Holy Blood, Holy Grail (42 page)

As a relic linked mystically with Jesus, the Grail engendered a voluminous quantity of romances, or lengthy narrative poems, which, even today, tease the imagination. Despite clerical disapprobation, these romances flourished for nearly a century, becoming a fully fledged cult of their own a cult whose lifespan, interestingly enough, closely paralleled that of the Order of the Temple after its separation from the Prieure de Sion in 1188. With the fall of the Holy Land in 1291, and the dissolution of the Templars between 1307 and 1314, the Grail romances also vanished from the stage of history, for another two centuries or so, at any rate. Then, in 1470, the theme was taken up again by Sir Thomas Malory in his famous Le Morte d’Arthur; and it has remained more or less prominent in Western culture ever since. Nor has its context always been wholly literary. There seems to be abundant documentary evidence that certain members of the National

Socialist hierarchy in Germany actually believed in the Grail’s physical existence, and excavations for it were actually undertaken during the war in the south of France.”

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By Malory’s time the mysterious object known as the Grail had assumed the more or less distinct identity ascribed to it today.

It was alleged to be the cup of the Last Supper, in which Joseph of Arimathea later caught Jesus’s blood. According to certain accounts, the

Grail was brought by Joseph of Arimathea to England more specifically, to

Glastonbury. According to other accounts, it was brought by the Magdalene to

France. As early as the fourth century legends describe the Magdalene fleeing the Holy Land and being set ashore near Marseilles where, for that matter, her purported relics are still venerated. According to medieval legends, she carried with her to Marseilles the Holy Grail. By the fifteenth century this tradition had clearly assumed immense importance for such individuals as King Rene d’Anjou, who collected “Grail cups’.

But the early legends say that the Magdalene brought the Grail into France, not a cup. In other words, the simple association of Grail and cup was a relatively late development.

Malory perpetuated- this facile association, and it has been a truism ever since. But Malory, in fact, took considerable liberties with his original sources. In these original sources, the Grail is something much more than a cup. And the mystical aspects of the Grail are far more important than the chivalric, which Malory extols.

In the opinion of most scholars the first genuine Grail romance dates from the late twelfth century, from around 1188 that crucial year which witnessed the fall of Jerusalem and the alleged rupture between the Order of the Temple and the Prieur6 de Sion. The romance in question is entitled

Le Roman de~Perceval or Le Conte del Graa1. It was composed by one Chretien de Troyes, who seems to have been attached, in some indeterminate capacity, to the court of the-count of Champagne.

Little is known of Chretien’s biography. His association with the court of

Champagne is apparent from numerous works composed before his Grail romance works dedicated to Marie, Countess of Champagne. Through this corpus of courtly romances including one dealing with Lancelot, which makes no mention of anything resembling a Grail Chretien by the 1180s had established an imposing reputation for himself. And, given his earlier work, one might have expected him to continue in a similar

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vein. Towards the end of his life, however, Chretien turned his attention to a new, hitherto unarticulated theme; and the Holy Grail, as it has come down to us today, made its official debut in Western culture and consciousness.

Chretien’s Grail romance was dedicated not to Marie de Champagne, but to

Philippe d’Alsace, Count of Flanders.2 At the beginning of his poem Chretien declares that his work has been composed specifically at Philippe’s request, and that it was from Philippe that he heard the story in the first place.

The work itself furnishes a general pattern, and constitutes a prototype, for subsequent Grail narratives. Its protagonist is named Perceval, who is described as the Son of the Widow Lady’. This appellation is, in itself, both significant and intriguing. It had long been employed by certain of the dualist and Gnostic heresies -sometimes for their own prophets, sometimes for Jesus himself. Subsequently i# became a cherished designation in Freemasonry.

Leaving his widowed mother, Perceval sallies forth to win his knighthood.

