by Mike Ashley
By 1209, the same year that Walter Map died, the reputation of the Cistercians was exceedingly low. Might there be a way to redeem themselves? That must have been when someone turned his thoughts to the story of the Holy Grail. Although the Cistercians are not identified by name in the Vulgate Cycle, there are references throughout to the “white monks” and “white abbeys”, as well as to procedures newly adopted by the Cistercians for confession and absolution. Roger Sherman Loomis, in The Development of Arthurian Romance, states: “Picture, then, the author as a monk in a white robe bending over a desk in a scriptorium or cloister, transforming the rough materials of chivalric fiction into an allegory of the search for God’s grace.”
The image may be sound, though a work of this scale must have required many monks, especially if they were producing several copies in addition to composing it. This project would have required approval by the abbot, possibly even the head of the order. It was a major project to redeem the Cistercians by featuring them at the centre of a holy quest conducted by the purest knight in the world, Galahad. Throughout the three books, it is repeatedly demonstrated that the smallest sin counts against you. Gawain, who has lustful thoughts, is soon ejected from the quest. Lancelot, once the greatest knight in the world, had sinned with Guenevere and could not achieve the quest. Each knight is put through many severe challenges to test their spiritual and moral resolve. Only then can they be rewarded with God’s grace. What better way of making their case acceptable than for the Cistercians to claim that this is all the work of their greatest critic, Walter Map?
The powers that be had not finished with the Vulgate Cycle. Not long after its completion, two further books were added, by way of prequels. These were the Estoire del Saint Graal and the Estoire de Merlin. They effectively upgraded the first two books of Robert de Boron’s trilogy, to serve as an historical introduction to the Roman de Lancelot. Even then the Cycle could not be laid to rest. By the 1230s, the five books had been revised as a new Roman du Graal, usually referred to as the Post-Vulgate Cycle. This was not hugely different from the original Vulgate Cycle except in one important respect, the addition of a new bridging section called the Suite de Merlin. This claims to be written by Robert de Boron, a claim that must be treated in the same way as the original Vulgate’s pseudo-attribution to Walter Map.
The Suite de Merlin adds three significant elements: the Questing Beast, a new and cynical view of Arthur, and the “Dolorous Stroke.” The Questing Beast is a strange hybrid creature that constantly bays like a pack of hounds, and is perpetually hunted by several knights. It seems that the very idea is representative of the Crusades. Here is something that, after more than a hundred years, seems to exist almost for its own sake, something which everyone makes an enormous noise over but which achieves very little. This interpretation is reinforced by the fact that the main questor of the beast, Pellinore, had in the earlier romances been a variant of Pelles, the Fisher King. In other words, the guardians of the Grail now seem locked into a never-ending quest that exists purely for its own sake.
In the Post-Vulgate cycle, Arthur is prepared to slaughter all newborn babies in order to rid himself of the prophesied threat to his kingship. Apart from the obvious Herod parallel, we now see an interpretation of the great Emperor destroying his offspring kingdoms. That is effectively how the actions of the new Holy Roman Emperor, Frederick II, were seen. The grandson of Frederick Barbarossa, Frederick was heralded in his youth as Stupor Mundi, the “wonder of the world”. A brilliant patron of arts and scholarship, he was really a Renaissance man two centuries too early. After twelve years of promises, Frederick eventually left for the Crusades in 1228, although he had to halt en route after catching the plague. Pope Gregory IX, who did not have a tenth of Frederick’s intellect, excommunicated the emperor for failing to fulfil his promise. Frederick, with the contempt for authority that made him both brilliant and a victim of his own image, ignored the Pope and, once recovered, continued to Acre. He was promptly excommunicated again, a fact which did not trouble him at all. A liberal at the time when all liberals were condemned, Frederick just continued to do what he had set out to do. He held a meeting with Saladin’s nephew Nasir-ud-Din, Sultan of Egypt, and under the Treaty of Jaffa agreed a truce that saw the return of Jerusalem and other territory in Palestine to Christian control. He had achieved in a few weeks what no Crusader had achieved for forty years. Yet no one in the Western world seemed happy with this arrangement. It was seen as a weak truce rather than an outright victory, and, as Frederick was excommunicated, such a treaty could not really be accepted.
