LIBRARY UNIVERSITY OP CALIFORNIA SAN DIEGO THE GRAAL PROBLEM FROM WALTER MAP TO RICHARD WAGNER BY J. S. TUNISON Author of " Master Virgil" and "The Sapphic Stanza" CINCINNATI THE ROBERT CLARKE COMPANY 1904 Copyright, 1904, by THE ROBERT CLARKE COMPANY. PRESS OF THE ROBERT CLARKK CO. CINCINNATI, U. S. A. What is it? The phantom of a cup that comes and goes ? Was I too dark a prophet when 1 said To those who went upon the Holy Quest, That most of them would follow wandering fires Lost in the quagmire? PREFACE Brevity has been zealously aimed at in the pages that follow. To have added transla- tions and abstracts and detailed analysis of the Arthurian romances to what in that kind is already existent and readily accessible for all who wish to investigate the subject, would be a mere impertinence in a writer whose qualifications for the task here essayed are those of a critic and medievalist, and not those of a folk-lorist or interpreter. The at- tempt is made to deal solely with the diffi- culties of a literary cycle, and the merits of the solution are left to the acuteness and penetration of readers. As to the use of the orthography graal in place of the conventional grail, nothing more can be said than that the former is historically the earlier form, and the one which indicates clearly the derivation of the tales in which it (v) PREFACE figures. If one were writing an essay on Tennyson's poems, the spelling grail would be sufficiently accurate; but in a field of in- vestigation where Tennyson apparently never ventured, the usage which he sanctioned may justly be neglected, if good reasons can be given for the deviation. In stopping short with the consideration of Wagner's drama as literature, leaving the discussion of his music untouched, the dic- tates have been followed of both necessity and reason necessity, through lack of requisite musical learning; reason, because it is only as a poet that Wagner can be compared with his predecessors. The author's thanks are due to Frank E. jTunison, of The Dayton Journal, for timely suggestions and for efficient aid in reading the proofs of this book. J. S. TUNISON. BETA THETA Pi ROOMS, CINCINNATI, January, 1904. (vi) CONTENTS PAGE PREFACE v I. A NEGLECTED POINT OF VIEW i II. THE ROUND TABLE 7 III. HENRY THE SECOND 18 IV. THE ENVIRONMENT 31 V. BERENGAR OF TOURS 51 VI. THE REAL PRESENCE 55 VII. WALTER MAP 65 VIII. WOLFRAM VON ESCHENBACH 75 IX. WOLFRAM AND WAG-NKR 79 X. THE GRAAL 89 XL FLEGETANIS 101 XII. WAGNER'S ORIENTALISM no INDEX 121 (vii) THE GRAAL PROBLEM A NEGLECTED POINT OF VIEW Current agitation on the subject of Rich- ard Wagner's Parsifal prompts a discussion of the entire Graal motive in fiction, mediaeval and modern, from a new point of view. The Arthurian romances have been analyzed sci- entifically as folklore, 1 in a literary way with I. See WECHSLER, Sage von der Heil. Gral; HAGEN, Parzival-Studien; BiRCH-HiRSCHFEU), Die Sage vom Gral, ihre Entwickelung in Franckreich und Deutsch- land, etc. Allusions in FISKE, Myths and Mythmakers; CLOUSTON, Popular Tales and Fictions; LIEBRECHT, Ger- vase of Tilbury's Otia Imperialia; WRIGHT, St. Patrick's Purgatory; and many others, but especially Sir GEORGE Cox, The Mythology of the Aryan Nations. (I) THE GRAAL PROBLEM reference to their beauty as works of art, 2 aesthetically with an eye to plastic represen- tation, 3 critically in respect to their racial origin; 4 but hardly, if at all, in the light of the environment that surrounded the men who are supposed to have written them. This last would be the very first thing to be considered in the case of modern fiction. Scott's great series of novels can be viewed solely as a collection of more or less ancient 2. Almost any collection of essays on Tennyson illustrates this point. See also introductions to various editions of Sir Thomas Malory and criticisms of the book that goes by his name. 3. Vide Abbey's mural paintings in the Boston Public Library and the critical writings thereby inspired. 4. ALFRED Nurr, Studies on the Legend of the Holy Grail, and, The Legends of the Holy Grail; HEINZEL, Die Framosischen Gral-romane; WECHSLER, Die Ver- schiedenen Redaktionen der Graal-Lancelot Cyklus; LICHTENSTEIN, Zur Parzival Frage; WAITZ, Die Fort- setzungen von Crestien's Perceval le Gallois; NITZE, The Old French Grail Romance of Perlesvaus; RHYS, The Arthurian Legend; KRAUSSOLD, Die Sage vom Heilgen Gral und Parceval; BERGMANN, The San Greal, etc. (2) A NEGLECTED POINT OF VIEW Scottish legend and tradition. They can be, and they have been, discussed to weariness, with reference to their literary merits. But the man Scott, in his historic place, with the influences, moral, social, religious, literary, political, professional, to which he was sub- ject, looms large in all comments upon his work, and most frequently the critics are so engrossed with him and his circumstances as to give the impression of unity to his mass of fiction which it would never give to any reader on its own account. An example, even more noteworthy, of the importance of environment is that of Wagner himself, particularly because of what is known of the stages of development in the composition of this play of Parsifal. It is well known that he meditated a music drama, first with Jesus, then with Buddha, as the central figure, years before the device of the Graal occurred to him. (3) THE GRAAL PROBLEM If the dates of his experiments are exam- ined, it will be found that his inceptive Jesus play was conceived in the midst of that ration- alistic disturbance in Germany, marked to the popular mind by Strauss's Life of Jesus. 5 This work was first published in 1835; but the movement of which it was an index hardly reached its maximum before the middle of the century. Kenan's Vie de Jesus, obviously a product of the movement somewhat belated in its transit from one nation to another, was issued in 1863. Thus Wagner, busy with a Jesus play in 1848, was alert to the new thought at its climax. The inchoate Buddha play belongs to the time when Schopenhauer's magnum opus, The World as Will and Idea, neglected for a quar- ter of a century, began, at its second pub- 5. KREHBIEL, Studies in the Wagnerian Drama, p. 163. A significant reminiscence of Frau Wille is quoted by FINCK, Wagner and His Works, II., p. 399. (4) A NEGLECTED POINT OF VIEW lication, to affect the thought of Europe. 6 Though the second edition appeared in 1844, it was much later in reaching its final success. Speaking of Herbart and Schopenhauer to- gether and in contrast, Erdmann explains elaborately why, under the shadow of Hegel, " the period of deserved recognition could first come to the two only a short time be- fore their death." Schopenhauer died in 1860. The date, then, of 1856 for Wagner's Buddha play is coincident with the triumph of the philosopher he admired. Finally the Parsifal complete was worked out under the patronage of a Catholic mon- arch, and in the heart of a Catholic commu- nity, 7 where mediaeval ideas were still vital, and, one may say, rampant. No doubt the ascetic reaction in the writings of Schopen- 6. ERDMANN, History of Philosophy, English trans- lation, II., p. 608. 7. Wagner's own date for the beginning of this work is the spring of 1865. (5) THE GRAAL PROBLEM hauer against fat, prosperous, well-fed, well- married German Protestantism 8 had its effect in turning Wagner to the Catholic ideal of Christian life, but his almost abnormal self- consciousness made him peculiarly sensitive to the atmosphere about him, and the atmos- phere of Bavaria was adapted above all to the creation of Parsifal. Thus, aside from the genius of the poet- composer, one may say that the drama of Parsifal, in its gradual evolution, through years of cogitation and experiment, was the result of German rationalism, of Schopen- hauer's pessimistic philosophy, and of a Cath- olic reaction in a mind which had been highly revolutionary. 8. "Protestantism, since it has eliminated asceticism and its central point, the meritoriousness of celibacy, has already given up the inmost kernel of Christianity. . . . It seems to me that Catholicism is a shamefully abused, but Protestantism a degenerate, Christianity; thus that Christianity in general has met the fate which befalls all that is noble, sublime and great whenever it has to dwell among men." SCHOPENHAUER, The World as Will and Idea, Engl. Transl., III., pp. 447. 449- (6) II THE ROUND TABLE It can not be hoped at this late day to restore the personality and surroundings of the two or at most three men who created, in a literary sense, the Arthur legends. But enough can be done to show that the narra- tives came into being with as distinct a pur- pose as that evident in Wagner's Parsifal, or in Tennyson's Idylls of the King, as expressed in the Dedication to the memory of Prince Albert These to His Memory since he held them dear Perchance as finding there unconsciously Some image of himself I dedicate, I dedicate, I consecrate with tears These Idylls; (7) THE GRAAL PROBLEM or more lightly in the lines that accompanied the Morte d' Arthur as published in 1842 To me, methought, who waited with a crowd, There came a bark, that, blowing forward, bore King Arthur, like a modern gentleman Of stateliest port; and all the people cried, 1 ' Arthur is come again : he cannot die." Recurring to the case of Scott, one is con- fronted at the outset with an important fact, namely, that while the material which he gathered into his novels was mostly derived from his own country, his literary method was merely an improvement on a German inven- tion which had been in use for many years, and which culminated in a book very familiar to him, Goethe's Goetz von Berlichingen. 1 Pre- cisely this thing happened also to the authors i. Beginning, according to WILSON'S DUNLOP, His- tory of Prose Fiction, with Frau Naubert, and proceed- ing to Goethe's time in the works of Meissner, Fessler, Schlenkert and others. Compare Carlyle's reference to Gotz with the Iron Hand in his review of LOCKHART'S Life of Scott. (8) THE ROUND TABLE of Arthurian romance. The material is largely Celtic that is, British, Irish, or Armorican; 2 the literary form was suggested by familiarity with the Prankish legends of Charlemagne and his paladins. 3 It should always be kept in mind that the Pseudo-Turpin's book pre- ceded Geoffrey of Monmouth by at least twenty years, and Geoffrey was undoubtedly acquainted with it, or he would hardly have committed the strange anachronism of hav- ing Charlemagne's Twelve Peers at Arthur's coronation in Caerleon. The special feature of a round table and a military order associated with it may confi- dently be set down as a loan from the Byzan- tines. The old triclinium of the Romans was 2. See the works of RHYS and NUTT in particular on this point. 3. HAZLITT'S WARTON, History of English Poetry, I., p. 108. Geoffrey's work did not become public before 1135. The Pseudo-Turpin had been pronounced genuine by Pope Calixtus in 1122, and must have been known to readers some years earlier. (9) THE GRAAL PROBLEM replaced early in the times of the empire, upon the importation of costly woods from Africa, by a crescent-shaped table, 4 with cushions or stibadia around the outer edge, while the inner curve was open to the attendants. Often a small round table was set in the opening, and from this the guests were served, as from a modern sideboard. The customs of Britain in Arthur's time are of no significance in Ar- thurian romance. Nevertheless, the Romans must have had tables in their British resi- dences similar to those they had in Italy. The curved table was sometimes called sigma, in allusion to that form of the Greek letter which resembled the Latin C. The com- plete semi-circle was a later invention, and was one of the many forms of table used at imperial banquets in Constantinople. The 4. An illustration of this kind of table can be found in LANCIANI, Pagan and Christian Rome, p. 357. This picture shows that the crescent-shaped table outlasted the fashion of recumbency at meals. (10) THE ROUND TABLE emperor, or the emperor and empress, if the latter were present, sat in the middle of the straight side, the guests around the curved side, so that each was equally distant from the place of honor. 