In Quest of the Grail

Contents

1.     Introduction........................................................................................................................p.3

2.     ‘A grail‘ or ‘the Grail‘?......................................................................................................p.5

3.     The Grail in literature.........................................................................................................p.7

3.1. French works

3.2.Wolfram von Eschenbach

4.     The origins of the Grail legend........................................................................................p.10

4.1. Celtic origins

4.2. Biblical, Jewish - Christian origins

4.3. Oriental/ Arabic origins

5.     Conclusion.......................................................................................................................p.14

6.     Bibliography....................................................................................................................p.16

1.  Introduction

“The Holy Grail: the famous object of quest for the knights of Arthurian romance. Controversy has raged round the origin of this theme which has fired the imagination of writers all over western Europe“.

In this extract from Kennedy´s encyclopaedia article all the questions which will be dealt with on the following pages are already mentioned:

1.     What is the meaning of the word ‘grail‘? Where does the word come from (etymology) and what does it denote? Or simply: What is a/ the grail? ( and the difference between the definite and the indefinite article is an important one, as will be shown).

2.     Where do we encounter the legend of the Grail? Where did it occur for the first time and how did it develop ? Which writers used this legend in their works and how did they use it? It will be necessary to limit the range of literary productions to be mentioned, because adaptions of the theme are abundant. So only the most influential works will come on the agenda and there will be made a cut after Wolfram von Eschenbach´s Parzival.

3.     Where do(es) the origin(s) of the legend of the Grail lay? The discussion of this question is highly controversial and it cannot be the aim of this paper to come to a final conclusion. Well is it possible to show the various suggestions made by scholars such as Burdach, Birch-Hirschfeld, Iselin, Godwin, Golthers and Schäfers. These suggestions can essentially be divided into four groups: the theory of a Celtic, a Christian and an Arabic origin or a combination of two or three of these.

It seems to be appropriate and also unavoidable when dealing with the Grail to become a ‚Perceval‘ oneself , as it were, i.e. an individual in quest of something which is beyond a full definition and  facing a number of crucial decisions. In this quest it is essential not to repeat the fault made by Perceval. So I would like to invite the reader to be inquisitive and to have the courage to ask questions.

2.  ‘A grail‘ or ‘the Grail‘?

The word ‘grail‘ is used in quite a lot of different ways in the literary works which will be discussed later on. The first great difference is that between a name for an object and a proper name. While Chrétien de Troyes introduces the object in question as ‘un graal‘, Wolfram von Eschenbach calls it ‚der Grâl‘. In the first case the reader is supposed to know what the author is speaking about and does not need further details. It seems to concern an ordinary item of originally practical use which perhaps later has achieved a special meaning. The second case immediately creates a mystical sphere. ‘Der Grâl‘ is an object totally beyond the everyday world. What is more the reader gropes around in the dark about the nature of this mysterious object and he needs a lot of patience because Wolfram plays with hints and covers all over his book.

The second group of variants concerns the form of the ‘thing‘ called ‘grail‘. It might be cup, a vessel, a dish, a plate, a kettle, an emerald, a stone, an altar, an abstract idea as the vision of God or something quite different.

It will  be interesting in this context to reflect on the origin of the word ‘grail‘. As one could have expected, there is no agreement among scholars about this question. Kennedy says in her article in the Encyclopaedia Britannica, that the “etymology of the word graal is still uncertain, but [that] it was used in a number of regions of France to denote a wide-mouthed vessel“ Golther speaks of a will from the year 873 in which several ‘garales‘ are mentioned, which were dishes to eat out. Schäfer explains that there were plenty of attempts to give a linguistic interpretation to the word but none of them convinced him. According to him the word ‘grail‘ always refers to the ‘Holy Grail‘ of the legend. Only in medieval Iberian the word denotes a dish or a vessel to eat or to drink out. The etymological dictionary of Kluge writes onder the entry ‘Gral‘: “‘Heiligtum‘ (Stein, Kelch o.ä.), arch. In mhd. Zeit (grāl) entlehnt aus afrz. graal gleicher Bedeutung, das außerdem auch ‚Behälter‘ bedeutet. Weitere Herkunft unklar.“ Burdach cites the chronicle of Helinandus, which translates the French word ‘gradalis‘ or ‘gradale‘ as a  wide and deep bowl in wich one dish after the other  is served in stages (Latin = gradatim). The bowl and the dishes are looked at and eaten with pleasure (Latin = grata).  Burdach does not agree with this derivation, but suggests a similar approach as Golther. He also refers to the will of Eberhard of Treviso (873) and the ‘garales‘ mentioned above.This ‘garales` he derives from the Latin ‚garum‘, i.e. a sort of fish soup. Therefore he interprets the word ‘garalis` as a vessel for fish soup and connects it with a mystical fishmeal which occurs in the legend of the Grail.

So far our quest has not been very successful in throwing light on the mystery of the Grail. On the contrary, the confusion has rather increased and  it has become obvious that it is not possible to give any clear definition. Authors and scholars have got divergent conceptions of the matter. Consequently, the next step will be to take a look at the literary productions,which use the theme of the Grail, in greater detail.

5.  Conclusion

At the end of our quest the quest-ion still remains: What is behind the mystery of the Grail?  On our way we have come across diverse answers:

1.     The Grail is the vessel Christ used at the Last Supper when he consecrated wine into his blood. This vessel later came to Joseph of Arimathea who used it to catch the blood of the body of Christ. He founded a community around this vessel which later came to Britanny. The Grail has a pronounced Christian significance. A knight who searches for the Holy Grail has to convert from sin through purification to holiness.

2.     The Grail is a mysterious stone originating from the creation of the world and turning up again and again throughout whole the Old and New Testament and apocryphical additions to these. It is a stone with plenty of wonderful qualities, such as giving strength to body and mind and predicting the future.

3.     The Grail is a link in the alchemical chain of transformations from the physical to the spiritual.

4.     The Grail is a vessel which is kept at Valencia in Spain. As can be seen in the gospels it was used at the Last Supper. Until the 3^rd century it was used by the pope in Rome when he celebrated the Holy Mass. During the persecutions of Christians in the 3^rd century it was brought to Huesca in Spain where it remained for the following 500 years. In the year 711 it came to the cathedral in Jaca and later (1071) to the monastery San Juan de la Peña. King Martin el Humano (Saragossa, Barcelona) got in possession of the vessel in 1399. Finally the vessel was brought to Valencia (1424) and belongs to the Spanish government since 1939 (see picture at p. 15).

5.     The Grail is an archetypical image in the mind of all Occidental people. It is the last memory of a primeval paradisical era of the world when there was a matriarchal order of society (Grail – vessel – womb).

Is one of these answers the right one? Or is there a grain of truth in all of them? We have scarcely any choice but to admit that the Grail remains a mysterious ‘thing‘ which is beyond our ability to define and to tie down. So the quest goes on...