One of the most important surviving manuscripts of Arthurian literature is set to go under the hammer at Christie’s this July, carrying an estimated value of up to £2 million. Christopher Berard explores the medieval romances that gave shape to the stories of King Arthur, Lancelot, Merlin, and the Holy Grail.
By Christopher Berard
An illuminated manuscript (c. 1290–1310) containing three romances from the Vulgate Cycle, or Lancelot-Grail Cycle (c. 1200–30), of prose Arthurian romances is coming up for sale at Christie’s Auction House in London on 8 July 2026. The manuscript is thought to have been produced by the Master of the Liège Apocalypse and contains 126 miniature illuminations. It is the earliest-known manuscript of the Vulgate Cycle to have remained in private ownership. It has been referred to as the “Clermont-Tonnerre Grail,” taking its name from its seventeenth-century owner Charles-Henri de Clermont-Tonnerre (1571–1640), and as the “Lebaudy Manuscript,” taking its name from its twentieth-century owner, the French industrialist Jean Lebaudy (1894–1969). Its current estimated value is between £1.5 and £2 million. In light of the upcoming auction, now is a good time to review the foundational romances of the Old French Arthurian tradition that are either informed or are part of the Vulgate Cycle. In this way, one can either be a knowledgeable bidder or have access to some of the contents of the manuscript at a tiny fraction of its asking price.
The Birth of Arthurian Romance
The Clermont-Tonnerre Grail. Images courtesy CHRISTIE’S IMAGES LTD. 2026
The first significant work on King Arthur in Old French is the Roman de Brut (1155) by Wace (d. after 1174), a Jersey-born cleric and court poet of King Henry II of England (r. 1154–89). The Roman de Brut is an adaptation into Old French verse (octosyllabic rhyming couplets) of two versions of the Latin Historia regum Britanniae (History of the Kings of Britain): the Vulgate version (c. 1136) by Geoffrey of Monmouth (d. c. 1155) and the anonymous First Variant version (c. 1130–55). The narrative begins with a brief recapitulation of the legendary founding of Rome by Aeneas of Troy and quickly proceeds to tell of the legendary founding of Britain by Brutus, a great-grandson of Aeneas. The narrative ends with the surrender of much of Britain to the Anglo-Saxons and the death of the last British king Cadwallader, allegedly at the dawn of the eighth century. A significant portion of the work is devoted to the life and reign of King Arthur.
Wace amplifies the chivalry, courtesy, and courtly love elements in his Norman French adaptation of his Latin sources. His most significant contribution to the narrative is the earliest-known mention of King Arthur’s Round Table. Wace claims that King Arthur invented the Round Table to eliminate baronial bickering over seating precedence, but it is entirely possible that Arthur’s Round Table is in fact Wace’s own invention. Arthur, it should be noted, does not sit at the Round Table but above it on a kingly dais. Wace’s Roman de Brut, which contains a full biography of Arthur from his somewhat unnatural conception at Tintagel in Cornwall to his somewhat unnatural death at Camlann in Cornwall, provides the basic narrative backbone for many of the later Arthurian romances, including those of the Vulgate Cycle. Consequently, Wace’s Roman de Brut is highly recommended reading. For an accurate, accessible, and affordable Modern English translation of the Roman de Brut, see Wace, Roman de Brut, translated by Glyn S. Burgess.
While Wace is the pioneer of the Old French Arthurian chronicle tradition, Chrétien de Troyes (d. 1190) is the pioneer of the Old French Arthurian romance tradition. Both poets use the same verse form (octosyllabic rhyming couplets) and both set their tales principally in Britain (the Matter of Britain). There the similarities end. Chronicles tend to focus on the reigning monarch and on events consequential to national history. Romances tend to focus on an individual knight, often the eponymous hero, who must balance his obligations to God, crown, family, and personal honor. Each verse Arthurian romance is largely self-contained, and King Arthur is very much a supporting character in most verse Arthurian romances.
