The beginnings of the Grail in literature
Chr�tien de Troyes
The Grail is first featured in Perceval, le Conte du
Graal (The Story of the Grail) by Chr�tien 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'.
Chr�tien 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 Chr�tien 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 honour. The
story of the Wounded King's mystical fasting is not unique;
several saints were said to have lived without food besides
communion, Saint Catherine of Genoa is one example. This may
imply that Chr�tien intended the mass wafer to be the
significant part of the ritual, and the Grail to be a mere
prop.
Robert de Boron
Though Chr�tien'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 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 Valencia cathedral, which
contains an artefact, 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 artefact 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 Palaestina 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.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holy_grail
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