Holy Blood, Holy Grail (43 page)

Knight, withdraw yourself away from the cross, for no right have you to come nigh it’: Perceval draweth him back, and the priest kneeleth before the cross and adore th it and boweth down and kisseth it more than a score times, and manifeste th the most joy in the world. And the other priest cometh after, and bringeth a great rod, and set teth the first priest aside by force, and bea teth the cross with the rod in every part, and weepeth right passing sore.

Perceval beholdeth him with right great wonderment and saith unto him,

“Sir, herein seem you to be no priest! wherefore do you so great shame?T “Sir,” with the priest, “It nought concerneth you of whatsoever we may do, nor nought shall you know thereof for us!” Had he not been a priest,

Perceval would have been right wroth with him, but he had no will to do him any hurt.9

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Such abuse of the cross evokes distinct echoes of the accusations levelled against the Templars. But not of the Templars alone. It might also reflect a skein of dualist or Gnostic thought the thought of the Cathars, for instance, who also repudiated the cross.

In the Perlesvaus this skein of dualist or Gnostic thought extends, in some sense, to the Grail itself. For Chretien the Grail was something unspecified, made of gold and encrusted with gems. For Robert de Boron it was identified as the cup used at the Last Supper and subsequently to collect Jesus’s blood. In the Perlesvaus, however, the Grail assumes a most curious and significant dimension. At one point, Sir Gawain is warned by a priest, “for behoveth not discover the secrets of the Saviour, and them also to whom they are committed behoveth keep them covertly’.” The Grail, then, involves a secret in some way related to Jesus; and the nature of this secret is entrusted to a select company.

When Gawain eventually does see the Grail, it “seemeth him that in the midst of the Graal he see th the figure of a child .. . he looketh up and it seemeth him to be the Graal all in flesh, and he see th above, as he thinketh, a King crowned, nailed upon a rood.” And some time later, the

Grail appeared at the sac ring of the mass, in five several manners that none ought not to tell, for the secret things of the sacrament ought none tell openly, but he unto whom God hath given it. King Arthur beheld all the changes, the last whereof was the change into a chalice.”

In short the Grail, in the Perlesvaus, consists of a changing sequence of images or visions. The first of these is a crowned king, crucified. The second is a child. The third is a man wearing a crown of thorns, bleeding from his forehead, his feet, his palms and his side. 11 The fourth manifestation is not specified. The fifth is a chalice. On each occasion the manifestation is attended by a fragrance and a great light.

From this account the Grail, in the Perlesvaus, would seem to be several things simultaneously or something that can be interpreted on several different levels. On the mundane level, it might well be an object of some kind -like a cup, bowl or chalice. It would also, in

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some metaphorical sense, appear to be a lineage or perhaps certain individuals who comprise this lineage. And quite obviously the Grail would also seem to be an experience of some sort quite likely a Gnostic illumination such as that extolled by the Cathars and other dualist sects of the period.

The Story of Wolfram von Eschenbach

Of all the Grail romances the most famous, and the most artistically significant, is Parzival, composed sometime between 1195 and 1216. Its author was Wolfram von Eschenbach, a knight of Bavarian origin. At first we thought that this might distance him from his subject, rendering his account less reliable than various others. Before long, however, we concluded that if anyone could speak authoritatively of the Grail, it was Wolfram.

At the beginning of Parzival, Wolfram boldly asserts that Chretien’s version of the Grail story is wrong, while his own is accurate because based on privileged information. This information, he later explains, he obtained from one Kyot de Provence who received it in turn supposedly from one Flegetanis. It is worth quoting Wolfram’s words in full: Anyone who asked me before about the Grail and took me to task for not telling him was very much in the wrong. Kyot asked me not to reveal this, for Adventure commanded him to give it no thought until she herself,

Adventure, should invite the telling, and then one must speak of it, of course.

Kyot, the well-known master, found in Toledo, discarded, set down in heathen writing, the first source of this adventure. He first had to learn the abc’s, but without the art of black magic .. .

