There is perhaps nothing lovelier in all these Romances than the story of

the young Lancelot, reared by the tender care of the Lady of the Lake. His

training supplements the genial instincts of his nature, and the result is

the mirror of all knighthood’s qualities. He is noble, he is true, he is

perfect in bravery, in courtesy, in modesty, the Lady imparting the

precepts of these virtues to his ready spirit.[706] There is no knightly

virtue that is not perfect in this peerless youth, as he sets forth to

Arthur’s Court, there to receive knighthood and prove himself the peerless

knight and perfect lover. In this Old French prose his career is set forth

most completely, and most correctly, so to speak. One or two points may be

adverted to.

Lancelot is not strictly Arthur’s knight. Originally he owed no fealty to

him; and he avoided receiving his sword from the king, in order that he

might receive it from Guinever, as he did. And so, from the first,

Lancelot was Guinever’s knight, as he was afterwards her accepted lover.

Consequently his relations to her broke no fealty of his to Arthur.

Again, one notices that the absolute character of Lancelot’s love and

troth to Guinever is paralleled by the friendship of the high prince

Galahaut to him. That has the same _précieuse_ logic; it is absolute. No

act or thought of Galahaut infringes friendship’s least conceived

requirement; while conversely that marvellous high prince leaves undone no

act, however extreme, which can carry out the logic of this absolute

single-souled devotion. At last he dies on thinking that Lancelot is dead;

just as the latter could not have survived the death of Guinever. In spite

of the beauty of Galahaut’s devotion, its logic and preciosity scarcely

throb with manhood’s blood. It will not cause our eyes to swell with human

tears, as did the blind blow and the true words which passed between

Oliver and Roland at Roncesvalles.[707]

Chivalry--the institution and the whole knightly character--began in the

rough and veritable, and progressed to courtlier idealizations. Likewise

that knightly virtue, love of woman, displays a parallel evolution, being

part of the chivalric whole. Beginning in natural qualities, its progress

is romantic, logical, fantastic, even mystical.

Feudal life in the earlier mediaeval centuries did not foster tender

sentiments between betrothed or wedded couples. The chief object of every

landholder was by force or policy to secure his own safety and increase

his retainers and possessions. A ready means was for him to marry lands

and serfs in the robust person of the daughter, or widow, of some other

baron. The marriage was prefaced by scant courtship; and little love was

likely to ensue between the rough-handed husband and high-tempered wife.

Such conditions, whether in Languedoc, Aquitaine, or Champagne, made it

likely that high-blooded men and women would satisfy their amorous

cravings outside the bonds of matrimony. For these reasons, among others,

the Provençal and Old French literature, which was the medium of

development for the sentiment of love, did not commonly concern itself

with bringing lovers to the altar.

In literature, as in life, marriage is usually the goal of bliss and

silence for love-song and love-story: attainment quells the fictile

elements of fear and hope. Entire classes of mediaeval poetry like the

_aube_ (dawn) and the _pastorelle_ had no thought of marriage. The former

_genre_ of Provençal and Old French, as well as Old German, poetry, is a

lyric dialogue wherein the sentiments of lover and mistress become more

tender with the approach of the envious dawn.[708] The latter is the song

of the merry encounter of some clerk or cavalier with a mocking or

complaisant shepherdess. Yet one must beware of speaking too

categorically. For in mediaeval love-literature, marriage is looked

forward to or excluded according to circumstances; and there are instances

of romantic love where the lovers are blessed securely by the priest at

the beginning of their adventures. But whether the lover look to wed his

lady, or whether he have wedded her, or whether she be but his paramour,

is all a thing of incident, dependent on the traditional or devised plot

of the story.[709]

Like all other periods that have been articulate in literature--and those

that have not been, so far as one may guess--the Middle Ages experienced

and expressed the usual ways of love. These need not detain us. For they

were included as elements within those interesting forms of romantic love,

which were presented in the lyrics of the Troubadours and their more or

less conscious imitators, and in the romantic narratives of chivalry. This

literature elaborately expresses mediaeval sentiments and also love’s

passion. Its ideals drew inspiration from Christianity and many a

suggestion from the antique. More especially, in its growth, at last two

currents seem to meet. The one sprang from the fashions of Languedoc and

the courtly centres of the north; the other was the strain of fantasy and

passion constituting the _matière de Bretagne_.

Languedoc had been Romanized before the Christian era, and thereafter did

not cease to be the home of the surviving Latin culture. By the eleventh

century, castles and towns held a gay and aristocratic society, on which

Christianity, honeycombed with heresy, sat lightly, or at least joyfully.

This society was inclined to luxury, and the gentle relationships between

men and women interested it exceedingly. Out of it as the eleventh century

closes, songs of the Troubadours begin to rise and give utterance to

thoughts and feelings of chivalric love. These songs flourished during the

whole of the twelfth century, and then their notes were crushed by the

Albigensian Crusade, which destroyed the pretty life from which they

sprang.

She whom such songs were meant to adulate or win, frequently was the wife

of the Troubadour’s lord. The song might intend nothing beyond such

worship as the lady’s spouse would sanction; or it might give subtle voice

to a real passion, which offered and sought all. To separate the sincere

and passionate from the fanciful in such songs is neither easy nor apt,

since fancy may enhance the expression of passion, or present a pleasing

substitute. At all events, in this very personal poetry, passion and

imaginative enhancings blended in verses that might move a lady’s heart or

vanity.

Love, with the Troubadours and their ladies, was a source of joy. Its

commands and exigencies made life’s supreme law. Love was knighthood’s

service; it was loyalty and devotion; it was the noblest human giving. It

was also the spring of excellence, the inspiration of high deeds. This

love was courteous, delicately ceremonial, precise, and on the lady’s part

exacting and whimsical. A moderate knowledge of the poems and lives of the

Troubadours and their ladies will show that love with its joys and pains,

its passion, its fancies and subtle conclusions, made the life and

business of these men and dames.[710]

In culture and the love of pleasure the great feudal courts of Aquitaine,

Champagne, and even Flanders, were scarcely behind the society of

Languedoc. And at these courts, rather than in Languedoc, courtly love

encountered a new passionate current, and found the tales which were to

form its chief vehicle. These were the lays and stories, as of Tristan and

of Arthur and his knights, which from Great Britain had come to Brittany

and Normandy. They were now attracting many listeners who had no part with

Arthur or Tristan, save the love of love and adventure. Marie de France

had put certain Breton lays into Old French verse. And one or two decades

later, a request from the great Countess Marie de Champagne led Chrétien

de Troies, as we have seen, to recast other Breton tales in a manner

somewhat transformed with thoughts of courtly love. These northern poems

of love and chivalry were written to please the taste of high-born dames,

just as the Troubadours had sung and still were singing to please their

sisters in the south. The southern poems may have influenced the

northern.[711]

In the courtly society of Champagne and Aquitaine diverse racial elements

had long been blending, and acquirements, once foreign, had turned into

personal qualities. Views of life had been evolved, along with faculties

to express them. Likewise modes of feeling had developed. This society

had become what it was within the influence of Christianity and the

antique educational tradition. It knew the Song of Songs, as well as

Ovid’s stories, and likewise his _Ars amatoria_, which Chrétien was the

first to translate into Old French. Possibly its Christianity had learned

of a boundless love of God, and its mortal nature might feel mortal loves

equally resistless. And now, in the early twelfth century, there came from

lands which were or had been Breton, an abundance of moving and catching

stories of adventure and of passion which broke through restraint, or knew

none. Dames and knights and their rhymers would eagerly receive such

tales, and not as barren vessels; for they refashioned and reinspired them

with their own thoughts of the joy of life and love, and with thoughts of

love’s high service and its uplifting virtue for the lover, and again of

its ways and the laws which should direct and guide, but never stem, it.

Thus it came that French trouvères enlarged the matter of these Breton

lays. Their romances reflected the loftiest thoughts and the most eloquent

emotion pertaining to the earthly side of mediaeval life. In these rhyming

and prose compositions, love was resistless in power; it absorbed the

lover’s nature; it became his sole source of joy and pain. So it sought

nothing but its own fulfilment; it knew no honour save its own demands. It

was unimpeachable, for in ecstasy and grief it was accountable to no law

except that of its being. This resistless love was also life’s highest

worth, and the spring of inspiration and strength for doing valorously and

living nobly. The trouvère of the twelfth century created new conceptions

of love’s service, and therewith the impassioned thought that beyond what

men might do in the hope of love’s fruition or at the dictates of its

affection, love was itself a power strengthening and ennobling him who

loved. Thought and feeling joined in this conviction, each helping the

other on, in interchanging rôles of inspirer and inspired. And finally the

two are one:

“Oltre la spera, che più larga gira,

Passa il sospiro ch’esce del mio core:

Intelligenza nuova, che l’Amore

Piangendo mette in lui, pur su lo tira.”

No one can separate the thought and feeling in this verse. But they were

not always fused. The mediaeval fancy sported with this love; the

mediaeval mind delighted in it as a theme of argument. And the fancy might

be as fantastic as the reasoning was finely spun.

The literature of this love draws no sharp lines between love as

resistless passion and love as enabling virtue; yet these two aspects are

distinguishable. The first was less an original creation of the Middle

Ages than the second. Antiquity had known the passion which overwhelmed

the stricken mortal, and had treated it as something put upon the man and

woman, a convulsive joy, also a bane. Antiquity had analyzed it too, and

had shown its effects, especially its physical symptoms. Much had been

written of its fatal nature; songs had sung how it overthrew the strong

and brought men and women to their death. Looking upon this love as

something put on man and woman, antiquity pictured it mainly as an

insanity cast like a spell upon some one who otherwise would have been

sane. But the Middle Ages saw love transformed into the man and woman, saw

it constitute their will as well as passion, and perceived that it was

their being. If the lover could not avoid or resist it, the reason was

because it was his mightiest self, and not because it was a compulsion

from without; it was his nature, not his disease.

The nature, ways, and laws of this high and ennobling love were much

pondered on and talked of. They were expounded in pedantic treatises, as

well as set forth in tales which sometimes have the breath of universal

life. Ovid’s _Ars amatoria_ furnished the idea that love was an art to be

learned and practised. Mediaeval clerks and rhymers took his light art

seriously, and certain of them made manuals of the rules and precepts of

love, devised by themselves and others interested in such fancies. An

example is the _Flos amoris_ or _Ars amatoria_ of Andrew the Chaplain, who

compiled his book not far from the year 1200.[712] He wrote with his

obsequious head filled with a sense of the authority in love matters of

Marie de Champagne, and other great ladies. His book contains a number of

curious questions which had been laid before one or the other of those

reigning dames, and which they solved boldly in love’s favour. Thus on

solicitation Countess Marie decided that there could be no true love

between a husband and wife; and that the possession of an honoured husband

or beautiful wife did not bar the proffer or acceptance of love from

another. The living literature of love was never constrained by the

foolishness of the first proposition, but was freely to exemplify the

further conclusion which others besides the countess drew.

Andrew gives a code of love’s rules. He would have no one think that he

composed them; but that he saw them written on a parchment attached to the

hawk’s perch, and won at Arthur’s Court by the valour of a certain Breton

knight. They read like proverbs, and undoubtedly represent the ideas of

courtly society upon courtly love. There are thirty-one of them--for

example:

(1) Marriage is not a good excuse for rejecting love.

(2) Who does not conceal, cannot love.

(3) None can love two at once. There is no reason why a woman should

not be loved by two men, or a man by two women.

(4) It is love’s way always to increase or lessen.

(9) None can love except one who is moved by love’s suasion.

(12) The true lover has no desire to embrace any one except his (or

her) co-lover (_co-amans_).

(13) Love when published rarely endures.

(14) Easy winning makes love despicable; the difficult is held dear.

(15) Every lover turns pale in the sight of the co-lover.

(16) The lover’s heart trembles at the sudden sight of the co-lover.

(18) Prowess (_probitas_) alone makes one worthy of love.

(20) The lover is always fearful.

(23) The one whom the thought of love disturbs, eats and sleeps

little.

(25) The true lover finds happiness only in what he deems will please

his co-lover.

(28) A slight fault in the lover awakens the co-lover’s suspicion.

(30) The true lover constantly, without intermission, is engrossed

with the image of the co-lover.

These rules were exemplified in the imaginative literature of courtly

love. Such love and the feats inspired by it made the chief matter of the

Arthurian romances, which became the literary property of western Europe;

and the supreme examples of their darling theme are the careers and

fortunes of the two most famous pairs of lovers in all this gallant cycle,

Tristan and Iseult, Lancelot and Guinevere. In the former story love is

resistless passion; in the latter its virtue- and valour-bestowing

qualities appear. In both, the laws forbidding its fruition are shattered:

in the Tristan story blindly, madly, without further thought; while in the

tale of Lancelot this conflict sometimes rises to consciousness even in

the lovers’ hearts. How chivalric love may reach accord with Christian

precept will be shown hereafter in the progress of the white and scarlet

soul of Parzival, the brave man proving himself slowly wise.

