What & Where Is the Holy Grail?

In many ways, the Middle Ages are still with us. This might seem obvious to orthodox Catholics and citizens of the United Kingdom and the 15 other nations over which Queen Elizabeth II reigns. It is most forcefully represented for the former by the liturgical use of Latin, the ongoing relevance of the medieval scholastics, and indeed, the papacy itself (despite the best efforts of some of its more recent occupants). The latter is exposed to it by the panoply of the monarchy, with its ceremonial heraldry, civic ritual, hereditary peers, and much else. But in all European countries and their daughter nations across the globe, traces are found in academic regalia, the law (even here in the U.S. we still have law Latin and law French), and the structures of government — from American sheriffs, counties, coroners, notaries public, and so on, to the French Council of State and Court of Auditors (both of which bodies trace their descent from the medieval Curia Regis, despite the Revolution) and to folklore, architecture, cuisine, and topography. Meanwhile, medieval re-enactment has become ever more popular, as witnessed by the growing number of attendees at the various Christmas revels, Renaissance faires, and Society for Creative Anachronism events. Recall the excitement just a few years ago throughout the Anglosphere surrounding the recovery and re-interment of the remains of King Richard III. Of all this cultural wealth, perhaps the most popular is the Arthurian legend. Out of that entire saga’s massive collection of motifs, perhaps the one most bewitching to the modern mind is the Holy Grail.

One of the reasons for the Holy Grail’s popularity in the current psyche is that the protean nature of its relatively late appearance allows us (as with much else in Arthuriana) to read our deepest desires into the narrative. As French poet Chrétien de Troyes and his contemporary continuators wrote it, the Grail might be a cup or vessel used by Christ at the Last Supper for the very first act of transubstantiation (and if a cup, used by St. Joseph of Arimathea to catch some of the blood that flowed from His side). Or, as in Wolfram von Eschenbach’s epic 13th-century poem Parzival, it might be an emerald that fell from Lucifer’s crown and upon which the Eucharist daily appeared. Or it might be a book. When seen at the fabled Grail castle of Arthurian literary tradition, it appeared in company with a bleeding lance — the spear that had pierced Christ’s side after His death. Otherwise, it might appear as it chooses on its own — as at Camelot one Pentecost, whence it inspired the Knights of the Round Table to go on a quest for it.

In recent times, this vagueness has been used as a palimpsest of sorts, whereby — depending on your own spiritual interests — you could compose your own myth: The Grail was really a bloodline of secret descent from our Lord and St. Mary Magdalene. Or it was an alternative scripture of the heretical Cathars. Or maybe it was some esoteric secret picked up by the Knights Templar in Palestine and either smuggled to North America or used to help found Freemasonry. Perhaps it was an updating and Christianization of the mythical Celtic “Bowl of Plenty.” Or it might represent your own highest spiritual aspiration, whatever that is. Perhaps it was concealed in the Apprentice Pillar at the mysterious Roslin Chapel in Edinburgh, Scotland, or hidden in the depths of the Chalice Well at legend-haunted Glastonbury Tor in Somerset, England.

Certainly, all this esoterica has led many modern Catholics to look askance at the Grail legends, as though they were somehow connected intrinsically with heresy. Such ought not to be the case. The orthodox Catholic of today can read the Grail romances the way their authors meant them to be read.

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Their original audiences faced several different things. First was the failure of the crusades. In 1097 Europeans were united on a holy quest that freed the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem and other holy places from Islamic control, produced a number of heroes worthy to stand beside Arthur and Charlemagne, codified chivalry, and gave rise to great religious military orders: the Knights Templar, the Knights Hospitaller, the Teutonic Knights, the Order of St. Lazarus, and the Order of the Holy Sepulchre. Most impressively, it staved off for three-and-a-half centuries the fall of the Byzantine Empire to the Turks. But it was all beginning to wane, thanks to both civil wars within and wars between the European nations. In 1144 the County of Edessa fell to the foe. In 1149 the Second Crusade, called to reconquer the lost territories, ended in failure. In 1187 Saladin conquered Acre and Jerusalem; Pope Urban III collapsed and died when he received the news. Pope Gregory VIII called a Third Crusade, and the doughty Holy Roman Emperor Frederick Barbarossa set off to the Holy Land, as did England’s King Richard the Lionheart and France’s King Philip Augustus. It would accomplish little, however, and there is a distinct possibility that Chrétien himself died on this venture. It is against this political backdrop that the first Holy Grail stories were written.

But other things were also in the offing. Hildebert of Lavardin, archbishop of Tours (1055-1133), had begun to use the word transubstantiation to explain what happens to the Sacred Species at Mass. After his death, use of this term spread in popularity in Catholic circles, and in 1215 the Council of Lyons defined it as the best term to use. In 1205, during the heyday of Grail writing, St. Juliana of Cornillon reported the first of a series of visions she had had of Christ that would lead in time to the promulgation of the Feast of Corpus Christi — 44 years after the death of von Eschenbach, whose work closed the first great spurt of Grail writing. Concurrent with the spread of the Corpus Christi observance was its eucharistic procession.

