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cijurcl) of tyt d^raal

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=fa .

^titotn Cfmrd) of (Sraal

Hegentis anD

tfje

Considered in their Affinity with Certain Mysteries

of Initiation and other Traces of a Secret

Tradition in Christian Times

BY

ARTHUR EDWARD WAITE

sanctum mfanit, foel sanctum facit

LONDON REBMAN LIMITED

129 SHAFTESBURY AVENUE, W.C. 1909

fti

Printed by BALLANTYNE, HANSON 6^ Co. At the Ballantyne Press, Edinburgh

PREFACE

IF deeper pitfalls are laid by anything more than by the facts of coincidence, it is perhaps by the intimations and suggestions of writings which bear, or are held to bear, on their surface the seals of allegory and, still more, of dual allusion ; as in the cases of coincidence, so in these, it is necessary for the historical student to stand zealously on his guard and not to acknowledge second meaning or claims implied, however plausible, unless they are controlled and strengthened by independent evidence. Even with this precaution, his work will remain anxious, for the lineal path is difficult to find and follow. Per- haps there is one consolation offered by the gentle life of letters. In matters of interpretation, if always to succeed is denied us, to have deserved it is at least something.

Among our aids there is one aid which arises from the correspondences between distinct systems of allegory and symbolism. They are important within their own sphere ; and it is by subsidiary lights of this nature that research can be directed occasionally into new tracks, from which unexpected and perhaps indubitable results may be derived ultimately. When the existence of a secondary and concealed meaning seems therefore inferentially certain in a given department of literature — if ordinary processes, depending on evidence of the external kind, have been found wanting — its purpose and intention may be ascertained by a comparison with other secret litera- tures, which is equivalent to saying that the firmest hermeneutical ground in such cases must be sought in evidence which inheres and is common to several depart-

Preface

ments of cryptic writing. It is in this way that the prepared mind moves through the world of criticism as through outward worlds of discovery.

I am about to set forth after a new manner, and chiefly for the use of English mystics, the nature of the mystery which is enshrined in the old romance-literature of the Holy Graal. As a literature it can be approached from several standpoints ; and at the root it has a direct consanguinity with other mysteries, belonging to the more secret life of the soul. I propose to give a very full account of all the considerations which it involves, the imperfect speculations included of some who have preceded me in the same path — writers whose interests at a far distance are not utterly dissimilar to my own, though their equipment has been all too slight. I shall endeavour to establish at the end that there are certain things in transcendence which must not be sought in the literature, and yet they arise out of it. The task will serve, among several objects, two which may be put on record at the moment — on the one hand, and quite obviously, to illustrate the deeper intimations of Graal literature, and, on the other, certain collateral intimations which lie behind the teachings of the great churches and are, in the official sense, as if beyond, their ken. Of such intimations is all high seership. The task itself has been undertaken as the initial consequence of several first-hand considerations. If I note this fact at so early a stage as the preface, it is because of the opportunity which it gives me to make plain, even from the beginning, that I hold no warrant to impugn preconceived judgments, as such, or, as such, to set out in search of novelties. In my own defence it will be desirable to add that I have not written either as an enthusiast or a partisan, though in honour to my school there are great dedications to which I must confess with my heart. On the historical side there is much and very much in which some issues of the evi- dence, on production, will be found to fall short of demon- stration, and, so far as this part is concerned, I offer it at

vi

Treface

its proper worth. On the symbolical side, and on that of certain implicits, it is otherwise, and my thesis to those of my school will, I think, come not only with a strong appeal, but as something which is conclusive within its own lines. I should add that, rather than sought out, the undertaking has been imposed through a familiarity with analogical fields of symbolism, the correspondences of which must be unknown almost of necessity to students who have not passed through the secret schools of thought.

It will be intelligible from these statements that it has not been my purpose to put forward the analogies which I have established as a thesis for the instruction of scholar- ship, firstly, because it is concerned with other matters which are important after their own kind, and, secondly, as I have already intimated, because I am aware that a par- ticular equipment is necessary for their full appreciation, and this, for obvious reasons, is not found in the consti- tuted or authorised academies of official research. My own investigation is designed rather for those who are already acquainted with some part at least of the hidden knowledge, who have been concerned with the study of its traces through an interest proper to themselves — in other words, for those who have taken their place within the sanctuary of the mystic life, or at least in its outer circles.

In so far as I have put forward my thesis under the guidance of the sovereign reason, I look for the recogni- tion of scholarship, which in its study of the literature has loved the truth above all things, though its particular form of appreciation has led it rather to dedicate especial zeal to a mere demonstration that the literature of the Graal has its basis in a cycle of legend wherein there is neither a Sacred Vessel nor a Holy Mystery. This not- withstanding, there is no scholar now living in England whose conditional sympathy at least I may not expect to command from the beginning, even though I deal ulti- mately with subjects that are beyond the province in which

vii

Preface

folk-lore societies can adjudicate, and in which they have earned such high titles of honour.

After accepting every explanation of modern erudition as to the origin of the Graal elements, there remain various features of the romances as things outside the general horizon of research, and they are those which, from rny standpoint, are of the last and most real importance. A scheme of criticism which fails to account for the claim to a super-valid formula of Eucharistic consecration and to a super-apostolical succession accounts for very little that matters finally. I have therefore taken up the sub- ject at the point where it has been left by the students of folk-lore and all that which might term itself authorised scholarship. Ut adeptis appareat me illis parem et fratrem, I have made myself acquainted with the chief criticism of the cycle, and I have explored more than one curious tract which is adjacent to the cycle itself. It is with the texts, however, that I am concerned only, and I approach them from a new standpoint. As to this, it will be better to specify from the outset some divisions of my scheme as follows : ( i ) The appropriation of certain myths and legends which are held to be pre-Christian in the origin thereof, and their penetration by an advanced form of Christian Symbolism carried to a particular term ; (2) the evidence of three fairly distinct sections or schools, the diversity of which is not, however, in the fundamental part of their subject, but more properly in the extent and mode of its development ; (3) the connection of this mode and of that part with other schools of symbolism, the evolu- tion of which was beginning at the same period as that of the Graal literature or followed thereon ; (4) the close analogy, in respect of the root-matter, between the catholic literature of the Holy Graal and that which is connoted in the term mysticism; (5) the traces through Graal romance and other coincident literatures of a hidden school in Chris- tianity. The Graal romances are not documents of this school put forward by the external way, but are its rumours at a far distance. They are not authorised, nor

viii

^Preface

are they stolen ; they have arisen, or the consideration of that which I understand with reserves, and for want of a better title, as the Hidden Church of Sacramental Mystery follows from their consideration as something in the intellectual order connected therewith. The offices of romance are one thing, and of another order are the high mysteries of religion — if a statement so obvious can be tolerated. There are, of course, religious romances, and the Spanish literature of chivalry furnishes a notable instance of a sacred allegorical intention which reposes on the surface of the sense, as in the Pilgrim s Progress. Except in some isolated sections, as, for example, in the Galahad Quest and the Longer Prose Perceval, the cycle of the Holy Graal does not move in the region of allegory, but in that of concealed intention, and it is out of this fact that there arises my whole inquiry, with the justification for the title which I have chosen. The existence of a concealed sanctuary, of a Hidden Church, is perhaps the one thing which seems plain on the face of the literature, and the next fact is that it was pre-eminent, ex hypothesis in its possession of the most sacred memorials connected with the passion of Christ. It was from the manner in which these were derived that the other claims followed. The idea of a Graal Church has been faintly recognised by official scholarship, and seeing, therefore, that there is a certain common ground, the question which transpires for consideration is whether there is not a deeper significance in the claim, and whether we are deal- ing with mere legend or with the rumours at a distance of that which " once in time and somewhere in the world " was actually existent, under whatever veils of mystery. Following this point of view, it is possible to collect out of the general body of the literature what I should term its intimations of sub-surface meaning into a brief schedule as follows : (#) The existence of a clouded sanctuary ; (£) a great mystery ; (c) a desirable communication which, except under certain circumstances, cannot take place ; (d} suffering within and sorcery without, being

ix

Preface

pageants of the mystery ; (e) supernatural grace which does not possess efficacy on the external side ; (/) healing which comes from without, sometimes carrying all the signs of insufficiency and even of inhibition ; (^) in fine, that which is without enters and takes over the charge of the mystery, but it is either removed altogether or goes into deeper concealment — the outer world profits only by the abrogation of a vague enchantment.

The unversed reader may not at the moment follow the specifics of this schedule, yet if the allusions awaken his interest I can promise that they shall be made plain in proceeding. But as there is no one towards whom I shall wish to exercise more frankness than the readers to whom I appeal, it will be a counsel of courtesy to inform them that scholarship has already commented upon the amount of mystic nonsense which has been written on the subject of the Graal. Who are the mystic people and what is the quality of their nonsense does not appear from the statement, and as entirely out- side mysticism there has been assuredly an abundance of unwise speculation, including much of the heretical and occult order, I incline to think that the one has been taken for the other by certain learned people who have not been too careful about the limits of the par- ticular term to which they have had recourse so lightly. After precisely the same manner, scholarship speaks of the ascetic element in the Graal literature almost as if it were applying a term of reproach, and, again, it is not justified by reasonable exactitude in the use of words. Both impeachments, the indirect equally with the overt, stand for what they are worth, which is less than the solar mythology applied to the interpretation of the literature. My object in mentioning these grave trifles is that no one at a later stage may say that he has been entrapped.

It is indubitable that some slight acquaintance with the legends of the Holy Graal can be presupposed in my readers, but in many it may be so unsubstantial that

Preface

I have concluded to assume nothing, except that, as indicated already, I am addressing those who are con- cerned with the Great Quest in one of its departments. There is no reason why they should extend their dedi- cated field of thought by entering into any technical issues of subjects outside those with which they may be concerned already. I have returned from investiga- tions of my own, with a synopsis of the results attained, to show them that the literature of the Holy Graal is of kinship with our purpose and that this also is ours. The Graal is, therefore, a rumour of the Mystic Quest, but there were other rumours.

In order to simplify the issues, all the essential materials have been so grouped that those for whom the bulk of the original works is, by one or other reason, either partially or wholly sealed, may attain, in the first place, an accurate and sufficing knowledge of that which the several writers of the great cycles understood by the Graal itself, and that also which was involved in the quests thereof according to the mind of each successive expositor. I have sought, in the second place, to furnish an adequate conversance with the intention, whether manifest or con- cealed, which has been attributed to the makers of the romances by numerous students of these in various countries and times. In the third place there is presented, practically for the first time — pace all strictures of scholiasts —the mystic side of the legend, and with this object it has been considered necessary to enter at some length into several issues, some of which may seem at first sight extrinsic. In pursuance of my general plan I have en- deavoured in various summaries : (#) To compare the implied claim of the Graal legends with the Eucharistic doctrine at the period of the romances ; (<£) to make it clear, by the evidence of the literature, that the Graal Mystery, in the highest sense of its literature, was one of supernatural life and a quest of high perfection ; (c) to show, in a word, that, considered as a mystery of illumina- tion and even of ecstasy, the Graal does not differ from

xi

'Preface

the great traditions of initiation. Whatever, therefore, be the first beginnings of the literature, in the final development it is mystic rather than ascetic, because it does not deal with the path of detachment so much as with the path of union.

It must be acknowledged assuredly that the first matter of the legend is found in folk-lore, antecedent, for the most part, to Christianity in the West, exactly as the first matter of the cosmos was in the TOHU, BOHU of chaos ; but my purpose is to show that its elements were taken over in the interest of a particular form of Christian religious symbolism. That advancement notwithstanding, the symbolism at this day needs re-ex- pression as well as the informing virtue of a catholic interpretation, showing how the Graal and all other traditions which have become part of the soul's legends can be construed in the true light of mystic know- ledge.

I have demonstrated at the same time that among the romancers, and especially the poets, some spoke from very far away of things whereof they had heard only, and this darkly, so that the characteristic of the Graal legend is, for this reason, as on other accounts, one of in- sufficiency. Yet its writers testify by reflection, even when they accept the sign for the thing signified and confuse the flesh with the spirit, to a certain measure of know- ledge and a certain realisation. It is only in its mystic sense that the Graal literature can repay study. All great subjects bring us back to the one subject which is alone great ; all high quests end in the spiritual city ; scholarly criticisms, folk-lore and learned researches are little less than useless if they fall short of directing us to our true end — and this is the attainment of that centre which is about us everywhere. It is in such a way, and so only, that either authorised scholar or graduating student can reach those things which will recompense knowledge concerning the vision and the end in Graal literature, as it remains to us in the forms which survive — in which

xii

'Preface

forms the mystery of the Holy Cup has been passed through the mind of romance and has been deflected like a staff in a pool.

I conclude, therefore, that the spirit of the Holy Quest may be as much with us in the study of the literature of the Quest as if we were ourselves adventuring forth in search of the Graai Castle, the Chalice, the Sword and the Lance. Herein is the consecrating motive which moves through the whole inquiry. So also the mystery of quest does not differ in its root-matter, nor consider- ably in its external forms, wherever we meet it ; there are always certain signs by which we may recognise it and may know its kinship. It is for this reason that the school of Graal mysticism enters, and that of necessity, into the great sequence of grades which constitute the unified Mystic Rite.

If there was a time when the chaos magna et infirmata of the old un- Christian myths was transformed and assumed into a heaven of the most holy mysteries, there comes a time also when the criticism of the literature which enshrines the secret of the Graal has with great deference to be taken into other sanctuaries than those of official scholarship ; when some independent watcher, having stood by the troubled waters of speculation, must either say : " Peace, be still " ; or, indifferently, " Let them rave" — and, putting up a certain beacon in the darkness, must signal to those who here and there are either acquainted with his warrants by certain signs, which they recognise, or can divine concerning them, and must say to them : "Of this is also our inheritance."

So much as I have here advanced will justify, I think, one further act of sincerity. I have no use for any audience outside my consanguinities in the spirit. As Newton's Principia is of necessity a closed book to those who have fallen into waters of confusion at the pons asinorum of children — and as this is not an impeachment of the Principia — so my construction of the Graal literature will not be intelligible, or scarcely, to those who have not

xiii

Treface

graduated in some one or other of the academies of the soul ; it is not for children in the elementary classes of thought, but in saying this I do not impeach the construction. The Principia did not make void the elements of Euclid. I invite them only for their per- sonal relief to close the book at this point before it closes itself against them.

I conclude by saying that the glory of God is the purpose of all my study, and that in His Name I undertake this quest as a part of the Great Work.

xiv

CONTENTS

PAGE

PREFACE v

BOOK I

THE ROOTS OF THE HOUSE OF MEANING

SECT.

I. SOME ASPECTS OF THE GRAAL LEGEND ... 5

II. EPOCHS OF THE LEGEND. 12

III. THE ENVIRONMENT OF THE GRAAL LITERATURE . 17

IV. THE LITERATURE OF THE CYCLE .... 47 V. THE IMPLICITS OF THE GRAAL MYSTERY . 61

BOOK II

MTSTERIES OF THE HOLT GRAAL IN MANI- FESTATION AND REMOVAL

I. A PRELIMINARY ACCOUNT OF CERTAIN ROOT-SECRETS

INCLUDED IN THE WHOLE SUBJECT ... 79

II. THE INSTITUTION OF THE HALLOWS, AND, IN THE

FIRST PLACE, A GENERAL INTRODUCTION CON- CERNING THEM 84

III. THE INSTITUTION OF THE HALLOWS, AND, SECONDLY,

THE VARIATIONS OF THE CUP LEGEND . . 89

IV. THE GRAAL VESSEL CONSIDERED AS A BOWL OF

PLENTY 104

V. THE LESSER HALLOWS OF THE LEGEND . . .114

(a) The Summary of these Matters ; (b) Legends of the Sacred Lance ; (c) The Broken Sword ; (d) The Dish.

VI. THE CASTLE OF THE HOLY GRAAL . . . .128

VII. THE KEEPERS OF THE HALLOWS . . . .134

VIII. THE PAGEANTS IN THE QUESTS . . . .138

xv

Contents

SECT. PAGE

IX. THE ENCHANTMENTS OF BRITAIN, THE TIMES CALLED ADVENTUROUS AND THE WOUNDING OF THE

KING 144

X. THE SUPPRESSED WORD AND THE MYSTIC QUESTION 152

XI. THE HEALING OF THE KING 157

XII. THE REMOVAL OF THE HALLOWS . . . 161

BOOK III

THE EARLY EPOCHS OF THE QUEST

I. THE ANTECEDENTS OF THE LEGEND IN FOLK-LORE . 171 II. THE WELSH PERCEVAL 181

III. THE ENGLISH METRICAL ROMANCE OF SYR PERCY-

VELLE 193

IV. THE CONTE DEL GRAAL 198

(a) Preliminary to the whole Subject ; (b) The Poem of Chretien de Troyes ; (c) The Extension of Gautier ; (d) The Con- clusion of Manessier ; (e] The Alternative Sequel of Gerbert ; (/) In which Sir Gawain is considered briefly as a Companion of the Holy Quest.

BOOK IV

THE LESSER CHRONICLES OF THE HOLT GRAAL

I. THE METRICAL ROMANCE OF JOSEPH OF ARIMATH^A 245 II. THE LESSER HOLY GRAAL 255

III. THE EARLY HISTORY OF MERLIN .... 258

IV. THE DIDOT PERCEVAL 265

BOOK V THE GREATER CHRONICLES OF THE HOLT GRAAL

I. THE BOOK OF THE HOLY GRAAL, AND, IN THE FIRST

PLACE, THE PROLOGUE THERETO BELONGING . 281

II. A NEW CONSIDERATION CONCERNING THE BRANCHES

OF THE CHRONICLE 287

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Contents

SECT. PAGE

III. THE MINOR BRANCHES OF THE BOOK OF THE HOLY

GRAAL ........ 308

IV. SOME LATER MERLIN LEGENDS . . . .316

(a) The Vulgate Merlin ; (b) The Huth Merlin.

