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