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ARTHURIAN STUDIES IN
HONOUR OF P.J.C. FIELD
Edited by Bonnie Wheeler
Arthurian Studies
ARTHURIAN STUDIES LVII
ARTHURIAN STUDIES
IN HONOUR OF P.J.C. FIELD
The essays in this volume celebrate the career of Peter Field, Professor of English at
the University of Wales, Bangor. A distinguished Arthurian scholar, he is particu-
larly well-known for his work on Malory’s Morte Darthur. Fittingly, this special
interest is reflected by the contributors to this volume, which has a strong focus on
Malory; there are many new insights into Malory’s text and sources, identifying
him as a keen and critical reader, and a powerful stylist. However, a wide variety of
other Arthurian and associated material is also covered; the chapters range over the
whole field of Arthurian vernacular texts and include new studies of early French
and German texts as well as an analysis of the impact of Arthurian materials on
Galician-Portuguese poetry.
BONNIE WHEELER is Director of Medieval Studies at Southern Methodist Univer-
sity, Dallas, Texas.
ARTHURIAN STUDIES
General Editor: Norris J. Lacy
ISSN 0261–9814
IN HONOUR OF
P.J.C. FIELD
D. S. BREWER
© Contributors 2004
Disclaimer:
Some images in the original version of this book are not
available for inclusion in the eBook.
Abbreviations ix
Foreword Bonnie Wheeler xi
Professor Peter Field: An Appreciation Margaret Locherbie-Cameron xiii
10 Wigalois and Parzival: Father and Son Roles in the German Romance of 101
Gawain’s Son
NEIL E. THOMAS
11 Reading between the Lines: A Vision of the Arthurian World Reflected 117
in Galician-Portuguese Poetry
AMÉLIA P. HUTCHINSON
12 The Lost Beginning of The Jeaste of Syr Gaweyne and the Collation of 133
Bodleian Library MS Douce 261
MALDWYN MILLS
18 Malory and Middle English Verse Romance: The Case of Sir Tristrem 217
PHILLIPA HARDMAN
Bonnie Wheeler
Southern Methodist University
Professor Peter Field: An Appreciation
MARGARET LOCHERBIE-CAMERON
medieval Scots was no impediment; Peter delivered them all with conviction.
Students who experienced this tour de force would find it hard to reconcile with
Peter’s rare and reluctant appearances on stage as a member of the Staff Dramatic
Society, but less so with his virtuoso performance as Noddy in a balloon debate for
the entertainment of the Bangor English Society. This perhaps unexpected talent for
performance may underline the success of his role as ‘distinguished professor ready
to talk to everyone’, a role at which Peter excels and one which contributes greatly
to the success of departmental Open Days.
The respect shown to Peter by his students is more than shared by his colleagues.
For many years he has acted as Senior Postgraduate Tutor, with responsibility for
admitting postgraduates, overseeing their progress and assessment, and, most
arduous of all, carefully guiding the examination boards through the minute details
and procedures of the examination process. In all his administration, as in his
teaching and research, Peter pays such meticulous attention to detail that his judge-
ments go unquestioned, whether they relate to an examination mark or a disputed
reading of an obscure passage. Whether his manuscript work created or evolved
from his temperament is unclear, but it certainly relates to his critical position; he
prefers fact and logical deduction to critical theorizing, respects the integrity of the
text (once he has established what it is) and is deeply suspicious of new or fashion-
able ideologies. That the English Department’s current syllabus is firmly traditional
owes much to his influence.
His academic status is, however, only one side of Peter’s personality; it does not
include his bubbling enthusiasm for his research projects, his kindness, his quick
sense of the ridiculous, the generous hospitality he and Vanessa offer, or his pride in
his two talented daughters. I have now worked with Peter for many years, and
greatly value him as a wise and loyal colleague, but primarily as a good friend. His
retirement will be a loss to the English Department, but I am proud to contribute on
their behalf and my own to this testament to the respect in which he is so widely
held.
1
FANNI BODGANOW
1 Gerald Herman, ‘A note on medieval anti-judaism, as reflected in the Chansons de geste’, Annuale
mediaevale (Duquesne University), 14 (1973): 63–73.
2 La Queste del Saint Graal, Roman du XIIIe siècle, ed. A. Pauphilet, CFMA (Paris, 1923, repr. 1949,
1967, 1980, 1984). I am preparing a new edition of the Queste in collaboration with Mrs Anne Berrie
for the Lettres gothiques series. In the present paper, italics in quoted material are my own.
3 F. Bogdanow, ‘An Interpretation of the Meaning and Purpose of the Vulgate Queste del Saint Graal in
the Light of the Mystical Theology of St Bernard’, in The Changing Face of Arthurian Romance:
Essays on Arthurian Prose Romances in memory of Cedric E. Pickford, ed. A. Adams, A. H. Diverres,
K. Stern and K. Varty (Cambridge, UK, 1986), pp. 23–46. See also J. Chaurant, ‘La vieille loi et la
nouvelle loi dans la Queste del Saint Graal’, Annales du C.E.S.E.R.E. 1 (1978): 25–37; repr. in Les
parlers et les hommes (Paris, 1992), pp. 407–20; A.M. D’Arcy, ‘Li Anemis Meismes: Satan and Syna-
gogue in La Queste del Saint Graal’, Medium Ævum 66 (1997): 207–35.
2 FANNI BODGANOW
blood be on us and our children!” as a result of which they were put to shame and
lost themselves and all they had’ (‘Et la voiz qui de la tombe issoit senefie la
dolereuse parole qu’il distrent a Pilate le prevost: “Li sans de lui soit sor nos et sor
nos enfanz!” Et por cele parole furent il honi et perdirent aux et quant qu’il avoient’
Queste, p. 39.16–19). And in order to contrast the ‘hardness of the Jews’ with the
Saracens, the Queste precedes the incident of the tomb with the account of how the
Saracen king Ewalach became a Christian, adopted the name Mordrain and subse-
quently freed Josephé who had been imprisoned by Crudel, the Saracen king of
Great Britain, and brought about the conversion of the whole of the country (Queste,
pp. 32.6–33.29).4
Gauvain and Lancelot’s exploits which follow deal respectively with the themes
of the hardened and repentant sinners, but with the second half of Perceval’s adven-
tures the writer of the Queste returns to the underlying theme of the perfidy of the
adherents of the Old Law. On the rock in the island where by chance Perceval had
arrived, he went to the aid of a lion attacked by a serpent that had carried off the
lion’s cub (Queste, p. 94.1–27). That same night, while asleep, he had a vision: an
old lady seated on a serpent, while the younger, more beautiful lady, rode a lion
(Queste, pp. 96.31–97.4). The young lady alerts Perceval that next morning he will
have to fight a battle against ‘the most dreaded champion of the world’ and if he is
defeated he would lose more than a limb: he would incur everlasting shame (Queste,
p. 97.6–12). The old lady, for her part, reprimands Perceval for having slain a beast
of hers, the serpent (Queste, pp. 97.17–98.2). Justifying his action, Perceval claims
that the lion is of a nobler nature and does not have the same evil disposition as the
serpent (‘por ce que li lyons est de plus gentil nature que li serpenz et de plus haut
afere, et por ce que je vi que li lyons estoit meins mesfesanz que li serpenz, corui je
sus au serpent et l’ocis’ (Queste, p. 98.6–9). Next morning, while Perceval was
pondering over the vision he had, a boat arrives in which there was a man dressed
like a priest (Queste, p. 99.12–17). At Perceval’s request, the priest tells him the
meaning of the vision he had that night. The lady sitting on the lion, he explains,
signifies the New Law, the lion representing Christ (Queste, p. 101.23–4). As for the
lady riding on the serpent, ‘she is the Synagogue, the first Law which became irrele-
vant as soon as Christ introduced the New Law’ (‘ce est la Synagogue, la premiere
Loi, qui fu ariere mise, si tost come Jhesucrist ot aporté avant la Novele Loi’ Queste,
p. 103.5–7). And the serpent, the priest adds, ‘denotes the Scriptures wrongly under-
stood and wrongly interpreted, in other words hypocrisy, heresy, iniquity and mortal
sin, namely the Devil himself’ (‘Et li serpenz qui la porte, ce est l’Escriture
mauvesement entendue et mauvesement esponse, ce est ypocrisie et heresie et
iniquitez et pechié mortel, ce est li anemis meismes: ce est li serpenz qui par son
orgueil fu gitez de paradis’ Queste, p. 103.7–10). Nor is this all. When the following
day Perceval is tempted by a beautiful damsel, the priest explains to him that the
damsel is no other than the Devil who had encouraged Eve to pluck the apple from
the tree, ‘the serpent on which the previous day he, Perceval, had seen the old lady
4 In order to contrast again the ‘Old Law’ with the Saracens, the Queste repeats in the first half of
Perceval’s adventures, though in much greater detail, the account of Josephé’s imprisonment by King
Crudel culminating in the death of Crudel and his men at the hands of the converted Mordrain and his
people (Queste, pp. 83.21–85.5).
THE GRAIL ROMANCES AND THE OLD LAW 3
ride’ (‘Li anemis qui ce li ot conseillié, ce fu li serpenz que tu veis avant hier la
vieille dame chevauchier, ce fu la damoisele qui ersoir te vint veoir’ Queste,
p. 113.22–5). In other words, it is the Old Law – the Devil – who day and night
wages war on the knights of Jesus Christ and constantly lies in wait for them (‘Et de
ce que ele te dist que ele guerreoit nuit et jor dist ele voir, . . . car il ne sera ja hore
que ele ne gait les chevaliers Jhesuscrist . . .’ Queste, p. 113.25–8).
One of Bors’s adventures is no less significant with regard to the Queste author’s
attitude to the Old Law. He arrives one day by chance at the house of a beautiful, but
poorly dressed, young lady, who at that moment receives news that her older sister
has taken from her two of her castles, which she would not return to her unless she
found a champion to fight her cause against Priadan le Noir. The reason for the
dispute between the sisters, as the younger one explains, is that King Amans
formerly loved her older sister to whom he gave control of her lands. But this older
sister initiated harsh and cruel and unjust customs which enabled her to have a large
number of her people put to death (‘ele . . . amena costumes mauveses et ennuieuses
ou il n’avoit point de droiture . . . par quoi ele mist a mort grant partie de ses genz’
Queste, p. 169.20–2). The king, on being aware of her evil actions, exiled her and
gave the younger sister control of the land. On his death, however, the older sister
immediately waged war on the younger sister (Queste, p. 169.22–8). Now the
younger sister, as a hermit explains to Bors, symbolizes Holy Church which upholds
Christendom in true faith (‘par li entendons nos Sainte Eglyse, qui tient sainte
crestienté en droite foi’ Queste, pp. 185.8–9), while the older sister represents the
‘Old Law, the enemy that constantly wages war on Holy Church and her people’
(‘Par l’autre dame . . . entendons nos la Vielle Loi, li anemis qui toz dis guerroie
Sainte Eglyse et les suens’ Queste, p. 185.10–13). Nor is this all. When Bors had
vanquished Priadam, he threatened the people who held their land from the older
sister that he would destroy them if they did not abandon the older sister. And indeed
those who refused, ‘were killed and disinherited and driven from the land’ (‘Si i ot
assez des homes qui firent homage a la juene dame. Et cil qui ne li voldrent fere
furent ocis et deserité et chacié de la terre’ Queste, p. 174.22–4).
The author of the Vulgate Queste was, moreover, not the only writer to use the
Grail theme to express his attitude to the Old Law. Chrétien de Troyes, to whom we
owe the first Grail romance, the Conte du Graal,5 dedicated to his patron, Philip
Augustus, count of Flanders, who died in June 1191 during the Third Crusade, was
no less an anti-semite. In his first reference, in speaking of Christ he states simply
that the ‘Jews did him much shame’ (‘Jhesucrist, le prophete sainte/ Cui juïf fisent
honte mainte’ ll. 581–2). But on the second occasion, in the incident where one
Good Friday Perceval meets three knights walking barefoot who remind him of
what day it is, Chrétien, in the words of one of the knights, advocates genocide. ‘The
false Jews’, he says, ‘ought to be exterminated like dogs’: ‘Li faus juïf par lor envie,/
C’on devroit tüer come chiens,/ Firent als mal et nos grans biens’ (ll. 6292–4).
Robert de Boron, a Burgundian knight or cleric, who shortly after Chrétien’s
5 Chrétien de Troyes, Le Roman de Perceval ou le Conte du Graal, ed. W. Roach, TLF (Geneva and Paris,
1956, repr. 1959); Le Conte du Graal (Perceval), ed. F. Lecoy, CFMA (Paris, vol. I, 1975; vol. II, 1981).
My references are to the Roach edition.
