The Holy Grail

In Sir Thomas Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur, the Holy Grail is the cup used by Jesus Christ at the Last Supper.  It was later used to collect the blood of Christ, and is sought by all the knights of the Round Table.  But achievement of this quest is reserved for the very best—not those who excel in martial deeds, in combat and in tournament, but those whose devotion to God is strongest.  Malory’s version of the quest for the Holy Grail is the one that is best known today, and so it comes as a great shock to first-time readers of Arthurian literature that the oldest stories of the Grail are barely, if at all, Christian.  Certainly, the Grail as it first appears has little to do with the Last Supper, the Crucifixion, or the Christian sacrament of the Holy Eucharist.  How it came to be that way is a long and complex story.

The earliest texts that contain something like the Grail are Celtic—that is, Irish and Welsh—mythological stories.  How pagan Celtic stories came to appear in the France of the Middle Ages is a fascinating story in itself; the eminent Arthurian scholar of the early twentieth century, R. S. Loomis, has argued that pagan Irish stories were transmitted through Wales to Brittany, in northern France, and from Brittany into France, where they were Christianized; the remnants of the pagan stories can be detected through the veneer of Christian piety.

In “Branwen, Daughter of Llyr,” Bran, the king of Britain, has a cauldron, given him by giants.  This was originally the possession of Matholwch,  who befriended the giants and gave them places in his household.  However, after some time had passed, they became unruly, so Matholwch placed them in an iron house and, when they were drunk, set fire to piles of charcoal piled around it.  Llasar waited until it was white-hot, then charged through the wall.  They took the cauldron to Bran, and are now his faithful retainers.  As part of a treaty, Bran marries his sister, Branwen, to Matholwch, and he takes the cauldron with him to Ireland.  Branwen has a son by him, named Gwern; but when Matholwch starts abusing Branwen, Bran gathers an army, and crosses the sea to Ireland.  The British are victorious, and Gwern is acknowledged king of Ireland.  However, at the feast, Bran’s mischievous brother takes Gwern and throws him into the fire, whereupon the Irish cast all their warriors into the cauldron.  They return to life, though they are unspeaking.  Bran’s brother is cast into the cauldron, and stretches himself out, bursting the cauldron and his own heart.  There are only seven British survivors of the battle that ensues: Pryderi, Manawydan, Glifeu son of Taran, Taliesin, Ynawg, Gruddieu son of Muriel, and Heilyn son of Gwyn the Old.  No Irishmen survive, except five pregnant women, who repopulate Ireland.  Bran tells the survivors to strike off his head and bury it in the White Mount in London, stopping at Harddlech for seven years, while the Birds of Rhiannon sing to them, at Gwales in Penfro for fourscore years.  As soon as they open the door facing Aber Henfelen and Cornwall, they must leave Gwales and go at once to Cornwall.  All falls out as Bran has promised; but as soon as Heilyn opens the door, all the sorrows of their lives, which the assembly has allowed them to forget, return to them, and they move on to London.

This story is very similar to that told in the Middle Welsh poem, “Preiddeu Annwn,” or “The Spoils of Annwn.”  The details of this story are hard to get at, since Welsh storytelling at the time frequently relied on allusion rather than narrative; but we can discern the rudiments of a plot.  According to “The Spoils of Annwn,” Arthur leads a force of Britons—three shiploads—into Annwn, the Celtic Otherworld, in order to recover a magical cauldron.  This cauldron is guarded by nine maidens and will not boil the food of a coward.  In the ensuing battle, Arthur’s force is almost entirely wiped out, and only seven—including the narrator, Taliesin—return to tell the tale.  Curiously enough, this agrees with a number of details to be found in “Branwen, Daughter of Llyr,” and with an episode in another Mabinogion Tale, “How Culhwch Won Olwen.”  In order to be able to marry Olwen, daughter of Chief Giant Ysbaddaden, Culhwch must perform a series of impossible tasks, and enlists the assistance of Arthur and his warriors.  One thing he must obtain is the Cauldron of Diwrnach Wyddel, but it does not seem to have any supernatural attributes.  Nevertheless, Arthur sets forth to Ireland in his ship, Prydwen, and seizes the cauldron from its owner.  After a fight in which Llenlleawg Wyddel, one of Arthur’s warriors, brandishes Arthur’s own sword, Caledfwlch, Arthur is successful in returning to Britain with the cauldron.