During his travels, he comes upon an enigmatic fisherman the famous

“Fisher King’ in whose castle he is offered refuge for the night. That evening the Grail appears. Neither at this point nor at any other in the poem is it linked in any way whatever with Jesus. In fact the reader learns very little about it. He is not even told what it is. But whatever it is, it is carried by a damsel, is golden and studded with gems. Perceval does not know that he is expected to ask a question of this mysterious object he is expected to ask “whom one serves with it’. The question is obviously ambiguous. If the Grail is a vessel or a dish of some kind, the question may mean “who is intended to eat from it’.

Alternatively the question might be rephrased: “Whom does one serve (in a chivalric sense) by virtue of serving the Grail?” Whatever the meaning of the question, Perceval neglects to ask it; and the next morning when he wakes, the castle is empty. His omission, he learns subsequently, causes a disastrous blight on the land.

Later still he learns that he himself is of the “Grail family’, and that the mysterious “Fisher King’, who was “sustained’ by the Grail, was in fact his own uncle. At this point Perceval makes a curious confession. Since his unhappy experience with the Grail, he declares, he has ceased to love or believe in God.

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Chretien’s poem is rendered all the more perplexing by the fact that it is unfinished. Chretien himself died around 1188, quite possibly before he could complete the work; and even if he did complete it no copy has survived. If such a copy ever existed, it may well have been destroyed in a fire at Troyes in 1188. The point need not be laboured, but certain scholars have found this fire, coinciding as it did with the poet’s death, vaguely suspicious.

In any case Chretien’s version of the Grail story is less important in itself than in its role as precursor. During the next half century the motif he had introduced at the court of Troyes was to spread through Western Europe like a brush-fire. At the same time, however, modern experts on the subject agree that the later Grail romances do not seem to have derived wholly from Chretien, but seem to have drawn on at least one other source as well a source which, in all probability, pre-dated Chretien.

And during its proliferation the Grail story became much more closely linked with King Arthur who was only a peripheral figure in Chretien’s version. And it also became linked with Jesus.

Of the numerous Grail romances which followed Chretien’s version, there were three that proved of special interest and relevance to us. One of these, the Roman de I’Estoire dou Saint Graal, was composed by Robert de

Boron, sometime between 1190 and 1199. Justifiably or no, Robert is often credited with making the Grail a specifically Christian symbol.

Robert himself states that he is drawing on an earlier source and one quite different from Chretien. In speaking of his poem, and particularly of the

Grail’s Christian character, he alludes to a “great book’, the secrets of which have been revealed to him.3

It is thus uncertain whether Robert himself Christianised the Grail, or whether someone else did so before him. Most authorities today incline towards the second of these possibilities. However, there is no question that Robert de Boron’s account is the first to furnish a history of the

Grail. The Grail, he explains, was the cup of the Last Supper. It then passed into the hands of Joseph of Arimathea, who, when Jesus was removed from the cross, filled it with the Saviour’s blood and it is this sacred blood which confers on the Grail a magical quality. After the Crucifixion,

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Robert continues, Joseph’s family became the keepers of the Grail.

And for Robert the Grail romances involve the adventures and vicissitudes of this particular family. Thus Galahad is said to be Joseph of Arimathea’s son. And the Grail itself passes to Joseph’s brother-in-law, Brons, who carries it to England and becomes the Fisher

King. As in Chretien’s poem, Perceval is the “Son of the Widow Lady’, but he is also the grandson of the Fisher King:

Robert’s version of the Grail story thus deviates in a number of important respects from Chretien’s. In both versions Perceval is a

“Son of the Widow

Lady’, but in Robert’s version he is the grandson, not the nephew, of the

Fisher King and thus even more directly related to the Grail family.

And while Chretien’s narrative is vague in its chronology, set sometime during the Arthurian age, Robert’s is quite precise. For Robert, the Grail story is set in England, and is not contemporary with Arthur but with Joseph of

Arimathea.

There is another Grail romance which has much in common with Robert’s.

