 
 time they shall be presented by the angels of 
 the Lord, then shall the Lord show them the 
 fruit and wages of their labours, to wit, many 
 souls that have been saved by their examples, 
 prayers, and tears, and shall say unto them : 
 " My well-beloved sons, such and so many souls 
 have been saved through your prayers, and 
 
 M 
 
178 l!he Holy Graal : 
 
 tears, and examples, and forasmuch as ye have 
 been faithful over a few things, I will make 
 ye rulers over many things ! " ' Was Francis 
 thinking of the Round Table of an Arthur or 
 a Charlemagne when he spoke thus, or of that 
 other Round Table of which his friend and 
 spiritual brother Dominic was one of the fore- 
 most champions ? 
 
 The actual dates that can be assigned to the 
 various versions of the Graal legend are few, 
 but these few are fairly certain. Apart from 
 indications in the manuscripts of the legend 
 themselves, the one cardinal date is the often- 
 quoted mention of the story in the chronicle of 
 Helinand. This chronicle, as I have shown in 
 my Epilogue to the ' High History,' cannot 
 have been written before 1209 nor after 1227, 
 the probabilities being in favour of the passage 
 relating to the Graal having been written in 
 1220. I need not here repeat the evidence on 
 which this conclusion is based ; but I may add 
 that Guarin, the Bishop of Senlis who con- 
 trived to lose the last sheets of Helinand's 
 chronicle, greatly distinguished himself as one 
 of Philip's ablest generals at the battle of 
 Bouvines. At that time he was only Bishop- 
 elect, but he regarded his position as forbidding 
 him actually to carry arms^ and his services 
 
Dates 1 79 
 
 were confined to marshalling the King's forces 
 and giving orders to the men. The Bishop of 
 Beauvais on the same occasion renounced the use 
 of the sword and spear which he had formerly- 
 employed against Richard of England, and 
 contented himself with a club so as not to 
 shed the blood of those he might happen to 
 kill. Both these scrupulously conscientious 
 prelates will be found, if I am not mistaken, as 
 the heroes of certain episodes in the ' High 
 History.' 
 
 The notes of time in the manuscripts of the 
 Graal stories are of very different degrees of 
 value. One of these occurs in a Prologue 
 prefixed to several manuscripts of the first part 
 of the Conte del Graal. The Prologue, osten- 
 sibly written by Crestien de Troyes, announces 
 that the romance which follows it was ' made 
 for the most worshipful man that is in the 
 empire of Rome, to wit, the Count Philip of 
 Flanders that is worth more than Alexander, 
 him of whom it is said that he was so very good.' 
 The pseudo-Crestien then proceeds to contrast 
 the characters of Philip and Alexander, greatly 
 to the former's advantage, recording among 
 other things that ' the gifts which the good 
 Count Philip bestows are given of charity,' 
 whereas Alexander ' never cared for charity nor 
 
i8o I' he Holy Graal : 
 
 anything else that is good.' The Philip of 
 Flanders here referred to has been generally- 
 identified, from the days of Thomas Warton's 
 History of English Poetry downwards, with 
 Philip of Alsace, Count of Flanders, who 
 succeeded his father in 1166, took the Cross in 
 1 188, started for Palestine in 1190, and died of 
 the plague before Acre in 1191. Warton is 
 not an authority on whom it is safe to rely 
 without verification. In this case, however, not 
 a single one of the many English and foreign 
 writers who have referred to this Prologue 
 seems to have taken the trouble to verify 
 Warton's conclusion. Had they done so, they 
 would have found that by a very natural mis- 
 apprehension Warton had mistaken his man. 
 I have not so much as seen any of the mss. in 
 which this Prologue occurs ; but as far as I 
 can gather from the catalogues of the libraries 
 in which they are preserved, none of them date 
 earlier than the fifteenth century. It will have 
 been observed that the writer dwells repeatedly 
 and insistently on the ' goodness ' of his patron. 
 If the Prologue was written after 1420, 
 there can be no reasonable doubt that it was 
 intended to eulogise, not the Crusader, but the 
 well-known Philip the Good, Duke of Bur- 
 gundy, who was born in 1396, became Count 
 
Dates 1 8 1 
 
 of Flanders in 141 9, founded the Order of the 
 Golden Fleece in 1430, and died in 1467. The 
 mere epithet 'good,' as employed by a trouveur 
 or chronicler, is, no doubt, insufficient to identify 
 a Count of Flanders. The word, indeed, is 
 applied by Philip Mousques himself as freely to 
 Philip of Alsace as to any other of the thousand 
 and one notabilities he mentions. In this case, 
 however, the whole and only point in the Pro- 
 logue is to prove that Philip was ' gooder ' than 
 Alexander ; and if the Prologue was written 
 after 1420, the inference that the Count Philip 
 of Flanders mentioned is the Philip historic- 
 ally known as ' The Good ' is hardly open to 
 question. 
 
