Malory and Christianity: Essays on Sir Thomas Malory's Morte Darthur

Introduction

Less than a century after the death of Sir Thomas Malory,Roger Ascham wrote in The Scholemaster that the “whole pleasure” of Malory’s Morte Darthur “standeth in two speciall poyntes, in open mans slaughter, and bold bawdrye: In which booke those be counted the noblest Knightes, that do kill most men without any quarell and commit fowlest aduoulteries by sutlest shiftes: as Sir Launcelote, with the wife of king Arthure his master.”1 Though perhaps few would agree with Ascham’s dismissive evaluation of the Morte’s “speciall poyntes,” most readers nonetheless recall most vividly the elements he names: the Round table knights’many battles and the adulterous love affair between Lancelot and Guinevere. And to be sure, pursuing opponents and pursuing love move the Morte’s narrative, but the work’s richness comes from its romance and tragic elements: the human quest for maturity and fulfillment and those uncontrollable forces that undermine the quest and destroy the dream. Malory’s use of myth and magic to explore these themes has received extensive scholarly attention, but his views on and thematic use of Christianity have long needed a closer look.This volume aims to address that need. Christianity is omnipresent in the Morte,from the second page where King uther swears “upon the four evangelistes” to reward Merlin richly if only Merlin will help him to fulfill his desire for Igrayne (1:8.40)2 to the last line of the work, where the reader learns that after Lancelot’s death, four of his companions do battle against the “turkes” and die “uppon a Good Fryday for Goddes sake” (3:1260.15.) but eugène vinaver early sidelined the topic, arguing that Malory, uninterested in Christianity,minimized its importance by paring down or deleting Christian references in the explicitly Christian Grail section. over time,vinaver’s persuasive view influenced critical reading of the whole Morte, overshadowing the views of others like C.S.Lewis,who argued that Malory’s text deals seriously with Christian themes and motifs. Reopening this discussion first requires attempting to define what “Christianity ” meant for Malory’s time and estate. Malory died just forty years before Henry vIII’s accession. Was his Christian world still that of medieval Roman Introduction 1 Catholicism or were the seeds of Protestantism and the Reformation already affecting daily religious practice and belief? In 1929, e. K. Chambers, commenting on Malory’s alleged assaults upon Combe Abbey, simply stated as fact that “there was a strong Lollard feeling against religious houses,”thus associating Malory with Lollardy.3 More recently, Christina Hardyment asserted that Lollardy was not a notable force in england in Malory’s time. Hardyment places Malory squarely in the traditional religious context of medieval english gentry from his baptism on. Although some contemporary gentry sympathized with the Lollards, Hardyment sees Malory’s family, with its connections to the order of St. John of Jerusalem and the Knights Hospitallers, as “a conventionally pious one.”4 Those connections were strong ones; as P. J. C. Field points out, Malory’s uncle was Sir Robert Malory, prior of the Hospital of St. John of Jerusalem in england from 1432 to 1439/40,“one of the greatest magnates of the kingdom and a professional crusader.”5 Speculating on Sir Robert’s possible influence upon his nephew, Field points out Malory’s “apparent indifference [in the Morte Darthur] to ceremony and conspicuous consumption, his dislike of courtly love, and his presentation of knighthood itself as an ‘order’ with a moral purpose and a religious justification.” He adds, “crusades and the defence of Christendom against Islam are more conspicuous in the Morte Darthur than in Malory’s sources or in most other english Arthurian romances.” The pious deaths of Lancelot’s final companions noted earlier also support this view for Field.6 Scholars are divided concerning religious attitudes in Malory’s time; no one perspective dominates the scholarly conversation. The late fifteenth century was a period of transition, a pre-Reformation time with currents tending to Protestantism contending against opposing currents of traditional Roman Catholicism. The issue of just how strong either current may have been has been occupying historians for the last several decades, as Alec Ryrie has pointed out.7 Moreover, identifying Malory’s social class does not help to identify his religious perspective. Seeing him as a member of the gentry class, which follows from Field’s widely accepted view that the Malory who wrote the Morte Darthur is Sir Thomas...