Corbenic


Corbenic is the name of the Grail castle, the edifice housing the Holy Grail in Arthurian legend. It is a magical domain of the Grail keeper, often known as the Fisher King. The castle's descriptions vary greatly in different sources, and it first appears by that name in the Lancelot-Grail cycle where it is also the birthplace of Galahad.

Grail castle

In Chrétien de Troyes' Perceval, the Story of the Grail, one of the first works to mention the Grail, it is given no name other than being known as the castle of the
Fisher King. As in the later works, the castle is given qualities of Celtic Otherworld, as the story's original Grail hero Perceval visits it only when invited and then cannot find it again despite searching for years.
In Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parzival, based on Chrétien, the Grail castle's name is Munsalväsche. There, the castle is the home of a secret society of temple knights who guard the Grail from the outside world.
In the Perlesvaus continuation of Perceval, it is called the Castle of Souls but originally was called Eden. The Grail is kept with other holy relics at the castle's Grail Chapel, from which they vanish during the time when the castle is conquered by Perceval's evil uncle.

Corbenic

In the 13th-century Lancelot-Grail prose cycle, the castle is named as Corbenic for the first time. In the highly Christian mystical Vulgate Quest for the Holy Grail, it is the home of the Grail family from the lineages of Jesus' followers Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus, whose history is told in the cycle's prologue, the Vulgate Joseph. The ruler of Corbenic is King Pelles.
File:Corbenic Auct. 2Q 4.5.png|thumb|left|Lancelot at Corbenic in decorative woodcuts from a 1488 printed edition of part of the Lancelot-Grail cycle
As befits the castle of the Grail, Corbenic is a place of marvels, including, at various times, a maiden trapped in a magically boiling cauldron, a dragon, and a room where either an angelic knight or arrows assail any who try to spend the night there. As told in
Le Morte d'Arthur, witnessing some of these wonders causes Bors to name it the Castle Adventurous, "for here be many strange adventures". Yet it can also appear quite ordinary: on an earlier occasion, according to the Lancelot-Grail, the same Bors visited without noticing anything unusual.
Corbenic has a town, and a bridge which Bromell la Pleche swears to defend against all comers for a year, for love of Pelles' daughter Elaine. It is on the coast, or at least is mystically moved there for the purposes of the Grail Quest: Lancelot arrives at Corbenic by sea at the climax of his personal quest. Corbenic's seaward gate is guarded by two lions, aided by either a dwarf or a flaming hand. Lancelot's arrival results in his and Elaine's conception of Galahad, the new Grail hero of the prose cycles.
It is unclear whether Corbenic is to be identified with the castle inadvertently levelled by Balin when he delivers the Dolorous Stroke upon King Pellam in the Post-Vulgate Merlin ; if so, then Corbenic is in Listeneise. The Lancelot-Grail gives the name of its kingdom only as the Land Beyond.

Cor-beneic: 'Blessed Horn' and 'Blessed Body'

and Roger Sherman Loomis have presented a convincing case for the origins of the name Corbenic in a myth concerning a type of Welsh cornucopia – to wit, the horn of Brân the Blessed, a magical, food-providing talisman. The argument hinges on confusion resulting from two possible meanings for the Old French li cors which can mean both 'the body' and 'the horn', leading to the mistranslation, by Christian authors, of li cors beneit as the blessed body - the latter readily construed as a reference either to the body of Christ or to the body of a saint preserved as a holy relic. The common scribal error of misreading the letter 't' as a 'c' yielded the second element -benic. The original name of Castle Corbenic can thus be reconstructed as Chastiaus del Cor Beneit - the Castle of the Blessed Horn – subsequently misunderstood to mean the Castle of the Blessed Body. The origins of the maimed Fisher King, master of the Grail Castle of Corbenic may be found in the maimed King Brân the Blessed, whose story is told in Branwen ferch Llŷr, second of the Four Branches of the Mabinogi.