 Be this as it may, however, the portion of the 
 Prologue referring to Philip and Alexander is 
 obviously an interpolation. The concluding 
 lines which the writer adopts as a tag to his 
 vapid eulogy are part of the original poem, and 
 the misfit of the two portions proclaims at 
 once the interpolator's awkwardness and his 
 suppression of the real prologue. The real 
 prologue, in fact, is nothing else but the 
 Elucidation already translated in full, with 
 the exception of these few lines. They run 
 in English thus : — 
 
 ' Now will Crest'en here recount the en- 
 
182 'The Holy Graal : 
 
 sample that you have heard. Thereof might 
 Crestien well have saved himself the pains, 
 inasmuch as he meaneth to endeavour by the 
 Count's command to set forth in rime the best 
 story that may be told in the King's Court, to 
 wit, the story of the Graal whereof the Count 
 lent him the book. Hearken, therefore, how 
 he delivereth himself.' 
 
 As a conclusion to the Elucidation, this is 
 perfectly appropriate and intelligible. The 
 poet says he might well have spared himself 
 the trouble of writing or rehearsing the brief 
 summary or ' ensample ' of the story he has 
 already given, because he is about to tell the 
 story itself at length. On the other hand, to 
 tack this passage on to the contrast between 
 Philip and Alexander is simply to reduce it to 
 palpable and irrelevant nonsense. The Prologue- 
 writer is not going to recount the * ensample ' 
 his audience have heard, nor, if he wished to 
 propitiate his patron, could he well have 
 spared his eulogy. A careless scribe may 
 perhaps be responsible for rendering some of 
 his words unintelligible, but the rhymester 
 himself is the culprit guilty of the disastrous 
 discord between his own lines and those of his 
 predecessor. 
 
 So far, then, what is certain is that the lines 
 
Dates 1 8 3 
 
 of the Prologue referring to Philip of Flanders 
 are an interpolation, and what is probable is 
 that they are the work of a clumsy story-teller 
 of the fifteenth century. The elucidator, 
 indeed, mentions that a count lent him 'the 
 book,' but this is far indeed from identifying 
 the lender with Philip of Flanders. It may 
 be worth while here to quote Warton's own 
 words : ' Chrestien of Troys wrote Le Romans 
 du Graal, or the adventures of the Sangrale, 
 which included the deeds of King Arthur, Sir 
 Tristram, Lancelot du Lake, and the rest of the 
 knights of the round table before 1 191.' When 
 we inquire where Warton and his followers 
 discovered this curiously definite point in the 
 chronology of romantic literature, only one 
 answer is possible. Warton found, as others 
 have found, that the Prologue-writer called 
 himself Crestien, and was effusive in his praises 
 of Philip of Flanders. He and they thereupon 
 incontinently identified Crestien with Crestien 
 de Troies, and Count Philip with the crusader 
 who went to his reward in 1191. The very 
 definiteness of the date tells its own story. 
 There is no more reason to believe that Crestien 
 wrote the story of the Graal before 1191 than 
 there is to believe that Crestien was the author 
 of the Prologue, or that the PhiHp it refers to 
 
184 T^he Holy Graal : 
 
 was really the Crusader. When a single tittle 
 of trustworthy evidence is forthcoming that 
 seems to indicate an earlier date than about 
 1220 for a single line about the Graal written 
 by Crestien de Troies, it will be time enough 
 to consider its value. At present, no such 
 tittle is known to exist. 
 
 All difficulty as to the date at which Crestien 
 wrote seems to me removed by the considera- 
 tions to which I have called attention, but 
 another difficulty in relation to the same writer 
 still remains for after-critics to solve. Long 
 ago, Roquefort denied that any portion of the 
 Romance of the Graal was written by Crestien ; 
 and although the conclusion seems to have 
 been based on insufficient premisses, it still 
 seems probable that much of what is generally 
 attributed to Crestien is really the work of 
 another trouveur. The author of Le Chevalier 
 a PEpee^ in his introduction to that delightful 
 story, reproaches Crestien for having forgotten 
 to celebrate Messire Gawain among the other 
 warriors of the Table Round. This evidence 
 of a contemporary, and of a kind not open to 
 suspicion, seems to militate strongly against 
 Crestien's authorship of at least those portions 
 of the romance attributed to him in which 
 Messire Gawain is the hero. 
 
Dates 1 8 5 
 
 The third section of the Conte del Graal is 
 the next which gives us more than the name 
 of the writer. With regard to this, there is no 
 occasion to add anything to what Mr. Nutt 
 writes in his valuable Studies. ' Manessier has 
 been more explicit ; he describes himself as 
 completing the work at the command of 
 
 Jehanne la Comtesse 
 
 Qu'est de Flandre dame et mestresse. 
 
 This Joan, daughter of Baldwin vi., ruled 
 Flanders alone during the imprisonment of her 
 husband after the battle of Bouvines (1214- 
 1227), and Manessier's words can only apply 
 to her during this period, so that his continua- 
 tion must have been written between 1214- 
 1227.' 
 
 The next contributor to the story wrote 
 almost at the same time. Robert de Beron, or 
 Bouron, or Borron, informs us that no mortal 
 man had told the story until he had it from 
 
 Mon seigneur Gautier en pels 
 Qui de Mont Belyal estoit. 
 
