Introduction

The adventures of King Arthur and his knights hold an honored place in literary and book history. The stories, at least in the Western world, have achieved mythic status, becoming part of the fabric of our collective unconscious. Even for those who have never read a single Arthurian tale, the themes, the grail quest and the names of Arthur, Merlin, Lancelot, Guinevere, and Gawain still resonate with meaning, underlying such contemporary pop culture masterworks as the Star Wars and Indiana Jones series. Lancelot, in particular, captures the imagination of many. He is undeniably a hero, perhaps the greatest of all King Arthur’s knights. Yet, he is a hero we can relate to because he struggles with all too familiar human desires and failings.

Lancelot first appeared on the pages of books in the 12th century, but it was in the 13th century that manuscripts featuring his story achieved widespread popularity (Loomis, 1975). At a time when books were a relative rarity due to the incredible expense, time and skill that went into their production, the popularity of secular Arthurian romance is significant. It raises many questions: What were the historical, cultural circumstances behind the popularity of Arthurian romances? Who was commissioning and purchasing these manuscripts? What was characteristic of these manuscripts?

This study attempts to answer these questions through examination of a manuscript of Lancelot Proper (MS UCB 107), a lengthy vernacular rendition of Lancelot’s story in French. Part of the University of California at Berkeley’s medieval manuscript collection, it is illuminated, dates back to about 1300 and was likely produced somewhere in northern France. The university purchased it at a Sotheby’s auction in 1967. At the time, only three out of a total of nearly eighty Arthurian manuscripts containing Lancelot Proper existed in American collections (Sotheby’s & Co., 1967), which made it a noteworthy purchase. However, perhaps because there are better preserved and more richly decorated examples of Lancelot Proper readily available for study, not much scholarly attention has been devoted to this particular manuscript. It raises as many questions as it answers. For these very reasons, it is a fascinating work to examine, giving us a peek into a time and place very different from our own. Yet, through the lens of the familiar Lancelot story, we find a powerful point of connection between the past and the present.

UCB 107 Manuscript images courtesy of the Digital Scriptorium

Historical Context

After centuries of ecclesiastical domination of letters and the production of manuscripts, the writing and illumination of a secular work of prose such as Lancelot Proper represents a notable cultural shift. Indeed, prior to the 13th century, many secular and pagan works from previous eras had been destroyed to provide surfaces for devotional material (Avrin, 1991). What about France in the 13th century led to the production of a secular prose manuscript written in vernacular French like our Lancelot Proper (henceforth UCB 107)?

For one, France was the heart of European civilization and political power. Its capital city, Paris was arguably the most important city of its time, a seat of western European culture where learning and the arts flourished (Morrison, 2010). The Christian church and its authority were still very much central to society but its position was on the wane along with feudalism as courtly culture rose in prominence and the government was increasingly centralized in the monarchy.

The Crusades, which occurred primarily between the late 11th and the late 13th centuries, had served the death blow to feudalism. They had depleted the wealth of many feudal lords and nobles, forcing them to sell freedom to their peasants and to grant charters to towns in order to raise funds, essentially negating the system that had, up until this point, formed the basis of medieval society. Across Europe, this resulted in increased urbanization as peasants migrated to the growing towns and city centers. There, they had a chance to become educated and improve their financial standing as tradesmen and artisans. Cities became centers of wealth and economic strength. Schools that were once affiliated with Cathedrals became independent universities, eventually giving rise to the modern university system. These developments contributed to the diminishment of the Church’s power and created a context where secular culture could flourish. It is in this context that the production of a manuscript like UCB 107 becomes possible.

Until the 13th century, manuscripts were written, bound, illuminated and read almost exclusively in monasteries (Arvin, 1991). But, the economic wealth provided by a strong monarchy coupled with the spread of courtly culture and the increase in literacy resulting from urbanization, created an unprecedented demand for illuminated manuscripts, both sacred and secular, in the 13th century (Morison, 2010; Loomis, 1975). As demand grew among members of the court, nobility and the well-to-do bourgeoisie, more and more lay scribes and illuminators set up shop, turning profits especially in the creation of secular vernacular manuscripts such as chronicles, fabliaux, treatises and romances like Lancelot Proper (Loomis, 1975). In 1292, Paris alone counted at least seventeen lay illuminators among its residents (Loomis, 1975, p. 89).