Probably there never was a better version of the story of Tristan and

Iseult than that of Gottfried of Strassburg, who transformed French

originals into his Middle High German poem about the year 1210.[713] The

poet-adapter sets forth his ideas of love in an elaborate prologue. Very

antithetically he shows its bitter sweet, its dear sorrow, its yearning

need; indeed to love is to yearn--an idea not strange to Plato--and

Gottfried uses the words _sene_, _senelîch_, _senedaere_ (all of which are

related to _sehnsucht_, which is yearning) to signify love, a lover, and

his pain. His poem shall be of two noble lovers:

“Ein senedaere, eine senedaerin.”

The more love’s fire burns the heart, the more one loves; this pain is

full of love, an ill so good for the heart that no noble nature once

roused by it would wish to lose part therein. Who never felt love’s pain

has never felt love:

“Liep unde leit diu waren ie

An minnen ungescheiden.”

It is good for men to hear a tale of noble love, yes, a deep good. It

sweetens love and raises the hearer’s mood; it strengthens troth, enriches

life. Love, troth, a constant spirit, honour, and whatever else is good,

are never so precious as when set in a tale of love’s joy and pain. Love

is such a blessed thing, such a blessed striving, that no one without its

teaching has worth or honour. These lovers died long ago; yet their love

and troth, their life, their death, will still give troth and honour to

seekers after these. Their death lives and is ever new, as we listen to

the tale. Evidently, in Gottfried’s mind the Tristan tale of love’s

almighty passion carried the thought of love as the inspiration of a noble

life. Yet that thought was not native to the legend, and finds scant

exemplification in Gottfried’s poem.

The tragic passion of the main narrative is presaged by the story of

Tristan’s parents. His mother was Blancheflur, King Mark’s sister, and his

father Prince Riwalin. She saw him in the May-Court tourney held near

Tintajoel. She took him into her thoughts; he entered her heart, and there

wore crown and sceptre.

She greeted him; he her. She bashfully began: “My lord, may God enrich

your heart and courage; but I harbour something against you.”

“Sweet one, what have I done?”

“You have done violence to my best friend”--it was her heart, she meant.

“Beauty, bear me no hate for that; command, and I will do your bidding.”

“Then I will not hate you bitterly. I will see what atonement you will

make.”

He bowed, and carried with him her image. Love’s will mastered his heart,

as he thought of Blancheflur, of her hair, her brow, her cheek, her mouth,

her chin, and the glad Easter day that smiling lay in her eyes. Love the

heartburner set his heart aflame, and lo! he entered upon another life;

purpose and habit changed, he was another man.

Sad is the short tale of these lovers. Riwalin is killed in battle, and at

the news of his death Blancheflur expires, giving birth to a son. Rual the

Faithful names the child Tristan, to symbolize the sorrow of its birth.

The story of Tristan’s early years draws the reader to the accomplished,

happy youth. He is the delight of all; for his young manhood is

courtliness itself, and valour and generosity. He is loved, and

afterwards recognized and knighted, by his uncle Mark. Then he sets out

and avenges his father’s death; after which he returns to Mark’s Court,

and vanquishes the Irish champion Morold. A fragment of Tristan’s sword

remained in Morold’s head; Tristan himself received a poisoned wound,

which could be healed, as the dying Morold told him, only by Ireland’s

queen, Iseult. Very charming is the story of Tristan’s first visit to

Ireland, disguised as a harper, under the name of Tantris. The queen

hearing of his skill, has him brought to the palace, where she heals him,

and he in return becomes the teacher of her daughter, the younger Iseult,

whom he instructs in letters, music and singing, French and Latin, ethics,

courtly arts and manners, till the girl became as accomplished as she was

beautiful, and could write and read, and compose and sing _pastorelles_

and _rondeaux_ and other songs.

On his return to Cornwall he told Mark of the young Iseult, and then, at

Mark’s request, set forth again to woo her for him. The Irish king has

promised his daughter to whoever shall slay the dragon. Tristan does the

deed, cuts out the dragon’s tongue as proof, and then falls overcome and

fainting. The king’s cupbearer comes by, breaks his lance on the dead

dragon, and, riding on, announces that he has slain the monster; he has

the great head brought to the Court upon a wagon. Iseult is in despair at

the thought of marrying the cupbearer; her mother doubts his story, and

bids Iseult ride out and search for the real slayer. The ladies discover

Tristan, with him the dragon’s tongue. They carry him to the palace to

heal him, and the young Iseult recognizes him as the harper Tantris, and

redoubles her kind care. But after a while she noticed the notch in his

sword, and saw that it fitted the fragment found in Morold’s head--and is

not Tantris just Tristan reversed? This is the man who slew Morold, her

mother’s brother! She seizes the sword and rushes in to kill him in his

bath. Her mother checks her, and at last she is appeased, Tristan letting

them see that an important mission has brought him to Ireland. There is

truce between them, and Tristan goes to the king with Mark’s demand for

Iseult’s hand. Then the cupbearer is discomfited, peace is made between

the Irish king and Mark, and the young Iseult, with Brangaene her cousin,

makes ready to sail with Tristan. The queen secretly gave a love-drink

into Brangaene’s care, which Iseult and Mark should drink together. The

people followed down to the haven, and all wept and lamented that with

fair Iseult the sunshine had left Ireland.

Iseult is sad. She cannot forget that it is Tristan who slew her uncle and

is now taking her from her home. Tristan fails to comfort her. They see

land. Tristan calls for wine to pledge Iseult. A little maid brings--the

love-drink! They drink together, not wine but that endless heart’s pain

which shall be their common death. Too late, Brangaene with a cry throws

the goblet into the sea. Love stole into both their hearts; gone was

Iseult’s hate. They were no longer two, but one; the sinner, love, had

done it. They were each other’s joy and pain; doubt and shame seized them.

Tristan bethought him of his loyalty and honour, struggling against love

vainly. Iseult was like a bird caught with the fowler’s lime; shame drove

her eyes away from him; but love drew her heart. She gave over the contest

as she looked on him, and he also began to yield. They thought each other

fairer than before; love was conquering.

The ship sails on. Love’s need conquered. They talk together of the past,

how he had once come in a little boat, and of the lessons: “Fair Iseult,

what is troubling you?”

“What I know, that troubles me; what I see, the heaven and sea, that

weighs on me; body and life are heavy.”

They leaned toward each other; bright eyes began to fill from the heart’s

spring; her head sank, his arm sustained her;--“Ah! sweet, tell me, what

is it?”

Answered love’s feather-play, Iseult: “Love is my need, love is my pain.”

He answered painfully: “Fair Iseult, it is the rude wind and sea.”

“No, no, it is not wind or sea; love is my pain.”

“Beauty, so with me! Love and you make my need. Heart’s lady, dear Iseult,

you and the love of you have seized me. I am dazed. I cannot find myself.

All the world has become naught, save thee alone.”

“Sir, so is it with me.”

They loved, and in each other saw one mind, one heart, one will. Their

silent kiss was long. In the night, love the physician brought their only

balm. Sweet had the voyage become; alas! that it must end.

With their landing begins the trickery and falsehood compelled by the

situation. The fearful Iseult plotted to murder the true Brangaene, who

alone knew. After a while Mark’s suspicion is aroused, to be lulled by

guile. Plot and counterplot go on; the lovers win and win again; truth and

honour, everything save love’s joy and fear and all-sufficiency, are cast

to the winds. Even the “Judgment of God” is tricked; the hot iron does not

burn Iseult swearing her false oath, literally true. Many a time Mark’s

jealousy has been fiercely stirred, only to be tricked to sleep again. Yet

he knows that Tristan and Iseult are lovers. He calls them to him; he

tells them he will not avenge himself, they are too dear to him. But let

them take each other by the hand and leave him. So, together, they

disappear in the forest.

Then comes the wonderful, beautiful story of the love-grotto and the

lovers’ forest-life; they had the forest and they had themselves, and

needed no more. One morning they arose to the sweet birds’ song of

greeting; but they heard a horn; Mark must be hunting near. So they were

very careful, and again prepared deception. Mark has been told of the

love-grotto in the wood. In the night he came and found it, looked through

its little rustic window as the day began to dawn. There lay the lovers,

apart, a naked sword between them. A sunbeam, stealing through the window,

touches Iseult’s cheek, touches her sweet mouth. Mark loves her anew. Then

fearful lest the sunlight should disturb her, he covered the window with

grass and leaves and flowers, blessed her, and went away in tears. The

lovers waken. They had no need to fear. The lie of the naked sword again

had won. Mark sends and invites them to return.

Insatiable love knew no surcease or pause. The German poet is driven to a

few reflections on the deceits of Eve’s daughters, the anxieties of

forbidden love, and the crown of worth and joy that a true woman’s love

may be. At last the lovers are betrayed--in each other’s arms. They know

that Mark has seen them.

“Heart’s lady, fair Iseult, now we must part. Let me not pass from your

heart. Iseult must ever be in Tristan’s heart. Forget me not.”

Says Iseult: “Our hearts have been too long one ever to know forgetting.

Whether you are near or far, nothing but Tristan enters mine. See to it

that no other woman parts us. Take this ring and think of me. Iseult with

Tristan has been ever one heart, one troth, one body, one life. Think of

me as your life--Iseult.”

The fateful turning of the story is not far off: Tristan has met the other

Iseult, her of the white hands. The poet Gottfried did not complete his

work. He died, leaving Tristan’s heart struggling between the old love and

the new--the new and weaker love, but the more present offering to pain.

The story was variously concluded by different rhymers, in Gottfried’s

time and after. The best ending is the extant fragment of the _Tristan_ by

Thomas of Brittany, the master whom Gottfried followed. In it, the wounded

Tristan dies at the false news of the black sails--the treachery of Iseult

of the white hands. The true Iseult finds him dead; kisses him, takes him

in her arms, and dies.

From the time when on the ship Tristan and Iseult cast shame and honour to

the winds, the story tells of a love which knows no law except itself, a

love which is not hindered or made to hesitate and doubt by any command of

righteousness or honour. Love is the theme; the tale has no sympathy or

understanding for anything else. It is therefore free from the consciously

realized inconsistencies present at least in some versions of the story of

Lancelot and Guinevere. In them two laws of life seem on the verge of

conflict. On the one--the feebler--side, honour, troth to marriage vows,

some sense of right and wrong; on the other, passionate love, which is law

and right unto itself, having its own commands and prohibitions; a love

which is also an inspiration and uplifting power unto the lover; a love

holy in itself and yet because of its high nature the more fatally

impeached by truth and honour trampled on. In the conflict between the two

laws of life in the Lancelot story, the rights and needs and power of love

maintain themselves; yet the end must come, and the lovers live out love’s

palinode in separate convents. For this love to be made perfect, must be

crowned with repentance.

Who first created Lancelot, and who first made the peerless knight love

Arthur’s queen? This question has not yet been answered.[714] Chrétien de

Troies’ poem, _Le Conte de la charrette_, has for its subject an episode

in Lancelot’s long love of Guinevere.[715] Here, as in his other poems,

Chrétien is a facile narrator, with little sense of the significance that

might be given to the stories which he received and cleverly remade. But

their significance is shown in the Old French prose _Lancelot_, probably

composed two or three decades after Chrétien wrote. It contains the lovely

story of Lancelot’s rearing, by the Lady of the Lake, and of his glorious

youth. It brings him to the Court of Arthur, and tells how he was made a

knight--it was the queen and not the king from whom he received his sword.

And he loves her--loves her and her only from the first until his death.

He has no thought of serving any other mistress. And he is aided in his

love by the “haute prince Galehaut,” the most high-hearted friend that

ever gave himself to his friend’s weal.

From the beginning Lancelot’s love is worship, it is holy; and almost from

the beginning it is unholy. From the beginning, too, it is the man’s

inspiration, it is his strength; it makes him the peerless knight,

peerless in courtesy, peerless in emprise; this love gives him the single

eye, the unswerving heart, the resistless valour to accomplish those

adventures wherein all other knights had found their shame--they were not

perfect lovers! Only through his perfect love could Lancelot have

accomplished that greatest adventure of the _Val des faux amants_;--_Val

sans retour_ for all other knights.[716] Lancelot alone had always been,

and to his death remained, a lover absolutely true in act and word and

thought; incomparably more chastely loyal to Guinevere than her kingly

spouse. Against the singleness of this perfect love enchantments fail, and

swords and lances break. Yet this love, fraught with untruth and

dishonour, must conceal itself from that king who, while breaking his own

marriage vows as passion led him, trusted and honoured above all men the

peerless knight whose peerlessness was rooted in his unholy holy love for

Arthur’s queen.

The first full sin between Lancelot and Guinevere was committed when

Arthur was absent on a love-adventure, which brought him to a shameful

prison. He was delivered by Lancelot, and recognizing his deliverer, he

said in royal gratitude: “I yield you my land, my honour, and myself.”

Lancelot blushes! Thereafter, as towards Arthur, Lancelot and Guinevere

are forced into stratagems almost as ignoble as those by which King Mark

was tricked. And Guinevere--she too is peerless among women; perfect in

beauty, perfect in courtliness, perfect in dutifulness to her

husband--saving her love for Lancelot! Guinevere’s dutifulness to Arthur

is not shaken by his outrageous treatment of her because of the “false

Guinevere,” when he cast off and sought to burn his queen. She will

continue to obey him though he has dishonoured her--and all the time,

unknown to her outrageous, unjustly accusing lord, how had she cast her

and his honour down with Lancelot! Only while she is put away from her

lord, and under Lancelot’s guard, for that time she will be true to

marriage vows; and Lancelot assents.[717]

The latter part of the story, when asceticism enters with Galahad,[718]

suggests that the peerless knight of “les temps adventureux” was sinful.