5 The first time that such a table was used in the west, so far as I know, was at a certain highly ceremonious dinner given by Emperor Otto the Third, whose mother was a Byzantine princess, to his nobles at Quedlinburg 8 toward the close of the tenth century. Otto's arrogance and the great number of his guests led him to a varia- tion which destroyed the meaning of the Byzantine custom and deeply offended his 5. It must be admitted that there is some dispute as to this, but all the probabilities favor the position taken in the text. 6. Imperator antiquam Romanorum consuetudinem jam ex parte magna deletam, suis cupiens renovare tem- poribus, multa faciebat, quae diversi diverse accipiebant. Solus ad mensam quasi semicirculum factum, loco caet- eris eminentiori sedebat. DITMARUS, Lib. IV., LEIBNITZ, Scriptores Rerum Brunsvicensium, I., p. 357. (ii) THE GRAAL PROBLEM. court. But in the twelfth century the thing was thoroughly understood, as may be in- ferred from the description of a royal feast which Walter Map 7 a man of mark in the history of Arthur romances gives in one of his Latin stories. A complete circle would have been rejected by the Greek emperor because it gave him no distinction. The thing is so impracticable under any rules of mediaeval manners that have ever been dis- covered or even imagined, that Wagner in the performance of Parsifal 8 replaced it with two semi-circular tables, and it remains to be proved that the Arthur romances alluded to more than the historic half-circle. By any other contrivance the King either took rank 7. Erat autem hemiciclum immensum regi pro mensa regique sedes in centre, quatinus eliminate livore in hemiciclo sedentes regiae sedis essent omnes aequaliter proximi, ne quisquam posset de sua remotione dolere nee de vicinia gloriari. WRIGHT'S MAPES, De Nugis Curialium, p.. 113. 8. FINCK, op. cit. II.. p. 418. (12) THE ROUND TABLE with his subjects or turned his back on half his guests. Posidonius, 9 it is true, says that the ancient Celts, when numerous at a feast, were accustomed to sit in a circle, with the man in the centre most notable in arms, de- scent or riches. But this relates to a time when these barbarians had no tables. The first historic notice of a round-table military order is that of Cassiodorus 10 re- specting Theodoric, the Ostrogothic King of Italy, and Theodoric's frank acceptance of everything Byzantine n which did not inter- 9. ATHEN^US, Deipnosoph.^ quoted by Wilson: "Orav 61 irfaiovef awdeiTrvaaav K.ddrfVTa.1, fiv ev Kt'/c/lcj, /j.eaof 6 6 Kp&TtaTOf <5f av Kopw^aZof %opov 6iatpuv TUV aTJwv f) Kara TT)V TfoXefj.iK.rjv etr^epytav, i] Kara rd yvo, rj /card TrAatrov, K.r.X. 10. CASSIODORUS, Far., lib. XII. 11. CASSIODORUS, Var. IV. 15. A modern Greek ad- mirer of Theodoric, writes : 'H ^>iXofj,ovaia rov 'Avaoraaiov ftre66&7) rridavue Kal ev r-ij av^y Qeo6upinov l &ov p^ruf (JXeTrufiev TOV EV ~P6f.Lij paaiXevovra T6r-&av bfiokojovvra lavrbv "TTIOTOV [U[IT}TTIV TOV (iiov KOI rfj^ K.vf3epvfoU TOV ' AvaaTaaiov" [vos enim estis regnorum omnium decus, vos totius orbis salutate praesidium . . . Regnum nostrum imitatio vestra forma est, forma boni propositi, unici exemplar imperil. CASSIODORI, (13) THE GRAAL PROBLEM fere with his authority is well known. The tradition concerning Edward the Confessor, if trustworthy, proves only that the Saxons had military round-tables at a date when Arthur romances had not yet been thought of. It is a mere inference to say that the in- stitution of the Round Table was transferred to Brittany and thence to Wales; and a use- less inference, since it involves, consciously or unconsciously, a view of the Arthur tales as historical. That assumption would be ridicu- lous, even granting that Arthur was once a Var., lib. I., Epist. I.] '2f 6 reAevraZof, OVTU /cat & Qeo6uplnof Karapyel raf ftifpioiiaxiaf ttironahuv airdf iffTrAay^vov ical fidpfiapov t-dtfiov. '0 ~Pwfia.iK.bf "Xabg el^f ^rjafMovfjaei Trheov T^ iajjfj.aivov al M^eig &earpov } KUju.(f)6ia, rpaycjfl/a, aKTfvfi, 6 f clxtv, vTroTiderai) on TOIOVTOI ij'h&ov l/c Bv^avriov STTOJ &va6cdd% aai Tovf vTTjjKdovf TOV QeofiupiKov TT)V e7C^,T}VMrjv T%V>JV' 6ia Tbv Adyov 6f TOVTOV ("fheirojitv rot)f kv "Ira/Up T6r-&ov vftpi^ovTaf rove ~Bvavrivovf enl 'lovcnviavoii Kal Tieyovraf on If avruv fi6vov tlfiov ipx<>[J.evovs elf 'Ira/ltav rpa-y^ovf, fj.ifj.ovs " SATHAS. 'loropinbv AOW//OV irepl TOV QeaTpov KOI Tl]f TUV ~BvavTivuv. /c.r.A., p. T?.&' (339). (14) THE ROUND TABLE British king, a real flesh and blood person- age. Besides, Rhys ap Tudor, twelfth cen- tury, to whom the British or Welsh Round Table is attributed, comes much too late to avail in the Arthur legend, though he may have had significance in the politics of an age when the tomb of Arthur had to be discov- ered at Glastonbury 12 to quiet seditious plots against the new Plantagenet dynasty. Round tables after the twelfth century were numerous. But they are manifestly of no importance except as attesting the grow- ing popularity of the fiction which they illus- trated. This restrictive argument also applies 12. In 1189, probably just before the death of Henry the Second. In identifying the tomb of Arthur and Guinevere, the Plantagenet party merely imitated a pro- ceeding of Otto the Third in Germany, who had opened the tomb of Charlemagne, and taken therefrom the cross which hung on the neck of the sainted emperor, as well as those parts of the vesture which were not gone to decay. In both cases the sacrilege, real with Otto, pretended with Henry, was a political necessity. ds) THE GRAAL PROBLEM to certain forms of literature more or less vaguely asserted as the primitive and original material of the Arthur romances. Granting that Geoffrey of Monmouth had a Celtic man- uscript which nobody but himself and Walter Calenius ever saw, it must still be conceded that this manuscript had no influence on sub- sequent writings except by Geoffrey's inter- vention. That Marie de France, a century or more after his time, found written as well as oral Breton lore is defective evidence, because much had happened in the meantime. The relics of the genuinely ancient British bards contain no signs of romance. They were interested in real events and in heroes who were their contemporaries. Willingly accept- ing the tales of the Mabinogion at the esti- mate, with regard to antiquity, put upon them by Celtic experts, one still has to deal with the cold fact that the imagination of the world at large was not touched by them, nor (16) THE ROUND TABLE did it betray any knowledge of them until long after the Arthur tales were in being. This was not the case with the Teutonic hero tales. Beowulf was well known as early as the eighth century, and even then existed only in a recension, with a manifestly dif- ferent geographical setting from that of the original. (17) Ill HENRY THE SECOND Not only was the material of the tales largely British, while the form was Teu- tonic, that is, Prankish, after a model dat- ing from a period when the Franks had not yet become French, but there was a fur- ther complication in that the language used as a vehicle by the authors was not in the first instance either English or German, nor yet Latin, the ordinary literary medium of the twelfth century, but French that is, Langue- doil. This was the language of the court of England, of Normandy, of Anjou, and of the chivalry of those countries, and these coun- tries were the ones most interested in direct- ing romance about ancient Britain to a con- (18) HENRY THE SECOND temporary purpose. In fact, Anjou, with Normandy and the larger part of what is now France, was looked upon as the property of the English King, who was himself Angevin by birth, 1 Norman by descent, 2 and English only as the result of the treaty of Wallingford between his mother, the Empress Matilda, and King Stephen, by which he succeeded the latter on the throne of England. Stephen's reign was a time of vast disorder, and Henry the Second found, on taking possession, that he had before him an enormous task. His hopes and his world-wide popularity 3 were 1. Eldest son of Count Geoffrey and born in Anjou. 2. His mother, Matilda, had been the wife of Henry the Fifth, Holy Roman Emperor. She was the daughter of Henry the First of England, and granddaughter of William the Conqueror. 3. See Sir JAMES H. RAMSEY, The Angevin Empire, for a complete statement of Henry's successes as well as his failures. " Henry's management of foreign affairs was undeniably successful. He held France in the hollow of his hand." His wide renown Map attested after his death in the words: "Cujus potestatem totus (19) THE GRAAL PROBLEM equal to it. It has been said of him that his brain was filled with the thought of an Eng- land as great as that of modern times. Un- doubtedly his ideas were imperial, it could not have been otherwise in such a man, with such a mother, but his mind was guided by a known past, not an unknown future. No afterthought about Henry's errors of policy can detract from the imperial movement of his earlier years. With holdings that were at the outset almost as great as those which Charlemagne fere timet orbis." De Nugis Curial., p. 60. He also quotes this singular compliment of the French king after a battle in which the latter had been defeated : " Mihi frequenter in omnibus fere Franciae finibus contigit, ut nunc et infortunium frequentia durus sum parumque vereor; sed Anglorum rex Henricus, qui nos hodie con- fecit, continuis jacet in successibus, et qui nunquam aliquid sinistri perpessus est, si contigisset ei quod nobis, intolerabiliter et immoderate doleret, et prae nimietate doloris infatuari possit aut mori, rex bonus et toti Chris- tianismo necessarius. Inde reputo victoriam ejus mihi pro successu quia perdidissemus." Ibid, p. 218. (20) HENRY THE SECOND obtained by force of arms, 4 Henry had every reason to aspire to supremacy over all Chris- tendom. The reading public of Europe had been assured in a recent book of wide renown by a Welshman, Griffith ap Arthur (Geoffrey of Monmouth), that a Briton had once been Roman emperor, and had been crowned at Rome. That was surely precedent good enough for the man who, it is now said, completed the conquest of Ireland by the forgery 5 of a papal decree. No doubt Geoffrey of Monmouth wrote his chronicle with a very different aim from that of strengthening a line of foreign kings in Eng- land. More likely he hoped in his own time 4. Charlemagne's empire comprised France, Ger- many west of the Elbe, Northern Italy, and Spain north of the Ebro; Henry's, England, Southern Scotland, Wales, Ireland, Normandy, Maine, Brittany, Anjou, Bur- gundy and Aquitaine in fact, about the whole of France except the Isle de France. 5. See Professor Thatcher's recent discussion of this subject (21) THE GRAAL PROBLEM for what was realized centuries later by the accession of the Tudors. But Henry seized the idea. 6 Fiction was as useful to him as fact. He imitated the practice of the Ger- man king-emperors by having his eldest son Henry crowned as his coadjutor, and the two certainly encouraged, if they did not directly inspire, the literary movement which resulted 6. There are repeated evidences that Henry urged the theme upon romancers and poets. Thus, in the National Library at Paris there is " Lancelot du Lac mis en Frangois, par [Walter Mapes], du commandement d'Henri roi d'Angleterre." HAZLITT'S WARTON, Hist. Engl. Poetry, II., p. in. Again, p. 116: "Quant Boort at conte laventure del Saint Graal teles com eles estoient avenues eles furent mises en escrit, gardes en lamere de Salisbieres, dont Mestre Galtier Map 1'estrest a faist son livre du Saint Graal por lamor du roy Henri son sengor, qui fist lestoire tralater del Latin en romanz ;" and p. 118: "Lancelot du Lac mis en Frangois, par Robert de Borron par le commandement de Henri roi d'Angle- terre." However, he, or rather Mr. Price, in a note to his well-known preface (I., p. 48), mentioned a Vatican MS. of the Saint Graal, which begins with the words : " Mesir Robert de Borron qui cheste estore translata de Latine en Romance par le commandement de Saint Eglise." (22) HENRY THE SECOND in the translation of Geoffrey's chronicle, first by Wace into Norman French, then into English by Layamon; and parallel to this, the expansion of the story of Arthur in the romances of the Graal, of Lancelot, of Merlin, of Arthur's Death, and of Perceval. The tradition which fixes the authorship of most of these works in the person of Walter Map, 7 from 1162 onward a man high in the confidence of English royalty, evinces the 7. It may be worth while to remark that Map was not a Welshman, as some have stated, though he was born near enough to the Welsh border to acquire a dis- like for Welshmen little short of that which he had for Cistercian monks. See FABRICIUS, Bibliotheca Latino Mediae et Infimae Aetatis, under the name Gualterus; LEYSER, Historia Poetarum et Poematum Medii Aevi, p. 776, seq., and WRIGHT, Biographia Britannica Litera- ria, II., p. 295, seq., also the introduction to Wright's edition of Poems of Walter Mapes and of Map's De Nugis Curialium, for such particulars as are known of his career. He seems to have quit literature and public life together about 1196. His satirical remarks in old age on the court show that he was weary of its vanities and mutations. (23) motive in all the earliest portions of the Arthur romantic cycle. With two French kings and the French-speaking nobility of England, Normandy and Anjou to please, the stories could be written only in French, while the hopes of future increase of power and the pride of descent in these kings and this nobility furnished the point of view from which the romancers must contemplate their task. Because Charlemagne was historically crowned at Rome, Arthur had to receive the same honor, at least in imagination, and the whole of that prolonged, futile effort of Eng- lish sovereigns to create a continental empire had to be forecast in the phantasmal career of a British prince. The real Arthur fought only against the Saxons. He never was out of Great Britain, and was commander of a whole army in but one battle. It is difficult to conceive how all that farrago of imperial- ism could have been imagined before Planta- (24) HENRY THE SECOND genet times. As to Henry the Second, com- ing as he did from a continental realm, large in fact and still larger in its possibilities, his feeling must have been very similar to that of a much later King of England, William the Third, who only accepted the English crown in order to strengthen his armies for his struggle with the King of France. What Henry the Second hoped to attain was prefigured in tales, the most significant of which were written, as one may say, under his eye. Nor could Henry have failed to see the ecclesiastical aspect of the affair in the light that had been habitual with the Norman princes. 