 Walter of Montbeliard, who is often in evidence 
 in the history of the Crusades as Constable of 
 Jerusalem and Regent of Cyprus, died in 12 12. 
 As Monseigneur's requiem had already been 
 
1 86 "The Holy Graal : 
 
 chanted, and he was 'in peace' at the time 
 Robert wrote, it is certain that Robert's con- 
 tribution cannot have been written before 
 1 21 2, and probably belongs to several years 
 later. 
 
 The claims of Walter Mapes to be regarded 
 as the author of any version or part of any 
 version of the Graal legend may, perhaps, 
 challenge serious discussion when they are 
 seriously put forward. In the thirteenth 
 century to say that a poem was written by 
 Walter Mapes was almost equivalent to saying 
 that the real author was unknown, or wished 
 to remain unknown. The date of Walter's 
 death is uncertain. It is generally assigned 
 to 1 210, but this may be three or four years 
 too early. 
 
 That Wolfram von Eschenbach won a prize 
 at the minstrel-tournament at Wartburg in 
 1207, and that he refers in an unfinished 
 poem to the death of Herman Landgrave of 
 Thuringia, which took place in 1216, seem 
 to be the only definite notes of time recover- 
 able with regard to the greatest German poet 
 of the Middle Ages. The date of his Parzival 
 is unknown, but that it is later than Crestien's 
 story of the Graal he informs us himself with 
 considerable emphasis. He is said by Rose, I 
 
Dates 1 87 
 
 know not on what authority, to have been 
 living in 1227. Mr. Nutt assigns his death to 
 about 1220, but only, I apprehend, on con- 
 jectural grounds. Any examination of Wolf- 
 ram's poems would lead me too far afield, but 
 I may observe that his conception of the Graal 
 as a stone is in strict accordance with other 
 traditions relating to the Holy Vessel. William 
 of Tyre, after describing the siege of Caesarea 
 in 1 102, and the fearful slaughter that took 
 place in the Great Mosque, writes thus : ' In 
 this same Prayer-house was found a vessel of a 
 most clear green colour, shapen after the 
 manner of a dish, which the Genoese aforesaid 
 received by lot instead of a great sum of money, 
 believing it to be made of emerald, and did 
 offer the same to their church as an ornament 
 exceeding precious. Whence it cometh to 
 pass even to this day that whensoever any great 
 folks shall pass through their city, they do of 
 custom display the said vessel as it were a thing 
 marvellous, persuading them that it is in very 
 truth that which the colour thereof doth make 
 show of, to wit, an emerald.' This marvellous 
 vessel is in reality none other than the Sacro 
 CatinOy or Holy Graal, still preserved in the 
 Cathedral at Genoa. William, it will be 
 observed, makes no mention of its sacred 
 
1 88 T^he Holy Graal : 
 
 character. As a matter of fact, its recogni- 
 tion as the Holy Graal did not take place till 
 many years after William's death, and is first 
 distinctly recorded in the pages of Jacobus de 
 Voragine. Wolfram's poem seems to me to 
 indicate that even in his day the identity of 
 the stone with the Graal was already an article 
 of the popular belief. If Wolfram joined the 
 Albigensian Crusade, which is far from un- 
 likely, it would account for much that remains 
 unaccounted for in his poem. 
 
 The dates I have referred to are, I believe, 
 all that can with any certainty be relied on 
 to be found in the various stories of Perceval 
 and the Graal. They range from about 1210 
 to about 1230. The Interdict in England 
 came into force in 1208, and was relaxed in 
 1 2 14. Every single romance in which the 
 Curse that fell upon Logres is mentioned was 
 written either during the Interdict or within 
 a few years after. 
 
 My task is done. I have pointed out what 
 I believe to be the meaning and motive of the 
 legends of the Graal, and have shown how 
 closely some of the cardinal incidents and 
 personages in the romance are paralleled in the 
 incidents and personages of contemporary 
 history. To my own mind, the coincidences 
 
Dates 189 
 
 here indicated seem far too many, too coherent, 
 too striking, to be the result of accident. If 
 they are admitted to be the result of deliberate 
 design, even this inadequate introduction may, 
 I hope, be found of some assistance in pioneer- 
 ing the way for future research. 
 
INDEX 
 
 Aaron, Innocent as, 54, 65, 
 
 146. 
 Agnes of Meran, 36. 
 Alain li Gros, identification of, 
 
 7- 
 
 spiritual father of Domi- 
 nic, 90. 
 
 Albigenses, the, Alan the Great 
 writes against, 7. 
 
 their argument against 
 
 rich preachers, 20. 
 
 their suppression neces- 
 sary, 28. 
 
 Alms, payment of, continued 
 during Interdict, 140. 
 
 Alphonso, King of Castile, his 
 embassy, 18. 
 
 Amangons, King, 100. 
 
 his treatment of the 
 
 damsels of the wells, loi. 
 
 his identification, 118, 
 
 119. 
 
 Amesbury, Eleanor Planta- 
 genet buried at, 171. 
 
 ' Army of God and Holy 
 Church,' significance of 
 title, 147. 
 
