vessel

Holy Grail

By Elizabeth Stein for Mythos Atlas. About the author. Editorial notes are grounded in the site's cited sources and can be challenged through the contact page.

Description

A Christian grail in British romance

Chrétien de Troyes's Perceval (c. 1180) introduces a graal as a costly serving dish in a wounded king's castle — not yet Christ's cup. Robert de Boron and the Vulgate Cycle make it the vessel of the Last Supper and Joseph of Arimathea's relic, carried to Britain. Malory's Grail quest is late medieval English piety and knighthood. It is not the Dagda's cauldron and not a pagan Irish object; those are separate motifs that nineteenth-century folklore sometimes glued on. Geography of the romances is a legendary Britain, which is why the cup sits with Celtic files. The authors are French and English church-and-court writers, not Irish saga-men.

Primary Sources

“A graal of gold came in, and it was of precious stone, and the light of it put out the candles.”
Chrétien de Troyes, Perceval (Conte du Graal)(c. 1180 CE)

“The Sangreal was the dish of the Last Supper, brought to Britain, and only Galahad and his fellows came to the vision of it.”
Thomas Malory, Le Morte Darthur (Quest of the Sangreal)(1485 CE)

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