V. THE GREAT PROSE LANCELOT 330

VI. A PREFACE OR INTRODUCTORY PORTION APPERTAINING

TO ALL THE QUESTS . . . . . . 340

VII. THE LONGER PROSE PERCEVAL 344

VIII. THE QUEST OF THE HIGH PRINCE .... 352

IX. THE WELSH QUEST OF GALAHAD .... 365

BOOK VI

THE GERMAN CYCLE OF THE HOLT GRAAL

I. THE PARSIFAL OF WOLFRAM VON ESCHENBACH . 375 II. GLEANINGS CONCERNING THE LOST QUEST OF GUIOT

DE PROVENCE ....... 397

III. SIDELIGHTS FROM THE SPANISH AND PORTUGUESE

QUESTS 404

IV. THE CROWN OF ALL ADVENTURES . . . .407 V. THE TITUREL OF ALBRECHT VON SCHARFENBERG . 415

VI. THE DUTCH LANCELOT 421

BOOK VII

THE HOLT GRAAL IN THE LIGHT OF THE CELTIC CHURCH

I. STATEMENT OF A POSSIBLE IMPLICIT ACCOUNTING FOR

ALL CLAIMS 433

II. THE FORMULA OF THE HYPOTHESIS SCHEDULED . 436

III. IN WHAT SENSE THE PLEA MUST BE HELD TO FAIL . 446

IV. THE VICTORY OF THE LATIN RITE . . . -459

xvii b

Contents

BOOK VIII

MYSTIC ASPECTS OF THE GRAAL LEGEND

SECT. PAGE

I. THE INTRODUCTORY WORDS 469

II. THE POSITION OF THE LITERATURE DEFINED . .476

III. CONCERNING THE GREAT EXPERIMENT . . .481

IV. THE MYSTERY OF INITIATION 488

V. THE MYSTERY OF FAITH 493

VI. THE LOST BOOK OF THE GRAAL .... 498 VII. THE DECLARED MYSTERY OF QUEST. . . . 507

BOOK IX

SECRET TRADITION IN CHRISTIAN TIMES

I. PRELIMINARY TO THE WHOLE SUBJECT . . .521 II. SOME ALLEGED SECRET SCHOOLS OF THE MIDDLE AGES 524

III. THE LATIN LITERATURE OF ALCHEMY AND THE HER-

METIC SECRET IN THE LIGHT OF THE EUCHARISTIC

MYSTERY 533

IV. THE KABALISTIC ACADEMIES ..... 550 V. THE CLAIM IN RESPECT of TEMPLAR INFLUENCE . 555

VI. THE GRAAL FORMULA IN THE LIGHT OF OTHER

GLEANINGS FROM THE CATHOLIC SACRAMENTARY 566

VII. THE Lapis Exilis 571

VIII. THE ANALOGIES OF MASONRY . . . . -576

(a) The Assumption of the Building Guild ; (/>) Masonry and Moral Science ; (c} A Theory of Hermetic Interference ; (d) One Key to the Sanctuary.

IX. THE HALLOWS OF THE GRAAL MYSTERY RE-DISCOVERED

IN THE TALISMANS OF THE TAROT . . . 600

BOOK X

THE SECRET CHURCH

I. THE HERMENEUTICS OF THE HOLY GRAAL . .615

II. THE GOOD HUSBANDMAN 620

III. THE CATHOLIC SECRET OF THE LITERATURE . . 626

xviii

Contents

SECT. PAGE

IV. THE MYSTERY WHICH is WITHIN .... 639

V. THE SECLUDED AND UNKNOWN SANCTUARY . . 642 VI. THE TRADITION OF ST. JOHN THE DIVINE AND OTHER

TRACES OF A HIGHER MIND OF THE CHURCH . 66 1

VII. THE CONCLUSION OF THIS HOLY QUEST . . . 668

APPENDIX

THE BIBLIOGRAPHT OF THE HOLT GRAAL

PART I THE TEXTS

PART II

SOME CRITICAL WORKS

PART III PHASES OF INTERPRETATION

xix

BOOK I

THE ROOTS OF THE HOUSE OF MEANING

THE ARGUMENT

Heads of a General Summary of the whole subject, with the analysis thereof, including: — I. SOME ASPECTS OF THE GRAAL LEGEND. — The word which came forth out of Qalilee — The sacramental vessel — Its history and the quests thereof— The Graal in the books of chivalry — The Graal in modern poetry — The composite elements of the Legend — The Graal as a reliquary . II. EPOCHS OF THE LEGEND. — The higher understanding of the Quest — The outlook of roman- ticism— The attitude of poetry — The direction of archeology — The prospect which is called spiritual — The consideration oj the present thesis — The hidden motives of the literature — Its critical difficulties — Concerning the interpretation of Books. III. THE ENVIRONMENT OF THE GRAAL LITERATURE. — The Catholic Doctrine of the Eucharist — The passage of Transubstantiation into Dogma — The Cultus of the Precious Blood — Relics of the Passion, and, in the first place, concern- ing those of the Precious Blood — The discovery of the Sacro Catino — The invention of the Lance at Antioch — The Sword of St. John the Baptist — The state of the Official Church — The Church in Britain — The Holy Wars of Palestine — The higher life of Sanctity and its annals in the Graal period — The sects of the period. IV. THE LITERATURE OF THE CYCLE. — Its various modes of classification and that mode which is most proper to the present inquiry — The places of the Graal Legend — The Welsh Peredur and the English Syr Percyvelle — The Conte del Graal— The Lesser Chronicles of the Holy Graal — The

3

The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal

Greater Chronicles of the Holy Graal — The German cycle— The question which is posed for consideration. V. THE IMPLICITS OF THE GRAAL MYSTERY. — The first considera- tion concerning a concealed sense of the literature — The Secret Words of Consecration and what follows therefrom, namely, that a true Mass has never been said in the world since the Graal was taken away — The super-apostolical succession, the peculiar Divine Warrant and ecclesiastical pre-eminence claimed for the Graal Keepers — That these claims must be distinguished from errors of doctrinal confusion and theo- logical ignorance, of which there is evidence otherwise — That any concealed sense must be held to co-exist with manifest insufficiency, even within its own province, and more especially regarding the Eucharist — That there is no intention to present the Graal Mystery as that of a secret process at work outside the Church — The Lesser Imp ii cits of the literature.

BOOK I

THE ROOTS OF THE HOUSE OF MEANING

I

SOME ASPECTS OF THE GRAAL LEGEND

THE study of a great literature should begin like the preparation for a royal banquet, not without some solicitude for right conduct in the King's palace — which is the consecration of motive — and not without recol- lection of that source from which the most excellent gifts derive in their season to us all. We may, there- fore, in approaching it say : 'Benedic, Domine, nos et h<ec tua dona, qu<e de tua largitate sumus sumpturi.

But in respect of the subject which concerns us we may demand even more appropriately : Mens<e ccelestis participes facial nos, Rex <etern<z gloria. In this way we shall understand not only the higher meaning of the Feeding-Dish, but the gift of the discernment of spirits, the place and office of the supersubstantial bread, and other curious things of the worlds within and without of which we shall hear in their order. Surely the things of earth are profitable to us only in so far as they assist us towards the things which are eternal. In this respect there are many helpers, even as the sands of the sea. The old books help us, perhaps above all things, and among them the old chronicles and the great antique legends. If the hand of God is in history, it is also in folk-lore. We can scarcely fail of our term, since lights, both close at hand and in the unlooked-for places, kindle everywhere about us. It is difficult to say any longer that we walk in the shadow of death when the darkness is sown with stars.

The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal

Now there are a few legends which may be said to stand forth among the innumerable traditions of humanity, wearing the external signs and characters of some inward secret or mystery which belongs rather to eternity than to time. They are in no sense connected one with another — unless, indeed, by certain roots which are scarcely in time and place — and yet by a suggestion which is deeper than any message of the senses each seems appealing to each, one bearing testimony to another, and all recalling all. They kindle strange lights, they awaken dim memories, in the antecedence of an immemorial past. They might be the broken fragments of some primitive revelation which, except in these memorials, has passed out of written records and from even the horizon of the mind. There are also other legends — strange, melancholy and long haunting— which seem to have issued from the depths of abori- ginal humanity, below all horizons of history, pointing, as we might think, to terrible periods of a past which is of the body only, not of the soul of man, and hinting that once upon a time there was a soulless age of our race, when minds were formless as the mammoths of geological epochs. To the latter class belongs part of what remains to us from the folk-lore of the cave-dwellers, the traditions of the pre-Aryan races of Europe. To the former, among many others, belongs the Graal legend, which in all its higher aspects is to be classed among the legends of the soul. Perhaps I should more worthily say that when it is properly understood, and when it is regarded at the highest, the Graal is not a legend, but an episode in the aeonian life of that which " cometh from afar"; it is a personal history.

The mystery of the Graal is a word which came forth out of Galilee. The literature which enshrines this mystery, setting forth the circumstances of its origin, the several quests which were instituted on account of it, the circumstances under which it was

6

The Roots of the House of Meaning

from time to time discovered, and, in fine, its imputed removal, with all involved thereby, is one of such considerable dimensions that it may be properly de- scribed as large. This notwithstanding, there is no difficulty in presenting its broad outlines, as they are found in the texts which remain, so briefly that if there be any one who is new to the subject, he can be in- structed sufficiently for my purpose even from the beginning. It is to be understood, therefore, that the Holy Graal, considered in its Christian aspects and apart from those of folk-lore, is represented invari- ably, excepting in one German version of the legend, as that vessel in which Christ celebrated the Last Supper or consecrated for the first time the elements of the Eucharist. It is, therefore, a sacramental vessel, and, according to the legend, its next use was to receive the blood from the wounds of Christ when His body was taken down from the Cross, or, alternatively, from the side which was pierced by the spear of Longinus. Under circumstances which are variously recounted, this vessel, its content included, was carried westward in safe guardianship — coming, in fine, to Britain and there remaining in the hands of successive keepers, or, this failing, in the hands of a single keeper, whose life was prolonged through the centuries. In the days of King Arthur, the prophet and magician Merlin assumed the responsibility of carrying the legend to its term, with which object he brought about the institution of the Round Table, and the flower of Arthurian chivalry set out to find the Sacred Vessel. In some of the quests which followed, the knighthood depicted in the greater romances has become a mystery of ideality, and nothing save its feeble reflection could have been found on earth. The quests were to some extent preconceived in the mind of the legend, and, although a few of them were successful, that which followed was the removal of the Holy Graal. The Companions of the Quest asked, as one may say, for

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bread, and to those who were unworthy there was given the stone of their proper offence, but to others the spiritual meat which passes all understanding. That this account instructs the uninitiated person most imperfectly will be obvious to any one who is acquainted with the great body of the literature, but, within the limits to which I have restricted it inten- tionally, I do not know that if it were put differently it would be put better or more in harmony with the general sense of the romances.

It might appear at first sight almost a superfluous precaution, even in an introductory part, to reply so fully as I have now done to the assumed question : What, then, was the Holy Graal ? Those who are unacquainted with its literature in the old books of chivalry, through which it first entered into the romance of Europe, will know it by the Idylls of the King. But it is not so superfluous as it seems, more especially with the class which I am addressing, since nominally this has other concerns, like folk-lore scholarship, and many answers to the question made from distinct points of view would differ from that which is given by the Knight Perceval to his fellow- monk in the poem of Tennyson : —

" What is it ?

The phantom of a cup which comes and goes ? — Nay, monk ! What phantom ? answered Perceval. The cup, the cup itself, from which our Lord Drank at the last sad supper with his own. This, from the blessed land of Aromat . . . Arimathaean Joseph, journeying brought To Glastonbury. . . . And there awhile it bode ; and if a man Could touch or see it, he was heal'd at once, By faith, of all his ills. But then the times Grew to such evil that the holy cup Was caught away to Heaven and disappeared."

This is the answer with which, in one or another of its forms, poetic or chivalrous, every one is expected

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to be familiar, or he must be classed as too unlettered for consideration, even in such a slight sketch as these introductory words. But it is so little the only answer, and it is so little full or exhaustive, that no person acquainted with the archaic literature would accept it otherwise than as one of its aspects, and even the enchanting gift of Tennyson's poetic faculty leaves — and that of necessity — something to be desired in the summary of the Knight's reply to the direct question of Ambrosius. Those even who at the present day discourse of chivalry are not infrequently like those who say: "Lord, Lord!" — but for all that they do not enter into the Kingdom of Heaven or the more secret realms of literature. And this obtains still more respecting the chivalry of the Graal. In the present case something of the quintessential spirit has in an obscure manner evaporated. There is an allusiveness, a pregnancy, a suggestion about the old legend in its highest forms : it is met with in the old romances, and among others in the longer prose chronicle of Perceval le Gallois, but more fully in the great prose Quest, which is of Galahad, the haut prince. A touch of it is found later in Tennyson's own poem, when Perceval's sister, the nun of " utter whiteness," describes her vision : —

" I heard a sound As of a silver horn from o'er the hills. . . .

The slender sound

As from a distance beyond distance grew Coming upon me. . . .

And then

Stream'd thro* my cell a cold and silver beam, And down the long beam stole the Holy Grail, Rose-red with beatings in it."

And again : —

" I saw the spiritual city and all her spires And gateways in a glory like one pearl. . . . Strike from the sea ; and from the star there shot A rose-red sparkle to the city, and there Dwelt, and I knew it was the Holy Grail."

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So also in the chivalry books the legend is treated with an aloofness, and yet with a directness of circumstance and a manifoldness of detail, awakening a sense of reality amidst enchantment which is scarcely heightened when the makers of the chronicles testify to the truth of their story. The explanation is, according to one version of the legend, that it was written by Christ Himself after the Resurrection, and that there is no clerk, however hardy, who will dare to suggest that any later scripture is referable to the same hand. Sir Thomas Malory, the last and greatest compiler of the Arthurian legend, suppresses this hazardous ascription, and in the colophon of his seventeenth book is contented with adding that it is <ca story chronicled for one of the truest and the holyest that is in thys world."

But there is ample evidence no further afield than Sir Thomas Malory's own book, the Morte cT Arthur, that the Graal legend was derived into his glorious codification from various sources, and that some ele- ments entered into it which are quite excluded by the description of Sir Perceval in the Idylls or by the colophon of Malory's own twelfth book, which reads : " And here foloweth the noble tale of the Sancgreal, that called is the hooly vessel, and the sygnefycacyon of the blessid blood of our Lord Jhesu Cryste, blessid mote it be, the whiche was brought in to this land by Joseph of Armathye, therefor, on al synful souls blessid Lord haue thou mercy."

As an equipoise to the religious or sentimental side of the legend, it is known, and we shall see in its place, that the Graal cycle took over something from Irish and Welsh folk-lore of the pagan period concerning a mysterious magical vessel full of miraculous food. This is illustrated by the Morte d" Arthur, in the memorable episode of the high festival held by King Arthur at Pentecost : in the midst of the supper " there entred in to the halle the Holy Graal couered with whyte samyte, but ther was none mighte see hit nor who bare hit. And

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there was al the halle fulfylled with good odoures, and euery knyzt had suche metes and drynkes as he loved best in this world." That is a state of the legend which has at first sight little connection with the mystic vessel carried out of Palestine, whether by Joseph or another, but either the simple-minded chroniclers of the past did not observe the anachronism when they married a Christian mystery to a cycle of antecedent fable, or there is an explanation of a deeper kind, in which case we shall meet with it at a later stage of our studies. For the moment, and as an intimation only, let me say that the study of folk-lore may itself become a rever- ence of high research when it is actuated by a condign motive.

We shall make acquaintance successively with the various entanglements which render the Graal legend perhaps the most embedded of all cycles. I have said that the Sacred Vessel is sacramental in a high degree ; it connects intimately with the Eucharist ; it is the most precious of all relics for all Christendom indifferently, for, supposing that it were manifested at this day, I doubt whether the most rigid of the Protestant sects could do otherwise than bow down before it. And yet, at the same time, the roots of it lie deep in folk- lore of the pre-Christian period, and in this sense it is a dish of plenty, with abundance for an eternal festival. So also, from another point of view, it is not a cup but a stone, and it would have come never to this earth if it had not been for the fall of the angels. It is brought to the West ; it is carried to the East again ; it is assumed into heaven ; it is given to a company of hermits ; for all that we know to the contrary, it is at this day in Northumbria ; it is in the secret temple of a knightly company among the high Pyrenees; and it is in the land of Presbyter Johannes. It is like the cup of the elixir and the stone of transmutation in alchemy — described in numberless ways and seldom after the same manner; but it seems to be one thing under its

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various ways, and blessed are those who find it. We shall learn, in fine, that the Graal was either a monastic legend or at least that it was super-monastic — and this certainly.

II EPOCHS OF THE LEGEND

A minute inquiry into the materials, and their sources, of a moving and stately legend is opposed to the pur- poses and interests of the general reader, though to him I speak accidentally, and apart from any sense of election I must in honesty commend him to abstain, resting satisfied that for him and his consanguinities the Graal has two epochs only in literature — those of Sir Thomas Malory and the Idylls of the King. As Tennyson was indebted to Malory, except for things of his own in- vention, so it is through his gracious poems that many people have been sent back to the old book of chivalry from which he reproduced his motives and sometimes derived his words. But without entering into the domain of archaeology, even some ordinary persons, and certainly the literate reader, will know well enough that there are branches of the legend, both old and new, outside these two palmary names, and that some of them are close enough to their hands. They will be familiar with the Cornish poet Robert Stephen Hawker, whose " Quest of the San Graal " has, as Madame de Stael once said of Saint-Martin, " some sublime gleams." They will have realised that the old French romance of Perceval le Gallois, as translated into English of an archaic kind, ever beautiful and stately, by Dr. Sebastian Evans, is a gorgeous chronicle, full of richly painted pictures and endless pageants. They will know also more dimly that there is a German cycle of the Graal traditions — that Titurel, Parsifal, Lohen- grin, to whom a strange and wonderful life beyond all common teachings of Nature, all common conventions

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of art, has been given by Wagner, are also legendary heroes of the Holy Graal. In their transmuted presence something may have hinted to the heart that the Quest is not pursued with horses or clothed in outward armour, but in the spirit along the via mystica.

There are therefore, broadly speaking, three points of view, outside all expert evidence, as regards the whole subject, and these are : —

1 i ) The Romantic, and the reversion of literary senti- ment at the present day towards romanticism will make it unnecessary to mention that this is now a very strong point. It is exemplified by the editions of the Morte d' Arthur produced for students, nor less indeed by those which have been modified in the interests of children, and in which a large space is given always to the Graal legend. Andrew Lang's Book of Romance and Mary McLeod's Book of King Arthur and his Noble Knights are instances which will occur to several people, but there are yet others, and they follow one another, even to this moment, a shadowy masque, not excepting, at a far distance, certain obscure and truly illiterate versions in dim byways of periodical literature.

(2) The Poetic, and having regard to what has been said already, I need only for my present purpose affirm that it has done much to exalt and spiritualise the legend without removing the romantic element ; but I speak here of modern invention. In the case of Tennyson it has certainly added the elevated emotion which belongs essentially to the spirit of romance, and this saved English literature during the second half of the nineteenth cen- tury. But taking the work at its highest, it may still be that the Graal legend must wait to receive its treat- ment more fully by some poet who is to come. The literary form assumed by the Graal Idyll of the King — a tale within a tale twice-told — leaves something to be desired. Many stars rise over many horizons, including those of literature, but there is one star of the morning,

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and this in most cycles of books is rather an expected glory than a dawn now visible

(3) The Archaeological, and this includes naturally many branches, each of which has the character of a learned inquiry calling for special knowledge, and, in several instances, it is only of limited interest beyond the field of scholarship.