 Arnold Amalric, Abbot of 
 Citeaux, identified as Pelles, 
 
 joins the legation against 
 
 the heretics, 35. 
 hisconference with Philip, 
 
 36. 
 
 he preaches the New 
 
 Way, 41. 
 
 Arnold Amalric, his mission to 
 Philip, 43. 
 
 his encroachments check- 
 ed, 54. 
 
 his compact with Philip, 
 
 56, 64. 
 
 his insubordination to 
 
 Rome, 57, 65. 
 
 his action as to the Eng- 
 lish Interdict, 62, 65, 72, 
 121, 145. 
 
 is reproved by Innocent, 
 
 75. 81. 
 
 appointed leader of the 
 
 Albigensian Crusade, 78. 
 
 becomes Archbishop and 
 
 Duke of Narbonne, 149. 
 
 Arnold de Campranhan re- 
 cants his heresy, 43. 
 
 Arragon, Peter il. of, overlord 
 of half Montpelier, 35. 
 
 Arthur, King, of the Graal 
 Legend, 5. 
 
 his Peers of the 
 
 Table Round, 102. 
 
 his attempt against 
 
 Castle Orguellous, iii. 
 
 his four years' war, 
 
 112, 151. 
 
 identification of, 
 
 iSS. 175- . 
 Arthur, Prince, his claim to 
 
 the throne, 156. 
 his capture and 
 
 murder, 159. 
 
 does homage to 
 
 191 
 
192 
 
 The Holy Graal : 
 
 Philip for French fiefs, 157, 
 
 167. 
 Arthur, Prince, connection of, 
 
 with traditionary king, 
 
 i6g. 
 Azalais of Roquemartine, wife 
 
 of Raymond Barral, 47. 
 
 Baptism during Interdict, 
 regulations concerning, 136. 
 
 Barnwell, Canon of, on Prince 
 Arthur, i6g. 
 
 Beaulieu, Hugh, Abbot of, 
 his mission to Innocent, 65, 
 
 74. 
 
 Beauvais, Bishop of, his avoid- 
 ance of bloodshed, 179. 
 
 Berenger of Narbonne, 45. 
 
 Beron, Robert de, contributor 
 to the Co?ite del Graal, 185. 
 
 Blihos Bliheris, his overthrow 
 by Gauwains, 103. 
 
 Bonfont, the Abbot of, sen- 
 tenced, 117. 
 
 Bouvines, battle of, 173, 178, 
 179. 
 
 Bridge Perilous, the, no. 
 
 Brittany, Great Council of, 
 160. 
 
 Brun, Hugh le, his appeal to 
 Philip, 158. 
 
 Canterbury, disputes con- 
 cerning the See of, 51. 
 
 Church of, despoiled by 
 
 John, 119. 
 
 Castelnau, the old Sustantion, 
 
 34. 
 Peter of. Archdeacon of 
 
 Maguelonne, 29. 
 • harasses Raymond 
 
 of Toulouse and is killed, 
 
 44. 
 utiHsation of his 
 
 murder, 58, 61, 63. 
 Castile, Alphonso King of, 
 
 18. 
 
 Castle of the Graal, names of 
 the, 5. 
 
 of Maidens, the, no. 
 
 Mortal, the King of, 2, 
 
 usurps the Castle of 
 
 the Graal and kills him- 
 self, 4. 
 
 identification of, 8, 
 
 13. 14- 
 
 Orguellous, the, no. 
 
 Channel of silver, the, 107. 
 Chevalier a I'J^pde, le, referred 
 
 to, 184. 
 Christ Church, lands of monks 
 
 of, confiscated, 52. 
 Church, the, its duties towards 
 
 heretics, 23. 
 Cistercians, predominance of 
 
 the Order of, 10, etc. 
 privileges granted to, 
 
 during Interdict, 25, 90, 
 
 91. 
 privileges to, refused 
 
 during English Interdict, 
 
 53. S4> 92. 
 
 Interdict disregarded by 
 
 the, 66, 75, 79, 92, 
 
 Innocent insists on their 
 
 observance of Interdict, 80. 
 
 their prayer and defence, 
 
 82. 
 
 Walter Mapes' line on 
 
 them, 125. 
 
 their use of a silver tube 
 
 in the Eucharist, 127, 
 
 Citeaux, the Abbey of, Alan 
 the Great dies at, 8. 
 
 Al;bots of, their semi- 
 military character, 10. 
 
 visit of the Castilian em- 
 bassy to, 33. 
 
 Clerics, dead, how disposed 
 of during Interdict, 137. 
 
 their housekeepers im- 
 prisoned by John, 144. 
 
 Comans, proposed mission to 
 the, 21. 
 
Index 
 
 193 
 
 Court of King Fisherman in 
 
 Logres, 102. 
 peers of the Table Round 
 
 search for it, 105. 
 found by Perceval li 
 
 Galois, 106. 
 results of the finding of 
 
 the, no. 
 
 identification of the, 119. 
 