8 There was no cause obvious in the middle of the twelfth century why the Nor- man power, which had spread so widely in less than two hundred years, should fall short 8. Hallam alludes to the "closer dependence upon Rome " produced by the Norman Conquest. See BRYCE, Holy Roman Empire, p. 160, for the substance of a letter from Gregory VII. to William the Conqueror. (25) THE GRAAL PROBLEM of Roman greatness. 9 Then the knightly brotherhood foreshadowed in the recent or- ganization of the Templars 10 would cover all Christendom, and Church and State would march forward together in a quest of which the Graal was only a faint symbol. It is hardly worth while to enumerate the royal and noble houses of Europe that were furnished in those days with pedigrees reach- ing straight back without a break to the Round Table. To illustrate the general fact, the single instance may be noted of Edward, Duke of Buckingham, beheaded in 1521, who caused an English translation to be made by Robert Copland of the French romance, The Knight of the Swan, a cognate of Lohengrin and Perceval, because he traced his descent through Godfrey of Bullogne back to Helias, 9. Hallam says : " That high-spirited race of Nor- mandy, whose renown then filled Europe and Asia." 10. Founded, according to Matthew Paris, in 1118. (26) HENRY THE SECOND Knight of the Swan. 11 But Arthur and his court became the ideal of society and almost touched the solid ground of universal belief. It is sometimes said that the Celtic imagina- tion worked this miracle. On the contrary, it was the organizing capacity of the Galli- cized Teutons, 12 once Northmen, now grow- ing daily more Frenchified, which gave to the wildest improbabilities the hue and consist- ency of history. These transformed Scandi- navians achieved so much because they read their own age in all its details, its chivalry, its crusading spirit, its religious dogmas, its ecclesiastical forms, its social customs, its per- sonal and national ideals, its moralizing tem- per, its allegorizing habit, and above all, its 11. THOMS, Early English Prose Romances, Intro- duction, p. ii. 12. There is an eloquent tribute to the character- istics of the Normans in JUSSERAND'S volume on Lang- land's Vision of Piers the Plowman. (27) THE GRAAL PROBLEM gift of telling gabs, 13 into a remote past, dex- terously using the scattered lore of that very past to give their scheme an air of truth. The first great blow to Henry's hopes was the death of his son in 1182. Then he quar- reled with the Church, and his remaining sons almost dismembered his realm. Long before the end of the century the Order of Knights Templars, as Map himself testifies, 14 began to show signs of degeneracy. Thus it may be regarded, on purely external evidence, as cer- tain that, so far as the cycle of Arthur tales belongs to the twelfth century, it is com- prised in the earlier years of Henry's reign. This must be particularly the case with the romance of the Graal in view of its uncom- promising orthodoxy on the doctrine of tran- 13. A gab usually was a mere vulgar, often obscene boast, but in the mouth of a person of genius it became a brilliant improvisation. 14. For Map's short essay on the Templars see De Nugis Curialium, p. 29, seq. (28) HENRY THE SECOND substantiation, and of the figure of Sir Gala- had, which was probably meant as a tribute to the younger Henry. In connection with this may be mentioned the curious afterthought of the romancers, who, having created Galahad, decided to give his father the same name. They explained that the latter was called Galahad in infancy, but received the name of Lancelot when ab- ducted by the Lady of the Lake. Another coincidence is to be found in the female names. The mother of Sir Galahad was Elaine, and the mother of young Henry, wife of Henry the Second, was Eleanor. 15 That 15. If Elaine figures in the romances after anything but a modest fashion, Eleanor was worse, according to Map, who had no respect for persons after they were dead. Cui [Stephano] successit Henricus Matildis filius, in quern injecit oculos incestos Alienor Francorum regina, Ludovici piissimi conjux, et injustum machinata divor- tium nupsit ei, cum tamen haberet in fama privata quod Gaufrido patri suo lectum Ludovici participassot. De Nugis Curialium, p. 226. (29) THE GRAAL PROBLEM Henry the Second meant in his younger days to go on crusade is fairly demonstrated by the lines of Joseph of Exeter: Tuque, oro, tuo da, maxime, vati Ire iter inceptum, Trojamque aperire jacentem: Te sacrae assument acies, divinaque bella, Tune dignum majore tuba; tune pectore toto Nitar, et immensum mecum spargere per orbem. But the elder Henry, like the elder Gala- had, was of dubious quality for a holy warrior. So the younger Henry should have been his substitute in the crusade, as the younger Gala- had was destined to achieve the Graal quest, of which his father was unworthy. But Henry died, and Richard, a man of military genius, but utterly incapable as a statesman, was left to carry on war against Saladin. (30) IV THE ENVIRONMENT, The environing conditions that made the sudden development of the chief Arthur ro- mances possible in a few years between 1162 and 1182 appear to have been: First An awakened attention to the pop- ular lore of the British race in Brittany and elsewhere. Enough and more than enough has been written by various critics on this point. 1 Second An attention equally alert to the boundless novelty of the strange world in the East which was opened to the astonished eyes i. See RHYS and NUTT, as previously cited; also CAMPBELL, Tales of the West Highlands. In contrast with these, Sir GEORGE Cox, in his book on Aryan myth- ology, dwelt on classical analogies, it must be confessed with much acuteness and considerable success. (31) THE GRAAL PROBLEM of Europe by the crusades. 2 The most note- worthy single literary event of the twelfth century was the translation of the Koran into Latin in 1 143 3 by two monkish scholars, one of whom was an Englishman. This fact lends great weight to the opinion of those critics * 2. " The riches of Asia, when brought into Europe, soon gave birth to a desire for the cultivation of the arts which embellish life, and of the sciences which double the faculties of man." MICHAUD, Hist, of the Crusades, Engl. Transl., III., p. 330. 3. Machumetis Sarracenorum vita ac doctrina omnis, quae et Ismaelitarum lex, et Alcoranum dicitur, ex Arabica lingua ante CCCC annos in Latinam trans- lata. . . . Item Philippi Melanchthonis viri doctiss. praemonitio ad lectorem, etc. BASIL, 1543. Machumetis ej usque successorum vitae doctrina, ac ipse Alcoran, quae D. Petrus, abbas Clun. ex Arabica lingua, in Lat. transferri curavit, cum Phil. Melanch- thonis praemonitione, etc. TIGURI (?), 1550. Huet declares the translation to be of no value what- ever. Fabricius flatly contradicts him. No doubt both. from different points of view, were influenced by the name of Melanchthon. Morhof remarks that no ver- sion of the Koran previous to his day could be trusted. Polyhistor, III., 5, i, 22. 4. This opinion is mentioned by Wilson in his notes to Dunlop. (32) THE ENVIRONMENT who derive the account of the miraculous table in the story of the Graal directly from the following passage in the Koran: " When the apostles said, ' O Jesus, Son of Mary! is thy Lord able to send down to us a table from heaven?' he said, ' Fear God, if ye be believers;' and they said, ' We desire to eat therefrom that our hearts may be at rest, and that we may know that what thou hast told us is the truth, and that we may be thereby amongst the witnesses.' Said Jesus, the Son of Mary, 'O God, our Lord! send down to us a table from heaven to be to us as a festival to the first of us and to the last, and a sign from Thee and grant us provision, for Thou art the best of providers.' God said, ' Verily I am about to send it down to you.' " 5 This passage is connected even more closely with incidents of the graal fiction by 5. Palmer's translation of the Koran, Sacred Books of the East, VI., p. 114. (33) THE GRAAL PROBLEM the Mohammedan tradition, which adds that when the table descended, it bore a covered dish, in which lay a fish cooked and ready to be eaten. All who ate of this fish were rejuvenated and healed of all their infirmi- ties. The fish as a symbol in universal use among early Christians is known to every reader of Quo Vadis? Not to be troubled with a mass of in- stances, it will suffice to remark that the word " Sarras," as the name of a city, is plainly an effort to give the Saracens a geographical point of origin. Sarrazin 6 was a common 6. For example, in Herber's paraphrase, a little later than the Arthur romances, of Jehan de Hauteselve's Latin Dolopathos, " Bien as oit de la roine Sibile, ki fut sarrazine." Sarrasin remains the accepted orthography in the French language. Nihil enim aliud notat vox Saracenorum quam populos orientales, licet vulgus eos a Sara autumet. HADRIANUS RELANDUS, Dissertationes Miscellaneae, pars secunda, p. 80. (34) THE ENVIRONMENT orthography in former times. Mandeville, 7 in locating this city in Media, probably de- pended upon the Graal romance for his infor- mation. Galahad, or rather Galaad, as it ap- pears in the old French of the romances, is the usual form, not only there, but in Latin, of the name that appears as Gilead 8 in the English Bible. It points to a forgotten detail of English aspirations 9 in the crusades. 7. Of course " Sir John Maundevile " is taken here, like " Sir Thomas Malory," to be a mere pen name, and his book as a compilation not only of travelers' tales, but of information from all kinds of books, ancient and modern, a work of the closet and not the writing of a man who had traveled. 8. Still retained in modern French. The name figured geographically in a significant way in the legend of Elijah, as exemplified in the chronicle of Godfrey of Viterbo, who was contemporary with the early Arthurian romancers : Elias de tribu Aaron, cum in utero matris suae esset in Galaad, Sobi pater ejus somnium vidit, quod nascente Elia, viri candidis utentes vestimentis, involvebant eum candidis, et ei pro cibis ignem ad nutri- mentum subministrabant. Pantheon, pars xiii., STRUVII PISTORII, Rerum Germanicarum Scriptores, II., p. 223. g. Probably the founding of a kingdom east of the (35) THE GRAAL PROBLEM Third The immense expansion of the educational system of Europe, causing troops of students to rove from city to city and coun- try to country 10 in search of famous schools and instructors. The intercommunication that resulted among the students gathered at great schools led to wider and wider acquaintance on the part of each with the history, traditions and literature of other countries than his own. For this reason, whole fields of literary effort the vision literature that culminated in Dante's Divina Commedia, the great group Jordan and south of Antioch and Syria, in the region sacred to the memory of Elijah, where he was expected to return to the world for the final conflict with Anti- christ. This would have been all of one piece with the return of Arthur to wield the empire of Christendom. 10. "The two great parent universities [Paris and Bologna] arose about the same time during the last thirty years of the twelfth century. They arose out of different sides of that wonderful deepening and broaden- ing of the stream of human culture which may be called the Renaissance of the twelfth century." RASHDALL, The Universities of Europe in the Middle Ages, I., p. 19. (36) THE ENVIRONMENT of Irish Voyages, the magical romances of Virgil and others, all came into the gen- eral view of Europe about the close of the century. Fourth The rapid advance of the ver- nacular languages, and particularly French, to literary utility. This advance n preceded the mania for story-telling. Provence, which taught all the mediaeval nations the art of poetry, cared nothing for tales 12 until after its literature began to decline. These were developed in Northern France, in England and Germany. Of course there is a question 11. This is substantiated by the ordinary histories of literature. 