Prose Merlin

(Vulgate Merlin)

(ca. 1210)

   The Prose Merlin is a ROMANCE focusing on the history of Merlin, the seer and magician of the court of King ARTHUR. The text is a prose redaction of a poem attributed to ROBERT DE BORON, a poem that is extant only in a 504-line fragment. Robert’s name appears twice in the prose text, so that the Prose Merlin has also been attributed to him, but Robert’s connection with the prose text is unclear. The Merlin is a sequel to another prose romance, the Joseph d’Arimathie, a prose version of another poem of Robert de Boron’s called the Estoire dou Graal (History of the Grail). It was also intended to precede the romance called the Didot-Perceval, a text concerned with the Arthurian quest for the Holy Grail. Thus the Prose Merlin, in this earliest of Arthurian cycles, is intended to be a bridge between the story of the Grail’s origins and the quest by Arthur’s knights to find the Grail. Before long the Prose Merlin was included in another, longer cycle of Arthurian prose romances, the VULGATE CYCLE (also called the Lancelot-Graal cycle), where it follows a prose Estoire del Saint Graal and where it is continued by a text known as the SUITE DE MERLIN. The text was apparently in a constantly evolving state, as additions or revisions were made to the original text to adapt it to the later Vulgate Cycle.

   The Prose Merlin begins with Merlin’s conception— he is begotten by a demon who seduces a virgin as part of the devil’s plot to emulate Mary’s conception of Christ. His mother’s faith and the child’s baptism enable him to frustrate any demonic control of his life, but he does inherit from his demonic father a knowledge of the past, and God gives him the ability to see the future. He is thus able to become the adviser of kings. He first helps depose the evil king Vortigier, then advises King Uther Pendragon as he fights against the invading Saxons. He introduces the Round Table during Uther’s reign, explaining that the table recalls and parallels, first, the table from the Last Supper, and second, the Grail Table (itself a recreation of the Last Supper). At the Round Table,Merlin introduces the “Judas Seat” or the “Perilous Seat”—a chair that was to remain empty until the knight destined to achieve the Grail was to come to court. This would be,Merlin tells Uther, during the reign of his son and successor. Merlin arranges for Uther to beget Arthur upon Ygerne, then takes the infant child and delivers him to be fostered by the wise Antor. Ultimately Arthur will be revealed as the true king by his ability to pull a sword from a stone in a magical test.Merlin dictates the story of Uther’s reign to his master and scribe Blaise, and intends for the story to become a part of the whole story of the Grail, but apparently abandons it when he becomes enamored of, and imprisoned by, the lady Viviane.

   The fact that the Merlin and its companion romances are in prose is perhaps a result of medieval attitudes toward poetry and prose: Verse was the vehicle for imaginative fiction, while prose was the medium for serious treatment of history: Thus the prose of Merlin implies its historical truth. The story was influenced by the pseudo-history of GEOFFREY OF MONMOUTH and by WACE’s Roman de Brut, but to a very large extent, it adds material about Merlin that was completely new to the Arthurian tradition. It became quite popular in the later Middle Ages—there are 55 surviving texts of the Prose Merlin—and had a tremendous impact on the subsequent development of Arthurian legend, because it served as one of the major sources for Thomas MALORY’S enormously influential LE Morte D'ARTHUR (ca. 1470).

   Bibliography

   ■ The Story of Merlin. Translated by Rupert T. Pickens. Vol. 1 of Lancelot-Grail: The Old French Arthurian Vulgate and Post-Vulgate in Translation, edited by Norris J. Lacy. New York: Garland, 1993–1996.