The problem of the Grail has been attempted to be solved by the hypothesis of a misunderstanding of Chrêtien de Troyes, this solution is of course possible, but it must be admitted that it has the appearance rather of an ingenious evasion than an explanation of a difficulty, and it holds good for nothing beyond the bare presentment of the Grail as a stone. The Angevin problem, on the other hand, has so far never been solved at all, and only its removal hinted at by the suggestion that Walter Mapes was the author of Wolfram's source, which of course admits that Wolfram had a source other than Chrêtien, and therefore by implication throws doubt on the above suggested explanation of the Grail which is based on the supposition that Chrêtien, and Chrêtien alone, was the source of Wolfram's information. In fact, so long as we refuse to admit the truth of Wolfram's own explicit statements, so long shall we find the interpretation of the Parzival beset with innumerable difficulties, the attempted explanation of one part of the problem only rendering the remaining portion more obscure; but if we will accept it as possible that Wolfram gave a correct account of the source of his poem, and, divesting our minds of all preconceived ideas in favour of this or that theory, carefully examine the indications afforded by the poem itself, we may find that there is a solution which will meet, more or less fully, all the difficulties which beset the question. Now, as remarked above, when Wolfram wrote his poem the power of the Angevin House was beginning to decline, the date assigned to the Parzival, with which date all the internal evidences agree, is within the first fifteen years of the thirteenth century, a period exactly corresponding to the reign of John, and it may be the first two or three years of that of his successor Henry III., and it was during the fatuous misgovernment of these princes that the edifice so carefully built up by the early Angevin counts fell to pieces. Works in glorification of any special house or kingdom are not, as a rule, written during that house or kingdom's period of decadence, rather during its time of growth and aggrandisement, and we find as a fact that the events which led to the accession of an Angevin count to the throne of England 'stirred up, during the early years of Henry Fitz-Empress' reign, a spirit of patriotic loyalty which led more than one of his subjects to collect the floating popular traditions of his race, and weave them into a narrative which passed for a history of the Angevin counts.' (Cf. England under the Angevin Kings, vol. ii. p. 195.) It is therefore to this period rather than to a later date, i.e. to Wolfram's source rather than to Wolfram himself, that historical testimony would bid us assign the Angevin allusions. History also forbids us to assume that Chrêtien could have been the source of Wolfram's information; Chrêtien was of Troyes, in Champagne, therefore an adherent of the House of Blois who were hereditary foes of the Angevin counts, and not without reason, as the latter were most undesirable neighbours, and never lost a chance of increasing their dominions at the expense of their fellow-princes. At one time or another, either by marriage or by conquest, they annexed all the surrounding estates (though they grasped considerably more than they could permanently hold), and after the marriage of Henry Fitz-Empress with Eleanor of Aquitaine, the heiress of Poitou and Guyenne, and of his son Geoffrey with Constance of Brittany, the whole of the coast-line of France belonged to the Angevin possessions. It was not surprising that princes of such an acquisitive nature should have many enemies, and when Henry's sons rebelled against him they were not without friends to back them up, among them, apparently, was the very Count Philip of Flanders from whom Chrêtien received the book from whence he drew his poem. If then Wolfram in his first two books was following a French poet, that poet was not Chrêtien.
But if the Angevin counts had many foes they had also many adherents, not only in Europe but in the East, their connection with which dated back to the reign of Fulk Nerra, or Fulk the Palmer. It was not to a member of an unknown house that Baldwin, king of Jerusalem, in 1129 sent an invitation to become his son-in-law and successor; nor did Fulk, when he left Anjou for Jerusalem, go alone—we are expressly told that he took a large army with him. Fulk himself died in 1142, but he left sons who succeeded him, so that the Angevin rule in the East did not end with his death.