These illuminated manuscripts were regarded as luxury items, to be appreciated by the new, increasingly educated, secular elites who took pleasure not simply in rich illumination, but in the act of reading itself, as characters previously mentioned in lines of poetry or briefly noted in histories gained whole works dedicated to their adventures written in exquisite calligraphy and expansive prose “deliberately spun out for the pleasure of long continued reading.” (Loomis, 1975, p. 91) The stage was set for the golden age of this art form, and the dates and location of our Lancelot Proper’s production fall squarely within this time frame: “The crucial period between about 1250 and 1315 saw the rise of the illuminated secular vernacular manuscript as a respected and treasured luxury product that established France as the center of this flourishing art form on the European stage” (Morrison, 2010, p. 91).

UCB 107 Manuscript images courtesy of the Digital Scriptorium

Lancelot Proper and The Vulgate Cycle

This manuscript is known as the Lancelot Proper or Lancelot Propre in French. However, the manuscript nowhere names itself thus. It has no incipit page and its title-label reads simply and somewhat enigmatically, “Manuscrit precieux de 1133.” We call the manuscript Lancelot Proper because it contains the text of the romance of the same name, which was part of the multi-volume Vulgate Cycle, a series of five Arthurian prose romances that tell the story of the quest for the Holy Grail by King Arthur and his knights. It is actually a bit of a misnomer to call the manuscript Lancelot Proper as it only contains the first two thirds of the romance. This abridged version, complete in itself, was sometimes known as La Reine aux Grande Douleurs and described the birth of Lancelot, his upbringing by the Lady of the Lake, his arrival at the court of King Arthur, his love for Guinevere and his friendship with Galehaut.

The Vulgate Cycle was composed between 1215 and 1235 and is called the Vulgate Cycle because it is written in the vulgar or vernacular. Other versions of prose and verse Arthurian legends existed at the time, but the romances of the Vulgate Cycle were the most popular and widely circulated (Sotheby’s & Co, 1967). The Cycle is a major source of Arthurian Legend; Sir Thomas Mallory’s famous Le Morte D’Arthur draws heavily on it.

The Lancelot Proper is the longest section of the cycle, accounting for over half the entire work. The cycle begins with the L’Estoire del Saint Graal (History of the Holy Grail), a “highly christianized” (Burns, 1995, 967) history of the grail, detailing its journey to Britain. The next volume is L’Estorie de Merlin (History of Merlin, also known as the Vulgate Merlin), an account of Merlin and the early adventures of Arthur. This volume is followed by Lancelot Propre (Lancelot Proper). Next is La Queste del Saint Graaal (Quest for the Holy Grail), which describes various knights’ attempts to locate the grail, a feat achieved in the end by the virtuous Galahad. Finally, the cycle concludes with Le Mort le Roi Artu (Death of King Arthur), a violent finale which sees King Arthur killed by his bastard son, Mordred, and the collapse of the entire Arthurian world.

AUTHOR

The identity of the Vulgate Cycle’s author remains obscure. The entire work is commonly thought to have been composed by several Cistercian Monks. However, scholars hypothesize that one “architect” devised the outline for the whole and composed the trilogy of Lancelot Propre, La Queste del Saint Graal and Le Mort le Roi Artu (Frappier, 1959). The Cycle draws on and elaborates the 12th century verse Arthurian Romances of Wace, Robert de Boron and Chretien de Troyes, and the “Arthurian pseudo-history” (Loomis, 1975, p. 9) of Geoffrey of Monmouth, a 12th century Welshman who presented Arthurian legend as historical fact in various chronicles, most famously in his History of the Kings of Britain.

The Cistercians were an order of Benedictine monks founded in 1098. The order distinguished itself by its greater austerity of life as compared to other Benedictine orders. Cistercian houses were located far from cities and their luxuries. The monks structured their lives and devotional practice around manual labor rather than performance of the liturgy, practicing direct cultivation of their lands. The Cistercians became the most influential of the new monastic orders, due in large part to the perceived holiness of their way of life (Bouchard, 1995).

The Cistercians had a tradition of producing art that reflected their order’s aim of reviving the true spirit of Benedictine monasticism, which encouraged piety through humility, obedience and austerity (Gould, 1995). At first glance, it may seem at odds with their purpose that they would author such an expansive cycle of secular, Arthurian Romance. However, we can understand it as an ingenious rhetorical move on their part to use Arthurian legend as a vehicle for their message. Given that the vast majority of the nobility were knights or descended from knights, Arthurian legend was an apt choice on the monks’ part, a work sure to delight as it instructed.

