Arthurian ‘Monsters’ in the Thirteenth-Century Bible anonyme (Paris, BNF fr. 763)

Abstract

The thirteenth-century anonymous Bible anonyme (Szirmai 1985), contains a Legend of the Holy Cross, in which appear four ‘Ethiopian monsters’, who are converted to the Christian faith by touching the Holy Wood. The description of these ‘monsters’, unique among the stories of the Holy Cross, bears a great resemblance to the portrait of some characters in Chretien de Troyes’s Yvain and in his Conte du Graal. The insertion of profane elements in a religious text may not be exceptional, as we will point out later, but the fact that Chretien’s influence extends beyond French romance (Busby 1985) deserves to be mentioned, since it adds to our knowledge, not only of the work of the Bible translator–compiler, but also of the reception of Arthurian romance.