But the main body of the tale put no reproach on Lancelot for his great

love. It told of a love as perfect and as absolute as the author or

compiler could conceive; and the conduct of Lancelot was intended to be

that of a perfect lover, whose sentiments and actions should accord with

the idea of courtly love and exemplify its rules. Their underlying

principle was that love should always be absolute, and that the lover’s

every thought and act should on all occasions correspond with the most

extreme feelings or sentiments or fancies possible for a lover. In the

prose narrative, for example, Lancelot goes mad three times because of his

mistress’s cruelty, a cruelty which may seem to us absurd, but which

represents the adored lady’s insistence, under all circumstances, upon the

most unhesitating and utter devotion from her lover.

Chrétien’s _Conte de la charrette_ is a clear rendering of the idea that

love shall be absolute, and hesitate at nothing; it is an example of

courtly love carried to its furthest imagined conclusions. It displays all

the rules of Andrew the Chaplain in operation. In it Lancelot will do

anything for Guinevere, will show himself a coward knight at her command,

or perform feats of arms; he will desire the least little bit of her--a

tress of hair--more than all else which is not she; he will throw himself

from the window to be near her; engaged in deadly combat, the sight of her

makes him forget his enemy; at the news of her death he seeks at once to

die. Of course his heart loathes the thought of infringing this great love

by the slightest fancy for another woman. On the other hand, when by

marvels of valour Lancelot rescues Guinevere from captivity, she will not

speak to him because for a single instant he had hesitated to mount a

_charrette_, in which no knight was carried save one who was felon and

condemned to death. This was logical on Guinevere’s part; Lancelot’s love

should always have been so absolute as never for one instant to hesitate.

Much of this is extreme, and yet hardly unreal. Heloïse’s love for

Abaelard never hesitated.

Such love, imperious and absolute, shuts out all laws and exigencies save

its own;[719] it must be virtue and honour unto itself; it is careless of

what ill it may do so long as that ill does not infringe love’s laws.

Evidently before it the bonds of marriage break, or pale to

insignificance. It is its own sanction, nor needs the faint blessing of

the priest. The poet--as the actual lover likewise--may even deem that

love can best show itself to be the principle of its own honour when

unsustained by wedlock; thus unsustained and unobscured it stands alone,

fairer, clearer, more interesting and romantic. Again, since mediaeval

marriage in high life was more often a joining of fiefs than a union of

hearts, there would be high-born dames and courtly poets to declare that

love could only exist between knight and mistress, and not between husband

and wife. Marriage shuts out love’s doubts and fears; there is no need of

further knightly services; and husband and wife by law are bound to render

to each other what between lovers is gracious favour; this was the opinion

of Marie de Champagne, it also was the opinion of Heloïse. In chivalric

poetry the lovers, when at last duly married, may continue to call each

other _ami et amie_ rather than wife and lord;[720] or a knight may shun

marriage lest he settle down and lose worship, doing no more adventurous

feats of arms, like Chrétien’s Erec, till his wife Enide stung him by her

speech.[721] Some centuries later Malory has Lancelot utter a like

sentiment: “But to be a wedded man I think never to be, for if I were,

then should I be bound to tarry with my wife, and leave arms and

tournaments, battles and adventures.”

If allowance be made for the difference in topic and treatment between the

Arthurian romances and Guillaume de Lorris’s portion of the _Roman de la

rose_, the latter will be seen to illustrate similar love principles. De

Lorris’s poem is fancy playing with thoughts of love which had inspired

these tales of chivalry. Every one knows its gentle idyllic

character;--how charming, for instance, is the conflict between the

Lover-to-be and Love, who quickly overcomes the ready yielder. So he

surrenders unconditionally, gives himself over; Love may slay him or

gladden him--“le cuers est vostre, non pas miens,” says the lover to Love,

and you shall do with it as you will. Then Love sweetly takes his little

golden key, and locks the lover’s heart, after which he safely may impart

his rules and counsels: the lover must abjure _vilanie_, and foul and

slanderous speech--the opposite of courtesy. Pride also (_orgoil_) must be

abandoned. He should attire himself seemingly, and show cheerfulness; he

must be niggardly in nothing; his heart must be given utterly to one; he

shall undergo toils and endure griefs without complaint; in absence he

will always think of the beloved, sighing for her, keeping his love

aflame; he will be shameful, confused and changing colour in her presence;

at night he will toss and weep for love of her, and dream dreams of

passionate delight; then wakeful, he will rise and wander near her

dwelling, but will not be seen--nor will he forget to be generous to her

waiting-maid. All of this will make the lover pale and lean. To aid him to

endure these agonies, will come Hope with her gentle healings, and

Fond-thought, and Sweet-speech of the beloved with a wise confidant, and

Sweet-sight of her dwelling, maybe of herself. The _Roman de la rose_ is

fancy, and the Arthurian romances are fiction. In the one or the other,

imagination may take the place of passion, and the contents of the poem or

romance afford a type and presentation of the theory of love.

CHAPTER XXIV

PARZIVAL, THE BRAVE MAN SLOWLY WISE

The instances of romantic chivalry and courtly love reviewed in the last

chapter exemplify ideals of conduct in some respects opposed to Christian

ethics. But there is still a famous poem of chivalry in which the romantic

ideal has gained in ethical consideration and achieved a hard-won

agreement with the teachings of mediaeval Christianity, and yet has not

become monkish or lost its knightly character. This poem told of a

struggle toward wisdom and toward peace; and the victory when won rested

upon the broadest mediaeval thoughts of life, and therefore necessarily

included the soul’s reconcilement to the saving ways of God. Yet it was

knighthood’s battle, won on earth by strength of arm, by steadfast

courage, and by loyalty to whatsoever through the weary years the man’s

increasing wisdom recognized as right. A monk, seeking salvation, casts

himself on God; the man that battles in the world is conscious that his

own endeavour helps, and knows that God is ally to the valiant and not to

him who lets his hands drop--even in the lap of God.

Among the romances presumably having a remote Breton origin, and somehow

connected with the Court of Arthur, was the tale of Parzival, the princely

youth reared in foolish ignorance of life, who learned all knighthood’s

lessons in the end, and became a perfect worshipful knight. This tale was

told and retold. The adventures of another knight, Gawain, were interwoven

in it. Possibly the French poet, Chrétien de Troies, about the year 1170,

in his retelling, first brought into the story the conception of that

_thing_, that magic dish, which in the course of _its_ retellings became

the Holy Grail. Chrétien did not finish his poem, and after him others

completed or retold the story. Among them there was one who lacked the

smooth facility of the French Trouvère, yet surpassed him and all others

in thoughtfulness and dramatic power. This was the Bavarian, Wolfram von

Eschenbach. He was a knight, and wandered from castle to castle and from

court to court, and saw men. His generous patron was Hermann, Landgraf of

Thüringen, who held court on the Wartburg, near Eisenach. There Wolfram

may have composed his great poem in the opening years of the thirteenth

century. He was no clerk, and had no clerkly education. Probably he could

neither read nor write. But he lived during the best period of mediaeval

German poetry, and the Wartburg was the centre of gay and literary life.

Walther von der Vogelweide was one of Wolfram’s familiars in its halls.

Wolfram knew and disapproved of Chrétien’s version of the _Perceval_; and

said the story had been far better told by a certain Kyot, a singer of

Provence.[722] Nothing is known of the latter beyond Wolfram’s praise.

Perhaps he was an invention of Wolfram’s; not infrequently mediaeval poets

referred to fictitious sources. At all events, Wolfram’s sources were

French or Provençal. In large measure the best German mediaeval poetry was

an adaptation of the French; a fact which did not prevent the German

adaptations from occasionally surpassing the French works they were drawn

from. In the instance of Wolfram’s _Parzival_, as in that of Gottfried von

Strassburg’s _Tristan_, the German poems were the great renderings of

these tales.

As our author was a thoughtful German, his style is difficult and

involved. Yet he had imagination, and his poem is great in the climaxes

of the story. It is a poem of the hero’s development, his spiritual

progress. Apparently it was Wolfram who first realized the profound

significance of the Parzival legend. Both the choice of subject and the

contents of the poem reflect his temperament and opinions. Wolfram was a

knight, and chose a knightly tale; for him knightly victories were the

natural symbols of a man’s progress. He was also one living in the world,

prizing its gifts, and entertaining merely a perfunctory approval of

ascetic renunciation. The loyal love between man and woman was to him

earth’s greatest good, and wedlock did not yield to celibacy in

righteousness.[723] Let fame and power and the glory of this world be

striven for and won in loyalty and steadfastness and truth, in service of

those who need aid, in mercy to the vanquished and in humility before God,

with assurance that He is truth and loyalty and power, and never fails

those who obey and serve Him.

“While two wills (_Zvifel_, _Zweifel_ == doubt) dwell near the heart,

the soul is bitter. Shamed and graced the man whose dauntless mood

is--piebald! In him both heaven and hell have part. Black-coloured the

unsteadfast comrade; white the man whose thoughts keep troth. False

comradeship is fit for hell fire. Likewise let women heed whither they

carry their honour, and on whom they bestow their love, that they may

not rue their troth. Before God, I counsel good women to observe right

measure. Their fortress is shame: I cannot wish them better weal. The

false one gains false reward; her praise vanishes. Wide is the fame of

many a fair; but if her heart be counterfeit, ’tis a false gem set in

gold. The woman true to womanhood, be hers the praise--not lessened by

her outside hue.

“Shall I now prove and draw a man and woman rightly? Hear then this

tale of love--joy and anguish too. My story tells of faithfulness, of

woman’s truth to womanhood, of man’s to manhood, never flinching.

Steel was he; in strife his conquering hand still took the guerdon;

he, brave and slowly wise, this hero whom I greet, sweet in the eyes

of women, heart’s malady for them as well, himself a very flight from

evil deed.”

Such is Wolfram’s Prologue. The story opens in a forest, where Queen

Herzeloide had buried herself with her infant son after the death in

knightly battle of Prince Gahmuret, her husband. The broken-hearted,

foolish mother is seeking to keep her boy in ignorance of arms and

knights. He has made himself a bow; he shoots a bird--its song is hushed.

This is the child’s first sorrow, and childish ignorance has been the

cause; as afterwards youth’s folly and then man’s lack of wisdom will

cause that child, grown large, more lasting anguish. Now to see a bird

makes his tears start. His still foolish mother orders her servants to

kill them. The boy protests, and the mother with a quick caress declares

the birds shall have peace, she will no more infringe God’s commands. At

this unknown name the boy cries out, “O mother! what is God?” “Son, I will

tell thee. Brighter than the day is He--who put on a human face. Pray to

Him in need; His faithfulness helps men ever. There is another, hell’s

chief, black and false. Keep thy thoughts from him and from doubt’s

waverings.” Away springs the boy again; and in the forest he learns to

throw the hunting-spear and slay the stags. One day he hears the sounds of

hoofs. He waves his spear: “May now the devil come in all his rage; I’d

stand against him. My mother speaks of him in dread; but she is just

afraid.” Three knights gallop up in glancing armour. He thinks each is a

god; falls on his knees before them. “Help, god, since thou canst help so

well!” “This fool blocks our path,” cries one. A fourth, their lord, rides

up, and the boy calls him God.

“God?--not I; I gladly do His behests. Thou seest four knights.”

“Knights? what is that? If thou hast not God’s power, then tell me, who

makes knights?”

“Young sir, that does King Arthur; go to him. He’ll knight you--you seem

to knighthood born.”

The knights gazed on the boy, in whom God’s craft showed clear. The boy

touches their armour, their swords. The prince speaks over him: “Had I thy

beauty! God’s gifts to thee are great--if thou wilt wisely fare. May He

keep sorrow from thee!” The knights rode on, while the boy sped to his

mother, to tell her what he had seen. She was speechless. The boy would go

to Arthur’s Court. So she bethought her of a silly plan, to put fool’s

garb on him, that insult and scoff might drive him back to her. She also

gave him counsel, wise and foolish.

So the youth is launched. He rides away; his mother dies of grief. As his

path winds on, he finds a lady asleep in a pavilion, and following his

mother’s counsel he kisses her, and takes her ring by force; trouble came

from this deed of folly. Then he meets with Sigune, mourning a dead

knight. He stops and promises to avenge her. She was his cousin and,

recognizing him, called him by name, and spoke to him of his lineage. Then

the youth is piloted by a fisherman, till, in the neighbourhood of

Arthur’s Court, he meets a knight, Ither, in red armour, who greets him,

points out the way, and sends a challenge to Arthur and his Round Table.

