Page:Studies on the legend of the Holy Grail.djvu/269

Rh Whether this is desirable is a question we can have no hesitation in deciding negatively. It is better to find out what the author really meant than to interpret his symbolism in our own fashion.

The author of the Queste places the object and conditions of his mystic quest wholly outside the sphere of human action or interest; in a similar spirit he insists, as an indispensable requirement in the successful quester, upon a qualification necessarily denied to the vast majority of mankind. His work is a glorification of physical chastity. "Blessed are the pure—in body—for they shall inherit the Kingdom of Heaven," is the text upon which he preaches. In such a case everything depends upon the spirit of the preacher, and good intent is not enough to win praise. His conception, says Mr. Furnivall, is founded upon a deep reverence for woman. This is, indeed, such a precious thing that had the mediæval ascetic really felt it we could have forgiven the stupidity which ignores all that constitutes the special dignity and pathos of womanhood. But he felt nothing of the kind. Woman is for him the means whereby sin came into the world, the arch stumbling-block, the tool the devil finds readiest to his hands when he would overcome man. Only in favour of the Virgin Mother, and of those who like her are vowed to mystical maidenhood, does the author pardon woman at all. One single instance will suffice to characterize the mediæval standpoint. When the Quest of the Holy Grail was first proclaimed in Arthur's Court there was great commotion, and the ladies would fain have joined therein, "car cascune dame ou damoiselle (qui) fust espousée ou amie, dist à son chiualer qu'ele yroit od lui en la queste." But a hermit comes forward to forbid this; "No dame or damsel is to accompany her knight lest he fall into deadly sin." Wife or leman, it was all one for the author of the Queste; woman could not but be an occasion for deadly sin, and the sin, though in the one case less in degree (and even this is uncertain), was the same in kind. Fully one-half of the romance is one long exemplification of the essential vileness of the sex-relation, worked out with the minute and ingenious nastiness of a Jesuit moral theologian. The author was of his time; it was natural he should think and write as he did, and it would be uncritical to blame him for his degrading view of