So it was that the Holy Grail stories reassured their listeners and readers that earthly defeat was of little consequence, so long as you kept your heart pure and attached to the quest. The “secret of the Holy Grail” whispered by some of the characters in various versions was nothing less than transubstantiation itself, and the obvious resemblance between the Holy Grail and Corpus Christi processions is extremely strong. No matter whether the Saracens were defeated or triumphed, Christ Himself still came (and comes) down upon the altar every day.

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The flood of relics of Christ’s Passion that came West during the Crusades (including relics of Christ’s blood) and the proliferation of wondrous shrines to our Lord, our Lady, saints, and angels that also sprang up throughout Europe reinforced the sense of the miraculous that suffused the Grail stories and comforted their audiences. Chief among these were the various eucharistic miracles that featured many of the same effects found with the Grail: the image of Christ as child, adult, or both appearing on Hosts; Hosts bleeding or turning to flesh; and wine turning to blood. For us moderns, this must be underscored by the fact that no fewer than five such miracles have occurred in the past quarter century. New and old alike have been and are subjected to rigorous scientific testing; they exhibit many otherworldly traits. All, it is of great interest to note, have the same blood type as one another — and as the Shroud of Turin, the Sudarium of Oviedo, and the handful of thorns from Christ’s Crown that each bleed on Good Friday. Moreover, the flesh is always heart flesh. In this sense, we can derive even more comfort from the Holy Grail stories than did their original hearers.

There is a strong parallel tradition among the Eastern Orthodox, so much so that the liturgical manual Hieratikon baldly states, “If after the consecration of bread and wine a miracle is revealed; if the bread manifests the appearance of a child or the wine the appearance of blood, and if in a short time this appearance does not change: if they do not appear again in the form of bread and wine, but if they remain thus without change, then let the priest not take communion because it is not the body and blood of Christ, but a miracle from God manifest only because of the lack of faith or some other reason.” The transformed Eucharist is then to be given to the bishop for further investigation, which is exactly the procedure followed by the Catholic Church.

Obviously, to post-medieval Catholics, all of this talk of blood and heart flesh brings immediately to mind not only eucharistic adoration but the devotions to the Precious Blood and the Sacred Heart. It can be no coincidence that the latter has always been the badge of those forced in the past few centuries to take up arms in defense of the faith: the Vendée and the Chouans, Andreas Hofer and his Tyroleans, the Carlists, the Papal Zouaves, the Cristeros, and so on. Nor is it coincidental that these defenders of the faith saw themselves as the successors of the knights and crusaders of yore and viewed their own struggles in precisely the same light as did their spiritual (and often enough, genetic) ancestors.

It was, in fact, the first contents of the Grail — the precious blood of Jesus — that made it holy. But there was another such vessel before that: our Lady, during the nine months between the Annunciation and the first Christmas. Even as her Immaculate Heart and her Son’s Sacred Heart cannot be separated as a result, and as her Queenship derives from His Kingship, so too did the first audiences of the Grail stories see her presence where He deigned to act openly in this world. Byzantine culture has no stories of the Holy Grail, but the relatively recent devotion of Byzantine Catholics to the Icon of the Virgin of the Inexhaustible Chalice (1878) would have been perfectly recognizable as such to our forebears.

One of the motifs of the Grail legends bound up the health of the Grail kingdom with that of its king — it withered because of his wound, and healed when he did. Bearing in mind the now almost-forgotten theology of coronations and kingship held by our ancestors, this makes perfect sense. One can see an unconscious response to it in the practice, since the 17th century, of Catholic monarchs and other heads of state consecrating, in union with their countries’ bishops, the entire realm to the Sacred and/or Immaculate Hearts, the Kingship of Christ and/or the Queenship of Mary, the Assumption or the Immaculate Conception, and the like. These actions imply a union and distinction between Church and state quite beyond the comprehension of modern constitutional scholars of whatever land.

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But what of the vessel itself, beyond devotion and metaphor? There are several good candidates, in Vienna, Genoa, and elsewhere. The one that seems the most likely, however, is the chalice in the cathedral of Valencia, Spain. Certainly, it was venerated as such by Popes St. John Paul II and Benedict XVI, both of whom celebrated Mass with it. A pilgrimage to its shrine would doubtless be an enormous help to anyone’s faith.

So too would visits to any of the various relics and shrines mentioned in my book A Catholic Quest for the Holy Grail. But if you cannot, you must remember, once more, that its contents were what made the Grail holy. In that sense, just as every confessional is Chapel Perilous, where a knight must face God and himself, so too is every adoration chapel a Grail Chapel. And if even these are unavailable, then whenever you see the chalice elevated at Mass — there, for a brief time, is the Holy Grail, just as it came to the Knights of the Round Table at Camelot, departing as mysteriously as it arrived.

All of this having been said, what is the Holy Grail to us Catholics of the early 21st century, faced as we are with at least as much discouragement as our forebears of the 12th? In itself, it symbolizes all that is miraculous, sacramental, royal, chivalric, and wondrous in our faith, beyond what the worst leadership in Church or state may make or mar, but freely available to us to follow to Heaven, if we shall but persevere upon that glorious quest. If we suffer doubt or anxiety because of that leadership, let us remember that the seemingly random appearances of the Holy Grail — or miracles, apparitions, and so forth — in reality occur according to the careful plan of a cool and loving Intelligence who yearns to bring us to Himself, and who will do so, if only we will cooperate with Him, heedless of all else.

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