SOURCE: Sticca, Sandro. “Christian Ethics and Courtly Doctrine in Béroul's Tristan et Iseut.” Classica et Mediaevalia 29 (June 1972): 223-48.

[In the following essay, Sticca explores how Béroul uses Christian elements—personified by the character Ogrin—to elevate his narrative from an amoral, adulterous story to a tale about a spiritual journey toward redemption.]

There are literary critics today who whether out of reluctance to make overt religious affirmations or out of fear to impose predetermined meanings on medieval poetry, have produced a criticism which is both farfetched and eccentric. Although I would refrain from suggesting that, in interpreting medieval literature, individual talent be sacrificed to the demands of tradition, I would maintain that, if literary criticism is to function as an instrument of knowledge, it ought to consider both the socio-religious and aesthetic contexts of the medieval work it seeks to interprete where those contexts pertain.

The greater number of contemporary critics, while taking into account the process of spiritual epiphany clearly apparent at the end of the story, have generally tried to ascertain the meaning of the Tristan et Iseut through a discussion of the intricate pattern of metaphorical and symbolical overtones the work obviously possesses. Eschewing purely moral values, the critics' central preoccupation has been to shift the moral focus to its social setting and arrive at a solution of the action by considering the effect on the lovers of both the forces of feudalism and of courtly doctrine. They have regarded the Christian element in the Tristan dramatic situation as mere cultural appendage and reiterated that the ethical norms reflected in it are secular, rather than religious¹). Such a unilateral interpretation of the poem, however, constitutes a misleading simplification of the text, for it limits the effectiveness of the central argument, and it sacrifices the historical and religious background upon which the Tristan poem was grafted. If one assumes, as an essential heuristic axiom, that the work of art, as produced, constitutes the definitive statement of the writer's intention, one is forced, then, to do away with blind subjective dogmatism and take into account the totality of the writer's conceptual universe.

The greatest difficulty in rationalizing the role of religion in the Tristan is the obvious fact that the adulterous couple contravenes all the laws of accepted feudal, social and religious morality. How can the role of religion be logically justified in a poem characterized by the coarsest sensuality, an amoral code celebrating sensual adulterous love? How can one explain in a monogamous and moralistic society, Beroul's projecting of a literary convention condoning courtly adultery? Furthermore, how can one possibly justify, within the pattern of medieval spirituality, God's favorable attitude toward and at times his actual abetting of this adulterous love?

The present essay will provide an explication of the Tristan et Iseut poem by interpreting its discordant elements, the erotic and the religious, the courtly and the Christian, as metaphorical and artistic projections of the artist's poetic intention, and offer a harmonious synthesis of the poem by pointing out, within the confines of Christian doctrine, its structural and paradigmatic unity.

To avoid the pitfalls of an extrapolated ethical interpretation and to preserve the organic structure of the poem I have decided to comment on its spiritual maturation by offering a chronological explication of the fundamental and essential dialectic of the story:

• 1) The Poiemata (the action or act). The fatality of Tristan and Iseut's love as symbolized by the love-potion.
• 2) The Pathemata (the suffering or state). The conflict between passion and duty in the Morrois forest.
• 3) The Mathemata (perception) as symbolized in the repentance episode.

Contemporary criticism of the Tristan has minimized the ethical and religious implications of the story by transcending the limits of traditional criteria of morality or immorality. Pointing out that the body of ethics governing the poem is neither moral nor immoral, it has classified the poem as amoral in the sense that it is wholly divorced from Christian morality. It has emphasized its secular character by stressing the element of fatality in the love of Tristan and Iseut²). As a primordial force, as an irresistible passion, as an uncontrollable appetite, their love defines human laws and ethical constrictions, it becomes amoral and anti-social. It establishes its own morality, an ethical imperative independent of theological and social considerations, an autonomous moral code, and it is within the limits and tenets provided by this code that critics have conducted their investigations and attempted to impose a logical meaning to the Tristan et Iseut poem. Equally prominent are the arguments raised by those who seek to interpret the poem as an illustration of the amorous code generally identified as provencal, troubadouric or courtly. Although scholars have of late seriously questioned the existence, during the Middle Ages, of any such thing as what is usually called courtly love³), both as a social or literary phenomenon, interpretations of the Tristan within that amatory framework have been undertaken⁴). Both critical schools have not been too successful, however, for they have been governed and sustained by some dubious assumptions. It is quite evident, for instance, that both have failed to cogently justify at the beginning of Beroul's fragment, the facile casuistry of Iseut and Tristan who, in the first one hundred and eleven lines, call eight times on God to be a benign witness to their alleged chaste and guiltless friendship. Contrary to widely entertained ideas on the subject, Béroul has been shown to be acquainted with the doctrinal love dictates of the sophisticated court circles and must surely have known the troubadours' tradition of “invoking the divine assistance and the aid of holy things and persons in furthering their quest for what in Christian eyes is sinful and immoral⁵).” The troubadours positively insisted that God was on the lovers' rather than on the cuckold's side. Guillaume IX, for instance, praises God and Saint Julian for his expertise in the game of love:

Dieu en lau e Sanh Jolia:
Tant ai apres del juec doussa
Que sobre totz n'ai bona ma(6).

The troubadour Raimon Jordan would rather spend one night in his lady's arms than be received by God in Paradise:

Que tan la desir e volh
Que, s'er'en coita de mort,
Non queri' a Deu tant fort
Que lai el seu paradis
          M'aculhis
Com que'm des lezer
D'una noit ab leis jazer(7).

The poet Cercamon writes unequivocally:

Dieu prejarai qu'ancar l'ades
O que la vej' anar jazer(8).

Likewise, none of his contemporaries was shocked, when Blondel de Nestle, in a paroxysm of joy after having at last obtained the ultimate physical solace from his lady, intoned a veritable Te Deum of thanksgiving. It seemed perfectly natural to them for him to do so. Equally responsive to the sollicitations of the interior and of the exterior, to the propensities of the mind and the necessities of the body, the troubadours perceived nothing irreverent or disrespectful in invoking divine assistance in their intense yearning for physical and emotional gratification, for they looked upon the love relationship as the source of a higher morality, a condition for the refinement of feelings and of personal conduct. Andreas Capellanus, who, later in the twelfth century, was to codify, in the De Amore, the central features of amour courtois for the enlightenment and edification of the court, equally solves the conflict between the principles of Christianity and the structures of the code of love by pointing out that since love is something “natural” God would not punish the sin too severely: “Credo tamen in amorem Deum graviter offendi non posse, nam quod natura cogente perficitur, facili potest expiatione mundari⁹.”

