How at the Castle of Corbin a Maiden Bare in the Sangreal and Foretold the Achievements of Galahad: illustration by
Arthur Rackham, 1917
According to Christian mythology, the Holy Grail was the dish, plate, or
cup used by Jesus at the Last Supper, said to possess
miraculous powers. The connection of Joseph of Arimathea with the Grail legend dates
from Robert de Boron's Joseph d'Arimathie (late 12th century) in which Joseph
receives the Grail from an apparition of Jesus and sends it with his followers to Great
Britain; building upon this theme, later writers recounted how Joseph used the Grail to catch Christ's blood while interring him and that in Britain he founded a line of guardians to keep it safe. The quest
for the Holy Grail makes up an important segment of the Arthurian cycle, appearing first in
works by Chrétien de Troyes.[1] The legend may combine Christian lore with a
Celtic myth of a cauldron endowed with special
powers.
The development of the Grail legend has been traced in detail by cultural historians: It is a legend which first came together
in the form of written romances, deriving perhaps from some pre-Christian folklore hints, in the later 12th and early 13th centuries. The early Grail romances centered on
Percival and were woven into the more general Arthurian fabric.
Some of the Grail legend is interwoven with legends of the Holy Chalice.
Origins of the Grail
The Grail
The Grail plays a different role everywhere it appears, but in most versions of the legend the hero must prove himself worthy
to be in its presence. In the early tales, Percival's immaturity prevents him from fulfilling
his destiny when he first encounters the Grail, and he must grow spiritually and mentally before he can locate it again. In later
tellings the Grail is a symbol of God's grace, available to all but only fully realized by those who prepare themselves
spiritually, like the saintly Galahad.
Early forms of the Grail
There are two veins of thought concerning the Grail's origin. The first, championed by Roger Sherman Loomis, Alfred Nutt, and Jessie Weston, holds that it derived from early Celtic myth and
folklore. Loomis traced a number of parallels between Medieval Welsh
literature and Irish material and the Grail romances, including similarities
between the Mabinogion's Bran the Blessed
and the Arthurian Fisher King, and between Bran's life-restoring cauldron and the Grail.
Other legends featured magical platters or dishes that symbolize otherworldly power or test the hero's worth. Sometimes the items
generate a never-ending supply of food, sometimes they can raise the dead. Sometimes they decide who the next king should be, as
only the true sovereign could hold them.
On the other hand, some scholars believe the Grail began as a purely Christian symbol. For example, Joseph Goering of the
University of Toronto has identified sources for Grail imagery in 12th century
wall paintings from churches in the Catalan Pyrenees (now
mostly removed to the Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya,
Barcelona), which present unique iconic images of the Virgin Mary holding a bowl that radiates tongues of fire, images that predate the first literary
account by Chrétien de Troyes. Goering argues that they were the original inspiration
for the Grail legend.[2][3]
Another recent theory holds that the earliest stories that cast the Grail in a Christian light were meant to promote the
Roman Catholic sacrament of the
Holy Communion. Although the practice of Holy Communion was first alluded to in the Christian
Bible and defined by theologians in the first centuries AD, it was around the time of the
appearance of the first Christianized Grail literature that the Roman church was beginning to add more ceremony and mysticism
around this particular sacrament. Thus, the first Grail stories may have been celebrations of a renewal in this traditional
sacrament.[4] This theory has some basis in the fact that
the Grail legends are a phenomenon of the Western church (see below).
Most scholars today accept that both Christian and Celtic traditions contributed to the legend's development, though many of
the early Celtic-based arguments are largely discredited (Loomis himself came to reject much of Weston and Nutt's work). The
general view is that the central theme of the Grail is Christian, even when not explicitly religious, but that much of the
setting and imagery of the early romances is drawn from Celtic material.
Etymology of grail
The word graal, as it is earliest spelled, appears to be an Old French adaptation
of the Latin gradalis, meaning a dish brought to the table in different stages of a meal.