As a final irony, and a perfect example of the stupidity of the age, the authorities decreed that because Frederick was excommunicated, the entire city of Jerusalem was also threatened with excommunication if they had any dealings with him. Frederick remained untroubled. By right of his marriage three years earlier to Isabella of Jerusalem, Frederick was also King of Jerusalem, though this title passed in principle to his infant son Conrad, born in April 1228 (Isabella died a few days later). When Frederick entered Jerusalem on 17 March 1229, having been given the keys to the city by the Sultan, there was no one there to welcome him. So Frederick arranged his own coronation and crowned himself king the next day.
Returning to the Post-Vulgate Cycle, the “Dolorous Stroke” had, in fact, been a feature of all of the Grail stories, but its presentation kept changing. In the Vulgate Cycle, it occurred when the Pagan king Varlan took the Sword of the Strange Straps (itself a religious relic), and killed the Christian king Lambar. From that day the land was laid to waste until the coming of the Good Knight. In the Post-Vulgate version, it is the knight Balin who delivers the stroke. Effectively excommunicated by Arthur for killing the Lady of the Lake, Balin tries to prove himself in a series of quests, and at one stage fights an invisible knight. He manages to kill the knight, but is pursued by the knight’s brother Pellam, the Fisher King. Chased through the Grail castle, Balin snatches up the Holy Lance and strikes Pellam with it.
The Dolorous Stroke was clearly a representation of the capture of Jerusalem by the Muslims, which initiated the Crusades. In the Vulgate version, it is described as a straightforward blow between East and West, but in the Post-Vulgate it is personalised and happens within the Grail castle. Since the Grail castle was effectively Jerusalem, and since Balin was an excommunicated knight, we may see here the writer of the Post-Vulgate cycle further criticising Frederick II, and suggesting that his actions would cause further destruction. The story continues with Balin fighting his brother Balan until both are killed, mirroring the battle that continued between Frederick and the papacy for much of the rest of his reign.
The growth in the Arthurian romance exactly parallels the period of the Crusades. A detailed analysis of all of the Romances, but particularly the works of Chrétien, de Boron, Wolfram and the Vulgate Cycle, relating all of the characters and events to people and circumstances in real life, has yet to be done, but I suspect we will find many parallels. Each author related events relevant to him, and thus there are several parallels to Arthur, Guenevere, Merlin, Lancelot and the Grail Knights. I have made my own interpretations in a few cases and have included those in the “Who’s Who” section (see Chapter 23).
The Post-Vulgate cycle removes the main Lancelot episode, chiefly on grounds of length, but also because the need for the main Lancelot role had passed, as if the Crusades had sullied the reputation of the great knights. In fact, the day of the Crusades in the Holy Land had virtually passed with the loss of Jerusalem in 1244. At the time no one knew that Jerusalem would stay in Muslim hands, and there were further attempts to reclaim it, but no longer the consolidated efforts by the forces of Christendom. The last great crusader was Louis IX of France, later to become St. Louis, though his efforts also failed, as did those of Prince Edward, the future Edward I of England. Edward might have achieved results had not the death of his father caused him to return to England in 1272. Acre fell to the Mamluks in 1291 and that, eff
ectively, brought an end to the Crusades.
It also brought an end to the mass of Arthurian romances. With the loss of the greater part of the Angevin Empire in France by the end of King John’s reign, France was able once again to become French. The Angevin influence diminished, and with the crumbling of the Crusades the need for Arthur fell away. The champions of Christendom had failed to achieve their great goal, and they were now more concerned with internal affairs and tussles with their neighbours.
No new Arthurian story of any significance, apart from translations and reworkings, appeared for a century after the fall of Acre. Such as did appear were either parodies, like the anonymous “Knight of the Parrot”, or stories that used the Arthurian setting to expose new problems. Most prevalent here were the land tenure wrangles in the Scottish borders that led to a flurry of Anglo-Scottish Arthurian stories featuring Gawain.