Parzival now finds himself at Arthur’s thronging Court. The young Iwein

first speaks to him and the fool-youth returns: “God keep thee--so my

mother bade me say. Here I see so many Arthurs; who is it that will make

me knight?” Iwein, laughing, leads him to the royal pavilion, where he

says: “God keep you, gentles, especially the king and his wife--as my

mother bade me greet--and all the honoured knights of the Round Table. But

I cannot tell which one here is lord. To him a red knight sends a

challenge; I think he wants to fight. O! might the king’s hand grant me

the Red Knight’s harness!” They crowd around the glorious youth. “Thanks,

young sir, for your greeting which I shall hope to earn,” said the king.

“Would to God!” cried the young man, quivering with impatience; “the time

seems years before I shall be knight. Give me knighthood now.”

“Gladly,” returns the king. “Might I grant it to you worthily. Wait till

to-morrow that I may knight you duly and with gifts.”

“I want no gifts--only that knight’s armour. My mother can give me gifts;

she is a queen.”

Arthur feared to send the raw youth against the noble Ither, but yielded

to the malignant spurring of Sir Kay, and Parzival rode out with his

unknightly hunting-spear. Abruptly he bade Ither give him his horse and

armour, and on the knight’s sarcastic answer, grasped his horse’s bridle.

The angry Ither reversed his lance, and with the butt end struck down

Parzival and his sorry nag. Parzival sprang to his feet and threw his

spear straight through the visor of the other’s helmet; and the knight

fell from his horse, dead. With brutal stupidity Parzival tried to pull

his armour off, not knowing how to unlace it. Iwein came and showed him

how to remove and wear the armour, and how to carry his shield and lance.

So clad in Ither’s armour and mounted on the great war-horse, he bids

Iwein commend him to King Arthur, and rides off, leaving the other to care

for the body of the dead knight.

In the evening he reached the castle of an aged prince, who saw the

marvellous youth come riding, with the fool garments showing out from

under his armour. Courteously received, the youth enjoyed a bath, a

repast, and a long night’s sleep. Fortunately his mother had bade him

follow the counsels of grey hairs; so in the morning he put on the

garments which his host had left in his room for him, instead of what his

mother gave. The host first heard mass with his simple guest, and

instructed him as to its significance, and how to cross himself and guard

against the devil’s wiles. Then they breakfasted, and the old man, having

heard Parzival’s story, advised him to leave off saying “My mother bade

me,” and gave him further counsel: “Preserve thy shame; the shameless man

is worthless, and at last, wins hell. You seem a mighty lord, mind you

take pity on those in need; be kind and generous and humble. The worthy

man in need is shamed to beg; anticipate his wants; this brings God’s

favour. Yet be prudent, neither lavish nor miserly; right measure be your

rule. Sorely you need counsel; avoid harsh conduct, do not ask too many

questions, nor yet refuse to answer a question fitly asked; observe and

listen. Let mercy temper valour. Spare him who yields, whatever wrong he

has done you. When you lay off your armour, wash your hands and face; make

yourself neat; woman’s eye will mark it. Be manly and gay. Hold women in

respect and love; this increases a young man’s honour. Be constant--that

is manhood’s part. Short his praise who betrays honest love. The

night-thief wakes many foes; against treachery true love has its own

wisdom and resource. Gain its disfavour and your lot is shame.”

The guest thanked the host for his counsel. He spoke no more of his mother

save in his heart. Then his host, remarking that he had seen many a shield

hang better on a wall than Parzival’s on him, took him out into a field;

and there in the company of other knights he instructed him in jousting,

and found him a ready and resistless pupil. The old man looked fondly on

him--his daughter Liasse--she is fair--would not Parzival think so, and

stay as a son in the now sonless house? Fair and chaste was the damsel,

but Parzival says: “My lord, I am not wise. If I gain knighthood’s praise

so that I may look for love--then keep Liasse for me. You shall have less

weight of grief if I can lighten it.”

Parzival’s first experience of life and the old man’s counsels had changed

him. He was no longer the callow boy who a few days before in the forest

took the knights for gods, but a young man conscious of his inexperience

and lack of wisdom. Perhaps the change seems sudden; but the subtle

development of character had not yet found literary expression in the

Middle Ages, and Wolfram here is a great pioneer.

So the young knight rode away, carrying secret thoughts of the maiden, and

a little pain, his heart lightly touched with love, and so made ready for

a mightier passion. His horse carried him on through woods and savage

mountains, to the kingdom whose capital, Pelrapeire, was besieged, because

it held its queen, Condwiramurs (_coin de voire amors_). Within the town

were famine and death, without, a knightly, cruel foe, King Clamide, who

fought to win the queen by sack and ruin. Crossing a field and bridge

where many a knight had fallen, Parzival reached a gate and knocked. A

maid called out, and finding that he brought aid and not enmity, she

admitted him. Armed men weak with hunger fill the streets, through which

the maid leads the knight on to the palace. His armour is removed, a

mantle brought him. “Will he see the queen, our lady?” ask the attendants.

“Gladly,” answers Parzival. They enter the great hall--and the queen’s

fair eyes greet him. She advances surrounded by her ladies. With courtesy

she kisses the knight, gives him her hand, and leads him to a seat. The

faces of her warriors and women are sad and worn; but she--had she

contended with Enit and both Iseults fair, and whomsoever else men praise

for beauty, hers had been the prize.

The guest mused: “Liasse was there--Liasse is here; God slacks my grief,

here is Liasse.” He sat silent by the queen, mindful of the old prince’s

advice not to ask questions. “Does this man despise me,” thought she,

“because I am no longer lovely? No, he is the guest, the hostess I; it is

for me to speak.” Then aloud: “Sir, a hostess must speak. Your greeting

won a kiss from me; you offered me your service--so said my maid. Rare

offer now! Sir, whence come you?”

“Lady, I rode this very day from the house of the good, well-remembered

host, Prince Gurnemanz.”

“Sir, I had hardly believed this from another; the way is so long. His

sister was my mother. Many a sad day have I and his Liasse wept together.

Since you bear kindness for that prince, I will tell you our grievous

plight.”

The telling is deferred till some refreshment is obtained, and then

Parzival is shown to his chamber. He sleeps; but the sound of sobbing

breaks his slumber. The hapless queen in her need had sought out her guest

in the solitude of night; she had cast herself on her knees by his couch;

her tears fall--on him, and he awakes. Touched with love and pity at the

sight, Parzival sprang up. “Lady! you mock me? You should kneel to God.”

In honour they sit by each other, and the queen tells her story, how King

Clamide and his seneschal have wasted her lands, unhappy orphan, slain her

people, even her knightly defender, Liasse’s brother--she will die rather

than yield herself to him.

Liasse’s name stirs Parzival: “How can I help you?”

“Save me from that seneschal, who harries me and mine.”

Parzival promises, and the queen steals away. The day is breaking, and

Parzival hears the minster bells. Mass is sung, and the young knight arms

and goes forth--the burghers’ prayers go with him--against the host led by

the seneschal. Parzival vanquishes him, grants him his life, and sends him

to Arthur’s Court. The townsmen receive the victor with acclaim, the

queen embraces him. Who but he shall be her lord? So their nuptials were

celebrated, although Parzival felt the reward to be too great; it were

enough for him to touch her garment’s hem. Soon King Clamide himself

ordered an assault upon the town, only to meet repulse. He challenged

Parzival, and, vanquished like his seneschal, was likewise sent to

Arthur’s Court.

Love was strong between Queen Condwiramurs and Parzival her husband. One

morning Parzival spoke to her in the presence of their people: “Lady,

please you, with your permission, I would see how my mother fares and seek

adventures. If thus I serve and honour you, your love is ample guerdon.”

From his wife and from all those who called him Lord, Parzival rode forth

alone. He has to learn what pain and sorrow are; the first teaching came

now, as longing for his wife filled his heart with grief. In the evening

he reached the shore of a lake, and saw a fisher in a boat, attired like a

king.[724] The fisher directed him to a castle, promising there to be his

host. Following his directions, Parzival came to a marvellously great

castle, where, on saying that the fisher sent him, he was courteously

received and his needs attended to. Sadness pervaded the great halls. The

banquet-room, to which he was shown, was lighted by a hundred chandeliers,

and around the walls were ranged a hundred couches. The host entered and

lay down on one of them, made like a stretcher; he seemed a stranger to

joy. They covered him with furs and mantles, as a sick man. He beckoned

Parzival to sit by him. As the hall filled with people, a squire entered

carrying a bleeding lance, whereupon all present made lament. A procession

of nobly clad ladies followed, bearing precious dishes, and at last among

them a queen, Repanse de Schoye. She bore, upon a silken cushion, the

fulness of all good, an object called the Grail. Only a maiden pure and

true might carry it. There also came six other maids bearing each a

flashing goblet; and they set their burdens before the host. Water for the

hands was then brought to the host and to his guest, and to the knights

ranged on the couches; and tables were placed before them all. A hundred

squires came and reverently took from the Grail all manner of food and

wine, which they set before the knights, whatever each might wish.

Everything came from the power of the Grail.

Parzival wondered, but kept silence, thinking of the old prince’s counsel

not to ask many questions, and hoping to be told what all this might be. A

squire brought a sword to the host, who gave it to the guest: “I bore this

sword in all need, until God wounded me. Take it as amends for our sad

hospitality. Rely on it in battle.”

The gift of the sword was Parzival’s opportunity to ask his host what had

stricken him. He let it pass. The feast was solemnly removed. “Your bed is

ready, whenever you will rest,” said the host; and Parzival was shown to a

bedchamber, where he was left alone. But the knight did not sleep

uncompanioned. Coming sorrow sent her messengers. Dreams overhung him, as

a tapestry, woven of sword-strokes and deadly thrusts of lance. He was

fighting dark, endless, battles for his life, till sweating in every limb

he woke. Day shone through the window. “Where are the knaves to fetch my

clothes?” He heard no sound. He sprang up. His armour lay there, and the

two swords--the one which he took from Ither and the one given him by his

host. Thought he: “I have suffered such pain in my sleep, there must be

hard work for me to-day. Is mine host in need, I will gladly aid him and

her too, Repanse, who gave me this mantle; yet I would not serve her for

her love; my own wife is as beautiful.”

Parzival passed through the castle’s empty halls, calling aloud in anger.

He saw no one, heard no sound. In the courtyard he found his horse, and

flung himself into the saddle. He rode through the open castle-gate, over

the draw-bridge, which an unseen hand drew up before his horse’s hoofs had

fairly cleared it. He looked behind him in surprise. A squire cursed him:

“May the sun scorch you! Had you just used your mouth to ask a question of

your host! You missed it, goose!” Parzival called for explanation, but the

gates were swung to in his face. His joy was gone, his pain begun. By

chance throw of the dice he had found and lost the Grail. He sees the

ground torn as by the hoofs of knights riding hard. “These,” thought he,

“fight to-day for my host’s honour. Their band would not have been shamed

by me. I would not fail them in their need--so might I earn the bread I

ate and this sword which their lord gave me. I carry it unearned. They

think I am a coward.”

He followed the hoof tracks; they led him on a way, then scattered and

grew faint. The day was young. Under a linden sat a lady, holding the body

of a knight embalmed. What earthly troth compared with hers? He turned his

horse to her: “Lady, your sorrow grieves my heart. Would my service avail

you?”

“Whence come you? Many a man has found death in this wood. Flee, as you

love your life; but, say, where did you spend the night?”

“In a castle not a league from here.”

“Do not deceive. You carry stranger shield. There is no house in thirty

leagues, save one castle high and great. Those who seek it, find it not.

It is only found unsought. Munsalvaesch its name. The ancient Titurel

bequeathed it to his son Frimutel, a hero; but in the jousts he won his

death from love. Of his children, one is a hermit, Trevrizent; another,

Anfortas, is the castle’s lord, and can neither ride nor walk, nor sit nor

lie. But, sir, if you were there, may be that he is healed of his long

pain.”

“Many marvels saw I there,” he answered.

She recognized the voice: “You are Parzival. Say, then, saw you the Grail

and the joyless lord? If his pain is stilled through you, then hail! far

as the wind blows spreads your glory, your dominion too.”

“How did you know me?” said Parzival.

“I am the maid who once before told you her grief, your kinswoman, who

mourns her lover slain.”

“Alas! where are thy red lips? Art thou Sigune who told me who I was?

Where is fled thy long brown hair, thy loveliness and colour?”

Sigune spoke: “My only consolation were to hear that you have helped the

helpless man whose sword you bear. Know you its gifts? The first stroke it

strikes well, at the second, breaks; a word is needed that the sword may

make its bearer peerless. Do you know this word? If so, none can withstand

you--have you asked the question?”

“I asked nothing.”

“Woe is me that mine eyes have seen you! You asked no question! You saw

such wonders there--the Grail, the noble ladies, the bloody spear.

Wretched, accursed man, what would you have from me? Yours the false

wolf-tooth! You should have taken pity on your host, and asked his

ail--then God had worked a miracle on him. You live, but dead to

happiness.”

“Dear cousin, speak me fair. I will atone for any ill.”

“Atone? nay, leave that! At Munsalvaesch your honour and your knightly

praise vanished. You get no more from me.”