According to the Catholic Encyclopedia, after the cycle of Grail
romances was well established, late medieval
writers came up with a false etymology for sangréal, an alternative name for
"Holy Grail." In Old French, san graal or san gréal means "Holy Grail" and
sang réal means "royal blood"; later writers played on this pun. Since then, "Sangreal" is sometimes employed to lend a
medievalizing air in referring to the Holy Grail. This connection with royal blood bore fruit in a modern bestseller linking many
historical conspiracy theories (see below).
The beginnings of the Grail in literature
Chrétien de Troyes
The Grail is first featured in Perceval, le Conte du Graal
(The Story of the Grail) by Chrétien de Troyes, who claims he was working from
a source book given to him by his patron, Count Philip of Flanders. In this
incomplete poem, dated sometime between 1180 and 1191, the object has
not yet acquired the implications of holiness it would have in later works. While dining in the magical abode of the Fisher King,
Perceval witnesses a wondrous procession in which youths carry magnificent objects from one chamber to another, passing before
him at each course of the meal. First comes a young man carrying a bleeding lance, then two boys carrying candelabras. Finally, a
beautiful young girl emerges bearing an elaborately decorated graal, or "grail."
Chrétien refers to his object not as "The Grail" but as un graal, showing the word was used, in its earliest literary
context, as a common noun. For Chrétien the grail was a wide, somewhat deep dish or bowl, interesting because it contained not a
pike, salmon or lamprey, as the audience may have expected for such a container, but a single Mass wafer which provided
sustenance for the Fisher King’s crippled father. Perceval, who had been warned against talking too much, remains silent through
all of this, and wakes up the next morning alone. He later learns that if he had asked the appropriate questions about what he
saw, he would have healed his maimed host, much to his honor. The story of the Wounded King's mystical
fasting is not unique; several saints were said to have lived without food besides communion, for instance Saint
Catherine of Genoa. This may imply that Chrétien intended the Mass wafer to be the
significant part of the ritual, and the Grail to be a mere prop.
Robert de Boron
Though Chrétien’s account is the earliest and most influential of all Grail texts, it was in the work of Robert de Boron that the Grail truly became the "Holy Grail" and assumed the form most familiar to
modern readers. In his verse romance Joseph d’Arimathie, composed between 1191 and
1202, Robert tells the story of Joseph of Arimathea
acquiring the chalice of the Last Supper to collect Christ’s blood upon His removal from the cross. Joseph is thrown in prison
where Christ visits him and explains the mysteries of the blessed cup. Upon his release Joseph gathers his in-laws and other
followers and travels to the west, and founds a dynasty of Grail keepers that eventually includes Perceval.
The Grail in other early literature
After this point, Grail literature divides into two classes. The first concerns King Arthur’s knights visiting the Grail
castle or questing after the object; the second concerns the Grail’s history in the time of Joseph of Arimathea.
The nine most important works from the first group are:
- The Perceval of Chrétien de Troyes.
- Four continuations of Chrétien’s poem, by authors of differing
vision and talent, designed to bring the story to a close.
- The German Parzival by Wolfram von
Eschenbach, which adapted at least the holiness of Robert’s Grail into the framework of Chrétien’s story.
- The Didot Perceval, named after the manuscript’s former owner, and purportedly a prosification of Robert de Boron’s
sequel to Joseph d’Arimathie.
- The Welsh romance Peredur,
generally included in the Mabinogion, likely at least indirectly founded on Chrétien's
poem but including very striking differences from it, preserving as it does elements of pre-Christian traditions such as the
Celtic cult of the head.
- Perlesvaus, called the "least canonical" Grail romance because of its very
different character.
- The German Diu Crône (The Crown), in which Gawain, rather than Perceval, achieves the Grail.
- The Lancelot section of the vast Vulgate
Cycle, which introduces the new Grail hero, Galahad.
- The Queste del Saint Graal, another part of the Vulgate Cycle, concerning the
adventures of Galahad and his achievement of the Grail.
