Perceval, the Story of the Grail

Gawain continues his journey, hoping to absolve himself of the charge Guinganbresil made against him. Along the way, Gawain meets a young nobleman in a hunting party in the woods, who sends Gawain (whose identity is not yet revealed) to his castle as a guest, to be welcomed by his sister. At this point, neither the nobleman nor Gawain realize the truth of the situation—the former is the young king of Escavalon, whose house is seeking Gawain for the death of the former king.

Gawain arrives at the city, still not realizing where he is, and is welcomed by the young king’s sister, and the two quickly become romantically infatuated with each other. The situation shifts when a nobleman stumbles upon the two sharing a kiss, and he recognizes Gawain: “The man you’re kissing, next to you / has killed your father” (5862-63). The princess does not abandon her affection for Gawain, but instead shelters him in a tower in the castle wall, and the townspeople raise a riot against them. Using a chessboard as a shield, the knight staves off the initial assault, but neither his efforts nor the princess’s appeals can sway the crowd from their violence.

While the tower is being besieged, the knight Guinganbresil arrives and realizes what has happened. Although the household bears a charge against Gawain, they have also extended him the welcome of a guest, which requires them to defend him against the mob. Guinganbresil finds the young king returning from his hunt and explains the situation to him:

I have accused Gawain of treason

as you know with no need of proof

You welcomed him beneath your roof

and you gave lodgings to the knight

so it is reasonable and right

that, as your house guest since he came

he should not come to harm or shame (6064-70).

Guinganbresil proposes a solution: they will get the mob to stand down and, for the sake of fulfilling the chivalric demands of a host to a guest, give Gawain a year’s reprieve before facing the challenge of his charge. In the meantime, however, Gawain must pledge to undertake a quest for the house of Escavalon by seeking out the mystical bleeding lance before returning to clear his name. He agrees, though the quest is thought by all to be practically impossible, essentially intended as an extended punishment for Gawain.

The narrative shifts back to Perceval for a single scene, in which Chrétien conveys that the young knight has undertaken five years of wandering and quests (with no explanation for how this fits into the timeline of Gawain’s single year of adventures). During that time Perceval has forgotten most of what went before, including his obligation to Christian piety. Nonetheless, he has spent those years having adventures, defeating opponents, and sending them back as prisoners to King Arthur’s court.

He comes across three knights and 10 ladies, who admonish him that he should be observing the tradition of laying down his arms that day, as it is Good Friday:

‘Don’t you hold Jesus Christ in awe

the One who wrote down the New Law

and gave this law to Christian men?

It is not good or righteous, then,

but very wrong,’ he testified,

‘to bear arms on the day Christ died’ (6255-60).

After explaining the tenets of the Christian faith to Perceval, the knights and ladies tell him that they have just come from the abode of a holy hermit, to whom they went to make confession. The passage includes a brief passage of violent antisemitic rhetoric directed against the Jews who were involved in Jesus’s crucifixion, as was unfortunately commonplace in some types of medieval Catholic writing.

Inspired by this, Perceval sets out to find the hermit and, having found him, confesses his forgetfulness of God. The hermit enquires about the root of Perceval’s sense of sinfulness, and Perceval tells him the story of his failure to inquire about the bleeding lance and the grail which he saw at the Fisher King’s castle. At this, the hermit surmises Perceval’s identity and reveals the hidden family connections that lie behind Perceval’s adventures. The hermit himself is Perceval’s uncle, the brother of his mother, and the man who was being served in the inner room by the grail was yet another brother of the family—who also happens to be the Fisher King’s father—a holy recluse subsiding only on consecrated communion wafers borne by the grail.

The hermit tells Perceval that the sin of abandoning his mother to her death is what lay at the root of his failure to ask the appropriate questions at the Fisher King’s castle, and he proposes a penance: to submit himself to Christian worship every day, and to live to give assistance to those in need of his strength:

Love God, believe in God, arise

and worship God time and again;

respect good women and good men;

when priests are in your presence, stand

…………………………………

If any woman seeks your aid

a widow, orphan, or a maid

assist her, and you will do well (6458-67).

Perceval repents of his sins, agrees to live by the hermit’s penance, and stays with him until Easter.