Faked Rituals in ‘Tristan and Isolde’ or Who Knows What?

Faked Rituals in ‘Tristan and Isolde’ or Who Knows What?

Dr Andrea Schindler (University of Braunschweig)

Imagine a sunny day in a beautiful park in front of an impressive castle, hundreds of people cheering, the bride and her godmother are coming down the aisle to the waiting groom and the priest. The servant is weeping with emotion, so is the godmother. Then the priest asks: ‘Do you, Philipp, take Aurora …?’ ‘I do!’ ‘And do you, Aurora …?’ ‘I do!’ ‘Then I pronounce you husband and wife! You may kiss the bride!’ Now we all know that Aurora and Philipp are finally married, and we share the happiness of everyone in the park, both humans and fairies – and also of Auroras godmother Maleficent. But we also know that Elle Fanning and Harris Dickinson are not married (at least not because of that scene) – not only because most of us don’t believe in fairies and Tom Bonington isn’t a priest, but also because Maleficent: Mistress of Evil is a film. Even if the priest would have said ‘Do you, Harris …’ and ‘Do you, Elle …’ they wouldn’t be married – but what if it would have been a real priest?

You see, we can do rituals that are of no consequence because something is ‘wrong’ or rather because we don’t believe in them. The latter is of great importance: If we all don’t believe in such rituals, a christening would mean nothing (at least on earth in our society – the heavenly consequences may be an entirely different matter). That’s not only true for rituals: if no one would believe in the existence of states like Germany, Italy, or the UK they wouldn’t exist. We need to imagine them, since you can’t touch a state like a table to feel it’s real. So, it is necessary to believe in rituals and to know that they are done in the right way.

The story of Tristan and Isolde, most famously told by the Middle High German author Gottfried of Straßburg, is about love and adultery. Tristan, the nephew of Marke, king of Cornwall, courts Isolde of Ireland for his uncle (including slaying a dragon), but on the ship back to Cornwall they inadvertently both drink a love potion and make love. So, Isolde is no longer a virgin. Nevertheless, Tristan brings Isolde to Marke and they – Isolde and Marke – get married. That is the beginning of many secrets. The narrator doesn’t bother us with details about the wedding and its rituals. We only hear that Marke invites his ‘lantbarûne’ (12549; lords of his country) to the wedding and everyone is amazed and enthusiastic about Isolde’s beauty. Then we hear:

Now once she was formally wed / And before all the nobles led, / And her rights announced to all, / Namely that she should hold Cornwall / And England too, but that Tristan / Should inherit both of those lands, / If she failed to produce an heir, / And once homage was done her there. (12573-12579; trans. A. S. Kline)

(“Nu sî zir ê bestatet wart / und an ir rehte bewart, / daz Kurnewal und Engelant / sô wart besetzet in ir hant, / ob sî niht erben baere, / daz Tristan erbe waere, / unde ir hulde wart getân”).

Although the text seems more focused on the order of inheritance, Isolde and Marke are legally married now, but … There’s one problem: the wedding night.

During the Middle Ages and in the different regions of Europe, there was no standardized regulation for weddings and wedding rituals. Sometimes and at some places these rituals included a contract, the wedding ceremony, and the wedding night as necessary elements. If that would have been the case in ‘Tristan and Isolde’, Isolde and Marke would perhaps not be legally married: for Isolde and Tristan persuade her handmaiden Brangäne, who is still a virgin, to substitute Isolde during the wedding night (at least for the first hour), to cover that Isolde already had sex before the wedding. Marke doesn’t notice this fraud. He must believe in the legitimacy of the ritual. The three have more information about the ritual than Marke, but even they never doubt that Marke and Isolde are married – and so do we (and – as far as I can see – all scholars). This ritual obviously works, and everything seems done in the right way.

During the following weeks and months Tristan and Isolde meet secretly – or rather: they try to meet secretly. Some people at court are suspicious and influence Marke into doubting Tristan and Isolde’s faithfulness. Finally, Isolde must submit to a judgment of God. This means that a public declaration of her faithfulness to Marke is then tested by holding a red-hot iron in her hand. If she is innocent, God would help her not to burn herself. (The Medieval Judicial Ordeals, see also last month’s blog by Heinz Sieburg). For all we know, Isolde must fail the test due to her affair with Tristan. But she is clever: this ordeal shall take place on the shore. She tells Tristan to disguise himself as a pilgrim, to carry her from the ship to the shore and to pretend to fall over with Isolde in his arms (see the scene depicted in Codex cgm 51):

Gottfried of Straßburg: ‘Tristan’ (with the continuation of Ulrich of Türheim); Bayerische Staatsbibliothek München, cgm 51, f. 82v

Afterwards Isolde formulates her oath to Marke as follows:

Hear the oath that I mean to swear: / That no man has known my body / Or lain in my arms, or beside me, / But yourself ever, except, I say, / The man who did that same today, / Whom you saw with your own eyes, / That pilgrim fate took by surprise. (15710-15720, trans. A. S. Kline)

(vernemet, wie ich iu sweren wil: / daz mînes lîbes nie kein man / dekeine künde nie gewan / noch mir ze keinen zîten / weder ze arme noch ze sîten / âne iuch nie lebende man gelac / wan der, vür den ich niht enmac / gebieten eit noch lougen, / den ir mit iuwern ougen / mir sâhet an dem arme, / der wallaere der arme)

Isolde and we, the readers, – and God – know that the pilgrim is Tristan; and we know that she has an affair with him. So, although we (and God) know, that she isn’t innocent of adultery, her oath is true and therefore she passes the test – God has (!) to help her not to burn her hand.

Marke and his entourage, on the other hand, must think that she is innocent because they don’t know the pilgrim is Tristan. The ritual works, but only because the people involved do not have access to the same information. Everything is done in the right way and Isolde’s plan succeeds. Even God has no choice, he must confirm her oath. Isolde thus uses the ordeal to prove her innocence to the world even though she is guilty.

Later Tristan and Isolde are banished from the court because Marke (and others) think them guilty of adultery, and for a while they live in the ‘Minnegrotte’, an idyllic cave of love with a beautiful crystal bed in it. No one knows where they are, but a huntsman of Marke finds the cave and tells his king about it. Tristan and Isolde notice that someone was near the cave. That’s why they decide to put a sword between them while they are sleeping in their bed; and they sleep turned away from each other. When Marke watches them through a window and sees the sword between them, he doubts that they are guilty – why should they sleep that way with that sword between them, if they love each other? This separating sword is no ritual, but it strikes Marke as a habit – he doesn’t know that Tristan and Isolde put it between them for the first time. But he also can’t know that they are aware of intruders who could find them. Again, they fool the king and at least Isolde can go back to her husband and live in the castle.

We, the recipients, always know more than what Marke knows. Therefore, he seems to be weak because he gets duped all the time. But if we see things from his point of view and with his knowledge the wedding is in every detail a ‘correct’ one, the ordeal shows him and the world that Isolde is innocent and so does the separating sword. All these rituals and habits work (for Marke and for us), but we know that parts of them are faked – and that is the reason why they work.

References

Gottfried von Straßburg: Tristan, Ed. by Karl Marold, Unveränderter vierter Abdruck nach dem dritten mit einem auf Grund von F. Rankes Kollationen verbesserten Apparat besorgt von Werner Schröder (De Gruyter, Berlin, New York, 1977).

24. S. Kline, Poetry in Translation: https://www.poetryintranslation.com/PITBR/German/Tristanhome.php (24.03.2020).