A heathen, Flegetanis, had achieved high renown for his learning. This scholar of nature was descended from Solomon and born of a family which had long been Israelite until baptism became our shield against the fire of Hell. He wrote the adventure of the Grail. On his father’s side,

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Flegetanis was a heathen, who worshipped a calf .. . The heathen Flegetanis could tell us how all the stars set and rise again . To the circling course of the stars man’s affairs and destiny aye linked. Flegetanis the heathen saw with his own eyes in the constellations things he was shy to talk about, hidden mysteries. He said there was a thing called the Grail, whose name he had read clearly in the constellations. A host of angels left it on the earth.

Since then, baptised men have had the task of guarding it, and with such chaste discipline that those who are called to the service of the Grail are always noble men. Thus wrote Flegetanis of these things.

Kyot, the wise master, set about to trace this tale in Latin books, to see where there ever had been a people, dedicated to purity and worthy of caring for the Grail. He read the chronicles of the lands, in Britain and elsewhere, in France and in Ireland, and in Anjou lie found the tale.

There he read the true story of Mazadan, and the exact record of all his family was written there.”4

Of the numerous items that beg for comment in this passage, it is important to note at least four. One is that the Grail story apparently involves the family of an individual named Mazadan. A second is that the house of Anjou is in some way of paramount consequence. A third is that the original version of the story seems to have filtered into Western Europe over the

Pyrenees, from Muslim Spain a perfectly plausible assertion, given the status Toledo enjoyed as a centre for esoteric studies, both Judaic and

Muslim. But the most striking element in the passage quoted is that the

Grail story, as Wolfram explains its derivation, would seem ultimately to be of Judaic origin. If the Grail is so awesome a Christian mystery, why should its secret be transmitted by Judaic initiates? For that matter, why should Judaic writers have had access to specifically Christian material of which Christendom itself was unaware?

Scholars have wasted considerble time and energy debating whether Kyot and

Flegetanis are real or fictitious. In fact the identity of Kyot, as we had learned from our study of the Templars, can be fairly solidly established.

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Kyot de Provence would seem, almost certainly, to have been Guiot de Provins - a troubadour, monk and spokesman for the Templars who did live in Provence and ~ who wrote love songs, attacks on the Church, paeans in praise of the Temple and satirical verses.

Guiot is known to have visited Mayence, in Germany, in 1184. The occasion was the chivalric festival of Pentecost, at which the Holy Roman Emperor,

Frederick Barbarossa, conferred knighthood on his sons. As a matter of course the ceremony was attended by poets and troubadours from all over

Christendom. As a knight of the Holy Roman Empire, Wolfram would almost certainly have been present; and it is certainly reasonable to suppose that he and Guiot met.

Learned men were not so very common at the time.

Inevitably they would have clustered together, sought each other out, made each other’s acquaintance; and Guiot may well have found in Wolfram a kindred spirit to whom he perhaps confided certain information, even if only in symbolic form. And if Guiot permits Kyot to be accepted as genuine, it is at least plausible to assume that Flegetanis was genuine as well. If he was not, Wolfram and/or Guiot must have had some special purpose in creating him. And in giving him the distinctive background and pedigree he is said to have had.

In addition to the Grail story, Wolfram may have obtained from Guiot a consuming interest in the Templars. In any case it is known that Wolfram possessed such an interest. Like Guiot he even made a pilgrimage to the

Holy Land, where he could observe the Templars in action, at first hand.

And in Parzival he emphasises that the guardians of the Grail and the Grail family are Templars. This might, of course, be the sloppy chronology and cavalier anachronism of poetic licence such as can be discerned in some of the other Grail romances. But Wolfram is much more careful about such things than other writers of his time. Moreover there are the patent allusions to the Temple in the Perlesvaus. Would both Wolfram and the author of the Perlesvaus be guilty of the same glaring anachronism?

