There is a question, moreover, whether Geoffrey's book is based mainly upon inherited poetical material, or is largely the product of Geoffrey's individual imagination. The elder Paris, M. Paulin Paris, inclined to the view that Nennius, with hints from local tales, supplied all the bases that Geoffrey had. But his son, Professor Gaston Paris, in his 'Littérature Française au Moyen Age,' emphasizes the importance of the "Celtic" contribution, as does also Mr. Alfred Nutt in his 'Studies in the Arthurian Legend.' The former view emphasizes the individual importance of Geoffrey; the latter view places the emphasis on the legendary heritage. Referring to this so-called national poetry, Ten Brink says:--
"But herein lies the essential difference between that age and our own: the result of poetical activity was not the property and not the production of a single person, but of the community. The work of the individual singer endured only as long as its delivery lasted. He gained personal distinction only as a virtuoso. The permanent elements of what he presented, the material, the ideas, even the style and metre, already existed. The work of the singer was only a ripple in the stream of national poetry. Who can say how much the individual contributed to it, or where in his poetical recitation ¸memory ceased and creative impulse began! In any case the work of the individual lived on only as the ideal possession of the aggregate body of the people, and it soon lost the stamp of originality."
When Geoffrey wrote, this period of national poetry was drawing to a close; but it was not yet closed. Alfred Nutt, in his 'Studies in the Legend of the Holy Grail,' speaking of Wolfram von Eschenbach, who wrote his 'Parzival' about the time that the 'Nibelungenlied' was given its present form (i.e., about a half-century after Geoffrey), says:--"Compared with the unknown poets who gave their present shape to the 'Nibelungenlied' or to the 'Chanson de Roland,' he is an individual writer; but he is far from deserving this epithet even in the sense that Chaucer deserves it." Professor Rhys says, in his 'Studies in the Arthurian Legend':--"Leaving aside for a while the man Arthur, and assuming the existence of a god of that name, let us see what could be made of him. Mythologically speaking, he would probably have to be regarded as a Culture Hero," etc.
To summarize this discussion of the difficulties of the theme, there are now existing, scattered throughout the libraries and the monasteries of Europe, unnumbered versions of the Arthurian legends. Some of these are early versions, some are late, and some are intermediate. What is the relation of all these versions to one another? Which are the oldest, and which are copies, and of what versions are they copies? What is the land of their origin, and what is the significance of their symbolism? These problems, weighty in tracing the growth of mediæval ideals,--i.e., in tracing the development of the realities of the present from the ideals of the past,--are still under investigation by the specialists. The study of the Arthurian legends is in itself a distinct branch of learning, which demands the lifelong labors of scholarly devotees.
There now remains to consider the extraordinary spread of the legend in the closing decades of the twelfth century and in the century following. Though Tennyson has worthily celebrated as the morning star of English song--
"Dan Chaucer, the first warbler, whose sweet breath
Preluded those melodious bursts that fill
The spacious times of great Elizabeth
With sounds that echo still."
yet the centuries before Chaucer, far from being barren of literature, were periods of rich poetical activity both in England and on the Continent. Eleanor of Aquitaine, formerly Queen of France,--who had herself gone on a crusade to the Holy Land, and who, on returning, married in 1152 Henry of Anjou, who became in 1155 Henry II. of England,--was an ardent patroness of the art of poetry, and personally aroused the zeal of poets. The famous troubadour Bernard de Ventadorn--"with whom," says Ten Brink, "the Provençal art-poesy entered upon the period of its florescence"--followed her to England, and addressed to her his impassioned verse. Wace, the Norman-French trouvere, dedicated to her his 'Brut.' The ruling classes of England at this time were truly cosmopolitan, familiar with the poetic material of many lands. Jusserand, in his 'English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare,' discussing a poem of the following century written in French by a Norman monk of Westminster and dedicated to Eleanor of Provence, wife of Henry III., says:--"Rarely was the like seen in any literature: here is a poem dedicated to a Frenchwoman by a Norman of England, which begins with the praise of a Briton, a Saxon, and a Dane."
But the ruling classes of England were not the only cosmopolitans, nor the only possessors of fresh poetic material. Throughout Europe in general, the conditions were favorable for poetic production. The Crusades had brought home a larger knowledge of the world, and the stimulus of new experiences. Western princes returned with princesses of the East as their brides, and these were accompanied by splendid trains, including minstrels and poets. Thus Europe gathered in new poetic material, which stimulated and developed the poetical activity of the age. Furthermore, the Crusades had aroused an intense idealism, which, as always, demanded and found poetic expression. The dominant idea pervading the earlier forms of the Charlemagne stories, the unswerving loyalty due from a vassal to his lord,--that is, the feudal view of life,--no longer found an echo in the hearts of men. The time was therefore propitious for the development of a new cycle of legend.
Though by the middle of the twelfth century the Arthurian legend had been long in existence, and King Arthur had of late been glorified by Geoffrey's book, the legend was not yet supreme in popular interest. It became so through its association, a few years later, with the legend of the Holy Grail,--the San Graal, the holy vessel which received at the Cross the blood of Christ, which was now become a symbol of the Divine Presence. This holy vessel had been brought by Joseph of Arimathea from Palestine to Britain, but was now, alas, vanished quite from the sight of man. It was the holy quest for this sacred vessel, to which the knights of the Round Table now bound themselves,--this "search for the supernatural," this "struggle for the spiritual," this blending of the spirit of Christianity with that of chivalry,--which immediately transformed the Arthurian legend, and gave to its heroes immortality. At once a new spirit breathes in the old legend. In a few years it is become a mystical, symbolical, anagogical tale, inculcating one of the profoundest dogmas of the Holy Catholic Church, a bearer of a Christian doctrine engrossing the thought of the Christian world. And inasmuch as the transformed Arthurian legend now taught by implication the doctrine of the Divine Presence, its spread was in every way furthered by the great power of the Church, whose spiritual rulers made the minstrel doubly welcome when celebrating this theme.
For there was heresy to be combated; viz., the heresy of the scholastic theologian Berengar of Tours, who had attacked the doctrine of the transubstantiation of the bread and the wine of the Eucharist into the body and blood of Christ. Lanfranc, Archbishop of Canterbury, one of the most brilliant of the Middle Age theologians, felt impelled to reply to Berengar, who had been his personal friend; and he did so in the 'Liber Scintillarum,' which was a vigorous, indeed a violent, defense of the doctrine denied by Berengar. Berengar died in 1088; but he left a considerable body of followers. The heretics were anathematized by the Second Lateran Ecumenical Council held in Rome in 1139. Again, in 1215, the Fourth Lateran Council declared transubstantiation to be an article of faith, and in 1264 a special holy day, Corpus Christi,--viz., the first Thursday after Trinity Sunday,--was set apart to give an annual public manifestation of the belief of the Church in the doctrine of the Eucharist.