Chrétien de Troyes authored five Arthurian romances: Erec et Enide (c. 1170), Cligès (c. 1176), Yvain ou Chevalier au Lion (c. 1180), Lancelot ou le Chevalier de la Charette (c. 1177–89), and Perceval ou le Contes du Graal (c. 1182–90). Of these works, the two most significant for our purposes are Lancelot ou le Chevalier de la Charette (Lancelot, or the Knight of the Cart) and Perceval ou le Conte du Graal (Perceval, or the Story of the Grail). The former introduces the infamous love triangle between King Arthur, Queen Guinevere, and Sir Lancelot; the latter introduces the Holy Grail (here presented as a platter worthy to carry the Eucharist) into Arthurian literature. As was the case with Wace’s Roman de Brut, Chrétien’s romances, particularly his Lancelot and Perceval, furnished critical plot points to the Vulgate Cycle. For an accurate, accessible, and affordable Modern English translation of all five of Chrétien’s Arthurian romances, see Chrétien de Troyes, Arthurian Romances, translated by William W. Kibler and Carleton W. Carroll.
Robert de Boron and the Origins of the Holy Grail
Opening folio of Robert de Boron’s Joseph d’Arimathie – Beinecke MS 227 1 fol. 1r
The thirteenth century saw a growing fondness for prose literature. A prose author did not have to twist his matter to match a rhyme scheme and was therefore deemed more veracious. Furthermore, the scope and scale of prose romances (collective mock-historiography) tended to be grander than the verse romance counterparts, which, as stated above, were often self-contained tales of an individual knight’s adventure.
The Burgundian poet Robert de Boron (fl. 1191–1212) is a significant Arthurian author who wrote on the brink of this transition from verse to prose. Robert authored a supremely influential Grail romance, Joseph d’Arimathie, also known as the Roman de l’Etoire dou Graal (c. 1200), in which he innovatively identifies the Grail as the vessel that Jesus used during the Last Supper at the house of Simeon the Leper and that Joseph of Arimathea subsequently used to collect the blood that dripped from Christ’s wounds as he prepared Him for burial. In Robert’s Joseph, the Grail is not the mysterious “sainte chose” (holy thing) of Chrétien’s Perceval; rather, it is concretely identified as a significant relic of Christ’s Last Supper and Crucifixion. The Joseph is preserved in two formats. There is a single manuscript copy of a somewhat garbled verse version and there are fifteen manuscript copies containing the prose redaction, some of which are much older than the one containing the verse version. The prose redaction is also the source of a translation by Jacob van Maerlant into Middle Dutch verse and is considered of great importance as it was based on a superior variant of the verse version.
Robert de Boron also authored an Arthurian romance called Merlin of which only 509 lines of the verse version survive. For its contents we depend on the prose redaction, the Estoire de Merlin (Story of Merlin). The Merlin is a reworking of the Arthurian portion of Wace’s Roman de Brut. Robert’s first significant innovation is a heightened emphasis on Merlin’s demonic paternal ancestry. Merlin was the spawn of a demon, but God granted him free will and the grace of Baptism.
Robert’s second significant innovation was to devise a new origin story for the Round Table. No longer was it to be an ad hoc secular work-around to put an end to baronial rancor over rank and standing. Now it had a spiritual pedigree. It was the third in a trilogy of round tables honoring God Incarnate: first came Jesus’ Table of the Last Supper; second came Joseph of Arimathea’s Table of the Grail; third came the Round Table of King Uther Pendragon and his son King Arthur Pendragon. Robert’s third significant innovation was King Uther’s and Queen Ygraine’s forced relinquishment of their son Arthur at the behest of Merlin, the child’s adoption by the worthy knight Sir Antor and his wife, and the iconic Sword in the Stone Episode: Arthur grows up believing that Sir Antor is his biological father and that Sir Kay is his biological brother. In a tournament after the death of King Uther, Sir Kay needs a sword, and Arthur, Kay’s dutiful brother and squire, resolves the problem by drawing the enchanted sword from the stone and giving it to Kay. Shortly thereafter, Arthur learns his true ancestry and his true destiny—to become the rightful king of Britain.
