MUNSALVASCHE
Munsalvaesche is in the same land as King Arthur’s realm and Wales (Parzival’s home), and thus presumably in Britain. Parzival (as does Perceval) moves from one to another of the three on horseback but, maybe on the mainland and Brittany (Bretagne). This castle cannot be found in the third dimension. The castle is accessible only to the one who lives from compassion. Although Parzival is destined for the Grail, he must overcome his self-absorption and inexperience before he can gain admittance to Munsalvaesche, the Grail Castle, and assume the position of king. When he first visits Munsalvaesche the mysterious Grail society rejects Parzival, because he has not yet acquired enough emotional or spiritual maturity to join them and ascend to kingship over the holy community.
Scholar Janice Bennett seeks to provide a real world location for Wolfram’s curiously named Grail Castle: “In Wolfram von Eschenbach’s Parzival, the Grail is kept in the castle of Munsalvaesche, which is surrounded by a wild forest. Salvaesche is from the Old French form of sauvage, meaning ‘wild’(in Latin silvaticus)" (p.156, n.8). Bennett goes on to state that the rugged woods surrounding the mountain monastery of San Juan de la Peña near Jaca Spain certaintly matches the description of the Grail Castle being a paradise set amid wilderness. The most convincing evidence to justify her assertion comes from the ancient language of the Pyreness.
Judging from the claim that Munsalvaesche derives from the French word for “wild,” it can be assume that this term might well mean something like “wild mountain.” According to Bennette, the name “Munsalvaesche” can be translated from the old Occitan language of the French and Spanish Pyrenee Mountains into a name more familiar to the area. In modern Spain, the mountains near Jaca in which the San Juan de la Peña monastery is housed are referred to as San Salvador – “Munsaelvaesche” in Occitan. In this regard, Wolfram’s Munsalvaesche might be better translated as “the Mountain of Salvation.”
The name of the Grail Castle, Munsalvaesche, is the medieval Occitan name for the mountains now called San Salvador, where the monastery of San Juan de la Peña is found. The monastery exhibits several features mentioned in Parzival, such as a spring which once ran very near to the niche where the Grail could have been kept, matching the description of the baptismal font in which Parzival’s Moorish brother was baptized. It also holds a sanctuary altar where the Santo Caliz was venerated featuring twenty-two decorative arches as mentioned by Albrecht von Scharfenberg, a later Grail romancer who based his work on that Wolfram von Eschenbach.
Munsalvaesche has been speculatively identified with a number of places:
- San Juan de la Peña in Spain
- Castell Dinas Bran in Wales
- Peel Castle on the Isle of Man
- Ravenglass, Keswick
- Whitehaven, in the Lake District of north-west England
- Red Castle built for William I of Scotland
- Scarponnois, a medieval county in the department Meurthe-et-Moselle in France near Gorze Abbey
Colless, Brian, ed. "PARZIVAL : THE STONE GRAIL." Google Sites. N.p., n.d. Web.
23 Mar. 2016. <https://sites.google.com/site/collesseum/parzival>.
"Corbenic." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, n.d. Web. 23 Mar. 2016.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corbenic>.
Griffin, Justin E. Glastonbury and the Grail: Did Joseph of Arimathea Bring the
Sacred Relic to Britain? Jefferson: McFarland, 2012. Print.
"Parzival" ["Munsalvaesche"]. Stories and your life. N.p., n.d. Web. 23 Mar.
2016. <http://www.storiesandyourlife.org/parzival/>.
Prager, Debra N. Orienting the Self: The German Literary Encounter with the
Eastern Other. Rochester: Boydell & Brewer, 2014. Print.
Wabbel, Tobias Daniel. The Templar Treasure: An Investigation. Walterville:
Trine Day, 2014. Print.
