under mystical knowledge and contemplation. Faith is
a pretaste of the vision of the divine. Reason helps faith
in the process of understanding itself, raising it to the
level of full mystical knowledge characterized by love.
William supports his refl ections on mystical knowledge
with quotations from many sources, mainly patristic,
while also frequently referring to profane, classical
authors. He, like the “monastic theology” he helped to
create, can thus be seen as part of the so-called 12th-
century renaissance.
See also Abélard, Peter; Anselm of Laon; Bernard
of Clairvaux
Further Reading
William of Saint-Thierry. Opera. PL 180, 184, 185.
——. On Contemplating God, trans. Sister Penelope. Kalamazoo:
Cistercian, 1977.
——. The Nature and Dignity of Love, trans. Thomas X. Davis.
Kalamazoo: Cistercian, 1981.
——. On Contemplating God; Prayer, Meditations, trans. Sister
Penelope. Kalamazoo: Cistercian, 1971.
——. On the Nature of the Body and the Soul, trans. B. Clark.
In Three Treatises on Man: A Cistercian Anthropology, ed.
Bernard McGinn. Kalamazoo: Cistercian, 1977.
——. Exposé sur le Cantique des cantiques, ed. jean M. Déchanet,
trans. Pierre Dumontier. Paris: Cerf, 1962.
——. The Mirror of Faith, trans. Thomas X. Davis. Kalamazoo:
Cistercian, 1979.
——. Lettre aux frères de Mont-Dieu (Lettre d’Or), ed. and trans.
Jean M. Déchanet. Paris: Cerf, 1975
Bell, David N. The Image and Likeness: The Augustinian Spiri-
tuality of William of Saint-Thierry. Kalamazoo: Cistercian,
1984.
Déchanet, Jean M. William of Saint-Thierry: The Man and His
Work. Spencer: Cistercian, 1972.
Burcht Pranger
WIRNT VON GRAFENBERG
(fl. 1204–1210)
Author of the Middle High German Arthurian romance
Wigalois, written between 1204 and 1210, Wirnt is
thought to be a ministerial (clerical administrator) from
the town of Gräfenberg north of Erlangen.
No documents associate him with any particular
court at which Wigalois might have been written, but
Berthold IV, count of Andechs and duke of Meran, is
his most likely patron. References to characters from
Erec and Iwein as well as the fi rst part of Parzival attest
to the author’s familiarity with the works of his famous
contemporaries Hartmann von Aue and Wolfram von
Eschenbach. Although earlier treatments of the Wigalois
story, such as Renaud de Beaujeu’s Le Bel Inconnu,
existed outside of Germany, Wirnt insists that his source
was a story told by a squire. It has been suggested that
the citing of an oral source served as a pretext to set
his own emphasis rather than following slavishly the
demands of the genre.
The Wigalois romance consists of 11,708 verses and
is written in rhymed couplets. The story of Gawein’s
son, it is divided into fi ve distinct parts: the hero’s
upbringing in his mother’s fairy kingdom; his arrival at
Arthur’s court and his adventures in the Arthurian realm;
his adventures in the otherworldly realm of Korntin and
ultimate triumph over the prince of darkness, the heathen
King Roaz of Glois; the hero’s wedding and coronation;
and the avenging of the murder of a wedding guest.
While earlier scholarship insisted on viewing Wirnt’s
hero as the unproblematic knight of fortune’s wheel,
more recent work detects a fl awed character in need of
God’s mercy who submits to the will of God. It is God
who provides the supreme guidance through the super-
natural obstacles of Korntin and grants victory. Wirnt’s
novelty is the Arthurian knight as God’s champion in
the eschatological confl ict between heaven and hell. He
uses the genre to send a message of apocalyptic urgency
to his contemporary society, drawing obvious parallels
between that society and Wigalois’s antagonist. Both
have lost sight of the ultimate good, and thus the story
of Wigalois serves as a vehicle to reaffi rm God’s grace
as our only hope for salvation. Wirnt’s romance has
enjoyed surprising popularity, judging not only by the
relatively large number of extant manuscripts but also
by its infl uence on contemporary as well as subsequent
German authors writing in the latter thirteenth and
fourteenth centuries. Noteworthy later adaptations of
the story include a fi fteenth-century chapbook, a Yiddish
rendition transmitted in manuscripts from the sixteenth
century, and a nursery tale dated 1786. Wirnt himself
became the hero of Konrad von Würzburg’s verse narra-
tive Der Welt Lohn, in which he is depicted as a knight
who learns to forsake the things of the world and to serve
God. The story of Wigalois has also contributed valuable
material to the body of Arthurian iconography, ranging
from the Wigalois frescoes in Runkelstein castle near
Bolzano in South Tyrol and woodcuts illustrating the
chapbook version to picture cycles in two of the manu-
scripts. One of these, the parchment codex no. Ltk 537
of Leyden, is considered the only signifi cant illuminated
Arthurian manuscript of the fourteenth century.
See also Hartmann von Aue; Konrad von
Würzburg; Wolfram von EschenbachFurther Reading
Cormeau, Christoph. ‘Wigalois’ und ‘Diu Crone’: Zwei Kapitel
zur Gattungsgeschichte des nachklassischen Aventiureromans.
Zurich: Artemis, 1977.
Freeland, Beverly M. “Wigalois A: A Prototype Edition of Wirnt
von Gravenberg’s Wigalois.” Ph.d. diss., University of Cali-
fornia, Los Angeles, 1993.WILLIAM OF SAINT-THIERRY