Abstract:
You might have thought that Monty Python had the last word on the Holy Grail, but now
Umberto Eco has offered his own version of this potent mediaeval myth in "Baudalino", his
latest novel.
The title character is a peasant boy in twelfth-century Italy who by chance meets
Frederick Barbarossa, the first Holy Roman Emperor. The novel tells of his adventures
over the next fifty years: how Frederick adopts him and sends him to Paris to be
educated; how he helps his adopted father, by means of his quick wit and good nature, to
extricate himself from many tricky situations. Eventually he persuades an aging Frederick
to embark on a Crusade. Mired in the dangerous politics of the warring states east of the
Mediterranean, Frederick dies mysteriously in the castle of an Armenian dignitary.
Baudalino and his eleven motley companions set off to find the fabled eastern kingdom
of Prester John, posing as the Twelve Magi.
Truth or lies, fact or fiction? Baudalino relates his story to Niketas, a Byzantine
historian in Constantinople, under attack from another wave of barbarian crusaders in
1204.
