Picherit, Jean-Louis, ed. and trans. The Journey of Charlemagne to Jerusalem and Constantinople.
Birmingham: Summa, 1984.
Horrent, Jules. Le pèlerinage de Charlemagne: essai d’explication littéraire avec des notes de
critique textuelle. Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1961.
VULGATE CYCLE
. Known by many titles, the Arthurian Vulgate Cycle (ca. 1215–35) derives its most
common name from the first, and only complete, edition of the cycle, undertaken by
H.Oskar Sommer between 1908 and 1916. Using British Museum Additional manuscripts
10292–10294, Sommer provides a text of the Estoire del saint Graal (Vol. 1), Estoire de
Merlin (Vol. 2), Estoire de Lancelot del Lac (known commonly as the Prose Lancelot,
Vols. 3–5), Queste del saint Graal (Vol. 6), and Mort le roi Artu (Vol. 7). More rigorous
editions have been undertaken subsequently for all volumes except the Estoire del saint
Graal. French scholars of the Vulgate romances refer typically to their material as the
Lancelot-Grail Cycle, although this appelation generally includes only the last three
works of the series, omitting the Merlin and sometimes also the Estoire del saint Graal
Attribution of the Queste and Mort Artu to Walter Map has fostered occasional reference
to the whole corpus as the Pseudo-Map Cycle. The diverse titles all reflect 13th-century
French prose composition through their common use of the term “cycle,” depicting
thereby an expansive narrative structure that chronicles the deeds of whole generations of
knights across numerous volumes of text.
Taking as their subject the entire history of the Grail from its origin in the Passion of
Christ to the successful accomplishment of the quest by the chosen hero, the Arthurian
prose texts adopt the comprehensive scale of literary and theological summae of the 13th
century, such as Jean de Meun’s Roman de la Rose, Vincent de Beauvais’s Speculum
naturale, and Thomas Aquinas’s Summa theologica. One of the earliest literary examples
of this effet totalisant is found in the Roman du Graal (ca. 1210), a prose trilogy
attributed to Robert de Boron, which recounts the history of the Grail vessel (Joseph
d’Arimathie), its arrival in Great Britain along with the discovery of the future King
Arthur (Merlin), and the quest for the Holy Grail and subsequent demise of Arthur’s
world (Perceval).
The Vulgate Cycle offers a more elaborate version of this narrative scenario,
expanding the prose Perceval into two separate tales, the Queste del saint Graal and the
Mort le roi Artu, and adding a lengthy rendition of the Lancelot story to make a total of
five roughly sequential narratives. The Lancelot propre (or Lancelot en prose), the
Queste, and the Mort Artu were written first, then supplemented by the Estoire del saint
Graal and the Estoire de Merlin (or the Vulgate Merlin), although the latter two are
designed to head the sequence in terms of narrative chronology.
As we move from the classic Arthurian verse romances of the 12th century, which
tend to focus on the chivalric exploits of a single knight, to protracted prose accounts of
the Grail quester’s complex heritage and inheritors, the scope of the Arthurian adventure
story becomes simultaneously more historical and more religious. Appeal is made to two
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