4 FANNI BODGANOW
Conte du Graal, probably between 1191 and 1212,6 wrote his early history of the
Grail, the Roman de l’Estoire dou Graal, known also as the Joseph,7 was perhaps
the most anti-semitic of all the romance writers. His remarks occur largely in the
first half of his narrative in the section dealing with the events leading up to the
Crucifixion. It is not the theme in itself, but the language that Robert de Boron uses,
so much so that the redactor who early in the thirteenth century turned his verse
romance into prose,8 though keeping certain of Robert de Boron’s anti-semitic
comments and indeed reinforcing them at times, nevertheless felt himself obliged to
remove others. The following are a few examples of the language Robert de Boron
used compared with the language of the prose writer.
(1) In the opening section where Robert explains that at the time when Christ was
on earth the land of Judea was under the rule of Rome, the governor Pilate had under
him a servant, Joseph, who loved Christ greatly but did not dare show his feelings
‘on account of the Jews who were of an evil way of life’:
The prose version omits the offensive remark ‘la gent de pute eire’ and says simply:
Icil Pilate avoit un sien soldoier qui avoit non Joseph et servoit Pilate. Et cil sivoit
Jhesucrist em plusors lius, et si l’ama molt en son cuer, et si n’en osoit faire semblant por
les autres Juis. (ed. Cerquiglini, p. 19; ed. Roach, p. 316, ll. 41–3)
(2) When the Jews brought Christ to Pilate, according to both the verse and prose
versions ‘they accused him as much as they could’:
(3) At the point where Joseph asks Pilate for Christ’s body, he comments in
Robert de Boron’s version ‘that he was wrongfully hung on the cross’, but here the
6 Cf. F. Bogdanow, ‘Robert de Boron’s vision of Arthurian Romance’, Arthurian Literature 14, ed. James
P. Carley and Felicity Riddy (1996), pp. 19–52 (pp. 19–20).
7 Robert de Boron, Le Roman de l’Estoire dou Graal, ed. William A. Nitze, CFMA (Paris, 1927).
8 ‘The Modena Text of the Prose Joseph d’Arimathie’, ed. W. Roach, Romance Philology 9 (1955–56):
313–42; ‘The Middle French Redaction of Robert de Boron’s Joseph d’Arimathie’, ed. Richard
O’Gorman, Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 122 (1978): 261–85; Le Roman du
Graal: Manuscrit de Modène, par Robert de Boron. Texte établi et présenté par Bernard Cerquiglini,
Bibliothèque médiévale 10/18 (1981), includes (1) pp. 17–71: prose rendering of Robert’s Joseph; (2)
pp. 73–195: prose rendering of Robert’s Merlin; (3) pp. 197–302: Didot Perceval (cf. n. 10). My refer-
ences to the prose Joseph are to the Cerquiglini edition.
THE GRAIL ROMANCES AND THE OLD LAW 5
prose redaction is stronger, saying that the ‘Jews made him wrongfully suffer
martyrdom’:
(4) Having had his request accepted by Pilate, Joseph makes his way to the cross,
but until Pilate intervenes in both versions the Jews refuse to let Joseph take the
body down from the cross. And here too the prose writer is more emphatic in his
comments:
(6) Similarly, in the following lines, at the point where Nychodemus, armed with
pincers and a hammer, arrives at the cross, Robert de Boron not only says that the
people (namely the Jews) who saw this were not pleased, but refers to them as ‘li
chien puant’ (‘stinking dogs’), a remark omitted in the prose redaction:
Nychodemus . . .
Tenailles prist et un martel
Qu’ilec trouva, mout l’en fu bel,
Et vinrent a la crouiz errant.
Quant ce virent li chien puant [=Jews]
Si se sunt de cele part treit,
6 FANNI BODGANOW
(7) On the other hand, later at the point where Christ’s tomb is found empty, both
Robert de Boron and the prose version present the Jews as vicious people who after
beating up Joseph threw him in prison:
Chiés un riche homme l’ont mené,
Forment l’unt batu et frapé . . .
Avalé l’ont en la prison. (Nitze, ll. 695–6, 701)
Lors le prisent li Juif, si le batirent molt durement et l’avalerent en le cartre. (Cerq., p.
26; Roach, p. 320, ll. 208–9)
(8) However, in the passage where Christ appears to Joseph in prison and Joseph
asks him if he is indeed Christ, the prose version is more restrained in its wording.
Whereas in the verse redaction the people to whom Judas sold Christ are not only
said to have beaten up Christ, but are referred to as the ‘Juïs pautonniers’, in the
prose version it is simply stated that the Jews took Christ to Pilate:
– Comment, sire? – Joseph li dist,
Estes vous donc Jhesus . . .
Cil que Judas trente deniers
Vendi as Juïs pautonniers
Et qu’il fusterent et batirent . . .? (Nitze, ll. 779–80, 783–5)
‘Comment, Sire, fait Joseph, estes vos donques Jhesucris de Nazareth, . . . que Judas vendi
trente deniers et que li Juif prisent et menerent devant Pilate, qui fu mis en la crois?’
(Cerq., p. 28; Roach, p. 321, ll. 238–40)
(9) And slightly further on in the passage where Joseph is still in prison, in the
verse redaction Joseph is reassured by Christ that their mutual love will be openly
apparent though very harmful for ‘the evil disbelieving Jews’. The prose writer
preserves the passage, but significantly removes the words ‘evil Jews’:
Nostre amour en apert venra
Et chaucuns savoir la pourra.
Meis ele sera mout nuisanz
As mauveis Juïs mescreanz. (Nitze, ll. 843–6)
Tu m’as amé celéement et jou toi, et saces bien que nostre amors revenra devant tous et
sera molt nuisable as mescreans. (Cerq., p. 29; Roach, p. 321, ll. 262–3)
(10) Similarly, in one of the passages referring to the Crucifixion, where Robert
de Boron as on an earlier occasion (see above, example 1) refers to the Jewish
people as being ‘de pute eire’, the prose version again removes this offensive
expression:
Et quant pis ne li peurent faire
Li Juïf, qui sunt de pute eire,
THE GRAIL ROMANCES AND THE OLD LAW 7
Si le firent crucefier
En la crouiz et martirïer. (Nitze, ll. 1059–62)
Et iceles gens donerent tant et promisent a çaus qui le pooient faire, por çou qu’il le
haoient, qu’il le prisent et . . . le crucifierent et ocisent.
(Cerq., p. 33; Roach, p. 323, ll. 346–8)
(11) In the passage, too, where Vaspasien’s son asks his father to allow him to
avenge Christ’s death, the prose version again removes the denigrating words ‘these
stinking scoundrels’ which Robert de Boron uses in referring to the Jewish people:
Biaus peres . . .
Que me leissiez aler vengier
La mort mon seigneur droiturier,
Que cil larrun puant Juïs
Unt si vileinnement ocis. (Nitze, ll. 1733, 1735–8)
. . . et je proi mon pere et mon segnor que je l’aille vengier de ceus qui l’ont ocis. (Cerq., p.
43; Roach, p. 328, ll. 574–5)
But not only did Robert de Boron express his attitude by the use of denigrating
expressions. Even more sinister is his concurrence with the forced conversion of the
Jews or death.9 In the passage where Vaspasien asks Joseph how he can save the
Jews, Joseph replies ‘only if they are willing to believe in Mary’s son’. The prose
version reinforces this message, adding that the alternative to accepting the Faith is
to ‘perish in body and soul’:
And indeed in an earlier passage where Vaspasien considered Pilate not as guilty of
Christ’s death as he had thought originally, Vaspasien orders, both in the verse and
prose version, the murder of the Jews by having them tied to horses’ tails and
dragged along until they were dead:
9 On the forced conversion of Jews in the Middle Ages, see Solomon Grayzel, The Church and the Jews
in the XIIIth Century (Philadelphia, 1933), pp. 13–15; Robert Chazan, Medieval Jewry in Northern
France: A Political and Social History (Baltimore and London, 1973), p. 12: ‘According to a variety of
extant sources, the years between 1007 and 1012 saw a series of edicts across northern Europe, posing
to the Jews the alternatives of conversion to Christianity and expulsion, or, on occasion, death.’
8 FANNI BODGANOW
Finally, when the Jews were unable to hand over Christ’s body, Vaspasien orders
them to be exterminated, again both in the verse and prose version, though the latter
omits the reference to some of the Jews being burnt alive, saying instead that a
countless number were killed:
Not all the Grail romances are of course equally anti-semitic. Characteristic is the
Didot Perceval (le Perceval en prose),10 composed most probably before the Vulgate
Cycle11 and forming the third part of a trilogy of which the first two are the prose
rendering of Robert de Boron’s Joseph and Merlin. Though the writer made use both
of the Joseph and Chrétien’s Perceval, he rejected their anti-semitic comments. Thus
in the account of Perceval’s second visit to the Grail castle where Bron, the Fisher
King, teaches his grandson ‘toute la creance Nostre Segnor’ (p. 241, l. 1870), he
simply mentions how the noble men of the land of Judea had conceived hatred for
the Lord and how a false disciple had sold him to the Jews (‘le vendi as Juïs’, p. 241,
l. 1874). But particularly striking is an earlier passage where, as in Chrétien,
Perceval encounters on Good Friday knights engaged in prayers: in contract to
Chrétien, when the knights remind Perceval of what day it is, the Didot Perceval
omits the anti-judaic sentiments expressed by Chrétien (Didot Perceval, p. 220,
ll. 1459–64).
As regards the verse continuations of Chrétien’s Conte du Graal, the shorter
version of the First and Second Continuations date from before the Vulgate Cycle,
the longer versions of these two continuations as well as those of Manessier12 and
10 The Didot Perceval according to the Manuscripts of Modena and Paris, ed. W. Roach (Philadelphia,
1941, repr. Geneva, 1977). My references to the Didot Perceval are to the Roach edition.
11 Cf. F. Bogdanow, ‘La trilogie de Robert de Boron: le Perceval en prose’, in Grundriss der Romanischen
Literaturen des Mittelalters, ed. Jean Frappier and Reinhold R. Grimm (Heidelberg, 1978), vol. IV,
part 1, pp. 513–35; part 2, pp. 173–7.
12 The Continuations of the Old French Perceval of Chrétien de Troyes, ed. W. Roach (Philadelphia):
vol. I, The First Continuation: Redaction of MSS TVD (1949, reprinted 1965); vol. II, The First Contin-
uation: Redaction of MSS EMQU (1950, reprinted 1965); vol. III, part 1, The First Continuation:
Redaction of MSS ALPRS (1952); vol. III, part 2, Glossary of the First Continuation, L. Foulet (1955);
vol. IV, The Second Continuation (1971); vol. V, The Third Continuation by Manessier (1983).
THE GRAIL ROMANCES AND THE OLD LAW 9
Gerbert de Montreuil13 postdate the Vulgate.14
The writer of the shorter versions
does not include any references to the Jewish people, while those in the longer
redaction of the First Continuation (both those of MSS EMQU, Roach vol. II, and
MSS ASP, Roach Vol. III) are less offensive as compared to those of Chrétien and
Robert de Boron. In referring to the Sword with the strange hangings, the damsel
whom Gauvain questions tells him that Joseph brought this sword with him when he
came to Britain after Christ’s death ‘whom the Jews, the traitors, had wrongfully
crucified’ (‘Que li juïf, li traïtor,/ Orent crocefïé a tort’, Roach, II, 136, ll. 4692–3).
Later, in the account of Gauvain’s arrival at the Grail castle, in response to Gauvain’s
questions concerning the bleeding lance, the king stressed that ‘the Jews and the
sinners who killed Christ in treason ought to be greatly afraid’ (‘Molt devront avoir
grant peor/ Li juïf et li pecheor/ Qui l’ocistrent par traïson’, Roach, II, 523,
ll. 17527–9, cf. Roach, III.1, 478, ll. 7455–7). And in informing Gauvain of the
history of the Grail, the king mentions how Joseph, who had collected Christ’s blood
in the Grail, prayed daily before the shrine where he had placed the Grail, until his
own people out of envy denounced him to the ‘wicked Jews’ who insured that he
would be imprisoned:
In the Second Continuation, which has a strong religious overtone and where
Perceval reaches the Grail castle, there are, as in the shorter version of the First
Continuation, no anti-semitic comments. Instead the writer underlines that ‘he who
forgets God in order to seek earthly esteem is very foolish’ (Roach, IV, 508, ll.
32486–7). Similarly, Manessier’s contribution, which follows on from where the
Second Continuation ends and of which the Vulgate Queste is an important source,
includes no anti-semitic references. On the only occasion when Jews are mentioned,
in the episode where the Fisher King tells Perceval the history of the Holy Lance,
the writer makes it clear that it was Longinus (Longis) who struck Christ on the
cross ‘where the Jews had hung him’ (‘Ou li juïf l’orent pandu’ (Roach, V, 4, ll.
32660–2).
As for Gerbert de Montreuil, he does not include in his composition a single
anti-semitic comment. Rather, he stresses that ‘God did not create knights to kill
people or wage war against them, but to uphold ‘droite justise’ and to defend Holy
Church (vol. III, 58, ll. 15819–22).