Indeed it would seem to draw upon the same sources, but its utilisation of these sources is very different and decidedly more interesting. The romance in question is known as the Perlesvaus. It was composed around the same time as Robert’s poem, between 1190 and 1212, by an author who, contrary to the conventions of the time, chose to remain anonymous. It is odd that he should have done so, given the exalted status accorded poets, unless he was involved in some calling a monastic or military order, for example which would have rendered composition of such romances unseemly or inappropriate. And, in fact, the weight of textual evidence concerning the

Perlesvaus suggests this to be the case. According to at least one modern expert, the Perlesvaus may actually have been written by a Templar. And there is certainly evidence to support such a conjecture.

It is known, for instance, that the Teutonic Knights encouraged and sponsored anonymous poets in their ranks, and such a precedent could well have been established by the Templars. What is more, the author of the Perlesvaus reveals, in the course of the poem, an almost extraordinarily detailed knowledge of the realities of fighting of armour and equipment, strategy and tactics, and weaponry and its

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effects on human flesh. The graphic description of wounds, for example, would seem to attest to a first-hand experience of the battlefield a realistic, unromanticised experience uncharacteristic of any other Grail romance.

If the Perlesvaus was not actually composed by a Templar, it nevertheless provides a solid basis for linking the Templars with the Grail. Although the Order is not mentioned by name, its appearance in the poem would seem to be unmistakable. Thus Perceval, in his wanderings, happens upon a castle. This castle does not house the Grail, but it does house a conclave of “initiates’ who are obviously familiar with the Grail. Perceval is received here by two “masters’ who clap their hands and are joined by thirty-three other men. “They were clad in white garments, and not one of them but had a red cross in the midst of his breast, and they seemed to be all of an age. “S One of these mysterious

“masters’ states that he has personally seen the Grail an experience vouchsafed only to an elect few.

And he also states that he is familiar with Perceval’s lineage.

Like Chretien’s and Robert’s poems, the Perlesvaus lays an enormous stress on lineage.

At numerous points Perceval’s is described as “most holy’.

Elsewhere it is stated explicitly that Perceval “was of the lineage of

Joseph of Arimathea’, and that “this Joseph was his [Perceval’s] mother’s uncle, that had been a soldier of Pilate seven years’.”

Nevertheless the Perlesvaus is not set in Joseph’s lifetime. On the contrary it takes place, like Chretien’s version, during the age of Arthur.

Chronology is further scrambled by the fact that the Holy Land is already in the hands of the “infidel’ which it wasn’t until nearly two centuries after Arthur. And by the fact that the Holy Land is apparently to be identified with Camelot.

To a greater degree than either Chretien’s or Robert’s poems, the Perlesvaus is magical in nature. In addition to his knowledge of the battlefield, the anonymous author displays a knowledge, quite surprising for the time, of conjuration and invocation. There are also numerous alchemical references to two men, for instance, “made of copper by art of nigromancy’.” And some of the magical and alchemical references resonate with echoes of the mystery surrounding the

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Templars. Thus, one of the “masters’ of the White-clad Templar-like company says to Perceval, “There are the heads sealed in silver, and the heads sealed in lead, and the bodies whereunto these heads belonged; I tell you that you must make come thither the head both of the King and of the Queen.”e

If the Perlesvaus abounds in magical allusions, it also abounds in other allusions that are both heretical and/or pagan. Again Perceval is designated by the dualist appellation, “Son of the Widow Lady’. There are references to a sanctioned ritual of king-sacrifice, most incongruous in a purportedly Christian poem. There are references to the roasting and devouring of children a crime of which the Templars were popularly accused. And at one point there is a singular rite, which again evokes memories of the Templar trials. At a red cross erected in a forest, a beautiful white beast of indeterminate nature is torn apart by hounds.

While Perceval watches, a knight and a damsel appear with golden vessels, collect the fragments of mutilated flesh and, having kissed the cross, disappear into the trees.

Perceval himself then kneels before the cross and kisses it: and there came to him a smell so sweet of the cross and of the place, such as no sweetness can be compared therewith. He looketh and see th coming from the forest two priests all afoot; and the first shouteth to him: “Sir