But it is precisely at this moment, when associational and traditional modes of poetical convention establish the essential pattern of literary treatment that one feels compelled to question the validity of applying strict secular and naturalistic critical methods to a work imbued with obvious Christian values.

If God's benign abetting of the adulterous couple fulfils the aesthetic requirements and the ethical commitments of troubadouric poetry, it raises, nevertheless, serious questions about the psychological, dramatic and cathartic implications of the repentance episode at the end of the poem. On the other hand, a consideration of God not as the omniscent moral entity of Christian tradition but rather as the Ovidian God of love, the metaphysical conception of love as a universal, immanent and innate inclination to love, would seriously undermine the dramatic coherence of the entire poem. The effectiveness and metaphorical possibilities of a Christian God within the structure of the poem, are, on the other hand, more easily apparent when one considers the function of the love potion.

The fatality in the love of Tristan and Iseut is usually symbolized in the various versions of the story by the love potion. But the naturalistic and primitive Celtic conception of love as a fatality, as an irresistible and absolute power, inescapably imposing on the lovers a pattern of amoral, anti-social and dishonorable behaviour was repugnant to Béroul and, therefore, even though the love-potion introduces the tragic necessity, Béroul transforms it by making it a symbol of the fatality of love. As Jean Frappier has cogently expressed it: “lephiltre … est dans la version commune à la fois la cause matérielle de leur amour, le symbole de leur passion fatale et l'excuse de leur péché¹⁰.” Béroul, moreover, sought to minimize, to attenuate the action of the love-potion, the philtre, by introducing in the ancien amorality of the Tristan story the drama of a Christian conscience. When viewed within this ethical context, the poem assumes an intrinsic logic and architectural unity. Indeed from the ethical point of view, the Tristan story reflects the confluence of two modi vivendi: adultery in Celtic marriage and fidelity in Christian marriage. From a literary viewpoint, the story can be seen as a Celtic myth working within the confines of a Christian society. From a dramatic perspective, it is a dialectic proceeding from order to disorder to a purified order, the dramatic impulse being precipitated by the clash of Christian law and Celtic adultery, and resolved through the Church, represented by the hermit, Ogrin. Religion, however, does not simply fulfill a peripheral role by providing a means of resolving conflict. It is God himself who intervenes in the action by perpretating several miracles at convenient moments to help Tristan and Iseut. God's tolerance and miraculous interventions find their justification in that Tristan and Iseut are not guilty of their adulterous relationship since their falling in love has been precipitated by the drinking of the love potion. At the beginning of the poem, after the blood-flecked flour incident, Tristan unequivocally dispels any ambiguity by stating that he had fallen in love with the queen “pris drüerie o la roïne par folie.” (801-02). The words par folie are extremely important for they shift the moral responsibility elsewhere. Later in the story, Tristan clearly indicates to Ogrin:

… Sire, par foi,
Que ele m'aime en bone foi,
Vos n'entendez pas la raison:
Q'el m'aime, c'est par la poison.

(1381-1384)¹¹.

A few verses later Iseut says:

Sire, por Deu omnipotent,
Il ne m'aime pas, ne je lui,
Fors par un herbé dont je bui.

(1412-1414).

To my knowledge, Carlo François is the only scholar who, although unwilling to recognize in the Tristan God the Christian divinity (he calls it “une Divinité composite, à la fois celtique, chrétienne et antique” has nevertheless stressed the Divinity's propitious intervention in that it sees in the philtre “la preuve d'une innocence que les amants ne cesseront jamais d'invoquer et que divers jugements et épreuves viendront d'ailleurs confirmer¹².” God's intention in favoring the adulterous couple must be seen, then, within His more general purpose of redirecting its moral perspectives, and aesthetically to achieve an ethical catharsis. The poets of the Middle Ages were, to a large degree, moralists, and Béroul too, notwithstanding the mundane and worldly background of the story, and the irresistible efficacy of the love-potion, could not completely sacrifice, with passivity and without scruples, his ethical sensibility. The presence of religion and of God at the beginning of the story is not intended to consecrate with divine approval worldly appetites but rather to disclose the absolute character of the moral obligation incumbent upon the adulterous couple. Since the irresistible efficacy of the love-potion prevents the lovers from achieving immediately this total realization, God in His boundless charity, will guide the lovers along a path demanding purification of the mind and of the senses before attaining reconcilitation with the Self, with Society and with the Divine. I have mentioned the word Charity not only because God is an instrument of efficient causality in the ethical transformation of Tristan and Iseut but particularly because it is quite evident that God's mercy gives structural and thematic unity to the entire poem. Indeed one encounters throughout the narrative expressions such as “Granz miracles vos a fait Dex” (377), “Bele merci Dex li a fait” (960), “Ja m'a Dex fait merci” (979), “Dex vos an ot merci fait” (2380), “Mais a Deu en prist g[ra]nt pitié” (2583), “Dex me saut” (2587), “Et Dex … esperitables la saut” (3402-03), “Dex … regarde moi” (4360). The centrality of Charity in the lovers passage from spiritual blindness to spiritual enlightenment is quite obvious in the poem and I will treat it more fully later in the discussion. It suffices to indicate at this point that, at the beginning of the Chapel episode, for instance, when God accomplishes perhaps the greatest miracle for Tristan, Beroul himself introduces the action thus:

Oez, seignors, de Damledé,
Comment il est plains de pité:
Ne vieat pas mort de pecheor.

(909-911).