13 Gerbert de Montreuil, La Continuation de Perceval, ed. Mary Williams, CFMA (Paris): vol. I (1922);
vol. II (1925), vol. III, ed. Marguerite Oswald (1975).
14 Cf. A.W. Thompson, ‘Additions to Chrétien’s Perceval – Prologues and Continuations’, in Arthurian
Literature in the Middle Ages, ed. R.S. Loomis (Oxford, 1959), pp. 206–17.
10 FANNI BODGANOW
li Rois del Chastel Mor[tel], qui la terre a sesie et le chastel, a fet crier par tout le païs que
tuit cil qui voudront maintenir la Viez Loi et guerpir la Nouvele avront sa garantie et sun
conseil et s’aide, et cil qui fere nel voudront seront destruit et essillié. (I, 235, ll. 5420–4)
That for the Perlesvaus the Jews are the ungrateful enemies is illustrated perhaps
even more vividly in the explanation of the twelve yelping dogs in the belly of the
little white beast: the dogs represent the Jews who, although the Lord had nourished
them, crucified him and who ‘were, and always would be, savage’ (‘li .xii. chien ce
sont li Juïs que Dex a norriz, . . . qui sauvaje sunt et ierent d’ore en avant’, I, 258, ll.
5999–6006). But the Perlesvaus also takes up the theme of conversion to the New
15 Edited most recently by Jean-Paul Ponceau, L’Estoire del Saint Graal, 2 vols., CFMA (Paris, 1997).
16 Le Haut Livre du Graal, Perlesvaus, ed. W.A. Nitze and T. Atkinson Jenkins, 2 vols. (Chicago,
1932–37, repr. New York, 1972). Cf. F. Bogdanow, ‘Le ‘Perlesvaus’, in Grundriss der Romanischen
Literaturen des Mittelalters, ed. Reinhold R. Grimm (Heidelberg, 1984), vol. IV, part 2, 44–67, 177–84.
17 M. Schlauch, ‘The Allegory of Church and Synagogue’, Speculum 24 (1939): 448–64 (449);
J. Chaurand, ‘La vieille loi et la nouvelle loi dans in Queste del Saint Graal’, Annales du Cesere 1
(1978): 25–37; Anne Berthelot, ‘Sarrasins, Juifs et Paiens dans les romans en prose’, in Tolérance et
Intolérance au Moyen Age, ed. D. Buschinger and W. Spiewok (Greifswald, 1997), pp. 15–21.
THE GRAIL ROMANCES AND THE OLD LAW 11
Law or death. When Perlesvaus had vanquished the Chevalier au Dragon who had
threatened the Roïne au Cercle d’Or, the latter, after herself accepting baptism, gave
her people the choice of baptism or death at the hands of Perlesvaus (‘tuit cil qui ne
voudront aler au batesme et croire en la Novele Loi si soient ocis par vostre espee’,
I, 254, ll. 5904–6). And this theme recurs in the story of the conversion of the blind
Queen Jandree who, after recovering her sight, had all those of her people who
refused baptism killed or sent into exile (‘La dame se fist lever et batoier, et tuit cil
qui ne voudrent ansi fere, ele les fist essillier e destruire’, I, 374–7, ll. 9168–252).
Finally, we must mention the Post-Vulgate Queste:18 while its author keeps the
reference to the hardness of the Jews (Vulgate Queste, p. 39, ll. 13–19; Post-Vulgate
Queste, II, § 61, p. 83, ll. 20–8), he does not include in his composition the other
Vulgate sections denigrating the Old Law, having remodelled or omitted certain
portions of the Vulgate Queste, including p. 46, l. 14 – p. 149, l. 6, and p. 167, l. 31 –
p. 187, l. 31. On the other hand, the redactor who incorporated into the Second
Version of the Prose Tristan a large part of the Post-Vulgate Queste, restored to his
version portions of the Vulgate omitted by the Post-Vulgate, including most of the
anti-semitic sections.19
The Grail romances were of course not the only form of literature imbued with
anti-semitism. As Manya Lifschitz-Golden and others have shown, it was very
common, too, in the Mystery plays and chronicles, as well as in the ‘Bibles
moralisées’.20 Nor do the epics form an exception, even though in most of these the
‘enemy’ were the Saracens.21 Already in the earliest epic, the Chanson de Roland,
on the capture of Saragossa, both Synagogues and mosques are destroyed:
That the Grail romances beginning with Chrétien de Troyes should have
expressed anti-semitic sentiments is both surprising and not surprising. It is not
surprising as the writers were in fact reflecting the spirit of their times. Already in
the months preceding the First Crusade in 1096, the persecution of the Jews had
begun first in the Rhineland and then in France.23 Crusaders from Swabia under the
18 Version Post-Vulgate de la Queste del Saint Graal . . ., ed. F. Bogdanow, SATF (Paris), vols. I, II, IV.1
1991; vols. III, IV.2 2001.
19 Cf. Le Roman de Tristan en Prose VIII, ed. B. Guidot and J. Subrenat, TLF (Geneva, 1995), § 56, pp.
123–4, ll. 58–64, § 105, p. 176, ll. 14–31, § 110, p. 181, ll. 3–6, § 120, pp. 192–3, ll. 15–17.
20 Manya Lifschitz-Golden, Les Juifs dans la littérature français du Moyen Age: Mystères, Miracles,
Chroniques (New York, 1935); Gilbert Dahan, ‘Les Juifs dans le théâtre religieux en France du XIIe au
XIVe siècles’, Archives Juives 13 (1977): 1–10; G. Dahan, ‘Les juifs dans les Miracles de Gautier de
Coincy’, Archives Juives 16 (1980): 41–9, 59–68; Bernhard Blumenkranz, ‘La représentation de
Synagoga dans les Bibles moralisées françaises du XIIIe au XVe siècle’, Proceedings of the Israel
Academy of Sciences and Humanities 5 (1970): 7–91; H. Pflaum, ‘Les scènes de Juifs dans la littérature
dramatique du moyen-âge’, Revue des études juives 89 (1930): 111–34.
21 Cf. Gerald Herman’s volume mentioned in n. 1. Also Bernard Guidot, ‘L’image du Juif dans la geste de
Guillaume d’Orange’, Revue des Etudes Juives 137 (1978): 3–25.
22 La Chanson de Roland, ed. F. Whitehead, Blackwell’s French Texts, second edition (Oxford, 1946),
p. 107.
23 Jonathan Riley-Smith, ‘The First Crusade and the Persecution of the Jews’, in Persecution and Tolera-
tion, ed. W.J. Sheils (Oxford, 1984), pp. 51–72; Hans Liebeschütz, ‘The Crusading movement in its
12 FANNI BODGANOW
direction of Count Emicho of Leinigen began their massacres first in Worms and
then in Mainz, Spiers, Cologne.24 The situation in France was no better. On
February 16, 1180, Philip Augustus, Chrétien’s patron, had Jews arrested while they
were at prayer in synagogues and all their property was seized.25 Subsequently, in
April 1182, Philip Augustus expelled the Jewish citizens from his domain in
Northern France under the pretext that they engaged in ritual murders.26 Nor did the
situation improve in later years. As earlier, there was anti-Jewish polemical liter-
ature.27 In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries various papal decrees imposed
restrictions on the Jewish people. For instance Jewish doctors were forbidden to
treat non-Jewish patients.28 And beginning with the Fourth Lateran decree in 1215
Jews and Saracens were obliged to wear distinctive clothing so as to differentiate
them from the Christians.29
On the other hand, it is surprising that amongst the Grail romance writers
Chrétien de Troyes, Robert de Boron, and the authors of the Queste and Perlesvaus
should have been so vehemently anti-semitic. It is surprising because they were
steeped in the mystical theology of Saint Bernard of Clairvaux30 who, in contrast to
Bearing on the Christian attitude towards Jewry’, Journal of Jewish Studies 10 (1959), 97–111; Histoire
des Juifs en France publiée sous la direction de B. Blumenkranz, Collection Franco-Judaïca (Toulouse,
1972), pp. 15–17. For an account of anti-semitism prior to the Crusades, see Rosemary R. Ruether, ‘The
Adversus Judaeos Tradition in the Church Fathers: the Exegesis of Christian Anti-Judaism’, in Aspects
of Jewish Culture in the Middle Ages, ed. Paul E. Szarmach (Albany, 1979), pp. 27–49.
24 Riley-Smith, pp. 51–4. Cf. Norman Cohn, The Pursuit of the Millennium: Revolutionary Millenarians
and Mystical Anarchists of the Middle Ages (London, 1957, reprinted 1961, 1970), pp. 68–70;
J.W. Parkes, The Jew in the medieval community (London, 1938) pp. 61–89; Paul Rousset, Histoire des
Croisades (Paris, 1978), p. 52; Robert Chazan, ‘The Anti-Jewish Violence of 1096: Perpetrators and
Dynamics’, in Religious Violence between Christians and Jews: Medieval Roots, Modern Perspectives,
ed. Anna Sapir Abulafia (Basingstoke, 2002), pp. 31–43.
25 R. Chazan, Medieval Jewry in Northern France, p. 64; Gilbert Dahan, Les intellectuels chrétiens et les
Juifs au Moyen Age (Paris, 1991). On the persecution of the Jews in medieval Europe, see Chazan,
pp. 27–41, 53–5; James Parkes, ‘Church and Synagogue in the Middle Ages’, in Transactions of the
Jewish Historical Society of England (1945–52): 25–33; James Parkes, The Conflict of the Church and
the Synagogue: A study in the origins of antisemitism (London, 1934); J. Trachtenberg, The Devil and
the Jew: The Medieval Conception of the Jew and its relation to Modern Anti-semitism (New Haven,
CT, 1943, repr. 1961, 1983).
26 Chazan, Medieval Jewry, p. 65: Dahan, ‘Les juifs dans les Miracles de Gautier de Coincy’, 39.
B. Monod, ‘Juifs, sorciers et hérétiques au Moyen Age d’après les mémoires d’un moine du xie siècle
(Guibert de Nogent)’, Revue des Etudes Juives 46 (1903): 237–45. Yvonne Friedman, in her article, ‘An
anatomy of Anti-semitism: Peter the Venerable’s letter to Louis VII, King of France (1146)’, in
Bar-Ilan Studies in History, ed. P. Artzi (Ramat-Gan, 1978), pp. 87–102, quotes (p. 93) the following
sentence from one of Peter the Venerable’s letters (ed. Constable, I, 328): ‘Why should we pursue the
enemies of the Christian faith in far and distant lands while vile blasphemers far worse than any
Saracen, namely the Jews, who are not far away from us, but who live in our midst, blaspheme, abuse,
and trample on Christ and the Christian Sacraments so freely and insolently and with impunity’.
27 See B. Blumenkranz, ‘Vie et survie de la polémique antijuive’, in Studia Patristica, ed. Kurt Aland and
F.L. Cross (Berlin, 1957), pp. 460–76. B. Blumenkranz, ‘Une survie médiévale de la polémique
antijuive de Saint Augustin’, Revue du Moyen Age Latin 5 (1949): 193–6; Jeremy Cohen, ‘The Jews as
the killers of Christ in the Latin traditions, from Augustine to the Friars’, Traditio 39 (1983): 1–27.
28 H. Prado-Gaillard, La condition des Juifs dans l’Ancienne France (Paris, Presses Universitaires de
France, 1942), p. 54; Théodore Reinach, Histoire des Israélites (cinquième édition revue et corrigée),
Paris, Librairie Hachette, 1914), pp. 41, 109–10, 123–24, 129–32.
29 G. Kisch, The Yellow Badge in History (New York 1942; originally published in Historica judaica 19,
1957, 89–147). S. Grayzel, The Church and the Jews in the XIII Century (op. cit. above, n. 9), pp.
60–70.
30 Cf. F. Bogdanow, ‘The mystical theology of Bernard de Clairvaux and the meaning of Chrétien de
Troyes’ Conte du Graal’, in Chrétien de Troyes and the Troubadours: Essays in memory of the late
THE GRAIL ROMANCES AND THE OLD LAW 13
the spirit of his time, condemned the massacre of Jews. In his letter 391 addressed to
the English people, he writes ‘The Jews are not to be persecuted, killed or even put
to flight.’31 In letter 393, this one addressed to the archbishop of Mainz, he asks the
question whether ‘it is not a far better triumph for the Church to convince and
convert the Jews than to put them all to the sword’.32
Leslie Topsfield, ed. Peter S. Noble and Linda M. Paterson (Cambridge, UK, 1984), pp. 249–82;
Bogdanow, ‘Robert de Boron’s Vision of Arthurian History’ (see above, n. 6); Bogdanow, ‘An Interpre-
tation of the Meaning and Purpose of the Vulgate Queste (above, n. 3); Bogdanow, ‘Le Perlesvaus’
(above, n. 16).
31 The Letters of St Bernard of Clairvaux, trans. Bruno Scott James (London, 1953, reprinted Stroud,
1998), p. 462.
