G. Ronald Murphy. Gemstone of Paradise: The Holy Grail in Wolfram's 'Parzival'. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006. 241 pp. $29.95 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-19-530639-2.

Reviewed by Will Hasty (Department of Germanic and Slavic Studies, University of Florida)
Published on H-German (May, 2007)

The Grail and Portable Altars

G. Ronald Murphy's latest volume is a marvelous and entertaining exploration of one of the most unique and difficult manifestations of the Holy Grail--and of one of the most unique and difficult medieval romances in which this Grail is contained. Murphy's book itself is structured as a quest, in which the goal takes tantalizing form in the prologue and initial chapter. Murphy argues that Wolfram's Grail, in contrast to the understanding of it as a chalice or serving platter (as it had been rendered in French romances and is still generally understood in the popular imagination) may actually be a portable altar, possibly inspired by a very specific one that Wolfram had knowledge of and perhaps experienced himself. If this is the case, moreover, the "Grail," or the object that inspired Wolfram's literary depiction of it, may really exist and be awaiting discovery. The final chapter brings about the culmination of the scholarly quest: in the "Paradise Altar" of Bamberg, Murphy feels he has found the object that inspired Wolfram's depiction of the Grail. Murphy thus engages in his own search for the mysterious object, informed by his analysis of Wolfram's romance. Somewhat like Parzival, Murphy searches for and ultimately finds his Grail. The book is adorned with numerous photographs of portable altars and other religious art, such as the replica of the Holy Sepulcher in Eichstätt, that visually complement Murphy's own quest.

The chapters separating the beginning of Murphy's quest from the end advance theses themselves consistent with the idea of the Grail as a portable altar, or kefse (Middle High German). Principal among these arguments is the idea that Wolfram's Grail romance needs to be read as a critical commentary on the religious violence and hatred of the Crusades. For Murphy, Wolfram rendered a Grail that has to be understood not merely as modeled on a specific religious object in Germany that he knew personally, but also as a direct reference to and literary analogue of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem--the "Holy Grail" of the Crusaders. Like his contemporaries, Parzival in his quest for the Grail is engaged in a kind of "crusade," with the crucial difference that the literary crusader must learn that violence and intolerance toward non-Christians is not the answer. Influenced for the better by the spiritual and magical powers of the many stones, gems, that pervade Wolfram's romance, which are all reflections of the stone part of the Grail as portable altar, and by the beneficial influence of the significant women characters in his life--Herzeloyde, Sigune, Condwiramurs, Cundrie la surziere, and Repanse de Schoie, Parzival reaches a condition of emotional maturity that involves an understanding of the kinship of all people, Christians and non-Christians. On the basis of this understanding, Parzival throws his sword away--as he does at the conclusion of his battle with Gawan, and as Feirefiz does, after Parzival's sword breaks on his helmet in their battle. Parzival's quest towards the Holy Object containing the Body of Christ, quite unlike the Crusades--and particularly the Fourth Crusade, which for Murphy is a prime example of Christian kin killing Christian kin (p. 75)--leads back in the direction of Paradise, following in reverse direction the path taken by the omnipresent gems. Wolfram's literary and religious vision, for Murphy, is a unique, ecumenical, and Trinitarian one. While a few passages from Thomas Aquinas that go in the same direction are cited by Murphy, the brotherhood of humanity that Murphy sees Wolfram advocating must really be regarded as unique to the German poet.

Chapters 4 and 5, which discuss Wolfram's romance, focus on the frame--the beginning and the end of the romance that most scholars assume were composed by Wolfram himself and thus are not present in the earlier Grail romance of Chrétien and its Continuations. It is quite logical that it would be in the frame that Wolfram's own conception of the Grail and of the narrative material would be most clearly rendered, though Murphy's analysis in chapter 6 of the presence of the Grail in the "inner story" of Parzival seeks to demonstrate that this section of the story was thoroughly reworked according to the same conception.

The theses that are likely to stimulate the most productive scholarly discussion pertain to Murphy's argument that Wolfram modeled his Grail on portable altars. Murphy notes "an enormous output of exquisitely made, approximately book-sized portable altars designed as reliquaries with a small rectangular chamber covered by a flat stone that was firmly fixed to the top surface" (p. 31). By way of the stone sections of these portable altars, the connection is made to precious stones or gems, as well as their perceived divine origins and their homeopathic characteristics. Murphy provides an erudite and fascinating display of medieval views of the qualities and properties of gemstones, including passages from Augustine, Hildegard von Bingen, and Albertus Magnus, among many others. After describing the properties of gems, which tend to be salutary, befitting objects that originally flowed out of paradise, Murphy begins his commentary of Wolfram's romance and his argument, in view of the pervasive presence of gemstones in Wolfram's text, has a kind of irresistible, albeit general plausibility. The gems are, for Murphy, Wolfram's manner of leading his hero back to the "paradise" of an ecumenical tolerance inspired by the ultimate kinship among all humans. In his prologue, Murphy writes, "It is hard to imagine a work in the first decade of the thirteenth century that would be so unique and diverse--spiritually at odds with Christian crusading, and so much in tune with the divine spirit of gemstones" (p. 17).