 Coventry, Walter of, on Prince 
 
 Arthur, 170. 
 Crestien de Troyes, his history 
 
 of Perceval, 98. 
 prologue to Conie 
 
 del Graal purports to be 
 
 written by, 179. 
 Warton quoted as 
 
 to, 183. 
 doubts as to his 
 
 authorship of the Conte, 184. 
 Crusade, Albigensian, Cister- 
 cian management of the, 
 
 10. 
 
 nature of the, 27. 
 
 its connection with 
 
 the English Interdict, 33. 
 declaration of the, 
 
 53- 
 
 date of proclama- 
 tion of the, 60. 
 
 Crusades by Innocent against 
 Christian potentates, 145, 
 173. 
 
 Cups, golden, borne by the 
 damsels of the wells, 100, 
 
 interpretation of the, 
 
 116. 
 
 Damsel, golden-haired, Graal 
 served by, 3. 
 
 Damsels of the Wells, the, 100. 
 
 the peers swear to suc- 
 cour them, 102. 
 
 their story told by Blihos 
 
 Bliheris, 104. 
 
 interpretation of the 
 
 story, 113, 114. 
 
 Damsels of the Wells, the 
 
 services they rendered, 116. 
 Dante, his description of 
 
 Dominic, 14. 
 his vision of Fulke of 
 
 Marseilles, 49. 
 Dates of the Legend, 188. 
 ' Daughters ' of Churches, 117, 
 
 118. 
 Dead bodies, disposal of 
 
 during Interdict, 137. 
 De risle, Alain. See Alain li 
 
 Gros. 
 Ddnids, les, 130. 
 Doctor Universalis, the, 7. 
 Diego d'Azeveda, chief of the 
 
 Castilian Embassy, 18. 
 desires to make trial of 
 
 the ' New Way,' 21. 
 becomes a Cistercian, 
 
 34. 
 inaugurates the ' New 
 
 Way,' 38. 
 his conference with here- 
 tics, 42. 
 
 he dies at Osma, 43. 
 
 Dominic, identification of, 
 
 with Perceval, 15, 119. 
 his visit to Pope Inno- 
 cent, 17, ig 
 his institution of the 
 
 ' New Way,' 20. 
 his failure to inquire of 
 
 Innocent, 29, 30, 129. 
 
 his visit. 1 o Citeaux, 33. 
 
 he declines to become a 
 
 Cistercian, 34, 39. 
 his identity with Perceval, 
 
 119. 
 is contemporary with 
 
 Francis of Assisi, 176. 
 is Knight of a Table 
 
 Round, 177. 
 Dominicans and Franciscans, 
 
 rivalry between, 176. 
 Durand de Huesca recants his 
 
 heresy, 43. 
 
 N 
 
194 
 
 T'he Holy Graal : 
 
 Eleanor Plantagenet, 
 posthumous history of, 170. 
 
 Elucidation de l Hystoire du 
 Graal, full text of, 98-112. 
 
 Elucidation, the, contempor- 
 ary with the events recorded, 
 
 154- 
 
 as prologue to the Conte 
 
 del Graal, 181. 
 
 Emerald, vessel of the Graal 
 made of, 187. 
 
 Emperor, the, as King of 
 Castle Mortal, 9, 14. 
 
 Eschenbach, Wolfram von, 
 date of his Parzival, 186. 
 
 Esclarraonde, sister of Ray- 
 mond Count of Foix, 42. 
 
 Eucharist, the Holy, repre- 
 sented as the Graal, i, 
 
 Eugemus iii., privileges 
 granted to Cistercians by, 
 
 25- 
 Eustace of Ely, a Commis- 
 sioner of Interdict, 52. 
 
 Feast Days, orders as to, 
 during Interdict, 136. 
 
 Fisherman, King, brother of 
 Yglais, 2, 89. 
 
 his ' languishment ' 
 
 and death, 4. 
 
 identification of, 8, 
 
 93. 119- ^ , . 
 
 the riches of his 
 
 court, 102. 
 
 his spiritual mar- 
 riage, 115. 
 
 his court reinstated, 
 
 121. 
 
 the Rich, his chang- 
 ing semblance, 105, 107. 
 
 'Fisherman's Ring,' the, 8. 
 
 Flanders, French invasion of, 
 70. 
 
 Foix, Raymond Roger, Count 
 of, 42. 
 
 Fontfroid, Ralph, Abbot of, 
 
 34- 
 
 his death, 43. 
 
 Fountains Abbey, William of 
 
 Newbury on ttae name of, 
 
 114. 
 France, Philip's ambitious 
 
 aims for, 36, 55. 
 
 Great Council of, 160. 
 
 Francis of Assisi, his identity 
 
 with Galahad, 174, 176. 
 Frederic of Sicily, his claim to 
 
 the Empire, 70. 
 Fulke, Bishop of Toulouse, at 
 
 the Pamiers Conference, 42. 
 
 his early career, 45. 
 
 his connection with Mar- 
 seilles, 46. 
 he becomes a Cistercian, 
 
 48. 
 
 his family ties, 48, 
 
 is made Abbot of Thoro- 
 
 net, 49. 
 his identification with 
 
 Gawain, 50, 119. 
 bears tidings of the death 
 
 of Peter of Castelnau, 92. 
 
