distinct traditions of authority: historical chronicle and the Divine Book. The Queste and
Mort are attributed to Walter Map, a scribe at the court of the English king Henry II (r.
1154–89). Throughout the Vulgate Cycle, fictive genealogies claim that the tale we read
descends from eyewitness testimony of events in the Arthurian past. As knights-errant
completed feats of heroism in the Arthurian forest, we are told, they returned to Arthur’s
court, where royal scribes recorded in writing their tales of adventure. 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.
An elaborate matrix of cross-references involving prophecy and family lineage
thematizes the conjunction of spiritual and chivalric modes cultivated throughout the
cycle. The Lancelot announces at its beginning that Lancelot was given the baptismal
name of Galahad, thus forging a crucial link between the archetypical knight-lover and
the chosen hero of the Queste del saint Graal. At the end of the Lancelot, we learn that
Lancelot is in fact Galahad’s father, having engendered the Grail hero during a visit with
King Pelles’s daughter at Corbenic, although the son far surpasses the more courtly
Lancelot in spiritual achievement. Galahad represents the ideal conjunction of religious
and chivalric modes and of past and future epochs. Descending from King David on his
father’s side and from Joseph of Arimathea and the Grail kings on his mother’s, he is the
embodiment of biblical history destined to cure the ills of the Arthurian world.
The belated prologue to the Vulgate Cycle supplied by the Estoire del saint Graal
recasts this father-son scenario in a yet more religious vein. A highly christianized
version of Robert de Boron’s Joseph, this tale adds to the story of the Grail keeper,
Joseph of Arimathea, the narrative of his son, Josephe, whose purity and chastity qualify
him to become the first bishop. Joseph catches Christ’s blood in the holy vessel after the
Crucifixion, but it is Josephe who has a privileged vision of Christ while con templating
the Grail and later becomes the spiritual leader of the Christians. The evangelization of
East and West ensues through a series of miraculous conversions and a final voyage to
Great Britain. When Josephe dies, he confers the Grail on Alain, the first Fisher King,
who places it in Corbenic castle to await the arrival of the bon chevalier.
In the Estoire de Merlin, the most chroniclelike of the Vulgate stories, Merlin as
prophet and enchanter becomes the nexus where chivalric and sacred threads of the
narrative cross. With a knowledge of the past inherited from his incubus father and a
divine gift of foresight, Merlin confounds onlookers with his ability to explain mysterious
events and predict the future. He uses his magic to engineer the conception of the future
King Arthur, to ensure Arthur’s success at pulling the sword from the stone, and to devise
military strategies that ensure the king’s power. Arthur’s military exploits are detailed in
a narrative suite (the Suite-Vulgate, Suite du Merlin, or historical suite) that links the
Merlin proper to the Lancelot.
The Lancelot, which alone accounts for half of the Vulgate Cycle, narrates the
adventures of its most popular, if flawed, chivalric hero. Different from the Lancelot
story provided by Chrétien de Troyes’s Chevalier de la charrette, the quintessential
Medieval france: an encyclopedia 1830