The only major work, itself a reworking of an old theme, but for once distinct and separate from the Arthurian cycle, was Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, regarded by many as the greatest Arthurian verse romance of all, certainly in English. Alas, its author, like those of all too many of these great works, remains anonymous.
Although interest in creating new Arthurian romances had faded, interest in the Arthurian world had not. Edward I was, in the words of Martin Biddle, “a passionate Arthurian”. Writing sometime after 1316, the Dutch poet and chronicler Lodewijk van Velthem recorded a Round Table celebration held by Edward I in which the participants played the roles of the leading Arthurian knights. Biddle, in King Arthur’s Round Table, has deduced that Lodewijk’s account relates to one of two events. One was the celebrations at the time of Edward I’s marriage to Margaret, daughter of Philip III of France, which happened at Canterbury in September 1299. The other is the celebrations in Winchester nine years earlier, in April 1290, for the imminent marriage of his daughter Joan of Acre to Gilbert de Clare, earl of Gloucester. If it was the latter, then this could well have been the event for which the Round Table, now displayed at Winchester, was made.
Records of these events are rare, but that does not mean that they did not happen. The next such event of interest was in 1344, when Edward III announced his intention to establish an Order of the Round Table “in the same manner and form as the Lord Arthur once King of England”. That Arthur had fought the “English” was by now long forgotten. Edward’s order did not come about, but the Order of the Garter was instigated in 1348. It is believed, however, again by Biddle, that with the 1344 announcement as the incentive, the Round Table at Winchester was moved from being an item of furniture to an icon, and raised to the wall. That simple act changed its significance considerably, as it became a symbol of greatness to behold rather than to use.
Few Arthurian romances had appeared during this period until Sir Gawain and the Green Knight sparked a revival of interest from the 1380s on. Most of these stories feature Gawain and are set in the north of England. They include The Awntyrs off Arthure, The Carle of Carlyle and probably the best known, The Wedding of Sir Gawain and Dame Ragnell, which may just have been an early effort by Malory. There were other efforts, such as the two renderings into English of the Mort Artu in verse form, known respectively as the “Alliterative” and the “Stanzaic” Morte Arthur.
The last great Arthurian work of the Middle Ages is also the one we know best and the one through which, in various modern versions or derivations, we come to know about Arthur – the Morte Darthur by Sir Thomas Malory. I shall discuss this and Malory in more detail in Chapter 19, but over the next few chapters I want to explore in more detail the main Arthurian characters and how they developed in the Arthurian romance.
13
TRISTAN AND ISEULT – THE ROMANCE BEGINS
Although Tristan, or Tristram as he became in English, is one of the best known Arthurian knights, he doesn’t really belong in the Arthurian legend. He was not part of the original stories but infiltrated them via the first prose Tristan in the 1240s. The original story and characters had lives of their own.
1. The original Tristan
The name Tristan, or Drystan, is derived from the Pictish Drust, a name of obscure origin, but which may derive from the Celtic drude, meaning “druid”, and may have been a title for Pictish priest-kings. There were several Pictish kings called Drust who lived during the Arthurian period (see Table 3.5).
The earliest is Drust mac Erp, ruler of the Picts from about 424 to 453, during whose reign Cunedda moved south to Wales, and the Pictish raid took place that led to the Alleluia victory of Germanus. Drust may also have been king at the time that an irate St Patrick wrote to Ceretic, the British ruler of Alclud, berating Ceretic’s soldiers for capturing recently baptised Christians in Ireland, and selling them as slaves to the Picts.
The dates for Patrick have been subject to revision. His mission to Ireland is traditionally, based on the Annals, dated to 432 and he remained there until his death, c. 459–462. His letter to Ceretic is usually placed about halfway through that period, or about 447, towards the end of Drust mac Erp’s reign. But the revised dates have Patrick’s Irish mission starting in 456, and place his death in 493. This in turn places the letter to Ceretic in the early 470s. Fortuitously, the ruler of the Picts at this time was another “Drust”, called Drest Gurthinmoch. This Drust ruled from about 468–498, which links him to the period of Arthur’s battle campaign. The Tristan story includes an Irish warrior who exacts tribute from Tristan’s uncle King Mark, thus suggesting a distant memory of Drest exacting tribute by way of slaves from the British or Irish.