2
LINDA GOWANS
Textual study indicates that Robert de Boron wrote in prose, and is the author only
of the Joseph part of the cycle associated with him.
This is a revised text of the paper presented at the International Arthurian Congress, Bangor, Wales, in July
2002. I would like to thank those present for their comments and contributions; also the Bibliothèque
Nationale, the British Library and the Institut de Recherche et d’Histoire des Textes for supplying photo-
copies of manuscripts.
1 For example, Pierre Le Gentil, ‘The Work of Robert de Boron and the Didot Perceval’, in Arthurian Lit-
erature in the Middle Ages: A Collaborative History, ed. Roger Sherman Loomis (Oxford, 1959, repr.
London, 2001), pp. 251–62 (esp. p. 256). My subsequent references to the extensive literature on the
Joseph and Merlin will concentrate on work dealing specifically with manuscript relationships.
2 Linda Gowans, ‘The Grail in the West: Prose, Verse and Geography in the Joseph of Robert de Boron’,
Nottingham French Studies 35.2 (Autumn 1996): 1–17.
3 See the contribution by Michel Zink to the discussion ‘La prose française et le “modèle” latin’, Perspec-
tives Médiévales 3 (October 1977): 52–3, and Ludmilla Evdokimova, ‘Vers et prose au début du XIIIe
siècle: Le Joseph de Robert de Boron’, Romania 117 (1999): 448–73 (pp. 451–2 and 471–3), a work
which treats the verse as precedent, but contains many findings relevant to the present discussion. In
‘De monachis rithmos facientibus: Hélinant de Froidmont, Bertran de Born, and the Cistercian General
16 LINDA GOWANS
which, by the end of the twelfth century, included a range of Biblical and ecclesias-
tical matter.4 In a wider European context, Jacob van Maerlant’s 1261 Dutch verse
was avowedly based on the Prose Joseph and Merlin, not on the verse,5 so that a
spirit of enquiry permits us to ask why should there not also have been a thirteenth-
century French versification of pre-existing prose – an unusual situation, but that
fact in itself should not cause the possibility to be dismissed without a close exami-
nation of the evidence.
My previously published work, suggesting the priority of the Prose over the
Verse Joseph, showed how a number of problems in the verse narrative which relate
to the Arthurian future do not arise in the prose (‘The Grail in the West’, 4–8).
Examples include: Joseph free to choose his successors, when the Grail guardians
are specifically to be appointed by divine announcement; two statements in the verse
to the effect that members of the Grail family will be free from harm or injury,
which hardly applies to the future Rich Fisher King; and the declaration that Alain
will never marry, when he is obviously destined to have a son. I suggested that such
anomalies arise because the versifier had not sufficiently familiarized himself with
the story before starting work, or was lacking in background knowledge. Before
moving on to other forms of evidence I would like to take one more example; but
first, an explanation of some of the problems is desirable.
Analysis of the manuscript tradition is forever indebted to the immense work of
the late Professor Richard O’Gorman, whose parallel edition of verse and prose
gives variants from almost all of the seventeen prose manuscripts (some fragmen-
tary).6 He constructed a prose stemma (Joseph, p. 15), which represents the prin-
cipal groupings within two families, y and z (the latter including the two cyclic
manuscripts Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, nouv. acq., fr. 4166 (D), and Modena,
Biblioteca Estense, E. 39 (E) which preserve the Didot/Modena Perceval), but he
Chapter of 1199’, Speculum 55 (1980): 669–85, William D. Paden, Jr notes a statute of the General
Chapter of the Cistercian Order evicting monks who make poems, though he suggests that the prohibi-
tion was not as inclusive as may appear. Professor Carol Chase and Dr Richard Barber have kindly
pointed out to me the latter two references.
4 The nature of early French prose was indicated over a century ago by Paget Toynbee, Specimens of Old
French (IX–XV Centuries) (Oxford, 1892), pp. 47–50, 101–8. More recently, see Brian Woledge and
H.P. Clive, Répertoire des plus anciens textes en prose française depuis 842 jusqu’aux premières
années du XIIIe siècle (Geneva, 1964), including translations of Papal documents (nos. 3, 17); matter to
be recited during offices (4); a commentary on the Psalms (14); hagiographic matter (37); psalters
(39–42); Biblical translations (48, which the editors note is a free rather than a close rendering, 70);
sermons (57–62), and translated sermons (64–5). The text of Oxford, Bodleian Library, Douce 320,
fols. 37–75 (Psalter and canticles in Anglo-Norman), was composed in England in the first half of the
twelfth century – on the role of Anglo-Norman in the development of French prose, see M. Dominica
Legge, Anglo-Norman Literature and its Background (Oxford, 1963, repr. Westport, CT, 1978),
pp. 176–9. I am grateful to Dr Martin Kauffmann for guidance on the materials for this note.
5 Jacob van Maerlant, Historie van den Grale und Boek van Merline, nach der Steinfurter Handschrift,
ed. Timothy Sodmann (Cologne, 1980), vv. 1560–2. On the Dutch writer’s own concerns and attitude to
his source, see Bart Besamusca and Frank Brandsma, ‘Jacob de Maerlant, traducteur vigilant, et la
valeur didactique de son Graal-Merlijn’, in Miscellanea Mediaevalia: Mélanges offerts à Philippe
Ménard, ed. J. Claude Faucon et al. (Paris, 1998), I, 121–31. My thanks go to Dr Brandsma for help
with Maerlant’s text.
6 Robert de Boron, Joseph d’Arimathie: A Critical Edition of the Verse and Prose Versions, ed. Richard
O’Gorman (Toronto, 1995). The MS for which variants are not given is the mid fifteenth-century Paris,
BnF, fr. 1469 (F), edited separately by O’Gorman, ‘The Middle French Redaction of Robert de Boron’s
Joseph d’Arimathie’, Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 122.4 (August 1978):
261–85.
WHAT DID ROBERT DE BORON REALLY WRITE? 17
saw over thirty years ago that there are troublesome variants. In particular, Chantilly,
Musée Condé 644 (K), and Rome, Bibliotheca Apostolica Vaticana, Reg. Lat. 1687
(V), belong to family y but show influence from z.7 In fact, the more one investi-
gates, the more one finds surprising minor agreements between unexpected manu-
script groups. A major problem is the lack of a good early manuscript. All except
two are about a century after composition at the least, and all are believed to date
from after the material had been used in the creation of the Vulgate Cycle. The
complexity of relationships among the surviving copies leaves us wondering how
many lost antecedents can be envisaged.
Particularly unfortunate, and a measure of the difficulties which beset Robert
studies, is a situation in which our earliest manuscripts, Paris, BnF, fr. 748 (C) and
Modena (E), both dated by O’Gorman to the second half of the thirteenth century
(Joseph, p. 7), are the most heavily reworked by helpful scribes; C with an uncon-
trollable urge to prolixity, and the tidy-minded E whose thoughtfulness enables the
production of readable editions and translations today but is less beneficial for
text-critical analysis. For his base, O’Gorman used the fourteenth-century Tours,
Bibliothèque Municipale 951 (T), though its undeniable closeness to the verse by no
means applies in every detail. I have already noted (‘The Grail in the West’, 11–17
passim) a relationship between T, C and the verse, whereas T and C are widely sepa-
rated in O’Gorman’s stemma. The present state of our knowledge supports the
suggestion that some scribes had multiple exemplars: this both Micha and
O’Gorman (independently and for different reasons) indicate in the case of C.8 One
of O’Gorman’s criteria for the selection of his base manuscript is the presence of
authorship and patronage claims, but some of these are not necessarily indicative of
an early date, and could be considered a contrivance: a notable example is the refer-
ence, unique to T, to ‘mon seignor Gautier de Monbeliart, en cui service je sui’
(Joseph, p. 113, with O’Gorman’s equivocal note on p. 425). Indeed, it is a curious
fact that mentions of Robert, his patron or their respective locations do not diminish
with the passage of time – as Emmanuèle Baumgartner observes, ‘Robert de Boron
s’impose progressivement comme le nom emblématique des écrivains du Graal’.9
For example, Robert is more than once claimed as author of the post-Vulgate Merlin
continuation in London, British Library, Add. 38117 (Huth=H),10 though manu-
scripts of this family (including E, to which H is closely related) have had all refer-
ence to Robert and Gautier excised from the Joseph section, an action probably
7 Richard O’Gorman, ‘La Tradition manuscrite du Joseph d’Arimathie en prose de Robert de Boron’,
Revue d’histoire des textes 1 (1971): 145–81 (pp. 171–2).
8 O’Gorman, ‘Tradition manuscrite’, 177–8; Robert de Boron, Merlin: Roman du XIIIe siècle, ed.
Alexandre Micha (Paris and Geneva, 1980), p. xlii.
9 ‘Robert de Boron et l’imaginaire du livre du Graal’, in Arturus Rex, vol. II: Acta Conventus Lovaniensis
1987, ed. Willy Van Hoecke, Gilbert Tournoy, Werner Verbeke (Leuven, 1991), pp. 259–68 (p. 268),
reprinted in Emmanuèle Baumgartner, De l’histoire de Troie au livre du Graal (Orléans, 1994),
pp. 487–96 (p. 496).
10 Merlin: Roman en prose du XIIIe siècle . . ., ed. Gaston Paris and Jacob Ulrich, 2 vols. (Paris, 1886);
more recently, with the continuation only, La Suite du roman de Merlin, ed. Gilles Roussineau, Textes
littéraires français, 2 vols. (Geneva, 1996). See also Emmanuèle Baumgartner, ‘Luce del Gat et Hélie de
Boron: le chevalier et l’écriture’, Romania 106 (1985): 326–40, and, for ‘Peryne de Mounte Belyarde’,
P.J.C. Field, ‘Author, Scribe, and Reader in Malory: The Case of Harleuse and Peryne,’ in Noble and
Joyous Histories: English Romances, 1375–1650, ed. Eiléan Ní Cuilleanáin and J.D. Pheifer (Dublin,
1993), pp. 137–55.
18 LINDA GOWANS
intended to tidy up the cycle being completed with the Prose Perceval which now
survives only in D and E.
My own working method is to use the unpublished late thirteenth-century manu-
script Paris, Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal 2996 (A), checking its many imperfections
against a cross-section from other groups (see ‘The Grail in the West’, 3). I come
now to my new example of prose and verse comparison, which concentrates on one
of the most troubling of all passages in the Verse Joseph. The following (in which I
deliberately show the scribes’ own pause marks) will give some idea of the problems
involved in attempting to establish anything like a definitive reading for the prose.
K, fol. 66v (Chantilly, Musée Condé 644, first half of fourteenth century) Family q.
Si sauras . eoras la uoiz do saint esprit parler atoi . et je ne ten mentrai pas de ci . Car il nest
pas raisons . tu remandras en tel prison . et si oscure . con elle estoit quant tu yfus mis . Et
en si oscure sera quant tu enseras gitiez . ne tes maier mie. . . .
T, fol. 162v (Tours, Bibliothèque Municipale 951, first half of fourteenth century)
Family q.
si orras et uerras lavoiz du saint esperit . parler atoi ge ne ten menrai : pas de ci car il est
misons (O’Gorman: ‘il [n]’est mi[e rai]sons’) . tu remaindras en itele prison . et si oscure
come ele estoit quant tu ifu mis . Einsin : oscure sera quant tu en seras gitez et ne tesmaie
mie. . . .
C (Paris, BnF, fr. 748, second half of thirteenth century. Hucher’s edition, Le Saint
Graal (Le Mans, 1875), I, 227.) Family q.
tu orras la voiz del saint esperit parler à toi. Et je ne t’enmenrai ore pas d’ici, car il n’est pas
raisons; ainz remaindras en itel prison et einsinc obscure comme ele estoit qant tu i fus
mis. A cele hore que tu en seras gitez et jusqu’alors, te durra ceste clartez que tu as ores; et
ne t’esmaier mie, . . .
WHAT DID ROBERT DE BORON REALLY WRITE? 19
E (Modena, Biblioteca Estense E.39, second half of thirteenth century. Roach’s
edition, Romance Philology 9 (1955/6), 322.) Family z. Cyclical MS related to H.
si saras et oras la vois del saint Esperit. Je ne te mentirai ja de ce, car ce n’est pas raisons.
N’i remanras en tel cartre ne en tel prison ne en si grant oscurté com ele estoit quant tu i fus
mis, et ne t’esmaier tu mie, . . .
Unique Verse MS R
(Paris, BnF, fr. 20047. O’Gorman’s edition, pp. 114, 116.)