In yet another Mabinogion story, “The Story of Taliesin,” Ceridwen the witch is boiling a potion of knowledge in a cauldron, which she intends for her own son; but the boy Gwydion, who tends the cauldron, accidentally drinks all that is useful from the potion when it splashes on his finger; this gives him all the gifts of shape-shifting and prophecy that he has later, renamed as Taliesin.

There is a final Mabinogion story, which is worth mentioning, “Peredur, son of Efrawg.”  In this, the hero sees a platter brought before him on which is a severed head.  Now, in its rough outline, this story follows that of Perceval, a poem written in the 1190s by the pioneer of Arthurian romance, Chrétien de Troyes.  In Chrétien’s story, Perceval, a rather blundering knight, finds himself at the castle of the mysterious Fisher King.  He sees a graal (what it might be is not explained fully, and it is introduced by the indefinite article, rather ingloriously) born through the hall but, although his curiosity is burning within him, he does not ask whom the graal serves, because of some advice he has been given earlier in the story.  When he awakens the following morning, the castle is empty, all around him is a waste land, a land withered by drought and blight, and he is chidden for not asking the question that was on his mind.  After a series of further adventures, Perceval at last returns to the Fisher King’s castle, asks the question, and restores the waste land to fertility.

Curiously, although Chrétien’s tale is relatively pious, the graal itself has no religious significance, and is certainly not the cup used by Christ at the Last Supper.  Indeed, its relationship to the restoration of the wilderness implies a connection with the cauldron of plenty from pre-Christian Celtic mythology.  The question is, how did it come to be identified with the cup of the Last Supper?  The answer to this lies in the closing chapters of the gospels.

One of the key figures in the legend of the Holy Grail is Joseph of Arimathea.  According to all four accounts in the New Testament, Joseph was a wealthy Jew, a member of the Sanhedrin, which sentenced Christ to death.  However, Joseph was secretly Christ’s follower, and after the Crucifixion, he begged Pontius Pilate for Christ’s body, wrapped it in linen, and sealed it in the tomb he had made for himself.  In the Gospel according to St. John, another member of the Sanhedrin called Nicodemus brought the necessary myrrh for the burial ritual.

In the early years of the Christian era, the Church had to choose very carefully which books it was going to consider canonical—i.e., which books had authority, and would be included in the official, authoritative, Church-sanctioned Bible.  There were a number of rival accounts of Christ’s life, and one of them, purporting to be written by Nicodemus, although rejected by the Church, was nevertheless widely known during the Middle Ages.  This was called the Acts of Pilate, though it became popular to called it the Gospel of Nicodemus from the sixteenth century on.  This account adds some further information to the story.  When rumours began circulating of Jesus’ resurrection, the Jews immediately seized Joseph, whom they suspected of hiding the body, and cast him into a dungeon.  However, Christ appeared to Joseph whilst in the dungeon, and released him, taking him first to the tomb, and next to his home town of Arimathea.

According to another account, Joseph traveled to the East on missionary work; according to medieval legend, he went to Britain, and founded the first Christian community in Glastonbury, widely believed to be Avalon.

This latter story originates with a French author, writing about 1215, called Robert de Boron.  Robert wrote a full version of the Arthurian story, placing at its centre not the conquest of Europe, but the quest for the Holy Grail.  And here, for the first time, the Grail is holy.  According to Robert, Joseph was a soldier in Pilate’s occupational force; when he begged for Jesus’ body, Pilate gave him a cup as an afterthought.  It was the cup that Christ had used at the Last Supper, at which he had celebrated the first Eucharist.  When Joseph and Nicodemus took down Christ’s body, the wounds bled profusely, and Joseph used the cup to collect the sacred blood.  After being released from his imprisonment by Vespasian, son of Emperor Titus, Joseph passes the Grail on to his brother-in-law, Bron, who takes it to Britain, where eventually it is sought by Arthur’s knights, and found by Perceval.

