Monsalvat: the Parsifal home page | Spear | Holy Grail
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Monsalvat: the Parsifal home page | Spear | Holy Grail
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Above: Henri Fantin-Latour: The Grail (Prelude to Lohengrin), 1892. |
 The Grail, according to my own interpretation, is the goblet used at the Last Supper in which Joseph of Arimathea caught the Saviour's blood on the Cross. 
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he
legends of the Holy Grail are woven of three strands: a Celtic
tradition of otherworld vessels and supernaturally powerful weapons;
an Arabic or Byzantine tradition of a mysterious stone that had fallen from the heavens; and a
Christian tradition, perhaps of Gnostic or heretical origin, of a
mysterious talisman.
essie Weston held the view that there lay at the root of the Grail
tradition, the rites of a secret mystery cult. The Grail might have
been a sacramental dish of the kind used in the Orphic tradition
and apparently taken over by the Christian Church; this possibility is explored in the fourth
volume of Joseph Campbell's The Masks of God. Miss Weston also suggested that the Bleeding
Lance, carried by a squire, and the Grail, carried by a maiden, must
have been originally symbolic elements of a classical mystery rite.
oomis held the alternative view that the origin of the Grail legends
was Celtic. The Celtic gods of the Underworld or of the Land Beneath
the Waves (Nodens or Nuadua, Gwynn ap Nudd, Manannnan Mac Lir, Bran the Blessed) possessed magic vessels of inexhaustible ambrosia and were to be found
in mysterious castles hidden in mist, surrounded by water or by
impenetrable forest.
olfram's Parzival contains passages that reveal a knowledge of
events in the Levant, as might have been told by returning crusaders. Indeed, Wolfram claims to have taken his subject matter from a book given to him by
Philip, Duke of Flanders, who had been in those lands in 1177. He also cites as a source a
certain mysterious Kyot, who provided him with further material from the
south of France or perhaps Moorish Spain (and the Kabbalah of the Spanish
Jews). So there are Arabic and other exotic elements in Wolfram's story that do not appear in
his primary source, Chrétien's unfinished poem.
n Wolfram's account, the Grail is a stone that fell from the heavens. It is by
the power of this stone that the phoenix rises from the ashes. Hence Wagner's reference to the meteoric stone
in the mosque
at Mecca.
ith the
appearance in 1136 of The History of the Kings of Britain, an extraordinary book
written by Geoffrey of Monmouth, the names of the mythical hero Arthur and the mythical wizard
Merlin became inseparably linked. The book became the medieval equivalent of a best seller,
with an enormous number of copies being made (in an age before the printing press) and
circulated throughout western Europe. Many adaptations and paraphrases were made in Latin prose
and verse, and then vernacular versions appeared in Old English, Old French or Welsh. The
characters and ideas of Geoffrey's book were developed by French writers, such as Marie de
France and Chrétien de Troyes. Other tales were related to the
court of Arthur: these included the love story of Tristam and Yseult or Tristan
and Isolde (of which the earliest version appeared around 1150) and the story of the Grail
and its guardian, the Fisher King.
he medieval
romances that tell of the Holy Grail divide into two groups. In the first group are the
different versions of the story of the quester who visits the Grail
Castle, where he witnesses miracles but fails to ask the vital Question. In the earlier versions of this story, the quester is either Gawain or Perceval. In the second and smaller group are the romances dealing with the
early history of the Grail. These describe the history of a sacred vessel in which the blood of
Christ had been captured. Joseph Campbell divided the literature of Arthur, Merlin and the Holy
Grail into four overlapping phases:
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he first of
these phases was concentrated on Arthur and Merlin. In the second, the focus moved to the
knights of Arthur's court, including Perceval
and Gawain, whose adventures were described in Chrétien's Perceval ou Le Conte du
Graal. Loomis and other scholars have argued that, in view
of the differences and similarities between the story of Peredur in
the Mabinogion and the French works, both Perceval and Peredur son of
Evrawc must have derived from a common predecessor, probably written in French, which
has been lost without trace.
he third
phase was motivated by an attempt by the Church to take over the popular figures and events of
the courtly romances and to utilise them in the promotion of Christian doctrines. There were
two major components in this movement:
n the final
phase, the literature of the Holy Grail reached its apogee in the work of the poet-knight Wolfram. As Oswald Spengler pointed out, it was with Wolfram that western civilisation arrived at a mythology of inwardly
motivated quest, directed from within: the tragic line of the individual life develops from
within outward, dynamically, functionally
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n the last of
the Continuations to Chrétien, probably written about 1230, the
Fisher King reveals that the bleeding spear is the lance that pierced the side of
Christ and that the Grail is the cup in which Joseph of Arimathea caught the blood of Christ. This interpretation is also described in Robert de Boron's
Joseph d'Arimathie, finished about
1199. There is one element of de Boron's story that found its way into Wagner's story although it does
not appear either in Chrétien or the Continuations: the Grail
ceremony induces pain in any sinner present. None of this is found in Wolfram and it may be supposed that Wagner had read a text that referred to,
or summarised, Joseph d'Arimathie.
esearch has
not yet fully identified the immediate sources for Wagner's summary of the Grail literature. His claim to have
invented the interpretation of the Grail as a chalice is disingenuous. There is evidence that Wagner had read Chrétien de
Troyes and the Continuations in the edition by Ch. Potvin,
published in seven volumes between 1866 and 1871. The first of Potvin's volumes contains a work that has no direct connection with Chrétien: the Perlesvaus, a
prose romance that scholars believe was written in northern France, a few years after the death
of Chrétien and perhaps as late as 1225. The first sentence in
the book is the following: The history of the holy vessel which is called Grail, in which
the precious blood of the Saviour was received on the day He
was crucified in order to redeem His people from hell ...
agner was
familiar with the work of contemporary scholars on the sources of Wolfram's epic but dismissed the interpretation of the Grail as a stone
brought to earth by angels. Wagner adopted the Christianised
version of the Grail but discarded the Question entirely, made
the recovery of the spear the focus of the story and changed some of
the names from those found in Wolfram's poem. Many other elements he
used, however: such as the election of those who might find their way to the Grail, the
life-preserving power of the Grail and the descending dove. Intelligent
guesses can be made about Wagner's familiarity with the writings of Chrétien de Troyes, Robert de Boron and
others, at first probably through secondary sources, such as German authors of the early 19th
century, including the commentary on Parzival by San-Marte.
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There are many sites on the Web that refer to the Holy Grail. Here is selection diverse and interesting sites, some of them with lists of links:
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And what exactly were they going to do with this Grail when they found it, Mr.
Rossetti?
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