Parzival’s fault was not accident; it sprang from what he was--unwise. He

could atone only through becoming wise through the endurance of years of

trial. The unhappy knight rode on, loosing his helmet to breathe more

freely. Soon he chanced to overtake the lady Jesute, travelling on a mean

horse in wretched guise, her garments torn, her face disfigured. He

offered aid, and she, recognizing him, said with tears that her sorrows

all were due to him; she was the lady whose girdle and ring his fool’s

hand had taken, and now her husband Orilus treated her as a woman of

shame. Here the proud duke himself came thundering up, to see what knight

dared aid his cast-off wife. Parzival conquered him after a long combat;

and the three went to a hermitage where the victor made oath that it was

he who took by force the ring and girdle from the blameless lady.

Returning the ring to Orilus, he sent him with his lady, reconciled and

happy, to Arthur’s Court. Thus Parzival’s knighthood made amends for his

first foolish act. He found a strong lance in the hermitage, took it, and

departed.

When Orilus and his lady had been received with honour at Arthur’s Court,

the king with all his knights set forth towards Munsalvaesch to find the

mighty man calling himself the Red Knight, who had sent so many conquered

pledges of his prowess; for he wished to make him a knight of the Round

Table. It was winter. Parzival--the Red Knight--came riding from the

opposite direction. As he drew near the encampment of the king, his eye

lighted on three drops of blood showing clear red in the fresh-fallen

snow; in mid air above, a wild goose had been struck by a falcon. The

knight paused in reverie--red and white--the colours carried his thoughts

to his heart’s queen, Condwiramurs. There he sat, as a statue on his

horse, with poised spear; his thoughts had flown to her whose image now

closed his eyes to all else. A lad spied the great knight, and ran

breathless to Arthur, to tell of the stranger who seemed to challenge all

the Round Table. Segramors gained Arthur’s permission to accost him. Out

he rode with ready challenge; Parzival neither saw nor heard, till his

horse swerved at the knight’s approach, so that he saw the drops no

longer. Then his mighty lance fell in rest, Segramors was hurled to the

ground, and took himself back discomfited, while Parzival returned to gaze

on the drops of blood, lost in reverie as before. Now Kay the quarrelsome

rode out, and roused the hero with a rude blow. The joust is run again,

and Kay crawls back with broken leg and arm. Again Parzival loses himself

in reverie. And now courtly Gawain, best of Arthur’s knights, rides forth,

unarmed. Courteously he addresses Parzival, who hears nothing, and sits

moveless. Gawain bethinks him it is love that binds the knight. Seeing

that Parzival is gazing on three drops of blood, he gently covers them

with a silken cloth. Parzival’s wits return; he moans: “Alas, lady wife of

mine, what comes between us? A cloud has hidden thee.” Then, astonished,

he sees Gawain--a knight without lance or shield--does he come to mock?

With noble courtesy Gawain disclosed himself and led the way to Arthur’s

Court, where fair ladies and the king greeted the hero whom they had come

to seek. A festival was ordained in his honour. The fair company of

knights and ladies are seated about the Round Table; the feast is at its

height, when suddenly upon a gigantic mule, a scourge in her rough hand,

comes riding the seeress Cundrie, harsh and unlovely. Straight she

addresses Arthur: “Son of King Uterpendragon, you have shamed yourself and

this high company, receiving Parzival, whom you call the Red Knight.” She

turns on Parzival: “Disgrace fall on your proud form and strength! Sir

Parzival, tell me, how came it that you met that joyless fisher, and did

not help him? He showed you his pain, and you, false guest, had no pity

for him. Abhorred by all good men, marked for hell by heaven’s Highest,

you ban of happiness and curse of joy! No leech can heal your sickened

honour. Greater betrayal never shamed a man so goodly. Your host gave you

a sword; you saw them bear the Grail, the silver dishes, and the bloody

spear, and you, dishonoured Parzival, were silent. You failed to win

earth’s chiefest prize; your father had not done so--are you his son? Yes,

for Herzeloide was as true as he. Woe’s me, that Herzeloide’s child has so

let honour slip!” Cundrie wrung her hands; her tears fell fast; she turned

her mule and cried: “Woe, woe to thee Munsalvaesch, mount of pain; here is

no aid for thee!” And bidding none farewell, she rode away, leaving

Parzival to his shame, the knights to their astonishment, the ladies to

their tears.

Cundrie was hardly out of sight, before another shame was put on the Round

Table. An armed knight rode in, and, accusing Gawain of murdering his king

and cousin, summoned him to mortal combat within forty days before the

King of Askalon. Arthur himself was ready to do battle for Gawain, but

that good knight accepted the challenge with all courtesy.

Parzival’s lineage was first known to the Court from Cundrie’s calling him

by name and speaking of his mother. Now Clamide, once Condwiramurs’s cruel

wooer, begged the hero to intercede for him with another fair one, the

lady Cunneware. Parzival courteously complied. A heathen queen then

saluted him with the news that he had a great heathen half-brother,

Feirefiz, the son of Parzival’s father by a heathen queen. Thanking her,

Parzival spoke to the company: “I cannot endure Cundrie’s reproach;--what

knight here does not look askance? I will seek no joy until I find the

Grail, be the quest short or long. The worthy Gurnemanz bade me refrain

from questions. Honoured knights, your favour is for me to win again, for

I have lost it. Me yet unshamed you took into your company; I release you.

Let sorrow be my comrade; for I forsook my happiness on Munsalvaesch. Ah!

helpless Anfortas! You had small help from me.”

Knights and ladies were grieved to see the hero depart in such sorrow, and

many a knight’s service was offered him. The lady Cunneware took his hand;

Lord Gawain kissed him and said: “I know thy way is full of strife; God

grant to thee good fortune, and to me the chance to serve thee.”

“Ah! what is God?” answered Parzival. “Were He strong He would not have

put such shame on me and you. I was His subject from the hour I learned to

ask His favour. Now I renounce His service. If He hates me, I will bear

it. Friend, in thine hour of strife let the love of a woman pure and true

strengthen thy hand. I know not when I shall see thee again; may my good

wishes towards thee be fulfilled.”

The hero’s arms are brought; his horse is saddled; his grievous toil

begins.

Why should long sorrow come to Parzival for not asking a question, when

his omission was caused neither by brutality nor ill will? when, on the

contrary, he would gladly have served his host? The relation between his

conduct and his fortune seems lame. Yet in life as well as in literature,

ignorance and error bring punishment. Moreover, to mediaeval romance not

only is there a background of sorcery and magic, but active elements of

magic survive in the tales.[725] And nothing is more fraught with magic

import and result than question and answer. Wolfram did not treat as

magical the effect upon his hero’s lot of his failure to ask the question;

but he retained the palpably magic import of the act as affecting the sick

Anfortas. It was hard that the omission should have brought Parzival to

sorrow and despair; yet the fault was part of himself, and the man so

ignorant and unwise was sure to incur calamity, and also gain sorrow’s

lessons if he was capable of learning. So the sequence becomes ethical:

from error, calamity; from calamity, grief; and from grief, wisdom. With

Wolfram, Parzival’s fault was Parzival; failure to ask the question was a

symbol of his lack of wisdom. The poet was of his time; and mediaeval

thought tended to symbolism, and to move, as it were, from symbol to

symbol, and from symbolical significance to related symbolical

significance, and indeed often to treat a symbol as if it were the fact

which was symbolized.

* * * * *

At this point Wolfram’s poem devotes some cantos to the lighter-hearted

adventures of Gawain. This valiant, courtly, loyal knight and his

adventures are throughout a foil to the heavier lot and character of

Parzival. But when Gawain has had his due, the poet is glad to return to

his rightful hero. Parzival has ridden through many lands; he has sailed

many seas; before his lance no knight has kept his seat; his praise and

fame are spread afar. Though he has never been overthrown, the sword given

him by Anfortas broke; but with magic water Parzival welded it again. In a

forest one day he rode up to a hut, where Sigune was living as a recluse,

feeding her soul with thoughts of her dead lover, barring all fancies that

might disunite her from the dead whom she still held as her husband.

Parzival recognized her, and she him, when he removed his helm: “You are

Sir Parzival--tell me, how is it with the Grail?”

“It has given me sorrow enough; I left a land where I was king, a loving

wife, fairest of women; I suffer anguish for her love, and more because of

that high goal of Munsalvaesch which is not reached. Cousin Sigune,

knowing my sorrow, you do wrong to hate me.”

“My wrath is spent. You have lost joy enough since that time you failed to

question Anfortas, your host--your happiness as well. Then that question

would have blessed you; now joy is denied you; your high mood halts; your

heart is tamed by sorrow, which had stayed a stranger to it had you asked

the question.”

“I acted as a luckless man. Dear cousin, counsel me--but, say, how is it

with you? I should bemoan your grief were not my own greater than man ever

bore.”

“Let His hand help you who knows all sorrow. A path might bring you yet to

Munsalvaesch. Cundrie but now rode hence--follow her track.”

Parzival started to follow the track of Cundrie’s mule, which soon was

lost, and with it the Grail was lost again. Without guidance he rode on.

He overthrew a Grail knight, and took his horse, his own having been

wounded in the combat. How long he rode I know not, says the poet. One

frosty morning he met an aged knight unhelmeted, and walking barefoot with

his wife and daughters. The knight reproved him for riding armed on that

holy day.

Parzival answered: “I do not know the time of year; it is long since I

kept count of days. Once I served Him who is called God--until He graced

me with His mockery. He helps, men say. I have not found it so.”

“If you mean God who was born of a virgin,” replied the old knight, “and

believe that He took man’s nature, you do wrong to ride in armour; for

this is the day when He hung on the Cross for us. Sir, not far from here

dwells a holy man, who will give you counsel; you may repent and be

absolved from your sins.”

Parzival courteously took his leave. He had regarded his failure to ask

that question as a luckless error, had felt that God was unjust to him,

and had also doubted His power to aid. Now came wavering thoughts: “What

if God might help my pain? If He ever favoured a knight, or if sword and

shield might win His favour--if to-day is His day of help, let Him help me

if He can. If God’s craft can show the way to man and horse, I’ll honour

Him. Go then according to God’s choosing.”

He flung the bridle on his horse’s neck, spurring him forward; and the

horse carried him straight to the hermitage of holy Trevrizent, who fasted

there to fit himself for heaven, his chastity warring with the devil.

Parzival recognized the place where he had sworn the oath to Orilus, to

clear Jesute’s honour. The hermit, seeing him, exclaimed: “Alas! sir, that

you ride equipped in this holy season. Were you sore pressed? Another garb

were fitter, did your pride permit. Come by the fire. If you follow love’s

adventure, think of that afterward, and this day seek the love which this

day gives.”

Dismounting, Parzival stood respectfully before the hermit: “Sir, advise

me; I am a man of sin.”

His host promised counsel and asked how he came there. Parzival told of

meeting the old knight, and inquired whether his host felt no fear at

seeing him ride up. “Believe me, no,” answered the hermit; “I fear no man.

I would not boast, but in my day my heart never quailed in the fight. I

was a knight as you are, and had many sinful thoughts.”

Having placed the horse in shelter beneath a cliff, the hermit led the

knight into his cell. There was a fire of coals, before which Parzival was

glad to warm himself and exchange his steel armour for a cloak; he seemed

forest-weary. A door opened to an inner cell, where stood an altar,

bearing the very reliquary on which Parzival had laid his hand in making

oath. He told his host of this, and of the lance which he had found there

and taken. “A friend of mine left it there, and chided with me afterwards.

It is four years, six months, and three days since you took that spear; I

will prove it to you from this Psalter.”

“I did not know how long I had journeyed, lost and unhappy. I carry

sorrow’s weight. Sir, I will tell you more: from that time no man has seen

me in church or minster, where they honour God. I have sought battles

only. I also bear a hate for God. He is my trouble’s sponsor: had He borne

aid, my joy had not been buried living! My heart is sore. In reward of my

many fights, sorrow has set on me a crown--of thorns. I bear a grudge

against that Lord of aid, that me alone He helps not.”

The host sighed, and looked at him; then spoke: “Sir, be wise. You should

trust God well. He will help you, it is His office; He must help us both.

Tell me with sober wits, how did your anger against Him arise? Learn from

me His guiltlessness before you accuse Him. His aid is never withheld.

Even I, a layman, can read the meaning of those unlying books; man must

continue steadfast in service of Him who never wearies in His steady aid

to sinking souls. Keep troth, for God is troth. Deceit is hateful to Him.

We should be grateful; in our behalf His nobility took on the form of man.

God is called, and is, truth. He can turn from no one; teach your thoughts

never to turn from Him. You can force nothing from Him with your wrath.

Whoever sees you carry hate toward Him will deem you sick of wit. Think of

Lucifer and all his comrades. Hell was their reward. When Lucifer and his

host had taken their hell-journey, a man was made. God made from clay the

worthy Adam. From Adam’s flesh He took Eve, who brought us calamity when

she listened not to her Creator, and destroyed our joy. Two sons were born

to them. One of these in envious anger destroyed his grandmother’s

maidenhood, by sin.”

“Sir, how could that be?”

