An Explanation Of The Vulgate Cycle

The Vulgate Cycle was sometimes known as “Prose Lancelot“, was now commonly called the “Lancelot-Graal” cycle.

The whole purpose of the cycle was to combine three themes: the quest of the Grail, the love of Lancelot and Guinevere, and the death of King Arthur. The authors of the Vulgate Cycle had attempted into interwoven these three themes together.

The Vulgate Cycle originally comprised mainly of three core works: Lancelot Proper (or “Lancelot”), the Queste del Saint Graal (“Quest of the Holy Grail”), and the La Mort le Roi Artu (“Mort Artu” or “Death of King Arthur”). It was written in the Old French, in the second half of thirteenth century (c. 1225-1237).

Two additional works were included into the Vulgate Cycle. Both of these works were influenced by the work of a French poet named Robert de Boron. One of these was called L’Estoire du Graal (“History of the Holy Grail”, c. 1240). This work deals with the history of the Grail, when Joseph of Arimathea took his family and the Grail to Britain. Rather than translating from verse to prose, the L’Estoire du Graal is actually a rework of Boron’s Joseph of Arimathea, c. 1200. Boron’s version is quite simple and different from the Vulgate Grail’s history. You will only find Boron’s version of Joseph of Arimathea in the Grail Legends, titled the Origin of the Holy Grail. Though, I have read L’Estoire du Graal, I have not written the Vulgate version of the Grail’s history.

The second additional work was called the Prose Merlin or the Vulgate Merlin. This was prose adaptation of another work by Robert de Boron also called “Merlin”. This had the episodes of Arthur’s birth and how he was raised by Sir Anton (Sir Ector) and educated by Merlin, and how Arthur became king by drawing the magic sword out of stone. The story ended with the death of Merlin through the magic of the Lady of the Lake. Most of the Prose Merlin can be found in Legend of Excalibur.

(Notice the third work of Boron, titled Perceval, was ignored, because they had introduced a new hero into the Grail romance – Galahad.)

There is additional collection of works, commonly known as the Post-Vulgate romances or cycle, written between 1240-1250. The Post-Vulgate cycle comprised mainly of Suite du Merlin (Continuation of Merlin), a longer and alternative version of the Quest of the Holy Grail, and the Prose Tristan tried to introduced the legend of Tristan into the cycle. There is also the Post-Vulgate version of Mort Artu is very short. See the next article called Post-Vulgate Cycle for more detail.

Before you began reading tales from the Vulgate Cycle, I suggest reading the Legend of Excalibur first. This is sort of like a prologue to the Vulgate Cycle. My sources for the Legend of Excalibur come from Vulgate Prose Merlin, 1240, and Suite du Merlin (or Merlin Continuation, c. 1245 Post-Vulgate). I had combined the two Merlins for the Legend of Excalibur. There are difference between the Prose Merlin and Merlin Continuation. After reading the Legend of Excalibur, then I suggest that you read the Vulgate romances in the order of Lancelot, the Quest and Death of Arthur.

Lancelot is a huge work that can be divided into three sections: “Galehaut“, “Charrette“, and “Agravain“. (See Lancelot du Lac for the full story.)

		The “Galehaut” tell of Lancelot’s origin, how the Lady of the Lake raised the hero. His early adventure where he captured a castle called Dolorous Guard and then befriended the giant Galehaut. Galehaut was the man who arranged for Lancelot to receive his first kiss from Queen Guinevere. The Galehaut ended with the death of Galehaut.
		The “Charrette” was the adaptation of Chretien’s first story of the hero called Le Chevalier de la charrette (“Knight of the Cart” or “Lancelot”), c. 1175. It recounts of Lancelot rescuing Queen Guinevere from her abductor, Meleagant. This section ends with the death of Meleagant’s cousin.
		The main theme of the Agravain, was the conception of Galahad, when Lancelot was tricked into sleeping with Elaine, daughter of Pelles, the Fisher King or Grail-keeper. This set up the scene for the next book, the Quest of the Holy Grail (Queste del Saint Graal). Perceval also make his first appearance in this section.

The Quest of the Holy Grail introduced the new Grail hero: Galahad, the son of Lancelot and Elaine, daughter of King Pelles. Galahad with his two companions, Sir Perceval and Sir Bors were the only Knights of the Round Table to complete the mysterious quest. It is only Galahad achieved the ultimate spiritual enlightenment of the Grail mystery. The story ended with the death of Galahad and Perceval. With Galahad’s death, the Grail vanished.

With the disappearance of the Grail from Britain, it also meant the withdrawal of God’s grace from Britain. This led to the final work of the Vulgate Cycle, The Death of King Arthur. The story tells of the adulterous love of Lancelot and Guinevere, which lead to the death of Gawain’s brothers and the war between Arthur and Lancelot. During Arthur’s absence, his son/nephew Mordred betrayed Arthur, led to Arthur’s final battle and death.

One of the things that is interesting is that the English writer, Walter Map, had been credited as the author of the three main works. This is highly unlikely because Walter Map had died in 1209, so the Vulgate trilogy was written at least 15 years after his death. The author or authors of these works remain unknown, but there are some speculation that the authors were Cistercian monks (particularly in regarding to the Queste del Saint Graal).

Due to the size of these three works from the Vulgate Cycle, I’ve decided to retell these stories in three separate pages.

The original romances of the Vulgate Cycle had only comprised of three works, beginning with the birth of Lancelot, which included his early adventure (Lancelot Propre), following through with the Grail quest (Queste del Saint Graal) and the death of King Arthur (Mort le roi Artu). The other two additional works included the origin of the Grail (L’Estoire du Graal) at the time of Joseph of Arimathea, then in the Prose Merlin (or Vulgate Merlin) included the birth and early reign of King Arthur. So the whole life on Arthur was covered.