At this point in the story Christ has brought the Grail to Joseph in prison, and
Joseph has seen a radiance.11 Christ implies that the time is not yet appropriate for
Joseph’s release, though He assures him of eventual deliverance, thus providing for
a break with the underlying situation in the apocryphal Acts of Pilate, in which
Joseph is taken straight away to his own house.12 The ‘mentirai’ reading of family z
therefore appears secondary, with K’s ‘mentrai’ an example of the contamination
noted by O’Gorman (see note 7 to this article). However, our concern here is with
the radiance, for later, when Vespasian eventually releases Joseph after his long
imprisonment he, too, will find the prisoner by the light (Joseph, pp. 210, 211) –
though the reader or listener doesn’t yet know this. A has one of its characteristic
lapses here, seemingly confused about ‘remanoir’ and ‘remetre’, so we need to look
at the other manuscripts to find that Joseph is going to be ‘let out of’ (or more
precisely ‘thrown out of’ in this case), not ‘put back into’ his place of captivity. After
digesting the cross-section of variants, we come up with a probable reading not far
from K. What Jesus is saying to Joseph is ‘you will stay in such captivity, and as
dark as it was when you were put there, it will be as dark when you are taken out of
it’. This is, in fact, correct in terms of the story. Joseph was indeed initially in the
darkness, until Christ came to him with the Grail, and once Joseph leaves he will be
taking the holy vessel with him, so the cell will revert to its previous state. There is
no problem for the author, who knows what he means and what he is going to do
with his story – but the potential is there for differences in scribal perception and
interpretation. K and T, which appear to provide glimpses of punctuation in the
course of development, indicate that some could have thought more along the lines
of ‘It isn’t right you’ll stay here in such darkness’, though there are attendant gram-
matical difficulties. Some, like H, omitted the problem altogether. At this point
11 Joseph, pp. 92 (verse), 93 (prose). The ways in which Joseph is subsequently led to recognize both Jesus
and the vessel would form another revealing comparative study.
12 See J.K. Elliott, The Apocryphal New Testament (Oxford, 1993), pp. 169–85 (p. 182).
20 LINDA GOWANS
Jacob van Maerlant reverted to the New Testament apocrypha that Robert had
adapted and therefore tells a different version, without the dialogue (Historie van
den Graal, pp. 126–7). Of the two earliest scribes, E has turned the statement into a
somewhat laboured negative, and C, characteristically, has tried to help but only
made matters worse.
The verse, however, is emphatically at odds with what happens later. With the
omission of the ‘when you are freed’ clause in the course of the poetic process, the
statement becomes simply that the cell will be dark, the implication being ‘from
now on’. The change to first person in line 954 does not help interpretation, but in
spite of everything the verse, as verse, reads satisfactorily in itself. In other words,
the text we have reflects not so much scribal confusion as failure to anticipate the
coming internal inconsistency: an important point to be considered later. A full
study of all examples would help to clarify both Robert’s wording and his authorial
concerns.
Meanwhile, the verse can tell us something else. At vv. 949 and 956 are two
examples of rhyming ‘filler’ lines – some passages of comparable length have far
more. Not only is the statement made, and the vocabulary used to make it,
completely absent from any of the prose manuscripts at this point in the story
(Joseph, p. 115), but in one case, v. 949, the additional line has created an unneces-
sary emphasis. The prose does not have Christ announcing His personal departure,
for He has promised Joseph the voice of the Holy Spirit, and has left him the vessel
with the Holy Blood; so, theologically, in a text which in its first few lines has intro-
duced the concept of the Trinity, He will not be absent.
Recent work by Ludmilla Evdokimova (see note 3) explains just how much
shorter the prose is than the verse, from which she believes that the prose redactor
has deleted many superfluous lines. However, it would appear highly suspicious that
there are, indeed, so many rhyming lines that would have been capable of being
deleted without fatally undermining narrative cohesion, and which could sometimes
even provide clarification by their removal. I have checked the whole verse text
carefully, line by line and word by word, and find that, excluding the instances
where a whole couplet is additional to the prose, in the Verse Joseph 29% and in the
Verse Merlin fragment 28% of the total number of couplets have one full line that is
completely absent from the prose; i.e., none of its vocabulary appears at that point in
any of the prose manuscripts, and importantly neither does the sentiment expressed
or observation made. The line is usually the second of a couplet (83% of examples
in the Joseph, 93% in the Merlin). A further 6% of couplets in the Joseph and 10%
in the Merlin fragment have a line which conveys sentiments similar to the prose but
still with no overlap in vocabulary.
It seems extraordinary that a prose redactor would not have picked up at least the
occasional word from so many supposedly discarded lines. I would see, instead, a
picture of the versifier at work, taking a statement from the prose and supplying
‘padding’ to complete the couplet and provide a rhyme,13 thereby creating a state-
13 The figures quoted do not include half-line and single-word rhyming ‘fillers’, i.e. cases in which part of
the line’s vocabulary does appear in the prose. Where both rhyme words in a couplet also occur in the
prose they frequently contain verb endings (which form naturally coincidental rhymes in other prose
texts), or involve changes to spellings or parts of speech. The exceptions (such as ‘reison’ and ‘prison’ in
WHAT DID ROBERT DE BORON REALLY WRITE? 21
ment not always compatible with the story. Even where there is no actual confusion,
the nature of the additions can be revealing. Material in the verse but not in the prose
– sometimes whole couplets and passages as well as rhyming ‘filler’ lines – often
represents general Scriptural matter or commentary, whereas the prose is more
tightly focused on the story being told. For example, vv. 613–22 adds to the account
of the Resurrection, vv. 749, 756 and 2163–4 provide extra comment on the Fall,
and vv. 883–4 inserts a statement on belief and repentance. In this context, the long
Marian passage early in the verse shows signs of being a digressionary expansion of
matter that is hinted at as the prose takes up its story, not a completely separate unit.
Another habit of the verse writer is to add to the sparser prose narrative by providing
derogatory comments about the Jews: ‘Car tout estoient adversaire/ A Jhesu la gent
de pute eire’ (Joseph, vv. 205–06: ‘de pute eire’ not in prose); drawing attention to
their specific presence where the prose has only a pronoun indicating speakers or
bystanders: ‘Tout li Juïf qui la estoient,/ Qui toutes ces paroles oient,/ Dient’
(Joseph, vv. 1557–59: ‘tuit’ alone identifies the speakers in prose l. 625); or empha-
sizing Christ’s suffering at their hands: ‘Et puis le suaire verrez/ Ou Diex essua sen
visage,/ Cui li Juïf firent outrage’ (Joseph, vv. 1576–8: vv. 1577–8 not in prose),
‘[. . .] Mout li feisoient vilenie,/ Nepourquant ne se pleignoit mie.’ (Joseph, vv.
1609–10: not in prose.) The prose subsequently has Jews put to death or sold, as a
relevant narrative detail drawn from the New Testament apocrypha being used as a
source,14 but every single one of the comments of the ‘chien puant’ (v. 526) variety
is in the verse only – the prominent anti-Semitism of which is, I suggest, attributable
not to Robert de Boron but to an anonymous versifier.
The poet’s theological interests are confirmed by the passage given overleaf, in
which Christ explains to Joseph the symbolism of the Mass. The passage in the
Prose Joseph appears to be out of sequence with a broad agreement between the
Verse Joseph and a Latin example of the antecedent exegetical tradition.
In fact, in the prose there is a specific reason for the order used, as Christ is
giving instructions for the institution of a sacrament with which, in narrative time,
both Joseph and the Christian world are as yet unfamiliar. I suggest that Robert de
Boron is carefully setting out the meaning of the Mass, rearranging his source to
provide a sequence that concentrates on the visual impact with table, vessel, cover
and cloth, and bringing in the significance of each item. The versifier, on the other
hand, uses his knowledge of the underlying material, though he does not exactly
restore the Biblical sequence of Crucifixion, Deposition, burial and closure of the
tomb. The Latin is concerned with signification; the prose adds the naming of the
corporal, while the verse has a further example of nomenclature, that of the chalice.
As a result, with the reference to the sepulchre having already been used in v. 902,
the example given above) account for only 2.5% of the couplets in the Joseph (2% in the Merlin frag-
ment).
14 See Elliott, pp. 214–16.
22 LINDA GOWANS
Honorius Augustodunensis, Prose Joseph, MS A, fol. 4v, Verse Joseph (MS R) from
Gemma Animæ,15 Cap. XLVI, with a missing portion, in O’Gorman’s edition, p. 110,
De passione Christi, and Cap. brackets, supplied from K, fol. vv. 901–13
XLVII, De Joseph 66r (contractions expanded)
altare crux intelligitur in quo seront plusors des tables Ce que tu de la crouiz m’ostas
corporale in forma corporis establies a moy sacrefier qui Et ou sepulchre me couchas,
Christi distenditur. . . . senefiera la croeis . (Et lo uaissel C’est l’auteus seur quoi me
Hic oblata, et calix cum o lan sacrifiera) et saintefiera la metrunt
corporali cooperitur, quod pierre ou tu meis mon cors* et Cil qui me sacrefierunt.
sindonem mundam significat, in le plataine qui sera desus mis Li dras ou fui envolepez
quam Joseph corpus Christi senefiera le couvercle de quoy Sera corporaus apelez.
involvebat. Calix hic, tu me couvris . et li drap . qui Cist veissiaus ou men sanc meïs
sepulcrum; patena, lapidem sera clamez corporax senefiera . Quant de men cors le requeillis
designat, qui sepulcrum le drap** de quoy tu me Calices apelez sera.
clauserat. envelopas . La platine ki sus girra
Iert la pierre senefiee
(By the altar is understood the Qui fu deseur moi seelee
cross, on which the corporal is Quant ou sepuchre m’eüs mis.
extended in the form of the
body of Christ. . . . * C (ed. Hucher, I, 226) adds
The sacrifice and the chalice are ‘que li caalices sénéfiera’.
covered with the corporal which ** suaire in other MSS. C has
symbolizes the clean sindon, in ‘li dras qui sera desus lou
which Joseph wrapped the caalice, qui sera clamez
body of Christ. The chalice corporaux, si sénéfiera lou
designates the sepulchre, the suaire, cest li dras de quoi tu
paten designates the stone m’envelopas’.
which enclosed the sepulchre.)
vv. 907–09 are effectively further from the Latin than the prose, which like its source
equates the vessel with the tomb.16
The theologically motivated expansions or revisions occur principally in the
earlier part of the story, before the narrative moves from Joseph’s imprisonment and
liberation to the founding of the Grail company. A rare attempt to expand the latter
part of the story produces a clumsy, less focused addition that displays the versifier’s
own authorship rather than recourse to his knowledge of other works. In both prose
and verse, Joseph has already explained to his brother-in-law Bron God’s plan for
Bron’s son Alain. The prose has: ‘Lors l’en emena arreres a son pere et si li dist: –
Cist sera garde en terre de ses freres et de ses serours’ (Joseph, ll. 1331–2),17
whereas the verse includes Bron’s wife:18
15 J.-P. Migne, Patrologiæ Latinæ 172 (Paris, 1895), cols. 557–8, translated here by Daniel Scavone. For
other works concerned with allegorical exegesis of the Mass see O’Gorman’s note to v. 901 (Joseph,
p. 361), and Daniel Scavone, ‘Joseph of Arimathea, the Holy Grail, and the Edessa Icon’, Arthuriana
9.4 (Winter 1999): 1–31 (pp. 7–8). Both Scavone and Nicholas Vincent (The Holy Blood: King Henry
III and the Westminster Blood Relic (Cambridge, UK, 2001), pp. 65–6), independently note a commen-
tary relevant to the question of Robert’s sources, attributed to the eighth-century Germanos I, patriarch
of Constantinople.
16 On pierre for ‘sepulchre’, see O’Gorman’s note to v. 577 (Joseph, pp. 357–8). It might now be added
that v. 580, which conversely uses tumbe to refer to the ‘stone cover’, is one of the rhyming ‘filler’ lines.
17 For ease of comparison, quotation will now be from O’Gorman’s published edition: line-by-line MS
variants can be found on each page.
18 The addition is also made, perhaps coincidentally, in the fourteenth-century MS Paris, BnF, fr. 423 (see
Joseph, variants to l. 1331 listed on p. 311).
WHAT DID ROBERT DE BORON REALLY WRITE? 23
Lors le mena Joseph arriere
Et a sen pere et a sa mere 3172
Dist que ses freres gardera
Et que touz les gouvernera,
Et ses sereurs . . . (Joseph, vv. 3171–5)
He now, in the prose, makes a short statement: ‘Et si li dounez veant aus vostre
grace, si l’en croiront plus et ameront’ (Joseph, ll. 1335–6). The verse repeats the
call to the parents, both repeats and expands on the plan for Alain, and, I suggest,
undermines Robert’s presentation of his story:
In the prose, Joseph has asked simply and concisely for Alain’s father’s parental
blessing on God’s plan for Alain’s earthly guardianship. The verse omits ‘en terre’,
and seems to require both parents formally to hand over an authority that has already
been transferred by divine edict.