The words “il ne veut pas la mort du pécheur” have an intimate connection with the poem partly because they furnish us with an insight into the poet's own understanding of God's role but primarily because they illustrate what I believe to be the basic theme of the story: God's mercy and the necessity for repentance. The words are a virtual duplication of the liturgical Nolo mortem peccatoris which is part of the weekday antiphon for the psalms at Prime during the first four weeks of Lent: “Vivo ego, dicit Dominus, nolo mortem peccatoris sed ut magis convertatur et vivat¹³.” There is also an adaptation of the phrase which occurs in the mass for Ash Wednesday: “Deus qui non mortem sed poenitentiam desideras peccatorum …” Béroul undoubtedly knew these liturgical passages and tried to adapt their spirit to his story, for just as the liturgical antiphons emphasize God's natural inclination to mercy, so too Beroul's Tristan gives prominence to God's offer of mercy to sinners through penitence: “Il ne veut pas la mort du pécheur.” The hermit Ogrin, who is furnished with a superior spiritual understanding, clearly correlates the events in the lovers' life to God's manifestation of His Charity:

Que, se ne fust la Deu vigor,
Destruit fusiez a deshonor.

(2383-84).

Recognizing in his miraculous escape from the Chapel God's overt manifestation of Charity toward him, Tristan says to his friend Governal:

Or ne criem, fors Deu, imais rien.

(1012)

The numerous “miracles” perpetuated to further the lot of the adulterous couple are intended to show that Tristan and Iseut are operating under the aegis of God, who will guide them toward self-knowledge and ethical awareness.

The unique role assigned by Beroul to God must be regarded not only as a magnificent attempt, on the part of the poet, to convey at the artistic level a singularly striking exemplification of the possibility of realizing, simultaneously, an aesthetic and religious experience but also as an attempt to give expression, poetically, to contemporary theological discussions pertaining to the moral experience of a conscious soul.

One of the most debated ideas in the realm of the theologia moralis, in Béroul's time, dealt with individual awareness in the contingencies of moral life. Twelfth-century theologians such as St. Anselm and Abelard and some mystics of the Victorine exegetical school began to react against the blind determinism of traditional theological ethics by emphasizing individual responsibility in the moral experience. They came to attach more importance to the intention which brought about the sinful act rather than to the act itself. They restored dignity to man's actions by distinguishing between the intentio mala and the operatio mali. According to Abelard, for instance, it is the wilful desire to choose, to do evil, voluntas mali that constitutes the real sin, not the actual sinning, operatio mali: “Voluntas mali operis peccatum est … peccatum in mala voluntate consistat¹⁴”. Only men, writes Abelard, judge on facts alone, on the perceptible and tangible: “non enim homines de occultis sed de manifestis judicant¹⁵.” God alone judges according to the intention: “Deus vero solus … veraciter in intentione nostra reatum pensat¹⁶.” In the eyes of God only the intention is taken into consideration: “in puniendo peccatum [Deus] non opus attendit, sed animum¹⁷.” In a passage which readily applies to Tristan and Iseut's ethical situation, Abelard states that sin is to be found not in the external act but in freely consenting to that act:

non est itaque peccatum uxorem alterius concupiscere
nec cum ea concumbere, sed magis huic concupiscentiae
vel actioni consentire(18).

Abelard's ideas on sin gained wide acceptance and prominence. The monk Herman, living also in the twelfth century, writes in the Epitome theologiae christianae that the moral value of the action is contingent solely on the intention:

In voluntate, non in operibus quae bonis et malis
communia sunt, meritum omne consistit … opera quae
in se indifferentia sunt non curat [Deus] sed
puritatem intentionis exigit(19).

Peter Lombard faithfully follows this exegetical tradition by remarking in his Libri IV Sententiarum:

omnia igitur opera hominis secundum intentionem
et causam iudicantur bona vel mala(20).

My intention here is not to resolve the aesthetic issues of the poem by references to Christian doctrine. Prescinding from theological considerations, the passages just quoted serve to reaffirm the aesthetic and artistic integrity of Béroul, and underline the weakness of the arguments of those critics who, unable to comprehend the structured complexity of the poem, have accused Béroul of demonstrating the innocence of the lovers by recourse to arguments that are either casuistic or absurd²¹. It is apparent, however, that as a learned cleric of the twelfth century, Béroul was operating, on the ethical level, within a well-defined tradition which allowed him to treat, artistically, a seemingly contradictory and illogical story. The apparent illogicality of the story must not be imputed to Béroul's poetical and imaginative presentation of reality but to the readers' distorted understanding of that reality. Béroul utilizes religion to conventionalize and externalize with dramatic intensity the path that leads Tristan and Iseut, at the end, to absorbing scenes of spiritual discovery, and to translate into specific artistic terms a dramatic situation which is in collusion with human and divine morality. The distinct pattern of Christian reference in the poem is made comprehensible, moreover, by the traditional structure and framework within which Tristan's tragic story is articulated.

• 1) the image of the peregrinus who attains virtue and his heavenly home by resisting temptation, and
• 2) the image of the knight who battles evil and the hostile forces of the world. It became a widely disseminated motif in the Middle Ages which found one of its clearest conceptual elaborations in St. Paul's Ad Ephesios, vi, 11-14:

Induite vos armaturam Dei, ut possitis stare adversus insidias diaboli. quoniam non est nobis colluctatio adversus carnem et sanguinem: sed adversus principes, et potestates, adversus mundi rectores tenebrarum harum, contra spiritualia nequitiae, in caelestibus. Propterea accipite armaturam Dei, ut possitis resistere in die malo, et in omnibus perfecti stare.

As Prof. Ladner has shown, the fusion, early in the Middle Ages, of the peregrinatio idea and of the feudal concept gave rise in the literature of the second half of the twelfth century to “that fateful image of the knight-errant who must seek out the hostile forces of the world and find his own self²².” It is amply evident from the poem that Tristan is both a peregrinus and a knight. In Tristan, however, the Christian implications of the peregrinatio are sacrificed to the worldly and the mundane. He is quite alienated from the Christian order of values. He must redirect his perspective by means of a struggle, within himself, of the via caritatis and the via cupiditatis—the love of God and the love of Sin. But since the irresistible power of the love-potion prevents the possibility of any personal commitment at this point, God will protect the lovers along the slow path toward resolution and order. And it is by means of the forest of Morrois that Béroul provides the artistic, and as I will show, the conventional background where the powers of the love-potion will dissipate and where the lovers' moral awareness will take place.