Of the second class there are:
- Robert de Boron’s Joseph d’Arimathie,
- The Estoire del Saint Graal, the first part of the Vulgate Cycle (but written after Lancelot and the
Queste), based on Robert’s tale but expanding it greatly with many new details.
Though all these works have their roots in Chrétien, several contain pieces of tradition not found in Chrétien which are
possibly derived from earlier sources.
Ideas of the Grail
The Grail was considered a bowl or dish when first described by Chrétien de Troyes. Other authors had their own ideas; Robert
de Boron portrayed it as the vessel of the Last Supper, and Peredur had no Grail per se, presenting the hero instead with
a platter containing his kinsman's bloody, severed head. In Parzival, Wolfram von Eschenbach, citing the authority of a
certain (probably fictional) Kyot the Provençal, claimed the Grail was a stone that fell from
Heaven, and had been the sanctuary of the Neutral Angels who took neither side during Lucifer's rebellion. The authors of the Vulgate Cycle used the Grail as a symbol of divine grace. Galahad, illegitimate son of Lancelot and Elaine, the world's greatest knight and the Grail Bearer at the castle of Corbenic, is destined to achieve the Grail, his spiritual purity making him a greater warrior than even his
illustrious father. Galahad and the interpretation of the Grail involving him were picked up in the 15th century by Sir Thomas Malory in Le Morte d'Arthur, and remain popular today.
Various notions of the Holy Grail are currently widespread in Western society (especially British, French and American),
popularized through numerous medieval and modern works (see below) and linked with the predominantly Anglo-French (but also with
some German influence) cycle of stories about King Arthur and his knights. Because of this wide distribution, Americans and West
Europeans sometimes assume that the Grail idea is universally well known. The stories of the Grail, however, are totally absent
from the folklore of those countries that were and are Eastern Orthodox (whether
Arabs, Slavs, Romanians, or Greeks). This is true of all Arthurian myths, which were not well known east of Germany until the
present-day Hollywood retellings. Nor has the Grail been as popular a subject in some predominantly Catholic areas, such as
Spain and Latin America, as it has been elsewhere. The
notions of the Grail, its importance, and prominence, are a set of ideas that are essentially local and particular, being linked
with Catholic or formerly Catholic locales, Celtic mythology and Anglo-French medieval storytelling. The contemporary wide
distribution of these ideas is due to the huge influence of the pop culture of countries where the Grail Myth was prominent in
the Middle Ages.
The later legend
Belief in the Grail and interest in its potential whereabouts has never ceased. Ownership has been attributed to various
groups (including the Knights Templar, probably because they were at the peak of their
influence around the time that Grail stories started circulating in the 12th and 13th centuries).
There are cups claimed to be the Grail in several churches, for instance the Saint Mary of Valencia Cathedral, which contains an artifact, the Holy Chalice, supposedly taken by Saint Peter to Rome in the first century, and then to Huesca in Spain by Saint Lawrence in the 3rd century. Archaeologists say the artifact is a 1st century Middle Eastern stone
vessel, possibly from Antioch, Syria (now Turkey); its history can be traced to the 11th century, and it presently rests atop an ornate stem and base, made
in the Medieval era of alabaster, gold, and gemstones. It was the official papal chalice for many popes, and has been used by
many others, most recently by Pope Benedict XVI, on July
9, 2006.[5] The
emerald chalice at Genoa, which was obtained during the Crusades
at Caesarea Maritima at great cost, has been less championed as the Holy Grail since
an accident on the road, while it was being returned from Paris after the fall of Napoleon, revealed that the emerald was green glass.
In Wolfram von Eschenbach's telling, the Grail was kept safe at the castle of Munsalvaesche
(mons salvationis), entrusted to Titurel, the first Grail King. Some, not least the monks of Montserrat, have identified
the castle with the real sanctuary of Montserrat in Catalonia, Spain. Other stories claim that the Grail is buried beneath
Rosslyn Chapel or lies deep in the spring at Glastonbury Tor. Still other stories claim that a secret line of hereditary protectors keep the Grail,
or that it was hidden by the Templars in Oak Island, Nova
Scotia's famous "Money Pit", while local folklore in Accokeek, Maryland says that it was brought to the town by a closeted priest aboard Captain
John Smith's ship.
