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Mail David
Despite being famous for his cycle of
Arthurian Romances centred around the Holy Grail,
next to nothing is known about the Burgundian known as Robert de Boron.
His works reveal that he was a poet in the employ of one Gautier, who has
been identified as Gautier de Montbeliard, the Lord of Montfaucon. Robert
presumably hailed from Boron - a small village about fifteen miles from
Montbeliard - where he appears to have been a cleric of some sort. In
1202, his master is known to have taken part in the Fourth Crusade from
which he never returned, dying abroad ten years later. So Robert's
Arthurian trilogy must have been written in the very late 12th century,
probably after the Glastonbury monks' 1191 "discovery" of King
Arthur's body, since Robert's 'Vales of Avalon' would seem to be in
Somerset. He wrote Le Roman de I'Estoire dou Graal (also called Joseph
d'Arimathie), the Merlin and, almost certainly, a version of
Sir Percivale's story usually known as the Didot-Perceval after an
early owner of the manuscript. They were originally put down in
octosyllabic verse but only the first named work and 504 lines of the Merlin
survive in this form. Luckily an anonymous admirer transcribed a prose
version of each around the 1220s. These were the inspiration for the later
Vulgate Cycle of Arthurian tales. Robert was the first to identify Sir
Percivale's Grail as the Last Supper vessel used by St.
Joseph of Arimathea to collect the blood of Christ from the Cross.
ROBERT DE BORON