English 83

In Chapter 9, just as Parzifal is about to learn about “hidden” matters of the gral, Wofram steps in with another of his characteristic apostrophes. His source, Kyot, wanted him to keep this information about the gral and its angelic origins hidden “till the story itself reached the point where it has to be spoken of” (232). He continues:

The famous master Kyot found the prime version of this tale in heathenish script lying all neglected in a corner of Toledo. He had to learn the characters’ ABC beforehand without the art of necromancy. . . No infidel art avail us to reveal the nature of the Gral and how one came to know its secrets.
There was a heathen named Flegetanis . . . [who] was descended from Solomon, begotton of Israelitish kin all the way down from ancient times till the Baptism became our shield against hellfire. He wrote of the marvels of the Gral. Flegetanis, who worshiped a calf as though it were his god, was a heathen by his father – How can the Devil make a mock of such knowledgeable people . . . For the infidel Flegetanis was able to define for us the recession of each planet and its return. . . With his own eyes the heathen Flegetanis saw – and he spoke of it reverentially – hidden secrets in the constellations. He declared there was a thing called the Gral, whose name he read in the stars . . . The wise master Kyot embarked on a search for this tale in Latin books in order to discover where there may have been a people suited to the keep the Gral and follow a disciplined life. He read the chronicles of the various lands of Britain and elsewhere. (ibid)

This passage I think says a great deal about Wolfram’s relationship to the Arabic learning that he wears rather lightly, and about his use of the “east” as a cultural reference point in the larger thematic structure of Parzifal. The “neglected corner of Toledo” of course refers to the city in Spain (not Ohio, though it’s nice too – great zoo, art museum, and Triple A baseball) that was the center of intellectual life in the Islamic Caliphate. Even after it was retaken by Castile in 1085, it was still a great intellectual center for scholars of east and west – the Arabic commentaries of Averroes on Aristotle (without Averroes, knowledge of Aristotle might have been lost forever to the west)were translated into Latin, along with Arabic medical and astronomical texts. So the knowledge of the gral presumably follows the archetypal pattern of much knowledge in the west: “lost” in the fall of the Roman Empire, “salvaged” by Muslim scholarship in the Mediterranean and Spain, “regained” for the Latin west by Latin scholars who sojourned in the Muslim West (i.e. places like Toledo).

So though Wolfram makes Feirefiz and the other “infidels” into polytheistic (if noble) pagans – this passage alone stands as demonstration that Wolfram did this deliberately, and not out of ignorance of Islamic culture and its achievements. It’s clear here also that, as Wolfram would have it, the sacred knowledge of the Gral would have been lost to Christendom without the mediating aid of the “infidel” Flagetanis (who is another kind of curious hybrid, as a descendant of Solomon on his mother’s side, and a “heathen” father, and who worships a calf like the backsliding Israelites in Exodus). It’s as though he can’t quite bring himself to acknowledge the reality of “Islam” even though his apprehension and understanding of the Muslim world pervades the text.

As for the Templars, who are the guardians of the gral in Wolfram’s tale, there’s a great deal of interesting historical information. They were a crusader-knight religious order (not too far off the ideals of Galahad, Perceval and Bors in the Quest of the Holy Grail) who were associated with the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. They attracted support from key church figures like Bernard of Clairvaux, as well as kings, Popes and emperors. Things started going badly for the Templars when the crusades started going badly from the perspective of Christendom: Jerusalem was never regained after being taken by Saladin, and the Templars turned their attention away from crusading to more lucrative things like plunder, being landlords of some very large estates, and an early system of credit and banking (where they take a cut for each transaction). Not surprisingly, they lend a great deal of money to the King of France for his disastrously expensive perpetual wars with England. King Philip got Pope Clement to investigate the Templars on charges of heresy (even Satanism, and other blasphemous rites they allegedly brought back with them from the Holy Land), and immorality (usually sodomy). A number of Templars confessed under torture, and later recanted. Either way, the King was able to seize most of their assets in France in 1308. Today the Vatican released a medieval account of the Trial of the Templars that contains new information: Pope Clement actually absolved the Templars of heresy, but let the judgments of immorality stand. Apparently, Philip persuaded the Pope to suppress the ruling.