The pious knight: Crusading ideals, purgatory, and Grail romances

This dissertation offers a genesis for medieval Grail romances as a challenge to the conception of piety promulgated by the reformed clergy during the crusades. It combines literary and historical analyses to ask why Arthurian writers, who produced for and represented secular culture, began to write about piety at a time when laymen were called upon by the clergy to embrace orthodoxy. By discussing knights seeking God in Chretien de Troyes' Conte du Graal, Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parzival, and the anonymous Queste del Saint Graal, it argues that Grail literature represents spirituality as a subjective and individual experience, an experience that cannot be channeled into a universal model. Vernacular writers sought a moral ideal alternative to the reformers' rigorous standards of piety that were inaccessible to most laymen. Grail romances reflect similar spiritual and intellectual concerns that led to the emergence of Purgatory in the twelfth century. The thesis rejects the common perception of Grail literature as a genre directly influenced by clerical thought and produced to convert lay readers.