Outside these admitted branches of presentation and research, which lie, so to speak, upon the surface of current literature, there is perhaps a fourth point of view which is now in course of emerging, though scarcely into public view, as it is only in an accidental and a sporadic fashion that it has entered as yet into the written word. For want of a better term it must be called spiritual. It cares little for the archaeology of the subject, little for its romantic aspects, and possibly something less than little for the poetic side. It would scarcely know of Hawker's Qjuest — not that it signifies vitally — and would pro- bably regard the Graal symbol as I have otherwise characterised it — as one of the legends of the soul — I should have said again, sacramental legends, but this point of view is not usual, nor is it indeed found to any important extent, among those who hold extreme or any Eucharistic views. In other words, it is not specially a high Anglican or a Latin interest ; it characterises rather those who regard religious doctrine, institute and ritual, as things typical or analogical, without realising that as such they are to be ranked among channels of grace. So far as their conception has been put clearly to themselves, for them the Graal is an early recognition of the fact that doctrinal teachings are symbols and are no more meant for literal acceptance than any express fables. It is also a hazardous inquiry into obscure migrations of doctrine from East to West, outside the Christian aspects of Graal literature. This view appreciates, perhaps, only in an ordinary degree the evidence of history, nor can history be said to endorse it in its existing forms of presentation. At the same time it is much too loose

The Roots of the House of Meaning

and indeterminate to be classed as a philosophical con- struction of certain facts manifested in the life of a literature. It is a consideration of several serious but not fully equipped minds, and in some cases it has been impeded by its sentimental aspects; but the re- ference which I have made to it enables me to add that it should have reached a better term in stronger and surer hands. No one, however indifferent — or, indeed, of all unobservant — can read the available romances with- out seeing that the legend has its spiritual side, but it has also, at the fact's value, that side which connects it with folk-lore. No further afield than the Morte cT Arthur, which here follows the great French Quest among many antecedents, it is treated openly as an allegory, and the chivalry of King Arthur's Court passes explicitly during the Graal adventures into a region of similitude, where every episode has a supernatural meaning, which is explained sometimes in rather a tiresome manner. I say this under the proper reserves, because that which appears conventional and to some extent even trivial in these non-metaphrastic portions might prove, under the light of interpretation, of all truth and the grace thereto belonging.

Superfluities and interpretations notwithstanding, it is directly, or indirectly, out of the recent view, thus tenta- tively designated, that the consideration of the present thesis emerges as its final term, though out of all knowledge thereof.

It has been my object to remove a great possibility from hands which are worthy, and that certainly, but un- consecrated by special knowledge, and it is my intention to return it thereto by a gift of grace after changing the substance thereof.

In searching out mysteries of this order, it must be confessed that we are like Manfred in the course of an evocation, for, in truth, many things answer us ; amidst the confusion of tongues it is therefore no light task to distinguish that which, for my part, I recognise as

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the true voice. The literature does, however, carry on its surface the proof rather than the suggestion of a hidden motive as well as a hidden meaning, and three sources of evidence can be cited on the authority of the texts : (#) Confessed allegory, but this would be ex- cluded, except for one strong consideration. The mind which confesses to allegory confesses also to mysticism, this being the mode of allegory carried to the ne plus ultra degree. (£) Ideological metathesis, the presence of which is not to be confused with allegory, (c] Certain traces and almost inferential claims which tend to set the custodians of the Holy Graal in a position superior to that of the orthodox church, though the cycle is not otherwise hostile to the orthodox church. It must be understood that the critical difficulties of the Graal literature are grave within their own lines, and the authorities thereon are in conflict over issues which from their own standpoint may be occasionally not less than vital. This notwithstanding, the elements of the Graal problem really lie within a comparatively small com- pass, though they are scattered through a literature which is in no sense readily accessible, while it is, for the most part, in a language that is not exactly familiar to the reader of modern French. It has so far been in the hands of those who, whatever their claims, have no horizon outside the issues of folk-lore, and who, like other specialists, have been a little disposed to create, on the basis of their common agreement, a certain orthodoxy among themselves, recognising nothing beyond their particular canons of criticism and the circle of their actual interests. To these canons there is no reason that we should ourselves take exception ; they are more than excellent in their way, only they do not happen to signify, except antecedently and provisionally, for the higher consequence with which we are here concerned. The sincerity of scholarship imputes to it a certain sanctity, but in respect of this consequence most scholarship has its eyes bandaged.

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The interpretation of books is often an essay in enchantment, a rite of evocation which calls, and the souls of the dead speak in response in strange voices. To those who are acquainted with the mysteries, perhaps there are no books which respond in the same manner as these old sacraments of mystic chivalry. They speak at the very least our own language. I conclude, therefore, that the most decorative of quests in literature is that of the things that are eternal ; God is the proper quest of the romantic spirit, and of God moveth not only the High History of the Holy Graal, but the book of enchant- ment which I have proposed to myself thereon.

And even now, as if amidst bells and Hosannahs, a clear voice utters the Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus — because by this undertaking we have declared ourselves on God's side.

Ill

THE ENVIRONMENT OF THE GRAAL LITERATURE

It is useless to approach the literature of the Holy Graal for any purpose of special consideration, in the absence of a working acquaintance with that which en- compassed it externally in history, in church doctrine, in popular devotion and in ecclesiastical legend. As an acquaintance of this kind must not be assumed in my readers, I will take the chief points involved as follows : (a) The doctrinal position of the Church in respect of the Holy Eucharist ; (£) the passage of tran- substantiation into dogma, and other circumstances which led up to the institution of the feast of Corpus Christi in 1264; (<:) the cultus of the Precious Blood; (d) the mind exhibited by the higher life and the mystical literature of sanctity ; (^) the standing of min- strelsy ; (/) the horizon filled by coincident schools

17 B

The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal

of thought within and without the Church ; (£) the state of the official Church itself, and more especially (K] the position of the Church in Britain, including its connection with the ambition of the English king ; (/') the legendary history of certain relics ; (£) the voice of Catholic tradition regarding Joseph of Arimathaea ; (T) the true attitude of coincident heresies which have been connected with Graal literature ; (m} the discovery of the Sacro Catino in noi; (n) the invention of the Sacred Lance at Antioch ; (0} the traditional history of certain imputed relics of St. John the Baptist.

The consideration of some of these points must remain over till we approach the term of our quest, but for the working acquaintance which I have men- tioned the particulars hereinafter following will serve a temporary purpose, and will enable the unversed reader to approach the literature of the Holy Graal with a knowledge of several elements which entered into its creation and were concerned in its develop- ment.

Man does not live by bread alone, because it is certain that there is the supernatural bread, and although a great literature may arise in part out of folk-lore, primeval fable and legend ; though in this sense it will have its antecedents in that which was at first oral but afterwards passed into writing, some records of which may remain after generations and ages ; it does not come about that the development can proceed without taking over other elements. That these elements were assumed in the case of the literature of the Holy Graal is so obvious that there could and would be no call to recite the bare fact if a particular motive were not very clearly in view. As regards this, I desire to establish that every student, and indeed many and any who are simple readers in passing, will be aware that the first matter of the literature was, as I have said, folk-lore, as if broken meat and garlic, standing for the daily bread of my first illustration. We shall see, in its proper

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place, that Celtic folk-lore — Welsh, Irish and what not — had wonder-stories of cauldrons, dishes and gob- lets, as it had also of swords and lances. Those who in the later twelfth and the early thirteenth century instituted the literature of the Holy Graal — being, as they were, makers of songs and endless tellers of stories — knew well enough of these earlier traditions ; they were the heritage of the minstrel from long ante- cedent generations of Druids and Scalds and Bards. But there had come over them another and a higher knowledge — a tradition, a legend, the hint of a secret perpetuated ; above all and more than all, there had come over them the divine oppression, the secret sense of the mystery which lies behind the surface declaration of the specifics of Christian doctrine. There was the power and the portent of the great orthodox Church, there was the abiding presence of the sacraments, there was the unfailing growth of doctrine, there was the generation of new doctrine, not indeed out of no elements, not indeed by the fiat lux of the Seat of Peter, but in the western countries of Europe — at so great a distance from the centre — the growth was un- suspected sometimes and often seemingly unprefaced, as if there had been spontaneous generation. Ever magnified and manifold in its resource, there was the popular devotion, centred about a particular locality, an especial holy person, and this or that individual holy object. Under what circumstances and with what motives actuating, we have to learn if we can in the sequel, but we can understand in the lesser sense, and perhaps too easily almost, how far the singers and the song which they knew from the past underwent a great transformation ; how the Bowl of Plenty became the Cup or Chalice of the Eucharist ; how the spear of many battles and the sword of destruction became the Lance which pierced our Saviour and the weapon used at the martyrdom of His precursor. I set it down that these things might have intervened naturally as a simple

The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal

work of causation which we can trace with comparative ease ; but they would not for this reason have assumed the particular complexion which we shall find to charac- terise the cycle ; we should not have its implicits, its air and accent of mystery, its peculiar manifestation of sacred objects, or its insistence on their final removal. For the explanation of these things we shall have to go further afield, but for the moment I need note only that the writers of the literature have almost without ex- ception certified that they followed a book which had either come into their hands or of which they had received an account from some one who had seen or possessed a copy. We can trace in the later texts and can sometimes identify the particular book which they followed, but we come in fine to the alleged document which preceded all and which for us is as a centre of research.

Amidst the remanents of mythic elements and the phantasmagoria of popular devotion, the veneration of relics included, there stands forth that which from Chris- tian time immemorial has been termed the Mystery of Faith, the grace not less visible because it is veiled so closely, and this is the Real Presence of Christ in the material symbols of the Eucharist. Seeing that the literature of the Holy Graal is, by the hypothesis of its hallow-in-chief, most intimately connected with this doctrine and the manifestation thereto belonging, it is desirable and essential before all things to understand the Eucharistic position at the period of the development of the literature. We have the traces therein of two schools of thought, though the evidence of the one is clearer than that of the other ; they are respectively the school of transubstantiation and that which is alternative thereto, but not in a sectarian sense, namely, the spiritual interpretation of the grace communicated in the palmary sacrament of the altar.

The means of grace are infinite, but the recognised Sacraments are seven, and to each of them is allocated a

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locus which is symbolical of its position in the system. Baptism is conferred at the West in the pronaos of the temple, because it is the rite of entrance and the recep- tion of the postulant. Confirmation takes place within the sanctuary itself, on the steps of the altar, because those who have been received in the body by the mediation of sponsors are entitled, if they are properly prepared, to their inheritance in the gifts of the Spirit. The place of Penance is in the sideways, because those who have fallen from righteousness have become thereby extra-lineal, having deviated from the straight path which leads to the Holy of Holies, and their rectification is to come. The Eucharist is administered at the steps of the chancel because it is taken from the hands of him who has received it from the altar itself, and thus he comes like Melchisedech carrying bread and wine, or in the signs and symbols of the Mediator. It is symbolical of the act of Christ in offering Himself for the redemp- tion of mankind ; He comes therefore half-way to the communicant, because He was manifested in the flesh. This is the material sign of the union which is consum- mated within, and its correspondence in the Sacraments is Matrimony, which is celebrated in the same place and is another sign of the union, even of the new and eternal covenant. It is the work of Nature sanctified and Love, under its proper warrants, declared holy on all planes. The Sacrament of Holy Orders is conferred on the steps of the altar, and it has more than this external corre- spondence with that of Confirmation, of which it is the higher form ; the latter is the rite of betrothal by which on the threshold of life the candidate is dedicated to the union and the spouse of the union descends for a moment upon him, with the sign and seal of possession ; the former is the spiritual marriage of the priest, by which he espouses the Church militant on earth that the Church triumphant in Heaven may at a proper season intervene for the consummation of the higher conjugal rights. The sacrament of Extreme Unction is the last act and

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the last consolation which the Church can offer to the faithful, and it is performed outside the temple because the Church follows its children, even to the gate of death, that their eyes may behold His salvation, Who has fulfilled according to His Word.

It is only at first sight that this brief interpretation will seem out of place in the section ; its design is to show, by the ritual position in which the sacraments are adminis- tered, that the Holy Eucharist, which has its place of repose and exposition at the far East on the Altar, is the great palladium of the Christian mystery, that the Orient comes from on high, moving to meet the communicant, because God is and He recompenses those who seek Him out. The correspondences hereof in the romances are (a) the rumours of the Graal which went before the Holy Quests, and (F) the going about of the Graal, so that it was beheld in chapels and hermitages — yes, even in the palace of the King.

The great doctrinal debate of the closing twelfth and the early thirteenth century was that which con- cerned the mystery of the Eucharist, and in matters of doctrine there was no other which could be called second in respect of it. It filled all men's ears, and there can be no question that the vast sodality of min- strelsy was scarcely less versed than the outer section of the priesthood in its palmary elements. Of this debate France was a particular centre, and Languedoc, in the persons of the Albigenses, was a place of holocaust, the denial of the Eucharist being one of the charges against them. As regards the question itself, I suppose it will be true to say that it turned upon the doctrine of transub- stantiation, which was decreed by the Council of Lateran in 1215, under Pope Innocent III. The words of the definition are : " The Body and Blood of Jesus Christ are really contained under the species of bread and wine in the Sacrament of the Altar, the bread being transub- stantiated into the Body and the Wine into the Blood." Long anterior to this promulgation, there can be no

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doubt that the doctrine represented the mind of the Church at the seat of its power. In contradistinction thereto were the opinions of the protesting sects, while external to both was the feeling of a minority which did not object openly, yet did not less strongly hold to a spiritual interpretation of the Real Presence. The ex- ternal devotion to the Eucharist which was manifested more and more by the extremists on the side of the Church would scarcely be checked by the exponents of the middle way, and indeed it might well have been encouraged, though not with an intention which could be termed the same specifically. In the thirteenth cen- tury the elements were beginning to be elevated for the adoration of the people ; the evidence is regarded as doubtful in respect of any earlier period. It must have become a general custom in 1216, for a constitution of Honorius III. speaks of it as of something which had been done always. In 1229 Gregory IX. devised the ringing of a bell before consecration as a warning for the faithful to fall on their knees and worship Christ in the Eucharist. Still earlier in the thirteenth century Odo, Bishop of Paris, regulated the forms of venera- tion, more especially when the Sacred Elements were carried in procession. Hubert, Archbishop of Canter- bury, had taken similar precautions at the end of the twelfth century. It seems to follow from the constitu- tions of Odo that some kind of reservation was prac- tised at his period, and I believe that the custom had descended from primitive times. There is nothing, however, in the romances to show that this usage was familiar ; the perpetual presence was for them in the Holy Graal, and apparently in that only. Church and chapel and hermitage resounded daily with the celebration of the Mass. In one instance we hear of a tabernacle on the Altar, or some kind of receptacle in which the Con- secrated Elements reposed. The most usual mediaeval practice was to reserve in a dove-shaped repository which hung before the Table of the Lord. The

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Book of the Holy Graal has, as we shall see, a very curious example of reservation, for it represents a Sacred Host delivered to the custody of a convert, one also who was a woman and not in the vows of religion. It was kept by her in a box, and the infer- ence of the writer is that Christ was, for this reason, always with her. The reader who is dedicated in his heart to the magnum mysterium of faith will be disposed to regard this as something approaching sacrilege, and I confess to the same feeling, but it was a frequent practice in the early church, and not, as it might well be concluded, a device of romance.

As regards transubstantiation, the voice of the litera- ture in the absence of an express statement on either side seems to represent both views. The Greater Chronicles of the Graal are as text-books for the illustration of the doctrine, but it is absent from the Lesser Chronicles, and outside this negative evidence of simple silence there are other grounds for believing that it was unacceptable to their writers, who seem to represent what I have called already the spiritual interpretation of the Real Presence, corresponding to what ecclesiologists have termed a body of Low Doctrine within the Church.

There was another question exercising the Church at the same period, though some centuries were to elapse before it was to be decided by the central authority. It was that of communion in both kinds, which was finally abolished by the Council of Constance in 1415, the decision then reached being confirmed at Trent in 1562. The ordination of communion in one kind was preceded by an intermediate period when ecclesiastical feeling was moving in that direction, but there was another and an earlier period — that is to say, in the fifth century — when communion under one kind was prohibited expressly on the ground that the division of the one mystery could not take place without sacrilege. As a species of middle way, there was the practice of the intincted or steeped Host which seems to have been coming into use at the

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beginning of the tenth century, although it was pro- hibited at the Council of Brago in Galicia, except possibly in the case of the sick and of children. The custom of mixing the elements was defended by Emulphus, Bishop of Rochester, in 1120, and Arch- bishop Richard referred to the intincted Host in 1175. All these problems of practice and doctrine were the religious atmosphere in which the literature of the Graal was developed. There were great names on all sides ; on that of transubstantiation there was the name of Peter Lombard, the Master of Sentences, though he did not dare to determine the nature of the conversion — whether, that is to say, it was " formal, substantial, or of some other kind " ; on the side of communion under one element there was that of St. Thomas Aquinas, the Angel of the Schools.

With an environment of this kind it was inevitable that poetry and legend should take over the mystery of the Eucharist, and should exalt it and dwell thereon. We shall see very shortly that the assumption was not so simple as might appear from this suggestion, and that something which has the appearance of a secret within the sanctuary had been heard of in connection with the central institution of official Christianity. In any case, from the moment that the Eucharist entered into the life of romantic literature, that literature entered after a new manner into the heart of the western peoples. Very soon, it has been said, the Graal came to be regarded as the material symbol of the Catholic and Christian faith, but it was really the most spiritual symbol ; I believe that it was so considered, and the statement does little more than put into English the inspired words of the Ordinary of the Mass. In the middle of the mistaken passion for holy wars in Palestine ; through the monstrous iniquity of Albigensian Crusades ; the ever-changing struggle notwithstanding between Pope and King and Emperor ; within the recurring darkness of interdict, when the Sacraments were hidden like the Graal ; the

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Legend of the Holy Graal grew and brightened, till the most stressful of times adventurous, the most baleful of all enchantments, shone, as it seemed, in its shining, and a light which had been never previously on the land or sea of literature glorified the spirit of romance. It was truly as if the great company of singers and chroniclers had gathered at the high altar to partake of the Blessed Sacrament, and had communicated not only in both kinds, but in elements of extra-valid consecration.

The thesis of this section is that God's immanence was declared at the time of the literature, through all Christendom, by the Mystery of Faith and that the development of Eucharistic doctrine into that of tran- substantiation was a peculiar recognition of the corporate union between Christ and His people. That imman- ence also was declared by the high branches of Graal romance, even as by the quests of the mind in philo- sophy— in which manner romance, in fine, became the mirror of religion, and the literature testified, under certain veils, to a mystery of Divine experience which once at least was manifested in Christendom.

So I who am about to speak offer a loving salutation to the learned and admirable souls who have preceded me in the way of research. It is because I have ascended an untrodden peak in Darien to survey the prospect of the Quest, and have found that there is another point of view, that I come forward in these pages carrying strange tidings, but leaving to all my precursors the crowns and bays and laurels which they have deserved so well, and offering no contradiction to anything which they have attained truly. How admirable is the life of the scholar — how unselfish are the motives which inspire him — and how earnestly we who, past all revocation, are dedicated to the one subject desire that those paths which he travels — when even they seem far from the goal — may lead him to that term which is his as well as ours, for assuredly he seeks only the truth as he conceives thereof.

As the theory of transubstantiation did not pass into

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dogma till a late period in the development of the canon of the Graal, so it can be said that romantic texts like the 'Book of the Holy Graal, the Longer Prose Perceval and the Galahad Quest, but the last espe- cially, which contains the higher code of chivalry, were instrumental in promoting that dogma by the proclamation of a sacrosaintly feast of Corpus Christi maintained for ever in the Hidden House of the Graal, till the time came when the great feast of exaltation and the assumption into heaven of the sacred emblems was held in fine at Sarras. There was, therefore, a correla- tion of activity between the two sides of the work, for it was out of the growing dogma that the Graal legend in the Greater Chronicles assumes its particular sacramental complexion.

When all has been granted and, after granting, has been exalted even, it remains that the Eucharistic symbol is so much the greatest of all that we can say that there is a second scarcely, because this is the palmary channel of grace, and — in the last resource — we do not need another. If it were not that the literature of the Holy Graal offers intimations of still more glorious things behind this mystery than we are accustomed to find in theological and devotional handbooks, I suppose that the old books would have never concerned my thoughts. Now therefore, God willing, I speak to no one, in or out of churches, sects and learned societies, who docs not realise in his heart that the path of the life everlasting lies, mystically speaking, within the consecrated elements of bread and wine, beyond which veils all the high Quests are followed.