 Galahad, his identity with 
 
 Francis of Assisi, 174, 176. 
 Gawain, the Graal appears 
 
 before him, but he asks no 
 
 question, 4, 58, 90. 
 his identification with 
 
 Fulke of Marseilles, 50, 119. 
 he bears the sword to 
 
 King Fisherman, 59. 
 finds the Court of the 
 
 Rich Fisherman, 105. 
 not mentioned by Crestien 
 
 de Troyes, 184. 
 Graal, the Holy, a type of the 
 
 Eucharist, i, 125, 126. 
 its disappearance and re- 
 storation, 4. 
 various versions of the 
 
 story of, 97, 176. 
 
Index 
 
 195 
 
 Graal, the Holy, is served 
 without servitor, 107. 
 
 the seven stories belong- 
 ing to it, no, 
 
 the sacred service of, 
 
 124. 
 
 as a stone vessel in Wolf- 
 ram's poems, 187. 
 
 the High History of, 2. 
 
 theme of the legend, 3, 
 
 97. 
 clue to the legend, 5, 88, 
 
 89, etc. 
 Gray, John de, appointed 
 
 archbishop by John, 51. 
 Gualo, the papal legate, 150. 
 Guarin, Bishop of Senlis, at 
 
 the Battle of Bouvines, 178. 
 
 Havvise of Gloucester di- 
 vorced by John, 157. 
 
 Helinand, his chronicle, 178. 
 
 Henry of Brabant, his claim 
 to the Empire, 70. 
 
 Henry of Winchester, alle- 
 giance of the barons to, 150. 
 
 Honorius iii. succeeds Inno- 
 cent III., 149. 
 
 Order of St. Dominic 
 
 established by, 176. 
 
 Hospitallers, the Knights, 140, 
 note. 
 
 Hubert of Canterbury, dis- 
 sensions after his death, 51. 
 
 Huden, the fifth ' Branch ' 
 concerning, 109. 
 
 Hugh, Abbot of Beaulieu, dis- 
 regards the Interdict, 66. 
 
 his mission to Rome, 67. 
 
 Hunting and haw^king, John's 
 prohibition of, 143. 
 
 prohibition as to, re- 
 voked, 153. 
 
 INGEBIORG OF DENMARK,\vife 
 
 of Philip of France, 36. 
 Innocent in., his relations 
 
 with the Abbot of Citeaux, 
 10, 13, 65, 67. 
 
 Innocent iii., his reception of 
 the Spanish embassy, 19. 
 
 desires to deal with heresy 
 
 in Languedoc, 21. 
 
 his employment of Inter- 
 dict, 24. 
 
 his dealings with the 
 
 Albigensians, 28. 
 
 he consecrates Langton 
 
 as Archbishop, 52. 
 
 appoints Commissioners 
 
 of Interdict, 52. 
 
 checks Cistercian pre- 
 tensions, 54, 57. 
 
 urges the invasion of 
 
 Raymond's dominion, 59. 
 
 his letters to King John, 
 
 67. 77' 
 to the Interdict 
 
 Commissioners, 72. 
 
 to Arnold, 74, 81,82. 
 
 to the Abbot of 
 
 Moleme, 76. 
 ' to the English 
 
 Bishops, 79. 
 to the Cistercian 
 
 Abbots, 83-85. 
 his willingness to grant 
 
 Cistercian privileges, 91. 
 represented as King 
 
 Fisherman, 93, 119. 
 an English crusade 
 
 averted by, 121. 
 his character as drawn 
 
 by the romancer, 122. 
 his unv/illingness to pro- 
 claim crusade against John, 
 
 145- 
 
 drives Lewis from Eng- 
 land, 147. 
 
 English liberties safe- 
 guarded by, 148. 
 
 his death, 149. 
 
 Order of St. Francis 
 
 established by, 176. 
 
196 
 
 T^he Holy Graal : 
 
 Interdict, its part in history, 
 23, 24. 
 
 English, threatened, 52. 
 
 proclaimed, 53, 60, 
 
 date of commence- 
 ment, 65. 
 
 hardship of, 93. 
 
 its removal repre- 
 sented as the achievement 
 of the Graal, 125. 
 
 pictured as the 
 
 Curse of Logres, 133. 
 
 text of the Form of, 
 
 134-140. 
 
 date of dissolution 
 
 of, 149, 152, 153. 
 
 Commissioners, their ap- 
 pointment, 52. 
 
 doubt as to order on 
 
 which they acted, 61. 
 
 safeguard granted 
 
 to, 71. 
 
 Isabella of Angouleme, 157. 
 
 Joachim, Abbot of Flora, his 
 predictions, 12, 
 
 Joan of Flanders, 185. 
 
 John the Baptist, Gawain bears 
 the sword that beheaded 
 him, 90. 
 
 King, refuses to accept 
 
 Stephen Langton, 52. 
 
 pleads with Innocent re- 
 specting the Interdict, 66. 
 