What were Robert’s sources?  What inspired him to combine the pagan cauldron of plenty with the Christian story of the Crucifixion in such a compelling way?  What had he heard or read that would cause him to make the single most exciting alteration to the way the Grail stories were told?

Daniel C. Scavone, professor emeritus at the University of Southern Indiana, has recently published a fascinating and compelling study that perhaps accounts for this curious transformation.  From the 4th century on, there are records of a relic in Edessa (now Urfa, Turkey), a bloodstained burial sheet bearing the image of Christ, that was shown only rarely in masses.  This was widely believed to be the actual burial sheet brought to Edessa by Joseph of Arimathea.  In 944, the Edessa Icon was moved to Constantinople, where it was stored in a rectangular case with a circular aperture through which Christ’s face was visible.  The image of Christ’s whole body was revealed to congregations gradually, in stages.  This was possibly because it was folded into eight sections, and expanded accordion-style; the Latin word gradalis, commonly thought to be the derivation of grail, means “by degrees.”  This, and the mystery surrounding both the Icon and the Grail, hint at a similarity between the two.  What is in some ways more convincing, however, is the fact that the royal palace complex in Edessa was called Britio Edessenorum; it is easy to see how a scribal error could have turned Joseph completely around, visiting Britain instead.

In 1204, the Edessa Icon disappeared.  At the time, knights on the Fourth Crusade were rioting in Constantinople, and it seems that one of them took the Icon.  For about a hundred and fifty years, the Edessa Icon disappeared.  It was possibly rediscovered in1355, in the possession of Geoffrey de Charny in Lirey, France.  This artifact is known today as the Turin Shroud.

It seems that what happened was that Robert de Boron combined the concept of the Celtic Cauldron of Plenty with the rumors of the Christian Edessa Icon, and it was this that gave his story the distinctly Christian overtones that have become familiar to us today.

Another feature common to the Grail legends, both Christian and pre-Christian, is the concept of the waste land, the land that is blighted until the Grail restores fertility. This too seems to have had its origins in a historical event.

If one’s only experience of the Arthurian legend is T. H. White’s The Once and Future King, or even Sir Thomas Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur, one might be forgiven for wondering why the Knights of the Round Table bother seeking the Grail at all.  Their motives seem to combine a kind of vague piety with a desire for adventure.  But the earlier stories are quite clear in this respect: the land is suffering.  The crops fail, disease stalks the land, and only the Grail can restore life to a barren waste land.  T. S. Eliot used this concept in his famous 1922 poem The Waste Land, which is about the moral, intellectual, and spiritual barrenness of the early twentieth century.  But its precedent was a sterility in the land and a pestilence among the people, for which the only remedy was the Grail—whether as a talisman of fertility or as a Eucharistic chalice.

In the year 535, a volcano of immense proportions erupted in southeast Asia, and catapulted 96,000 cubic feet of ash, gases, and other kinds of debris into the stratosphere.  Much of the heavier material fell back down to earth almost immediately, but much of it was light enough to stay there for years, with the result that there was a drastic reduction in sunshine accompanied by a drop in temperature.  The low temperature meant that there would be less evaporation from the oceans, leading to a significant lack of rainfall.  The first effect of this was the failure of crops; the second was plague.  Whether or not it was caused by the volcanic explosion (and David Keys makes a strong case for this in his book Catastrophe), the Annals of Cambria records “widespread death” in Britain and Ireland for the year 539, and the spread of bubonic plague through Europe at this time is a matter of historical record.  Curiously enough, 539 is also the year that the Annals of Cambria records for the deaths of Arthur and Mordred.

The events following the volcanic eruption made their way into Celtic mythology.  Perhaps the most significant written version of the story is the Mabinogion tale of “Math, Son of Mathonwy,” in which the waste land the revenge of Llwyd son of Cil Coed for the killing of his friend, Gwawl son of Clud.  In the Irish story, “The Adventures of Art, Son of Conn,” the land is wasted because of King Conn’s marriage to a sexually dubious fairy.