II

Unimpaired by Christian and literary considerations, and by the obvious meaning and sensible coherence conveyed by the text, contemporary critics, with dreadful logic and with inevitable inaccuracy have expounded on the worldly and social aspect of Tristan and Iseut's sojourn in the forest of Morrois by indicating that it exhibits a total suspension of moral perception. Prof. Jean Marx, for instance, states that in the forest “les amants, évoquent avant tout la perte de leur rang, la déchéance de leur situation, la solitude de leur existence, la misère de leur vie fugitive, beaucoup plus que le remords de leur péché et la trahison de leur adultère²³.” Such an interpretation is fraught with error, is contrary to the basic structure of the poem and eliminates the human force of the moral conflict by subordinating it to the trivial vision of man's social responsibilities. It obscures, moreover, the infinite magnitude of the medieval man's task of demonstrating his powers of rational and spiritual judgment by choosing between the opposing forces, within himself, of good and evil. It is amply evident, however, that from the very beginning of the lovers' stay in the forest, Béroul gives emphasis to positive action, to the perception on the lovers' part of those Christian values which alone can bring reconciliation and eventual salvation, and gives focus, as I will show, to the three basic motifs of the forest wandering:

a) separation b) initiation c) rebirth.

After Tristan delivers Iseut from the lepers and flees with her, Béroul succinctly announces: “En la forest de Morrois sont” (1275). Some twenty-five lines later he comments:

… eisi font longuement
En la forest parfondement,
Longuement sont en cel desert.

(1303-05)

These lines do not exhibit any particular preoccupation on Beroul's part with concerns of a social nature. The religious assertiveness of the episode is immediately established, however, when one morning they meet by chance the hermit Ogrin. And it is not without reason that the Morrois interlude should begin with the lovers' encounter with a representative of religious authority and terminate by another encounter with that same representative. The architectural pattern is quite obvious. The lovers, although in an unconscious moral state because of the continued influence of the love potion are exposed to that initial but still deep spiritual experience which at the end will transmute into drama the agony of their return to self-knowledge and moral realization. The religious and symbolical interpretation of the forest, furthermore, is more consonant with the events taking place in it and reflects traditional understanding of the introspective and penitential value of life in the forest.

The medieval forest is traditionally the place of the fuga mundi: lovers, hermits, knight-errants take refuge within its inner recesses, and there in a crucial moment, they usually achieve redemption, regeneration and restoration. Moreover, the forest can also symbolize, metaphorically, the moral condition of the pilgrim who wanders in it. In the early Middle Ages the Latin word for forest, silva, carries a philosophical resonance. In Chalcidius most prominently, and in Bernard Silvestris and others, silva is the customary translation of the Greek ὕλη: prime matter, the unformed chaotic substance of which all corporeal beings are made²⁴. Silva itself is unintelligible according to Chalcidius²⁵. Commenting on Dante's use of the word selva at the beginning of the Commedia, early exegetes interpret it as suggesting both the state of chaotic, wordly and mundane indirection in which the pilgrim finds himself at the outset and the disordered and confused state of the place itself²⁶. There is no doubt that the forest setting in the Tristan story is a unifying device for it illustrates both physically and metaphorically the aimless wandering of the two lovers, their separation from the moral order, their state of sin. The validity of this interpretation, while deriving its fundamental strength from the contextual convergence, within the poem, of a literary and philosophical tradition, finds effective support also in contemporary exegetical pronouncements. Pierre Bercheur, for instance, in his learned Reductorii Moralis, indicates that in a silva one is likely to find “viatores isti mundi peccatores qui sunt in estatu tentationum et tribolationum positi²⁷.” And the chance meeting with Ogrin is carefully designed to emphasize the lovers' state of moral alienation by subjecting them to the hermit's exhortations to repentance, a repentance which follows throughout the canonical and orthodox norms of the ordo confessionis. Ogrin initiates the first steps toward the central act of pardoning by remarking:

… Tristan, qui se repent,
Deu du pechié li fait pardon,
Par foi et par confession.

(1378-80)

Ogrin clearly indicates in these lines that reconciliation with God can only be obtained through faith and confession. Faith in the knowledge that a reconciliation with God is available to him and an understanding that the disorder caused by his personal sins must be rectified by means of the confession. Through the words foi and confession Béroul not only emphasizes the two cardinal points of the sacrament of penance: God's absolution to the penitent by means of one of his earthly representatives but also stresses the fact that Tristan's confession ought to be interior coram Deo and exterior coram Dei vicario. As I have already indicated Tristan disclaims any moral responsibility by answering to Ogrin:

… Sire, par foi,
Que ele m'aime en bone foi,
Vos n'entendez pas la raison:
Q'el m'aime, c'est par la poison.
Ge ne me pus de lié partir,
N'ele de moi.

(1381-86)

Ogrin's immediate reply to Tristan is designed to provide him with moral orientation, to stimulate within his heart a psychological receptivity to the word of God, and to indicate to him that the healing powers of the sacrament of confession have no validity whatever unless the sinner is capable of accurate self-appraisal:

Doner ne puet nus penitance
A pecheor sanz repentance.

(1391-92)

Ogrin may have derived his admonition from the Scriptures: “Qui abscondit sclera sua non justificabitur” (Prov. xxviii) and from contemporary canonical pronouncements on the subject. Hugh of St. Victor, for instance, states in his De Sacramentis: “Si taces peccata tua inveterantur; si confiteris, condonantur²⁸.” As I will later more cogently illustrate Ogrin is operating within the norms of the orthodox peninential triad of contrition, confession, and satisfaction. He asks of them, at this point, only contrition and confession even though he is aware, as a holy man surely would be, that they are not psychologically or spiritually ready for them. Realizing that the effect of the love-potion is still evident, and trusting in the infinite mercy of the Divine Providence, Ogrin's last words to the lovers are:

Diva! cil Dex qui fist le mont,
Il vos donst voire repentance!

(1418-19)

As Ogrin clearly perceives, this is the one moment in the lovers' life in which God is unwilling to perform a miracle. Tristan and Iseut are sinners and God repeatedly saves them but this does not obliterate their sin. God's grace can and must only work concomitantly with man's inclination. Man must be free to choose between evil and good. The automatic granting by God of grace would constitute a limitation of man's freedom, for it would introduce an impulse in one direction that would make it more difficult, if not impossible, to choose the alternative. Tristan and Iseut must freely orient themselves to spiritual transformation by means of a profound personal commitment. The event will take place at the end of their stay in the Morrois forest, an event that illustrates metaphorically the exit from their own moral darkness into the light of spiritual epiphany.