12. " If we diligently examine their history, we shall find that the poetry of the first troubadours con- sisted in satires, moral fables, allegories and sentimental sonnets. . . . The troubadours who composed metrical romances form a different species, and should be con- sidered separately. And this latter class seems to have commenced at a later period, not till after the crusades had effected a great change in the manners and ideas of the Western world." HAZLITT'S WARTON, II, p. 148. (37) THE GRAAL PROBLEM of precedence between the epopee of Charle- magne and that of Arthur. 13 But if the Song of Roland was sung at the Battle of Hast- ings, 14 there seems to be little need of further discussion, for that battle took place more than three-quarters of a century before the Arthurian muse chipped a single crack in her shell. 15 And the Roland song was already old. The conclusion must be that the Charle- magne tales, probably told in the first place of an earlier court than his, 16 existed as folk- 13. DUNLOP treats the Arthur tales as if their priority was unquestionable. 14. " In William's army was a valiant warrior named Taillefer, who was distinguished no less for the minstrel arts. . . . He . . . animated his countrymen with songs in praise of Charlemagne and Roland " and Oliver " qui mourruent en Rainschevaux." PERCY, Reliques, WHEATLEY'S edition, I., pp. 354 and 403. BURNEY, History of Music, II., pp. 275-280. 15. That is, if written evidence only is to be de- pended upon. With the aid of myth and oral tradition, the case for the Arthur epic can be stated somewhat differently. 16. Charlemagne is said by his biographers to have (.38) THE ENVIRONMENT poetry before they were amplified by pro- fessional singers and writers, while there is no evidence that the earliest Arthur fiction, namely, the Graal story, had any basis in folk- lore, though popular material was freely used in concocting it. Fifth The aspirations of the papacy toward universal supremacy. The origin of the Arthurian cycle, so far as it can now be ascertained, must be dated near the middle of the twelfth century. At that time the heat was still felt of the fierce struggle of Alexan- der II., 17 Gregory VII., 18 and other less able Popes, with the temporal power. In fact, there might be men still alive who could re- member Gregory. His power, both as papal made a collection in writing of ancient Prankish songs, which was destroyed by his too pious son. 17. It was this Pope who began the struggle with the Emperor Henry IV. that culminated at Canossa, and centuries later furnished Bismarck one of his most elo- quent speeches. 18. See BRYCE, Holy Roman Empire, pp. 158 seq., (39) THE GRAAL PROBLEM adviser and as Pope, was intimately asso- ciated with the reform of clerical manners as well as the enlargement of the papal author- ity. 19 In the ascetic purity of life, so urgently advocated and so indifferently exemplified throughout the earliest Arthur tales, is re- flected this influence, which permeated all 217, 389. For a poetical account of Gregory's exile and death see the poem of William of Apulia, lib V., Leibnitz Script. Rerr. Brunsw., I., p. 616 : quem nee persona nee aun Unquam flexit amor- 19. One of the great struggles of the time was in behalf of celibacy " Namque sacerdotes, Levitae, clericus omnis Hac regione palam se conjugio sociabant," wrote William of Apulia in the eleventh century; and still, near the close of the twelfth, the ribald Goliards were ringing the changes on the same theme : " Non est Innocentius, immo nocens vere Qui quod Deus docuit, studet abolere ; Jussit enim Dominus foeminas habere, Sed hoc noster pontifex jussit prohibere." 'These lines were credited to Walter Map, but probably he was not the author. (40) THE ENVIRONMENT Europe. Gregory died an exile from his see, the guest of Robert Guiscard, a Norman ruler of Sicily. He felt that he had been persecuted to the death for his effort to purify Christen- dom. 20 The authors of the earliest Arthur tales must have envisaged the contests of the times in much the same way. Thus the struggle of the papacy and the empire seems to be allegorized in the well-known passage where the Church in the form of a lion is beset by a dragon. The subsequent romantic explanation of the allegory is as fictitious as that which it interprets. All must be taken as an effort to read the facts of the twelfth century according to the ideas supposed to be proper to the fourth. It is a misdirection of thought to imagine that the Arthur romances were inspired by Henry the Second as a defense against papal 20. "I have loved justice and hated iniquity, there- fore I die in exile." (41) THE GRAAL PROBLEM encroachments. 21 If he or the romancers had meant, in looking back upon a feigned an- tiquity, to claim superiority for the British Church, the point would have been made clear even to the proverbial wayfarer. On the con- trary, the tales emphasize the spiritual author- ity 22 of the Church. But they also aim to put the Angevin-English monarchs into the same rank, as regarded the papacy, as was held by the Carolingians because of the mutual good offices of Charlemagne and the Roman See. If this pretended history had come to be looked on as real history, it is easy to see how that would have contributed to the Angevin notion of an empire, consolidated in equal alliance with the Church, from which not only evil living, but all heresy would be 21. Paulin Paris was primarily responsible for this purely mythical view of the primitive British Church. 22. " Holy Church," a phrase common in the ro- mances, was utterly foreign to the ancient communion* that were under the Johannine ritual. (42) THE ENVIRONMENT forever excluded. The aim was to make the fiction even more convincing than history by giving it the vogue of an inspired writing. 23 Thus the Graal story in its various forms is in part a redaction of apocrypha which still retained their credit in the twelfth century despite the censure of Pope Gelasius; 24 and in addition to this interweaving of revered legend, claimed a divine original written by Jesus Christ himself. 25 Preposterous as this 23. Probably the romancers come the nearest to downright blasphemy when they reckon the descent of Lancelot du Lac in the eighth generation from the family of Jesus Christ. They are not even careful to make it clear that Lancelot could not be a direct descendant of the Saviour. The case is somewhat similar to the American trick of mentioning persons as descendants of Washington. 24. Gelasius L, whose pontificate lasted from 492 to 496. The Gospel of Nicodemus, one of the books much used by the romancers, can be read in the English Apocryphal New Testament, which now has the imprim- atur of the late DeWitt Talmage. Vindicta Salvatoris, a Greek fiction, is printed in TISCHENDORF'S Evangclia Apocrypha. 25. The claim was made in the book itself, and it (43) THE GRAAL PROBLEM was, it showed that somebody between the Bay of Biscay and the Roman Wall was up on the secret practices of both State and Church in earlier times. That Henry the Second resented the direct interference of the papacy in the affairs of England, as in the famous case of Battle Abbey, 26 or that, comparatively late in his reign, he had a fatal controversy with the Church in the person of Becket, 27 does not was added that Jesus wrote nothing else. This state- ment seems to fix a date line for the apocryphal cor- respondence between Christ and Abgarus in Western literature. 26. Adrian IV. had interfered in a quarrel between the Bishop of Chichester and the Abbot of Battle, enjoin- ing the latter to obey his diocesan. When the case came up for trial before the King, the fact was disclosed that the Bishop had appealed to the Pope. He made an angry and apparently profane speech to the Bishop, which the monks expurgated in their chronicle. Chroni- con de Bella, pp. 91-2. Other instances in Henry's reign, of earlier and later years, will occur to the reader. 27. The main incidents in the affair of Becket are too well known to require recapitulation in this place. (44) THE ENVIRONMENT bear on the question at all. The whole body of Arthurian romance, so far as it could in- terest him, was already in writing, and had become the property of the trouveres, to be wrought by them into any form they desired. His penance for the killing of Becket, unwill- ing though it was, suffices to show that his idea of the relations between Church and State was still what it had been. This idea was practically equivalent to the theory ad- vanced by Gervase of Tilbury, 28 near Henry's 28. Duo sunt quibus hie mundus regitur, sacerdo- tium et regnum. . . . Uterque divinae legis executor suum justitiae debitum cuique tribuit, malos coercendo et bonos remunerando. Quippe divisum imperium cum Jove Caesar habens terrena moderator et lutea figmenta judicat, haec probans, ista conterens. . . . Ecce quod duobus rectoribus mundus iste subjicitur, et tamen a manu sacerdotali Rex principatus sui unctionem habet, et ab utrorumque domino uterque suam recipit potes- tatem. . . . Constantini gesta si memoramus, ab ipso collata legitur in partes occidentales tantum Sylvestro. Orientalis regio facta est caput imperil. Licet vicario Christi Petro in tempore ej usque successoribus jus regis in occidente constituisset, diademate Caesaris ceterisque (45) THE GRAAL PROBLEM own times, by William of Ockam 29 in the next century, and consecrated by Dante in his De Monarchic, 30 that is, of a Church insignibus Sylvestro collatis ad gloriam : Non tamen imperii nomen aut imperium ipsum transire voluit impe- rator in Sylvestrum : quod sibi ac successoribus suis conservavit intactum, sola sede mutata, non dignitate. Unde primus Karolus magnus a Graecorum ditione legitur recessisse, monitu Gregorii papae, ut I. T. de imperio. Quis ergo major in terrenis, qui dat, an qui accipit? Profecto qui dat autor est honoris, non qui accipit. Deus autor imperii, imperator autor papalis triumphi. GERVAS., Otia Imperialia. Introduction. 29. " In agreement with the stricter division of his order [the Spirituales, a faction of the Franciscans], he [Ockam] had always deduced from the humility of Christ and of the apostles the conclusion that the Pope ought not to possess temporal power. To this was added later the conviction that as the Pope must be subject to princes in worldly matters, he ought to be subject to the Church in spiritual matters. In this opinion he was confirmed more and more by the party spirit shown by the incumbent of the Papal chair [John XXII.] against the Spirituales." ERDMANN, Hist. Phil, Engl. Transl., I., P. 503. 30. Compare with the opinions of Gervase and Ockam, Dr. Schaff's compact summary of Dante's Mon- archia: " He proves in three parts, first, that there must be a universal empire; secondly, that this monarchy (46) THE ENVIRONMENT wholly spiritual and spiritually supreme, and a State (that is, a monarch Louis the Four- teenth was not the first King who thought, " I am the State,") supreme, even over the hierarchy, in temporal affairs. Given a State in which purity of life was maintained, from which all doctrine condemned by the Church was excluded, and there would be no excuse, so long as the world lasted, for papal inter- belongs, of right and by tradition, to the Roman people ; and, thirdly, that the monarchy depends immediately upon God and not upon the Pope. The conflicting interests of society in his judgment require an impartial arbiter, since kings of limited territories are always liable to be influenced by selfish motives and aims. A universal monarch alone can insure universal peace. The right of Rome is based on the fact that Christ was born under the reign of Augustus and died under Tiberius. The universal rule of God is divided between the Emperor and the Pope ; the Emperor is supreme by divine right in temporal things, and is to guide the human race to temporal felicity, in accordance with the teaching of philosophy; the Pope also by divine right is supreme in spiritual and ecclesiastical things, and is to guide men to eternal life, in accordance with the truth of Revelation." SCHAFF, Literature and Poetry, p. 320. (47) THE GRAAL PROBLEM ference. The refinements of Greek specula- tion, however, as applied to theology in the supposititious works of Dionysius the Areo- pagite 31 and in the compilations of John of Damascus, 32 in contact with Western literal- ism, made it a superhuman task to suppress heresy, and so there is in the environment of the earliest Graal romances a most important factor, Sixth The nascent scholastic philoso- phy. Ever since John Erigena, at the court 31. For the influence of the author of the works under this name, see the larger histories of philosophy. His authority as to the usages of the Eucharist is shown by the following liturgical note: EZf rf rb Xonrbv, ri&eftcv s ruv ' Ayiuv ' a( av Tr/UtoDf, ovS 1 e/Wrrovf, cM.' Sa, A.ard fiifj.rjatv TUV ovpaviuv rayfiarov. "Qotrtp yap inside, /card rbv irohvv iv deo'Xoylg kiovvaiov rbv 'Apeo- irayiTijv, flf ewea rdy/uara Traaa TOVTUV ff orparm 6iJjptfTat, OVTU navrav'&a deoirpeirearaTa ' 6 avrbf yap iv a.fjorepoif rvy%avuv SiarE^ei Irjffovf. K. r. X. Euchologion Mega, p. 46. 