A third romance, known as the Prose Perceval, is attributed to Robert de Boron, but it is unlikely that he was its author. It is an amalgamation of three earlier works: Chrétien’s unfinished Perceval, the Second Continuation of Chrétien’s Perceval, and the Arthurian portion of Wace’s Brut. We do not know the relative chronology of the Prose Perceval and the Vulgate Cycle, but Robert’s Joseph, Robert’s Merlin, and the Prose Perceval constitute a complete “Little Grail Cycle.”
For an accessible and affordable Modern English translation of this trilogy of romances attributed to Robert de Boron, see Merlin and the Grail: Joseph of Arimathea, Merlin, and Perceval. The Trilogy of Romances attributed to Robert de Boron, translated by Nigel Bryant. The Little Grail Cycle is a clear, concise, and complete collection of the greatest hits of Arthurian legend and therefore, like Wace’s Brut, highly recommended reading for newcomers to the medieval Arthurian tradition.
The Rise of the Vulgate Cycle
The Clermont-Tonnerre Grail. Images courtesy CHRISTIE’S IMAGES LTD. 2026
We arrive at last at the Vulgate Cycle of prose Arthurian romances. It consists of three core texts: the Prose Lancelot, the Queste del Saint Graal, and the Mort le Roi Artu. Two of its major changes are that Sir Galahad, the son of Sir Lancelot, displaces Sir Perceval as the Grail Knight in the Queste and that the adulterous affair between Lancelot and Guinevere leads to the breakdown of Arthur’s marriage and kingdom in the Mort Artu. Guinevere’s doomed affair with Lancelot is consistent with the Arthurian romance tradition, but it is a departure from the Brut chronicle story, where Guinevere has a treasonous affair with Arthur’s nephew Mordred. Both changes to the preexisting lore make Lancelot the central figure of the vast narrative cycle.
The Lancelot-Queste-Mort Artu combination are the defining works of the Vulgate Cycle, and, narratively speaking, they are the final two-thirds of the cycle—with over a third being composed of the massive Prose Lancelot alone. The first third of the cycle consists of the Vulgate Estoire del Saint Graal, which is a greatly reworked and expanded retelling of Robert’s Joseph d’Arimathie, the Vulgate Estoire de Merlin, which is essentially the same as the prose redaction of Robert’s Merlin, and the Vulgate Suite du Merlin, a continuation of the Estoire de Merlin that provides a bridge to the Prose Lancelot. The massive Vulgate Cycle was translated into English in the 1990s (New York: Garland, 1992–96) and it is still in print in a ten-volume paperback edition: Lancelot-Grail: The Old French Arthurian Vulgate and Post-Vulgate in Translation, edited by Norris J. Lacy. These volumes can be purchased individually. Two recommended Modern English translations from the Vulgate Cycle are: The Quest of the Holy Grail, translated by P.M. Matarasso, and The Death of King Arthur, translated by James Cable.
The “Clermont-Tonnerre Grail” appears to contain the Vulgate Estoire del Saint Graal, the Vulgate Estoire de Merlin, and the Vulgate Suite du Merlin. A leading scholar on the composition of the Vulgate Cycle and related prose Arthurian romances is Patrick Moran, Associate Professor of French at the University of British Columbia. For a helpful and concise recent overview of these Arthurian romance cycles, see his article “The Old French Vulgate and Post-Vulgate Cycles,” in The Cambridge History of Arthurian Literature and Culture, vol. 1: Medieval Arthurian Literatures and Cultures, ed. Raluca L. Radulescu and Andrew Lynch. Another significant Arthurian scholar in the field, especially when it comes to the manuscript tradition of the Vulgate Cycle is M. Alison Stones, Professor Emerita, Department of History of Art and Architecture, University of Pittsburgh. She has authored numerous articles on the manuscript illuminations of the Vulgate Cycle, and she oversees the Lancelot-Grail Project, a digital humanities project that maps the illuminated manuscripts of the cycle using geographic information system (GIS) concepts.
On 8 July 2026, the next guardian of the Holy Grail of Arthurian manuscripts will emerge, and we will learn the financial cost of obtaining that title.
Christopher Berard is the author of Arthurianism in Early Plantagenet England (Boydell & Brewer, 2019) and The Alliterative Morte Arthure as Christian Epic Poetry (Boydell & Brewer, forthcoming 2026). He completed his PhD at the University of Toronto’s Centre for Medieval Studies (2015), and he is currently an adjunct professor at Providence College.