At the beginning of the paper I mentioned the existence of a school of criticism which seeks to sustain its interpretation of the Tristan by reference to the ethical and social norms of feudalism. In this respect, it finds the thematic unity of the poem in one of its most celebrated episodes, the one where King Marc discovers the lovers asleep in the forest in their refuge. As the King by means of the indications provided by the forester comes upon the sleeping lovers, he is in a fit of rage about to strike them, when he notices that they are sleeping chastely, that Iseut has on her blouse, that Tristan is wearing his breeches, that their mouths are not joined in a loving embrace, and that a drawn sword lies in between them. Where upon the King comments:

Je lor ferai tel demostrance
Ançois que il s'esvelleront,
Certainement savoir porront
Qu'il furent emdormi trové
Et q'en a eü d'eus pité,
Que je nes vuel noient ocire,
Ne moi ne gent de mon enpire.

(2020-26)

Marc then proceeds to take from Iseut's finger a ring which he formerly gave her and replaces it with one she brought to him from Ireland; he next places his glove over her face to protect it from a sunray shining on it, and finally he takes Tristan's sword and substitutes his in its place. The naturalistic school has interpreted King Marc's action as an attempt to bring about a reconciliation by a fit of psychological preconditioning. Thus it has supplied symbolical interpretations for King Marc's triple action within the framework of medieval feudal custom. The substitution of Marc's sword for Tristan's is intended to re-establish a new bond of vassalage between the king and his nephew. The investiture by means of a sword (investitura per ensem) would symbolize the ties binding the vassal to his suzerain. Concomitantly the retaking of the marriage ring by the king and the substitution of hers would indicate that the queen is once again taken under the marital dependence of the king. This is the investitura per annulum. The donation of the king's glove, the investitura per guantum, so prominent in the Chansons de geste, would renew the feudal bond that existed between the king and his queen²⁹. By this triple investiture the king is trying to restore the lovers to their former honor, position and rank.

But although the king's actions have a validity consecrated by tradition and metaphorically have a definite value within the development of the story, I do not think that they can be looked upon as the causa causans of the lovers' repentance, as the motivating force which restores them to self-awareness and reconciliation. As my discussion has already indicated and fuller analysis will confirm, the ethical stimulus in their reentry into society will be precipitated by their deep-rooted self-appraisal and subsequent confession. I have considered up to now both the element of separation symbolized in their flight into the forest and the element of initiation prefigured in their initial encounter with Ogrin; the circle will be completed with the achievement of rebirth which is prepared structurally by the confluence of three parallel but separate moral coefficients: mortification of the flesh in the forest, the dissipation of the effect of the love-potion at the end of three years, and the sanctifying power of the confession. In failing to perceive the importance of the mortification to which the lovers are subjected in the forest, contemporary critics have missed its enormously fruitful implications. No one would question the fact that they endure sorrow and humiliation, but Béroul amply indicates that theirs is fundamentally a physical suffering and more particularly a mortification of the flesh. A perusal of Béroul's comments on the subject throughout the forest interlude supplies a most vivid illustration of my argument:

Aspre vie meine / n / t et dure.

(1364)

Au matinet s'en part Tristrans;
Au bois se tient, let les plains chans.
Li pain lor faut, ce est grant deus.

(1423-25)

Seignors, molt fu el bois Tristrans,
Molt i out paines et ahans.
En un leu n'ose remanoir;
Dont lieve au main ne gist au soir.

(1636-40)

Molt sont el bois del pain destroit,
De char vivent, el ne mengüent.

(1644-45)

… puis le tens que el bois furent,
Deus genz itant de tel ne burent;
.....Nule gent tant ne s'entramerent
Ne si griment nu conpererent.

(1787-92)

As a man of the Middle Ages Béroul follows the traditional tenets of Christian morality which maintained the notion that mortification is the necessary initial condition for purgation and purification. And it is precisely through an incessant mortification of the flesh in the forest that their ethical sensibility is aroused and they become better attuned and more receptive to the words of God. To expedite the day of reconciliation and God's pardon, Ogrin too, will do penance for them by subjecting himself to an even more austere life:

Por eus esforça molt sa vite.

(1422)

In so acting the hermit clearly illustrates the ideal of a person who practices the contemplative life which is to contribute, in the scheme of redemption, by means of self-denial, prayer and mortification to man's salvation. Curiously enough, it is Béroul himself who, before treating the dissipation of the potion and the episode of repentance, gives emphasis once more to their physical anguish and suffering:

Molt les avra amors pené:
Trois anz plainiers sofrirent peine,
Ler char pali et devint vaine.

(2130-32)

III

The episode of the dissipation of the effect of the love-potion at the end of three years holds preeminence in the structure of the poem, for it establishes an intrinsic causal link among the various incidents of the story and it fulfills its profoundly religious meaning. It is in a very simple and concise manner that Béroul describes the dissolution of the magic spell:

L'endemain de la saint Jehan
Aconpli furent li troi an
Que cil vin fu determinez.

(2147-49)

Virtually every scholar who has had occasion to write on the Tristan has commented in one fashion or another on these lines, and yet none of them, as far as I have been able to ascertain, has payed any attention or attributed any meaning whatever to the words: “la Saint Jean.” As Tristan and Iseut's repentance takes place sometimes after Pentecost la Saint Jean clearly refers to Saint John the Baptist's nativity celebrated on the 24th of June. The reference to Saint John's day is rich in symbolic and suggestive powers and is clearly designed to establish a religious correlation between the events of the story and St. John's birthday. If the poison has exhausted itself the day after Saint John's day, then the third year was accomplished on Saint John's day, and, three years previously, Tristan and Iseut's tragic error occurred on Saint John's day. Thus, the premarital and adulterous erotic love shared by Tristan and Iseut is chronicled in relation to the Christian calendar of feasts and events. It had, therefore, an obvious meaning for a Christian audience who possessed or at least was supposed to possess the ability of responding ritualistically to it. If, after what I have been suggesting, the basic function of the story is to illustrate God's mercy and the need for repentance, so clearly anticipated by the events and motifs examined, and by the exhortations of the hermit Ogrin, what better way could it have suggested itself to Béroul than to let the dissipation of the love potion dramatically coincide with the nativity of Christ's precursor, who, better than any one, personifies and typifies the spirit and the necessity for repentance? With supreme poetical sensitivity and artistry Béroul sustains the central dramatic situation by weaving around it the superstructure of the complex actuality and density of St. John's functional symbolism. The main message of St. John was: do penance, prepare the way of the Lord, make straight His paths. John's chief work consisted in preparing the way for the Redeemer, a work which closely parallels that of Ogrin, who, like John, both physically and metaphorically, is a voice of one crying in the desert (in our case the forest) to prepare the way of the Lord. But what did John mean by repentance? In the Greek of the New Testament the word is μετάνοια, and it denotes a change of mind, a transition from one state to another in the process of atonement, a shift from the ego to God. One of the fundamental aspects of metanoia is that it involves an acknowledgment of the sin, that is a confession, and a reorientation of life, a re-evaluation of one's attitudes, a total rebirth. In this process of moral conversion, positive action in the manner of good works or reparation is extremely important. The lovers' moral experience faithfully follows these norms. Realization and satisfaction are clearly in Tristan's mind when he states:

