yet it is clear that the Didot Perceval logically concludes
the trilogy. It resembles one of the works projected at the
end of the Joseph/Estoire and recounts the fulfi llment
of God’s prophecy in the Joseph that the Rich Fisher
will not die until he is visited by his son’s son; it is also
closely linked to the prose Merlin: fi nally succeeding at
the Grail castle with Merlin’s help, Perceval replaces his
uncle as Rich Fisher; the hero’s triumph coincides with
the downfall of the Arthurian kingdom, the founding of
which the Merlin had recounted.
In the Joseph/Estoire and what must have been
the original verse Merlin, Robert de Boron in effect
rewrites the Conte du Graal of Chrétien de Troyes. He
expands the religious content of the original to provide
the Grail’s “sacred history,” identifying it for the fi rst
time with the cup of the Last Supper. In addition, he
extends Chrétien’s references to pre-Arthurian Britain,
which echo Wace’s Brut, to provide the Grail’s “secular
history.”
Robert’s most important contribution is the genera-
tive power that infuses his verse. Not only are the prose
adaptations of the Joseph/Estoire and Merlin among the
earliest examples of literary prose in French, they also
stand at the head of a long tradition that promoted the
“translation” of imaginative and historical works written
in “unreliable” verse into the “more stable” and “more
authoritative” medium of prose. The better-known, more
highly respected, Pseudo-Robert de Boron who was thus
created, the one to whose authorship the more widely
transmitted prose works are attributed, became in the
early 13th century an even stronger literary force. He
inspired the “completion” of Chrétien de Troyes’s unfi n-
ished Conte du Graal in the anonymous Didot Perceval,
and he is ultimately responsible for the germination of
the Vulgate Cycle.
See also Chrétien de Troyes
Further Reading
Robert de Boron. Merlin, roman du XIIIe siècle, ed. Alexandre
Micha. Geneva: Droz, 1979.
——. Le roman de l’estoire dou Graal, ed. William A. Nitze.
Paris: Champion, 1927.
——. Le roman du Graal, ed. Bernard Cerquiglini. Paris: Union
Générale d’Éditions, 1981.
Roach, William, ed. The Didot Perceval According to the Manu-
scripts of Paris and Modena. Philadelphia: University of
Pennsylvania Press, 1941.
Cerquiglini, Bernard. La parole médiévale. Paris: Minuit, 1981.
O’Gorman, Richard F. “The Prose Version of Robert de Boron’s
Joseph d’Arimathie.” Romance Philology 23 (1969–70):
449–61.
——. “La tradition manuscrite du Joseph d’Arimathie en prose
de Robert de Boron.” Revue d’histoire des textes 1 (1971):
145–81.
Pickens, Rupert T. “Histoire et commentaire chez Chrétien de
Troyes et Robert de Boron: Robert de Boron et le livre de
Philippe de Flandre.” In The Legacy of Chrétien de Troyes,
ed. Norris J. Lacy, Douglas Kelly, and Keith Busby. 2 vols.
Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1988, Vol. 2, pp. 17–39.
——. ‘“Mais de ço ne parole pas Crestiens de Troies ¼’: A Re-
examination of the Didot Perceval.” Romania 105 (1984):
492–510.
Rupert T. PickensROBERT GUISCARD (c. 1015–1085)
When Robert Guiscard (Robert de Hauteville) rode into
southern Italy in 1047, Norman mercenaries had been
playing Lombards against Byzantines there for at least
thirty years. Robert’s half brothers, older sons of Tancred
of Hauteville, had already claimed lands around Aversa,
where the eldest, William, had earned the name “Iron-
Arm” and had become the fi rst Norman Italian count.
William did not welcome Robert’s arrival. Eventually
another brother, Drogo, gave Robert a miserable outpost
in Calabria, which he could control only by ousting the
Byzantines. Yet this offered him a base from which to
launch ambitious conquests, achieved with prodigious
energy. Robert used terror and bloodshed, but his signa-
ture strategy was the ruse, as when he allegedly feigned
death and penetrated a monastic stronghold inside a cof-
fi n, lying on a bed of swords. So wily was this trickster
that the name Guiscard (“the clever”) was used in the
eleventh-century histories featuring his exploits.
Robert also proved his mettle on the battlefi eld. In
1053, a formidable coalition of Germans from the Holy
Roman Empire and their Italian allies, led by Pope
Leo IX, engaged the Normans at Civitate, hoping to
dislodge them from Italy. Robert distinguished himself
in this Norman victory, and soon he was challenging his
brother Humphrey for hegemony among the Normans
of Italy. Before Humphrey died in 1057, he commended
his son Abelard to Robert’s care, but Robert promptly
claimed his nephew’s lands. The boy would grow up to
foment insurrections against his uncle but eventually
sought asylum in Byzantium after yet another unsuc-
cessful resistance in 1080. Such rebellions punctuated
Robert’s reign, even as he expanded his domination,
seizing Capua from the Lombards and fi nally—in 1071,
after a three-year siege—taking Bari, the last Byzantine
foothold in Italy.
Along Robert’s path to power, two events of 1059
enhanced his prestige and legitimized his authority.
First, having repudiated his wife (the mother of his
son, Bohemond), Robert compelled Prince Gisulf II of
Salerno to surrender his sister Sichelgaita in marriage.
Now linked to a venerable Lombard princely family,
Robert also allied himself with the papacy, which sought
the support of the Normans in the investiture confl ict
against the Holy Roman emperor and the imperial anti-
pope. Thus at the synod of Melfi , Robert—who had been
thrice excommunicated—acquired a papal blessing and
the title of duke of Apulia and Calabria and Sicily.ROBERT GUISCARD