O’Gorman realized many years ago that the prose can clarify contentious
passages in the verse,19 though his solution was to think in terms of our surviving,
late thirteenth-century, verse manuscript R being particularly corrupt, and there
having been far more exact, but lost, earlier copies (‘Prose Version’, p. 450). In an
endeavour to explain a verse original for the Merlin, Micha constructed a complex
hypothetical stemma,20 far more intricate than that produced by O’Gorman for the
Joseph (Joseph, p. 13). In view of all that has been written about it,21 it comes as
quite a surprise to find that the supposedly notoriously inaccurate verse account
turns out, upon inspection, to be preserved in a carefully crafted manuscript. It is not
a question of text attractively written but garbled: in most places R reads clearly in
itself, and it is the inconsistencies in the story, not obscure or corrupt readings, that
have given it a bad name. So far as I am aware, no one since the much-maligned
Eugène Hucher in the 1870s seems to have considered that we could be dealing with
a versification incorporating some over-hasty rhyming without realizing the implica-
tions for the story.22 Such a situation would also mean that our surviving verse
19 Richard O’Gorman, ‘The Prose Version of Robert de Boron’s Joseph d’Arimathie’, Romance Philology
23.4 (May 1970), 449–61.
20 Alexandre Micha, Étude sur le ‘Merlin’ de Robert de Boron: Roman du XIIIe siècle (Geneva, 1980),
p. 76.
21 Loomis, for example, judging Robert by the story told in MS R, wrote: ‘his style is crude and his narra-
tive is marred by gross blunders which can be explained only as due to misreadings of an earlier text’; ‘a
poem as confused and crude as Robert de Boron’s Joseph . . . the work of a stupid rimester’. Roger
Sherman Loomis, The Development of Arthurian Romance (London, 1963), pp. 115 and 119.
22 Eugène Hucher, ed., Le Saint Graal (Le Mans, 1874), I, 1–137, for his detailed discussion and compar-
ison of manuscripts. O’Gorman considered Hucher’s introductory remarks ‘worthless’ (Joseph, p. 3).
See also Gowans, ‘The Grail in the West’, 1–2.
24 LINDA GOWANS
manuscript need not be as far removed in time from the initial versification as has
been proposed to justify its inconsistencies. It may even have been made for a
specific purpose only, for it does not seem to have circulated widely: I am not aware
of any text that has been claimed to draw upon it. In the thirteenth-century manu-
script Paris BnF, fr. 20039, the end of the verse Bible of Herman de Valenciennes has
been replaced with a passage from the Prose, not the Verse, Joseph that forms
O’Gorman’s manuscript L (see Joseph, pp. 8–9). Even the interpolator of the First
Continuation23 may rather have had access to the prose, with readings Barimacie
(First Continuation MS M, v. 17575), and variants, that are closer to the prose
(particularly to the variants in Joseph MSS P and B noted on p. 201 of O’Gorman’s
edition)24 than to anything in the verse.
So far as the Merlin is concerned, in the course of an intensive reading it soon
becomes apparent that the prose is a very different prospect from that of the Joseph,
and that a versifier would have been faced with a far harder task to convey what was
in the already highly verbose text. As noted earlier, 10% of the couplets in the verse
Merlin fragment have a rewritten line, in addition to the 28% with rhyming ‘filler’
lines. The latter statistic makes it hard to imagine what a full Verse Merlin – like the
Joseph, much longer than the prose – would have been like,25 and it is possible that
the versifier simply gave up. In fact, the point at which the verse breaks off could be
significant. The temptress is talking about the delights which men and women may
enjoy together:
The verse ends at v. 504. In the succeeding prose the temptress achieves her aim of
directing the girl’s actions: ‘Vos vos abandoneroiz as homes . . . si feroiz de vostre
cors vostre volenté’ (Merlin 4, 61, 63). This is not at all the type of material that the
versifier has been working on, and by now he may have felt that enough was
enough. The Joseph/Merlin verse text we have is preceded in the manuscript by a
23 See William Roach and Robert H. Ivy, Jr, The Continuations of the Old French Perceval of Chrétien de
Troyes. Volume II: The First Continuation. Redaction of Mss E M Q U (Philadelphia, 1950, repr. 1965),
pp. 524–9, and Roach, The Continuations. . . . Volume III, Part 1: The First Continuation. Redaction of
Mss A L P R S (Philadelphia, 1952, repr. 1970), pp. 480–9.
24 Joseph MS B also has ‘sidoine’ in agreement with the First Continuation, rather than ‘drap’ in most
Prose Joseph MSS (Joseph, pp. 79 and 81). B is part of Paris, BnF, fr. 770, and consists of three long
interpolations from the prose Joseph in the text of the Vulgate Estoire (Joseph, p. 7): access to such a
text could help to explain much of the mystery surrounding the passage in the First Continuation.
25 There is one perplexing reference, to ‘l’Histoire de Merlin, en vers’, in an inventory of the manuscripts
of a sixteenth-century collector. See André Vernet, ‘Les manuscrits de Claude d’Urfé (1501–58) au
château de La Bastie’, Académie des inscriptions & belles-lettres: Comptes rendus (Jan–Mar 1976),
81–97 (p. 92). I am grateful to Dr Roger Middleton for this reference. The manuscript has not been
traced, and, with no mention of a preceding ‘Joseph’ or ‘Grail’, could instead be a work relating to the
Prophecies.
WHAT DID ROBERT DE BORON REALLY WRITE? 25
verse Image du Monde in the same hand and distinctive decorative format, with the
first letter of each line separated from the rest of the text, and a horizontal line drawn
from the end of the text on each line to the right-hand margin. The Image is a mid
thirteenth-century French encyclopedic work by Gossuin of Metz, from Latin
sources, concerned with God’s creation, learning, astronomy, earth and heaven (see
Joseph, pp. 5–6 and refs. there cited); the Merlin story being unfolded had moved on
from the more strictly Biblical an/*d apocryphal subject-matter of the Joseph and its
own immediate opening. As well as being heavy going, it could have begun to look
as though it was reaching the limits of its relevance to the versifier’s, or his patron’s,
interests.
The far more voluble narrative of the Prose Merlin argues for different authorship
from the Prose Joseph; as, it might be suggested, does the difference in sophistica-
tion which emerges from a comparison by Liliane Dulac of a significant passage in
both works26 – and this becomes entirely feasible if we envisage a common versifier
of two texts by different authors, which had earlier been brought together. I have
already published the passage from A which may show this happening (‘The Grail
in the West’, 15–16): in short, I suggested that part of the ending of the Prose Joseph
describes Robert’s proposals, and part the redactor’s intentions, and that the correct
placing of the crucial third to first person division which demonstrates this is
preserved in A.
Micha has analysed the vocabulary, narrative style and dialogue of the Prose
Merlin (Étude, pp. 199–214), making it possible to compare the Prose Joseph. There
are undoubted similarities, notably the frequent use of ‘Lors’ and ‘Einsi’ to structure
the narrative, but there are also striking differences. I cannot trace in the Joseph the
frequent use of ‘Mout’ and ‘Mais’ which characterises the Merlin, nor do I find the
predilection for expressions of the type ‘Et voil je bien que vos sachiez’ or ‘Tant vos
puis je bien dire’ beloved of speakers in the Merlin (Micha, Étude, p. 212). In fact,
all I have found in the Joseph are two occurrences of ‘tant vous pui ge bien dire’
(Joseph, p. 123), both in the same speech, in which the pilgrim is eagerly telling his
host about the miracles of Jesus. Enthusiasm and conviction come over in the lines
he is given, whereas dialogue elsewhere in the Joseph is normally required to be
more solemn.
Much more work could be done on comparison of style and vocabulary. For
example, some passages in the Prose Merlin look back to the earlier work and show
signs of being composed using wording specific to the Prose Joseph, not the Verse.
One such passage is the attribution to Robert de Boron after the account of how
Arthur becomes king in three of the many Merlin manuscripts (one a fragment),27 its
suspiciously derivative nature effectively summarised by Fanni Bogdanow some
time ago.28 Another is the earlier reference to Robert (Merlin, 16, 115–16) in which
‘mes sires’ agrees with l. 1324 of the prose Joseph rather than with ‘Meistres’ at v.
26 Liliane Dulac, ‘L’épreuve du siège vide: esquisse d’une lecture croisée d’un épisode du Joseph et du
Merlin de Robert de Boron’, in Rewards and Punishments in the Arthurian Romances and Lyric Poetry
of Mediaeval France: Essays presented to Kenneth Varty on the occasion of his sixtieth birthday, ed.
Peter V. Davies and Angus J. Kennedy, Arthurian Studies 17 (Cambridge, UK, 1987), pp. 31–43.
27 See Micha, ed., Merlin, 91, 59–69, and the transcription of the Amsterdam fragment in Liesl A. Clark
and P.J.C. Field, ‘The Amsterdam University Fragment of the Old French Prose Merlin’, Medium
Ævum 61 (1992), 275–84 (p. 277).
28 Review of Micha’s edition, French Studies 38 (1984), 322–3 (p. 323).
26 LINDA GOWANS
3155,29 and is closely followed by ‘le conte dou Graal’ (Merlin, 16, 117), compa-
rable with ‘le conte del Greal’ at l. 1082 of the Prose Joseph, where the verse has
‘estoire’ (v. 2684). This, again, occurs in only two manuscripts of the Merlin,30 but
the following form part of the main text:
Einsis avient de plusors Il nos peut bien engignier; Ce devuns savoir, non
qui cuident engingnier et s’il nos engigne, il quidier,
autres: si engingnent els engigne[ra] soi meïsmes Que il ne nous puet engignier.
meismes . . . (51, 7–8) avant. (ll. 1109–10) S’il n’est boens, il
s’engignera
Et tout premiers le comparra.
(vv. 2747–50)
si avra non toz jorz mais . . . Et ce ne peut nus hon fere . . . nus hons nes puet
tes livres li livres dou Graal s’il n’a oï conter le livre del rassembler
. . . (23, 63–4) Graal de ceste estoire. S’il n’a avant oï conter
(ll. 1453–4) Dou Graal la plus grant
estoire. . . .
One small but revealing extract allows us to compare all four accounts. It occurs
early in both texts, as the effect of the introduction of Christian baptism on the
powers of Hell is explained. The prose Joseph has: ‘Einsint lava nostre Sires luxure
29 Both prose Joseph (l. 1445) and verse (v. 3461) have a later reference using the title ‘Messires’. If
‘Meistres’ at v. 3155 has inadvertently been supplied by the versifier, the problem of Robert’s status
may be simplified. O’Gorman’s note on v. 3461 (Joseph, p. 405) is effectively concerned with that of
the verse writer.
30 The Amsterdam fragment does not contain this part of the text, but its later attribution to Robert (see
note 27 above) has ‘misire’.
WHAT DID ROBERT DE BORON REALLY WRITE? 27
d’ome et de fame et de pere et de mere; einsint perdi li Deables sa vertu qu’il avoit
sor les homes tant que il meïsmes repechasent’ (Joseph, ll. 30–2). The prose Merlin
author refers back to the work for which he is writing a continuation, dropping
‘home’ and ‘feme’, as the demons discuss their losses: ‘par cele iaue a lavé le delit
del pere et de la mere. . . . Or les avons perduz par cel lavement que nos n’avons nul
pooir sor els devant que il meismes reviengnent a nos par lor euvres’ (Merlin, 1,
27–8, 30–2). The versifier, working his way through a prose manuscript of the
combined Joseph and Merlin, instead omits ‘pere’ and ‘mere’ when he both rhymes
and expands the passage in the Joseph:
Shortly after, at v. 72 of the Merlin, the versifier uses the word amenuisié as a
rhyme-word which is not present in the prose. He has made a similar innovation not
long before, with amenuisant at v. 3352 of the Joseph. Considered together, all of
the foregoing examples may be seen to confirm the order of composition I have
proposed in this article.
Therefore, I suggest that, when Jacob van Maerlant tells us that Robert de Boron
wrote ‘sonder rime’ (Historie van den Grale, v. 1562), he was right. ‘What Robert
de Boron really wrote’ was a Prose Joseph, to which was added, by successive
continuators, a Prose Merlin, and then a Prose Perceval. The Joseph and part of the
Merlin were put into verse by a poet who in the course of his search for rhyme and
scansion both expanded his original and at times undermined its narrative cohesion.
He may also have been unaware of the Arthurian implications that lay behind
Robert’s scheme to provide in retrospect a destined Grail-keeper who, his father
having remained celibate before the journey to the West, could be referred to as
Perceval the Welshman. I base my suggestion not only on narrative sense but on
evidence from manuscripts, with attention to dating and care that unpublished
manuscripts are given equal weight with published ones.
28 LINDA GOWANS
What, then, is the way forward? In the absence of a truly satisfactory base manu-
script, and given the need for constant comparison of multiple manuscripts to
attempt to establish a likely primary reading, any sustained endeavour to recreate
Robert’s work would result in a prime example of the situation described here by
Elizabeth Scala:
[E]ditorial production tends to hide the fact that it produces singularly ahistorical ob-
jects, modern texts for which we have no identical, medieval witnesses. Obviously,
printed editions of . . . medieval works are absolutely necessary to the practice of our criti-
cal scholarship. But when we (re)create the ‘author’s’ text from the scribal copies that ac-
tually circulated in medieval culture (the individual manuscripts that comprise our
historical evidence), we change what we mean by the word ‘historical’.31
It could equally well be proposed, however, that Grail scholarship has everything to
gain from a careful attempt to verify Robert’s interests, meanings and intentions.