One of the most important surviving manuscripts of Arthurian literature is set to go under the hammer at Christie’s this July, carrying an estimated value of up to £2 million. Christopher Berard explores the medieval romances that gave shape to the stories of King Arthur, Lancelot, Merlin, and the Holy Grail.
By Christopher Berard
An illuminated manuscript (c. 1290–1310) containing three romances from the Vulgate Cycle, or Lancelot-Grail Cycle (c. 1200–30), of prose Arthurian romances is coming up for sale at Christie’s Auction House in London on 8 July 2026. The manuscript is thought to have been produced by the Master of the Liège Apocalypse and contains 126 miniature illuminations. It is the earliest-known manuscript of the Vulgate Cycle to have remained in private ownership. It has been referred to as the “Clermont-Tonnerre Grail,” taking its name from its seventeenth-century owner Charles-Henri de Clermont-Tonnerre (1571–1640), and as the “Lebaudy Manuscript,” taking its name from its twentieth-century owner, the French industrialist Jean Lebaudy (1894–1969). Its current estimated value is between £1.5 and £2 million. In light of the upcoming auction, now is a good time to review the foundational romances of the Old French Arthurian tradition that are either informed or are part of the Vulgate Cycle. In this way, one can either be a knowledgeable bidder or have access to some of the contents of the manuscript at a tiny fraction of its asking price.
The Birth of Arthurian Romance
The first significant work on King Arthur in Old French is the Roman de Brut (1155) by Wace (d. after 1174), a Jersey-born cleric and court poet of King Henry II of England (r. 1154–89). The Roman de Brut is an adaptation into Old French verse (octosyllabic rhyming couplets) of two versions of the Latin Historia regum Britanniae (History of the Kings of Britain): the Vulgate version (c. 1136) by Geoffrey of Monmouth (d. c. 1155) and the anonymous First Variant version (c. 1130–55). The narrative begins with a brief recapitulation of the legendary founding of Rome by Aeneas of Troy and quickly proceeds to tell of the legendary founding of Britain by Brutus, a great-grandson of Aeneas. The narrative ends with the surrender of much of Britain to the Anglo-Saxons and the death of the last British king Cadwallader, allegedly at the dawn of the eighth century. A significant portion of the work is devoted to the life and reign of King Arthur.
Wace amplifies the chivalry, courtesy, and courtly love elements in his Norman French adaptation of his Latin sources. His most significant contribution to the narrative is the earliest-known mention of King Arthur’s Round Table. Wace claims that King Arthur invented the Round Table to eliminate baronial bickering over seating precedence, but it is entirely possible that Arthur’s Round Table is in fact Wace’s own invention. Arthur, it should be noted, does not sit at the Round Table but above it on a kingly dais. Wace’s Roman de Brut, which contains a full biography of Arthur from his somewhat unnatural conception at Tintagel in Cornwall to his somewhat unnatural death at Camlann in Cornwall, provides the basic narrative backbone for many of the later Arthurian romances, including those of the Vulgate Cycle. Consequently, Wace’s Roman de Brut is highly recommended reading. For an accurate, accessible, and affordable Modern English translation of the Roman de Brut, see Wace, Roman de Brut, translated by Glyn S. Burgess.
While Wace is the pioneer of the Old French Arthurian chronicle tradition, Chrétien de Troyes (d. 1190) is the pioneer of the Old French Arthurian romance tradition. Both poets use the same verse form (octosyllabic rhyming couplets) and both set their tales principally in Britain (the Matter of Britain). There the similarities end. Chronicles tend to focus on the reigning monarch and on events consequential to national history. Romances tend to focus on an individual knight, often the eponymous hero, who must balance his obligations to God, crown, family, and personal honor. Each verse Arthurian romance is largely self-contained, and King Arthur is very much a supporting character in most verse Arthurian romances.