“The earth was Adam’s mother, and was a maiden. Adam was Cain’s father,

who slew Abel; and the blood fell on the pure earth; its maidenhood was

sped. Thence arose hate among men--and still endures. Nothing in the world

is as pure as an innocent maid; God was himself a maiden’s child, and took

the image of the first maid’s fruit. With Adam’s seed came sorrow and joy;

through him our lineage is from God, but through him, too, we carry sin,

for which God took man’s image, and so suffered, battling with troth

against untroth. Turn to Him if you would not be lost. Plato, Sibyl the

prophetess, foretold Him. With divine love His mighty hand plucked us from

hell. The joyful news they tell of Him the True Lover is this: He is

radiant light, and wavers not in His love. Men may have either His love or

hate. The unrepentant sinner flees the divine faithfulness; he who does

penance wins His clemency. God penetrates thought, which is hidden to the

sun’s rays and needs no castle’s ward. Yet God’s light passes its dark

wall, comes stealing in, and noiselessly departs. No thought so quick but

He discovers it before it leaves the heart. The pure in heart He chooses.

Woe to the man who harbours evil. What help is there in human craft for

him whose deeds put God to shame? You are lost if you act in His despite,

who is prepared for either love or hate. Now change your heart; with

goodness earn His thanks.”

“Sir,” says Parzival, “I am glad to be taught by you of Him who does not

fail to reward both crime and virtue. With pain and struggle I have so

borne my young life to this day that through keeping troth I have got

sorrow.”

Parzival still feels his innocence; perhaps the host is not so sure:

“Prithee, be open with me. I would gladly hear your troubles and your

sins. May be I can advise you.”

“The Grail is my chief woe and then my wife--she is beyond compare. For

both of these I yearn.”

“Sir, you say well. Your grief is righteous if its cause is yearning for

your wife. If you were cast to hell for other sins, but loyal to your

wife, God’s hand would lift you out. As for the Grail, you foolish man,

pursuit will never win it. ’Tis for him only who is named in heaven. I can

say; for I have seen it.”

“Sir, were you there?”

“I was.”

Parzival did not say that he had been there too; but asked about the

Grail. His host then told him of the valiant Templars who dwelt on

Munsalvaesch, and rode thence on adventures as penance for their sins.

“They are nourished by a Stone of marvellous virtue; no sick man seeing it

could die that week; it gives youth and strength, and is called the Grail.

To-day, as on every Good Friday, a dove flies from heaven and lays a wafer

on the Grail, from which the Grail receives its share of every food and

every good the earth or Paradise affords. The name of whosoever is chosen

for the Grail, be it boy or girl, appears inscribed upon it, suddenly, and

when read disappears. They come as children; glad the mother whose child

is named; for taken to that company, it will be held from sin and shame,

and be received in heaven when this life is past. Further, all those who

took neither side in the war between Lucifer and the Trinity, were cast

out of heaven to earth, and here must serve the Grail.”

Parzival spoke: “If knighthood might with shield and spear win earth’s

prize and Paradise for the soul--why I have fought wherever I found fight;

often my hand has touched the prize. If God is wise in conflicts, He

should name me, that those people there may learn to know me. My hand

never drew back.”

“First you must guard against pride, and practise modesty.” The old man

paused and then continued: “There was a Grail king named Anfortas. You and

I should pity his sad lot which befell him through pride in youth and

riches; he loved in the world’s light way--that also goes not with the

Grail. There came once to the castle one unnamed, a simple man; he went

away, his sins upon his head; he never asked the host what ailed him.

Before that time a prince, Lahelein, approached and fought with a Grail

knight, and slew him and took his horse. Sir, are you Lahelein? you rode a

Grail steed hither. I know his trappings well, and the dove’s crest which

Anfortas gave his knights. The old Titurel also wore that crest, and after

him his son Frimutel, till he lost his life. Sir, you resemble him. Who

are you?”

Each looked on the other. Parzival spoke: “My father was a knight. He lost

his life in combat; sir, include him in your prayers. His name was

Gamuhret. I am not Lahelein; yet in my folly once I too robbed the dead.

My sinful hand slew Ither. I left him dead upon the sward--and took what

was to take.”

“O world! alas for thee! heart’s sorrow is thy pay!” the hermit cried. “My

nephew, it was your own flesh and blood you slew; a deed which with God

merits death. Ither, the pattern of all knights--how can you atone? My

sister too, your mother Herzeloide, you brought her to her death.”

“Oh no! good sir, how say you that? If I am your sister’s child, oh tell

me all.”

“Your mother died when you left her. My other sister was Sigune’s mother;

our brother is Anfortas, who long has been the Grail’s sad lord. We early

lost our father, Frimutel; from him Anfortas, his first-born, inherited

the Grail crown, when still a child. As he grew a man, all too eagerly he

followed the service set by love of woman, chose him a mistress and broke

many a spear for her. He disobeyed the Grail, which forbids its lords

love’s service, save as it prescribes. One day, for his lady’s favour, he

ran a joust with a heathen knight. He slew him, but the heathen spear

struck him, and broke, leaving a poisoned wound. In anguish he returned.

No medicine or charm can heal that wound, and yet he cannot die; that is

the Grail’s power. I renounced knighthood, flesh, and wine, in prayer that

God would heal him. We knelt before the Grail, and on it read that when a

knight should come, and, unadmonished, ask what ailed him, he should be

sound again. That knight should then be the Grail’s king, in place of

Anfortas. Since then a knight did come--I spoke of him to you. He might as

well have stayed away for all the honour that he won or aid he brought us.

He did not ask: My lord, what brought you to this pass? Stupidity forbade

him.”

The two made moan together. It was noon. The host said: “Let us take food

now, and tend your horse.” They went out; Parzival broke up some branches

for his horse, while the host gathered a repast of herbs. Then they

returned to the cell. “Dear nephew,” said the hermit, “do not despise this

food. At least, you will not find another host who would more gladly give

you better.”

“Sir, may God’s favour pass me by, if ever a host’s care was sweeter to

me.”

When they had eaten, they saw to the horse again, whose hungry plight

grieved the old man because of the saddle with Anfortas’s crest. Then

Parzival spoke:

“Lord and uncle mine, if I dare speak for shame, I should tell you all my

unhappiness. My troth takes refuge in you. My misdeeds are so sore, that

if you cast me off I shall go all my days unloosed from my remorse. Take

pity with good counsel on a fool. He who rode to Munsalvaesch, and saw

that pain, and asked no question, that was I, misfortune’s child. Thus

have I, sir, misdone.”

“Nephew! Alas! We both may well lament--where were your five senses? Yet I

will not refuse thee counsel. You must not grieve overmuch, but, in lament

and laying grief aside, follow right measure. Would that I might refresh

and hearten you, so that you would push on, and not despair of God. You

might still cure your sorrow. God will not forsake you. I counsel thee

from Him.”

His host then told Parzival more about Anfortas’s pains, and about the

Grail people, then the story of his own life before he renounced

knighthood, and also about Ither. “Ither was your kin. If your hand forgot

this kinship, God will not. You must do penance for this deadly sin, and

also for your mother’s death. Repent of your misdeeds and think of death,

so that your labour here below may bring peace to your soul above.”

These two deadly sins of Parzival were done unwittingly, and unwitting

was his neglect to ask the question. His guilt was thoughtlessness and

stupid ignorance. It is impossible not to think of Oedipus, and compare

the Christian mediaeval treatment of unwitting crimes with the classical

Greek consideration of the same dark subject. Oedipus sinned as

unwittingly as Parzival, and as impulsively. His ruin was complete.

Afterwards--in the _Oedipus Coloneus_--his character gathers greatness

through submission to the necessary consequences of his acts; here was his

spiritual expiation. On the other hand, mercy, repentance, hope, the

uplifting of the unwitting sinner, forgiveness and consolation, soften and

glorify the Christian mediaeval story.

Parzival stayed some days at the hermitage. At parting the hermit spoke

words of comfort to him: “Leave me your sins. I will be your surety with

God for your repentance. Perform what I have bidden you, and do not

waver.”

The story here turns to Gawain. In the tale of his adventures there comes

a glimpse of Parzival. A proud lady, for whose love Gawain is doing

perilous deeds, tells him, she has never met a man she could not bend to

her will and love, save only one. That one came and overthrew her knights.

She offered him her land and her fair self; his answer put her to shame:

“The glorious Queen of Pelrapeire is my wife, and I am Parzival. I will

have none of your love. The Grail gives me other care.”

Gawain won this lady, and conducted her to Arthur’s Court, whither his

rival the haughty King Gramoflanz was summoned to do battle with him. On

the morning set for the combat Gawain rode out a little to the bank of a

river, to prove his horse and armour. There at the river rode a knight;

Gawain deemed it was Gramoflanz. They rush together; man and horse go down

in the joust. The knights spring to their feet and fight on with their

swords. Meanwhile Gramoflanz, with a splendid company, has arrived at

Arthur’s Court. The lists are ready; Gramoflanz stands armed. But where is

Gawain? He was not wont to tarry. Squires hurry out in search, to find him

just falling before the blows of the stranger. They call, Gawain! and the

unknown knight throws away his sword with a great cry: “Wretched and

worthless! Accursed is my dishonoured hand. Be mine the shame. My

luckless arms ever--and now again--strike down my happiness. That I should

raise my hand against noble Gawain! It is myself that I have overthrown.”

Gawain heard him: “Alas, sir, who are you that speak such love towards me?

Would you had spoken sooner, before my strength and praise had left me.”

“Cousin, I am your cousin, ready to serve you, Parzival.”

“Then you said true! This fool’s fight of two hearts that love! Your hand

has overthrown us both.”

Gawain could no longer stand. Fainting they laid him on the grass.

Gramoflanz rides up, and is grieved to find his rival in no condition to

fight. Parzival offers to take Gawain’s place; but Gramoflanz declines,

and the combat is postponed till the morrow. Parzival is then escorted to

Arthur’s Court, where Gawain would have him meet fair ladies; he holds

back, thinking of the shame once put on him there by Cundrie. Gawain

insists, and ladies greet the knight. Arthur again makes Parzival one of

the Round Table. Early the next morning, Parzival, changing his arms,

meets Gramoflanz in the lists, before Gawain has arrived; and vanquishes

him. Then comes Gawain and offers to postpone the combat as Gramoflanz had

done. So the combat is again set for the next day. In the meanwhile,

however, various matters come to light and explanations are had; Arthur

succeeds in reconciling the rival knights and adjusting their relations to

the ladies. So the Court becomes gay with wedding festivals, and all is

joy.

Except with Parzival. His heart is torn with pain and yearning for his

wife. He muses: “Since I could love, how has love dealt with me! I was

born from love; why have I lost love? I must seek the Grail; yet how I

yearn for the sweet arms of her from whom I parted--so long ago! It is not

fit that I should look on this joyful festival with anguish in my heart.”

There lay his armour: “Since I have no part in this joy, and God wills

none for me; and the love of Condwiramurs banishes all wish for other

happiness--now God grant happiness to all this company. I will go forth.”

He put his armour on, saddled his horse, took spear and shield, and fled

from the joyous Court, as the day was dawning.

And now he meets a heathen knight, approaching with a splendid following.

They rode a great joust; and the heathen wondered to find a knight abide

his lance. They fought with swords together, till their horses were blown;

they sprang on the ground, and there fought on. Then the heathen thought

of his queen; the love-thought brought him strength, and he struck

Parzival a blow that brought him to his knee. Now rouse thee, Parzival;

why dost thou not think on thy wife? Suddenly he thought of her, and how

he won her love, vanquishing Clamide before Pelrapeire. Straight her aid

came to him across four kingdoms, and he struck the heathen down; but his

sword--once Ither’s--broke.

The foolish evil deed of Parzival in slaying Ither seems atoned for in the

breaking of this sword. Had it not broken, great evil had been done. The

great-hearted heathen sprang up. “Hero, you would have conquered had that

sword not broken. Be peace between us while we rest.”

They sat together on the grass. “Tell me your name,” said the heathen; “I

have never met as great a knight.”

“Is it through fear, that I should tell my name?”

“Nay, I will name myself--Feirefiz of Anjou.”

“How of Anjou? that is my heritage. Yet I have heard I had a brother. Let

me see your face. I will not attack you with your helmet off.”

“Attack me? it is I that hold the sword; but let neither have the

vantage.” He threw his sword far from them.

With joy and tears the brothers recognized each other; and long and loving

was their speech. Then they rode back together to the Court. They entered

Gawain’s tent. Arthur came to greet them, and with him many knights. At

Arthur’s request each of the great brothers told the long list of his

knightly victories. The next day Feirefiz was made a knight of the Round

Table, and a grand tournament was held. Then the feast followed; and

again, as once before, to the great company seated at the table, Cundrie

came riding. She greeted the king; then turned to Parzival, and in tears

threw herself at his feet and begged a greeting and forgiveness. Parzival

forgives her. She rises up and cries: “Hail to thee, son of

Gahmuret--Herzeloide’s child. Humble thyself in gladness. The high lot is

thine, thou crown of human blessing. Thou shalt be the Grail’s lord; with

thee thy wife Condwiramurs, and thy sons Lohengrin and Kardeiz, whom she

bore to thee after thy going. Thy mouth shall question Anfortas--unto his

joy. Now the planets favour thee; thy grief is spent. The Grail and the

Grail’s power shall let thee have no part in evil. When young, thou didst

get thee sorrow, which betrayed thy joy as it came;--thou hast won thy

soul’s peace, and in sorrow thou hast endured unto thy life’s joy.”

