Holy Grail
The Holy Grail is a treasure that serves as an important motif in Arthurian literature. Various traditions describe the Holy Grail as a cup, dish, or stone with miraculous healing powers, sometimes providing eternal youth or sustenance in infinite abundance, often guarded in the custody of the Fisher King and located in the hidden Grail castle. By analogy, any elusive object or goal of great significance may be perceived as a "holy grail" by those seeking such.
A mysterious "grail", wondrous but not unequivocally holy, first appears in Perceval, the Story of the Grail, an unfinished chivalric romance written by Chrétien de Troyes around 1190. Chrétien's story inspired many continuations, translators and interpreters in the later-12th and early-13th centuries, including Wolfram von Eschenbach, who portrayed the Grail as a stone in Parzival. The Christian, Celtic or possibly other origins of the Arthurian grail trope are uncertain and have been debated among literary scholars and historians.
Writing soon after Chrétien, Robert de Boron in portrayed the Grail as Jesus's vessel from the Last Supper, which Joseph of Arimathea used to catch Christ's blood at the crucifixion. Thereafter, the Holy Grail became interwoven with the legend of the Holy Chalice, the Last Supper cup, an idea continued in works such as the Lancelot-Grail cycle, and subsequently the 15th-century Le Morte d'Arthur. In this form, it is now a popular theme in modern culture, and has become the subject of folklore studies, pseudohistorical writings, works of fiction, and conspiracy theories.
Etymology
The word graal, as it is spelled in its earliest appearances, comes from Old French common noun graal or greal, cognate with Old Occitan grazal and Old Catalan gresal, meaning "a cup or bowl of earth, wood, or metal". Its origin is uncertain. One unlikely is the Old Welsh word griol. The most commonly accepted etymology derives it from Latin gradalis or gradale via an earlier form, cratalis, a derivative of crater or cratus, which was, in turn, borrowed from Ancient Greek krater. Alternative suggestions include a derivative of cratis, a name for a type of woven basket that came to refer to a dish, or a derivative of Latin gradus meaning by degree', 'by stages', applied to a dish brought to the table in different stages or services during a meal".In the 15th century, English writer John Hardyng invented a fanciful new etymology for Old French san-graal, meaning "Holy Grail", by parsing it as sang réal, meaning "royal blood". This etymology was used by some later medieval British writers such as Thomas Malory, and became prominent in the conspiracy theory developed in the book The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail, in which sang real refers to the Jesus bloodline.
Medieval literature
Overview
The literature surrounding the Grail can be divided into two branches. The first concerns King Arthur's knights visiting the Grail castle or questing after the object:- Perceval, the Story of the Grail, a chivalric romance poem by Chrétien de Troyes where a girl mysteriously carries it in a procession. When first described by Chrétien, the marvelous nature of "a grail" is mysteriously unexplained. There, it is a salver, a tray used to serve at a feast.
- The four continuations of Chrétien's unfinished poem, by authors of differing vision, designed to bring the story to a close.
- The, purportedly a prosification of Robert de Boron's lost sequel to his romance poems and Merlin.
- Parzival by Wolfram von Eschenbach, where it is a gemstone linked to the fall of the angels.
- Welsh romance Peredur son of Efrawg, a loose translation of Chrétien's poem and the Continuations, with some influence from native Welsh literature. It had no Grail as such, presenting the hero instead with a platter containing his kinsman's bloody, severed head.
- Perlesvaus, an alternative work inspired by Perceval.
- German poem Diu Crône by Heinrich von dem Türlin, in which Gawain, rather than Perceval, achieves the Grail.
- The Prose Lancelot section of the vast Lancelot-Grail cycle introduced the new Grail hero, Galahad. The Vulgate Queste del Saint Graal, a follow-up part of the cycle, ends with the eventual achievement of the Grail by Galahad. The story was rewritten in the Post-Vulgate Cycle and other derivative works.
- Robert de Boron's Joseph d'Arimathie and Merlin, establishing the Grail as the vessel of the Last Supper.
- The Vulgate Estoire del Saint Graal and the Vulgate Merlin, parts of the Lancelot-Grail cycle based on Robert's telling but expanding it greatly with many new details. It, too, was then rewritten in the Post-Vulgate, as well as in the Prose Tristan.
Chrétien de Troyes and continuators
While dining in the magical castle 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". Perceval, who had been warned against talking too much, remains silent through all of this and wakes up the next morning alone. Later, a hermit informs Perceval that the latter is a "very holy thing" in which a host is served that miraculously keeps the crippled Fisher King alive. If Perceval had asked the appropriate questions about the meaning of the lance and the grail, he would have healed his maimed host.
Chrétien refers to this object not as "the Grail" but as "a grail", showing the word was used, in its earliest literary context, as a common noun. For Chrétien, a 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 Communion wafer. 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 Communion wafer to be the significant part of the ritual, and the Grail to be a mere prop. Hélinand of Froidmont's Chronicon described it as a "wide and deep saucer". It is also mentioned by others such as Rigaut de Barbezieux.