Passing from the doctrinal matters expressed and im- plied in the Graal literature to the sacred palladia with which it is concerned more especially, we enter into another species of environment. Out of the doctrine of transubstantiation, and perhaps more especially out of the particular congeries of devotional feelings connected there- with, there originated what may be termed a cultus of

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the body of God and of His blood, understood in the mystery of the Incarnation, and the instinct which lies behind the veneration of relics came into a marked degree of operation. Such veneration is instinctive, as I have just said, and representing on the external side, invalidly or not, the substance of things unseen in religion, it is so rooted in our natural humanity that it would be difficult to regard its manifestation in Christendom as characteristic more especially of Christianity than of some other phases of belief. The devotion which, because of its excesses, is by a hasty and unrooted philosophy termed superstition — which no instinct can ever be — manifested early enough and never wanted its objects. There can be scarcely any call to point out that in the considerations which here follow I am concerned with questions of fact and not with adjudication thereon. The veneration of relics and cognate objects, to which some kind of sanctity was imputed, became not only an environment of Christianity at a very early period, but it so remains to the present day for more than half of Christendom. It may be one of the grievous burdens of those ecclesiastical systems about which it prevails and in which it is still promoted, but having said what the sense of intellectual justice seems to require, that it may be exonerated from the false charge of superstition, I have only to add — and this is to lift the Graal literature out of the common judgment which might be passed upon memorials of relic worship — that the instinct of such devotions, as seen at their best in the official churches, has always an arch-natural implicit ; it works upon the simple principle that God is not the God of the dead but of the living, and the reverence, by example, for the Precious Blood of Christ depends from the doctrine of His immanence in any memorials which He has left. I need not add that, on the hypothesis of the Church itself, the sense of devotion would be better directed, among external objects, towards the Real Pres- ence in the symbols of the Eucharist ; but in the Graal literature it was round about the Sacramental Mystery

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that the Relics of the Passion were collected, operating and shining in that light.

We know already that the Sacred Vessel of the legends was in the root-idea a Reliquary, and as such that it was the container and preserver of the Precious Blood of Christ. The romantic passion which brought this Reliquary into connection with the idea of that sacrament which communicated the life of Christ's blood to the believing soul, and the doctrinal passion which led to the definition concerning transubstantiation interacted one upon another. John Damascene had said in the eighth century that the elements of bread and wine were assumed and united to the Divinity — which took place by the invocation of the Holy Ghost, for the Spirit descends and changes. The Venerable Bede had said that the Lord gave us the sacrament of His flesh and blood in the figure of bread and wine. And again : " Christ is absent as to His Body, but is present as to His Divinity." And yet further: "The Body and Blood of Jesus Christ are received in the mouth of believers for their salvation." I do not know whether the implicits of this presentation have been realised in any school of interpreters, but there is one of them which covers all phases of sacramental exegesis, however variant from each other, and however in conflict with high Roman doctrine concerning the Eucharist. I state it as one who after long searchings has found a hidden jewel of the sacra- ment which might be an eirenicon for all the sects alive. It has also the simplicity which Khunrath, in expounding the Hermetic side of Eternal Wisdom, has said to be the seal of Nature and Art. I testify, therefore, that the true mystery of the Eucharist resides in the assumption by the Divine Life of the veils of Bread and Wine, and that even as once in time and somewhere in the world that life assumed the veils of flesh and blood, which became the Body of the Lord, so here and now — daily on every worshipful and authorised altar over the wide, wide world — do those unspotted elements become again

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that sacred vehicle, so that he who communicates in the faith of spirit and of truth, receives that which is not less truly the Divine Body than the especial polarisation of elements which was born in Nazareth of the sacred and glorious Virgin. Moreover, I am very certain that the one mystery was operated as if in the terms and valid forms of the other by the invocation of the Holy Spirit and the utter consecration of the elements. The reason is that given by Leo the Great, or another, so long and long ago — that Mary conceived in her heart before she conceived in her body. But having so con- ceived, the elements within her were transubstantiated into the Divine Body. I desire to add with all venera- tion and homage that this root-mystery of redemption is that which lies behind the devotion to the Mother of God, which has ascended to such heights in the Latin Church. This Church is the one witness through the ages whose instinct on the great subjects has never erred, however long and urgently the powers of the deep and the powers of perdition have hammered at the outer gates. Among other things, she has always recognised in the withdrawn and most holy part of her consciousness that she who conceived Christ — by the desire of the mystery of God satisfied out of all measure in a consummated marriage of the mind — had entered through her humanity into assumption with the Divine, and was to be counted no longer merely among the elected daughters of Zion.

To return therefore, those who say that the Eucharist is flesh and blood are speaking God's truth, and I ask in examine mortis —

" In life's delight, in death's dismay " —

that I may never receive otherwise. And those who say that such things are understood spiritually say also the truth which is eternal after their own manner, whence I look to communicate with them when " the dedely flesh" begins "to beholde the spyrytuel thynges " — or ever I set forth in that ship of mystic faith which was

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built from the beginning of this external order that it may carry us in fine to Sarras, though it is known that we shall go further.

Well, fratres carissimi, sorores ex omnibus dilectissimte, to whom I speak the wisdom of the other world in a mystery — those who out of all expectation translated the deep things of doctrine, as they best could, into the language of romance — out of the Latin, as they said in their cryptic fashion — the Palladium of all research was that Vessel of Singular Election which contained, in their ingenuous symbolism, the Blood of Christ ; but seeing that they were in a hurry to show how those who were worthy to receive the arch-natural sacraments did after some undeclared manner partake at the Graal Mass of corporeal and incorporeal elements which were fit to sustain both body and soul, so did the Reliquary become the Chalice, or alternatively it was elevated and the Christ came down to distribute His own life with the osculum fraternitatis and the consolamentum of all consolation. They collected, also, under the ecclesiastical and monastic aegis, certain other relics about the relic-in-chief. Now, the point concerning all is that most of the minor Hallows were known already as local objects of sanctity no less than the palmary Hallow, but the sanctity ascribed to the latter and the devotion thereto belonging were beginning to prevail generally. It is difficult to trace the growth of this kind of cultus ; but as to the worship of spiritual devotion there was offered everywhere in Christendom the Body and Blood of Christ in the Sacra- ment of the Altar, so at many shrines — as if the more visible symbol carried with it a validity of its own, a more direct and material appeal — there was the reputed sang real of Christ preserved in a reliquary. Some of these local devotions were established and well known before the appearance of any text of the Holy Graal with which we are acquainted — probably before those texts which we can discern behind the extant literature.

We have at the present day the Feast of the Precious

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Blood, which is a modern invention, and perhaps for some even who are within the fold of the Latin Church, it is classed among the unhappy memorials of the pontificate of Pius IX. This notwithstanding, it is what may be termed popular, and has in England its confraternities and other systems to maintain it in the mind of the laity. It has the London Oratory as its more particular centre, and it is described as an union and an apostolate of inter- cessory prayer. Without such assistance in the Middle Ages we can understand that the cultus had its appeal to the devotional side of the material mind, for which flesh and blood profited a good deal, in spite of asceticism and the complication of implicits behind the counsels of perfection in the religious life of the age.

The historical antiquity of the local sanctities which centre about certain relics is shrouded like some Masonic events in the vague grandeur of time imme- morial, and a defined date is impossible. Because the legends of the Graal are connected with the powers and wonders of several hallowed objects belonging to the Passion of Christ, it is essential rather than desirable to ascertain whether at the period when the literature arose —and antedating it, if that be possible — there were such objects already in existence and sufficiently well known to respond as a terminus a quo in respect of the development of the legends. The places which appear as claimants to the possession of relics of the Precious Blood are, comparatively speaking, numerous ; among others there are Bruges, Mantua, Saintes, the Imperial Monastery at Weingarten, and even Beyrout. According to the story of Mantua, the relic was preserved by Longinus, the Roman soldier who pierced the side of Christ. Within the historical period, it is said to have been divided, and some part of it was secured by the monastery of Weingarten, already mentioned. This portion was again subdivided and brought from Germany by Richard of Cornwall, the brother of Henry III. Frac- tional as the portion was, it is affirmed to have been a

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large relic, and the fortunate possessor founded a religious congregation to guard and venerate it. Later on it was, however, divided again into three parts, of which one was retained by the congregation, one was deposited in a monastery built for the purpose at Ashted, near Berk- hampstead, and the third in a third monastery erected at Hailes in Gloucestershire. All these were foundations by Richard of Cornwall ; and to explain such continual division, it must be remembered that this was a period when the building of churches and religious houses was prohibited without relics to sanctify them. Now, the story of Richard himself may be accepted as tolerably well founded, but there is much doubt concerning the relics at Weingarten and at Mantua itself. The alter- native statements are (i) that in 1247 the Templars sent to King Henry III. a vas vetustissimum^ having the appear- ance of crystal and reputed to contain the Precious Blood ; (2) that in the same year, and to the same King, there was remitted by the Patriarch of Jerusalem a Reliquary termed the Sangreal, which had once belonged to Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathasa. Now it is obvious that at the period of Henry III. the canon of the Graal literature was almost closed ; the last of these stories is obviously a reflection of that literature ; it was also the time when (a) the Sacro Catino of Geneva may have begun to be regarded as the Graal, and when (<£) a similar attribution was given to a sacred vessel which had been long preserved at Constantinople ; but these objects, whether dishes or chalices, were not reliquaries. It will be seen that the claim of Mantua remains over with nothing to account for its origin. Of Beyrout I have heard only, and have no details to offer. But the relic of Bruges has a clear and methodical history, passing from legend into a domain which may be that of fact. The legend is that Joseph of Arimathasa having collected the Blood from the wounds of Christ, as the literature of the Graal tells us, placed it in a phial, which was taken to Antioch by St. James the Less, who was the first

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bishop of that city. The possible historical fact is that the Patriarch of Antioch gave the Reliquary about 1130 to a knight of Bruges who had rendered signal services to the church in Antioch. It was brought back by the knight to his native place, and there it has remained to this day. The dubious element in the story is the gift of such a relic under any circumstances whatever; the point in its favour is that the phial has the character of oriental work, which is referred by experts in ancient glass to the seventh or eighth century.

Against, or rather in competition with, this simple and consistent claim, there is the monstrous invention con- nected with the monastery of the Holy Trinity at Fecamp in Normandy. Here there is — or there was at least in the year 1840 — a tabernacle of white marble, decorated with sculptured figures and inscribed : "Hie SANGUIS D.N., I.H.V., X.P.I." It is therefore called the Tabernacle of the Precious Blood.

The story is that Joseph of Arimathaea removed the blood from the wounds of Christ, after the body had been taken down from the Cross, using his knife for the purpose, and collecting the sacred fluid in his gauntlet. The gauntlet he placed in a coffer, and this he concealed in his house. The years passed away, and on his death- bed he bequeathed the uncouth reliquary to his nephew Isaac, telling him that if he preserved it the Lord would bless him in all his ways. Isaac and his wife began to enjoy every manner of wealth and prosperity ; but she was an unconverted Jewess, and seeing her husband per- forming his devotions before the coffer, she concluded that he had dealings with an evil spirit, and she denounced him to the high priest. The story says that he was acquitted, but he removed with the reliquary to Sidon, where the approaching siege of Jerusalem was made known to him in a vision. He therefore concealed the reliquary in a double tube of lead, with the knife and the head of the Lance which had pierced the side of Christ. The tube itself he concealed^ in the trunk of a fig-tree,

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the bark of which closed over its contents, so that no fissure was visible. A second vision on the same subject caused him to cut down the tree, and he was inspired to commit it to the waves. In the desolation which he felt thereafter an angel told him that his treasure had reached shore in Gaul, and was hidden in the sand near the valley of Fecamp.

I do not propose to recount the various devices by which the history of the fig-tree is brought up to the period when the monastery was founded at the end of the tenth century. The important points in addition are (#) that the nature of the Reliquary did not satisfy the custodians, and, like the makers of Graal books, they wanted an arch-natural chalice to help out their central Hallow ; (£) that they secured this from the priest of a neighbouring church who had celebrated Mass on a certain occasion, and had seen the consecrated elements converted into flesh and blood ; (c) that a second knife was brought, later on, by an angel ; (d) that a general exposition of all the imputed relics took place on the high altar in 1171 ; (tf) that their praises and wonders were celebrated by a guild of jongleurs attached to the monastery, which guild is said to have originated early in the eleventh century, and was perpetuated for over four hundred years ; (/) that the story is told in a mediaeval romance of the thirteenth century, though in place of Joseph the character in chief is there said to be Nicodemus; \g) that there are other documents in French and in Latin belonging to different and some of them to simi- larly early periods ; (h) that there is also a Mass of the Precious Blood, which was published together with the poem in 1 840, and this is, exoterically speaking, a kind of Mass of the Graal, but I fear that a careful examina- tion might create some doubt of its antiquity, and, speaking generally, I do not see (i) that any of the documents have been subjected to critical study ; or (2) that Fecamp is likely to have been more disdainful about the law of great inventions than other places with

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Hallows to maintain in Christian — or indeed in any other — times.

So far as regards the depositions which it might be possible to take in the Monastery concerning its Tabernacle ; and there is only one thing more which need be mentioned at this stage. It has been proved by very careful and exhaustive research into the extant codices of the Conte del Graal that some copies of the continua- tion by Gautier de Doulens state that the episode of Mont Douloureux was derived from a book written at Fecamp. It follows that one early text at least in the literature of the Holy Graal draws something from the Monastery of the Holy Trinity, but, lest too much importance should be attributed to this fact, I desire to note for my conclusion : (#) that the episode in question has no integral connection with the Graal itself; (^) that the tradition of Fecamp, which I have characterised as monstrous, by which I mean in comparison with the worst side of the general legends of the Precious Blood, is utterly distinct from that of the Holy Graal in the texts which constitute the literature ; and (c) that this literature passed, as we shall find, out of legend into the annuncia- tion of a mystic claim. It is the nature of this claim, the mystery of sanctity which lies behind it, and the quality of perpetuation by which the mystery was handed on, that is the whole term of my quest, and here it stands declared.

We have seen how at Fecamp there occurred a very curious intervention on the part of an arch-natural chalice, being that vessel into which the Graal passes by a kind of superincession, if it does not begin and end therein. But there are other legends of chalices and dishes in the wide world of reliquaries, and in order to clear the issues I may state in the first place that the Table of the Last Supper is said to be preserved at St. John Lateran, with no history of its migration attached thereto. The Church of Savillac in the diocese of Montauban has also, or once had, a Tabula Ccen<e Domini and the Bread used at that Table. As regards the chalice itself, there is one

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of silver at Valencia which the Catholic mind of Spain has long regarded as that of the Last Supper ; but I have no records of its history. There is one other which is world-wide in its repute, and this I have mentioned already, as if by an accidental reference. The Sacro Catino is preserved in the Church of St. Laurence at Genoa, and it is pictured in the book which Fra Gaetano di San Teresa dedicated to the subject in 1726. It corresponds by its general appearance — which recalls, broadly speaking, the calix of an enormous flower — more closely to the form which might, in the absence of expert knowledge, be attributed to a decorative Paschal Dish than a wine-cup ; but there is no need to say that it is not an archaic glass vessel of Jewry. The history of so well known an object is rather one of weariness in recital, but at the crusading sack of Cassarea in noi the Genoese received as their share of the booty, or in part consideration thereof, what they believed to be a great cup or dish carved out of a single emerald ; it was about forty centimetres in height, and a little more than one metre in circumference ; the form was hexagonal, and it was furnished with two handles, polished and rough respectively. Now, Caesarea was near enough to the Holy Fields for the purposes of a sacred identification in the hearts of crusaders, and moreover the vessel had been found in the mosque of Antioch, which might have helped to confuse their minds by suggesting that it was a stolen relic of Christian sanctity. But at the time when the city was pillaged there is no evidence that the notion occurred to the Genoese, unless it was on some vague ground of the kind that at the return of some of them it was deposited in their church as a gift. It may well have been a thank-offering, and this only, but I confess to a certain suspicion that, vaguely or otherwise, they had assumed its sacred character, and that its identi- fication, not certainly with the Holy Graal, but with the dish or chalice of the Last Supper, may have begun earlier than has been so far supposed — antedating, that is to

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say, the first record in history. This record is connected with the name of the author of the Golden Legend, Jacobus de Voragine, at the end of the thirteenth century. There is, however, some reason to believe that the attribution was common already in Genoa prior to the period in question. The point which is posed for consideration is whether the wide diffusion of the Graal literature caused such a claim to be put forward by the wardens of the Sacro Catino. The materials for a decision are unfor- tunately not in our hands. With the Graal itself it could not have been connected properly, seeing that the vessel was empty ; but perversions of this kind are not outside the field of possibility. Whatever the ultimate value of an empirical consideration like this, the heaviest fines, and even death itself, were threatened against those who should touch the vessel with any hard object. A cruel but belated disillusion, however, awaited its wardens when it was taken to Paris in 1816, and was not only broken on the way back, but, having been subjected to testing, was proved to be only glass.

Second in importance only to the vessel of the Holy Graal was the Sacred Lance of the Legend, and as in the majority of texts this is also a relic of the Passion, our next task is to ascertain its antecedent or concurrent history in the life of popular devotion. We know already of the thesis issued at Fecamp, but the claims are so many that no one has cared especially. The shaft of the spear used by Longinus when he pierced the side of Christ is preserved in the Basilica of St. Peter. According to the Roman Martyrology, the Deicide was suffering from ophthalmia when he inflicted the wound, and some of the Precious Blood overflowing his face, he was healed immediately — which miracle led, it is declared, to his conversion. Cassiodorus, who belongs to the fifth century, says that the Lance was in his days at Jerusalem, but this was the head and the imbedded part of the shaft, the rest being missing. He does not account for its preservation from the time of Christ to

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his own. Gregory of Tours speaks of its removal to Constantinople, which notwithstanding it was discovered once more at Antioch for the encouragement of Crusaders, under circumstances of particular suspicion, even in the history of relics. This was in 1098. There is also a long story of its being pledged by Baldwin II. to Venice, and of its redemption by St. Louis, which event brought it to Paris ; but this is too late for our subject. A Holy Lance with an exceedingly confused history — but identical as to its imputed connection with the Passion — came also into the possession of Charlemagne. That any history of such a hallow is worthless does not make it less important when the object is to exhibit the simple fact that it was well known in this world before Graal literature, as we find it, had as yet come into existence. According to St. Andrew of Crete, the head of the Lance was buried with the True Cross, but it does not seem to have been disinterred therewith. It is just to add that some who have investigated the question bear witness that the history of the Hallow is reasonably satisfactory in the sixth century and thence onwards.

