Qualifications of the Promised Knight.
Neither Chrestien, Gautier, nor Manessier lay any stress upon special qualifications in the quest-hero for the achievement of his task. In Chrestien, as already stated, (supra, p. 87), it is exclusively the sin of which Perceval has been guilty in leaving his mother which prevents his achieving the Quest at his first visit to the Grail Castle (v. 4,768-71 and 7,766-74), whilst the continuator make no attempt at any explanation of the hero's repeated failures. Not until Gerbert does a fresh motif show itself in the poem, but then it is a remarkable one; if Perceval has been hitherto unable to attain the goal he has so long striven for, it is because he has been unfaithful to his first love, Blanchefleur (VI, p. 182); he must return and wed her before he is fit to learn the full secret of the Grail.[1]
The other Quest versions are on this point in striking contrast to Chrestien. The words of C, Didot-Perceval, have already been noted, (supra, p. 89). Again the damsel, reproaching the hero after his first failure, addresses him thus:—"Mès je sai bien por quoi tu l'ás perdu, por ceque tu ni es pas si sage ne si vaillant, ne n'as pas fet tant d'armes; ne n'ies si prodons que tu doies avoir le sanc nostre (sire) en guarde" (p. 467).
It is significant to note in this connection that it is only after Perceval has overcome all the best knights of the Round Table, including Gawain (the companion hero, as will be shown later, of the oldest form of the story), and thereby approved himself the best knight of the world, that Merlin appears and directs him to the Grail Castle.[2] The talk about Holy Church would seem to be an addition, and the original ideal a purely physical one.
In the Queste the qualification of the hero has become the
- ↑ This is one of a remarkable series of points of contact between Gerbert and Wolfram von Eschenbach.
- ↑ It almost looks as if the author of C were following here a version in which the hero only has to go once to the Grail Castle; nothing is said about Perceval's first unsuccessful visit, and Merlin addresses Perceval as if he were telling him for the first time about matters concerning which he must be already fully instructed.