Tears of love sprang from Parzival’s heart and fell from his eyes: “Lady,

if this be true, that God’s grace has granted me, sinful man, to have my

children and my wife, God has been good to me. Loyally would you make good

my losses. Before, had I not done amiss, you would not have been angry. At

that time I was yet unblessed. Now tell me, when and how I shall go meet

my joy. Oh! let me not be stayed!”

There was no more delay. Parzival was permitted to take one comrade; he

chose Feirefiz. Cundrie guided them to the Grail castle. They entered to

find Anfortas calling on death to free him of his pain. Weeping, and with

prayer to God, Parzival asked what ailed him, and the king was healed.

Then Parzival rode again to Trevrizent. The hermit breaks out in wonder at

the power of God, which man cannot comprehend; let Parzival obey Him and

keep from evil; that any one should win the Grail by striving was unheard

of; now this has come to Parzival, let him be humble. The hero yearns for

his wife--where is she? He is told; there by the meadow where he once saw

the drops of blood he finds her and his sons, asleep in their tent. They

are united; Parzival is made Grail king; and the queen Repanse is given in

marriage to Feirefiz, who is baptized and departs with her. Lohengrin is

named as Parzival’s successor, while Kardeiz receives the kingdoms which

had been Gahmuret’s and Herzeloide’s.

END OF VOL. I

_Printed by_ R. & R. CLARK, LIMITED, _Edinburgh_.

INDEX

_NOTE.--Of several references to the same matter the more important are

shown by heavy type._

Abaelard, Peter, career of, ii. 342-5;

at Paris, ii. 343, 344, 383;

popularity there, ii. 119;

love for Heloïse, ii. 4-=5=, 344;

love-songs, ii. =13=, 207;

Heloïse’s love for, i. 585; ii. =3=, =5=, 8, 9, =15-16=;

early relations with Heloïse, ii. 4-5;

suggestion of marriage opposed by her, ii. 6-9;

marriage, ii. 9;

suffers vengeance of Fulbert, ii. 9;

becomes a monk at St. Denis, ii. 10;

at the Paraclete, ii. 10, 344;

at Breton monastery, ii. 10;

St. Bernard’s denunciations of, i. 229, 401; ii. =344-5=, =355=;

letters to, from Heloïse quoted, ii. 11-15, 17-20, 23, 24;

letters from, to Heloïse quoted, ii. 16-17, 21-3, 24-5;

closing years at Cluny, ii. 25, =26=, 345;

death of, ii. =27=, 345;

estimate of, ii. 4, 342;

rationalizing temper, i. 229; ii. =298-9=;

skill in dialectic, ii. 303, =345-6=, 353;

not an Aristotelian, ii. 369;

works on theology, ii. 352-5;

_De Unitate et Trinitate divina_, ii. 10, =298-9=, 352 _and_ _n. 3_;

_Theologia_, ii. =303-4=, 395;

_Scito te ipsum_, ii. 350-1;

_Sic et non_, i. 17; ii. =304-6=, =352=, 357;

_Dialectica_, ii. 346 _and_ _nn._, 349-50;

_Dialogue_ between Philosopher, Jew, and Christian, ii. 350, =351=;

_Historia calamitatum_, ii. =4-11=, 298-9, =343=;

_Carmen ad Astralabium filium_, ii. 192;

hymns, ii. 207-9;

otherwise mentioned, ii. 134, 283 _and_ _n._

Abbo, Abbot, i. =294 and n.=, 324

Abbots:

Armed forces, with, i. 473

Cistercian, position of, i. 362-3 _and_ _n._

Investiture of, lay, i. 244

Social class of, i. 473

Accursius, _Glossa ordinaria_ of, ii. 262, =263=

Adalberon, Abp. of Rheims, i. 240, =282-3=, 287

Adam of Marsh, ii. 389, 400, 487

Adam of St. Victor, editions of hymns of, ii. 87 _n. 1_;

examples of the hymns, ii. 87 _seqq._;

Latin originals, ii. 206, 209-15

Adamnan cited, i. 134 _n. 2_, 137

Adelard of Bath, ii. 370

Aedh, i. 132

Agobard, Abp. of Lyons, i. 215, =232-3=;

cited, ii. 247

Aidan, St., i. 174

Aimoin, _Vita Abbonis_ by, i. 294 _and_ _n._

Aix, Synod of, i. 359

Aix-la-Chapelle:

Chapel at, i. 212 _n._

School at, _see_ Carolingian period--Palace school

Alans, i. 113, 116, 119

Alanus de Insulis, career of, ii. 92-4;

estimate of, ii. 375-6;

works of, ii. 48 _n. 1_, =94=, 375 _n. 5_, 376;

_Anticlaudianus_, ii. =94-103=, 192, 377, 539;

_De planctu naturae_, ii. =192-3 and n. 1=, 376

Alaric, i. 112

Alaric II., i. =117=; ii. 243

Alberic, Card., i. 252 _n. 2_

Alberic, Markgrave of Camerino, i. 242

Alberic, son of Marozia, i. 242-3

Albertus Magnus, career of, ii. 421;

estimate of, ii. 298, 301, =421=;

estimate of work of, ii. 393, 395;

attitude toward Gilbert de la Porrée, ii. 372;

compared with Bacon, ii. 422;

with Aquinas, ii. 433, =438=;

relations with Aquinas, ii. 434;

on logic, ii. 314-15;

method of, ii. 315 _n._;

edition of works, ii. 424 _n. 1_;

_De praedicabilibus_, ii. 314 and _n._, 315, 424-5;

work on the rest of Aristotle, ii. 420-1;

analysis of this work, ii. 424 _seqq._;

attitude toward the original, ii. 422;

_Summa theologiae_, ii. 430, 431;

_Summa de creaturis_, ii. 430-1;

_De adhaerendo Deo_, ii. 432;

otherwise mentioned, i. 17; ii. 82 _n. 2_, 283, 312, 402, 541 _n. 2_

Albigenses, i. 49;

persecution of, i. 366-7, 461, 481, 572; ii. 168

Alboin the Lombard, i. 115

Alchemy, ii. 496-7

Alcuin of York, career of, i. 214;

works of, i. 216-21 _and_ _n. 2_;

extracts from letters of, ii. 159;

stylelessness of, ii. =159=, 174;

verses by, quoted, ii. 136-7;

on _urbanitas_, ii. 136;

otherwise mentioned, i. 212, 240, 343; ii. 112, 312, 332

Aldhelm, i. 185

Alemanni, i. 9, 121, 122, 145 _n. 2_, 174, 192

Alemannia, Boniface’s work in, i. 199

Alexander the Great, Pseudo-Callisthenes’ Life of, ii. 224, 225,

=229-230=;

Walter of Lille’s work on, ii. 230 _n. 1_

Alexander II., Pope, i. 262 _n._, 263 _and_ _n. 1_

Alexander de Villa-Dei, _Doctrinale_ of, ii. =125-7=, 163

Alexander of Hales--at Paris, i. 476; ii. =399=;

Bacon’s attack on, ii. 494, 497;

estimate of work of, ii. 393, 395, 399;

Augustinianism of, ii. 403-4

Alfred, King of England, i. 144 _and_ _n. 2_, =187-90=

Allegory (_See also_ Symbolism):

Dictionaries of, ii. 47-8 _and_ _n. 1_, 49

Greek examples of, ii. 42, 364

Metaphor distinguished from, ii. 41 _n._

Politics, in, ii. 60-1, 275-=6=, =280=

_Roman de la rose_ as exemplifying, ii. 103

Scripture, _see under_ Scriptures

Two uses of, ii. 365

Almsgiving, i. 268

Alphanus, i. 253-4

_Amadas_, i. 565

Ambrose, St., Abp. of Milan, on miracles, i. 85-6;

attitude toward secular studies, i. 300; ii. 288;

_Hexaëmeron_ of, i. 72-4;

_De officiis_, i. 96;

hymns, i. 347-8;

otherwise mentioned, i. 70, 75, 76, 104, 186, 354; ii. 45 _n._, 272

Anacletus II., Pope, i. 394

Anchorites, _see_ Hermits

Andrew the Chaplain, _Flos amoris_ of, i. 575-6

Angels:

Aquinas’ discussion of, ii. 324-5, 435, =457 seqq.=, =469=, =473-5=

Dante’s views on, ii. 551

Emotionalizing of conception of, i. 348 _n. 4_

Hugo of St. Victor on, ii. 68, 69

Symbols, regarded as, ii. 457

Vincent’s _Speculum_ as concerning, ii. 319

Writings regarding, summary of, ii. 457

Angilbert, i. 234-5

Angles, i. 140

Anglo-Saxons:

Britain conquered by, i. 141

Characteristics of, i. 142, =196=

Christian missions by, i. 196, 197

Christian missions to, i. 172, 174, =180 seqq.=

Customs of, i. 141

Poetry of, i. 142-4

Roman influence slight on, i. 32

Aniane monastery, i. 358-9

Annals, i. 234 and _n. 1_

Anselm (at Laon), ii. 343-4

Anselm, St., Abp. of Canterbury, dream of, i. 269-70;

early career, i. 270;

at Bec, i. 271-2;

relations with Rufus, i. 273, 275;

journey to Italy, i. 275;

estimate of, i. 274, =276-7=; ii. =303=, 330, =338=;

style of, i. 276; ii. =166-7=;

influence of, on Duns Scotus, ii. 511;

works of, i. 275 _seqq._;

_Cur Deus homo_, i. 275, 277 _n. 1_, =279=; ii. 395;

_Monologion_, i. 275-7;

_Proslogion_, i. 276-8; ii. =166=, 395;

_Meditationes_, i. 276, =279=;

_De grammatico_, i. 277 _n. 2_;

otherwise mentioned, i. 16, 19, 301-2; ii. 139, 283, 297, 340

Anselm of Besate, i. 259

Anthony, St., i. 365-6;

Life of, by Athanasius, i. 47, =52 and n.=

Antique literature, _see_ Greek thought _and_ Latin classics

Antique stories, themes of, in vernacular poetry, ii. 223 _seqq._

Apollinaris Sidonius, ii. 107

Apollonius of Tyana, i. 44

_Apollonius of Tyre_, ii. 224 _and_ _n._

Aquinas, Thomas, family of, ii. 433-4;

career, ii. 434-5;

relations with Albertus Magnus, ii. 434;

translations of Aristotle obtained by, ii. 391;

_Vita_ of, by Guilielmus de Thoco, ii. 435 _n._;

works of, ii. 435;

estimate of, and of his work, i. 17, 18; ii. 301, =436-8=, 484;

completeness of his philosophy, ii. 393-5;

pivot of his attitude, ii. 440;

present position of, ii. 501;

style, ii. 180;

mastery of dialectic, ii. 352;

compared with Eriugena, i. 231 _n. 1_;

with Albertus Magnus, ii. 433, =438=;

with Bonaventura, ii. 437;

with Duns, ii. 517;

Dante compared with and influenced by, ii. 541 _n. 2_, =547=, 549,

551, 555;

on monarchy, ii. 277;

on faith, ii. 288;

on difference between philosophy and theology, ii. 290;

on logic, ii. 313;

_Summa theologiae_, i. 17, 18; ii. =290 seqq.=;

style of the work, ii. 180-1;

Bacon’s charge against it, ii. 300;

Peter Lombard’s work contrasted with it, ii. 307-10;

its method, ii. 307;

its classification scheme, ii. 324-9;

analysis of the work, ii. 438 _seqq._, 447 _seqq._;

_Summa philosophica contra Gentiles_, ii. 290, 438, =445-6=;

otherwise mentioned, i. 69 _n. 2_; ii. 283, 298, 300, 312, 402

Aquitaine, i. 29, 240, =573=

Arabian philosophy, ii. =389-90=, 400-1

Arabs, Spanish conquest by, i. 9, 118

Archimedes, i. 40

Architecture, Gothic:

Evolution of, i. 305; ii. =539=

Great period of, i. 346

Argenteuil convent, ii. 9, 10

Arianism:

Teutonic acceptance of, i. =120=, 192, 194

Visigothic abandonment of, i. 118 _nn._

Aristotle, estimate of, i. 37-8;

works of, i. 37-8;

unliterary character of writings of, ii. 118, 119;

philosophy as classified by, ii. 312;

attitude of, to discussions of final cause, ii. 336;

the _Organon_, i. =37=, 71;

progressive character of its treatises, ii. 333-4;

Boëthius’ translation of the work, i. 71, =91-2=;

advanced treatises “lost” till 12th cent., ii. 248 _n._, 334;

Porphyry’s _Introduction_ to the _Categories_, i. 45, 92, 102; ii.

