Celtic Traditions of the Grail
Jessie Weston held the view that there lay at the root of the Grail tradition, the
rites of a secret mystery cult. The Grail might have been a sacramental dish of the kind used in the Orphic tradition and apparently taken over by
the Christian Church; this possibility is explored in the fourth volume of Joseph Campbell's The Masks of God. Miss Weston also suggested that the Bleeding Lance, carried by a squire, and the Grail, carried by a maiden, must have
been originally symbolic elements of a classical mystery rite.
Loomis held the alternative view that the origin of the Grail legends was Celtic. The Celtic gods of the Underworld or of the Land Beneath the Waves
(Nodens or Nuadua, Gwynn ap Nudd, Manannnan Mac Lir, Bran the Blessed)
possessed magic vessels of inexhaustible ambrosia and were to be found in mysterious castles hidden in mist, surrounded by water or by impenetrable forest.
Eastern
Traditions of the Grail
olfram's Parzival contains passages that reveal a knowledge of
events in the Levant, as might have been told by returning crusaders. Indeed, Wolfram claims to have taken his subject matter from a book given to him by Philip,
Duke of Flanders, who had been in those lands in 1177. He also cites as a
source a certain mysterious Kyot, who provided him with further material from the south of France or
perhaps Moorish Spain (and the Kabbalah of the Spanish Jews). So there are Arabic and other exotic elements in
Wolfram's story that do not appear in his primary source, Chrétien's unfinished poem.
n Wolfram's account, the Grail is a stone that fell from the heavens. It is by
the power of this stone that the phoenix rises from the ashes. Hence Wagner's reference to the meteoric stone in the mosque at Mecca.
Arthur, the
Once and Future King
ith the appearance
in 1136 of The History of the Kings of Britain,
an extraordinary book written by Geoffrey of Monmouth, the names of the
mythical hero Arthur and the mythical wizard Merlin became inseparably linked.
The book became the medieval equivalent of a best seller, with an enormous number
of copies being made (in an age before the printing press) and circulated
throughout western Europe. Many adaptations and paraphrases were made in Latin
prose and verse, and then vernacular versions appeared in Old English, Old
French or Welsh. The characters and ideas of Geoffrey's book were developed by
French writers, such as Marie de France and Chrétien de Troyes. Other tales were related to the
court of Arthur: these included the love story of Tristam
and Yseult or Tristan and Isolde
(of which the earliest version appeared around 1150) and the story of the Grail
and its guardian, the Fisher King.
The medieval romances that tell of the
Holy Grail divide into two groups. In the first group are the different
versions of the story of the quester who visits the Grail Castle, where he witnesses miracles but fails to ask the vital Question. In the earlier versions of this story, the quester is either Gawain or Perceval. In the second and smaller group are the romances dealing with the
early history of the Grail. These describe the history of a sacred vessel in
which the blood of Christ had been captured. Joseph Campbell divided the
literature of Arthur, Merlin and the Holy Grail into four overlapping phases:
Anglo-Norman patriotic epics: 1137- 1205
French courtly romances: 1160- 1230
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Religious legends of the Grail:
1180- 1230
German biographical epics: 1200- 1215
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The first of these phases was concentrated
on Arthur and Merlin. In the second, the focus moved to the knights of Arthur's
court, including Perceval and Gawain, whose adventures were described in Chrétien's Perceval ou Le Conte du Graal. Loomis and other scholars have argued that, in view of the differences and
similarities between the story of Peredur in the Mabinogion and the French works, both Perceval and Peredur son of Evrawc
must have derived from a common predecessor, probably written
in French, which has been lost without trace.
The third phase was motivated by an
attempt by the Church to take over the popular figures and events of the
courtly romances and to utilise them in the promotion of Christian doctrines.
There were two major components in this movement:
n the final phase, the literature of the
Holy Grail reached its apogee in the work of the poet-knight Wolfram. As Oswald Spengler pointed out, it was with Wolfram that western civilisation arrived at a mythology of inwardly motivated
quest, directed from within: the tragic line of the individual life develops
from within outward, dynamically, functionally.
n the last of the Continuations to Chrétien, probably written about 1230, the Fisher King reveals that the bleeding spear is the lance that pierced the
side of Christ and that the Grail is
the cup in which Joseph of Arimathea caught the blood of Christ. This interpretation is also described in Robert de Boron's Joseph d'Arimathie, finished about 1199. There is one element of de Boron's story that found its way into Wagner's story although it does not
appear either in Chrétien or the Continuations: the Grail ceremony induces pain in any sinner
present. None of this is found in Wolfram and it may be supposed that Wagner had read a text that referred to, or
summarised, Joseph d'Arimathie.