The next relic which may be taken to follow on our list is the Crown of Thorns ; it figures only in one romance of the Graal, but has an important position therein. The possession of single or several Sacred Thorns has been claimed by more than one hundred churches, without prejudice to which there are those which have the Crown itself, less or more intact. This also is not included among the discoveries of St. Helena in connection with the True Cross, and there is no early record concerning it ; but it is mentioned as extant by St. Paulin de Nole at the beginning of the fifth century. One hundred years later, Cassiodorus said that it was at Jerusalem ; Gregory of Tours also bears testimony to its existence. In the tenth century part of it was at Constantinople, which was a general centre, if not a forcing-house, of desirable sacred objects. St. Germain, Bishop of Paris, was in that city and received part of it

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as a present from the Emperor Justinian. Much earlier the patriarch of Jerusalem is supposed to have sent another portion to Charlemagne. In 1106 the treasure at Constantinople is mentioned by Alexis Comnenus. Another Crown of Thorns is preserved in Santa Maria della Spina of Pisa,

The Sacred Nails of the Passion appear once in the Book of the Holy Graal, and these also have an early history in relics. Some or all of them were discovered by St. Helena with the True Cross, and, according to St. Ambrose, one of them was placed by her in the diadem of Constantine, or alternatively in his helmet, and a second in the bit of his horse. In the sixth century St. Gregory of Tours speaks of four nails, and it seems to follow from St. Chrysostom that the bit of Constantine's charger was coupled with the Lance as an object of veneration in his days. As regards the diadem fashioned by St. Helena this was welded of iron and became the Iron Crown of Lombardy, being given by Gregory I. to Theodolinde in recognition of her zeal for the conversion of the Lombard people. Charlemagne, Sigismund, Charles V. and Napo- leon I. were crowned therewith. Muratori and others say that the Nail which hallowed it was not heard of in this connection till the end of the sixteenth century, and the Crown itself has been challenged. Twenty-nine places in all have laid claim to the possession of one or other of the four nails, and there are some commendable devices of subtlety to remove the sting of this anomaly. It is sufficient for our own clear purpose to realise that the relics, if not everywhere, were in " right great plenty."

It is also in the Book of the Holy Graal, and there only, that we see for a moment, in the high pageant of all, a vision of an ensanguined Cross, a blood-stained Cincture and a bended rod, also dyed with blood. Of the Crux vera and its invention I need say nothing, because its relics, imputed and otherwise, are treasured everywhere, and I suppose that their multiplicity, even at the earliest Graal period, made it impossible to introduce the Cross as an exclusive

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Hallow in the Sacred House of Relics. By the Cincture there was understood probably that bandage with which the eyes of Christ were blindfolded, and this, or its substitute, had been in the possession of Charlemagne and was by him given to St. Namphasus, who built the Abbey of Marcillac and there deposited the relic. It is now in a little country church called St. Julian of Lunegarde. According to St. Gregory of Tours, the reed and the sponge, which had once been filled with vinegar, were objects of veneration at his day in Jerusalem. They are supposed to have been taken to Constantinople, which notwithstanding an informant of the Venerable Bede saw the sponge with his own eyes, deposited in a silver cup at the Holy City. He saw also the shorter reed, which served as the derisive symbol of the Lord's royalty.

The last relic of the Passion of which we hear in the books of the Graal is the Volto Santo, which all men know and venerate in connection with the piteous legend of Veronica. The memorials of this tradition are, on a moderate computation, as old as the eighth century, but the course of time has separated it into four distinct branches. The first and the oldest of these is preserved in a Vatican manuscript, which says that Veronica was the woman whose issue of blood was healed by Christ, and she herself was the artist who painted the likeness. She was carried to Rome with the picture for the healing of the Emperor Tiberius. The second branch is con- tained in an Anglo-Saxon manuscript of the eleventh century, and this says that the relic was a piece of Christ's garment which received in a miraculous manner the im- pression of His countenance. The origin of the third tradition seems to have been in Germany, but it is pre- served in some metrical and other Latin narrative versions. The likeness of Christ is said to be very large, apparently full length. It was in the possession of Ver- onica, but without particulars of the way in which it was acquired. In another story — this is perhaps of the twelfth century — the Emperor who was healed is Vespasian, and

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Christ Himself impressed His picture on the face-cloth which He used when He washed before supper at the house of Veronica. She had asked St. Luke, whom tradition represents as an artist, for a copy of the Master's like- ness. The fourth and last variant is the familiar Calvary legend, wherein the holy woman offers in His service the cloth which she has on her arm when Christ is carrying the Cross, and she is rewarded by the impress of His countenance thereon. The noticeable point is that the story of Veronica, of the Volto Santo, and of the healing of a Roman Emperor is the root-matter of the earliest historical account of the Holy Graal, and this fact has led certain scholars to infer that the entire literature has been developed out of the Veronica legend, as a part of the conversion legend of Gaul, according to which the holy woman, in the company of the three Maries and of Lazarus, took ship to Marseilles and preached the Gospel therein. They carried the Volto Santo and other Hallows.

I approach now the term of this inquiry, and there remains for consideration the Sword of the Graal legends, which is accounted for variously in respect of its history and is also described variously, but it is not under any circumstances a Hallow of the Passion. A romance which stands late in the cycle, so far as chronology is concerned, connects it with the martyrdom of St. John the Baptist. I have found no story in the world of relics to help us in accounting for this invention, though there are traces of a sword of St. Michael. In this respect, as indeed in other ways, the Hallow is complicated in the literature. It embodies (a) matter brought over from folk-lore ; (£) deliberate invention, as when one story affirms it to be the sword of David, and another that of Judas Maccabasus; and (c) the semi-devotional fable to which I have referred above, and this must be taken in connection with the legends of the head of St. John, served to Herodias on a charger to satiate her desire for revenge on the precursor of Christ, he seeming to have reproached her concerning

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her manner of life. It will be plain from the enumera- tion subjoined that the relics of St. John are compre- hensive as to the person of his body. ( i ) A martyrology tells us that some of his blood was collected by a holy woman at the time of his decapitation, was put into a vessel of silver, and was carried into her country of Guienne ; there it was placed in a temple which she erected to his honour. (2) The body was, according to one account, placed in a temple at Alexandria, which was dedicated to the Saint. Another says that the head was first interred in the sepulchre of Eliseus at Samaria. During the reign of Julian the Apostate it was redeemed from possible profanation, and sent to St. Athanasius, who concealed it in a wall of his church. At the end of the fourth century the same remains were removed to a new church, built on the site of a temple of Serapis. Subse- quently they were divided and distributed. (3) The Caput Johannis was carried to Antioch by St. Luke, or alternatively to Cassarea. From whichever place, it was afterwards removed to Constantinople and brought finally into France, where it was divided into three parts, one of which is at Amiens, another at Angely in the diocese of Nantes, and the third at Nemours in the diocese of Sens. A distinct account states that the head was found in Syria in the year 453, and that the removal to Con- stantinople took place five centuries later. When that city was taken by the French in 1204, a canon of Amiens, who was present, transported it into France, where it was divided, but into two portions apparently, one being de- posited at Amiens and the other sent to the Church of St. Sylvester in Rome. I have also seen a report of two heads, but without particulars of their whereabouts.

So much concerning the Caput Johannis, but I should not have had occasion to furnish these instances were it not for the apparition of an angel carrying a head upon a salver when the wonders of the Holy Graal were first manifested at Sarras. But this vision is not found in the story which connects the Hallowed Sword with the head

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of St. John the Baptist. The Dish, with its content, is supposed to be a complication occasioned by the inter- vention of folk-lore elements concerning the head of the Blessed Bran. The Dish, apart from the head, is almost always the fourth Hallow in the legends of the Graal — perhaps, as I shall indicate later, because the Sacred Vessel, which is the central object of all, is sometimes identified with the Paschal Dish of the Last Supper and sometimes with the Chalice of the First Eucharist.

It follows from the considerations of this section that although there has been a passage of folk-lore materials through the channel of Graal literature — which passage has less or more involved their conversion — its real im- portation into romance has been various elements of Christian symbolism, doctrine and legend ; it is these, above all, that we are in a position to know and account for, and I have made a beginning here. We have, there- fore, certain lines laid down already for our inquiry which assure that it will have the aspect of a religious and even of an ecclesiastical quest.

There is nothing on our part which can be added to the discoveries of folk-lore scholars, nor have we — except in a most elementary manner, and for the better under- standing of our own subject — any need to summarise the result even of such researches — as these now stand. This work has been done too well already. We are entering a new region, and we carry our own warrants. I need not add that in assuming Celtic or any other legends, the Church took over its own, because she had come into possession, by right and by fact, of all the patrimonies of the Western world.

I want it to be understood, in conclusion as to this side of the Hallows of the Holy Graal, that the literature is not to be regarded as a particular extension of the history of relics, nor should my own design in presenting the external history of certain sacred objects suffer mis- construction of this or an allied kind. The compilers of encyclopaedic dictionaries and handbooks have sometimes

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treated the value of such legends, and of the claims which lie behind them, in a spirit which has been so far serious that they have pointed out how the multiplicity of claims in respect of a single object must be held to militate against the genuineness of any. One Juggernaut effigy of all that is virulent in heresy took the trouble, centuries ago, to calculate how many crosses might be formed full- size from the relics of the one true Cross which were then extant in the world, and an opponent not less grave took the further trouble of recalculating to prove that he was wrong. So also Luther, accepting a caution from Judas, lamented that so much gold had gone to enshrine the imputed relics of the Cross when it might have been given to the poor. The truth is that the veneration of relics is open to every kind of charge save that which Protestantism has preferred, and this an enlightened sense of doctrine and practice enables us to rule out of court on every count.

It is desirable now to notice a few points which are likely to be overlooked by the informed student even, while the unversed reader should know of them that he may be on his guard hereafter, (i) The German cycle of the Holy Graal has the least possible connection with Christian relics ; speaking of the important branches, it is so much sui generis in its symbolical elements that it enters scarcely into the same category as the Northern French romances, with which we shall be dealing chiefly.

(2) No existing reliquary and no story concerning one did more than provide the great makers of romance with raw materials and pretexts ; the stories they abandoned in all cases nearly, and the symbols they exalted by their genius.

(3) As I have once already indicated, but not so expressly, the knowledge or the rumour of some unknown book had come to them in an unknown manner, and of this book neither Fecamp nor its competitive monasteries, abbeys and holy houses had ever heard a syllable. The general conclusion of this part is therefore that the growing literature of the Holy Graal drew from the life of devotion

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in its application to the Mystery of the Eucharist and to the secondary veneration of relics at the period ; but, on the other hand, it contributed something of its own life to stimulate and extend the great doctrine of the mystery, and the devotion also. The elucidations which have been here afforded represent but a part of the schedule with which this section opened ; it is that, however, which is most needed at the moment, and all that remains will find its proper place in the later stages of research.

About that mystery in chief of the faith in Christ which is the only real concern of the Holy Graal, there are other environments which will appeal to us, though their time is not yet in our methodical scheme of pro- gress. There is (a) the state of the official church, so glorious in some respects, so clouded in others, like a keeper of sacred things who has been wounded for his own sins, or like a House of Doctrine against which he who sold God for money has warred, and not in vain, for at times he has invaded the precincts and entered even the sanctuary, though the holy deposit has not been affected thereby, because by its nature and essence it is at once removed from his grasp. There is (£) the Church in Britain and its connections of the Celtic world, having aspirations of its own, as there is no question — having a legitimacy of its own, as none can dare to deny — but with only a local horizon, a local mission, and used, for the rest, as a tool for ambitious kings, much as the orthodox claim of the Church at large was the tool of the popes at need. There is (c) the resounding rumour and there is the universal wonder of the high impossible quest of holy wars in Palestine, without which we might have never had the Graal literature, the romances of chivalry, or the secret treasures of the disdainful East brought to the intellectual marts and houses of exchange in the rest- less, roving, ever-curious kingdoms of the West — king- doms in travail towards their puberty. There is (^/) — and of five things to be enumerated, I count this the head and crown — there is the higher life of sanctity and its

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annals at the Graal period, as the outcome of which the West went to the East, carrying what it believed to be the missing talent of gold, without which, as the standard of all values, all other talents were either debased or spurious. It was the age of a thousand reflections, at centuries sometimes of distance, from Dionysius, Augus- tine, and the first great lights of Christendom ; it was the age of Hugo de St. Victor, of Bernard, of Bona- ventura ; it was the age which Thomas of Aquinas had taken up as plastic matter in his hands, and he shaped the mind of the world after the image and the likeness of his own mind in the high places of the schools ; it was the age of many doctors, who would have known in their heart of hearts what was the real message of the Graal literature, and where its key was to be sought. There is in fine (e} my fifth branch, but this is the sects of the period, because more than one division of the Christian world was quaking and working towards the emancipation which begins by departing from orthodox doctrine in official religion, but seeing that it begins wrongly and takes turnings' which are the fatalities of true direction, so it ends far from God. As to all this, it is needful to say at this moment, because it is almost from the beginning, that the Books of the Holy Graal are among the most catholic of literature, and that reformations have nothing therein. I say, therefore, that the vessels are many but the good is one, of which Galahad beheld the vision.

IV THE LITERATURE OF THE CYCLE

The cycle of the Holy Graal is put into our hands like counters which can be arranged after more than one manner, but that which will obtain reasonably for a specific purpose may not of necessity conform to the chrono- logical order which by other considerations would be

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recommended to archeological research. It will be pertinent, therefore, to say a few words about the classi- fication which I have adopted for these studies, and this is the more important because at first sight it may seem calculated to incur those strictures on the part of recog- nised learning which, on the whole, I rather think that I should prefer to disarm. I must in any case justify myself, and towards this, in the first place, it should be indicated that my arrangement depends solely from the indubitable sequence of the texts, as they now stand, and secondly, by an exercise of implicit faith, from several palmary findings of scholarship itself. It follows that the disposition of the literature which has been adopted for my own purpose is, on the evidence of the texts, a legitimate way in which to treat that literature. There are certain texts which arise out of one another, and it is a matter of logic to group them under their proper sections. Comparatively few documents of the whole cycle have reached us in their original form, even sub- sequently to that period at which the legends were taken over in a Christian interest, while many of them have been unified and harmonised so that they can stand together in a series. It is the relation which has been thus instituted that I have sought to preserve, because among the questions which are posed for our considera- tion there is that of the motive which actuated successive writers to create texts in succession which, although in many cases of distinct authorship, are designed to follow from one another ; as also to re-edit old texts ; and to adjust works to one another with the object of presenting in a long series of narratives the Mystery of the Holy Graal manifested in Britain. The bulk of the texts as they stand represents the acquisition completed and certain intentions exhibited to their highest degree. Hence a disposition which shows this the most plainly is for my object the reasonable grouping of all, that object depending from almost the last state of the literature and differing to this extent from ordinary

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textual criticism, to which the first state is not only important but vital.

The Graal cycle, as it is understood and as it will be set forth in these pages, belongs chiefly to France and Germany. Within these limits in respect of place and language, there is also a limit of time, for textual criticism has assigned, under specific reserves, the pro- duction of the chief works to the fifty years intervening between the year 1170 and the year 1220. As regards the reserves, I need only mention here that the romantic histories of Merlin subsequent to the coronation of Arthur have not so far been regarded by scholarship as an integral part of the Graal literature, while one later German text has been ignored practically in England. Seeing that within the stated period and perhaps later, many of the texts were subjected, as I have just indicated, to editing and even to re-editing, it seems to follow that approximate dates of composition would be the most precarious of all arrangements for my special design. As regards that course which I have chosen, I have found that the French romances fall into three divisions and that they cannot be classified otherwise. The elaborate analysis of contents which I have prefixed to each division will of itself convey the general scheme, but I must speak of it more expressly in the present case because of the implicits with which we shall be concerned presently.

We may assume, and this is correct probably, that the earliest extant romances of the Holy Graal — the specula- tive versions which have been supposed in the interests of folk-lore being, of course, set apart — are the first part of the Conte del Graal written by Chretien de Troyes, and the metrical Joseph of Arimath<ea by Robert de Borron — in the original draft thereof. In the earlier records of criticism the preference was given to the latter, but it is exercised now in respect of the former text.

Besides the folk-lore and non-Christian legends of Peredur and the Bowl of Plenty — which shall be con-

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sidered in their proper place — there was another class of traditions taken over in the interests of the Holy Graal. That the Arthurian legend had pre-existed in another form is not only shown by the early metrical literature of northern and southern France but by isolated English texts, such as the fifteenth-century Morte cT Arthur, which suggest older prototypes that are not now extant. It is shown otherwise by the Welsh Mabinogion, which, much or little as they have borrowed in their subsisting form from French sources, point clearly to indigenous traditions. The North - French romances were re- founded in the interest — whatever that was — of the Graal sub-surface design. The most notable example in an- other sense was perhaps the Merlin cycle, which took over the floating traditions concerning the prophet and enchanter and created two divergent romances, each having the object of connecting Merlin with the Graal. The general process was something after the manner following: (i) Lays innumerable, originally oral but drifting into the written form; (2) the same lays re- edited in the Arthurian interest 5(3) the Graal mystery at first independent of Arthurian legend, or such at least is the strong inference concerning it ; (4) the Graal legend married to Arthurian romance, the connection being at first incidental ; (5) the Arthurian tradition after it had been assumed entirely in the interests of the Holy Graal. I recur, therefore, to my original thesis, that there is one aspect at least in which for my purpose the superior importance resides not in the primordial elements of the literature but in their final and unified form. As a typical example, it is customary to recognise that there was an early state of the Book of the Holy Graal which is not now extant. The text, as we have it, is later than most of the cycle to which it belongs properly, yet it poses as the introduction thereto. Now the early draft may or may not have preceded, chronologically speaking, the corresponding first versions of some of the connecting texts, and in either case when the time came for the

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whole literature to be harmonised it was and remains entitled to the priority which it claimed, but that priority is in respect of its place in the series and not in respect of time. The re-editing of the romances in the Graal interest must be, however, distinguished carefully from the innumerable alterations which have been made other- wise but to which no ulterior motive can be attributed. There is further no difficulty in assuming (i) that the passage of folk-lore into Christian symbolical literature may have followed a fixed plan ; (2) that when late editing exhibits throughout a number of texts some defined scheme of instituted correlation, there may have been again a design in view, and it is this design which is the concern of my whole research.

The places of the Graal legend, its reflections and its rumours, are France, Germany, Holland, Italy, Spain, Portugal, England and Wales.

In matters of literature France and England were united during the Anglo-Norman period, and when this period was over England produced nothing except ren- derings of French texts and one compilation therefrom. Germany had an independent version of the legend derived by its own evidence from a French source which is now unknown. The German cycle therefore differs in important respects from the French cycle ; the central figure is a characteristic hero in each, but the central sacred object is different, the subsidiary persons are different in certain cases — or have at least undergone transformation — and, within limits, the purpose is ap- parently diverse. The Dutch version is comparatively an old compilation from French sources, some of which either cannot be identified or in the hands of the poet who translated them they have passed out of recognition. Italy is represented only by translations from the French and one of these was the work of Rusticien de Pise, who has been idly accredited with the production of sources rather than derivatives of the legend, and this in the Latin tongue. There is also another compilation, the

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Tavo/a Ritonda, but in both instances more than the names of the MSS. seems unknown to scholars. The Italian cycle is not of importance to any issue of the literature, either directly or otherwise, and so far as familiarity is concerned it is almost ignored by modern students. The inclusion of Spain in the present schedule of places might seem merely a question of liberality, for the Spanish version of the Graal legend exists only in (i) the inferred allusions of a certain romance of Merlin, printed at Burgos in 1498, and (2) in a romance of Merlin and the Quest of the Holy Graal, printed at Seville in the year 1500. Of the first work only a single copy is known to exist, and no French or English scholar seems to have seen it ; the second has so far escaped the attention of scholarship, outside the bare record of its existence. This notwithstanding, according to the German cycle, the source of the legend and its true presentation in at least one department thereof, are to be looked for in Spain, and the first account concerning it was received by a Spanish Jew. Portugal, so far as I am aware, is responsible only for a single printed text, but it represents a French original which is otherwise lost ; it is therefore important and it should receive full considera- tion at a later stage. As regards Wales, it is very difficult and fortunately unnecessary to speak at this initial stage. Of the Graal, as we find it in France, there is no in- digenous Welsh literature, but there are certain primeval traditions and bardic remanents which are held to be fundamental elements of the cycle, and more than one of the questing knights are found among the Mabinogion heroes. In the thirteenth century and later, the legend, as we now have it, was carried across the marches, but it is represented only by translations.