Chrétien's Perceval does not achieve the quest, but four different authors attempted to completed his unfinished story in their own poems known as Perceval Continuations that include two successive follow up tales and then two alternative endings. In these works, the mysteries left unsolved by Chrétien develop an explicitly Christian character, transforming a chivalric adventure into a mystical religious quest, undertaken by not only Perceval but also Gawain.
The First Continuation seemingly features two grails: a floating dish and a carved head of Jesus. The Third Continuation has it again as carried by a girl. Here, the Fisher King dies and is replaced by Perceval, after whose death the Grail is taken to Heaven.
German stories
In Parzival, the author Wolfram von Eschenbach, citing the authority of a certain Kyot the Provençal, claimed the Grail was a gemstone, the sanctuary of the neutral angels who took neither side during Lucifer's rebellion. It is called lapis exillis, which in alchemy is the name of the philosopher's stone. In Wolfram's telling, the Grail was kept safe at the castle of Munsalvaesche, entrusted to Titurel, the first Grail King. The stone grants eternal life to its guardian. First, Gawain fails his quest, given to him by the elven king Vergulaht. In the end, Perceval replaces the maimed and long suffering Anfortas as the new Grail King, having finally released him by correctly answering his question.In Diu Crône, a secularised and subversive of version of the Grail Quest, has Gawain as the main Grail Knight. The work also notably features the figure of the crowned Grail Goddess in a much larger role than an usual Grail Maiden. Uniquely across the Grail legend, it is Gawain who solves the mystery and releases the Grail King from his state of living death, after which the entire cursed court of the Grail Kingdom vanishes.
Robert de Boron and continuators
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 its Christian context. In his 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 west to Britain, where he founds a dynasty of Grail keepers that eventually includes Perceval.Robert returned to the subject of the Grail as a major theme in Merlin where he linked it to the figure of Merlin, turned by him into a Grail prophet who orders the construction of the Round Table as a successor item to the previous Grail tables of Jesus and Joseph. Perceval himself is the subject of the Prose Perceval, a rare work sometimes attributed to Robert that presents a revised and completed version of Chrétien's story while simultaneously also serving as a continuation to Joseph and Merlin.
In the anonymous prose Perlesvaus, another but markedly different continuation of Chrétien's Perceval, the Grail is a holy blood relic creating mystical visions and appearing in the form of a hovering chalice, apparently as inspired by the works of de Boron. It a religious militant work where its hero Perlesvaus punishes infidels and conquers the Grail castle in an allegory for establishing the Kingdom of Jerusalem.
The vast prose Vulgate Cycle finished the story set up by Robert de Boron in Joseph and Merlin, the works themselves incorporated into the cycle in an expanded form as the Vulgate Estoire dou Graal and the Vulgate Merlin, in the continuation known as the Vulgate Queste del Saint Graal. Here, the main Grail hero is Galahad, son of the world's hitherto greatest knight, Lancelot, and the Fisher King's daughter and the Grail Bearer at the castle of Corbenic, Elaine. Both of his parents come from Biblical lineages and he is destined to achieve the Grail, a symbol of divine grace, as the virgin Galahad's spiritual purity makes him superior to even his illustrious father.
In the Estoire, the definition and characterization of the Grail change over the course of the story. It is initially only mentioned as the holy "bowl", then is referred to as a "vase", before definitively becoming a cup and the "grail". It is also kept in a marvelous ark and forbidden to ordinary mortals, reminiscent of the Ark of the Covenant. The Grail again appears in the Vulgate Lancelot, featured in a story loosely based on Chrétien, as well as in a new original episode of Elaine using it to cure Lancelot's madness. In the Queste, the corruption of the inhabitants of Britain resulted in the loss of the Grail and its return to the Middle Eastern city of Sarras.
The Queste tells of the adventures of various Knights of the Round Table in their eponymous great quest in search of the Grail, who embark on it against the worried Arthur's reservations and wander throughout Britain and the broader world alone or in small groups. Perceval and Bors eventually join Galahad, who had been earlier proved uniquely worthy and predestined for it by surviving the Siege Perilous. They are present as his companions at the successful end of the Grail Quest, when they witness his ascension to Heaven. The mystery of the Grail is finally unveiled as containing an incarnation of Christ. Perceval himself dies after a year in a hermitage in Sarras. A total of 72 knights perish and the Round Table never fully recovers, setting the stage for the collapse of the Arthurian world in the cycle's final part, the Mort Artu.
Variants of the Grail Quest based on that from the Vulgate Cycle are featured in the long version of the Prose Tristan and in the Post-Vulgate Cycle. The Galahad-centered tradition was later picked by Thomas Malory for his Le Morte d'Arthur and remains popular today. Based on the Vulgate Queste in an abridged form, Malory's telling accordingly elevates Galahad above Perceval, the latter reduced to a secondary role in the Quest. Uniquely, Malory described the Grail as invisible, apparently confused by his French source text's mention of an invisible Grail bearer.