Let us turn to the Sangreal, or Holy Grail, the Quest of which forms so
important a part of Malory’s book. The word ‘Grail’ means a dish, a
drinking vessel, or a tureen, in the Romance language, and is probably
derived from the Low Latin ‘gradalis’ or ‘grasalis’; and this from the
Greek ‘crater’: and the old writers describe it sometimes as a shallow
vessel for holding food, and sometimes as a cup[12]. The legend of the
Grail is traced back to Pagan times, where it appears as a miraculously
food-producing vessel, of which we perhaps see a survival in the coming
of the Sangreal to Launcelot and King Pelles, and at the feast of
Pentecost which led to the Quest:—
‘Then there entered into the hall the holy Grail covered with white
samite, but there was none might see it, nor who bare it. And there was
all the hall full filled with good odours, and every knight had such
meats and drinks as he best loved in this world: and when the holy
Grail had been borne through the hall, then the holy vessel departed
suddenly, that they wist not where it became.’
But in the Christian form into which the legend passed, the Grail
became either the dish which held the paschal lamb at the Last Supper,
the vessel in which Joseph of Arimathea had received the Saviour’s
blood, or the sacramental cup itself. Mr. Alfred Nutt has treated the
whole subject with exhaustive learning in his ‘Studies of the Legend of
the Holy Grail,’ and his article ‘Grail, the Holy’ in Chambers’
Encyclopaedia. But when I say that one only of the many stories of
which Mr. Nutt gives an account is a poem of 60,000 verses, I shall not
be expected to attempt any summary of his book. I shall content myself
with the more popular account of the Sangreal, in its immediate
relation to Malory’s Morte Darthur. According to the romances of Le S.
Graal, Lancelot du Lac, Perceforest, and Morte Arthur, the Sangreal, or
Holy Graal, was the dish which held the paschal lamb of the Last
Supper. Joseph of Arimathea having gone into the house where the Supper
had been eaten, took away the dish, and in it received the blood from
the wounds of Jesus; and this dish, ‘with part of the blood of our
Lord,’ he brought with him into England, and with it converted many
heathens; and it was kept in a tower expressly built for it at
Corbenicy. The romance of Merlin says that ‘this vessel was brought to
this said knight [Joseph of Arimathea] by our Lord Jesu Christ while he
was in prison xl. winter, him to comfort,’ but does not mention its
earlier history.
When Caxton replied to the ‘noble and divers gentlemen of this realm of
England’ who urged him to print the history of Arthur, that many
persons held the opinion that there was no such Arthur, ‘one in
special’ insisted that this was mere blindness, since Arthur’s
sepulchre was to be seen at Glastonbury, Gawaine’s skull at Dover, the
Round Table at Winchester, as well as many other relics. And if this
noble gentleman had only known it, he might have added that the Holy
Grail itself was to be seen in the Cathedral Church of Genoa. There it
is still shewn. It is an hexagonal dish, about seventeen inches across,
and was long supposed to be a single emerald, which stone it resembles
in colour and brilliancy. It is called ‘Sagro Catino,’ with a tradition
which makes it to be the Holy Grail we have just described, and with
the addition that it was brought to Solomon by the Queen of Sheba. It
was taken, on the capture of Caesarea, by the Genoese under Guglielmo
Embriaco in 1101 A. D. Like the other plunder of Italian cities it was
taken to Paris by Napoleon I, and restored after the peace of 1815, but
was broken in pieces on the road from careless packing. It is now kept
together by a wire frame: and when I saw it in the Cathedral treasury a
few years since I was gravely told that it was broken in its return
from the Paris ‘Exposition’ of Napoleon III[13].