Love, War and the Grail History of Warfare

LOVE, WAR AND THE GRAIL HISTORY OF WARFARE Editorial Board theresa vann paul chevedden VOLUME 4 LOVE, WAR AND THE GRAIL BY HELEN NICHOLSON BRILL LEIDEN • BOSTON • KÖLN 2001 This book is printed on acid-free paper. Die Deutsche Bibliothek – CIP-Einheitsaufnahme Nicholson, Helen : Love, war and the grail / by Helen Nicholson. – Leiden ; Boston ; Köln : Brill, 2001 (History of warfare ; Vol. 4) ISBN 90–04–12014–9 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is also available ISSN 1385–7827 ISBN 90 04 12014 9 © Copyright 2001 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910 Danvers MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change. printed in the netherlands CONTENTS Preface ........................................................................... VII Abbreviations ................................................................... XIII Chapter One: Introduction..................................................... 1 PART ONE: SURVEY Chapter Two: Monastic Roles................................................. 35 Chapter Three: Military Activity ............................................. 76 Chapter Four: The Grail ....................................................... 102 PART TWO: ANALYSIS Chapter Five: The Appearances Of The Military Orders In Medieval Fictional Literature ......................................................... 187 Chapter Six: Servants Of Christian Knights................................. 222 Chapter Seven: The Predominance Of The Templars ...................... 227 Chapter Eight: Some Conclusions ............................................ 234 Bibliography .................................................................... 239 Index ............................................................................. 263 This page intentionally left blank PREFACE This is a study of the appearances of the Military Orders in the epic and romance literature of the Middle Ages, 1150–1500. The subject is important for historians of the Military Orders and the crusades because the Orders’ appearances in literature give an insight into how they were viewed by the noble knightly class who supported them with money, land and recruits – the same class for which epic and romance literature was composed. The Orders’ continued appearance in this literature throughout the Middle Ages is valuable evidence for continued belief in the Orders’ vocation – military service in a religious order dedicated to defending Christians and Christendom against their external enemies – and continued support for the crusade, with which the Military Orders were often but not invariably associated in literature. The subject is also of interest to literary specialists. The Military Orders’ appearances in fictional literature, and the changes in their roles in fictional literature throughout the Middle Ages, indicate that while convention was important in the composition of fictional literature, from the late twelfth century onwards it was essential that fiction should reflect actual events: that it should be ‘realistic’. While this was not total realism, fictional literature must at least have a context in actuality, and the inclusion of the Military Orders could assist in providing this context. No study of the Military Orders’ roles in medieval fictional literature can be complete without a consideration of the Templars’ appearance in Wolfram von Eschenbach’s version of the Grail legend, Parzival, and the later works based on it. This study reassesses the historical context of Parzival and sets out a new historical interpretation of the work. It also reconsiders the connection of the Grail with the Holy Land and with the concept of the ‘perfect knight’ and considers how these themes were developed during the course of the Middle Ages. While the emphasis here is on the historical rather than the mystical aspects of the Grail legend, it is also shown that Wolfram von Eschenbach’s Templeise, who bear a symbol of faithful love – the turtle dove – were probably responsible for the development of the image of the Templars in French literature as supporters of lovers. Certain problems arise in a work of this sort in reconciling the expectations of historians and of literary specialists, who differ in their approaches to their material and in their definitions of key concepts such as ‘history’, ‘reality’, ‘literature’ and ‘fiction’. In attempting to define such terms there is a danger of viii PREFACE becoming bogged down in an epistemological morass, but at the same time to avoid any attempt at definition will certainly lead to misunderstanding among readers. The stance taken in this study reflects my own background and training as a historian with wide reading in texts which historians would generally label ‘literary’. Strictly speaking a ‘literary’ text is anything that is written (as distinct from, for instance, an artefact) and can include both texts intended primarily as a record of actuality and those intended primarily to entertain. However, historians have tended to use the term ‘literature’ to mean texts produced primarily to entertain, with no intention to accurately record actuality. This sweeping distinction overlooks the fact that many medieval texts which claim an intention to act as a record of actuality (such as chronicles) include a great deal of material which in present-day scholarship would not be regarded as recording actuality: the most obvious example being miracle stories. At the same time, many medieval texts which are now regarded by historians as having been written primarily to entertain (such as epics or chansons de geste) were believed by their contemporaries to record actuality, while others which are now generally regarded as fantasy (such as Arthurian romances) were presented by their writers as recording actuality, and had a clear didactic intention in addition to their function as entertainment. In short, it would be misleading to claim that there is a clear distinction between ‘reality’ and ‘fiction’ in medieval writing. However, as is discussed in part two of this study, my own reading of these texts has led me to conclude that the concern for ‘realism’, in the sense of reproducing actuality, and the prejudice against ‘fiction’, in the sense of inventing a literary reality distinct from objective actuality, were important factors in dictating the form of all kinds of literature during the medieval period. It is therefore legitimate to enquire how far writers of works not regarded as ‘historical’ by modern historians did attempt to reproduce actuality to a greater or lesser extent, and how they went about doing this. This raises the problem of which definition of ‘realism’ and ‘fiction’ are to be used in this study. However, while acknowledging that it is impossible to define an objective reality of the past, as our knowledge of the past must be mediated through texts and archaeological evidence, it is an underlying assumption of this study that it is possible through a study of a combination of different forms of evidence (such as government records, letters, archaeological evidence and chronicles) to arrive at an approximation of a past actuality which, while not objective or complete, provides us with a yardstick against which to measure the extent to which texts produced during a particular period in the past reproduce that actuality. The extent to which they correspond or deviate from this modern scholarly approximation of past actuality will be expressed in this study in terms of their degree of ‘realism’ or ‘fiction’. It is acknowledged that this can only be approximate, and that many scholars will consider that PREFACE ix any attempt to define ‘reality’ or ‘fiction’ is theoretically flawed. However, these are concepts which are regarded as useful measures by many scholars of history and those outside academia, and I can only crave the patience of colleagues who regard such an exercise as essentially pointless. This study is purely concerned with the appearances of the Military Orders in epic and romantic literature, and not with their appearances in chronicles or other forms of writing which were intended to record actuality. It is clear that chronicle accounts of the Military Orders were governed by convention as well as by actuality, and could present an image of the Military Orders no closer to actuality than that presented in epic and romantic literature. However, I have written elsewhere on this problem as it relates to certain chronicle sources, and will not consider it here. Moreover, this study does not set out to examine the interrelationship between works which were primarily intended to entertain (such as epic and romance) and those primarily intended to record actual events, i.e. history, but also intended to entertain (such as chronicles). While writers of epic and romance may have drawn on chronicles for their materials, chronicle writers certainly knew epic and romantic literature: as evidenced, for instance, by their references to the epic hero Roland, and to King

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