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A Reading of Robert De Boron
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
Extract
In writing the chapter on “The Work of Robert de Boron and the Didot Perceval” for Arthurian Literature in the Middle Ages, Pierre Le Gentil shows that many questions remain unanswered for readers of the Metrical Joseph. Beyond the statements which we understand as the poet's—that at the time when he told the story of the graal he was with his lord Gautier de Montbéliard in peace, that no one had yet told the story, and that he intends to continue with stories of Alain, Petrus, Moyses, and Bron—we have been guided in our reading largely by conjecture. From the fragment of the Merlin which follows the Metrical Joseph in MS. fr. 20047 of the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris, we can see that the poet places the two works within the concept of the struggle between Christ and Satan for the soul of man. Several of his sources have been pointed out; but beyond a few conclusions from the text itself, a reader wonders at the strange combination of Christian tradition and Celtic legend which Robert de Boron has effected in these two works. Discussions have been complicated by manuscripts of works related in various ways to the poems of MS. fr. 20047, and by the proliferation of stories of the Grail following Robert de Boron's Christianization of Celtic stories which had been circulating for about a hundred years before his time.
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- Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1965
References
1 Ed. R. S. Loomis (Oxford, 1959), pp. 251–252; hereafter cited as A.L.M.A.
2 Roman de l'estoire dou Graal, ed. W. A. Nitze, CFMA, 57 (Paris, 1927), pp. 1–7, 126–130.
3 See Matthew xxvi.6 and Mark xiv.3.
4 On the language, see Nitze, “Messire Robert de Boron: Enquiry and Summary,” Speculum, xxviii (1953), 280–282.
5 Giselbertus, sculpteur d'Autun (Paris, 1960), pp. 26–27, 137, 142–143.
6 Ibid., p. 16.
7 Fr. Urbain Plancher, Histoire générale et particulière de Burgogne, 4 vols. (Dijon, 1739–81), i, 27, 186–381, and documents arranged chronologically and numbered, following p. 532.
8 Jean Frappier, “Chrétien de Troyes,” A.L.M.A., pp. 157–191.
9 For the identification of Avalon with Glastonbury and the questions it raises, see Le Gentil, A.L.M.A., pp. 252–253 and notes.
10 Grivot and Zarnecki, p. 15.
11 Dom Philibert Schmitz, Histoire de l'Ordre de Saint-Benoît, 7 vols. (Liège, 1948–49), i, 339.
12 Grivot and Zarnecki, p. 16.
13 Ed. William Roach, The Continuations of the Old French Perceval of Chrétien de Troyes, 3 vols. (Philadelphia, 1949–55), i, 44, 49. See also MSS. E, M, Q, and U, vss. 5133–37 (ed. W. Roach and R. H. Ivy, Jr.), ii, 149–150.
14 Chronicles of the Reigns of Stephen, Henry II, and Richard 1, ed. Richard Howlett, R.S., 4 vols. (London, 1884–89), ii, 696–708.
15 R. W. Eyton, Court, Household and Itinerary of Henry II (London, 1878), pp. 268, 271–273, 276–277, 287.
16 Abbé Félix Bernard, Histoire de Pontcharra-sur-Breda et du mandement d'Avalon (Chambéry, 1964), pp. 27–59.
17 For the genealogy of the family, see ibid., p. 43.
18 In the genealogy Pierre is called “seigneur en Angleterre en 1200.” See the confirmation by King John in Rotuli Chartarum, ed. T. D. Hardy, 2 vols. (London, 1837), i, 80.
19 The passage substituted is from Der Prosaroman von Joseph von Arimathie, ed. Georg Weidner (Oppeln, 1881), 1128–78.
20 Schmitz, v, 143; vi, 173.
21 Magna Vita Sancti Hugonis, ed. D. L. Douie and H. Farmer, 2 vols. (London, 1961–62), i, 86.
22 Roman de l'estoire don Graal, pp. x-xi. Cf. Helaine Newstead, Bran the Blessed in Arthurian Romance (New York, 1939), p. 31.
23 R. M. Woolley, Catalogue of the Manuscripts of Lincoln Cathedral Library (London, 1927), pp. v-x.
24 Ibid., pp. vi, 155.
25 For the life and works of Honorius, see Josef Endres, Honorius Augustodunensis (Munich, 1906); Eva M. Sanford, “Honorius, Presbyter and Scholasticus,” Speculum, xxiii (1948), 397–425; and R. W. Southern, St. Anselm and His Biographer (Cambridge, Eng., 1963), pp. 210, 215.