Chrétien de Troyes authored five Arthurian romances: Erec et Enide (c. 1170), Cligès (c. 1176), Yvain ou Chevalier au Lion (c. 1180), Lancelot ou le Chevalier de la Charette (c. 1177–89), and Perceval ou le Contes du Graal (c. 1182–90). Of these works, the two most significant for our purposes are Lancelot ou le Chevalier de la Charette (Lancelot, or the Knight of the Cart) and Perceval ou le Conte du Graal (Perceval, or the Story of the Grail). The former introduces the infamous love triangle between King Arthur, Queen Guinevere, and Sir Lancelot; the latter introduces the Holy Grail (here presented as a platter worthy to carry the Eucharist) into Arthurian literature. As was the case with Wace’s Roman de Brut, Chrétien’s romances, particularly his Lancelot and Perceval, furnished critical plot points to the Vulgate Cycle. For an accurate, accessible, and affordable Modern English translation of all five of Chrétien’s Arthurian romances, see Chrétien de Troyes, Arthurian Romances, translated by William W. Kibler and Carleton W. Carroll.
Robert de Boron and the Origins of the Holy Grail
The thirteenth century saw a growing fondness for prose literature. A prose author did not have to twist his matter to match a rhyme scheme and was therefore deemed more veracious. Furthermore, the scope and scale of prose romances (collective mock-historiography) tended to be grander than the verse romance counterparts, which, as stated above, were often self-contained tales of an individual knight’s adventure.
The Burgundian poet Robert de Boron (fl. 1191–1212) is a significant Arthurian author who wrote on the brink of this transition from verse to prose. Robert authored a supremely influential Grail romance, Joseph d’Arimathie, also known as the Roman de l’Etoire dou Graal (c. 1200), in which he innovatively identifies the Grail as the vessel that Jesus used during the Last Supper at the house of Simeon the Leper and that Joseph of Arimathea subsequently used to collect the blood that dripped from Christ’s wounds as he prepared Him for burial. In Robert’s Joseph, the Grail is not the mysterious “sainte chose” (holy thing) of Chrétien’s Perceval; rather, it is concretely identified as a significant relic of Christ’s Last Supper and Crucifixion. The Joseph is preserved in two formats. There is a single manuscript copy of a somewhat garbled verse version and there are fifteen manuscript copies containing the prose redaction, some of which are much older than the one containing the verse version. The prose redaction is also the source of a translation by Jacob van Maerlant into Middle Dutch verse and is considered of great importance as it was based on a superior variant of the verse version.
Robert de Boron also authored an Arthurian romance called Merlin of which only 509 lines of the verse version survive. For its contents we depend on the prose redaction, the Estoire de Merlin (Story of Merlin). The Merlin is a reworking of the Arthurian portion of Wace’s Roman de Brut. Robert’s first significant innovation is a heightened emphasis on Merlin’s demonic paternal ancestry. Merlin was the spawn of a demon, but God granted him free will and the grace of Baptism.
Robert’s second significant innovation was to devise a new origin story for the Round Table. No longer was it to be an ad hoc secular work-around to put an end to baronial rancor over rank and standing. Now it had a spiritual pedigree. It was the third in a trilogy of round tables honoring God Incarnate: first came Jesus’ Table of the Last Supper; second came Joseph of Arimathea’s Table of the Grail; third came the Round Table of King Uther Pendragon and his son King Arthur Pendragon. Robert’s third significant innovation was King Uther’s and Queen Ygraine’s forced relinquishment of their son Arthur at the behest of Merlin, the child’s adoption by the worthy knight Sir Antor and his wife, and the iconic Sword in the Stone Episode: Arthur grows up believing that Sir Antor is his biological father and that Sir Kay is his biological brother. In a tournament after the death of King Uther, Sir Kay needs a sword, and Arthur, Kay’s dutiful brother and squire, resolves the problem by drawing the enchanted sword from the stone and giving it to Kay. Shortly thereafter, Arthur learns his true ancestry and his true destiny—to become the rightful king of Britain.
A third romance, known as the Prose Perceval, is attributed to Robert de Boron, but it is unlikely that he was its author. It is an amalgamation of three earlier works: Chrétien’s unfinished Perceval, the Second Continuation of Chrétien’s Perceval, and the Arthurian portion of Wace’s Brut. We do not know the relative chronology of the Prose Perceval and the Vulgate Cycle, but Robert’s Joseph, Robert’s Merlin, and the Prose Perceval constitute a complete “Little Grail Cycle.”