For the purpose of the classification which follows, we must set aside for the moment all whatsoever that has come down to us concerning quests, missions and heroes in which the central object known as the Holy Graal does not appear. We shall deal with these fully when

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we come to the study of the texts severally ; we are now dealing generally, and there is nothing to our purpose in the Welsh Peredur or in the English Syr Percyvelle. Whatever its importance to folk-lore, the Welsh Peredur, in respect of its literary history, is a tangled skein which it will not repay us to unravel more than is necessary absolutely. It has been compared, and no doubt rightly enough, to the Lay of the Great Fool, but, whether we have regard to his foolishness or to the nature of his mission, Peredur never interests and also never signifies. His mission is confined to the extermination of sor- ceresses, and among these of such sorceresses as those of Gloucester. On the other hand, the English metrical romance is entitled to less consideration except for its claims as literature, and it is only in its speculative attribution to a lost prototype that it has concerned scholarship. It must be understood at the same time that both texts are essential to the literary history of the whole subject from the standpoint of folk-lore. The remaining works may be classified into cycles, according either to affinities of intention or to the seat of their origin, and among these the Northern French texts fall into three divisions, the distribution of two being, within their own lines, a chronological arrangement strictly.

The Conte del Graal is allocated properly after the cycle of folk-lore — as it is reflected at a far distance in the non-Graal texts that survive. The fact that the Lesser Chronicles are given a priority of place in respect of the Greater Chronicles does not for that reason mean that all their parts are assumed to be older than all the documents contained in the third division. In the third division itself the chronological arrangement has been abandoned, as it is more important for my purpose to show the codification of the documents by which they have been harmonised into a series rather than to place them in an order of dates which would at best be approximate only and would represent the first drafts rather than the texts as they remain. The divisions are therefore as follows : —

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A. The Conte del Graal. Let me say, in the first place, that our problems are not the authorship of an individual prose or metrical romance, not even the com- parative dates of certain documents as they now stand actually, but whether we, who as mystics have come to know the significance and value of the hidden life of doctrine, can determine by research the extent to which the intimations of such doctrine found in the Graal literature are true or false lights. Now, I suppose that there is no very serious question as to the literary greatness of Chretien de Troyes, while some of the sequels and alternatives added to his unfinished poem are not perhaps unworthy to rank with his own work ; the collection, however, as a whole, offers very little to our purpose. So far as Chretien himself carried the story, we are not only unable to gather clearly what he intended by the Graal, but why he had adventured so far from his proper path as to plan and even to begin such a story. If he had gone further, as I believe personally, we should have found that the Sacred Vessel, Telesma, or Wonder- Working Palladium carried with it the same legend as it carried for most other writers ; but we do not know and it matters less than little, for the Conte del Graal at its best is Nature in the pronaos of the temple testifying that she is properly prepared. If we grant this claim, we know that in Chretien at least, however she may have been prepared conventionally, she has not been sanctified. The alternative termination of Gerbert carries the story up to a higher level, moving it in the direction of Wolfram's Parsifal, yet not attaining its height. So far as any mystic term is concerned, the great Conte is rather after the manner of a hindrance which calls to be taken out of the way ; it is useless for the higher issues, and even for the business of scholarship it seems of late days to have lapsed from its first importance.

The chief additamentum of this cycle is the unprinted metrical Perceval, which is preserved in the library at Berne. The desire of the eyes of students is a certain

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lost Provensal poem, connected by the hypothesis with Perceval, as to which we shall hear more fully in con- nection with the German cycle of the Holy Graal.

The Chretien portion of the Conte del Graal was written not later than 1189, and the most recent views assign it somewhere between that year and 1175. Manessier and Gerbert are believed to have produced their rival conclusions between 1216 and 1225. As regards the Chretien portion, it has been recognised, and may be called obvious, that it " presupposes an early history." This being so, it does not seem un- reasonable to infer that the first form of the early history was either (a) the first draft of De Borron's poem, or (£) it corresponded to the book from which De Borron drew and of which, Chretien notwithstanding, he is probably the most faithful, perhaps even the only repre- sentative. On the other hand, if the particular quest does not draw directly or indirectly from the particular history, then my own view is that in the question of date but little can be held to depend from the priority of Chretien's poem — which is a quest — or that of De Borron — which is a history. I have therefore no call to indicate a special persuasion. For what it is worth, the inferences from admitted opinion seem to leave the priority of De Borron still tenable in the first form of his poem, and for the rest I hold it as certain that my classification, although a novelty, is justified and even necessary ; but exact chronological arrangement, in so tinkered a cycle of literature as that of the Holy Graal, is perhaps scarcely possible, nor is it my concern exactly.

B. The cycle of Robert de Borron, being that which is connected more especially and accurately with his name, and herein is comprised : —

i. The metrical romance of Joseph of Arimathaea, in which we learn the origin, early history and migration of the Graal westward, though it does not show that the Sacred Vessel came actually into Britain.

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2. The Lesser Holy Graal, called usually Le Petit St. Graal. We have here a prose version of the poem by Robert de Borron, which accounts for its missing portions, but the two documents are not entirely coincident.

3. The Early History of Merlin, and this represents in full another metrical romance of the same authorship but of which the first 500 lines are alone extant.

4. The Didot Perceval, but this text is regarded as a later composition, though it seems to contain some primitive elements of the quest. Its designation is explained by the fact that it was at one time in the possession of M. Firmin Didot, the well-known Parisian bookseller. Its analogies with the poem of Chretien de Troyes are thought to indicate a common source of knowledge rather than a reflection or derivation from one to another. This romance has been also somewhat generally regarded as the prose version of another lost poem by Robert de Borron. The additamentum of this cycle is the fuller unprinted codex of the Didot Perceval preserved in the library at Modena.

These documents constitute what may be termed the Lesser Histories or Chronicles of the Holy Graal. Their characteristics in common, by which they are grouped into a cycle, are (i) the idea that certain secret and sacramental words were transmitted from apostolic times and were taken from East to West ; (2) the succes- sion of Brons as Keeper of the Holy Graal immediately after Joseph of Arimathaea.

The metrical Joseph may have been written soon after 1170, but the balance of opinion favours the last years of the twelfth century. Criticism supposes that there were two drafts, of which only the second is extant. It was succeeded by the early Merlin. As regards the Didot Perceval, this is known chiefly by a manuscript ascribed to the end of the thirteenth century.

C. The Cycle of the Greater Holy Graal and the Great Quest, comprising : —

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1 . The Saint Graal, that is, The Book of the Holy Graal, or Joseph of Arimathxa, called also the First Branch of the Romances of the Round Table and the Grand Saint Graal. The last designation is due perhaps to its dimensions; but it may be held to deserve the title on higher con- siderations, as the most important development of the legend in its so-called historical aspects, by which I mean apart from the heroes of the various quests. The work has been widely attributed to Walter Map, sometime archdeacon of Oxford and Chaplain to Henry II. of England. While the trend of present opinion is to regard it as of unknown authorship, I think that the ascription is not untenderly regarded by scholarship, and recognising, as we must, that evidence is wanting to support the traditional view, no personage of the period is perhaps antecedently more likely. Unfortunately more than one other romance, which seems distinct generically in respect of its style, has received the same attribution. The Greater Holy Graal was intended to create a complete sequence and harmony between those parts of the cycle with which it was more especially concerned, and the Galahad Quest, as we have it, may represent the form of one document which it intended to harmonise. The alternative is that there was another version of the Quest which arose out of the later Merlin, or that such a version was intended. I believe in fine that my order is true and right.

2. The later Merlin romances, and because the Vulgate Merlin is in certain respects, though not perhaps expressly, a harmony of De Borron's cycle and that of the Book of the Holy Graal, drawing something from both sources, I refer here more especially to the Huth Merlin and the secret archives of the Graal from which it claims to derive. The history of Merlin is taken by the first text up to his final enchantment in the forest of Broceliande, and in particular to that point when the knight Gawain hears the last utterance of the prophet. An analogous term is reached by the Huth Merlin in

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respect of Bademagus, through a long series of entirely distinct episodes ; it should be stated that the references to the Holy Graal are few in both romances, but they are pregnant with meaning.

As an addendum to these branches, there is the late text called The Prophecies of Merlin, which I know only by the printed edition of Rouen. It has wide variations from the texts mentioned previously in so far as it covers their ground, but it has also its Graal references. It has been regarded as a continuation of the early prose Merlin, and in this sense it is alternative to the Vulgate and the Huth texts.

3. The great prose Lancelot, which in spite of its subject-matter is, properly understood, a book of high sanctity, or it lies at least on the fringe of this description, and towards the close passes therein.

4. The Longer Prose Perceval le Gallois, or High History of the Holy Graal, which offers a term and con- clusion of the Graal mystery by way of alternative to or substitute for that of the Galahad quest. It is like a rite which has narrowly escaped perfection ; it holds certain keys, but the doors which they open are not doors which give entrance to the greatest mysteries. Herein the king is dead, and with all the claims of Perceval it is a little difficult to say of him : Long live the king ! The romance does not harmonise with the other histories of Perceval ; it has elements which are particular to itself and the air of an independent creation. It should be added that it draws also from sources to us unknown and has haunting suggestions of familiarity with the source of Wolfram. So far as there has been any critical opinion expressed concerning it in England, it must be said that it has missed the mark.

5. The Quest of the Holy Graal, called also The Last Book of the Round Table, containing the term of the mystery as given in the Chronicle concerning Galahad the haul prince, and this is the quest par excellence, the head and crown of the Graal legend. I know that this

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statement will be challenged in certain high quarters of special research, but before any one speaks of human interest he should say, or at least in his heart : The Life Everlasting ; and this stated, it must be added that all which is commonly understood by human interest, all which has been sometimes regarded as characterising the chief quests and one of them in particular, is ex- cluded by the Great Prose Quest. We have in place thereof a spiritual romance, setting forth under this guise a mystery of the soul in its progress. It is only the books of perfection which make at once for high rites and gorgeous pageants of literature. Hereof is the Galahad Quest.

These five romances constitute what I have termed the Greater Chronicles of the Holy Graal. It will have been understood that the Longer Prose Perceval and the Great Prose Quest exclude one another ; they stand as alternatives in the tabulation. The characteristics of this cycle are (i) the succession of Joseph II. as keeper of the Holy Graal immediately after his father and during the latter's lifetime, this dignity not being conferred upon Brons, either then or later; (2) the substitution of a claim in respect of apostolical succession — which placed the Graal keepers in a superior position to any priesthood holding from the apostles — for that of a secret verbal formula applied in respect of the Eucharist.

The dates of the texts which are included in the Greater Chronicles differ widely so far as the extant manuscripts are concerned. The canon of the Graal literature was not in reality closed till the end of the thirteenth century if these manuscripts are to be regarded as the final drafts. The lost antecedent documents cannot, of course, be assigned. It is suggested, for example, that the prototype of the Book of the Holy Graal and the Quest of Galahad preceded the continuations of Chretien. The unique text comprised in the Huth Merlin has been dated about 1225 or 1230, the MS. itself belonging to the last quarter of the thirteenth

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century. There was a fourth part which is now wanting ; it contained a version of the Galahad quest, and though it has been concluded that it corresponds to the extant text, the Huth Merlin embodies allusions to episodes in the lost part which are not to be met with in the Galahad romance as it now stands.

The additamenta of this cycle are the quests of the Holy Graal in the Spanish and Portuguese versions, and one rendering into Welsh. There is also material of importance in the draft of the Great Quest printed at Rouen in 1488 together with the Lancelot and the Morte <F Arthur ) as also in the Paris edition of 1533. Finally, the English metrical chronicle of Hardyng con- tains a version of the Galahad legend which differs in some express particulars from anything with which we are acquainted in the original romance texts.

D. The German Cycle. The Parsifal of Wolfram is the high moral sense saying that it has received the light, and I know not how we could accept the testi- mony even if that which uttered it had risen from the dead. I am speaking, however, of the German legend only in one of its phases, and at a later stage I shall exhibit every material which will enable us to judge of its importance. The Conte del Graal, except in its latest portions, and then by chance allusions or deriva- tions at a far distance, has nothing to tell us of secret words, Eucharistic or otherwise ; it has also no hint of any super-apostolical succession. It is the same with Wolfram's Parsifal; the legend, as it stands therein, is in fact revolutionised, or rather it is distinct generi- cally, and the quest, though it follows the broad lines of the other Percevals, has gone under I know not what greatness of alteration. If the Northern French stories concerning the widow's son could be likened to a high grade in Masonry, then assuredly the German version would be that rite rectified. The Titurel of Albrecht von Scharfenberg, which deserves a notice which it has never received in England, seems to suggest that there

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is a greater light in the East than has been found as an abiding presence in the West, and except in a very high mystic sense, a sense much higher than is to be found in any of the romances, this suggestion offers the token of illusion. In fine, to dispose of this cycle, let me say that the metrical romance of Diu Crone by Heinrich von dem Turlin has no secret message, even in the order of phantasy. At this day we rest assured, or those at least whose opinion matters anything, that the most hopeless of all worlds to enter in search of wisdom is the world of ghosts. It happens, however, that in Heinrich's poem ghosts, or the dead alive, are the cus- todians of the mysteries. At the same time they may hold the kind of office which it is possible to confer on Sir Gawain, who is the hero of this voided quest. I speak, of course, in comparison with the palmary texts by which the Quest itself has entered into the holy places of literature.

It will follow from the above tabulation that while the Graal literature is divisible into several cycles there are three only which belong to our particular concern. The classification which I have made is serviceable there- fore in yet another way, since it enables us, firstly, to set apart that which is nihil ad rem nostram catholicam et sanctam, and, secondly, to come into our own.

THE IMPLICITS OF THE GRAAL MTSTERT

There are several literatures which exhibit with various degrees of plainness the presence of that sub-surface meaning to which I have referred in respect of the Graal legend ; but there, as here, so far as the outward sense is concerned, it is nearly always suggested rather than affirmed. This additional sense may underlie the entire body of a literature, or it may be merely some concealed intention or a claim put forward evasively. The sub-

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surface significance of the Graal literature belongs mainly to the second class. It is from this point of view that my departure is here made, and if it is a warrantable assumption, some portion at least of the literature will prove, explicitly or otherwise, to contain these elements in no uncertain manner. As a matter of fact, we shall find them, though, as I have indicated, it is rather by the way of things which are implied, or which follow as in- ferences, but they are not for this reason less clear or less demonstrable. The implicits of the Graal literature are, indeed, more numerous than we should expect to meet with at the period in books of the western world. They may almost exceed, for example, those which are imbedded in the alchemic writings of the late twelfth or early thir- teenth century, though antecedently we should be pre- pared to find them more numerous in the avowedly secret books of Hermetic adepts.

The most important of the Graal implicits are those from which my study depends in its entirety, but there are others which in the present place need only be speci- fied, as they belong more properly to the consideration of individual texts. There is, in fine, one implicit which is reserved to the end, because it is that upon which the debate centres.

The implicit in chief of that cycle which I have termed the Lesser Histories, or Chronicles of the Holy Graal, is that certain secret words, having an attributed appli- cation to the Sacrament in chief of the Altar, and to certain powers of judgment, were communicated to Joseph of Arimathaea by Christ Himself, and that these remained in reserve, being committed from keeper to keeper by the oral method only.

It must be noted, though more especially for con- sideration at a later stage, that the secret words are also represented in the poem of Robert de Borron as words of power on the material plane ; that is to say, outside any efficacy which they may be assumed to possess in conse- crating the elements at the Mass. They are " sweet,

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precious and holy words." It is these qualities which stand out more strongly in the metrical romance than the Eucharistic side of the formula, and there seems, there- fore, a certain doubt as to De Borron's chief intention respecting their office. But in the Lesser Holy Graal the implicit of the metrical romance passes into actual expres- sion, and it becomes more clear in consequence that the secret words were those used, ex hypothesi, by the cus- todians of the Holy Graal in the consecration of the elements of the Eucharist.

Let it be understood that I am not seeking to press this inference, but am stating an aspect only. If the references to the secret words in the metrical Joseph do not offer a sacramental connection with full clearness —because they are also talismanic and protective — their operation in the latter respects must be regarded as subsidiary and apart from the real concern of the Holy Graal. When all possible issues have been exhausted, the matter remains Eucharistic in the final terms of its appearance, and behind it there is that which lies wholly perdu for the simple senses in sources that are concealed utterly. It is further to be noted that any Eucharistic appearance has nothing to do with transubstantiation, of which there is no trace in the Lesser Chronicles. Finally, the sole custodian of the Sacred Vessel through a period of many centuries lived in utter seclusion, and after the words were imparted to Perceval he was in- terned apparently for ever. The message of the Lesser Chronicles seems to be that something was brought into Britain which it was intended to manifest, but no mani- festation took place.

When the Book of the Holy Graal was produced as an imputed branch of Arthurian literature, there is no need to say that the Roman Pontiff was then as now, at least in respect of his claim, the first bishop of Christendom, and, by the evidence of the traditional claim, he derived from St. Peter, who was episcopus primus et pontifex primordialis. This notwithstanding, the romance attri-

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butes the same title to a son of Joseph of Arimathaea, who is called the Second Joseph, and here is the first suggestion of a concealed motive therein. The Book of the Holy Graal 'and the metrical romance of De Borron are the historical texts in chief of their particular cycles, and it does not follow, or at least in all cases, that their several continuations or derivatives are extensions of the implicits which I have mentioned. In the first case, the early prose Merlin has an implied motive of its own which need not at the moment detain us, and the Didot Perceval is of dubious authenticity as a sequel, by which I mean that it does not fully represent the mind of the earlier texts, though it has an importance of its own and also its own implicits. On the other hand, in what I have termed the Greater Chronicles of the Holy Graal there is, if possible, a more complete divergence in respect of the final document, and I can best explain it by saying that if we could suppose for a moment that the Book of the Holy Graal was produced in the interests of a pan- Britannic Church, or alternatively of some secret school of religion, then the Great Prose Quest, or Chronicle of Galahad, might represent an interposition on the part of the orthodox Church to take over the literature. At the same time the several parts of each cycle under consideration belong thereto and cannot be located otherwise.

The further divisions under which I have scheduled the body-general of the literature, and especially the German cycle, will be considered at some length in their proper place, when their explicit and implied motives will be specified ; for the present it will be sufficient to say that the German poems do not put forward the claims with which I am now dealing, namely, the secret formula in respect of the De Borron cycle and a super-apostolical succession in respect of the Book of the Holy Graal, and that which is classed therewith. We do not know, at least here in England, that Wolfram had prototypes to follow outside those to which he himself confesses. As to these

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he rejected one of them, and we have means only by inference of ascertaining what he derived from the other. It may seem certain, however, for many that his acknow- ledged exemplar could not have originated all those generic distinctions which characterise the German Parsifal^ and the fact of what Wolfram borrowed throws perhaps into clearer light all that which he created, or alternatively it indicates an unknown source the nature of which we can determine only by reference to schools of symbolism which cannot be properly discussed except towards the close of our inquiry.

