THE TITUREL OF ALBRECHT VON SCHARFENBERG

The secret doctrine of Guiot de Provence and the high tradition of the starry heavens not only failed to convince the minstrel world in Germany concerning the indefectible titles of Parsifal, with its root-matter written in the starry heavens--of which our example is Heinrich--but it failed to hold even those who had no alternative and more elect hero to offer--of which the example, within certain limits, is Albrecht. It came about that at the end of that century which had seen the light of Wolfram there arose the succeeding light of him who was to follow, and, having regard to the welcome which he received, the German world was evidently looking for another. He came to announce--like the French romances before him--that the Graal was taken away. Albrecht von Scharfenberg was a Bavarian poet, who wrote about 1270. He undertook to carry the whole experiment to its term, which he did in a vast poem of 4,000 verses, written in the obscure style of his predecessor-in-chief, whence--and for other reasons--the distinct individualities were confused for a considerable period. He incorporated various materials, for there was firstly the intervention of an anonymous and unknown poet, who seems to have undertaken but not completed the task, and, secondly, there were certain so-called Titurel fragments which were the work of Wolfram himself. Of the first I can say nothing, except that he is believed to have projected a complete chronicle of the Graal and its keepers, drawing for this purpose on the source used by Wolfram. It is a matter of speculation at what point he broke off and for what reason, but his mantle fell upon Albrecht. Of the materials left by Wolfram we know all that is needful,

"In dark Dundagel by the northern sea"--

owing to that frightful fatality by which Arthur begat Mordred on the body of his own half-sister. Other stars intervened in their power to avert the doom and vengeance for that which was done in ignorance. In place of the dubious mercy of healing at the hands of Morgan le Fay in the mystic island of Avalon, the king--at the head of his whole chivalry--carries the Graal to India,

Dutch Lancelot, the Priest-King appears to have been Perceval's son. It is thought that the reticence of Wolfram on the whole subject is explicable by the fact that there were few materials at his period, while in the fifty subsequent years the rumours of the eastern legend had extended and was available to Albrecht. But it should be mentioned that the first rumour is referable to 1156, and before the end of the twelfth century it had the support of Maimonides as well as of the wandering Israelite, Benjamin of Tudela. The seat of Peter had done more than confess to an attraction when an embassy was sent to Prester John bearing a written communication from Alexander III.; and before 1180, or at and about this time, the Emperor of Constantinople is supposed to have received the celebrated letter in which the mysterious potentate announced his own existence with consummate grandiloquence. It was a pretentious and impossible document in the worst style of false-seeming, but it created great interest and great wonder. It concerns us only because it may have provided certain materials both for