Holy Grail
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[edit] Definition
The Holy Grail is a utensil used by Jesus and his disciples during the Last Supper (the feast of Passover which Jesus and the disciples celebrated the evening before his arrest). There is some disagreement as to what, exactly, it is: in some accounts, it is the cup mentioned in Luke 28; in some accounts the cup is further used to catch the blood of Jesus as it gushes from his side at the Crucifixion; in other accounts it is the dish in which the Passover lamb was served at the Last Supper; and in one medieval romance it is represented as a lapsit exillis --- a precious stone with miraculous powers. It figures prominently in the romances of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table.
The grail is usually represented by artists as a precious chalice, made of gold and studded with jewels. This does not at all fit with the lifestyle of virtuous and respectable poverty ascribed to Jesus and his disciples in the New Testament, and there is no scriptural or historical reason to suppose that Jesus’ cup, or dish, or whatever, would be anything out of the way for first-century Judea.
[edit] Provenance
If we assume that Jesus was a historical personage (see the main article Historical Jesus for further dicussion on this subject), then presumably there was a last cup that he used before his death, or alternatively, a dish in which the Passover lamb was served at his last Passover. The question would then be, how did it end up hidden somewhere in Britain?
[edit] The Last Supper
According to the Bible (Luke 22:14 - 20):
- When the hour came, Jesus and his apostles reclined at the table. And he said to them, "I have eagerly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer. For I tell you, I will not eat it again until it finds fulfilment in the kingdom of God."
- After taking the cup, he gave thanks and said, "Take this and divide it among you. For I tell you I will not drink again of the fruit of the vine until the kingdom of God comes."
- And he took bread, gave thanks and broke it, and gave it to them, saying, "This is my body given for you; do this in remembrance of me."
- In the same way, after the supper he took the cup, saying, "This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you."
Whether or not this is accurate, it is a fact that the rites of early Christians included a communal meal, and that the sharing of bread and wine is still a rite of most Christians, although they disagree vehemently on the theological significance of the ritual.
Following the Crucifixion, the cup, dish, or whatever the Grail should be identified with, receives as much attention as you would expect a table utensil to get, and appears neither in history nor in myth for a thousand years. When we next hear of it, centuries later, it is supposedly hidden somewhere in the British Isles.
[edit] The Vision of the Grail
The Grail makes its first reappearance in a thirteenth century chronicle, which recounts a vision of the Grail supposedly vouchsafed to a hermit in the year 717, who wrote about his vision in a book called Gradale, now lost. The chronicler Harnandus explains the meaning of "Gradale" as follows:
- "Gradalis or Gradale means a dish (scutella), wide and somewhat deep, in which costly viands are wont to be served to the rich in degrees (gradatim), one morsel after another in different rows. In popular speech it is also called "greal" because it is pleasant (grata) and acceptable to him eating therein".
This would describe neither the cup with which Jesus instituted communion, nor the dish in which the Paschal lamb was served, but it is the first mention we have of a Holy Grail.
[edit] The Grail enters Arthurian legend
Later versions of the Arthurian legend explicitly identify the Grail seen by Perceval with the Holy Grail, and have all the Knights of the Round Table out looking for it.
[edit] Joseph of Arimathea
This, of course, called for an explanation of how the Holy Grail could have got from the Middle East to the British Isles.
In the Bible, we are told that Joseph of Arimathea was virtuous, wealthy, and a man of some status and importance, and that, together with Nicodemus, he arranged for Jesus' funeral.
He takes on a much bigger role in British mythology, according to which he was the Uncle of the Virgin Mary, and a merchant who made his money trading in tin with Britain. He took Jesus with him to Britain as a young man (a legend which inspired William Blake's famous poem Jerusalem). At the Crucifixion, he supposedly used the Grail to collect the blood of Jesus when it gushed from his side. He subsequently fled Judea for Britain, and converted the British to Christianity, before retiring to Glastonbury.
The story of Joseph collecting Jesus' blood was already in existence by the time the Grail legend was elaborated in the thirteenth century. The idea that he fled to Europe appears first in Robert de Boron's poem Joseph de Aramathie, and the specific location of Britain is given in Perceval:
- Joseph and his company prepared their fleet and entered without delay, and did not end their voyage till they reached the land which God had promised to Joseph. The name of the country was the White Isle; well I know that thus it was called. One part belongs to England, which is enclosed and locked by the sea... At the end of his life he prayed God sweetly that He would consent that Joseph's lineage would be rendered illustrious by the Grail. And thus it befell; it is the pure truth. For after his death no man in the world of any age had possession of it unless he was of Joseph's lineage. In truth the Rich Fisher descended from him, and all his heirs and, they say, Guellans Guenelaus and his son Perceval.
[edit] Discussion
Although the connection of Joseph of Arimathea with the Holy Grail seems to date back before medieval times, the necessity of bringing him to Britain with the Grail did not arise until the conflation of the unidentified grail in Chrestien de Troyes' poem with the Holy Grail of the Joseph of Arimathea legend. The connection of the Joseph and the Holy Grail with Glastonbury, with Britain in general, or even with Europe, goes back no earlier than the thirteenth century, and the story arises in Continental Europe, not in Britain.
One incident from history shows this very clearly. In the 1220s, the monks at Glastonbury produced forged documents tracing their religious foundation to contemporaries of Jesus, including St Philip. There is no mention made at all in these documents of Joseph of Arimathea, as there certainly would have been if British tradition had linked him to the foundation at Glastonbury. Nor is there any mention of this mission in the earliest historical work on the conversion of Britain, Bede's eighth-century book History of the English Church and People, nor indeed is it mentioned in any historical sources until the legend appears in the works of French poets. This has not stopped the myth of Joseph being taken seriously by various pseudohistorians, including the British Israelites.
The Grail has also received attention recently from the authors Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh, and Henry Lincoln, who collaborated on the book Holy Blood, Holy Grail, which argues that the Holy Grail should be identified with the bloodline of Jesus, whom they suppose to have survived the Crucifixion and married Mary Magdalene.
The identification of the Holy Grail with Jesus' bloodline is based on the observation that "Holy Grail" in medieval French may be written as "san greal", which may then be redivided as "sang real" --- "royal blood". This is scarcely a conclusive argument. It is also anachronistic, for if the Grail starts off in Latin as a "sanctus gradalis" (which, however you slice it, is nothing like the Latin for "royal blood"), then there are no conclusions to be drawn from the fact that five centuries later it would be written in medieval French as "san greal". One might as well reason, by looking at the modern English translation, that the object in question was actually a "holey gray L".
The scholarship of Holy Blood, Holy Grail is uniformly on this level, and it has been panned or ignored by serious historians. This did not, of course, prevent it from becoming a best-seller.
