Robert de Boron

Life

Robert de Boron wrote Joseph d'Arimathe for a lord named Gautier de Montbéliard and he took on the name Boron from the village of Boron near Montbéliard in today's eastern France (formerly a part of the Holy Roman Empire). What is known of his life comes from brief mentions in his own work. At one point in Joseph, he applies to himself the title of meisters (medieval French for 'master', indicating being a clerk); later he uses the title messires (medieval French for 'sir', indicating his knighthood). At the end of the same text, he mentions being in the service of Gautier of "Mont Belyal", whom French philologist Pierre Le Gentil (1906–1989) identifies with one Gautier de Montbéliard (the Lord of Montfaucon), who in 1202 left for the Fourth Crusade, and died in the Holy Land in 1212.

Le Gentil argues that the mention of Avalon shows that Robert wrote Joseph after 1191, when the monks at Glastonbury claimed to have discovered the coffins of King Arthur and Guinevere. His family is unknown, though the second author of the Prose Tristan claimed to be Robert's nephew, calling himself "Helie de Boron" (this is taken more as an attempt to drop a famous name than a genuine accreditation, however). Although Le Gentil describes him as a "poet endowed with boldness and piety but with mediocre talent", his work was immensely successful and influential. Notably, his version of the myth of the Holy Grail, originally an element of Chrétien de Troyes's unfinished Perceval, was adopted by almost all later writers of the Matter of Britain.