Modern interpretations
Casual metaphor
The legend of the Holy Grail is the basis of the use of the term holy grail in modern-day culture. Something referred
to as a "holy grail" is seen as the distant, all-but-unobtainable ultimate goal for a person, organization, or field to
achieve.
Modern retellings
The story of the Grail and of the quest to find it became increasingly popular in the nineteenth century, referred to in
literature such as Alfred Tennyson's Arthurian cycle the
Idylls of the King. The combination of hushed reverence, chromatic harmonies
and sexualized imagery in Richard Wagner's late opera Parsifal gave new significance to the grail theme, for the first time associating the grail – now
periodically producing blood – directly with female fertility.[6] The high seriousness of the subject was also epitomized in Dante Gabriel Rossetti's painting (illustrated), in which a woman modelled by
Jane Morris holds the Grail with one hand, while adopting a gesture of blessing with the
other. Other artists, including George Frederic Watts and William Dyce also portrayed grail subjects.
The Grail later turned up in movies; it debuted in a silent Parsifal. In The Light of Faith (1922), Lon Chaney attempted to steal it, for the finest of reasons.
The Silver Chalice, a novel about the Grail by Thomas B. Costain was made into a 1954 movie (in which Paul
Newman debuted), that is considered notably bad by several critics, including Newman himself. Lancelot du Lac (1974) is Robert Bresson's gritty retelling. In vivid contrast, Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975) (adapted in
2004 as the stage production Spamalot) deflated all pseudo-Arthurian posturings.
Excalibur attempted to restore a more traditional heroic representation of an
Arthurian tale, in which the Grail is revealed as a mystical means to revitalise Arthur himself, and of the barren land to which
his depressive sickness is connected. Indiana Jones and the Last
Crusade and The Fisher King place the quest in modern settings,
one a modern-day treasure hunt, the other robustly self-parodying.
The Grail has been used as a theme in fantasy, historical fiction and science fiction; a quest for the Grail appears in
Bernard Cornwell's series of books The Grail
Quest, set during The Hundred Years War. Michael Moorcock's fantasy novel The War Hound
and the World's Pain depicts a supernatural Grail quest set in the era of the Thirty Years' War, and science fiction has taken the Quest into interstellar space, figuratively in
Samuel R. Delany's 1968 novel Nova, and
literally on the television shows Babylon 5 and Stargate SG-1 (as the "Sangreal"). Marion Zimmer Bradley's The Mists of Avalon
has the grail as one of four objects symbolizing the four Elements: the Grail itself (water), the sword Excalibur (air), a
dish (earth), and a spear or wand (fire). The grail features heavily in the novels of Peter
David's Knight trilogy, which depict King Arthur reappearing in modern-day New York City, in particular the second
and third novels, One Knight Only and Fall of Knight. The grail is central in many modern Arthurian works,
including Charles Williams collections of poems about Taliessin, Taliessin Through Logres and Region of the Summer Stars, and in feminist author
Rosalind Miles' Child of the Holy Grail. The Grail was also the central focus of
the anime Fate/Stay Night, in which seven sorcerers with
their summoned servants battle it out to obtain the Holy Grail.