The other beneficial powers that direct Parzival to his religiously enlightened position are the significant women characters. Another important feature of Wolfram's new religious and humanitarian vision is the leading role played by females which, although Murphy does not go into the broader implications of this theme, also runs somewhat counter to the negative, if not misogynistic, view prevalent both in patristic writing and some clerical and monastic circles of the time. Murphy's view of this leadership function of important females rests to a large degree on the assumption that the names of the women characters themselves are "poetic, multilingual compositions" (p. 207) that mark the hero's progress and future path. Herzeloyde means "heart sorrow," Condwiramurs translates to "love leads," and Repanse de Schoie is "overflowing happiness." These very names mark Parzival's development towards "emotional maturity, that is, the capacity to feel sufficient compassion to break with convention" (p. 208). Murphy provides an "Etymological Excursus" (pp. 207-214) to support his view of the supreme importance of women figures in Parzival's development.

It is inspiring to think that Wolfram could have articulated such an enlightened and diverse view of humanity in the early thirteenth century and few scholars who are familiar with Wolfram would doubt that he was capable of such a view and that many aspects of his romance go in this general direction. Nevertheless, scholars may begin to have some reservations about some of those aspects of Murphy's case that reach beyond his arguments that Wolfram's Grail is modeled on a portable altar, that gemstones in Parzival may receive an added significance by virtue of their possible connection to a Grail thus conceived, and that Wolfram's romance might be read as a critical commentary on the crusades, especially in view of the outcome of the Fourth Crusade, which may at least in part have overlapped with the composition of Wolfram's romance. Reservations will be called forth by a frequently effusive and emotional style of argumentation that seems to mix different kinds and categories of things together, as in the following section, the common thread of which is the journey back to Paradise:

"The journey to Paradise is one that leads to a simultaneous seeing and feeling of compassion, to conversion and regret--as in the case of Gahmuret, to the double function of the water in the eye: sight and tears. This is also the type of journey on which Anfortas and his Templars find themselves. Badly defeated and depressed in the context of war for military domination of Mount Zion, they must travel on to the acceptance of another way of dealing with the heathen and of finding happiness, the happiness of the holy Grail stone. Wolfram uses the Trinity and the bedroom, women and priests/hermits/ex-knights, all the sacraments and their Origin--he uses laughter and tears, blind killing and merciful forgiveness, foolishness and wisdom all to elicit feelings of kinship and family love. It is on this journey of the heart that Wolfram hopes to bring his readers and listeners, a journey of the transformation of feelings from indifference to sorrowful feelings of loss to the overflowing happiness of repossession, a journey that will replace his contemporary world of prolonged Muslim-Christian warfare with a world led by the model of faithful women, by Christ's loyalty kinship to the human race to the point of death, by the Turtledove. If Christ's cross had become a symbol used to urge Christians against this vision, to urge them to engage in familial killing, Wolfram would replace it with the Dove of the overflowing love of the holy Trinity" (pp. 142-143).

Passages such as this, in which the precise nature of the relationships of the different subjects to one another remains very general, if not vague, are not infrequent in Murphy's book. Their effect is to elicit skepticism and a wish for more systematic, rigorous argumentation. The journey-of-the-heart approach also has a somewhat leveling effect. Tensions and contradictions in Wolfram's complex narrative do not really emerge in Murphy's discussion. The importance of victory in combat, Parzival's connection of service to women and his enmity towards God after his condemnation by Cundrie la surziere, Trevrizent's amazed utterance in the final Book that Parzival obtained the Grail without giving up his anger towards God--these and other aspects of the romance that would seem to suggest tensions between chivalric and religious (clerical/monastic) values, are not discussed. Nor do the Gawan-books, which make up such a substantial part of Wolfram's romance, receive anything more than the most cursory attention. How do Gawan and the more conventionally chivalric world in which he moves fit into the vision of Wolfram's Grail romance as posited by Murphy?

Perhaps the biggest question of all is whether the unique ecumenical vision of Wolfram that Murphy posits is probable in view of the cultural horizons in which the medieval poet lived and worked. Murphy himself discusses this possibility at the beginning of his afterword (pp. 197-205). To the degree that such a vision might be considered out of step with its time, some reason persists to suspect that the vision may in fact be a projection of a modern conception onto the medieval work. The various literary texts cited by Murphy in the afterword do little to address this problem. Heinrich von dem Türlin may have been influenced by Wolfram's conception of the Grail as portable altar, but Murphy does not show that the later medieval poet demonstrated a comprehension of the posited vision per se. The use of Grimmelshausen's Simplicissimus (1668), Grimm's fairytales (first volume published in 1812), and even Bertolt Brecht's Mutter Courage und ihre Kinder (1941) for this purpose, given the very different cultural horizons in which they were composed, seems farfetched, but the initial big question seems to have been lost from view by this point. In the afterword, the initial focus is broadened and begins to meander through a centuries-long literary history, transmuted into a quest for signs of tolerance and justice. So the question in the end remains: could Wolfram really have been so at odds with his specific time?

Despite such reservations and lingering questions, Murphy has doubtless articulated both a specific and very interesting idea regarding the nature of Wolfram's Grail, as well as a general statement about a singular humanitarian vision on the part of the medieval poet that may possess a high degree of validity, however broadly aspects of it may be cast. As already suggested, if any author from around 1200 might have been capable of articulating such a vision, then it would have been Wolfram, and readers will find Murphy's book a singular and thought-provoking scholarly quest. In the end one is left with the indelible impression of gems and the sense that they draw attention to aspects of Wolfram's text that have not yet been fully appreciated. Murphy's book points the way.

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Citation: Will Hasty. Review of Murphy, G. Ronald, Gemstone of Paradise: The Holy Grail in Wolfram's 'Parzival'. H-German, H-Net Reviews. May, 2007.
URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=13191

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