The Grail and the quest to discover its whereabouts or the secret of its mysteries provided one of the most popular themes of later medieval literature and art, and has continued to inspire artists as diverse as the Pre-Raphaelites, Wagner, and Julien Gracq in modern times. Its popularity probably stemmed from the openendedness of the theme, combined with an appeal to the highest ideals of chivalry and religion, which, while essentially orthodox, allowed a whole range of esoteric interpretations.
The first mention of the Grail, or rather of a grail (a broad serving dish capable of holding a whole salmon), comes in Le Conte du graal written by Chrétien de Troyes between c.1180 and 1192. This unfinished romance claims as its source a book shown to the author by his patron, Philip of Flanders. Chrétien's romance was highly problematic as it was unfinished and also contained two parallel sets of stories: that of the uncouth Perceval, who should have asked the question: ‘Whom does the grail serve?’, which would put an end to the devastation of the land of the Fisher King; and that of Gauvain, who rambles from chivalric adventure to chivalric adventure, nominally questing the bleeding lance which accompanies the grail, until caught in the womb-like web of the castle of his own mother and grandmother. Some critics believe that the Perceval and Gauvain material belong to separate romances amalgamated after Chrétien's death. While there may be some literary evidence for this within the text, the manuscript tradition lends no support to the view. Perceval's failure to ask the restorative question opens a perspective of death and destruction of apocalyptic proportions which, with the essentially chivalric aspects of Chrétien's work, are elaborated in the first two verse Continuations by anonymous authors c.1195-1210.
The First Continuation takes Gauvain as its hero; although he visits the Grail Castle and asks appropriate questions, the devastation is not ended as he falls asleep from exhaustion before hearing the answers. This continuation is purely an adventure romance and interpolates another entire story based on Welsh folk-tales, that of Caradoc Briebras. The Second Continuation reverts to Perceval as hero, but again has little interest in the moral or spiritual dimensions of Chrétien's work. Perceval also rides from adventure to adventure, hunting the white stag, retrieving a magic hunting dog, doing battle in enchanted lands. The author is so little concerned with piety and chastity that not only does Perceval spend a night with Blancheflor, his love from Chrétien's poem, but he also sleeps with the lady on whose behalf he hunted the white stag. The continuation breaks off at the point where Perceval was about to ask the spell-breaking questions. Two further verse continuations, by Manessier and Gerbert de Montreuil, dating from the late 1220s or 1230s, finally bring the story to a close, but only after several more peripeteia, which are chivalric in nature and not obviously linked to the quest. However, both these writers have experienced the influence of the ascetic Queste del Saint Graal (c.1225-30, see below); they accentuate the Eucharistic features of the story and emphasize Perceval's chastity.
Despite some allusions towards the end of Chrétien's account, the first systematic treatment of Eucharistic symbolism in the Grail stories is due to Robert de Boron. His Estoire du Saint Graal (or Joseph d'Arimathie) exploits Genesis and Exodus, Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae, and Wace's Roman de Brut, as well as the Gospels and apocrypha, to make the Grail both the dish from which Christ ate the Paschal lamb and the vessel in which His blood was collected at the Crucifixion, and to have it transported with its guardian priesthood to Britain, while the lance becomes the Lance of Longinus, the Roman centurion who pierced Christ's side. The Merlin uses the figure of the Celtic wizard-prophet, sired by an incubus on a virgin, who was instrumental in the birth and education of Arthur, to make the Arthurian realm central to a universal scheme of salvation. Perceval, the last part of Robert's trilogy, introduces the Grail-winner to the Round Table, where he is identified by the splitting of the ‘stone of destiny’ when he sits in the Siege Perilous. He visits the Grail Castle twice under the close tutelage of Merlin before asking the required questions and inheriting the duties of priest-king, guardian of the Grail. The ‘speaking stone’ is made whole and the adventures of Arthur's realm come to an end.
At about the same time as the prose adaptations of Robert de Boron's works were being made (c.1200-12), the monks of Glastonbury produced their own version of the Grail story, Le Haut Livre du Graal or Perlesvaus. This text has demonstrably pious intentions (several sections begin with invocations of the Trinity), but it was also intended to promote the abbey's Arthurian relics, and so puts much emphasis on chivalric adventure. There are three principal questers (Perceval, Lancelot, and Gauvain), none of whom is debarred by sin from participating, although Perceval remains the hero. Unlike in any other version, the Fisher King dies and the Grail and Lance are removed from Britain to a spiritual home before Perceval completes the quest, which thus centres on the winning of ‘Grail substitutes’, notably a gold circlet. The quest completed, Perceval travels over the western seas to a blessed land, amid reminiscences of Celtic myth and folk-tale and of the Voyage de saint Brendan [see Anglo-Norman Literature, 6a].
Like all the other texts considered so far, the Perlesvaus remains firmly committed to the courtly ethos, but the Queste del Saint Graal, composed as part of the Lancelot cycle, takes a firmly ascetic, uncourtly stance at the hands of a Cistercian writer. Gauvain fails because he is an habitual homicide and womanizer; Lancelot carries the stigma of his adultery with Guenièvre, and is seared by the Grail. He is given the role of penitent. Perceval is demoted to a subsidiary role, dying at the completion of the quest. The new hero is the virgin Galaad, predestined to his role in a purely religious and non-heroic sense. The enemies to be overcome are devils and sins personified, and the allegorical meaning of every adventure is expounded by White Monks. The narrative scheme embraces the whole divine plan of salvation from Eden to the New Jerusalem, represented by Sarras, the city where Galaad officiates as priest-king on the model of Melchisedech, and where he contemplates the final mystery of the Grail, which centres on the nature of the Trinity and transubstantiation. After the ultimate mystical experience Galaad is translated to Heaven, leaving his other companion Bohort to return to Arthur's court to recount what he knows. The marvels of Britain are at an end, as is the purpose of the Round Table, which will be destroyed in the bloody, internecine strife of La Mort le Roi Artu.
[Philip Bennett]
Bibliography
- J. Marx, La Légende arthurienne et le graal (1952)
- J. Markale, Le Graal (1982)
- C. Méla, La Reine et le Graal (1984)