Non-fiction
The Grail has also been treated in works of non-fiction. According to the notorious
Italian traditionalist philosopher Julius Evola (1898-1974), the Holy Grail was an
initiatory "Hyperborean mystery" and also "a symbolic expression of hope and of the will of
specific ruling classes in the Middle Ages (namely, Ghibellines), who wanted to reorganize and reunite the entire Western world as it was at that
time into a Holy Empire, that is, one based on a transcendental, spiritual
basis."[7] Some scholars consider Evola's ideas on the Holy
Grail as sources for Pierre Plantard's later claims about a "Priory of Sion".[8]
In The Sign and the Seal, Graham
Hancock asserts that the Grail story is a coded description of the stone tablets stored in the Ark of the Covenant. For the authors of Holy
Blood, Holy Grail, who assert that their research ultimately reveals that Jesus may not have died on the cross, but
lived to wed Mary Magdalene and father children whose Merovingian lineage continues today, the Grail is a mere sideshow: they say it is a reference to Mary
Magdalene as the receptacle of Jesus' bloodline.[9] In
their book Swords at Sunset, Canadian authors Michael Bradley and Joelle Lauriol connect the Grail to the pseudohistorical
legend that Henry Sinclair came to the Americas (specifically
Lake Memphremagog in Vermont, USA) 100 years before Columbus;[10] this theory has been greeted with considerable skepticism. In an argument
drawing more closely on earlier "pro-Celtic" research, English author John Grigsby attempts
to connect themes of the Grail to other Indo-European myths, including
Osiris, Adonis and the Greek Dionysos in his book Warriors of the Wasteland. Grigsby interprets archaeological discoveries as
relating to the Arthurian mythos, for instance he believes the Lindow Man was a victim of the
Iron Age sacrificial rite that underlies the wounding of the Fisher King.[11]
These works of non-fiction have inspired a number of works of modern fiction. The best known is Dan Brown's bestselling novel The Da Vinci Code, which, like
Holy Blood, Holy Grail, is based on the idea that the real Grail is not a cup but the womb and later the earthly remains
of Mary Magdalene (again cast as Jesus' wife), plus a set of ancient documents telling
the "true" story of Jesus, his teachings and descendants. In Brown's novel, it is hinted that Jesus was merely a mortal man with
strong ideals, and that the Grail was long buried beneath Rosslyn Chapel in Scotland, but
that in recent decades its guardians had it relocated to a secret chamber embedded in the floor beneath the Inverted Pyramid near the Louvre Museum. The latter location, like
Rosslyn Chapel, has never been mentioned in real Grail lore. Yet such was the public
interest in this fictionalized Grail that for a while, the museum roped off the exact location mentioned by Brown, lest visitors
inflict any damage in a more-or-less serious attempt to access the supposed hidden chamber.
See also
References
- ^ Loomis, Roger Sherman (1991). The Grail: From Celtic Myth to Christian
Symbol. Princeton. ISBN 0-691-02075-2 [1]
- ^ Goering, Joseph (2005). The Virgin and the Grail: Origins of a
Legend. Yale University Press. ISBN 0-300-10661-0. [2]
- ^ Rynor, Micah (October 20, 2005). "Holy Grail legend may be tied to
paintings". www.news.utoronto.ca.
- ^ Barber, Richard (2004). The Holy Grail: Imagination and Belief,
Harvard University Press. ISBN 0-674-01390-5. [3]
- ^ Glatz, Carol (July 10, 2006). "At Mass in Valencia, pope uses
what tradition says is Holy Grail". Catholic News.
- ^ Donington, Robert (1963). Wagner's "Ring" and its Symbols: the Music and
the Myth. Faber
- ^ Hansen, H. T. The Mystery of
the Grail, p. vii.
- ^ Richardson, Robert (2000). "The Priory of Sion
Hoax". alpheus.org. Originally published in Gnosis (No. 51, Spring 1999), pp. 49-55. Retrieved March 29, 2007.
- ^ Baigent, Michael; Leigh, Richard; Lincoln, Henry (1983). Holy Blood,
Holy Grail. New York: Dell. ISBN 0-440-13648-2
- ^ Bradley, Michael; Lauriol, Joelle (2005). Swords at Sunset: Last Stand
of North America's Grail Knights. Ancaster, Ontario: Manor House. ISBN 0-9736477-4-4.
- ^ Grigsby, John (2003). Warriors of the Wasteland: A Quest for the Pagan
Sacrificial Cult Behind the Grail Legends. London: Duncan Baird Publishers. ISBN 1-84293-058-3
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