A Deu, qui est sire du mont,
Cri ge merci, que il me donst
Itel corage que je lais
A mon oncle sa feme en pais.

(2185-88)

The positive action, the satisfaction is the returning of the queen to her husband Marc, the re-establishing of the original moral situation. Such is Iseut's understanding too when

As piez l'ermite chiet encline,
De lui proier point ne se faint
Qu'il les acort au roi …

(2320-22)

The spiritual rebirth brings about reparation, thus illustrating Ogrin's orthodox view that God's forgiveness can be attained only by a personal and spontaneous commitment to a moral course of action:

Qant home et feme font pechié,
S'anz se sont pris et sont quitié
Et s'aus vienent a penitance
Et aient bone repentance,
Dex lor pardone lor mesfait.

(2345-49)

The development of the story at this point allows us to comprehend sufficiently the full implications of Tristan's peregrinatio. It should be obvious by now that by achieving rebirth, Tristan, as a Christian pilgrim, has abandoned the via cupiditatis for the via caritatis and completed, in medieval fashion, the traditional journey from Babylon to Jerusalem, from the city of confusion to the city of peace. As Robertson so cogently comments on this medieval topos:

Cupidity, which is the source of all man's sins and hence of his discontents, makes a Babylon of the individual mind, a Babylon of society, and leads to an ultimate Babylon in eternal damnation. Charity brings the peace of Jerusalem to the mind, to society, and to the Celestial City where its radiance is all-pervasive³⁰.

By entering the path of the via caritatis a new feudal relationship is established whereby God becomes Tristan's permanent Liege Lord and Tristan His principal agent in effecting an essential change: the restoration of peace and tranquillity within the realm. This is accomplished first of all by the reintegration of Iseut in the aristocratic society and by means of her famous oath and justification before the assembled courts of Arthur and Marc.

The legendary and grandiose figure of King Arthur exercises a distinct function in the episode. As the direct representative of God's authority on earth, the personification of uncompromising morality, the redresser of wrongs, the gravitational center of knightly excellence, he supplies the proper background within which an affective and profound reorientation can take place. The reinstatement of the Queen in the court, moreover, takes on an explicit spiritualized form since Béroul provides unmistakable indications that the action is transfigured by religious meaning for it is at the Croix Rouge³¹, symbol of divine presence and approval that the letters formalizing Iseut's return are exchanged. The divine approval is further consecrated when Iseut's return to the court is announced by the ringing of the town's bells, a symbol at once of rejoicing and of a restoration of order.

Iseut's oath has been considered by some to be both ambiguous and false, but a reading of the text undermines the plausibility of such an interpretation, for it is made amply clear that Iseut exercises a peculiar kind of ingenuity:

Escondit mais ne lor ferai,
Fors un que je deviserai.

(3233-34)

Although Iseut's oath finds complete justification in contemporary legal customs, some scholars admit the possibility of a moral justification only if one is willing to take it for granted that Iseut is sincere in respect to God. Frappier, after stating that “la vraie question est de savoir si par sa restriction mentale [Iseut] est insincère envers Dieu³²,” neatly solves the problem by implicitly believing in her sincerity. In the interpretation of the poem that I have been suggesting, it is even possible to dismiss the notion of mental reservation, for Iseut has no need of justifying herself before God, since the events narrated and God's own protection furnish an undeniable proof of such justification. She must justify herself only before men, and consequently her oath can be considered deceptive only in their eyes.

Iseut's justification, so solemnly and impressively achieved, constitutes the initial impetus toward a necessary purification of the court by removing the original cause of disharmony: Danalain, Godoïne and Guenelon. Although the three barons have acted legally in making King Marc aware of Tristan and Iseut's adulterous relationship, it is quite evident that it is they who have broken the existing harmony. Moreover, the legality of their action is greatly exceeded by their malevolent and evil nature so often remarked upon by Marc himself, and by Béroul and King Arthur, who normally refer to them as félons³³. In addition, King Arthur's admonition to Marc in the episode seeks to give emphasis to the harmful consequences of the King's credulous nature—Marc acknowledges his own responsibility in the matter—and to blame the troubles of the realm directly on the perverse machinations of the three barons. It is for this reason that at the end of Iseut's trial “molt sont de cort li troi hai” (4248). They leave the court, Danalain and Godoïne to fall quickly victims of Tristan's vengeance, Guenelon to surely incur the same fate later. At the end of Béroul's fragment thus once again peace and tranquillity are reestablished in the realm through Tristan, who fulfills God's effective activity designed to restore ultimate goodness.