32. Spanheim was the first, perhaps, to point out thaf Peter Lombard, the father of Western Realists, gathered his material and drew his method from the works of John of Damascus. MORHOF, Polyhistor., II., I., xiv.. I. (48) THE ENVIRONMENT of Charles the Bald, 33 had stirred up the ques- tion of the real presence of the body and blood of Christ in the elements of the Eucharist, a fire had smoldered in ecclesiastical Europe that was bound to break out some time in a general conflagration. To theologians may be left the dispute as to the antiquity of the doctrine of transubstantiation. But it is plain that between the opinions held by Erigena, similar, at least in a general way, to those of most modern Protestants, and those of Pas- chasius Radbertus, 34 who reduced the Cath- olic belief to dogmatic form, there could be no peace. With the spread of education in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, the prob- 33. Erigena figures largely in all histories of philos- ophy. But it is disputed whether or not he was the author of the book that made most of the trouble for later theologians. 34. Paschasius is barely mentioned in Erdmann's history of philosophy. His book was entitled De Cor- pore et Sanguine Christi. He flourished about the middle of the ninth century. (49) THE GRAAL PROBLEM lem became the one unfailing characteristic of theological controversy. Of all the sects accused of heresy in those centuries, not one omitted to emphasize its disbelief in the Cath- olic doctrine of the Eucharist. On every other point they varied, but in this they were a unit. Neo-manichaeans, Gandulfians, Bogo- mils, Tanchelinians, Petrobrussians, Henri- cians, Arnaldists, Apostolians, Cathari, Wal- denses, Almaricans, Albigenses, Paulicians and Lollards, 35 all of whom sprang into notice in the twelfth century, agreed in denying this doctrine of the Church of Rome, no matter how widely they diverged from one another in the statement of their own respective views. 35. In this summary, Noel Alexandra's ecclesias- tical history, edition of Mansi, has been consulted. But all the church historians agree on the main point, though they differ like heretics on details. (So) V BERENGAR OF TOURS Over all these towered the host of Sacra- mentarians, who refused to be shut out of the Church, who had absolutely no quarrel with it except on the question of the Eucharist, and in the van of the Sacramentarians was one of the most remarkable men in the whole range of ecclesiastical history. Berengar of Tours * lived ninety years, and died in good repute with the Church. Men were burned at the stake before his time, in his time and after his time, who gave the hierarchy infin- itely less trouble than he gave it. The whole eleventh century was his century, theologi- i. Born 998; died 1088. (SO THE GRAAL PROBLEM cally considered, and the twelfth was under his shadow. Condemned over and over again, he absented himself from councils and synods when he could, refused to answer if obliged to be present, and when in peril of his life recanted, 2 confessedly under duress, only to renew his preaching as soon as he was free. Twice, at least, he went to Rome, argued his case before the Pope in council, and escaped with his life, and even with letters of protec- tion 3 to secular princes, who were more viru- lent against him than the most bigoted of churchmen. For a half century he main- tained his position in face of the ablest con- troversialists of the time; and this he did almost alone, for his followers, though deeply 2. ERDMANN, 1. c., I., p. 301 : " For this double sub- jection to the fear of men he blamed himself until his death." 3. Dedit ipsi [Berengario] et alias literas ad fideles universes, quibus ipsum haereticum appellari prohibuit. NOEL ALEXANDRE, 1. c., Vol. XIII., p. 486. (52) BERENGAR OF TOURS attached to him, developed no great minds to sustain him in his arduous conflict. Berengar finished his life where he began it, at Tours; but, meanwhile, he had dissemi- nated 4 his opinions over Normandy, Anjou, Provence and Western Germany. He very nearly persuaded the Duke of Normandy, 5 William the Conqueror, to come out on his side, while Lanfranc, 6 who was to be the first primate of all England under the Norman power, was long suspected of favoring his views, and only dispelled this suspicion by a ruthless attack on him. His bitterest foe was Fulk, 7 Count of Anjou, who would unques- tionably have burned him, had it not been for 4. Berengarius plane quamvis ipse sententiam cor- rexerit, omnes tamen, quos ex totis terris depravaverat, convertere nequivit. WILLIAM of MALMESBURY, Ed. HARDY, p. 465, quoted also by Alexandre. 5. ALEXANDRE, VIII., p. 474. 6. Ibid, p. 467. 7. This was Fulk the Fourth, great-grandfather of Henry the Second. (53) direct and personal commands from the Pope, Gregory VII., 8 who was not to be trifled with. But Fulk's enmity is a significant fact in the evolution of the Graal romance, for it made the real presence a family question with Henry the Second. A great part of the empire over which the King of England claimed sover- eignty in the twelfth century was saturated with very recent and very vigorous tradi- tions of Berengar and his teachings, while the King's own tradition as a prince of the House of Anjou made it a point of honor with him to oppose Sacramentarianism wherever he found it. And this he did with severitv. 8. Gallios repetenti Berengario, Gregorius VII., apostolicae protectionis literas dedit ad Redulphum Turo- nensem archiepiscopum, et Eusebium episcopum Andega- vensem ut eum sua vice a Fulconis comitis Andegavensis infestationibus tuerenter. NOEL ALEXANDRE, XIII., p. 486. (54) VI THE REAL PRESENCE While Normandy and Anjou were troubled by heresies, England was free from serious religious disturbance, and to the close of the twelfth century remained, from the dogmatic point of view, a model of faithfulness. Hume 1 mentions but one eruption of heresy in Henry the Second's time, and this was confined to a group of foreign wanderers. Walter Map, 2 who knew a good deal about heretics and rather liked some of them, 3 was fain to find 1. Probably Hume refers to the incident given in detail by Map. 2. Map, in De Nugis Curialium, gave a long account of the Waldenses, the result of his own personal inves- tigation at Rome. P. 64, seq. 3. Speaking of the Waldenses, Map remarked : " Sunt certe temporibus nostris, licet a nobis damnati (55) THE GRAAL PROBLEM them for the most part in his frequent jour- neys to the continent. He particularly men- tioned the fact that of the Publicans 4 or Paterini, a widespread sect of Paulician origin, only sixteen had been found in England, and these had been promptly driven out by the King. Among these Publicans was to be found the sole open outbreak in the Eng- land of those days against the accepted doc- trine of the Eucharist. Walter also notes the fact that Henry was equally energetic in his efforts to put down heresy in the parts of his empire outside 5 of England. If he desired et derisi, qui fidem servare velint, etsi ponantur ad rationem, ut dudum ponant animas suas pro pastore suo domino Jesu ; sed nescio quo zelo ductis vel conductis." P. 65. 4. In Anglia nondum venerunt nisi sedecim, qui praecepto regis Henrici secundi adusti et virgis caesi disparuerunt in Normanniam. P. 62. Non accipiunt de corpora Christi et sanguine, pane benedictp nos derident. P. 61. 5. Rex noster etiam Henricus secundus ab omnibus terris suis arcet haereseos novae damnosissimam sectam, etc. P. 60. (56) THE REAL PRESENCE to hold England up as a model to the other regions under his sway, how better could this be done than by showing that it had once been the resting place of the tryblion out of which the Lord and his disciples had eaten the Last Supper, and that the quest of this sacred and miraculous vessel had in remote times absorbed the attention of British war- riors? Thus, in addition to other political and ecclesiastical aims, the Arthur tales, by the conditions of the times, twelfth century times, remember, not the times of the real Arthur, a point which is regularly ignored by many persons who write on the subject, were directed to the strenuous support of that doctrine of the Church which was most prom- inent in the twelfth century. 6 For the sake of illustration a single passage may be taken 6. A single glance at any of the great ecclesiastical histories will show that transubstantiation was the one theme of speculative interest. It rivaled even the quarrel between the empire and the papacy. (57) THE GRAAL PROBLEM from Map's 7 story of the Graal as Englished by the translators who gave themselves col- lectively the pen name, Sir Thomas Malory: "And anon light a voice among them said, ' They that ought not to sit at the table of our Lord Jesus Christ arise; for now shall very knights be fed/ so they went thence, all save King Pelleas and Eliazar his son, the which were holy men, and a maid which was his niece: and so these three fellows [Sir Gala- had, Sir Perceval and Sir Bors] and they three were there, and no more. Anon they saw knights all armed come in at the hall door, and did off their helms and their har- ness, and said unto Sir Galahad, ' Sir, we have bled sore to be with you at this table, where the holy meat shall be parted.' Then said he, 'Ye be welcome, but whence be ye?' So three of them said they were of Gaul, 8 and 7. Even if it can be shown that the translators here used a poetical original, still the substance is of Map's invention. 8. Gaul was conquered by Arthur, according to the legend in Geoffrey's history. (58) THE REAL PRESENCE other three said they were of Ireland, 9 and other three said they were of Denmark. 10 So as they sate thus, there came a bed of wood out of a chamber, the which four gentle- women brought; and in the bed lay a good man sick, and a crown of gold upon his head, and there in the midst of the place they sat him down and went their way again. Then he lift up his head and said, ' Sir Galahad, Knight, ye be welcome, for much have I desired your coming, for in which pain and anguish as ye see have I been long; but now I trust to God that the time is come that my pain shall be allayed, that I shall pass out of this world, so as it was promised me long ago.' Therewith a voice said, ' There be two among you that be not in the quest of the Sancgreal, and therefore depart ye.' ai Then 9. Ireland was invaded by Arthur in fiction, and was now claimed by Henry in fact. 10. Both Norway and Denmark were said to have been overrun by Arthur's armies. It is curious that nobody has dwelt in detail on the manifest fact that Geoffrey appropriated in these affairs the biography of Alfred. 11. That is, a new test was to be set up of fitness (59) THE GRAAL PROBLEM King Pelleas and his son departed; and there- with it seemed them that there came a man and four angels from heaven clothed in the likeness of bishops, and [the man] had a cross in his hand: and the four angels bear him up in a chair, and set him down before the table of silver, whereupon the Sancgreal was, and it seemed that he had in the midst of his fore- head letters that said, ' See ye, here, Joseph, the first bishop of Christendom, the same which our Lord succoured in the city of Sarras in the spiritual place.' Then the knights marvelled, for that bishop was dead more than three hundred years before. ' Oh, knights,' said he, ' marvel not, for I was some- time an earthly man.' With that they heard the chamber door open, and there they saw angels, and two bear candles of wax, and the third a towel, 12 and the fourth a spear, 13 which bled marvellously, that the drops fell to partake of the Lord's Supper. According to Arthur romancers, the Eucharist should have been confined to the sacerdotal and military orders. 12. An allusion to the Veronica. 