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Substance and Providence in the Old French Theological Romance The doctrine of divine providence was considered fundamental to understanding the nature of reality in medieval Christian orthodoxy. One of our greatest modern impediments to proper understanding of this law are the radically different ontologies that flourished in the Latin West through the recuperation of Ancient thought, most notably in the divisions between the Platonists and the Aristotelians. Whereas Biblical exegesis owed more to Augustine's Platonism, the rise of Aristotelian thought in the university curriculum entailed a serious threat to the doctrine of providence. The translation and dissemination of Islamic Aristotelians revealed an almost identical challenge to Islamic orthodoxy on the same matter. Philosophical, and especially ontological, speculation on the nature of substance (ontology) was therefore fertile ground for heresy. The main works under examination are the anonymous Queste del Saint Graal and the continuation of the Roman de la Rose by Jean de Meun. Deeply imbued with Augustinian figuralism and Biblical history, the Queste strongly distinguishes itself from the rest of the Lancelot en Prose, most notably La Mort le Roi Artu, in its theological purpose. It also shows a clever reworking of its source materials (Chrétien de Troyes and continuators, Robert de Boron, Perlesvaus) and an attempt to re-write the grail literature in its mos