I have adopted what I consider to be the best way of treating the whole cycle for the purpose in view. I have said already that it is not an instruction to scholarship, nor is it an appeal thereto, except for reasonable tolerance regarding an issue external to its own, and then even only in the sense of that forbearance which I should be ex- pected to extend on my own part to the probability of a speculative date, or the existence of a lost text, which scholars may favour in a particular case.

If certain mystic sects took over at a given period the hypothesis and symbolism of alchemy, if they used them as a secret language to enshrine their researches and dis- coveries in a wholly different region, it is obviously useless for any one to have recourse to the physical alchemists — otherwise than as a light on method and especially on the antithetical use of terms — for an ex- planation of the later mode and intention. If also some other or any mystic sect appropriated certain crude legends, prehistoric or what not, which they magnified, developed and transformed, designing to use them for the furtherance of a particular scheme to which they were themselves dedicated ; it is not then less obvious that the original form of such legends will in no wise help us to understand the later position to which they have been assigned by that school. In these few words the whole thesis of scholarship concerning the sources of the Graal elements is disposed of for our purpose, though with

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many titles of honour, and the alternative with which we are concerned can be put no less shortly.

As regards both the claims with which I am at the present moment more especially concerned, we must remember that although we are dealing with a depart- ment of romantic literature, their content does not be- long to romance ; the faculty of invention in stories is one thing, and I think that modern criticism has some- times made insufficient allowance for its spontaneity, yet through all the tales of chivalry it worked within certain lines. It would not devise secret Eucharistic words or put forward strange claims which almost make void the Christian apostolate in favour of some unheard-of suc- cession communicated directly from Christ after Pente- cost. We know absolutely that this kind of machinery belongs to another order. If it does not, then the apo- cryphal gospels were imbued with the romantic spirit, and the explanation of Manichean heresy may be sought in a flight of verse. In particular, the higher under- standing of secret consecration is not a question of litera- ture, but of the communication to the human soul of the Divine Nature. It lies behind the Eucharistic doctrine of the Latin Church, but on the external side that doctrine — and of necessity — by the hypothesis of transubstantiation, communicates the Divine Humanity rather than the Eternal and Divine Substance.

I suppose that what follows from the claims has not entered into the consciousness of official scholarship, be- cause it is otherwise concerned, but it may have entered already into the thought of those among my readers whose preoccupations are similar to my own, and I will now state it in a summary manner. As the secret words of consecration, the extra-efficacious words which must be pronounced over the sacramental elements so that they may be converted into the arch-natural Eucharist, have, by the hypothesis, never been expressed in writing, or alternatively have been enshrined only in a lost or hypothetical book, it follows that since the Graal was

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withdrawn from the world, together with its custodians, the Christian Church has had to be content with what it has, namely, a substituted sacrament. And as the super- apostolical succession, also by the hypothesis, must have ceased from the world when the last keeper of the Graal followed his vessel into heaven, the Christian Church has again been reduced to the ministration of some other and apparently lesser ordination. It follows, therefore, that the Graal literature is not only a cycle of romance originating from many traditions, but is also, in respect of those claims — and even in a marked manner — a departure from tradition.

If I were asked to adjudicate on the value of such claims, I should say that the doctrine is the body of the Lord and its right understanding is the spirit. Whoso- ever therefore puts forward a claim on behalf of secret formulae in connection with the Eucharistic Rite may appear in the higher hermeneutics to have forgotten one thing which is needful — that there are efficacious consecra- tions everywhere. The question of apostolical succession would seem also in the same position, because the truly valid transmissions are those of grace itself, which com- municates from the source of grace direct to the soul ; and the essence of the sacerdotal office is that those who have received supernatural life should assist others so to prepare their ground that they may also in due season, but always from the same source, become spiritually alive. If there is another and higher understanding of any apostolical warrant, I do not know what it is. It remains, however, that the implicits with which I have been dealing are actually the implicits in chief of the Graal books, and that they do not make for harmony with the teaching of the orthodox churches does not need stating. From whence therefore and with what intention were they imported into the body of romance ? Before this question can be answered we shall have to pro- ceed much further in the consideration of the literature.

The few people who have approached the Graal legend

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with any idea of its significance — I will not say from the mystic standpoint, but from that of a secret tradition per- petuated through Christian times, or a certain remanent thereof — have been wholly unequipped in respect of textual knowledge and in a manner of official religious training. They have, therefore, missed the points. Scholarship, on the other hand, has been well trained in its proper groove, but it has had no eyes for another and more especially for any mystic aspect. I am about to tabulate a few facts and to draw from them several inferences which have not been noted previously.

The Graal in the Graal Castle appeared on certain occasions in connection with the Mass, but it was, for the most part, manifested only at a feast. There it operated sometimes in relation to the idea of sustenance, but seemingly by way of transmutation. Subject to a single exception, it was not itself eaten or drunk, but it was passed over food and wine when these were available. When they were not forthcoming, it pro- duced the notion of rare refection. The particular vessel — understood usually as a cup or chalice — which, as we shall see, was, under the distinctive name of Graal, the chief Hallow of the Castle, contained, however, blood and water, without increase, of which there is no record, or diminution, of which there is also no record, though on one occasion which passes all understanding it might have been supposed to occur. It was therefore solely a relic of great virtue and miraculous efficacy. We shall see in what manner, at the end of various quests, it was taken to heaven, or at least into deeper seclusion ; but this, in spite of the Eucharistic implicit, did not mean, in the minds of the makers of romance, any sacra- mental decrease, because it is obvious from all the texts that Mass was said independently in church and hermitage while the Graal was still in the castle. The indubitable inference from the Book of the Holy Graal, and indeed from De Borron's poem, is that Britain was entirely heathen when Joseph came thereto, and it might therefore follow

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that its priesthood held subsequently from him. In the later and longer text the claim of Robert de Borron is voided, or rather has undergone substitution ; there are no secret words, of consecration or otherwise ; the Eucha- ristic formula is given in full, and its variations, such as they are, from that of the Latin rite, bear traces of oriental influence derived through a Gallican channel and offer nothing to our purpose. In this case, and so far certainly as England was concerned, when the time came for the Graal to be taken away, that removal signified at most the loss of a great hallow, a precious relic, and, this granted, things remained as they were for all ecclesiastical purposes. In connection with the re- cession, a period was put to certain times of adventure, aspects of enchantment, inhibition and disaster, much as if a sovereign pontiff had laid the city or land of Logres under a long interdict and had at length removed it, one only sanctuary, during the whole period, remaining free from suspension.

The question therefore arises as to what was the nature of the pre-eminence ascribed to Joseph and his line. I speak here so far as its object and intention were concerned, and, of course, the readiest answer will be sought in the secret aspirations of the Celtic Church ; but we shall see in the end that they are inadequate. There is another explanation which is not only ready to our hand, but is so plausible that it is desirable to exer- cise a certain caution against it. I would say, therefore, that the claims with which we are concerned must be distinguished from doctrinal confusions and errors of theological ignorance ; of these we have full evidence otherwise. They are to be accounted for in the most natural of all manners, but, whether explicit or implied, the claims of Eucharistic efficacy and supereminence in succession carry with them an evidence of set purpose which makes it impossible to enter them in any category of mere blunders. I say this with the greater certainty because every concealed sense which we can trace in the

The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal

literature must be held to co-exist with manifest surface insufficiency even within its own province, and more espe- cially regarding the Eucharist. We shall learn towards the term of our inquiry that this fact offers evidence in itself that the real mystery of the Graal was brought from a great distance — not exactly in time or place, but in the matter of connection with its source. I should add that other concealed literatures offer similar difficulties, as, for example, those which are constituted by the grossness of the Talmud, the barbarisms of the Zohar and other Midrashim, or the scientific fatuities of Latin alchemy. In conclusion for the moment as to this part, if I have spoken as though there were some fundamental spirit of rivalry to the external Church indicated by the fact of the romances, it is pre-eminently desirable to state that there is no intention, at least on my part, to present the Graal Mystery as a secret process at work outside the Church. It was assuredly working from within, as if in the opinion of those who held its keys they looked that it would act as a leaven and accomplish some modifica- tion in the entire mass. It would be a mistake to suppose that the Eucharistic and super-apostolical claims denied those which have their authority in the New Testament and in the outer offices of the Church. The institutions of the one remain as we know it already on sacred evidence ; as to the other, its validity is in no sense diminished, but the presence of a still higher or at least of a distinct warrant is indicated, and it is of the essence thereof that it is not in competition ; it is a secret thing, but it might have been manifested more openly, if the world had been worthy : the world, how- ever, was so unworthy that the Palladium was taken still farther away. One evidence of the whole position is that the apostolate of Joseph II. is compared with that of the known apostles in other countries than Britain, and without diminution of either. This notwithstanding, there remains the irresistible suspicion of the external Church at the suggestion that one who was outside the

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chosen twelve is represented as the first to consecrate the Eucharist under an imprescriptible title and to receive the benefit of installation in the episcopal chair ; Peter, who in the days of his Master understood so little, seems to take an inferior place. But if, as I believe, the im- plicits of the Graal literature are the rumour rather than the replica of secret sanctuary doctrine, there is pro- bably a better understanding of both than can be found imbedded in the texts. The true intention may have concerned a statement of higher experience in the com- munication of the Divine Substance ; or, in still more simple language, the external Eucharist conveys Christ symbolically, but the attainment of Christ in the higher consciousness offers a direct experience. The succession, the modes of ordination in a company of sanctity who have thus attained is ex hypothesi and de facto of a different order than that which, also ex hypothesi and per doctrinam sanctam, is conveyed from one to another by the episcopal intention. We have, however, to take things as they are offered to us in the official churches and in the glorious literatures of the soul, ascribing to them that sense in which we can understand them best, so only that it is our highest sense.

In conclusion as to the greater implicits, seeing that the import of the Secret Words in the cycle of Robert de Borron has eluded critical analysis, while that of the extra-apostolical succession was appreciated — it is sixty years since, and has occasioned scarcely a notice — by Paulin Paris, there is one thing at least obvious — that the second is more largely written on the surface of the particular texts than the first, and when we come to consider in their order the romances comprised in the cycle of the Lesser Chronicles, we shall find that there are several difficulties. It is only after their grave and full evalua- tion that I have put forward in this section the possession of certain secret words in relation to the Eucharist as being one of the two sovereign implicits of the Graal literature.

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The lesser implicits may, for purposes of convenience, be tabulated simply as follows : —

a. The Implicits of Moses and Simeon.

b. The Implicits of the Merlin legend.

c. The Implicits of the Graal keepers.

d. The Implicits of the several Quests and the dis-

tinctions thereto belonging.

I recognise that the general subject of these and the other subsurface meanings is at this stage much too advanced for the reader, who is perhaps wholly unskilled, and hence those that are major I have sketched only in outline and those that are minor I have limited to a simple enumeration : it has been necessary to define all, so that the scope of the literature may be indicated in respect of our proper concern even from the beginning. After the problems which they offer have been studied at length in the light of the texts themselves, we shall turn for further help to certain coincident schools of symbolism.

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BOOK II

MTSTER1ES OF THE HOLT GRAAL IN MANIFESTATION AND REMOVAL

THE ARGUMENT

I. A PRELIMINARY ACCOUNT OF CERTAIN ROOT- SECRETS INCLUDED IN THE WHOLE SUBJECT. — Further

considerations concerning the several groups of the literature — Quest versions and versions of early history — The Suppressed IVord of the Perceval Quests — The suppressed sacramental formula — The secret school of ordination — The passing of the sacraments. II. THE INSTITUTION OF THE HALLOWS,

AND IN THE FlRST PLACE A GENERAL INTRODUCTION

CONCERNING THEM. — Their powers and offices — Their passage from East to West — The Hallows in Britain — An alternative division of the cycle — Texts of the sacramental claims — The implied mystery of the Hallows — The four Hallow s-in- chief. III. THE INSTITUTION OF THE HAL- LOWS, AND, SECONDLY, THE VARIATIONS OF THE CuP

LEGEND. — The Holy Vessel in the legends of Joseph of Arimath<za — The high symbolism of the Cup — Sources of information concerning the Sacred Vessel — Certain apocryphal Gospels and certain chronicles of Britain — Variations of the Conte del Graal — The Cup in the metrical romance of ~De Eorron — Its Rucharistic character — Philology of the term GRAAL — The Cup in the Lesser Holy Graal — In the Early Prose Merlin — In the Didot Perceval — The Cup in the Hook of the Holy Graal — The Chalice and the Paschal Dish — References in the later prose Merlins — The Graal in the Longer Prose Perceval — Certain visions of the Holy Vessel in the great prose Lancelot — The Graal in the Quest of

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Galahad — The Hallow In the German cycle — Possible hypotheses regarding the Most Precious Vessel — The conclusion of this matter. IV. THE GRAAL VESSEL CONSIDERED AS A BOWL OF PLENTY. — Developments of this tradition in the Greater Chronicles — In the poem of Robert de Borron — Of spiritual refreshment — Material presentation in the Book of the Holy Graal — Two aspects of magical feeding in the German cycle. V. THE LESSER HALLOWS OF THE LEGEND. — The Summary of these matters — The Lance — The Broken Sword— The Dish or Salver. VI. THE CASTLE OF THE HOLY GRAAL. — The place of the Holy Vessel — The House of the Rich King Fisherman — The Castle in the Valley— The Castle of Eden— The Palace of Dead Men. VII. THE KEEPERS OF THE HALLOWS. — Variations of tradition in respect of the Graal and its Guardians — How the life of Brons was prolonged through- out the centuries — The Keepers in the Greater Chronicles. VIII. THE PAGEANTS IN THE QUESTS. — Order of the Ceremonial Procession in the Conte del Graal — The Pageant in the Romance of Lancelot — In the duest of Galahad — In the Longer Prose Perceval — In the German cycle. IX. THE ENCHANTMENTS OF BRITAIN, THE TIMES CALLED ADVENTUROUS AND THE WOUNDING OF THE KING. — The Cloud upon the Sanctuary — The sus- pension of Nature — Times of peril and distress — Of sin entering the Sanctuary — Of help coming from without — The Dolorous Stroke. X. THE SUPPRESSED WORD AND THE MYSTIC QUESTION. — One distinction between Perceval and Galahad — Mischances of the Word in its suppression — The Word in partial manifestation — Of the causes of silence — Of the plenary demand. XL THE HEALING OF THE KING. — How the burden was lifted from old age — Of

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The Argument

anodyne for wounding in battle — Concerning the body of the healer — Of absolution from sin. XII. THE REMOVAL OF THE HALLOWS. — How, according to one text, they remain in seclusion — How, in another, there was no recession — How the dead were set free — How the Hallows were not seen so openly — How they were taken to heaven — Conclusion as to the Hallows — Their hidden period.

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BOOK II

MTSTERIES OF THE HOLT GRAAL IN MANIFESTATION AND REMOVAL

I

A PRELIMINARY ACCOUNT OF CERTAIN ROOT- SECRETS INCLUDED IN THE WHOLE SUBJECT

IT is a very curious heaven which stands around the infancy of romance-literature, and more than one warrant is required to constitute a full title for the interpretation of those strange signs and portents which are seen in some of its zones. The academies of official learning are consecrated places, and those who have graduated in other schools, and know well that they hold, within their own province, the higher authority, must be the first to recognise and respect the unsleeping vigilance and patience of students who are their colleagues and brothers in a different sphere. In the study of archaic literature, the external history of the texts and the criticisms thereto belonging are in the hands of a recog- nised college, and its authority is usually final ; but the inward spirit of the literature is sometimes an essence which escapes the academical processes. At the same time, any school of criticism which should decide that some books of the Holy Graal do not put forward extraordinary claims of the evasive kind, and do not so far contain the suggestion of an inward purpose, must be held to have failed even within its own province. Having indicated after what manner the literature

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with which we are dealing falls readily into several groups of a distinct kind for the purpose of particular classification, we are now called to regard it a little differently, though without prejudice to the schedule- in-chief of my proper choice. The distinction between quest-versions and versions of early history is known to students, and though it is not absolutely definite in itself, so far as the intention of criticism is concerned solely, it is important from another point of view. The reason is that both classes have their particular mystery, which is not without its antecedents in distinct schools of symbolism. The keynotes of the historical series — to make use of the expression in a sense which is not usually or so concisely attached to it — -are those which have been considered as the implicits-in-chief of the literature. They are two in number, and they are em- bodied in two palmary historical texts, from which they were carried forward through intermediate documents which answer, broadly speaking, to the same description, and thence through certain quest-versions by which the literature is taken to its term. I am speaking, however, only of those cycles which have been classified in the previous section as the Lesser and Greater Chronicles of the Holy Graal ; but it should be understood that the same or analogous early histories are presupposed by the later sequels to the poem of Chretien de Troyes. On the other hand, the German cycle, as represented by Wolfram von Eschenbach and the author of the later Titurel, has an early history which differs from all existing French sources, though the Quest of Parsifal is in close corre- spondence with the Perceval quests current in northern France.

We have seen, concerning the keynotes of the early histories, that they are : —

A. The suppression or concealment of a potent sacramental formula, in the absence of which the office of the Christian ministry is not indeed abrogated but is foreshortened or has become substituted, so that there

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seems to be something of a vital character wanting to all the sanctuaries. Whatever therefore the elements which entered into the composition of the Graal conception, several versions of the legend unite in relating it to the mystery and power of certain high consecrations or of certain unmanifested and withheld forms of speech. Those who can acquire and retain the words may exercise at will a strange power and mastery over all about them, and will possess great credit in the sight of God. They need never fear the deprivation of their proper rights, sufferings from evil judgments, or conquest in battle, so long as their cause is just. It is, however, as I have intimated, either (i) impossible to communicate these words in writing, or (2) they are recorded in one place only ; that is to say, in the secret archives, or great book of the Graal. They are too precious and holy for com- mon utterance, and, moreover, they are the secret of the Graal itself, in which a strange power of speech also resides. Joseph was himself under singular direction in accordance with the preconceived order of the Mystery, for the fulfilment of its concealed term.

B. The removal, cessation, or assumption of a certain school of ordination, which held from heaven the highest warrants, which was perpetuated from generation to generation in one line of descent, which had the custody of the sacred mysteries, which, in fine, ordained no one ; and the substitution, both concurrently and thereafter, of some other form of succession — venerable enough in its way, and the next surviving best after the abrogation of the first, but not the highest actuality of all, not the evidence of things unseen made spiritually and materially manifest as the term of faith. To this extent did the powers of the Secret Sanctuary differ by the hypothesis concerning it from the powers of the Holy Church mani- fested in the world. Yet the Church manifest was also the Church Holy.