Yet the three main works wasn’t about Arthur at all. Lancelot was the predominant player in the drama, even in the last volume, titled the Death of King Arthur (Mort le roi Artu). The tale only ended with Lancelot’s death and how he was taken to heaven after four years of pentience.

What is remarkable is the difference between the core works of the Vulgate Cycle. In Lancelot Propre, Lancelot undertake adventures with not only to glory for himself, but because of his love for Arthur’s queen, Guinevere. Lancelot became the best knight in the world. This volume was fairly typical of knightly adventures and courtly love. Many of the adventures were magical, where the hero must defeat powerful knights, enchantreses, giants and dragons.

In Queste del Saint Graal, the tale moved away from courtly love to spiritual love. Attention is then drawn to Lancelot’s own son, Galahad become the greatest knight in the world. While Lancelot himself fell from grace, because of his sin of adultery with the Queen, Lancelot failed to achieve the Grail.

In Mort le roi Artu, Lancelot returned to the foreground of this tale. His love for Guinevere and the treachery of Mordred, would bring the fall of Arthur and the kingdom he had established. In this last volume, the adventure and tragedy seemed more real, because the magic had been kept to a minimum. Here, the tragedy is more human, the scene is more somber, yet they were also more moving.

The Vulgate romances may have dervived from many sources, including Geoffrey of Monmouth’s original, yet it has bloosom.

The Suite du Merlin was sort of a continuation of the Vulgate Prose Merlin. It contained the early episodes of Arthur’s life, particularly about Arthur had unwittingly committed incest with his half-sister Morgawse, who begotten Mordred. The tale also included Arthur’s early warfare against baron and lords, including King Lot, whom was killed by Sir Pellinor in battle. When Arthur’s sword broke, it tell of how Merlin brought Arthur to the Lady of the Lake, where he received a new sword called Excalibur. As well as the episode of Morgan le Fay, who tried to kill her brother by stealing his sword, by giving Excalibur to her lover Accolon. The story also included how the knight Balin de Savage wounded the Grail Keeper (Parlan) with the Dolorous Stroke, which caused his kingdom to become the Waste Land. Most of these episodes in the Suite du Merlin can be found in Legend of Excalibur.

The Prose Tristan was also called Le Roman de Tristan de Léonois (c. 1230). The Prose Tristan was notably different from the earlier accounts by Thomas and Beroul. This tale say the Tristan became a Knight of the Round Table, where in the end he was murdered by his uncle King Mark of Cornwall. I have only briefly gone over the Prose Tristan in the Tristan and Isolde page.

The other was called Le Livre d’Artu (c. 1250) which recount the origin of Arthur, his early adventure, including his early wars, and Arthur drawing the sword from rock, which proved him to be the true and rightful king of Britain.

Sir Thomas Malory was the last great medieval author of the Arthurian literature, who penned Le Morte d’Arthur, a Middle English prose writing in 1469. Le Morte d’Arthur was available in two main media: the Winchester Manuscript and the mass printed edition from Caxton printing company, in 1485.

Malory was writing at the time when England was embroiled in the long civil war and the power struggle between two powerful houses: York and the Lancaster. The war was known by a very quaint name: the Wars of the Roses. The name came from the fact that House of Lancaster was symbolised by the red rose, while the House of York used the white rose. The House of Tudor, with tainted bloodline to Lancaster, the eventual victor of the bloody conflict (Henry Tudor or Henry VII), tried to legitimatise his claim to the throne through his marriage to Elizabeth of York and uniting the white rose with the red.

Not much is known about Malory, though there are rumours that he may have being imprisoned for siding one of the two houses in the mid-1460s.

It is very clear that Malory had used a number of sources to compose his own work. Malory’s main sources come from the Old French prose romances of the early half of 13th century and the Middle English prose romances of the 14th century.

In the French Arthurian literature, Malory had used a bit of the Prose Lancelot, a substantial parts of the Queste del Saint Graal and Mort le roi Artu; all three works from the Vulgate Cycle. Malory had also used many parts of Suite du Merlin (Merlin’s Continuation) for the early part of Arthur’s reign, and the Prose Tristan, for the episodes of Tristan, both from the Post-Vulgate romances.

While his English sources were from the stanzaic Le Morte Arthur, which was written about 1350, and the alliterative Morte Arthure of 1400.

Note that Malory had selected episodes with care from his sources, however only a couple of his episodes were clearly his own invention, such as the book he had devoted on the adventure of Gareth, brother of Gawain, and the adventure of Sir Urry.

Malory had also rearranged the timeline of the episodes that were markedly different from that of the Vulgate romances. Geoffrey’s Historia and the Mort le roi Artu (Vulgate) had put Arthur’s Roman war near the end of Arthur’s reign and after the Grail, while Malory had set this episode earlier in Arthur’s reign.

In the Prose Lancelot (Vulgate), the Charrette scene where Lancelot rescued Guinevere from Meleagant, where the hero rode in a cart. This scene was set before the Grail quest began. While in Le Morte d’Arthur, Malory had placed this between the end of the quest but before the war between Lancelot and Arthur.

Another little discrepancy is that in the quest of the Grail, King Baudemagus was killed by Sir Gawain. Though we only know of the king’s death in the inscriptions of his tombstone, it is certain that they didn’t recognise one another when they fought. However in the last book of the Le Morte d’Arthur, Baudemagus was seen supporting Lancelot in the war against Arthur. (This error doesn’t occurred in the Vulgate tales.)

It is unlikely that I will do a page on the Le Morte d’Arthur, because of the similiarity to the French Vulgate and Post-Vulgate romances. However, I may retell a couple of episodes from Le Morte d’Arthur, in the future.