Is it then impossible, or even improbable, that this 'Kiot the Provençal' of whom Wolfram speaks was an adherent of the House of Anjou, who had followed their fortunes in the East, and who, coming under the spell of the Grail myth in its connection with the Perceval legend, remodelled the story, probably then still in a rough and transitional form, in accordance with his own personal experiences and prepossessions? Do not all the indications afforded by the poem favour this theory? Such a man would have been thoroughly familiar with the legends that had gathered round the early Angevin princes, as well as with the historical facts connected with their successors; he would have come into contact with the Order of the Knights Templars in a land where they were in deed, and not merely in name, guardians of the Faith; he would be familiar with many a legend of precious stones, the favourite talisman of the East, and would know the special virtue ascribed to each; above all, he would have seen before him in a concrete form the contest between faith and unbelief, darkness and light, Christianity and Heathendom, a black race and a white, which forms at least one of the leading ideas in the interpretation of the poem.
In fact, if we will allow the existence of such a writer as a travelled Angevin might well have been, we shall find all the principal problems of the Parzival admit of a rational explanation. Even the central puzzle, Wolfram's representation of the Grail, is explicable on such an hypothesis. We know how very vague Chrêtien's account of the Grail is; how much in the dark he leaves us as to Its outward form, Its influence, and Its origin. A writer before Chrêtien is scarcely likely to have been more explicit; what more likely than that a man long resident in the East, and familiar, as has been said above, with Eastern jewel talismans and the legends connected with them, when confronted with this mysterious Grail, of which no definite account was given, yet which apparently exercised a magical life-sustaining influence, should have jumped to the conclusion of Its, at least partial, identity with the precious stones of the power of which he had heard so much?
And in connection with this it is worthy of note that Wolfram represents the Grail as lying on a green Achmardi; in other versions of the Grail romances it is red, or white, samite that we find mentioned as veiling the relic. Throughout the poem we find green constantly mentioned, e.g. Gamuret's equipment, the robes of the Grail maidens and of Gramoflanz, the cross over Gamuret's grave, Trevrezent's shrine or reliquary; all these allusions seem to point to the writer's familiarity with green as a royal and sacred colour, a knowledge which could only have been gained in the East. Nor, as mentioned in note to Book IX., is the description of the Grail the only instance of a mystical influence being attributed to a precious stone, but throughout the whole poem the constant mention of gems, and, in special instances, of the virtue they possess, is one of the marked peculiarities of the poem, and one of the features which differentiate it from Chrêtien's version.
That Wolfram had a model for these earlier books, and one that he was following closely, appears from the description he gives in two places of Kailet's armour; in Book I. we find 'do rekande ich abr wol dinen strûs, ame schilde ein sarapandra test,' and in Book II. 'stit dîn strûs noch sunder nest? Du solt din sarapandra test gein sinem halben grîfen tragen,' where in both instances it is distinctly implied that Kailet had two badges, an ostrich on his helmet and a snake's head on his shield, which is, to say the least, extremely unlikely. What seems to be really meant is that Kailet carried the figure of the entire bird on his helmet, and a representation of its head on his shield; the likeness in the shape of the latter to a snake's head has often been commented upon, and the ostrich, from its curious head and neck, has been known as 'the serpent bird.' It seems clear that here at least Wolfram was following another description, and one which he did not altogether understand.
As to the conclusion to be drawn from the proper names which occur in such profusion throughout the poem, this question has been so fully treated by Bartsch (cf. vol. i. Appendix B) that it would be superfluous to discuss it here; and the correspondence between the Titurel poems and the Parzival, which argues a common source for both, has also been adequately discussed, but the addition of the arguments to be derived from the correspondence existing between Wolfram's Angevin allusions and the facts of Angevin history, seems to put it beyond doubt that there is a strong body of evidence in support of Wolfram's own statement that he had a French source other than Chrêtien de Troyes; and, if we admit that he spoke the truth so far, it seems only logical to believe that he was also speaking the truth when he gave the name of the author of his source as 'Kiot the Provençal.'