13. This allusion appears to be to Longinus, men- (60) THE REAL PRESENCE within a bier, the which he held in his other hand. And then they set their candles upon the table, and the third put the towel upon the vessel, and the fourth set the holy spear even upright upon the vessel. And then the bishop made semblance as though he would have gone to the consecration of the mass; and then he took a wafer, which was made in the likeness of bread, and at the lifting up there came a figure in the likeness of a child, and the visage was as red and as bright as any fire, and smote itself into that bread, so that they all saw the bread was formed of fleshy man." It may be left to experts in ecclesiastical history to say whether or not this narrative could have been invented before the middle or after the close of the twelfth century. In accordance with the usual revulsion in human affairs, the conditions of the thirteenth tioned in the Gospel of Nicodemus as the soldier who pierced the side of Christ with his lance. (61) THE GRAAL PROBLEM century were foreign to the production of a work like the Graal story in its original form. The reform of Gregory had spent its force. 14 The high ideals with which the Templars and Hospitallers began were forgotten. 15 Eccle- siasticism was now dominated by the conflict- ing orders of St. Dominic and St. Francis. 16 The Franciscans, particularly through the eloquence of the youthful and enthusiastic Duns Scotus, 17 and mindful of the victory of 14. In the case of Innocent III. and those who fol- lowed him, there was hardly a pretense of the stern recti- tude of Gregory VII. In a poetical satire respecting the quarrel of Innocent III. with the Emperor Otto the Fourth, which was probably written by an Englishman, Rome is represented as saying to the Pope: " Innocentius es, ita quod non privet in immo, Augmentet potius, valdeque Nocentius esse Dicaris, quia totius mundi es nocumentum." Liebnitz, 1. c., Tom. II., p. 532. 15. See Map's essays on these orders, as previously cited. 1 6. This domination began in popular favor, but it was strengthened by the victory of the friars over the universities. 17. The satire of Butler in Hudibras has given Duns (62) THE REAL PRESENCE John of Damascus in the East, 18 began the age-long effort to force the dogma of the im- maculate conception upon the Church, while the Dominicans arrayed themselves in a fierce opposition 19 that was not to be overcome till the middle of the nineteenth century. 20 The university era was fairly opened, 21 and criti- cism of the doctrine of the real presence, so far as it became public, was confined to the subtleties of scholastic philosophers. 22 Her- Scotus a bad name. But he was a remarkable man, especially in view of the fact that he died at the early age of forty-three. 18. John of Damascus is represented in the Roman Breviary with only two discourses; but these suffice to show how he identified his name with the homage to the Virgin. In the Greek Church his renown is very great. 19. The scandal of the fraudulent miracles at Berne in 1507 belongs to the history of this controversy. 20. At the (Ecumenical Council summoned by Pius IX. in the Vatican, 1870. 21. RASHDALL, Universities of Europe in the Middle Ages, dates the Studium Generate at Oxford 1167, and Cambridge 1209. 22. Many doctrines condemned as heretical in the thirteenth century originated with university professors. (63) THE GRAAL PROBLEM esy took up new grievances. Not that the subject of transubstantiation was forgotten. In fact, as the reformation of the sixteenth century demonstrated, nearly the half of Christendom was the mortal foe of the dogma. But it ceased to be a subject of im- mediate interest and general discussion, such as it had been for the better part of two cen- turies. Hence the story of the Graal in any of its forms, whether as to its origin and migra- tions, or as an object of knightly quest, could no more have been imagined in the thirteenth century than in the twentieth. That the story was capable of being worked over is another question. It was rewritten then and after- wards, and no doubt will continue to be done anew to the end of time. (64) VII WALTER MAP If the Arthur stories had been in the first instance a natural outcrop of the folk spirit, it is not credible that they would have begun with the super-imposed graal episode. More likely they would have opened with the tale of Tristan, which, be it of British or of conti- nental origin, is as thorough a folk product as the ballads of Robin Hood. But with the graal the cycle began, and the only ques- tion is, who was the first to write the graal episode in any of its forms? Wolfram von Eschenbach is responsible for the figure of a Provencal troubadour, or rather joglar, whom he calls Kyot, supposed to mean Guy or Guyot. But Provencal poets did not com- pose long narrative poems until their art fell (65) THE GRAAL PROBLEM into its decline. Moreover, they did not write in Languedoil. If it is necessary to contrive an hypothesis making this Languedocian of Wolfram's an Angevin or a Northern French trouvere, he might just as well be dropped at the outset as a mere name. 1 Wolfram, as some of his poetry showed to an expert like Hueffer, 2 was well versed in the language and metrical art of Provence. But his German contemporaries were not. He could tell them anything he liked. Very likely the name Kyot represents something very different from Guyot. It is no great stretch of prob- abilities in palaeography to account for it as I. His existence is of no importance either way. If he was real, he was as much addicted to the cult of the House of Anjou as Map himself, and if he is a mere figment of the imagination, he leaves no hiatus in the tradition as to the authorship of the legends. 2. " Hence we find that the wonderfully beautiful morning songs, evidently written in imitation of Pro- venc,al models by Wolfram von Eschenbach, the great mediaeval German poet, are actually called Wachter- lieder, or sentinel songs." HUEFFER, The Troubadours, p. 87. (66) WALTER MAP a reading of some abbreviation of Walter, Gualtier, such as Guat or Gyat. Outside of Wolfram's poem Kyot is unknown. The only authors of Arthur romances before the end of the twelfth century are Map, 3 who has already been mentioned, Robert de Borron, 4 and Chrestien de Troyes. 5 There need be no hes- 3. The tradition of Map's authorship, which had been attacked, was rehabilitated once for all by Sir Frederick Madden and Paulin Paris. 4. Who was secretary to Gautier de Montfaucon, and as he could write, most likely a cleric. He went to Palestine as a crusader, probably under Richard Coeur de Lion or Philip Augustus, and his writings appear to have preceded that event. There was no age limit in the crusading hosts. The discrepancy in style and mat- ter that is observed by some critics between the opening parts and the conclusion of works attributed to him is probably accounted for by supposing that they were begun in youth and finished in old age. This suppo- sition is also the only way of explaining the known fact that he was looked on as a contemporary by three gen- erations of poets and romancers. 5. Chrestien died in 1181. [Some say he was still alive in 1191.] The opinion that the Perceval was his last work may be disputed on the ground that he also (67) THE GRAAL PROBLEM itation in accepting the theory already offered by others that Borron was a collaborator with Map. It is equally possible that Chrestien was influenced by Map in his last work, The Perceval, which must have been interrupted by his death, as he left it unfinished. His other pieces are of minor importance. From 1162 till the close of the century, Map 6 was the foremost man of letters in England, and his relation to the court put him in a position to tell others what to write. He was as well known in the continental parts of Henry's empire as he was at home. Map's position as overseer in the whole affair ac- counts for what would otherwise be unac- countable for example, the dragging of left Le Chevalier au Lion, a poem on Lancelot, unfin- ished. But at least the effort to compose two elaborate poems at the same time gives an impression of some external influence that required the poet to be in haste. 6. If the question were one of literary style, Map would have to give way to John of Salisbury. But John made far less noise among his contemporaries than Map. (68) WALTER MAP the graal motive into the Perceval romance, which without this addition is a manifest variant under Hahn's famous Aryan Expo- sure and Return formula. 7 Much as Map wrote, he said of himself that he was more of a talker than a writer. 8 With this confession is to be linked the fact that his contributions to the cycle of Arthur romances were in prose. We must remember that verse was through- out the mediaeval period reckoned as the vehicle of fiction, while prose carried with it a conviction of truth. On this prejudice was based the dislike which Joseph of Exeter, 9 a few years after Map's time, professed for Homer, and his preference for Dictys and Dares. Godfrey of Viterbo, in his Pantheon, 10 7. The principal variation being that the hero is not exposed, but concealed, to evade the fate that awaits him. 8. "You have written much, I have talked a great deal," he is reported to have said to Gerald de Barri. g. This poet should be mentioned with respect. He furnished the motto for Tennyson's Idylls of the King. 10. This elaborate work, a very creditable perform- (69) THE GRAAL PROBLEM a compendium of universal history, alter- nating prose with verse, was careful to put certain parts in prose only, lest in metre they should be disputed. The prose romancers of the thirteenth century discredited their poetical predecessors by the same argument, 11 while in the very act of filching their material. From these instances it is plain that to a work put forth almost in the form of a supplement to the New Testament history rhythm and rhyme would have been fatal. They would have been considered prima facie evidence of forgery. So the Arthur stories, begun, as they were, with what was properly the con- clusion, also violated the natural order by being first set down in prose before they got into verse. That tradition is certainly trustworthy, ance for the times, is to be read in STRUVIUS' edition of PISTORIUS, Rerum Gerntanicarum Scriptores, Tom. II. n. WILSON'S DUNLOP, History of Prose Fiction, Vol. I., p. 146. (70) WALTER MAP since it corresponds to the necessities of the case, which attributes to Map 12 the Quest of the Graal, the Book of Lancelot du Lac and the Death of Arthur. It is also probable that to him is due the graal history in both its shorter and longer forms. Borron turned these into verse and wrote the Book of Mer- lin. Lucas de Cast 13 began The Tristan, and Chrestien The Perceval, in which the Angevin genealogical and political motives were a prominent feature. But the moral, ecclesi- astical and political motives of the cycle are practically complete in the works of Map. It is objected that Map wrote in Latin. This is, as Wright has remarked, a misappre- hension, 14 so far as the Arthur stories are con- cerned. It is also objected that if Wolfram owed his original to a priest, he would have 12. WRIGHT, Biographia Britannica Literaria, Vol. II., p. 303. 13. Ibid, p. 311. 14. Ibid, p. 304. THE GRAAL PROBLEM given a priestly title and would not have spoken of Master Kyot. 15 But it happens that Map, though he rose to the dignity of an archdeacon in the Church, betrayed all his life a fondness for the title of Master. 16 It was evidently the habitual form of address mutual between him and his friend, Giraldus Cambrensis, and he is called Maistre Gautiers Map 17 in the concluding paragraph of the ancient French prose Mart Artus. 15. " Si se taist ore Maistre Gautiers Map del' estoire de Lancelot," etc., from a manuscript in the British Museum quoted by WRIGHT. " Les livres que Maistres Gautiers Maup fist," PAULIN PARIS, Les Manuscripts de la Bibliotheque du Roi, Tom. I., p. 139. " Le livre de Missire Lancelot du Lac lequel trans- lata Maistre Gautier Map," Ibid, p. 147. 16. No doubt the title in Map's case is associated with the practice of the universities which made Master a title in the theological faculty and Doctor a title for a graduate in canon law. RASHDALL, op. cit., Vol. I., p. 21. 