|
This web-page will look
much better in a browser that supports worldwide web
standards although it is accessible to any browser.
You appear to be using an older browser that does not
support current standards. Please consider upgrading
your browser. We suggest the latest
version of any one of the following: MS
Internet Explorer, Opera, Mozilla or Firefox.
 he legends of
the Holy Grail are woven of three strands: a Celtic tradition of otherworld vessels and supernaturally
powerful weapons; an Arabic or Byzantine
tradition of a mysterious stone that had fallen from
the heavens; and a Christian tradition, perhaps of
Gnostic or heretical origin,
of a mysterious talisman.
 essie 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.
 oomis 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.
Right: this carving from Jaén Cathedral shows an
oriental or Moorish philosopher and an occidental
knight with a stone that fell from Heaven.
 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. 
Grail Romances
he 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
|
- Religious legends of the Grail: 1180-
1230
- German biographical epics: 1200-
1215
|
Copyright J. Horner, by permission.
he 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.
he 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:
- the writings of Robert de Boron, in particular
his Joseph
d'Arimathie (1180-1199) in which the Grail
became, for the first time, a chalice;
- the Vulgate Cycle (1215-1230), including
L'Estoire del Saint Graal and La Queste del Saint
Graal, in which the Grail is a dish.
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 Robert 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.
Left: Parsifal Act 3, Washington Opera 2000.
Production and designs by Roberto Oswald.
©Washington Opera.
 esearch has not yet
fully identified the immediate sources for Wagner's summary of
the Grail literature but it can be assumed that he
read both secondary and primary material. His claim
to have invented the interpretation of the Grail as a
chalice is disingenuous, as he must have known about
Christian interpretations of the Grail, even before
he read Perceval. There is evidence that Wagner had read
Chrétien de Troyes and the
Continuations in the edition by Ch. Potvin, published in
seven volumes between 1866 and 1871, of which there
are copies in his Wahnfried library. The first of
Potvin's volumes
contains a work that has no direct connection with
Chrétien: the Perlesvaus, a prose
romance that scholars believe was written in northern
France, a few years after the death of Chrétien and perhaps as late as
1225. The first sentence in the book is the
following: The history of the holy vessel which is
called Grail, in which the precious blood of the Saviour was
received on the day He was crucified in order to
redeem His people from hell ...
Left: The Grail is uncovered at the end of the
opera, in the recent Met production.
agner was familiar
with the work of contemporary scholars on the sources
of Wolfram's epic but
dismissed his interpretation of the Grail as a stone
brought to earth by angels. Wagner adopted the
Christianised
version of the Grail but discarded the Question entirely, made the
recovery of the spear the
focus of the story and changed some of the names from
those found in Wolfram's
poem. Many other elements he used, however: such as
the election of those who might find their way to the
Grail, the life-preserving power of the Grail and the
descending dove. Intelligent
guesses can be made about Wagner's familiarity with
the writings of Chrétien de
Troyes, Robert de Boron and others, at first
probably through secondary sources, such as German
authors of the early 19th century, including the
commentary on Parzival by San-Marte.
|