Rhetoric may also explain the use of prose rather than verse, which in the 12th century had been the dominant form for Arthurian Romance. Prose, dating back to the Greeks, was the language of non-fiction history and philosophy. The use of prose lent the Arthurian legends the air of a history or nonfiction text (Morrison & Hedeman, 2010). That, coupled with the Cycle’s elaboration of Christian themes and elements, focusing as it does on the Holy Grail, lent it an authority absent in the verse Arthurian romances. As E. Jane Burns (1995) explains, the Vulgate Cycle is at once more historical and more religious than the 12th century verse romances it draws upon:

Appeal is made to two distinct traditions of authority: historical chronicle and the Divine Book . . . The story we read is presented as an accurate transcription or historical documentation of events that actually occurred. But while posing as historiography, the adventure story also claims descent from an authoritative tradition of scriptural writings. The Merlin results ostensibly from Merlin’s dictation to his scribe, Blaise, who combines accounts of the Arthurian past with those of Christ’s miracles. The Estoire claims to issue directly from the mouth of God and from a book that Christ, the divine author, gave the vernacular “author” to copy (p. 968).

Medieval audiences considered the Arthurian romances historical (Morrison, 2010). However, their understanding of history is different from our modern understanding, moving more fluidly between real and imaginary content. The Cistercian authors of the Cycle played on that fluidity and on the murky historical fact of King Arthur himself to make historical figures out of fictional characters like Galahaut and Lancelot.

UCB 107 Manuscript images courtesy of the Digital Scriptorium

Provenance

UCB 107 was likely produced in Northern France, transcribed by Picard scribes and illuminated and decorated by North French artists. Several manuscript details indicate this provenance. First is the subject matter itself. According to Roger Loomis (1975), the nobility in Northern France had a “special enthusiasm” for Arthurian Legend such that the majority of extant 13th century illuminated copies of Arthurian romances come from Northern France, not Paris as one might assume (p. 89). The reasons behind this fad are worth further scholarly inquiry, but are beyond the scope of this project.

The other indicators of a provenance in Northern France include the calendar that precedes the text of the romance, details of the Gothic script employed by the scribe and the illustration style.

CALENDAR

UCB 107 includes a calendar that was not originally part of the manuscript but that is contemporary with it. The calendar is characteristic of medieval calendars, illuminated with a combination of the zodiac signs for each month of the year as well as depictions of monthly occupations. Only three leaves of the calendar have survived. In addition to the roundels decorated with gold of the zodiac signs and monthly occupations, the calendar also features painted initials decorated with gold on squares of red and blue. Calendar entries are done in red, blue and brown ink.

The deaths and saints’ feast days entered onto calendars vary and often give evidence of origin and provenance (Brown, 1994). While the UCB 107 calendar is done primarily in Latin, the names of the saints are in French and they are particular to northern France, although they do not indicate any particular locality, which provides further evidence of a provenance in Northern France.

In addition to provenance, the calendar also gives us some indication of who owned and commissioned the manuscript. Calendars were usually included with religious works such as psalters and books of hours to help the reader calculate movable religious feast dates such as Easter (Brown, 1994). However, this calendar precedes an Arthurian Romance. Aside from religious works, calendars were often included in private, university and administrative books (Brown, 1994). Of the three, it seems most likely that UCB 107 belonged to a private collection given the degree to which the calendar is decorated. It is illuminated with gold leaf, contains numerous figurative decorations, and makes use of three ink colors. While not as elaborately illustrated as calendars in the most luxurious manuscripts, the expense that went into decorating this calendar elevates it above mere function and would make the most sense in a private library context.

SCRIPT

The script of the main text also supports a provenance in Northern France. It appears to be the work of a single scribe, done in a rounded gothic hand that features flat-headed t’s. Gothic script was fairly standard for manuscripts produced in the 13th century, but there were many possible variations in style. The style in UCB 107 is unlike Parisian script and was therefore likely done by a Picardy scribe (Picardy is a region in the North of France), the main school of scribes outside Paris (Loomis, 1975).



ILLUSTRATION STYLE

We can see one final indication that UCB 107 was produced in Northern France by examining the faces of the figures in the manuscript’s miniatures. They are almost uncolored except for dots of pink in the cheeks, a style which was common among North French book artists at this time (Loomis, 1975).