312, =314 n.=, 333, =339=;

Arabian translations of works, ii. 389-90;

introduction of complete works, i. 17;

Latin translations made in 13th cent., ii. 391;

three stages in scholastic appropriation of the Natural Philosophy and

Metaphysics, ii. 393;

Paris University study of, ii. 391-2 _and_ _n._;

Albertus Magnus’ work on, ii. 420-1, 424 _seqq._;

Aquinas’ mastery of, i. 17, 18;

Dominican acceptance of system of, ii. 404;

Dante’s reverence for, ii. 542

Arithmetic:

Abacus, the, i. 299

Boëthius’ work on, i. 72, =90=

Music in relation to, ii. 291

Patristic treatment of, i. 72

Scholastic classification of, ii. 313

Arnold of Brescia, i. 401; ii. 171

Arnulf, Abp. of Rheims, i. 283-4

Art, Christian (_For particular arts, see their names_):

Demons as depicted in, ii. 540 _n. 2_

Early, i. 345 _n._

Emotionalizing of, i. 345-7

Evolution of, i. 19-20

Germany, in (11th cent.), i. 312

Symbolism the inspiration of, i. 21; ii. 82-6

Arthur, King, story of youth of, i. 568-569;

relations with Lancelot and Guinevere, i. 584;

with Parzival, i. 592, 599-600, 612

Arthurian romances:

Comparison of, with _Chansons de geste_, i. 564-5

German culture influenced by, ii. 28

Origin and authorship of, question as to, i. 565-7

Universal vogue of, i. =565=, 573, 577

otherwise mentioned, i. 531, 538

Arts, the (_See also_ Latin classics):

Classifications of, ii. 312 _seqq._

Course of, shortening of, ii. =132=, 384

_Dictamen_, ii. =121=, =129=, 381

Grammar, _see that heading_

Masters in, at Paris and Oxford, ii. 384-5;

course for, ii. 388

Seven Liberal, _see that heading_

Asceticism:

Christian:

Carthusian, i. 384

Early growth of, i. 333-5

Manichean, i. 49

Women’s practice of, i. 444, 462-3

Neo-Platonic, i. 43, 44, 46, 50, =331=, 334

Astralabius, ii. 6, 9, 27;

Abaelard’s poem to, ii. 191-2 _and_ _n. 1_

Astrology, i. =44 and n.=; ii. 374:

Bacon’s views on, ii. 499-500

Astronomy:

Chartres study of, i. 299

Gerbert’s teaching of, i. 288-9

Patristic attitude toward, i. 72

Ataulf, i. 112, 116

Athanasius, St., estimate of work of, i. =54=, 68;

Life of St. Anthony by, i. 47, =52 and n.=, 84;

_Orationes_, i. 68

Atlantis, i. 36

Attila the Hun, i. 112-13;

in legend, i. 145-7

Augustine, Abp. of Canterbury, i. 6, 171, =180-2=;

Gregory’s letters to, cited, i. 102

Augustine, St., Bp. of Hippo, Platonism of, i. 55;

personal affinity of, with Plotinus, i. 55-7;

barbarization of, by Gregory the Great, i. 98, 102;

compared with Gregory the Great, i. 98-9;

with Anselm, i. 279;

with Guigo, i. 385, 390;

overwhelming influence of, in Middle Ages, ii. 403;

on numbers, i. 72 _and_ _n. 2_, 105;

attitude toward physical science, i. 300;

on love of God, i. 342, 344;

allegorizing of Scripture by, ii. 44-5;

modification by, of classical Latin, ii. 152;

_Confessions_, i. =63=; ii. 531;

_De Trinitate_, i. =64=, =68=, 74, 96;

_Civitas Dei_, i. 64-65, 69 _n. 2_, =81-82=;

_De moribus Ecclesiae_, i. 65, 67-8;

_De doctrina Christiana_, i. 66-7;

classification scheme based on the _Doctrina_, ii. 322;

_De spiritu et littera_, i. 69;

_De cura pro mortuis_, i. 86;

_De genesi ad litteram_, ii. 324;

Alcuin’s compends of works of, i. 220;

otherwise mentioned, i. 5, 53, 71, 75, 82, 87, 89, 104, 186, 225, 340,

354, 366, 370; ii. 107, 269, 297, 312

Augustus, Emp., i. 26, 29

Aurillac monastery, i. 281

Ausonius, i. 126 _n. 2_; ii. 107

Austrasia:

Church organization in, i. 199

Feudal disintegration of, i. 240

Irish monasteries founded in, i. 174

Rise of, under Pippin, i. 209

Authority _v._ reason, _see_ Reason

Auxerre, i. 506-7

Averroes, ii. 390

Averroism, ii. 400-1

Averroists, ii. =284 n.=, 296 _n. 1_

Avicenna, ii. 390

Avitus, Bp. of Vienne, i. 126 _n. 2_

Azo, ii. 262-3

Bacon, Roger, career of, ii. 486-7

tragedy of career, ii. 486;

relations with Franciscan Order, ii. 299, 486, =488=, 490-1;

encouragement to, from Clement IV., ii. 489-90 _and_ _n. 1_;

estimate of, ii. 484-6;

estimate of work of, ii. 402;

style of, ii. 179-80;

attitude toward the classics, ii. 120;

predilection for physical science, ii. 289, 486-7;

Albertus Magnus compared with, ii. 422;

on four causes of ignorance, ii. 494-5;

on seven errors in theological study, ii. 495-8;

on experimental science, ii. 502-8;

on logic, ii. 505;

on faith, ii. 507;

editions of works of, ii. 484 _n._;

Greek Grammar by, ii. =128= _and_ _n. 5_, 484 _n._, 487, 498;

_Multiplicatio specierum_, ii. 484 _n._, 500;

_Opus tertium_, ii. =488=, 490 _and_ _nn._, 491, 492, 498, 499;

_Opus majus_, ii. 490-1, 492, =494-5=, 498, =499-500=, =506-8=;

_Optics_, ii. 500;

_Opus minus_, ii. 490-1, =495-8=;

_Vatican fragment_, ii. 490 _and_ _n. 2_, =505 n. 1=;

_Compendium studii philosophiae_, ii. 491, 493-4, 507-8;

_Compendium theologiae_, ii. 491;

otherwise mentioned, ii. 284 _n._, 335 _n._, =389=, 531-2

Bartolomaeus, _De proprietatibus rerum_ of, ii. 316 _n. 2_

Bartolus, ii. 264

Baudri, Abbot of Bourgueil, ii. 192 _n. 1_

Bavaria:

Irish monasteries founded in, i. 174

Merovingian rule in, i. 121

Otto’s relations with, i. 241

Reorganization of Church in, 198-9

Bavarians, i. 145 _n. 2_, 209, 210

Beauty, love of, i. 340

Bec monastery, i. 262 _n._, 270-2

Bede, estimate of, i. 185-6;

allegorizing of Scripture by, ii. 47 _n. 1_;

_Church History of the English People_, i. 172, =186=, 234 _n. 2_;

_De arte metrica_, i. 187, =298=;

_Liber de temporibus_, 300;

otherwise mentioned, i. 184, 212

Beghards of Liége, i. 365

Belgae, i. 126

Belgica, i. 29, 32

Benedict, Prior, i. 258

Benedict, St., of Nursia, i. =85 and n. 2=, 94, 100 _n. 4_;

_Regula_ of, _see under_ Monasticism

Benedictus, _Chronicon_ of, ii. 160-1

Benedictus Levita, Deacon, ii. 270

Benoit de St. More, _Roman de Troie_ by, ii. 225, =227-9=

Beowulf, i. 141, =143-4= _and_ _n. 1_

Berengar, King, i. 256

Berengar of Tours, i. 297, 299, =302-3=; ii. 137

Bernard, Bro., of Quintavalle, i. 502

Bernard, disciple of St. Francis, i. 425-6

Bernard of Chartres, ii. 130-2, 370

Bernard, St., Abbot of Clairvaux, at Citeaux, i. 360, 393;

inspires Templars’ _regula_, i. 531;

denounces and crushes Abaelard, i. 229, 401; ii. =344-5=, =355=;

denounces Arnold of Brescia, i. 401; ii. 171;

relations with Gilbert de la Porrée, ii. 372;

Lives of, i. 392 _n._, 393 _n. 1_;

appearance and characteristics of, i. 392-3;

estimate of, i. 394; ii. 367-8;

love and tenderness of, i. 344, 345, =394 seqq.=; ii. 365;

severity of, i. 400-1;

his love of Clairvaux, i. 401-2;

of his brother, i. 402-4;

Latin style of, ii. 169-71;

on church corruption, i. 474;

on faith, ii. 298;

unconcerned with physics, ii. 356;

St. Francis compared with, i. 415-16;

extracts from letters of, i. 395 _seqq._; ii. 170-1;

_Sermons on Canticles_--cited, 337 _n._;

quoted, i. =409-13=; ii. =169=, 368-9;

_De consideratione_, ii. 368;

otherwise mentioned, i. 17, 20, 279, 302, 472, 501; ii. 34, 168

Bernard Morlanensis, _De contemptu mundi_ by, ii. 199 _n. 3_

Bernard Silvestris, _Commentum ..._ of, ii. 116-17 _and_ _n. 2_;

_De mundi universitate_, ii. 119, =371 and n.=

Bernardone, Peter, i. 419, 423-4

Bernward, Bp. of Hildesheim, i. 312 _and_ _n. 1_

Bible, _see_ Scriptures

Biscop, Benedict, i. 184

Bishops:

Armed forces, with, i. 473

Francis of Assisi’s attitude toward, i. 430

Gallo-Roman and Frankish, position of, i. 191-2, 194 _and_ _nn._, 198,

=201 n.=

Investiture of, lay, i. 244-5 _and_ _n. 4_; ii. 140

Jurisdiction and privileges of, ii. 266

Papacy’s ascendancy over, i. 304

Reluctance to be consecrated, i. 472

Social class of, i. 473

Vestments of, symbolism of, ii. 77 _n. 2_

_Blancandrin_, i. 565

Bobbio monastery, i. 178, =282-3=

Boëthius, death of, i. =89=, 93;

estimate of, i. 89, 92, =102=;

Albertus Magnus compared with, ii. 420;

works of, i. 90-3;

Gerbert’s familiarity with works of, i. 289;

works of, studied at Chartres, i. 298-9;

their importance, i. 298;

_De arithmetica_, i. 72, =90=;

_De geometria_, i. 90;

commentary on Porphyry’s _Isagoge_, i. =92=; ii. 312;

translation of the _Organon_, i. 71, =91-2=;

“loss” of advanced works, ii. 248 _n._, 334;

_De consolatione philosophiae_, i. =89=, 188, =189-90=, 299;

mediaeval study of the work, i. 89; ii. 135-6

Bologna:

Clubs and guilds in, ii. 382

Fight of, against Parma, i. 497

Law school at, ii. =121=, 251, =259-62=, 378

Medical school at, ii. 121, 383 _n._

University, Law, inception and character of, ii. 121, =381-3=;

affiliated universities, ii. 383 _n._

Bonaventura, St. (John of Fidanza), career of, ii. 403;

at Paris, ii. 399, 403;

estimate of, ii. 301;

style of, ii. 181-2;

contrasted with Albertus, ii. 405;

compared with Aquinas, ii. 405, 437;

with Dante, ii. 547;

on faith, ii. 298;

on Minorites and Preachers, ii. 396;

attitude toward Plato and Aristotle, ii. 404-5;

toward Scriptures, ii. 405 _seqq._;

_De reductione artium ad theologiam_, ii. 406-8;

_Breviloquium_, ii. 408-13;

_Itinerarium mentis in Deum_, ii. 413-18;

otherwise mentioned, ii. 283, 288

Boniface, _see_ Winifried-Boniface

Boniface VIII., Pope, _Sextus_ of, ii. 272;

_Unam sanctam_ bull of, ii. 509

_Books of Sentences_, method of, ii. 307

(_See also under_ Lombard)

Botany, ii. 427-8

Bretons, i. 113

_Breviarium_, i. 117, 239, =243-4=

Britain:

Anglo-Saxon conquest of, i. 141

Antique culture in relation to, before Middle Ages, i. 10-11

Celts in, i. 127 _n._

Christianity of, i. 171-2

Romanization of, i. 32

Brude (Bridius), King of Picts, i. 173

Brunhilde, i. 176, 178

Bruno, Abp. of Cologne, i. 309-10, 383-4;

Ruotger’s Life of, i. 310; ii. 162 _and_ _n. 1_

Burgundians:

Christianizing of, i. 193

Church’s attitude toward, i. 120

Roman law code promulgated by (_Papianus_), ii. 239, =242=

Roman subjects of, i. 121

otherwise mentioned, i. 9-10, 113, 145

Burgundy, i. =175=, 243 _n. 1_

Byzantine architecture, 212 _n._

Byzantine Empire, _see_ Eastern Empire

Cædmon, i. 183, 343

Caesar, C. Julius, cited, i. =27-9=, 138, 296

Caesar of Heisterbach, Life of Engelbert by, i. 482-6 _and_ _n._;

_Dialogi miraculorum_, cited, i. 488 _n._, 491.

Canon law:

Authority of, ii. 274

Basis of, ii. 267-9

Bulk of, ii. 269

Conciliar decrees, collections of, ii. =269=

Decretals:

Collections of, ii. 269, =271-2=, =275= =n.=

False, ii. 270, 273

Gratian’s _Decretum_, ii. 268-9, =270-1=, 306

_Jus naturale_ in, ii. 268-9

_Lex romana canonice compta_, ii. 252

Scope of, ii. 267

Sources of, ii. 269

Supremacy of, ii. 277

Canossa, i. 244