Murphy, G. Ronald, S.J. Gemstone of Paradise. The Holy Grail in Wolfram's Parzival

German Quarterly, The, Summer, 2007 by Brian Murdoch

Murphy, G. Ronald, S.J. Gemstone of Paradise. The Holy Grail in Wolfram's Parzival. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006. 241 pp. $29.95 hardcover.

This is a thoroughly engaging book, dealing more specifically than usual with the perennial question of the perception and (more significantly) the importance of the Grail in Wolfram's Parzival, but going well beyond that to offer an interpretation and indeed an appreciation of Wolfram's poem as a whole. Wolfram's Grail, of course, is described as a stone, and the study concludes that what Wolfram had in mind was a portable altar-stone with a place for the Host. It should perhaps be stressed that we are not pursuing "the Holy Grail," however much attention it may have received in popular culture lately, although there is indeed an additional narrative here of a personal pursuit, which frames the scholarly investigation of the poem and suggests an identification of what may have been in Wolfram's mind when he envisioned his Grail: a portable altar in the Bamberg Domschatz, green on top and with the rivers of paradise on it (the rare reading of Abenberc in the text as Babenberc is, however, treated with due caution). The work is far more extensive than this rather specific point, however, and looks at the knowledge and literary use of gemstones in the work, at the use of such altars during the Crusades, and even more broadly at Wolfram's pleas for tolerance at the sack of (Christian) Constantinople by the Crusaders in 1204. There is a useful etymological excursus on five of the women's names in the poem (although whether the name Sigune is really a deliberate anagram for cosine, mentioned several times, remains debatable) and another with extracts from the Egbert Pontifical and from the Middle English Caxton Eracles on the consecration of the altar and the veneration of the Holy Sepulcher. The work is fully and usefully illustrated.

Murphy argues that the Bamberg altar inspired Wolfram's concept of the Grail, which is of course famously unspecific when he calls it ein dinc, and other links have been made with the stone in Apocalypse 2:17. But even the neutral designation is solidly material, and Murphy offers a detailed and convincing contextualization of the Grail into medieval thought on precious stones, and into the liturgical context, focussing upon the links between the stone altar and the representations of the Holy Sepulcher. There are details, of course, that the reader may not want to accept. The likelihood of Wolfram having ever heard of the Heliand (another important medieval spiritual work on which Professor Murphy is an acknowledged expert) seems remote, and some of the other parallels drawn in the conclusion might look a little contrived, however interesting in literary terms. The bibliography is partly annotated (more would be useful), albeit with "secondary literature" taken somewhat oddly to mean everything other than texts by Wolfram or Chretien (though even E. H. Zeydel's Parzival-translation, listed under the title, is included there) and containing the Vulgate and the Patrologia Latina. But these points are not particularly significant.

In summary, this is a well-produced and very readable work which may serve, too, as a stimulating introduction to a great work of literature. The approach is original in its linking of the Grail to a specific (kind of) object, and is in line with other critics (perhaps most notably Bodo Mergell and Petrus Tax) in stressing the liturgical significance of what is, after all, a major work of medieval spirituality. Wolfram had unusual ideas, bur remained well within the church. Trevrizent does not grant formal absolution, bur be does direct Parzival towards the establishment of the Church, towards a priest's gewihtiu hant, and of course Gurnemanz had taught him to cross himself. Murphy is quite right to point to the number of masses actually said in the work. The seeking out of the Bamberg altar provides for a fascinating framework, showing usa scholar at work, even if the final judgment upon it must be left up to the reader. Certainly, Parzival returns to Paradise at the end. As an overall reading of Wolfram's work, this is a convincing and eminently readable study.

BRIAN MURDOCH

University of Stirling Scotland