Critics who interpret the poem as an allegory of mundane and passionate love, an epic of tragic passion celebrating the subliminal quintessence of adulterous love, easily forget the distinctive function of Christian poetry, in the Middle Ages, as a teleological instrument and a bearer of moral truth to mankind. And it would be misleading indeed to conceive that, in the Middle Ages, concupiscence and passionate love were tolerated whether in the married state or outside of marriage. Adultery in particular had normally serious consequences. “In a letter of 857 which became part of Gratian's Decretum, Pope Nicolas I referred to a husband's right ‘according to secular law’ to kill his adulterous wife³⁴.” To be sure, the Church itself could be tolerant in certain instances and simply censure the adulterers. In the late twelfth century one adulterous English couple had ten sons before Pope Celestine III imposed perpetual continence on them. Punishment, however, could be harsh, particularly when it concerned one form of adultery, that is adultery with the lord's wife. A singular severe form of punishment was devised by Count Philip of Flanders who, upon suspecting a young noble of adultery with the countess, he executed him by hanging him upside down in a latrine. Equally famous, in the reign of Philip the Fair, is the punishment meted out to two nobles accused of adultery with the wives of Prince Louis and Prince Charles. The king ordered that the young men be castrated, dragged behind horses to the gallows and hanged³⁵. Jacques Bretiaus, in the thirteenth century, gave literary treatment to the twelfth-century adventure of Gui, Count of Coucy, who served to his wife as a palatable dish her lover's heart. The examples furnished are enough to provide a picture of the problems that arise when one is unable to distinguish between literary and social practices. Although in some circles of medieval society there existed a significant toleration of adultery, it would be wrong to assume that that society, particularly the aristocratic, was dedicated to the pursuit and consummation of illicit love. As Professor Benton has shown, the greatest difficulty in understanding medieval society has been raised by those medieval texts which express a light attitude toward adultery. In this respect the term “courtly love” provides no significant help since it is not a medieval technical term³⁶. Particularly as regards the vassal and his suzerain, their immediate relationship and that between their families is characterized in medieval chronicles and poetry by words which suggest devotion, commitment, sacrifice, dedication, even to the point of death.

As a cleric of the twelfth century, Béroul, although accurately reflecting the occasional laxity in the matrimonial union practised by the aristocracy, felt the necessity of chastizing extraconjugal love and imposed on the Tristan a solution which is both moral and Christian. The chronological and structural tripartition of the poem creates a configurational and thematic rapport between the literary and Christian meaning of the story by stressing the interlocking causality existing between God's benevolent tolerance of the lovers at the beginning of the poem, and their religious rebirth through suffering and self-knowledge. The evident religious structure of the poem so remarkably traceable in terms of the denouement finds one of its gradational and compositional supports in the centrality of the character of Ogrin, whom, with the most finespun ingenuity, Béroul utilizes to effect a synthetic and harmonious progression in the poem. The filigree of Christian doctrine, liturgical and theological references metaphorically woven into the dramatic situation, contribute to the progressive and ordered exposition of the poet's basic theme: that God's mercy is available to the penitent soul. In the six teenth century, Cornelius a Lapide provides perhaps the most meaningful comment on the Tristan story when he says, concerning Wisdom 11:24 and Romans 2:4, that “Deus dissimulat et punire differt peccata hominum hoc fine, ut ipsi culpam agnoscant et poenitentiam agant³⁷.”

Uneasy and illogical as it may seem, an integral understanding of dilection to achieve an interaction on the same plane between the divine Tristan et Iseut presupposes an awareness of the medieval artist's pre-dilection to achieve an interaction on the same plane between the divine and the human. The modern tendency to divorce secular and sacred did not hold true for the Middle Ages. Conscious of the religious and literary values that formed an integral part of his cultural heritage, Béroul, in typical medieval fashion, chooses to interpret human actions in divine terms, sub specie aeternitatis. He thus raises a basically immoral and ignominious adventure to a higher dignity by structurally correlating the thematic tension of the story to the nobler struggle toward personal redemption and Christian salvation.

Notes

1. Stephen G. Nichols, Jr., “Ethical Criticism and Medieval Literature”, in William Matthews' Medieval Secular Literature (Berkeley, 1965), p. 86; Pierre Jonin, in Les personnages féminins dans les Romans de Tristan au XII^e siècle (Aixen-Provence, 1958), p. 372, writes that “La religion que nous trouvons dans Béroul est donc toute superficielle et ne permet pas de parler de foi. Elle n'inspire aucure action, n'enrichit aucun épisode de valeur symbolique assurée”. Alberto Alvaro in Il ‘Roman de Tristan’ di Béroul (Torino, 1963), p. 121, stresses the idea the “la problematica del peccato e della colpa, in quanto problematica morale, non la molta presa sulla fantasia di Béroul”.

2. Jean-Charles Payen, Le motif du repentir dans la littérature française médiévale (Genève, 1968), p. 333, writes: “La conception de l'amour qui domine la légende est singulièrement païenne. Il s'agit bien encore d'un amour de caractère fatal et quasi-magique”. Alan Fedrick in “The Love Potion in the French Prose Tristan” Romance Philology, XXI (1967), 25-6, refers to the presence in the version commune of “the hand of fate … an involuntary surrender to fatality”. P. Le Gentil, “La légende de Tristan vue par Béroul et Thomas” Romance Philology, VII (1953-54), 115, points in Béroul's version, to a “fatalité extérieure”. Moshé Lazar, Amour Courtois et Fin'Amors (Paris, 1964) p. 154, indicates that the passion binding Tristan and Iseut “est une force aveugle du destin”.

3. D. W. Robertson, Jr., “The Concept of Courtly Love as an Impediment to the Understanding of Medieval Texts”, in F. X. Newman, ed. The Meaning of Courtly Love (Albany, 1968), pp. 1-18; also John F. Benton, “Clio and Venus: an Historical View of Medieval Love”, Ibid., pp. 19-42.

4. Lazar, op. cit., pp. 149-73.

5. A. J. Denomy, “Fin'Amors: The Pure Love of the Troubadours, Its Amorality, and Possible Source”, Mediaeval Studies, VII (1945), 183.