17. See also the title repeated in other copies of the French romances as cited in a previous note. (72) WALTER MAP While Map could easily and frankly assert his authorship of the Lancelot, the Quest, and the Morte a" Arthur, he could not, nor could anybody, claim the original prose history of the Graal as his own. 18 This was deliberately meant to make its way among the apocrypha, and, if possible, to attain an inspired or semi- inspired rank. But the actual inspiration, coming from the court of England, could only be breathed upon a man of letters who was also a courtier, and that was Map. No doubt his work was hasty and confused, a memorandum rather than a finished piece of literature in fact, all the earliest Arthurian prose has the look of being tumbled together for the use of writers rather than as a perma- nent gift to the reading world. Even in Latin 18. The usual plan with apocrypha was to attribute them to some well-known personage of primitive Chris- tian times, and then to invent a more or less plausible account of the preservation of the manuscript. In the present case the Saviour himself was made responsible for the fiction. (73) THE GRAAL PROBLEM Map told stories, often very good ones, in the same huddled, promiscuous style, as any one may find by looking into De Nugis Curialium. (74) VIII WOLFRAM VON ESCHENBACH To find a writer who was capable of making genuine literature out of the stories of Arthur's knights and the graal, one has to wait a whole generation and then turn to Ger- many. Wolfram von Eschenbach, 1 though only a half century later than the earliest of the Arthurian romancers, belonged to a time when the overweening ambition of a Planta- genet Count-King of Anjou and England had already become a matter of indifference. He merely finds Angevin tradition prominent in the fiction as it came to him, and is careful to preserve what gives an air of verity to the i. Lived until 1220. His poem can now be read in an English translation by Miss Weston. (75) THE GRAAL PROBLEM narrative. The tempest of controversy over the question of the real presence has passed by. 2 The quarrel between the powers spir- itual and temporal has also fallen into what may be called its chronic state, 3 as distin- guished from the acute outbreaks of the eleventh century and the twelfth. Politicians may theoretically be Thomists on this point; practically they are Ockamists, 4 and such they have remained from the thirteenth cen- tury to the twentieth. Wolfram, therefore, found nothing to interfere with his view of the Arthur theme as the material of a work of art. Naturally, being a man of genius, 2. If Wolfram von Eschenbach had a preference for any sacrament, it must have been baptism. He certainly mentions that subject at every opportunity. 3. In fact the papacy never again recovered the position it had under Innocent III. 4. Thomas Aquinas imagined a theocratic solution for the dualism of politics. But Ockam, who was a logician pure and simple, saw that the theory of spiritual supremacy was impossible. The physical necessity of human life is against it. (76) WOLFRAM VON ESCHENBACH he produced the first writing worthy of the subject. Proud as he was of his familiarity with the languages of France, 5 it can not be believed that anything previously written escaped him, and yet it is only here and there that he descended to mere translation. He cast aside the colorless and shadowy Galahad, the perverted Lancelot, the maddened Tris- tan, left Arthur an almost motionless figure in the background, and only preserved the egotist Gawain 6 as a foil to the evolution of the simpleton Parzival, the man without learn- ing, like Wolfram himself, but of native force, of latent spirituality, and of manifest destiny. Doubtless there was something in this of the envy of a man wholly unlettered, as Wolfram was, 7 whose education was all by experience 5. His works reveal this fact. 6. Even thus, Wolfram's Gawain is a finer char- acter than the earlier romances had made of him. 7. There is some reason to suspect that Wolfram, like the troubadour Uc de St. Cyr, rather exaggerated his lack of book learning. (77) THE GRAAL PROBLEM and word of mouth, provoked at the spread of the new-fangled university learning and the arrogance of its votaries. But there was also the keen insight of a man of genius, who saw that in the cycle of French poems and prose tales, all the heroes could be impersonated by a single figure. All that Galahad, all that Lancelot achieved, all that Bors achieved, Parzival also achieved, with the added inter- est of his individual story. Instinct, preju- dice, conviction, common sense and poetic insight all converged to the certainty that all there was in the Arthur cycle of any epic value could be coordinated with the single figure of Parzival. (78) IX WOLFRAM AND WAGNER It is sometimes said that compassion as a characteristic of Parsifal was original with Wagner. But this is not the case. It is true that Wagner, owing to his profound interest and prominent share in the war against vivi- section at the time when the Parsifal drama began to absorb his creative powers, obtained a higher appreciation of Schopenhauer's defi- nition of pity as the central fact in morals. But Schopenhauer himself was witness to an earlier humane movement, which was crowned in England by laws for the prevention of cru- elty to animals, and especially by the noble poem of Coleridge, The Ancient Mariner. 1 I. Written in 1798. (79) THE GRAAL PROBLEM There is a distinct analogy between the shoot- ing of the albatross, as imagined by Coleridge, and the shooting of the swan in Parsifal, 2 even to the unconsciousness of the cruelty involved in the needless crime. But Wolfram 2. Compare these two passages, the first from Cole- ridge's poem, the second from Wagner's drama: " God save thee, Ancient Mariner ! From the fiends that plague thee thus ! Why look'st thou so? With my cross-bow I shot the albatross. " And the good south wind still blew behind, But no sweet bird did follow, Nor any day for food or play Came to the mariner's hollo." Gurnemans. Bist du's der diesen Schwan erlegte? Parsifal. Gewiss! Im Fluge treff ich, was fliegt! Gurnemans. Du thatest das? Und bangt' es dich nicht vor der That? . . . Was that dir der treue Schwan? . . . Er war uns hold: was ist er nun dir? Hier schau' her! hier trafst du inn, da starrt noch das Blut, matt hangen die Fluge! das Schneegefieder dunkel befleckt, gebrochen das Aug? siehst du den Blick? Wirst deiner Sundenthat du inne? Sag knab', erkennst du deine grosse Schuld? Wie konntest du' sie begeh'n ? Parsifal. Ich wusste sie nicht. (80) WOLFRAM AND WAGNER thought of pity 3 as the solution of the doubt and indecision and rebellion against God which marked the immature stage in the career of his Parzival. His defect, as com- pared with Wagner, is that he did not grasp the whole thought nor extend it to all living things. 4 But his thought, so far as it goes, is original with him. In the poem of Chrestien of Troyes, the graal is merely a miraculous dish, through which, by means of the ques- tion suggested at sight of it, the Fisher-King is to be healed of his wound. 5 In Wolfram the graal becomes a symbol and touchstone of moral purity, and the graal community, 3. See KARL PANNIER'S introduction to his transla- tion of Parzival into modern German. 4. The thought would have been impossible to the mediaeval German in a country still only partially tamed. An American pioneer in the early years of the last cen- tury would have had very little sympathy with the notions of either Coleridge, Schopenhauer or Wagner. 5. The poem of Chrestien of Troyes is unfortu- nately not yet translated into English. (81) THE GRAAL PROBLEM. with its knighthood, appears as the upholder of the Christian ideal of a good life. In Chres- tien's poem the question is merely an external act: " Whom serve they with the graal?" In Wolfram the question, at the sight of the suf- ferings of Amfortas, whose figure is unknown to Chrestien, becomes a duty the omission of which betrays Parzival's lack of sympathy and of the moral maturity which would make him worthy of the graal kingdom. The whole of that searching of the heart by which Wolfram aims in the contrast be- tween Parzival ignorant, egotistic, rebellious, and Parzival penitent, sympathetic and spirit- ually alert, is unknown to Chrestien, and is certainly misunderstood and misinterpreted by Wagner. In Wolfram Parzival's conver- sion is a divine work. 6 In Wagner it is the 6. In fact, Wolfram would have thoroughly under- stood the meaning of the word " conversion " implied in an anecdote of John Larkin Lincoln. " I suppose," said a German professor to him, " you can tell us the hour (82) WOLFRAM AND WAGNER result of a woman's kiss T given with anything but virginal modesty. Psychically Wagner's and the minute when you were converted ?" " Yes," replied Lincoln ; " it was the time when religion ceased to be a duty and became a pleasure." Tholuck, the renowned theologian, who stood by, remarked after- wards : " That was a magnificent answer." 7. In the old French romance it is the girl who is modest, while Perceval is an ignorant young ruffian, intent merely on having his own way: Quant pres du pavilion fut arrive, ouvert le trouva, dedans lequel vit un lict noblement accoutre, sur lequel etoit une pucelle seule endormie, laquelle avoient laissee ses demoyselles qui etoient alle cueiller des fleurs pour le pavilion jolier et parier, comme de ce faire etoient accoutumees. Lors est Perceval du lict de la pucelle approche, courrant assez lourdement dessus son cheval : adonc s'est la pucelle assez effrayement eveillee. A laquelle dit Perceval, " Pucelle, Je vous salue, comme ma mere m'a apprins, laquelle m'a commande que jamais pucelle ne trouvasse, que humblement ne la saluasse." Aux paroles du jeune Perceval, se print la pucelle a trembler, car bien luy sembloit qu'il n'etoit gueres sage, comme le montroit assez son parier ; et bien se reputoit folle, que ainsi seule 1* avoit trouvee endormie. Puis elle lui dit : "Amy pense bien-tot d'icy te departir, de peur que mes amis ne t'y trouvent, car si icy te rencontroient, il t'en pourroit mal advenir." "Par ma foi," dit Perceval, "jamais d'icy ne partirai que, premier baisee ne vous aye." A quoy repond la pucelle que non fasse, mais que bientot pense (83) THE GRAAL PROBLEM: device is almost ludicrously inadequate; 8 dra- matically it is, of course, very effective. In Wolfram the man who has in him a potential spirituality, in the person of Parzival, is con- trasted to sharp advantage with the thorough worldliness of Gawain. Naturally, and with the deepest insight, the poet assigns the victory over the magician Klingsor to this worldly character as the highest achievement of which he is capable. But when Gawain enters on a conflict with Parzival, he suffers a grievous defeat; and this defeat means much de departir, que ses amis la ne le trouvent. " Pucelle," fait Perceval, "pour votre parler, d'icy ne partirai tant que de vous aye eu ung baiser; car ma mere m'a a ce faire ainsi enseigne." Tant s'est Perceval de la pucelle approche, qu'il 1'a par force baisee; car pouvoir n'eut elle d'y resister, combien qu'elle se deffendit bien. Mais tant etoit lors Perceval lafre et lourd, que la defense d'icelle ne luy put profiter, qu'il ne luy prit baiser, voulsit elle ou non, voire, comme dit le conte, plus de vingt fois. 8. The incident illustrates the fact that there are certain conventions of the stage, as in every art, which seem rational in their place, but would only provoke sarcastic reflections if adopted in real life. (84) WOLFRAM AND WAGNER more to Wolfram than the same incident in the ordinary Arthurian romances, since it symbolizes for him the victory of the spirit over the flesh, 9 and is the last proof needed of Parzival's fitness for the Graal Kingship. In Wagner, evidently for dramatic reasons, Gawain is ignored altogether and Parsifal is made the victor over Klingsor. Thus the Christian symbolism in this part of Wagner's work becomes perforce a kind of magic, g. In fact, the allegory at this point comes very close in its most intimate meaning to that of Bunyan in his Holy War, where King Immanuel, in reference to death and resurrection, is made to say : " I will take down this famous town of Mansoul, stick and stone, to the ground. And I will carry the stones thereof, and the timber thereof, and the walls thereof, and the dust thereof, and the inhabitants thereof, into mine own coun- try, even into the kingdom of my father: and will there set it up in such strength and glory as it never did see in this kingdom where now it is placed." BUNYAN, Holy War, Ed. Burder, reprinted at Pittsburg, 1830. For the apostolic legends, some of which cast light on the superstitions embodied in the graal romances, see R. A. LIPSIUS, Die Apokryphen Apostelgeschichtcn und Apostellegenden. (85) THE GRAAL PROBLEM better than Klingsor's merely because it is more efficacious. 