 ■ represented as Araan- 
 
 gons, 118, 119. 
 
 his policy towards the 
 
 Interdict, 143. 
 
 loss of his continental 
 
 possessions, 146, 167. 
 
 his submission to Inno- 
 cent, 147, 
 
 his death, 150, 
 
 does homage for Nor- 
 mandy, 157. 
 
 marries Isabella of 
 
 Angouleme, 157. 
 
 John, King, is crowned at 
 
 Westminster, 158. 
 his murder of Prince 
 
 Arthur, 159. 
 is indicted at the Great 
 
 Council, 161. 
 
 his condemnation, 164. 
 
 Joseph of Abarimacie, 2, 
 
 Knight, the Good, 108. 
 Knights, King Arthur's, 
 enemies of Amangons, 120. 
 
 Lance, the bleeding, 106, 108. 
 
 of Longis, 109, 125. 
 
 Lancelot, the sight of the Graal 
 withheld from him, 4, 6. 
 
 identified as the elder 
 
 Simon de Montfort, 174. 
 
 Langton, Simon, safe-conduct 
 granted to, 71. 
 
 Stephen, consecrated 
 
 archbishop by Innocent, 52. 
 
 rejected by John, 52. 
 
 John prepares to accept 
 
 him, 67. 
 
 Innocent's motive in sup- 
 porting him, 148. 
 
 his archiepiscopal func- 
 tions suspended, 150. 
 
 Languedoc, heresy in, 21. 
 
 privileges of the Cister- 
 cians in, 24, 54. 
 
 Innocent's efforts against 
 
 the heretics of, 28, 36. 
 
 Lanselos dou Lac, 109. 
 
 Legations for the suppression 
 of heresy, 28, 29, 33, 34. 
 
 Le Midi, heresy in, 28, 37. 
 
 Lewis of France, his invasion 
 of England, 147. 
 
 crusade against him, 150. 
 
 his defeat, 150, 152. 
 
 ' Lincoln, Fair of,' 150. 
 
 Logres, the Curse that fell on 
 the Kingdom of, 65, 88, 93, 
 99. 113. 133- 
 
Index 
 
 197 
 
 Logres, Amangons King of, 
 120. 
 
 Longinus, his lance, 109, 125. 
 why the Cistercians were 
 
 so called, 126. 
 Lower Folk, Pelles King of 
 
 the, 2. 
 identification of the, 13, 
 
 56. 
 
 Magna Charta, how ex- 
 torted, 147. 
 cursed by Innocent, 
 
 148. 
 Malger of Worcester a Com- 
 missioner of Interdict, 52. 
 Malory quoted, 2. 
 Manessier, part author of the 
 
 Coitte del Graal, 185. 
 Mantes, great council held at, 
 
 161, 168. 
 Mapes, Walter, as to the 
 
 Cistercians, 125. 
 date of his death, 
 
 186. 
 Marriage forbidden during 
 
 Interdict, 138, 142. 
 Marseilles, Fulke of. See 
 
 Fulke, Bishop of Toulouse. 
 Mass, Cistercian privileges 
 
 connected with celebration 
 
 of the, 25, 31, 72,. 
 Meinie, peers of the Rich, 
 
 make war on Arthur, iii, 
 
 112. 
 Moleme, Abbey of, petitions 
 
 against Arnold's visitation 
 
 of, 76. 
 Montbeliard, Walter of, 185. 
 Montpelier, joint overlordship 
 
 of. 35- 
 
 Mary of, 36. 
 
 marries Barral of 
 
 Marseilles, 47. 
 Mors del Calan, 109. 
 Moses, Arnold of Citeaux in 
 
 the character of, 13, 54, 65. 
 
 Navarre, Bishop of Con- 
 
 serans, 42. 
 
 his mission to Rome, 45. 
 
 New Way, inception of the, 
 
 19. 
 
 methods of the, 20. 
 
 inaugurated by Diego 
 
 d'Azeveda, 38. 
 ' Nigromancy, ' the RichFisher- 
 
 man cunning in, 105, 122. 
 Normandy, its re-acquisition 
 
 by France, 166. 
 Dukes of, their allegiance 
 
 to France, 156, 159. 
 Nutt, Mr., quoted as to Ma- 
 nessier, 185. 
 
 Order, a Waldensian, 
 
 founded, 43. 
 Orders, religious, privileges 
 
 granted to, during Interdict, 
 
 24, 25. 
 Osma, Diego d'Azeveda, 
 
 Bishop of, 18. 
 Otho of Brunswick, his claims 
 
 to the Empire, 70. 
 Emperor, crusade 
 
 against, 145. 
 
 Pamiers, conference with 
 heretics held at, 42. 
 
 Paris, Matthew, on the versa- 
 tility of Pope Innocent, 123. 
 
 Parzival, Wolfram von Esch- 
 enbach's, 98, 186. 
 
 Pecorins, son of Amangons, 
 109. 
 
 identified as Henry in., 
 
 119, 150. 
 
 Pelles, King of the Lower 
 Folk, 2. 
 
 identification of, 9. 
 
 Penance inflicted by Citeaux 
 for obedience to Rome, 66. 
 
