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In Sir Thomas Malory’s Morte Darthur, where chivalry is a way of life, moral principles operate with vigor but not necessarily with signs of Christianity. not all characters displaying chivalric values are identified as Christian or even religious. Moreover, those who are secular Christians frequently indicate their faith just incidentally, such as hearing Mass or expostulating, as Gareth does, “Jesu, wolde that the lady of this Castell Perelus were so fayre as she is.”1 However, in the episode where Sir Lancelot heals the festering, bleeding wounds of Sir urry, certain chivalric virtues are explicitly adjoined to a Christian belief system. My purpose is to show how in this controversial episode the Christianity of Round table knights is made to matter and the virtues of the healer are bound to a mystery central to their religious faith, the trinity. to fulfill this purpose, I begin with an anecdote from a fifteenth-century collection of edifying literature, for it provides a heuristic for discerning signs of Christianity and is particularly apropos of Lancelot. The next two sections compare the virtues of exemplary Christian holy men and the charism of healing with Lancelot’s portrayal in the chivalric atmosphere of the urry healing event. Then I examine the details and unusual aspects of the urry healing, including its public atmosphere, absence of medical treatment, ritualistic employment of touch, and use of a prayer to the trinity unique in the Morte. The following two sections explain why the trinity is the most complex component in the urry healing and show how fifteenth-century english people expressed an intense, albeit rare, regard for this doctrine similar to Malory’s. Finally, suggesting that the story of Lancelot’s curing of urry is only one of various narrative models for attempting to sustain communal relationships in the Morte, I conclude that once the components of this healing event are understood, the episode stands out as a distinct instance in which the thriving of chivalric communal morality is linked to Christian sacred belief. EndlessVirtueandTrinitarianPrayer inLancelot’sHealingofUrry Sue Ellen Holbrook 56 Christian virtue A knight who had done “many euylles and moche harme, and wolde conuerte hym to god” asked a holy man if God received sinners in his grace. The holy man answered, “‘Ye,’ and shewed to hym by many reasons and auctorytees of holy scrypture.” but the knight still doubted. Therefore, the holy man showed to him this example: “‘Yf thy mantell be rente or broken in ony parte, wylt thou incontinent caste it awaye?’The knyght answered to hym, ‘nay, but I shall make it agayne & amende it, and it shall serue me as it dyde byfore.’Thenne sayde the holy man, ‘Ryght so, my frende, is it of god. For how well that thy soule be broken by synne, neuertheless our lord casteth it not awaye, but by very penaunce & pure confessyon shal make it hole agayn by his grace.’”2 Read in books or heard in sermons, exempla such as this one taught medieval europeans not just how to conduct themselves honorably, for as J. Ian H. Mcdonald observes, “every culture has some notion of virtue or moral excellence,”3 but how to do so within a Christian paradigm. The virtues inculcated in professional religious, like that holy man in the anecdote, and secular people, like that knight, were not unique to members of the Christian faith community. Christian morality had been “forged,” as Mcdonald puts it, in a “crucible,” which contained both “Graeco-Roman” and “Jewish Hellenistic elements.”4 The moral qualities and procedures in the Christianizing crucible included, for instance, the many branches of the cardinal virtues of wisdom, justice, fortitude, and temperance from the Stoic tradition and the cultivation of sorrow from the Judean tradition—the penitence in the exemplum. Although monastic Christians were expected to develop virtues to a greater degree than secular Christians were, both understood that moral excellence was necessary for their concept of salvation. In the paradigm evident in the anecdote, virtuous living for Christians is linked with the belief that their God had created human beings with a soul that, like the knight’s mantle, they might damage through evil and harmful acts but also amend by penitence, resumption of virtuous ways, and God’s grace. That knight in the anecdote, who feels “broken by synne” but learns that there is a way for his soul to be made whole again by God’s grace,brings to mind Sir Lancelot at several points during the...

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