However, Moorman’s opinion is somewhat narrow in scope. Furthermore, rather than seeking glory as Vinaver posits, Moorman argues Malory’s Grail adventure is symbolic of man’s fall from God’s grace – “presenting the failure of the Grail knights as one of the major causes of the downfall of the Round Table” (497). Vinaver’s argument is refuted by Charles Moorman in his 1956 essay “Malory’s Treatment of the Sankgreall.” In a detailed response to Vinaver, Moorman argues the Grail story must be viewed in context of the Morte as a whole. The claim is flawed on its face as this research will prove. This argument claims Malory’s work is secular in nature rather than inspired by Christian themes. His attitude may be described without much risk of over-simplification as that of a man to whom the quest of the Grail was primarily an Arthurian adventure and who regarded the intrusion of the Grail upon Arthur’s kingdom not as a means of contrasting earthly and divine chivalry and condemning the former, but as an opportunity offered to the knights of the Round Table to achieve still greater glory in this world. Writing of the translation from the source material, the French Vulgate Cycle La Queste de Saint Graal, Vinaver says: Eugene Vinaver (1947) argues Malory’s Grail section is the least original of the author’s work.

Even the seminal Holy Grail section, The Noble Tale of the Sankgreall, has been argued as a simplified telling of the divine chalice that eschews the overly Christian elements in favor of a secularized account. Due to the rise of other religious beliefs during its composition and passages selected from the work, some critics have argued Malory’s (1485) Morte is a secularized telling of Arthurian lore rather than being influenced by Christianity. In detailed study on the religion of the period, Tanner (2009) highlights a declining population due to the Black Death, the spread of the Ottoman Empire into Europe, and general disillusionment with the church following the Western Schism as reasons for waning support for the church. In the years between Geoffrey of Monmouth’s (1136) History of the Kings of Britain, which featured tales of a young warrior who would become ruler of an empire, and the prison-inked Le Morte Darthur of Sir Thomas Malory, the religious landscape of Europe began to shift from thoroughly Christian to a mixture of traditional beliefs and newfound spiritualism.

Soul Searing by By:Morte