The final chapter in the story of the Grail concerns the son of Sir Lancelot.  The writers of the Vulgate Cycle had a difficult problem before them.  Like Robert de Boron, they were putting the story of the Holy Grail at the center of their version of Arthur’s story.  Like Robert de Boron and others, they had to have the best knight in the world achieve the Grail.  Like Robert, they intended to make the Grail a religious relic, and object of devotion.  Unlike other authors, however, they had just devoted hundreds of pages to describing the best knight in the world, and he was not Perceval, but the adulterous Lancelot.  So they invented a new character, Lancelot’s son, Galahad.  La Queste del Sainte Graal, the fourth section of the Vulgate Cycle, is a largely allegorical tale, that stresses the virtues of chastity and piety over martial prowess or, of course, amatory success.  Lancelot comes close to finding the Holy Grail, but complete success is reserved for his pious son.  It was this version of the story that Malory knew, and which thus has been handed down to posterity in the English-speaking world through Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s Idylls of the King and T. H. White’s The Once and Future King.

The story of the Grail often seems like the most fanciful of the stories surrounding King Arthur.  It is odd, therefore, that almost all of its elements should be derived ultimately, in whatever garbled form, from historical fact—indeed, fact that is a good deal more verifiable than the facts surrounding the existence of Arthur himself.

Works Cited

Translations and Modern Grail Stories
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Gilliam, Terry, and Terry Jones, dirs.  Monty Python and the Holy Grail.  Perf. Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle, Terry Jones, Michael Palin.  Python (Monty) Pictures, 1974.

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Robert de Boron.  Merlin and the Grail: Joseph of Arimathea, Merlin, Perceval.  Trans. Nigel Bryant.  Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2001.

Rohmer, Eric, dir.  Perceval le Gallois.  Perf. Fabrice Luchini, André Dussolier, Pascale de Boysson.  Les Films du Losange, 1978.

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Wolfram von Eschenbach.  Parzival.  Trans. A. T. Hatto.  Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1980.

General Studies of the Grail and Studies of Other Grail Texts

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Keys, David.  Catastrophe: An Investigation into the Origins of the Modern World.  New York: Ballantine, 1999.

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Loomis, R. S.  “The Origin of the Grail Legends.”  Arthurian Literature in the Middle Ages: A Collaborative History.  Ed. R. S. Loomis.  Oxford: Clarendon, 1959.  274-94.

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Rossignol, Rosalyn.  “The Holiest Vessel: Maternal Aspects of the Grail.”  Arthuriana 5.1 (1995): 52-61.

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Joseph of Arimathea and Glastonbury

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The Grail as Celtic Myth

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Jackson, Kenneth Hurlstone.  The International Popular Tale and Early Welsh Tradition.  Cardiff: U of Wales P, 1961.

Jarman, A. O. H., and Gwilym Rees Hughes.  A Guide to Welsh Literature I.  Swansea: Davies, 1976.

Koch, John T.  “A Welsh Window on the Iron Age: Manawydan, Mandubracios.”  Cambridge Medieval Celtic Studies 14 (1987): 17-52.

Lloyd-Morgan, Ceridwen. “Perceval in Wales: Late Medieval Welsh Grail Traditions.”  The Changing Face of Arthurian Romance: Essays on Arthurian Prose Romances in Memory of Cedric E. Pickford. Arthurian Studies 16. Ed. Alison Adams, Armel H. Diverres, Karen Stern and Kenneth Varty. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1986. 78-91.

Mac Cana, Proinsias.  Branwen, Daughter of Llŷr: A Study of the Irish Affinities and of the Composition of the Second Branch of the Mabinogi.  Cardiff: U of Wales P, 1958.

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Newstead, Helaine.  Bran the Blessed in Arthurian Romance.  New York: Columbia UP, 1939.

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Chrétien de Troyes and His Continuators

Bogdanow, Fanni. “The Transformation of the Role of Perceval in Some Thirteenth Century Prose Romances.”   Studies in Medieval Literature and Languages in Memory of Frederick Whitehead. Manchester: Manchester UP, 1973. 47-65.