6. Alfred Jeanroy, ed. Les chansons de Guillaume IX (Parsi, 1913), VI, 29-31.

7. Hilding Kjellman, Le troubadour Raimon-Jordan (Upsala, 1922), pp. 113-14.

8. Alfred Jeanroy, ed. Les poésies de Cercamon (Paris, 1922), I, p. 2.

9. E. Trojel, ed. Andreae Capellani, De Amore Libri Tres (Munich, 1964), p. 162.

10. Jean Frappier, “Structure et Sens du Tristan”, Cahiers de Civilisation Médiévale, VI, (1963), 266.

11. All references to Béroul's text are taken from the edition by A. Ewert, The Romance of Tristran (Oxford, 1946).

12. Carlo François, “Tristan et Iseut: poème d'amour et manuel de la ruse”, Mercure de France, CCCXXXVIII (1960), 619.

13. Breviarium ad Usum … Sarum, fasc. II, col. dlxxxix, Feria II Primae Ebdomadae Quadragesimae, Ad primam.

14. Abelard, Ethica, P. L., CLXXVIII, col. 636.

15. Ibid., col. 648.

16. Ibid. On col. 657 he succinctly says: “per ignorantiam peccare, non culpam in hoc habere”.

17. Ibid., col. 648B.

18. Ibid., col. 642D.

19. P. L., CLXXVIII, col. 1755A-B.

20. Petri Lombardi, Libri IV Sententiarum (ed. Quaracchi, 1916), II, 522.

21. Frederick Whitehead, “Tristan and Isolt in the Forest of Morrois”, in Studies in French Language and Mediaeval Literature Presented to Mildred K. Pope (Manchester, 1939), pp. 395-96; A. Pauphilet in Le legs du moyen âge (Melun, 1950), p. 127, states that Tristan “ment aux hommes et à Dieu même”, and Frappier in Sens et Structure, loc. cit., p. 446, regrets that “on se condamne à ne plus rien comprendre au récit de Béroul … du moment qu'on admet la possibilité d'un langage hypocrite envers le ciel de la part des amants”.

22. Gerhart B. Ladner, “Homo Viator: Mediaeval Ideas on Alienation and Order” Speculum, XLII (1967), 245-47.

23. Jean Marx, “Observations sur un épisode de la légende de Tristan”, Recueil Clovis Brunel (Paris, 1955), p. 271. Nichols, too, op. cit., p. 79, speaks of a psychological and physical rather than a religious and moral expiation and chastening. Whitehead op. cit., has also emphasized the social character of the Morrois forest episode.

24. Timaeus a Calcidio translatus commentarioque instructus, cclxviii-ccclv, ed. J. H. Waszink (London, 1962), pp. 273-346; J. Reginald O'Donnell, “The Meaning of Silva in the Commentary on Timaeus of Plato by Chalcidius”, Mediaeval Studies, VII (1945), 1-20; Bernard Silvestris, De mundi universitate, I, i-ii, eds. Carl Sigmund Barach and Johann Wrobel (Innsbruck, 1876), pp. 77-15. I owe these references to Professor Francis X. Newman.

25. Waszink, op. cit., 337.

26. Pietro di Dante writes: “Fingit se ipsum repperisse in quadam sylva obscura, hoc est in statu vitioso; Ben: Ista siquidem sylva est mundanus status viciosus, qui metaphorice appelatur silva; Landino: Selva, s'intende in vita viziosa, che sì come la selva è uno luogo salvatico e scuro, così la vita viziosa è salvatica rispetto alla virtuosa”. For these commentaries see G. A. Scartazzini, La Divina Commedia (Bologna, 1899), pp. 2-3. Commenting on the term wildness in the Wild Men in the Middle Ages (Cambridge, Mass., 1952), R. Berheimer, pp. 19-20, writes that “the word implied everything that eluded Christian norms and the established framework of Christian society”.

27. Petri Berchorii, Reductorii Moralis (Parrissiis, 1521), fol. CCXCIIII^vo.

28. De Sacramentis, P. L., CLXXVI, col. 551.

29. Jean Marx, Nouvelles recherches sur la littérature Arthurienne (Paris, 1965), pp. 290-94; also in his article in the Recueil Clovis Brunel, op. cit., pp. 265-273. Commenting on Marx's observations, Eugène Vinaver in “La foret de Morrois”, Cahiers de Civilisation Médiévale, XI (1968), 8, writes that this scene is not intended to create juridically and poetically “un nouveau lien de dépendance” but rather to affirm in the life of the lovers the presence of Marc's royal authority.

30. D. W. Robertson, Jr., “The Doctrine of Charity in Mediaeval Literary Gardens: A Topical Approach through Symbolism and Allegry”, Speculum, XXVI (1951), 28.

31. Structurally and symbolically the Cross assumes a redemptive meaning. It is the symbol of the divine, it is the instrument which leads man to God, it teaches the way of Christian life and salvation; just as Christ on the Cross overcame sin and death, so too Tristan and Iseut, as true Christians, through the Cross, will overcome their sin and achieve salvation. Additional symbolic signification is conveyed by the fact that the Cross is rouge. As the traditional color and symbol of Charity, red is a direct reminder of God's Charity toward all sinners.

32. Frappier, loc. cit., p. 450. Some critics have sought to deprive Tristan and Iseut's long stay in the Morrois forest of any penitential significance by attributing a positive value to the recurring motif of the “ne sent mal”:

    Yseut s'esjot, or ne sent mal.

    (1274)

    Tant s'entraiment de bone amor,
    L'un por l'autre ne sent dolor.

    (1365-66)

    Chascun d'eus soffre paine elgal,
    Qar l'un por l'autre ne sent mal.

    (1649-50)

    Fu ainz mais gent tant eüst paine?
    Mais l'un por l'autre ne le sent.

    (1784-85)

    To give these phrases a positive meaning, that is, that because of the presence of the other each does not feel his own misery, would deny the obvious validity of their suffering in the forest, so often reiterated by Béroul. My interpretation, more consonant with the basic meaning of the poem, is that although they suffer, each does not exhibit his suffering because of the influence it might have on the other: the fear that the other partner might either cease to love or get tired of loving.

33. God's condemnation of the barons is confirmed at various occasions. Referring to the barons and the forester, Béroul comments (2754), “… felons que Dex cravant” (2763), “Dex les venga de toz ces quatre” and later (2822-23), “Li trois … mal troveront en la parfin” (2826), “Enfer ovre, qui les tranglote” (3028), “Oiez des trois, que Dex maudie” (3082), “Li rois Marc dist: “Dex vos destruie'.”

34. Benton, op. cit., p. 26.

35. Ibid., pp. 26-27.

36. Ibid., p. 28.

37. (God temporarily ignores men's sins and delays punishment of them with this intent, so that they themselves may acknowledge their fault and do penance). Is Wisdom 11:24 we read: “Sed misereris omnium, quia omnia potes, et dissimulat peccata hominum propter poenitentiam”. In Romans 2:4 it is stated: “ignora quoniam benignitas Dei ad poenitentiam te adducit?”