For an accessible and affordable Modern English translation of this trilogy of romances attributed to Robert de Boron, see Merlin and the Grail: Joseph of Arimathea, Merlin, and Perceval. The Trilogy of Romances attributed to Robert de Boron, translated by Nigel Bryant. The Little Grail Cycle is a clear, concise, and complete collection of the greatest hits of Arthurian legend and therefore, like Wace’s Brut, highly recommended reading for newcomers to the medieval Arthurian tradition.
The Rise of the Vulgate Cycle
We arrive at last at the Vulgate Cycle of prose Arthurian romances. It consists of three core texts: the Prose Lancelot, the Queste del Saint Graal, and the Mort le Roi Artu. Two of its major changes are that Sir Galahad, the son of Sir Lancelot, displaces Sir Perceval as the Grail Knight in the Queste and that the adulterous affair between Lancelot and Guinevere leads to the breakdown of Arthur’s marriage and kingdom in the Mort Artu. Guinevere’s doomed affair with Lancelot is consistent with the Arthurian romance tradition, but it is a departure from the Brut chronicle story, where Guinevere has a treasonous affair with Arthur’s nephew Mordred. Both changes to the preexisting lore make Lancelot the central figure of the vast narrative cycle.
The Lancelot-Queste-Mort Artu combination are the defining works of the Vulgate Cycle, and, narratively speaking, they are the final two-thirds of the cycle—with over a third being composed of the massive Prose Lancelot alone. The first third of the cycle consists of the Vulgate Estoire del Saint Graal, which is a greatly reworked and expanded retelling of Robert’s Joseph d’Arimathie, the Vulgate Estoire de Merlin, which is essentially the same as the prose redaction of Robert’s Merlin, and the Vulgate Suite du Merlin, a continuation of the Estoire de Merlin that provides a bridge to the Prose Lancelot. The massive Vulgate Cycle was translated into English in the 1990s (New York: Garland, 1992–96) and it is still in print in a ten-volume paperback edition: Lancelot-Grail: The Old French Arthurian Vulgate and Post-Vulgate in Translation, edited by Norris J. Lacy. These volumes can be purchased individually. Two recommended Modern English translations from the Vulgate Cycle are: The Quest of the Holy Grail, translated by P.M. Matarasso, and The Death of King Arthur, translated by James Cable.
The “Clermont-Tonnerre Grail” appears to contain the Vulgate Estoire del Saint Graal, the Vulgate Estoire de Merlin, and the Vulgate Suite du Merlin. A leading scholar on the composition of the Vulgate Cycle and related prose Arthurian romances is Patrick Moran, Associate Professor of French at the University of British Columbia. For a helpful and concise recent overview of these Arthurian romance cycles, see his article “The Old French Vulgate and Post-Vulgate Cycles,” in The Cambridge History of Arthurian Literature and Culture, vol. 1: Medieval Arthurian Literatures and Cultures, ed. Raluca L. Radulescu and Andrew Lynch. Another significant Arthurian scholar in the field, especially when it comes to the manuscript tradition of the Vulgate Cycle is M. Alison Stones, Professor Emerita, Department of History of Art and Architecture, University of Pittsburgh. She has authored numerous articles on the manuscript illuminations of the Vulgate Cycle, and she oversees the Lancelot-Grail Project, a digital humanities project that maps the illuminated manuscripts of the cycle using geographic information system (GIS) concepts.
On 8 July 2026, the next guardian of the Holy Grail of Arthurian manuscripts will emerge, and we will learn the financial cost of obtaining that title.
Christopher Berard is the author of Arthurianism in Early Plantagenet England (Boydell & Brewer, 2019) and The Alliterative Morte Arthure as Christian Epic Poetry (Boydell & Brewer, forthcoming 2026). He completed his PhD at the University of Toronto’s Centre for Medieval Studies (2015), and he is currently an adjunct professor at Providence College.
Subscribe to Medievalverse
Related Posts