Whatever method is adopted, it can only be stressed that the manuscripts themselves
should be allowed to speak for Robert de Boron in future critical discussion.
31 Elizabeth Scala, Absent Narratives, Manuscript Textuality, and Literary Structure in Late Medieval
England (New York and Basingstoke, 2002), p. 6.
3
The question of the possible significance of the placing of majuscules (i.e., capital
letters) by the various scribes who have transmitted Wace’s Roman de Brut to us
surfaces with some regularity in informal discussions of the work. The issue arises
primarily from the division of the poem into indented paragraphs by Ivor Arnold, in
his edition of the work for the Société des Anciens Textes Français:1 the practice
remains uncommented on in the Introduction or in the discussion of editorial princi-
ples, but these highly visible textual dividers naturally lead the reader to wonder
about medieval scribal usage in this regard. Intuitively, one would expect a text of
the length of the Roman de Brut (14,866 octosyllabic lines, typically well over 100
folios of parchment) to have displayed some form of structural division, possibly
from the earliest days of manuscript tradition, simply for practical reasons. As
pointed out by Mary Carruthers in her now classic study The Book of Memory and
Paul Saenger in his groundbreaking Space Between Words,2 manuscript layout was
an important element in the mnemonic techniques used by medieval readers. More-
over, the systematic study of the manuscripts of Chrétien de Troyes over past
decades has shown that the study of the placement of capitals can provide useful
insights into the way a text was read.3
The nature of the information highlighted or systematized in this manner could
be expected to vary from one manuscript to another, reflecting the interests of the
patron or manuscript planner, and following the ways in which a given text was
received in time and space. A fourteenth-century luxury manuscript of the Roman de
Brut produced on the Continent is thus likely to prioritise different features to, say, a
1 Le Roman de Brut de Wace, ed. Ivor Arnold, 2 vols. (Paris, 1938, 1940). All references are to this edition
of the work.
2 Mary Carruthers, The Book of Memory: A Study of Memory in Medieval Culture (Cambridge, UK,
1990); and Paul Saenger, Space Between Words: The Origins of Silent Reading (Stanford, CA., 1997).
3 See especially Roger Middleton, ‘Coloured Capitals in the Manuscripts of Erec et Enide’, Les
Manuscrits de Chrétien de Troyes, ed. Keith Busby, Terry Nixon, Alison Stones and Lori Walters
(Amsterdam and Atlanta, 1993), I, pp. 149–193.
30 FRANÇOISE H.M. LE SAUX
4 See the groundbreaking article of Christiane Marchello–Nizia, ‘Ponctuation et “Unités de lecture” dans
les manuscrits médiévaux ou: je ponctue, tu lis, il théorise’, La Langue Française 40 (1978): 32–44.
5 Scribes are not entirely consistent in these matters; the alternation between the two colours is not
always respected, and capitals missed out entirely are not uncommon, even in a carefully produced
manuscript. See Middleton, ‘Coloured Capitals’, pp. 150–7.
6 A good example of this may be found in the text of the Roman de Brut preserved in London, British
Library, MS Cotton Vitellius A X.
7 See Elizabeth J. Bryan, Collaborative Meaning in Medieval Scribal Culture: The Otho Laamon (Ann
Arbor, 1999) for an analysis of comparable marginal inscriptions in London, British Library, MS Otho
C. XIII of Laamon’s early thirteenth-century translation of the Roman de Brut.
8 See Thomas Rud, Codicum Manuscriptorum ecclesie cathedralis Dunelmensis (Durham, 1825), pp.
CAPITALIZATION IN EARLY MANUSCRIPTS OF WACE 31
in-8o in size, though originally it would have been somewhat larger (as is often the
case, much of the margins was cut off in the bookbinding process), and contains
Wace’s Roman de Brut, followed by two other histories of Britain in verse, Gaimar’s
Estoire des Engleis and Jordan Fantosme’s Chronique. The Wace text is copied in
two 36–line columns, the first line of text beginning under the first line drawn on the
parchment – an indication that this is indeed a twelfth-century copy; later, scribes
adopted the practice of writing above the first line. After the ornate and multicol-
oured initial capital letter marking the beginning of the work, capitals are typically
two lines high (not counting any flourishes), alternating in red or blue ink (though
this is not systematic throughout the manuscript). Where a capital letter was
planned, the couplet is indented to allow sufficient space for the coloured-ink scribe.
A marked change occurs on folio 60. Though certainly the product of the same
scriptorium, the hand is larger and less neat; the lineation is done with a wider
stylus, and the scribe was using a thicker quill. The page layout remains identical,
however, and the text picks up exactly where folio 59 verso ended. The interesting
thing to note here is that Folio 59 verso ends with a blank space at the end of the
second column – enough to copy some sixteen lines of text. This suggests that the
scribes were copying from an original with a different page layout, making it diffi-
cult to estimate with precision how much parchment would be required for a given
section. The blank space may be accounted for by the interpolation, from folios 42
to 48, of the Prophecies of Merlin, translated by one Helias; it could also (somewhat
less convincingly) point to a ‘master copy’ with large, ornate capital letters – in other
words, a luxury or presentation exemplar.
The Durham copy was clearly intended for serious study, and the manuscript
bears evidence of this. Most of the readers’ inscriptions in the margins occur in the
first part of the manuscript; one may discern two generations of medieval margi-
nalia, one in a faded light brown ink, the other in a later, darker ink. Neither appears
to have been contemporary with the planning of the manuscript, though the same
light brown ink is also used to correct the text in the Locrin section (l. 1267),
suggesting that some of these inscriptions were made very soon after the completion
of the copying task proper.
The Wace text preserved in the Durham manuscript contains ninety-two capital
letters (not counting the initial letter of the text, or those in the interpolated Proph-
ecies of Merlin section), very unevenly distributed over a total of ninety-five folios:
only four capitals until the Roman invasion of Britain (i.e., roughly one every thou-
sand lines), two of those being ‘bunched’ together in the first five hundred lines.
Four capital letters appear in the section recounting Caesar’s successful invasion,
spread over some 400 lines; then nothing for almost 800 lines, when a capital letter
adorns the mention of King Lucius’s death without leaving an heir (5269). Capitals
become more common as the dynasty that will produce Arthur is introduced,
appearing roughly every 126 lines, on average. From folio 60, capitals become more
plentiful: forty-nine in total, on average one every 116 lines. By contrast, marginalia
are at their most copious in the first 6000 lines of the text, where capital letters are
most scarce.
311–2. I wish to thank the Librarian of Durham Cathedral Library, Mr Roger Norris, who kindly looked
for further information in the cathedral archives for me, in vain.
32 FRANÇOISE H.M. LE SAUX
One may distinguish in this manuscript between three types of medieval margi-
nalia: nota signs indicating to the reader an interesting point of detail within the text;
circles with horizontal, vertical or slanting inner bars, originally with a numeral
above them, in the margin beside lines where a new king accedes to the throne (the
numerals counting from Brutus as King number One); and more explicit glosses
(either in words – mostly irretrievable – or in the form of ink doodles). The interest
in keeping count of the kings on the British throne was an enduring one. The older,
brown ink circles are frequently ‘touched up’ in darker ink by a later (medieval)
reader, where the quality of the parchment or of the ink itself had caused them to
become too faint; and the second part of the manuscript continues the practice of
marking the accession of new kings with circles and numerals in the margins, in
what at first glance looks like faded modern pencil, but in fact is medieval carbon
point.9 For the earliest as for the later readers of the work, one of its main values was
therefore as a king-list. Other marginal inscriptions are relatively few, though some
will have been lost in the bookbinding process:
— a faded brown mark opposite line1008 of the text (the death of Turnus,
Corineus’s nephew, after whom the city of Tours is named)
— a brown ink nota sign opposite the foundation of London (1221)
— dark brown ink gloss, ‘Brutus’, with a little crowned head underneath,
right-hand margin, opposite 1240ff.
— Latin gloss, same hand as the ‘Brutus’ in the right-hand margin, bottom margin
of fol. 8v, ‘Brutus regnavit xxiiii ann. Et habuit tres filios’ (Brutus reigned 23
years and had three sons’)
— brown-ink nota opposite 1272 (the naming of Wales)
— brown-ink nota opposite 1311 (the name of the Humber)
— brown ink nota opposite 1501 (the first British war of aggression)
— brown ink nota opposite 1522–6 (the names of Ebrauc’s foundations; esp. York)
— brown-ink nota opposite 1741–5 (Cordeille’s answer to Leir)
— dark brown gloss opposite 2817: ‘Ici la pes forme’ (after Tonuenne reconciles
her sons)
— gloss opposite 3196: ‘issi change l’em plusurs nuns’ (‘here several names are
changed’, re. Caerleon)
— 3213, black ink gloss: Billing (re. Billingsgate)
— opposite 3524: very long (tail extending to the last line of the column), faded
brown ink nota, and illegible gloss (Elidur’s subterfuge)
— opposite 3755–90: faded brown ink nota (on the names of London)
— opposite 4810: dark brown ink gloss, in French; mostly cut off in the binding.
(‘. . . ous pars’: the Britons give Caesar hostages and tribute)
— 4865, red ink nota and inscription: Thelesini de Christo; a little lower in the
margin (i.e., bottom of col. 2 of fol. 28v), dark brown ink symbol (Taliesin
prophecies the birth of Christ)
— top margin of fol. 29r. in faded black ink: ‘Jhesuz’
9 Regrettably, I was unable to determine with certainty whether the numerals in the latter part of the
manuscript follow on from those above the ink circles in the former part, as they are very faint.
CAPITALIZATION IN EARLY MANUSCRIPTS OF WACE 33
— faded brown-ink nota opposite 5073–80 (the naming of Gloucester)
— opposite 5230: black ink star and crescent moon (the mission of Dunian and
Fagan)
— opposite 5870: red-brown ink symbol (marriage leading to dynastic change)
— opposite 5948: nota, very faded ink (the name of Brittany)
— opposite 6839–44: faded nota (lands granted to Hengist)
— opposite 8056–66: faint remains of nota (Merlin explains the virtues of the
Giant’s Circle)
— opposite 10447: trace of a light brown cross (the Queen at the Whitsun
celebration)
— opposite line 13316, faint trace of annotation (illegible; killing of Modred’s
sons?)
— top margin of fol. 91r, light brown ink: ‘Legere et non intellegere non legere
est’, ‘to read and not to understand is not to read’ (Cadwalan defeats Edwin)
It is noticeable that the nota, particularly those in the faded brown ink similar to
that of the marginal circles pointing to the accession of a new king, are overwhelm-
ingly concerned with onomastics. Ten of these draw the reader’s attention to the
origins of certain toponyms and/or the changes undergone by these names through
the course of history or due to linguistic factors. Other interests betrayed by the
faded ink annotations appear to have a moral colouring: the first war of aggression
waged outside of Britain after the British settlement, imposed on Ebrauc by the rest-
lessness of his men; Cordeille’s words of wisdom to her father (‘E pur faire tei plus
certain/ Tant as, tant vals e jo tant t’aim’, ‘And to leave you in no more doubt: you
are worth as much as you possess and I love you accordingly’);10 the narrator’s
exclamation at Elidur’s forgiveness and generosity towards his brother Argal
(‘Deus! Ki vit mais tel pieté/ Tel amur, tel fraternité!’, ‘Lord, who ever saw such
pity, such love and such brotherly feeling!’ 3523–4); the murder of Modred’s two
sons whilst claiming sanctuary in churches; and of course, the final invitation to
reflect on what we have read in order to understand its implications – ‘To read and
not understand is not to read’. Of the two remaining pale ink marginalia, one has a
possible political dimension (Vortigern grants Lyndsey to Hengist) whilst the other
would appear to belong to the category of mirabilia, with Merlin explaining to
Aurelius why the stones in the Giant’s Circle are so desirable. However, in this last
instance, the point may equally be didactic, as the lines in question correspond to a
quasi-sermon on the superiority of skill over brute strength:
10 Lines 1471–2. Unless specified otherwise, all translations of the Roman de Brut are from Wace’s
Roman de Brut: A History of the British, ed. and trans. Judith Weiss (Exeter, 1999).
34 FRANÇOISE H.M. LE SAUX
(‘King’, answered Merlin, ‘then you don’t know that skill surpasses strength.
Might is good, skill better; skill prevails where might fails. Skill and art achieve
many things which might doesn’t dare to start.’)