Less definitive, though worth noting, is the overall simplicity of the illustrations throughout the work. While simplicity alone would not indicate a provenance of Northern France, considered with the rest of the indicators, it is consistent. As Loomis (1975) notes of the artists of the North French school, “they lacked the extreme refinement and sophistication of the best Parisian artists.” At their most mediocre, these artists lacked not only technique but imagination, regularly recycling a set of stock subjects such as a person in prayer or knights fighting to illustrate their manuscripts regardless of textual content. However, at their best, the simplicity of their style could be vibrant and charming.


The illuminator of UCB 107 probably falls somewhere between these two extremes. Examining the miniatures, we see little or no shading, the hands are not modeled or articulated, the faces are expressive but generally do not contain much variation in expression, and there are few details in the images. However, there is a boldness to the lines and colors and a liveliness to the figures that captures our attention and imaginations.

UCB 107 Manuscript images courtesy of the Digital Scriptorium

Decoration, Illumination and a Conjecture about Rubrication

In addition to the Calendar decoration described above, the main text of the manuscript contains the following:

2-line initials in red and blue with pen-flourishing in contrasting color.

Numerous 4- to 7-line illuminated initials in gold or with gold decoration on painted, white-patterned grounds, occasionally inhabited but usually with geometric or foliate infillings

Figurative Decoration: 5 groups of illuminated miniatures at the beginning of principal sections, on backgrounds of either burnished gold or white-patterned blue or red.

UCB 107 contains no obvious rubrication. Briefly, rubrication was the practice of adding organizational elements such as titles and chapter headings in colored ink to a manuscript. The ink was usually red and the term “rubrication” derives from the Latin for the color red, rubrica (Brown, 1994). Rubrication was also used to add emphasis to certain parts of a text. For example, in religious works, quotes that were supposed to come directly from Christ were done in red ink.

We’ve already made the case that UCB 107 belonged to a private collection. Given the collection type and the content of the manuscript, a vernacular prose romance about Lancelot, it seems likely that this manuscript was intended for pleasure rather than for serious study. Rubrication, which organizes and articulates the text, is in a sense a scholarly apparatus and would therefore not be essential in a work meant to be read for pleasure. In a manuscript like UCB 107, the decorations serve an analogous function to rubrication, providing visual elements that organize the text and add emphasis.


Indeed, the five groups of miniatures each preface the principal sections of the work, giving the reader a visual indication of the narrative’s structure. The miniatures are laid out in blocks much like a comic strip, which was a style of decoration characteristic of secular manuscripts of this time (Morrison, 2010). These miniatures gave a visual summary of the section of text, shaping the reader’s expectation of the narrative to come.

Not being able to read the text, it is difficult to comment extensively on the interaction between image and text. The initials certainly serve to enliven the text, but they also provide important visual breaks much like paragraph breaks that structure the text. It would be inaccurate to call the inhabited initials historiated. They do not contain identifiable characters or scenes from the narrative, but traditionally these images mark important moments in the text, which can be organizational moments like the beginning of a chapter or paragraph or section or narrative moments like key scenes (Brown, 1994). It would be interesting to analyze how the images reflect and amplify the emotions of characters and tensions in the narrative.



UCB 107 Manuscript images courtesy of the Digital Scriptorium

Manuscript Details

INCIPIT, EXPLICIT and COLOPHON

UCB 107 does not contain an incipit, explicit or colophon of note. The opening
line of the main text could serve as an inicipit, but this line is not distinguished or emphasized in any particular way. The explicit of the work follows tradition and is simply, explicitus, which is the Latin for “unrolled” and an abbreviation of the phrase, explicitus est liber or “the scroll is unrolled.” The absence of a colophon is not unusual as these only appeared irregularly in medieval manuscripts and were most often used by Italian humanists (Brown, 1994).

SIZE

The manuscript measures 11 5/8 X 8 inches or 298 x 203 mm. This is an appropriate size for personal use, portable and functional yet still of a size indicating luxury. Larger and more extensively decorated manuscripts would have been showpieces and works meant to be read aloud and looked at by multiple people at the same time.

COLLATION, FOLIATION and BINDING

Precise details of how this manuscript was collated and bound are unknown. The manuscript contains 380 leaves and is missing folia 2 and 22, but is otherwise complete according to medieval foliation. The manuscript contains foliation in Roman numerals in the manuscripts upper-right margin although this was probably added at a later date.