10 The difference is the lo. The sign of the cross was no doubt from early times considered infallible against demons, but the spec- tacular thaumaturgy adopted by Wagner is not that of the church except in legend: Kat 6f ev&vf diravrg ry rov cravpov dwdpet rrjv x e *P a Ka&oirMpac, rvirovaav avrbv Kol KOTO rov fiai/j.ovof /Jd/lAovtrav. NlCEPHORUS CHUMNUS on Bishop Theoleptus. BOISSONADE, Anecdota Graeca, V. p. 208. f6re ra novrjpa 7rve{y/ara, -&eig dwdfiei npupovfieva, elf 0f , "Ov% viro/uevo/jiev" teyavTa, "ov6c avro- rov Sw&p.ei not rfi ovfi/36%.vyd6ag elp-ydaaro. BOISSONADE, IV. 284. The formula in the mouth of Saint Aberce, a famous exorcist, was : 'A/cdi^apra irvevfiara, tv ru ovd/ian ' Xpiffrow efeAtfdvra, elf dpof avdptiTroif cnr&'&eTe avei BOISSONADE, V. 467. It is singular that Wagner, a rationalist with Prot- estant antecedents, did not adopt this verbal exorcism rather than the sign of the cross, which has been so severely condemned by all the reformed churches. (86) WOLFRAM AND WAGNER same as that between the simple rejection of Simon Magus in the Acts of the Apostles and the elaborate thaumaturgy attributed to the apostles in the later legends. It must be confessed that here Wolfram shows a much more thorough practical knowledge of Chris- tian psychology than his modern rival. In another case dramatic convenience and truth to human nature both dictated the merging of one character in another. Gurne- manz, the old knightly tutor of Parzival, and Trevirenz, his hermit confessor, both teach him the same lesson. In ignoring Trevirenz and emphasizing the excellent old knight, who is not only devout but experienced, whose piety has been tried in the world of action, Wagner has made a change which can never be improved upon. In enlarging the character of Kundry to that of the Herodias of popular legend and bringing her to rest and peace at last, Wagner has illustrated his (87) THE GRAAL PROBLEM principle of compassion to a degree that would have been impossible to mediaeval minds. 11 But in general it may be said that Wagner has read out more profound thought than he has put into the story of Parzival as it left Wolfram's hands. He has reverted to the brilliant externals of the earliest romancers in place of the inner meanings. If the music restores these inner meanings, which Wag- ner's poem itself falls short of, that is another thing. ii. The law, "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live," was ingrained in the middle ages, and even in much later times. (88) X THE GRAAL It was possible for Wagner to realize scenically what his mediaeval predecessors could only imagine. They succeeded in de- scribing, with the utmost vividness of which words are capable, the graal as glowing by a light from within itself. The electric light enabled Wagner to perform this miracle. It will doubtless be achieved in time without the aid of an electric apparatus. But to Wolf- ram, who was evidently reluctant to follow his models in the too close identification of the graal, with the deepest of Christian mys- teries, the form of this object and its virtues are rather vague. There is no doubt, from the very first attempt to use the history and fables about Arthur as a background for (89) THE GRAAL PROBLEM romanticizing the political and ecclesiastical theories and opinions of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, that the graal was under- stood to be the dish out of which Jesus and his disciples had eaten the last Supper. 1 The i. The fact that it is usually a cup, not a dish, that is spoken of in the legends, points back to the quarrel between the laity and the clergy over the limitation of the former to communion in one kind. This was re- sented at the point of the sword in Bohemia, and the deprivation was felt bitterly elsewhere, particularly by the aristocratic and military classes. The existence of such vessels as the Genoese catino has nothing to do with the graal romances, all of which invariably repre- sent the miraculous dish as having been taken to heaven or to some inaccessible region of Asia. In fact, it would have annoyed kings, nobles and romancers in Northern Europe greatly to have been obliged to confess that an Italian commune possessed the most wonderful relic in Christendom. International jealousy on points of this sort in the middle age is exemplified by the conflict of opinion over the identity of the spear supposed to have pierced the side of Christ as he hung on the cross. Germany had rested since the time of Henry the Fowler in the belief that when that monarch gave Swabia as well as a great deal else for a lance head and two nails said to have once belonged to Constantine the Great, he secured the (90) THE GRAAL best proof that could be desired of the nov- elty of this idea and its lack of any tradi- tional perspective is that nobody knew what weapon with which the side of Christ was pierced. [Compilatio Chronologica, ad annum 920; Bono, Syn- tapma de Ecclesia Gander sheim.; SiGEBERT of Gem- blours.] They carried it to battle and fancied that it won them victories [DiTMAuus, lib. I.]. They insisted on seeing it at the coronation of their king-emperor [DITMARUS, lib. V.]. It was stolen and secreted in the interest of one aspirant or another to the throne [HER- MANNUS CONTRACTUS, ad annum 1062]. In the popular mind it was associated with the great sword which, according to legend, had been given to Charlemagne by an angel [Jon ANN STATWERCH, ad annum 1380]. But when a rival spear point was dug up at Antioch about the close of the eleventh century, the Germans were taken aback. While many stoutly maintained the gen- uineness of Constantine's lance, others accepted the dis- covery at Antioch as true, and with Godfrey of Viterbo, dismissed its competitor as only the lance of St. Maurice. The dispute affected the fortunes of the empire as well as those of the Christian armies in Syria. Henry the Second, the son of a German empress, and very strict in his theories of vassalage and hereditary rights, could hardly fail to be on the imperial side in the controversy. Besides, Constantine was born in Great Britain, and legend had it that his mother was a British princess. Obviously there is good reason for the conduct of the (91) THE GRAAL PROBLEM the tryblion 2 mentioned by the evangelists Matthew and Mark was like. It is not easy to discern why the Latin Vulgate translated the same word in Matthew by paropsis and in Mark by catinus? But between the infor- mation which Isidore 4 has given, that the paropsis was a rectangular, equilateral dish, and the reasonable belief that the Latin catinus did not greatly differ from its modern namesake, the Italian catino, it can at least be inferred that neither our Lord nor his apos- tles, in the midst of graver matters, troubled graal romancers in completely ignoring the lance of Antioch, and in associating the sacred weapon of their fiction with the story of ancient Britain. 2. MATTHEW, xxvi. 23: '0 6i AiroKpf&elf ciTrev'O ip.- /3di[>af fier' ijiov iv TGJ TpvfiMtJ rfjv x ^P a i ovr6^ fie irapaS&oti. MARK, xiv. 20: '0 6e aTronpidels, elirev avrolf ' Elf c/c ruv (Wjfitna 6 e/j./3airT6ficvof /uer* tfwv c/f TO Tpvjttdov. 3. MATTHEW : At ipse respondens, ait : Qui intingit mecum manum in paropside, hie me tradet. MARK : Qui ait illis : Unus ex duodecim, qui in- tingit mecum manum in catino. 4. ISIDORE 20, Orig. 4, 10, cited by Forcellini, sub voce. (02) THE GRAAL themselves overmuch about their table furni- ture. Nor did the fancy of the twelfth cen- tury give itself any trouble to remember the words of Scripture. It simply substituted for them the old French word graal, greal, grail, combined this with san, holy, and in a few mispronunciations had the substance of a legend. 5 The relation of the word graal to the Latin gradate is now a matter of com- mon knowledge. No doubt, in the fervent disputes of the Sacramentarians and the Or- thodox, when Berengar was traversing Anjou and Normandy and keeping everybody in a fever, the French word got an importance it would otherwise never have had. It was always San Graal, San Greal, in these dis- 5. It is probable that graal was the original form of the word ; greal followed as an attempt to spell accord- ing to sound, while grail was a more learned effort at accuracy. Gradale is not the neuter of the Latin adjec- tive gradalis, but a corrupt pronunciation of crate! la. Of course sancg real, real blood, followed the phrase San Greal, as the night the day. (93) THE GRAAL PROBLEM putes, to distinguish it from ordinary dishes. When that sort of thing goes on for half a century or more, there is bound to be mysti- fication in the best educated community, and most people were not educated at all, in the way of book learning, in the twelfth century. Only one man, the Flemish chronicler Helinandus, paid any attention to the fact that there was a common, every-day graal as well as a holy graal. 6 This ordinary graal, which people saw at meal time, was a wide, rather deep dish, such as Helinandus sup- posed would be called scutella in Latin. This Latin word has survived in the Italian sco- della, equivalent to the English porringer. 6. " Gradalis vel gradale dicitur gallice scutella lata et aliquantulum profunda; dicitur et vulgari nomine graal, quia grata est." Paulin Paris was the first to mention this passage as bearing on the graal romances. Helinandus, being a Fleming, was just far enough re- moved from the regions where the graal flourished to feel a curiosity about it and at the same time to be able to satisfy himself. (94) THE GRAAL The additional information which Helinan- dus gave as to the food-providing powers of the holy graal, he probably found in the graal romances, which in his time were already widely popular. The legend of the preserva- tion of the holy graal and its transfer from Palestine to England by Joseph of Arimathea is to all appearances another of the pure fictions of the twelfth century, with abso- lutely no perspective 7 in the way of popular 7. The author of this fiction showed his familiarity with the earlier apocrypha and legends. In fact he had the substance of the Veronica legend in his prayer-book, and the rest were not remote. The Gospel of Nicodemus was a favorite with the Anglo-Saxons and with the early Provencal troubadours. The apocalypse of Paul was newly translated in Western Europe about his time, and doubtless other tales concerning primitive Christians accompanied it. He would ask himself who had been neglected in these tales, and would thus hit upon a name without a fixed and known tradition. With that name he would begin, and would need for guidance in his invention merely the example of numerous lives of the saints and other fictitious narratives familiar to him. No doubt the popular discourses of the preachers inter- ested in the controversy raised by Berengar would be of assistance to him. (95) THE GRAAL PROBLEM tradition. Wolfram cared nothing for it. The graal for him was simply an object which pro- vided food for the knights who guarded it, by virtue of the fact that every Good Friday a dove descended from heaven and laid upon it an oblate. 8 Even here the direct reference of the older tales to the bread or wafer of the Eucharist was avoided by the German poet. This precious object, he added, was originally guarded by those angels who were neutral at the time of the war in heaven, but was now in the care of an order of Knights called Tem- pleis. The name which was given to this object in the manuscript of Wolfram's poem has long been a puzzle. Besides calling it the graal, he also described it as Lapsit exillis* As x and r are exactly alike in mediaeval Ein tub' von himel swinget, Uf den stein diu bringet Ein kleine wiz ablat. Uf dem steine sie die lat Er heizet lapsit exillis. (96) THE GRAAL writing, these expressions have been read lapis herilis, 10 stone of the Lord. Another interpretation is Lapis ex cells, 11 stone from heaven, referring, it is supposed, to the legend of a jewel lost by Lucifer when he was cast out of heaven. Neither of these explanations is considered satisfactory. While it is to be hoped that some good Arabic scholar will take the trouble to look for a possible key to Wolfram's enigma in a phrase of the Koran or the Mohammedan tra- ditions, 12 yet a conjecture may be hazarded that Wolfram tried to reproduce a Greek word or phrase which he had heard associ- ated with the narrative that was in his mind; for example, hapi?, the name of a utensil used 10. HAZLITT'S WARTON, I., p. 49, note 2. 11. Lapsi de cells has also been suggested. 12. The variation in the vowels of the name Allah in such phrases as Bismillah and Allhamdolillah sug- gest the possibility of an Arabic explanation. But the phrase to be satisfactory would have to be one that is or was in actual use. (97) THE GRAAL PROBLEM in handling the bread broken at the com- munion, or Mftrjg-, a kind of basin. These words sound nearly alike in Greek, so that a fair representation of the sounds in the mys- terious phrase of the Parzival is given by either AojStc tfea/eeAof, or Xefiris $aKeXo$ miraculous or wonderful holder, or miracu- lous basin. One may smile at these phrases, but how about ayta Aa/3t$- holy holder, 13 13. Ore ds fiehfai otppayioai Toi>f apTovf } 7\.eyei' Hoirjaov TOV aprov TOVTOV, eviKUf, wf elf eanv 6 Xpiarof ovtf uf rivef a/ Acyowrt, roif aprovf rovrovg ' nal Sre fie^et vipuaai, vijioi <5/iop, /cat fj.tki^f.1 TOV irpoaKO[u6/j.evov irpuTov aprov, /cat r rrjv /ucpida, ev T(J dy'ip TroD/ptu, Kal iyxt l Ka * T & o EZra, Xaftuv TIJV dyiav Aa/3tda fi(.ra TTJ<; de^iaf ^etpoc, pdipei avrfjv iv TCJ dyiu alpari' TTJ 6 dpiarepa % ei pi ^-o.^d.vei EKCIOTOV aprov, /cat eiofpei rtjv dyiav Aa/?trfa, //era rod ayiov at/zarof /Je/3a// / uev)7V, /cat eyyifct avrrjv kv TU &yi