The earlier readership, as represented by the faded brown marginalia, was thus
clearly approaching the Roman de Brut as a work of history. The most systematic
area of interest was the name and sequence of the successive kings of Britain, but
beyond the detail of political history we also find a real concern for what might be
termed the human geography of the country, the circumstances surrounding the
foundation of cities, principalities or kingdoms, the reason for their names, the ratio-
nale behind name-change. This information was of practical value, but it equally ties
in with a moralising reading. Wace regularly ascribes the change of toponyms and
towns to linguistic corruption grounded in ignorance (3762–84): the absence of
continuity in the names of the British towns becomes a symptom of the mutability
suffered by a post-lapsarian world. This means that such passages would be rich
food for thought for the reader wishing to learn the lessons of the past, and ‘under-
stand’ what he was reading.
The darker ink marginalia share much of the concerns of the earlier reader or
body of readers. The circles marking the beginning of a new reign were clearly felt
to be valuable, as they were, when necessary, ‘freshened up’, together with the
numerals which accompanied them. There is no evidence, however, that fading nota
were similarly retraced in darker ink, which might suggest that the question of
linguistic change and its effect on place-names was not paramount in the minds of
these slightly later readers (the hand in the glosses is pre-fourteenth-century). The
interest seems to be directed more at the narrative itself: Brutus’s achievements; the
restoration of peace between Belin and Brennes after their mother’s moving plea;
the modalities of Cassibelan’s submission to Caesar; Taliesin’s prophecy of the birth
of Christ; the mission of Dunian and Fagan. There is more than one reader at work
in the margins at this later date, as may be seen from the fact that some glosses are in
French and others in Latin, and the interests appear to be more dispersed; but there is
a clear consensus in privileging the mention of the birth of Christ, which is signalled
by a red ink nota (possibly dating back to the planning of the manuscript), a dark
brown ink symbol and a black ink inscription. Similarly, the black star and crescent
moon in the margins of the conversion of the British by saints Dunian and Fagan
point to the espousal of a hierarchy of events that transcends the political or military.
But there is little sense that the Roman de Brut was being read on a level other than
the immediate, literal one.
The survey of the marginal annotations in this manuscript reveals a striking lack
of response to the Arthurian section, with only one, faint cross at the point where
Wace turns to the Queen’s role in Arthur’s crown-wearing festivities. In view of the
patterns discerned in the faded brown ink marginalia, this is perhaps not unexpected.
However, one might have thought that the later readers would have found something
to highlight in this particularly long and rich section of Wace’s work. Are we to
interpret this as indicating a lack of interest in Arthur on the part of these thir-
teenth-century Anglo-Norman readers of the Roman de Brut?
Before we draw such a conclusion, it is necessary to consider the patterns of capi-
talization in the manuscript. One may identify three main potential functions of
capital letters:
CAPITALIZATION IN EARLY MANUSCRIPTS OF WACE 35
— to mark the beginning of a new division (typically, a new inparagraph)11
Wace’s source, Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia Regum Britanniae;
— to mark a new focus in the narrative, typically indicated in the text either
through a temporal conjunction such as ‘quand’, or through the mentioning of
the protagonist who is to be central to the new phase of action;
— to indicate that a passage in direct speech, an aside by the narrator, or a purple
passage has started, or (more commonly) come to an end.
These three categories are not mutually exclusive, but they provide an adequate
working grid.
Of the ninety-two passages set off by capital letters, thirteen correspond to a new
chapter in Geoffrey’s Historia, nine of these occurring in the second part of the
manuscript, from folio 60 onwards. Fifteen capital letters mark the beginning or end
of a passage in direct speech or of an intervention by the narrator and eighty-five
mark a change in narrative focus. It is clear from these figures that there was no
systematic attempt on the part of the manuscript planner to return to Geoffrey’s text
for guidance. All occurrences of capital letters in conjunction with the beginning of
a new chapter in the Historia Regum Britanniae also coincide with the presence of
syntactical or rhetorical markers indicating a change of focus in the narrative. This is
not surprising, as similar markers are to be found in Geoffrey at the beginning of his
paragraphs; they are the indispensable stock-in-trade of any competent writer of
complex narrative. The relatively low proportion of capitals corresponding to
Geoffrey’s textual divisions may in turn be explained to some extent by the fact that
Wace’s recasting of the material in verse can lead to an obscuring of the boundaries
of his source’s paragraphs. A good example of this may be observed at line 1608 of
the Roman, where Ruhundibras becomes king after a period of lawlessness during
his father’s final years. Where the Historia (variant version) of §29 begins: ‘Post
hunc regnauit filius suus Rudhudibras .xxxix. annis’,12 ‘After him, his son
Rudhudibras reigned 39 years’, Wace reads: ‘Mais un sun fiz Ruhundibras/ Fut
emprés reis de grant justise’ literally: ‘but a son of his, Ruhundibras, was after him a
king of great justice’.13 Through the addition of ‘mais’, the French writer creates a
transition explicitly opposing the strength of the new king to the weakness of his
predecessor, thus connecting the two sections in a way that the Latin text does not.
It is therefore safe to conclude that the internal structure flagged out by the pres-
ence of capital letters was one determined by the manuscript planner on the basis of
his reading of Wace’s text. To venture an interpretation of the distribution patterns of
capitals in the manuscript, it is useful to make an additional distinction to the more
obvious break in scribal hand observed at folio 60. At folio 26, though no gap
appears in the manuscript page, no change is apparent in the ink and layout, and the
marginal inscriptions continue unmodified, one may discern a change in the care
with which the text was copied – the hand is slightly less regular and neat. This
11 All references to Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia Regum Britanniae are from The Historia Regum
Britannie of Geoffrey of Monmouth II. The First Variant Version: a critical edition, ed. Neil Wright
(Cambridge, 1988).
12 The Historia Regum Britannie of Geoffrey of Monmouth II, p. 22.
13 Judith Weiss’s more elegant translation reads: ‘But his son Ruhundibras was subsequently a most righ-
teous king’.
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The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Land
Beyond the Forest: Facts, Figures, and Fancies
from Transylvania
This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United
States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away
or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License
included with this ebook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you
are not located in the United States, you will have to check the
laws of the country where you are located before using this
eBook.
Title: The Land Beyond the Forest: Facts, Figures, and Fancies
from Transylvania
Author: E. Gerard
Language: English
BY E. GERARD
AUTHOR OF
“REATA” “THE WATERS OF HERCULES” “BEGGAR MY NEIGHBOR”
ETC.
NEW YORK
HARPER & BROTHERS, FRANKLIN SQUARE
1888
PREFACE.
In the spring of 1883 my husband was appointed to the command of
the cavalry brigade in Transylvania, composed of two hussar
regiments, stationed respectively at Hermanstadt and Kronstadt—a
very welcome nomination, as gratifying a long-cherished wish of
mine to visit that part of the Austrian empire known as the Land
beyond the Forest.
The two years spent in Transylvania were among the most agreeable
of sixteen years’ acquaintance with Austrian military life; and I shall
always look back to this time as to something quaint and
exceptional, totally different from all previous and subsequent
experiences.
Much interested in the wild beauty of the country, the strange
admixture of races by which it is peopled, and their curious and
varied folk-lore, I recorded some of my impressions in short,
independent papers, of which three were published in Blackwood’s
Magazine, one in the Nineteenth Century, and one in the
Contemporary Review. It was only after I had left the country that,
being desirous of preserving these sketches in more convenient
form, I began rearranging the matter for publication; but the task of
retracing my Transylvanian experiences was so pleasant that it led
me on far beyond my original intention. One reminiscence awoke
another, one chapter gave rise to a second; and so, instead of a
small volume, as had been at first contemplated, my manuscript
almost unconsciously developed to its present dimensions.
When the work was completed, the idea of illustrating it occurred to
me: but this was a far more difficult matter; for, though offering a
perfect treasure-mine to artists, Transylvania has not as yet received
from them the attention it deserves; and had it not been for obliging
assistance from several quarters, I should have been debarred the
satisfaction of elucidating some of my descriptions by appropriate
sketches.
In this matter my thanks are greatly due to Herr Emil Sigerus, who
was good enough to place at my disposal the blocks of engravings
designed by himself, and belonging to the Transylvania Carpathian
Society, of which he is the secretary. Likewise to Madame Kamilla
Asboth, for permission to copy her life-like and characteristic
photographs of Saxons, Roumanians, and gypsies.
I would also at this place acknowledge the extreme courtesy with
which every question of mine regarding Transylvania people and
customs has been responded to by various kind acquaintances, and
if some parts of my work do not meet with their entire approval, let
them here take the assurance that my remarks were prompted by no
unfriendly spirit, and that in each and every case I have endeavored
to judge impartially according to my lights.
Emily de Laszowska-Gerard.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER PAGE
I.Introductory 1
II. Historical 6
III.Political 11
IV. Arrival in Transylvania—First Impressions 14
V. Saxon Historical Feast—Legend 25
VI. The Saxons: Character—Education—Religion 31
VII. Saxon Villages 39
VIII. Saxon Interiors—Character 50
IX. Saxon Churches and Sieges 62
X. The Saxon Village Pastor 71
XI. The Saxon Brotherhoods—Neighborhoods and Village Hann 79
XII. The Saxons: Dress—Spinning and Dancing 85
XIII. The Saxons: Betrothal 94
XIV. The Saxons: Marriage 101
XV. The Saxons: Birth and Infancy 111
XVI. The Saxons: Death and Burial 117
XVII. The Roumanians: their Origin 122
XVIII. The Roumanians: their Religion, Popas, and Churches 125
XIX. The Roumanians: their Character 132
XX. Roumanian Life 139
XXI. Roumanian Marriage and Morality 146
The Roumanians: Dancing, Songs, Music, Stories, and
XXII. 151
Proverbs
XXIII. Roumanian Poetry 158
XXIV. The Roumanians: Nationality and Atrocities 173
The Roumanians: Death and Burial—Vampires and Were-
XXV. 180
wolves
XXVI.Roumanian Superstition: Days and Hours 188
Roumanian Superstition—continued: Animals, Weather,
XXVII. 196
Mixed Superstitions, Spirits, Shadows, etc.
XXVIII.Saxon Superstition: Remedies, Witches, Weather-makers 207
XXIX. Saxon Superstition—continued: Animals, Plants, Days 212
XXX. Saxon Customs and Dramas 218
XXXI. Buried Treasures 229
XXXII. The Tziganes: Liszt and Lenau 236
XXXIII. The Tziganes: their Life and Occupations 242
XXXIV. The Tziganes: Humor, Proverbs, Religion, and Morality 253
XXXV. The Gypsy Fortune-teller 260
XXXVI. The Tzigane Musician 265
XXXVII. Gypsy Poetry 273
XXXVIII. The Szeklers and Armenians 279
XXXIX. Frontier Regiments 288
XL. Wolves, Bears, and Other Animals 292
XLI.A Roumanian Village 299
XLII. A Gypsy Camp 306
XLIII.The Bruckenthals 309
XLIV. Still-life at Hermanstadt—a Transylvanian Cranford 317
XLV. Fire and Blood—the Hermanstadt Murder 326
XLVI. The Klausenburg Carnival 331
XLVII. Journey from Hermanstadt to Kronstadt 339
XLVIII. Kronstadt 348
XLIX. Sinaïa 357
L. Up the Mountains 364
LI. The Bulea See 372
LII. The Wienerwald—a Digression 377
LIII. A Week in the Pine Region 380
LIV. La Dus and Bistra 388
LV. A Night in the Stina 394
LVI. Farewell to Transylvania—the Enchanted Garden 399
ILLUSTRATIONS.
PAGE
Old Town Gate at Hermanstadt (Elisabeth Thor) Frontispiece
Saxon Burgher in Olden Times 9
The Thorda Spalt 19
Old Fortress-tower on the Ramparts at Hermanstadt 23
Mounted Peasants, from the Historical Procession 28
Saxon Peasant House 40
Old Town Gate at Hermanstadt (on the Heltau side) 43
Michelsberg 47
Saxon Peasant at Home 51
Saxon Embroidery 53
Saxon Embroidery and Pottery 55
Fortified Saxon Church 63
Ruined Abbey of Kerz 70
Saxon Pastor in Full Dress 73
Saxon Peasant going to Work 84
Dressing for the Dance 93
Saxon Betrothed Couple 97
Archbishop Schaguna 131
Roumanian Costumes 141
Roumanian Women 143
Saxon Girl in Full Dress 221
Gypsy Type 237
A Gypsy Tinker 245
Basket-maker 247
Bear-driver 249
Gypsy Girl 258
Gypsy Mother and Child 261
Gypsy Musicians 269
Szekler Peasant 279
The Rothenthurm Pass 291
The Bruckenthal Palace 310
Baron Samuel Bruckenthal 315
Street at Hermanstadt 319
Schässburg 341
Castle of Törzburg 347
King Matthias Corvinus 355
Castle Pelesch at Sinaïa 359
The Negoi 365
The Pine Valley 381
The Cavern Convent, Skit la Jalomitza 399
Castle Vajda Hunyad before its restoration 401
Map of Transylvania At end
INTRODUCTORY.
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