Possibly. But it is also possible that something is being implied by these ostentatious connections of the Templars with the Grail. For if the

Templars are indeed guardians of the Grail, there is one flagrant implication that the Grail existed not only in Arthurian times, but

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also during the Crusades, when the romances about it were composed. By introducing the Templars, both Wolfram and the author of the Perlesvaus may be suggesting that the Grail was not just something of the past, but also something which, for them, possessed contemporary relevance.

The background to Wolfram’s poem is thus as important, in some obscure way, as the text of the poem itself. Indeed the role of the Templars, like the identity of both Kyot and Flegetanis, would seem to be crucial; and these factors may well hold a key to the whole mystery surrounding the Grail.

Unfortunately, the text of Parzival does little to resolve these questions, while posing a good many others.

In the first place Wolfram not only maintains that his version of the Grail story, in contrast to Chretien’s, is the correct one. He also maintains that Chretien’s account is merely fantastic fable, whereas his is in fact a species of “initiation document’. In other words, as Wolfram states quite unequivocally, there is more to the Grail mystery than meets the eye. And he makes it clear, with numerous references throughout his poem, that ‘the

Grail is not merely an object of gratuitous mystification and fantasy, but a means of concealing something of immense consequence. Again and again, he hints to his audience to read between the lines, dropping here and there suggestive hints. At the same time, he constantly reiterates the urgency of secrecy, “For no man can ever win the Grail unless he is known in Heaven and he be called by name to the Grail.

115 And ‘the Grail is unknown save to those who have been called by name .. . to the Grail’s company.”6

Wolfram is both precise and elusive in identifying the Grail. When it first appears, on Parzival’s sojourn in the Fisher King’s castle, there is no real indication of what it is. It would seem, however, to have something in common with Chretien’s vague description of it:

She [the Queen of the Grail family] was clothed in a dress of Arabian silk. Upon a deep green achmardi she bore the Perfection of Paradise, both root and branch.

That was a thing called the Grail, which surpasses all earthly perfection. Repanse de Schoye was the name of her whom the Grail

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permitted to be its bearer. Such was the nature of the Grail that she who watched over it had to preserve her purity and renounce all falsity.”

Among other things, the Grail, at this point, would seem to be a kind of magical cornucopia or horn of plenty:

A hundred squires, so ordered, reverently took bread in white napkins from before the Grail, stepped back in a group and, separating, passed the bread to all the tables. I was told, and I tell you too, but on your oath, not mine hence if I deceive you, we are liars all of us that whatsoever one reached out his hand for, he found it ready, in front of the Grail, food warm or food cold, dishes new or old, meat tame or game. “There never was anything like that,” many will say. But they will be wrong in their angry protest, for the Grail was the fruit of blessedness, such abundance of the sweetness of the world that its delights were very like what we are told of the kingdom of heaven.”8

All of this is rather mundane in its way, even pedestrian, and the Grail would appear to be an innocuous enough affair. But later, when Parzival’s hermit-uncle expounds on the Grail, it becomes decidedly more powerful.

After a lengthy disquisition, which includes strands of flagrantly Gnostic thought, the hermit describes the Grail thus:

Well I know that many brave knights dwell with the Grail at Munsalvaesche.

Always when they ride out, as they often do, it is to seek adventure. They do so for their sins, these templars, whether their reward be defeat or victory. A valiant host lives there, and I will tell you how they are sustained. They live from a stone of purest kind. If you do not know it, it shall here be named to you. It is called Iapsit exillis. By the power of that stone the phoenix burns to ashes, but the ashes give him life again.

Thus does the phoenix molt and change its plumage, which afterwards is bright and shining and as lovely as before. There never was a human so ill but that, if he one day sees that stone, he cannot die within the week that follows. And in looks he will not fade. His appearance will stay the same, be it maid or man, as on the day he saw the stone, the

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same as when the best years of his life began, and though he should see the stone for two hundred years, it will never change, save that his hair might perhaps turn grey. Such power does the stone give a man that flesh and bones are at once made young again. The stone is also called the