The Nature of Pilgrimage in the Queste del Saint Graal

THE NATURE OF PILGRIMAGE IN THE QUESTE DEL SAINT GRAAL Elizabeth Moore Willingham Baylor University The Old French prose Vulgate Queste del Saint Graal (= Queste) may be productively read as a narrative of sacramental pilgrimage set into the context ofArthurian chivalric romance.1 Indeed, the ideas of "quest" and "pilgrimage" are often connected and even conflated; "quest", in the Arthurian sense, intends a search for a physical object or a person, while "pilgrimage", as used here, involves a journey of a religious nature. The 1 The Vulgate composition is dated to the first third of the thirteenth century, and the Queste to the first quarter of the century, 1215-1225. Citations here of La Queste del Saint Graal refer to the manuscript codex Yale MS 229, a thirteenth-century Old French redaction of the last three sections of the Prose Lancelot: I'Agrauains (the final book of the Lancelot Proper), the Queste and La mort le Roi Artu. References to narrative events are given by folio number and column designation without "f." (folio) where syntax permits. Where a single word or phrase is salient, or a quotation appears, line number(s) are also given. Quotations given here do not observe line breaks or end line hyphens that appear in the double-column manuscript, which is available digitally at the Beinecke website, given in the Works Cited as "Yale 229". Translations are mine. Harvey L. Sharrer provides a discussion of Spanish versions of the Queste and resources for research in Norris Lacy's edition and in his 1987 bibliographic article for La coránica. See also William J. Entwistle's standard work and that of Maria Rosa Lida de Malkiel. La corónica 36.2 (Spring 2008): 191-215 192Elizabeth Moore WillinghamLa coránica 36.2, 2008 pilgrimages of the Queste turn out to have deeply spiritual ends, and their overarching rationale is the journey made to achieve union with Christ and witness of the Eucharist at an esoteric level to which few are permitted access; in the Queste, those few are represented by Arthur's best knights. The pilgrimages in the Queste are primarily directed by God toward individual experience ofthe Eucharist through the Grail, but preparatory pilgrimages also secure spiritual and physical healing and discipline, spiritual and historical-political instruction, and penance. These pilgrimages belong to the knights who are subservient to the Perfect Knight, Galaad (Galahad),2 while Galaad's destinations involve his resolving the enchantments and suffering in Arthur's kingdom before he leaves on the communal strange-land pilgrimage that closes the narrative and allows Galaad to achieve final union with God. As the medieval reader of such a manuscript would have been aware, the knights' literal quest-pilgrimages construct views of man's figurative pilgrimage: the day-to-day journey through earthly existence toward God, a layered representation that is also intentional in other pilgrimage narratives.3 The Queste, however, charges the dual aspect 2 Except for "Arthur", which would be awkward and unfamiliar as Artus or Artu, the names given here for Arthurian characters are based on the nominative forms ofthose used in the manuscript. Names that appear in English translations of Arthurian material are given parenthetically. I have deleted the nominative final -s from Gauains, Hestors, and Bohors (making it Bohort) to eliminate issues with possessive forms within the paper. 3 Moral pilgrimage narratives such as those contained in Berceo's Milagros, which was composed at about the time of the Queste; Langland's Piers the Ploughman and Dante's Divina Commedia, both fourteenth-century works; Spenser's The Faerie Queene published in the last decade ofthe sixteenth century; and Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress, first published in the seventeenth century; and biblical stories of pilgrimage in Exodus and Hebrews are open to interpretation on both levels. In Hebrews should, for example, the ideas implied by words like "wandering", "stranger", "exile" and "homeland" (in English translation from Hebrew) construct central images in many pilgrimage narratives. These are constructs shared with the Queste pilgrimage "adventures" and its "prequel" the Histoire del Saint Graal, and provide a basis for literal and figurative readings in a Judeo-Christian context. In this respect, see William G...