There may be other clues in Scotland. Near Gatehouse of Fleet in Galloway is Trusty’s Hill (“Drust’s Hill”), which has some unusually carved Pictish stones yet is outside the traditional Pictish area, perhaps suggesting a successful Pictish raid on the British kingdom of Strathclyde. Near to Trusty’s Hill is another hillfort, the Mote of Mark, which seems more than coincidence.
Whenever Tristan is mentioned in Celtic tales, he is given the patronymic ap Tallwch, the Brythonic form of the Pictish Talorg. The Pictish inheritance passed through the female line, usually through the sister of the preceding king, and, intriguingly, Drest Gurthinmoch was the grandson of the sister of Talorg ap Aniel.
There were several other Drests. Another by that name, Drest mac Giromt, ruled from about 513 to 533, and would have fought against the Gododdin. What is interesting about him is that his sister may have married Maelgwyn Gwynedd, since it has long been believed that the Pictish king Brude mac Maelchion was the son of Maelgwyn’s union with a Pictish princess. There is one pedigree, recorded in Bonedd yr Arwyr, which connects Maelgwyn and a certain Trystan, giving Maelgwyn’s mother Meddyf as Trystan’s neice. However, this would make a distinction between Drest and Trystan.
There are two other cases in which the names Drust and Talorg come together. Drest mac Munait succeeded Talorg mac Mordeleg in 552. Though not apparently related, the names appear together in the Pictish king lists, and recorders may have presumed a father-son relationship. The second example is a Drust mac Talorcen, who ruled for one year from 781–782 and whose father went by the name of Dubthalorc, or Black Talorc. Although this is outside the Arthurian period, it is within a generation of the time when the Celtic oral legends started to come together during the reign of Merfyn Frych in the 820s.
The name Drust does have a Cornish connection, through the famous Tristan Stone just north of Fowey. Its worn inscription reads: DRUSTANS HIC IACET CUNOMORI FILIUS (“Here lies Drustan, the son of Cunomorus.”) None of the Pictish Drusts had a father called Cunomorus. In fact, the one well-known Cunomorus, or Conmor, didn’t even live in Britain, but in Brittany, in the 550s, and is remembered in the lives of various saints as a tyrant. He was a Comes (count), of Léon, who seized power over Domnonée, murdering the king, Ionas, or Jonas, and throwing the heir Iudwal into prison. He then married the king’s widow, Leonore. There was considerable opposition to Conmor, including from Armel (one of the suggested manifestat
ions of Arthur). Iudwal eventually recovered the throne, and Conmor was killed in battle. Gregory of Tours, the one reliable historian in all of this, makes him less of a tyrant and records that he gave sanctuary to Macliau, a neighbouring chieftain fleeing from his own brother. We also know that the usurped son Iudwal succeeded to the throne and that his grandson Judicaël flourished from about 610–640, thus dating Iudwal’s youth to the 550s.
The hagiographer Wrmonoc, in the Life of St. Paul Aurelian (880s), refers to a King Marcus, also called Quonomorius, who might seem to be the same man as Conmor, but there is no evidence to support this. It is probable that Wrmonoc connected two contemporary rulers, one of Domnonée in Armorica, and one of Dumnonia in south-west Britain. The Dumnonian ruler is always referred to as March ap Meirchion, who lived in the 550s and 560s (see Table 3.10), certainly close enough to Conmor to suggest that they were contemporaries.
Conmor is the abbreviated Latin version of the Welsh Cynfor, and Cynfor ap Tudwal was March ap Meirchion’s great-grandfather. It may be that, if Wrmonoc was working from a corrupt pedigree, he may have seen the names “March Cynfor” run together and made the wrong conclusion. Rachel Bromwich has suggested, in “The Tristan of the Welsh”, included in The Arthur of the Welsh, that Cynfor may be the same man as the Cunomor on the Fowey stone. Cynfor is a generation earlier than Arthur of Badon, and if he were the father of an otherwise unrecorded Drust, that Drust could have been associated with Arthur’s warriors. However, he certainly would not be of the same generation as March’s nephew.