In the prologue or preamble to the Book of the Holy Graal, the hermit who receives the revelations and the

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custody of the mysterious Book of the Legend testifies that the greatest secret of the world has been confided to him, and the communication took place amidst inexpres- sible experiences in that third heaven to which St. Paul was translated. The description of his ecstasy is written in fervent language, but in place of an indicible formula there is a great mystery attributed to the entire text of that cryptic record which, although it is said to be translated, yet remains unknown. The form wherein we have it is a concession to human disqualification and even to the frailty of external Nature. We possess only a substitute. On the other hand, the keynotes of the French quests are also of two kinds, by which — if it were possible otherwise — they might be divided into two cycles. That of the several Percevals is the suppression of a certain word, question, or formula, which suppression, on the surface side of things, causes dire misery and post- pones the advancement of the elect hero, but in the end it makes for his further recognition and ensures his more perfect calling, so that he is crowned in fine as he might not have been crowned at first. If at his initial oppor- tunity he had asked in the Graal Castle that simple question which covers the whole adventure with so deep a cloud of mystery, he would not have been perfected in suffering, regret and exile ; some of the quests would have terminated almost at their inception, and one in its present form could not have existed at all.

The withheld word of the Perceval quests takes, as I have indicated, the form of a simple question — a ques- tion, that is to say, which should have been asked but was not ; as such it is, so to speak, the reverse side or antithesis of the old classical legend of the sphinx. The sphinx asked questions and devoured those who did not reply or whose answers blundered. Perceval kept silence when he should have urged his inquiries, sometimes through false modesty, sometimes because he had been cautioned against idle curiosity; but in both cases, by the working of some apparently blind destiny, the

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omission carried with it the long series of its disastrous consequences. There came, however, a time of joy and deliverance, and it followed a belated utterance of the word ; thereby great enchantments were determined, great wrongs were redressed, and the wounds and sufferings endured through many years were healed and annulled. It follows that there is a twofold mystery of words con- nected by certain texts with the Quest of Perceval. Its higher sense is that of the sacramental formula, and this was interned with Perceval according to the Lesser Chronicles. But the word alternative — that which could be reserved or uttered — had performed in the meantime, and was still fulfilling, a certain office of amelioration, so that it is not by a merely vain observance that, in a sense, it is replaced by the quests for that unknown formula which was reserved as the last mystery of the Hidden Sanctuary. In contradistinction to this, there is one quest — and it is to be noted that it is one only — which depends entirely from the second alternative of the historical implicits. This is the Galahad Quest, and the keynote hereof is separate from all mysteries of asking, all joy of answer, as if these were of the Lesser Enigmas, and it is uplifted into a great world of holiness, where no longer is there any shadow of similitude to secret claims — doctrinal or ecclesiastical ; but the heroism of human life is received into the Divine Rapture, so that the last formulary of the search after and finding of the Holy Graal is in all truth that which is expressed by the admir- able doctor Ruysbroeck — in vastissimum divinitatis pelagus navigare. Of such is the Graal legend, and those who are acquainted with it in the most elect of its early forms will agree not only that many portions of it are singularly winning, but that it is indeed

" A part Of the hunger and thirst of the heart."

It is also on the external side a very melancholy legend ; it is the passing of a great procession and a great sacra-

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ment, which, owing to the imputed stress and terror of the time, is destined never to return in the same form ; it is a portion of the loss of humanity on one side of its manhood ; and it is no matter for surprise that in these late days, which are so full of the hunger and the thirst, several persons have attempted to read into it the parti- cular significance which appeals to them. This has been anything in some cases but that which could have been intended consciously by any maker of chronicles, and the question of Perceval abides therefore amongst us, but now in the reverse form, seeing that it is asked, and this often, yet it remains to this day unanswered, save in those Holy Places, beyond the external voices, of which this world, as such, knows not anything. To the glory of God and to those Holy Places, within the Great Church of the Mysteries, I dedicate this research as a sign without of the things signified within.

II

THE INSTITUTION OF THE HALLOAS, AND IN THE FIRST PLACE A GENERAL INTRODUC- TION CONCERNING THEM

Having thus indicated after what manner the Graal legend and its literature is tinged with mystery and symbolism a parte ante et a pane post, the next matter of our inquiry is concerned with the Institution of the Hallows. In all its forms indifferently, the Legend of the Holy Graal depends upon powers and offices ascribed to certain sacred objects. Those texts which it has become customary to term the Early Histories, equally with those which present the various versions of the Quest, revolve about these Hallows, showing how they were instituted, how they came into Britain, in whose hands they were preserved at first, to whom

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they were transmitted successively, why and by whom they were sought, and what, in fine, became of them.

Among the general characteristics of the French cycle we shall find that there is the passage of these Hallows from East to West. They are in hereditary keeping, and in the end, according to certain ver- sions, they are again taken East. There are, however, numerous phases of the legend, important variations in the Hallows, while claims which are manifest in certain texts are in others non-existent. The cycle in Germany took over the legend of the Swan Knight and imported the Templar interest expressly ; on the other hand, the introduction of certain highly ascetic elements is thought to be characterised by the coming of Galahad into the Graal Quest. The peculiar ecclesiastical claims which are the subsurface warrant of the cycle written in Northern French were never put forward ostensibly, and in the Galahad legend there remains only the shadow of those earlier designs which might be constructed as in dissonance with the Latin rite.

The Quest of the Holy Graal and of the other Hallows which were from time to time connected there- with is followed by many knightly heroes, most of whom are unsuccessful ; the preliminary conditions of attain- ment are purity and sanctity, but there is nothing to show that these were sufficient in themselves, and as there were other qualifications, so in some signal instances a partial success was not impossible in the absence, or at least comparatively, of those warrants which in given cases were claimed as essential. Once more, therefore, the cycle of Northern France may be regarded as falling into four divisions : —

(a] The Institution of the Hallows, and more especially that which concerns the origin of the Sacred Vessel.

(£) The circumstances under which the Hallows were carried into Britain, or alternatively were found therein, and the later circumstances of their partial manifestation.

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(c] The details of the search for the Hallows, and other things within and without which led to their removal or recession. (d} The occasion of their final departure. The texts, therefore, purport to provide the complete History of the Graal, including whence it came, where it abode for a while, and whither it has gone. This is not to say that there are express books treating of each section only. The metrical romance of De Borron does, however, stand simply for the first part, and the same ap- plies to its prose rendering in the Lesser Holy Graal. The second part is found in the Book of the Holy Graal, and the third in the Didot Perceval, the Conte del Graal, the Parsifal of Wolfram, the Longer Prose Perceval and the Great Quest of Galahad. The German Perceval excepted, all these stories of research give an account of the with- drawal— some at considerable length, and some briefly.

Again, the later romances may be divided into two sections : (a) those which speak of an enchantment fallen on Britain, and (£) those which are concerned with the termination of certain adventurous times. If the litera- ture follows any set purpose, a definable importance must be attributed to the meaning of that enchantment and those adventures. In this manner, the chief questions may be summarised alternatively as follows : —

(#) The sacramental claim and its connections, so far

as these appear in the Quests. (£) The qualifications for the Quest. (<:) The Hereditary Keepers of the Graal. (^) The King's Wounding and the King's Healing. (e) The enchantments of Britain in connection with

the Wounded Keeper.

(/) The removal of the Graal and the close of those times which the texts term adventurous, since when there has been silence on earth in respect of the Holy Graal.

The sacramental claim is introduced, among other documents, in (a) the De Borron poem ; (£) the Lesser

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Holy Graal; while its shadow is projected as a secret which cannot be told in (c) the proem to the Conte del Graal. It seems to be found by a vague and remote inference in the Longer Prose Perceval, and it may be gathered by brief allusions in the early prose Merlin. In the Great Quest it has been expunged, while it is outside the tradition as represented by Wolfram. The Quest qualifications are vague in Chretien and exceed reason. They are perhaps what might be termed ethical —but in the high degree — in Wolfram, who presents the marriage of Perceval. The so-called ascetic element appears fully in the 'Book of the Holy Graal, in the Longer Prose Perceval, and in the Quest of Galahad. The King's Wounding is accounted for differently in every romance ; the withdrawal of the Graal is also told differently ; sometimes it passes simply into deeper con- cealment ; sometimes it seems taken away utterly ; in one version there is another keeper appointed, but of the realm apart from the Hallows ; it is carried to the far East in another ; in two texts it remains where it was.

If there is a secret intention permeating the bulk of the literature, again it must partly reside in those epochs into which the literature falls ; their consideration should manifest it and should enable us to deal, at the close of the whole research, with the final problem, being that which is signified by the departure of the Sacred Vessel.

Each of the Hallows has its implied enigma, besides that which appears openly in its express nature, and as we know that the mysteries of God are mysteries of patience and compassion, we shall be prepared to find in their reflections through the Graal Legend that even some offices of judgment are formularies of concealed mercy. They are therefore both declared and un- declared— that is to say, understood ; and as there are certain Hallows which only appear occasionally, so there are suggestions and inferences concerning others which do not appear at all. That which was always in evidence is that to which the distinctive name of Graal is applied in

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every text, but enough has been said concerning it till we come to its exhaustive consideration in the next section. The second and third Hallows are the Lance and the Sword. The Lance is that which was used by the Roman soldier Longinus to pierce the side of Christ at the Cruci- fixion, or it is this at least according to the more general tradition. Of the Sword there are various stories, and it is this which in some cases serves to inflict the wound from which the Enchantments of Britain follow. It is (a) that which served to behead St. John the Baptist, in which connection we can understand its position as a sacred object ; (<£) that of the King and Prophet David, committed by Solomon to a wonderful ship, which went voyaging, voyaging throughout the ages till it should be seen by Galahad, the last scion of the royal house of Israel ; or (c] it is simply an instrument preserved as a token belonging to a legend of vengeance, in which relation it was brought over from folk-lore and is nothing to the purpose of the Graal.

The Dish, which is the fourth and final object in- cluded among the authorised Hallows, is more difficult to specify, because its almost invariable appearance in the pageant of the high processions is accompanied by no intelligible explanation respecting it ; and although it has also its antecedents in folk-lore, its mystic ex- planation, if any, must be sought very far away. Like the rest of the Hallows, it is described with many variations in the different books. It may be a salver of gold and precious stones, set on a silver cloth and carried by two maidens ; it may be a goodly plate of silver, or a little golden vessel, and this simply, except in the Longer Prose Perceval, which as it multiplies the Hallows so it divides their ministry ; but here, as else- where, the Dish does not embody apparently the feeding properties which are one aspect of the mystery.

In summary therefore : subject to characteristic varia- tions which are particular to each text, it will be found that the several romances follow or forecast one general

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process, exhibiting a general secret intention, manifested though not declared, and it is for this intention that my study has to account.

Ill

THE INSTITUTION OF THE HALLOAS, AND, SECONDLT, THE VARIATIONS OF THE CUP LEGEND

We have seen that the secret of the Graal, signifying the super-substantial nourishment of man, was communi- cated by Christ to His chosen disciple Joseph of Arima- thaea, who, by preserving the body of his Master after the Crucifixion, became an instrument of the Resurrec- tion. He laid it in the sepulchre, and thus sowed the seed whence issued the arch-natural body. On Ascension Day this was removed from the world, but there re- mained the Holy Vessel, into which the blood of the natural body had been received by Joseph. Strangely endued with the virtues of the risen Christ and the power of the Holy Ghost, it sustained him spiritually, and by a kind of reflection physically, during forty years of imprisonment, through which period he was in that con- dition of ecstasy which is said by the Christian masters of contemplation to last for half-an-hour — being that time when there is silence in heaven. We find accordingly that Joseph had no sense of duration in respect of the years ; he was already in that mystery of God into which the ages pass. After his release the Holy Vessel became a sign of saving grace, instruction and all wonder to that great company which he was elected to take westward. He committed it in fine to another keeper, by whom it was brought into Britain, and there, or otherwhere, certain lesser Hallows were added to the Hallow-m- chief, and were held with it in the places of concealment. Those which are met with most frequently, as we have

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seen, are four in number, but the mystery is really one, since it is all assumed into that vessel which is known for the most part as the Cup of legend. It is understood that for us at least this Cup is a symbol, seeing that the most precious of all vessels are not made with hands. It is in such sense that the true soul of philosophy is a cup which contains the universe. We shall understand also the ministry of material sustenance, frequently attributed to the Holy Graal, after another manner than that which can be presumed within the offices of folk-lore. It is in this sense that the old fable concerning the Bowl of Plenty, when incorporated by the Graal Mystery, may prove to have a profound meaning. Some things are taken externally ; some are received within ; but the food of the body has analogies with that of the soul. So much may be said at the moment concerning certain aspects which encompass the literature of the Graal, as the hills stand round Jerusalem.

The four Hallows are therefore the Cup, the Lance, the Sword and the Dish, Paten or Patella — these four, and the greatest of these is the Cup. As regards this Hallow-in-chief, of two things one : either the Graal Vessel contained the most sacred of all relics in Christen- dom, or it contained the Secret Mystery of the Eucharist. Now, the first question which arises is whether the general description which obtains concerning it — as I was almost about to say, in the popular mind — reposes on the authority of the texts. Here also will be found our first difficulty. I may not be pardoned such flippancy, but the Psalmist said : Calix meus quam inebrians est, and this has rather a bearing on the Graal chalice ; for the variety of the accounts concerning it may produce in the mind a sense of having visited some inn of strange description where those who come to ask questions are served with strong measures, and full at that.

There are three available sources of information con- cerning the Sacred Vessel, including those which are purely of the Eucharistic office, (i) The apocryphal

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legends concerning Joseph of Arimathaea which are dis- tinct from those that have been incorporated with the romances of chivalry and with the histories leading up to these. (2) The romances themselves and their pro- legomena, which are the chief bases of our knowledge, but on the understanding that there is no criterion for the distinction between that which is traditional and that which is pure invention. (3) Some archaeological aspects of sacramental practice.

The apocryphal legends which connect Joseph with the cultus of the Precious Blood are late, and they lie under the suspicion of having been devised in the interests of Glastonbury, or through Glastonbury of ecclesiastical pretensions on the part of the British Church at or about the period of Henry II. Above these as a substratum of solid fact — I refer to the fact of the inventions — there has been of late years superposed an alleged dream of a pan-Britannic Church, which belongs, however, more particularly to the romance of history. The chivalrous romances themselves have so overlaid the Graal object with decorations and wonder- elements that the object itself has been obscured and its nature can, in some cases, be extricated scarcely. Eucharistic archaeology remains as a source of informa- tion on which it is possible to rely implicitly, but while this can satisfy us as to the variations in the form and matter of the Sacred Vessel used in the Sacrifice of the Mass, it does not offer us, except indirectly, much or perhaps any assistance to determine the relic of legend.

The Evangelium Nicodemi, Acta [vet Gestd\ Pilatiy and some other oriental apocryphal documents are the authorities for the imprisonment of Joseph by the Jews because he had laid the body of Christ in the sepulchre. William of Malmesbury, John of Glastonbury and similar makers of chronicles are responsible for referring the first evangelisation of Britain to Joseph of Arimathaea. From these, however, we must except Geoffrey of Monmouth, and William of Malmesbury has nothing

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to tell us of the Graal, though he has the story of two phials containing the Precious Blood. The reference to relics of any kind is also late in the chronicles. An English metrical life of Joseph, belonging to the first years of the sixteenth century, but drawing from previous sources, shows how the precious blood was collected by that saint and received into two cruets, which we find figuring at a later period in the arms of Glastonbury Abbey. One of these sources, though perhaps at a far distance, may have been the lost book attributed to Melkin or Mewyn, which gives an account of these cruets. The tradition supposes (i) that they were buried at Glastonbury, (2) that they will be discovered concurrently with the coffin of Joseph, and (3) that thereafter there will be no more drought in Britain. John of Glastonbury is one of the authorities for the existence of a book of Melkin — sometimes identified with the Chronicle of Nennius. The more immediate antecedent of the metrical story is, however, the Nova Legenda Anglic of Capgrave, and it represents Joseph as living with twelve hermits at Glastonbury, where he also died and was buried. The Oxford Vernon MS., written in verse about 1350, shows that there was a sacred vessel containing blood. The Chronicle of Helinandus describes the Graal as a wide and shallow vessel, wherein meats in their juice are served to wealthy persons. The Historia Aurea, written by John of Tynemouth, connects Joseph with the Holy Vessel, which it describes as that large dish or platter in which the Lord supped with His disciples, with which concurs one entire cycle of the legend. It may be added, for what it is worth, that the Armorican Gauls seem to have had a sacred vessel used in certain rites from a very early period. An object of this kind is thought to be depicted on Armorican coins, being semi- circular in shape, held by means of thongs and devoid of stem or base. Under Roman domination the vessel was figured with a pedestal.

We come now to the putative historical romances and

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the poems and tales of chivalry which contain the de- veloped legend of the Graal. The Conte del Graal, which is the first text for our consideration, has many decorative descriptions of the Sacred Vessel, but they pre- sent certain difficulties, as will be exhibited by their simple recitation in summary, (i) It was covered with the most precious stones that are found in the world, and it gave forth so great a light that the candles at the table were eclipsed, even as are the stars of heaven in the glory of the sun and moon (Chretien de Troyes). (2) It passed to and fro quickly amidst the lights, but no hand appeared to hold it (Gautier de Doulens, or, as he is now termed, Wauchier de Denain). (3) It was borne uplifted by a beautiful maiden, who was discounselled and weeping (Montpellier MS.). (4) It was carried to and fro before the table by a maiden more beautiful than flowers in April (second account of Gautier, with which compare the similar recital of Gerbert). (5) It was carried amidst a great light by an angel, to heal Perceval (Manessier). (6) It was carried in the pageant by a maiden through the castle chamber (ibid.). (7) It was carried openly at the coronation of Perceval, also by a maiden (ibid.). (8) It was, in fine, ravished with the soul of Perceval, and has never since been seen so openly : —

" Ne ja mais nus hommes qui soit nes Nel vera si apiertement."

What follows from these citations will have occurred to the reader — that in all these several sections of the Conte del Graal there is no intelligible description of the sacred object; that the writers knew of it at a far distance only; that some of their references seem to indicate a brilliant lamp rather than a chalice ; and, when they allocated it to Christian symbolism, that they may have wavered in their meaning between the idea of the Paschal Dish and the Cup in which Christ consecrated the wine of the first Eucharist ; but we cannot tell. I should

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add that the prologue, which is certainly the work of a later or at least of another hand, and embodies some curious material, mentions, but very briefly, the pageant of the Graal procession, saying that the Vessel appears at the Castle without sergeant or seneschal, but again there is no description of the Vessel. In conclusion of this account, the alternative ending of Gerbert retells with variations part of the story of Joseph, and although there is once again no intimation as to the form of the Graal, an account of the service performed at an altar over " the holy, spiritual thing " — the Vessel more beautiful than eye of man has seen — is there recounted, while it leaves no doubt in the mind that this service was a Mass of the Graal. It is the only suggestion of the kind which is afforded by the vast poem, though the origin and early history of the sacred object is in accordance with the received tradition.

The fuller memorials of this tradition are embodied, as we have seen, in two cycles of literature, but the text which is first in time and chief in importance is the metrical Romance of the Graal, or Joseph of Arimathtea, by Robert de Borron. A French and a German critic have said that this is the earliest text of the Graal literature proper, and an English writer has concluded, on the con- trary, that it is not : mats que nfimporte ? I will not even ask for the benefit of the doubt, so far as enumeration is concerned. The metrical Joseph says that the Graal was a passing fair vessel, wherein did Christ make His sacrament. This is vague admittedly, and assuming a certain confusion in the mind of the writer, it might have been that Dish mentioned by John of Tynemouth in which the Paschal Lamb was