 Perceval, his kinship, 3, 6. 
 
 he visits King Fisher- 
 man, <J, 
 
198 
 
 'The Holy Graal : 
 
 Perceval, he besieges the Castle 
 
 of the Graal, 4. 
 identified as Dominic, 6, 
 
 7, 14, 93, 119. 
 he fails to ask the ques- 
 tion of King Fisherman, 30, 
 
 89. 
 has no place at the Table 
 
 Round, 39. 
 finds the Court of the 
 
 Fisherman, 106. 
 is hero of the earlier 
 
 versions of the legend, 176. 
 Perceval le Gallois, doubtful 
 
 authorship of, 98. 
 Peter ll. of Arragon, 35, 41. 
 Petrarca, his vision of Fulke 
 
 of Marseilles, 49, 
 Philip • Augustus ' of France, 
 
 his relations with Innocent, 
 
 36, 41. 
 his aims for France, 54, 
 
 70, 145- 
 his annexation of Nor- 
 mandy, 55. 
 his compact with Arnold, 
 
 56, 63, 64. 
 he acquires John's con- 
 tinental possessions, 146. 
 his crusade against Eng- 
 land, 151. 
 his English claims, 161- 
 
 165. 
 of Flanders, Co7ite del 
 
 Graal said to have been 
 
 made for, 179. 
 son of Frederic Bar- 
 
 barossa, his assassination, 
 
 69. 
 the Good, Duke of 
 
 Burgundy, 180. 
 Porcellets, family of the, 44, 
 
 46. 
 Potvin, M, Charles, Perceval 
 
 le Gallois edited by, 98. 
 Poverty, Dominic's preaching 
 
 of, 20. 
 
 Preachers, the Order of, con- 
 templated by Dominic, 19, 
 
 its formal institution, 
 
 41. 
 
 Prologue to the Conie del 
 Graal, doubtful authenticity 
 of, 179-184. 
 
 Questions, the, left unasked 
 
 by Gawain, 4, 58. 
 left unasked by Perceval, 
 
 3, 30, 106, 127. 
 asked too late, 83, 88. 
 
 Raymond Barral of Mar- 
 seilles, 45, 46. 
 
 marries Mary of 
 
 Montpelier, 47. 
 
 of Rabastens deposed 
 
 from the Bishopric of Tou- 
 louse, 45. 
 
 Roger, Count of Foix, 
 
 42. 
 of Toulouse summoned 
 
 to expel heretics, 35. 
 is harassed by Peter 
 
 of Castelnau, 44. 
 marries a sister of 
 
 John of England, 58. 
 
 invasion of his do- 
 minions urged by Innocent, 
 
 59- 
 Rayner, his mission to the 
 
 heretics of Languedoc, 28. 
 Rome, Dominic's visit to, 18, 
 
 19. 
 
 Sacro Catino at Genoa, 187. 
 St. Dominic, establishment of 
 
 Order of, 176. 
 St. Francis, establishment of 
 
 Order of, 176. 
 'Secular Arm,' resort to the, 
 
 in suppressing heresy, 23, 
 
 35, 37> 38. 
 Shield, adventure of the, 
 no. 
 
Index 
 
 199 
 
 Silver, channel of, for the 
 Blood from the Lance, 126. 
 
 cross of, 130. 
 
 Simon de Montfort the elder, 
 his identity with Lancelot, 
 
 Simony, the sin of Smion 
 
 Magus, 122. 
 Speed quoted as to Prince 
 
 Arthur, 169. 
 Stephen de Minia,'his reproof 
 
 of Esclarmonde, 43. 
 Sword, the broken, 106, 128, 
 
 129. 
 that beheaded John the 
 
 Baptist, 90, 
 
 Table Round, Peers of the, 
 
 102, 119. 
 that of Dominic and 
 
 Francis contrasted, 177. 
 Toulouse, Dominic's visit to, 
 
 19. 
 efforts against heresy in, 
 
 35- 
 
 Transubstantiation, date of 
 dogma of, 31. 
 
 acceptance of doctrine of, 
 
 90. 
 
 — . — Dominic's inquiries con- 
 cerning, 128. 
 
 Tyre, William of, on the 
 vessel of the Graal, 187. 
 
 VORAGINE, Jacobus de, 
 the Sacro Catino, 188. 
 
 on 
 
 Wage, his record of Eleanor 
 Plantagenet's burials, 171. 
 
 Waldenses, their non-accept- 
 ance of Transubstantiation, 
 32. 
 
 recantation of certain, 
 
 43- 
 Wardens, the seven, 99. 
 their names in order, 
 
 109. 
 Warton, Thomas, referred to, 
 
 183. 
 on the date of Le 
 
 Romajis du Graal, 183, 
 Wedlock, spiritual, between 
 
 cure and ecclesiastic, 114. 
 Wells, the, in Logres, 100. 
 interpretation of, 
 
 113, 114. 
 William of London, a Com- 
 missioner of Interdict, 52, 
 William of Newbury quoted 
 
 as to Fountains Abbey, 
 
 114. 
 
 Yglais, mother of Perceval, 
 
 2, 6, 89. 
 York, province of, a special 
 
 Interdict imposed on, 68, 
 
 69. 
 
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