The quires or gatherings are of variable length and contain no catchwords, the words written at the end of a quire repeating the first word on the following page that aided the binding process (Brown, 1994). The manuscript is covered in red leather although it is unclear if this is an original covering.

RULING

The manuscript is laid out in two colums of 44-46 lines that are ruled in hard point and lead. This was a typical presentation for volumes in the Vulgate Cycle (Loomis, 1975; Morrison, 2010). Due to their great length, the manuscript was sometimes written in as many as three columns to save space.



MATERIAL WRITTEN ON

UCB 107 is written on vellum. It is interesting to note that scholars are unclear on the exact difference between parchment and vellum (Avrin 1991). Both involve the stretching, scraping and liming of animal skin into thin sheets suitable for writing upon. Many assume that the difference between the two is in vellum’s use of calf skin since vellum translates literally to “veal skin”. When examining medieval manuscripts though, it is nearly impossible to identify the kind of animal whose hide was used. Therefore, it is impossible to conclude that vellum is made exclusively from calf skin. Some scholars do use the age of the animal as a way to distinguish between parchment and vellum, with parchment coming from adult animals and vellum coming from young animals. Others propose that the difference lies in the method of preparation. They claim that vellum is not treated with salt like parchment, resulting in a softer texture. Still others claim that vellum, unlike parchment, does not show any hair holes. Whatever the differences in methods of preparation, the difference in the end results are clear: parchment is heavier and glossier while vellum is softer, more fine and was typically the more costly of the two.

UCB 107 Manuscript images courtesy of the Digital Scriptorium

Summary

UCB 107 is neither the most elaborately decorated manuscript, nor the most richly illuminated, nor the most well preserved. We know very little of its origins, its creators and original owners. This is not to say that the work has nothing to offer us. Rather, it presents us with a great gift—a mystery to solve and an enigma to contemplate. What do we know about UCB 107? We know it contains the story of a particular time and place in book history. That story is set in the North of France around the year 1300. We know it participates in a fascinating moment of cultural change that saw feudalism and the church in decline and secular culture on the rise. In this book, we also see the flowering of one tradition, that of the illuminated manuscript, and the germinating of another, that of literary fiction. Study and analysis can only reveal part of the story though. For the rest, we must look to our imaginations to fill in the gaps.

References

Avrin, L. (1991). Scribes, script and books: The book arts from Antiquity to the Renaissance (M. Carl and N. Ophir, Illus). Chicago, IL: American Library Association.

Bouchard, C. (1995). Cistercian order. In W. Kibler & G. Zinn (Eds), Medieval France: An encyclopedia (p. 227). New York, NY: Garland Publishing, Inc.

Brown, M. (1994). Understanding illuminated manuscripts: A guide to technical terms. Los Angeles, CA: Getty Publications.

Burns, E. (1995). Vulgate Cycle. In W. Kibler & G. Zinn (Eds), Medieval France: An encyclopedia (pp. 967-968). New York, NY: Garland Publishing, Inc.

Frappier, J. (1959). The Vulgate Cycle. In R.S. Loomis (Ed), Arthurian literature in the Middle Ages (pp. 295-319). Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.

Gould, K. (1995). Cistercian art and architecture. In W. Kibler & G. Zinn (Eds), Medieval France: An encyclopedia (pp. 225-227). New York, NY: Garland Publishing, Inc.

Lancelot Proper. [Medieval Manuscript], Banc MS UCB 107, Special Collections, Bancroft Library, The University of California, Berkeley. Retrieved from http://scriptorium.columbia.edu/.

Loomis, R. S. (1975). Arthurian legends in medieval art. New York, NY: Modern Language Association.

Morrison, E. (2010). Dawning of the vernacular: 1250-1315. In E. Morrison & A. Hedeman, Imagining the past in France: History in manuscript painting 1250-1500 (pp. 89-129). Los Angeles, CA: J. Paul Getty Museum.

Morrison, E. & Hedeman, A. (2010). Introduction. In E. Morrison & A. Hedeman, Imagining the past in France: History in manuscript painting 1250-1500 (pp. 1-7). Los Angeles, CA: J. Paul Getty Museum.

Sotheby’s & Co. (1967, November 28). Lancelot: The “Lancelot Proper” in French prose. Sotheby’s [auction catalogue]. London, England: Sotheby’s & Co. pp. 40-42.