26 Ernst Kantorowicz, “Anonymi ‘Aurea Gemma‘,” Medievalia et Humanistica, i (1943), 51.
27 Emile Mâle, thinking that Honorius was of Autun, in his L'Art religieux du XIIIe siècle en France, 4th ed. (Paris, 1919), pp. 427–428, says that the Elucidarium of Honorius supplied the artistic formula which influenced the sculptures of Giselbertus at St. Lazare.
28 J. J. Parry and R. A. Caldwell, “Geoffrey of Monmouth,” A.L.M.A., pp. 72–79.
29 Woolley, p. 154.
30 St. Hugh's care of lepers is emphasized in the Vita Cartusiana of 1609, trans. Herbert Thurston, The Life of Saint Hugh of Lincoln (London, 1898), pp. 612–613.
31 Ibid., p. 348.
32 The familiar texts were: Acts iii.25; Romans xi.27; Galatians iii.17; Hebrews viii.8–10; x.10, 29; xiii.20.
33 Of the many texts, see Exodus vi.3–5, 16–18; Deut. xxxi.9, 25–26; I Chron. vi.2, 18; xv.2–9; xxiii.12, 19, 27–28.
34 Newstead, pp. 28, 32–36, 41–43, and notes; and R. S. Loomis, “Bron and Other Figures in the ‘Estoire del Saint Graal’,” MLR, xxiv (1929), 427–429.
35 Plancher, i, 362–371; and Frappier, A.L.M.A., p. 158.
36 Pilgrimage of Saewulf to Jerusalem and the Holy Land, trans. W. R. Brownlow, P.P.T.S., No. 21 (London, 1892), pp. viii, 11–12, 24; John of Würzburg, Description of the Holy Land, trans. Aubrey Stewart, P.P.T.S., No. 14 (London, 1890), pp. 58–59; Theodoric of Hirschau, Description of the Holy Places, trans. Aubrey Stewart, P.P.T.S., No. 17 (London, 1891), pp. 45, 53–54.
37 The Itinerary of Benjamin of Tudela, trans. A. Asher, 2 vols. (London, 1840–41), i, 76–77. The tombs are still seen today, though one does not enter the cave. When I visited the mosque in 1963, a guide pointed through an iron grille in the floor to a lamp burning below in the cave where the tombs are located. The building is little changed since the days of the cathedral. Guides point out the cenotaphs in the mosque today, as did Christian guides in the cathedral of the twelfth century.
38 Itinerarium peregrinorum et gesta regis Ricardi, ed. W. Stubbs, in Chronicles and Memorials of the Reign of Richard I, R.S., 2 vols. (London, 1864–65), i, 93, 111–112.
39 Montbéliard“ and ”Montfaucon“; de gue à 2 bars adossés d'or, in Grand Armorial de France, 5 vols. (Paris, 1934–52), v.
40 See “Bar de Lorraine” and “Bar d'Auvergne” in Grand Armorial, i.
41 Arthur Gardner, Medieval Sculpture in France (Cambridge, Eng., 1931), p. 127; and Schmitz, ii, 245, 274; and vi, 65–66.
42 Bernard, pp. 38, 62–64.
43 André Du Chesne, Histoire des Roys, Ducs, et Comtes de Bourgogne et d'Arles (Paris, 1619), pp. 520–524.
44 Plancher, i, 370–381.
45 Villehardouin, La Conquête de Constantinople, ed. E. Farai, 2 vols. (Paris, 1938–39), i, 34.
46 Itinerarium Cambriae, ed. J. F. Dimock, Opera, R.S., 8 vols. (London, 1861–91), vi, 13–14.
47 J. Armitage Robinson, Two Glastonbury Legends (Cambridge, Eng., 1926), pp. 12–17.
48 Ed. G. F. Warner, Opera, viii, 126–129.
49 Magna Vita, i, xxviii.
50 Ed. J. F. Dimock, Opera, vii, 39–42, 83–147.
51 His words are: “Hugo, de Burgundia natus,” ibid., p. 39; and “de remotis imperialis Burgundiae finibus, haud procul ab Alpibus, origines duxit,” p. 89.
52 Ed. J. S. Brewer, Opera, iv, 47–51.
53 Bernard, p. 43.
54 This article was read in part before members of the Radcliffe Institute for Independent Study in May 1964. In the course of the work over several years in several countries, I have been indebted to Dr. Nita Scudder Baugh and to Professors Grace Frank, William Roach, Giles Constable, and Lt. Col. Sumner Willard. I wish also to thank Miss Joan Brockman for help with particular characteristics of Francien-Picard and Burgundian of the twelfth century.