Cazelles, Brigitte.  The Unholy Grail: A Social Reading of Chrétien de Troyes’s Conte du Graal.  Stanford: Stanford UP, 1996.

Deist, Rosemarie.  “Perceval’s Inner Wanderings: Growing Out of Childhood in Chrétien de Troyes’s Conte du Graal.”  The Court Reconvenes: Courtly Literature Across Disciplines.  Ed. Barbara K. Altmann and Carleton W. Carroll.  Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2003.  223-29.

Frappier, Jean.  “Chrétien de Troyes.”  Arthurian Literature in the Middle Ages: A Collaborative History.  Ed. R. S. Loomis.  Oxford: Clarendon, 1959.  157-91.

Furtado, Antonio L.  “A Source in Babylon.”  Quondam et Futurus 3.1 (1993): 38-59.

Groos, Arthur.  “Dialogic Transpositions: The Grail Hero Wins a Wife.”  Chrétien de Troyes and the German Middle Ages.  Ed. Martin H. Jones and R. A. Wisbey.  Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1993.  257-76.

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Sargent-Baur, Barbara Nelson.  “‘Avis li fu:’ Vision and Cognition in the Conte du Graal.”  Continuations: Essays on Medieval French Literature and Language in Honor of John L. Grigsby.  Ed. Norris J. Lacy and Gloria Torrini-Roblin.  Birmingham, Alabama: Summa, 1989.  133-44.

Thompson, Albert Wilder.  “The Additions to Chrétien’s Perceval.”  Arthurian Literature in the Middle Ages: A Collaborative History.  Ed. R. S. Loomis.  Oxford: Clarendon, 1959.  206-17.

Weston, Jessie L.  The Legend of Sir Perceval: Studies upon Its Origin, Development and Position in the Arthurian Cycles.  2 vols.  London: Nutt, 1906, 1909.

The Grail as Christian Symbol
Barber, Richard.  “Chivalry, Cistercianism and the Grail.”  A Companion to the Lancelot-Grail Cycle.  Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2003.  3-12.

Baumgartner, Emanuèle.  “The Queste del sainte Graal: from semblance to veraie semblance.”  Trans. Carol Dover.  A Companion to the Lancelot-Grail Cycle.  Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2003.  107-14.

Bogdanow, Fanni.  “The Suite du Merlin and the Post-Vulgate Roman du Graal.”  Arthurian Literature in the Middle Ages: A Collaborative History.  Ed. R. S. Loomis.  Oxford: Clarendon, 1959.  325-35.

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Combs, Annie. “From Quest to Quest: Perceval and Galahad in the Prose Lancelot.” Arthuriana 12.3 (2002): 7-30.

D’Arcy, Anne Marie.  Wisdom and the Grail: The Image of the Vessel in the Queste del Saint Graal and Malory’s Tale of the Sankgreal.  Dublin: Four Courts, 2000.

Frappier, Jean.  “The Vulgate Cycle.”  Arthurian Literature in the Middle Ages: A Collaborative History.  Ed. R. S. Loomis.  Oxford: Clarendon, 1959.  295-324.

Karczewska, Kathryn.  Prophecy and the Quest for the Holy Grail: Critiquing Knowledge in the Vulgate Cycle.  New York: Peter Lang, 1998.

Kennedy, Elspeth.  Lancelot and the Grail: A Study of the Prose “Lancelot.”  Oxford: Clarendon, 1986.

Looper, Jennifer E.  “Gender, Genealogy, and the ‘Story of the Three Spindles’ in the Queste del Saint Graal.”  Arthuriana 8.1 (1998): 49-66.

Plummer, John F.  “The Quest for Significance in La Queste del Saint Graal and Malory’s Tale of the Sankgreal.”  Continuations: Essays on Medieval French Literature and Language in Honor of John L. Grigsby.  Ed. Norris J. Lacy and Gloria Torrini-Roblin.  Birmingham, Alabama: Summa, 1989.  107-19.

Séguy, Mirielle.  “Naming and Renaming: On Two Grail Scenes in L’Estoire del Saint Graal.”  Arthuriana 12.3 (2002): 87-102.