The Da Vinci Fraud: Why the Truth Is Stranger Than Fiction (8 page)

CHALICE OF CHIVALRY

As everyone knows, the grail forms an important part of the King Arthur mythos. The legends of the grail serve a purpose analogous to that of the Book of Mormon, which extends the biblical tradition to a latter-day Christian community far removed from either the time or the place of the Bible. What the Book of Mormon does for American Latter-day Saints the grail sagas do for Western Europeans: They tie them into the salvation history of the Bible. But, as we shall see in a bit more detail, the grail legends teem with elements that do not naturally fit into such a framework and cannot be explained easily within it. Basically, what happens in the grail legend is that, after an ethereal apparition of the grail in midair above the Round Table, King Arthur resolves to locate the holy relic and to provide a fitting setting for it. So he sends forth his knights to find and retrieve it. In the end, only the purest is able to procure the grail, and only after a series of arduous labors.

Presently we must survey the principal sagas and ballads, that is, written literary texts, from which this rough summary has been distilled. But first let us note that, like the New Testament gospels, these documents constitute a writing down or compilation of oral traditions. The materials from which they have been composed are the songs and prose stories told at the fireside or at the feasting board by a class of wandering raconteurs who sang for their supper before moving on to their next venue. They were much like the performing troupes of the medieval miracle and mystery plays as depicted in Ingmar Bergman’s
The Seventh Seal
.

They were also much like the itinerant charismatic prophets and apostles who made the rounds of the earliest churches, repeating, expounding, and sometimes coining sayings and stories of Jesus. After much repetition and redaction, these stories came to rest in our gospels, the work of editors who, like the Brothers Grimm, decided to collect the precious material before it should vanish, replaced by the dry abstractions of institutional preaching. As Roger Sherman Loomis, in
The Grail: From Celtic Myth to Christian Symbol
, says, “Nothing better explains, then, some of the typical features of Arthurian romance in its early stages—its episodic, loose structure, its glaring inconsistencies—than the fact that it was based on the numberless short
contes
which formed the stock-in-trade of wandering
conteurs
.”
³
Loomis might as well be describing the synoptic gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke).

The oral origin and character of the grail romances already throw into serious question the Teabing hypothesis, namely, that the grail was an esoteric cipher invented to communicate to a chosen few the secret of the bloodline of Jesus. How strange, if this were so, that those who transmitted, who had even, so far as we know,
created
the legend, should have been oblivious of the “true” meaning of it, since they themselves give nary a hint of it.

Now, theoretically, it is always possible that the transmitters of the grail cycles were unaware of a prior, deeper significance of stories that they and their hearers appreciated simply for their entertainment value. But then we would need to have some proof, at least some evidence, that there had been an earlier stage in which the stories were designed and circulated as a vehicle for the supposed esoteric message. And there is none.

By contrast, in his masterpiece
Love in the Western World
, Denis de Rougemont makes an impressive case that the soap-operatic ballads of the fourteenth-century troubadours of southern France, the songs of courtly love, were dumbed-down versions of paeans of mystical devotion addressed by Cathar mystics and Sufis to Dame Wisdom, the heavenly Sophia. These singers had sought to unite their spirits with her in an exercise of Platonic Eros. These Gnostic psalmists were forced by the rigors of the Albigensian Crusade to go underground. Their celestial love lyrics had to be put into the adjacent idiom of secular, romantic, albeit chaste, male-female love between mortals. This would be a case closely analogous to that demanded by the Teabing hypothesis, in that we would have an initially esoteric allegorical myth forced subsequently to don the garb of secular entertainment and thus doomed to be perpetuated in ignorance by the uninitiated. The fatal difference is that de Rougemont is able to point to ample evidence of the earlier esoteric stage of interpretation, later lost, whereas Baigent, Leigh, Lincoln, and Brown cannot. Theirs is a circular argument.

THE GRAIL CANON

There are ten major grail texts, or groups of texts, all written in the first half of the thirteenth century. Again we may spot analogies to the New Testament gospels in that some of these grail gospels are interdependent, while others embody rival or variant underlying traditions. The first, written about 1180, is the
Conte del Graal
or
Perceval
by Chrétien de Troyes, which he wrote up from some older book in the possession of his patron, Count Philip of Flanders. He did not finish the tale, dropping the pen before the grail knight, having missed an earlier opportunity, redeems himself by finding the grail again and asking the proper questions. Just as Matthew and Luke, like various later copyists, found Mark’s ending too abrupt and added their own continuations, so did at least four writers continue Chrétien’s work only twenty years later, namely, Manessier (writing between 1214 and 1227), Gerbert de Montreuil (ca. 1230), and two anonymous writers (before 1200). These four constitute the second version.

The third version of the grail saga is the famous
Parsifal
of Wolfram von Eschenbach, a knight of Bavaria, written between 1200 and 1210. The fourth is the Welsh romance
Peredur
, which forms part of the collection of Welsh tales the
Mabinogion
. Fifth is a French version that scholars have denominated the
Didot Perceval
in honor of the former owner of the sole extant manuscript. Sixth is
The High History of the Holy Grail
, or
Perlesvaus
, stemming from Belgium or the north of France. Seventh is a portion of the Vulgate cycle, the
Prose Lancelot
. The eighth is the next chapter of the Vulgate cycle, the
Queste del Saint Graal
. The ninth source is Robert de Boron’s
Joseph d’Arimathie
, penned in Burgundia. Tenth is the
Estoire del Saint Graal
, the first segment of the Vulgate cycle but written later than the other two listed here. The fourth through tenth are of uncertain date, but all of them appear to have been completed by 1230.

And only the ninth and tenth feature the prehistory of the grail, Joseph of Arimathea, and so forth. The other accounts do not presuppose it. This is important because it suggests the connection to Jesus and his alleged relatives (Joseph of Arimathea) is not an integral part of the tale but rather a later addition. That does not look good for the Teabing hypothesis, for which the bloodline connection is the whole raison d’être of the grail story.

EXPANDING EPIC

Chrétien’s version lacks any epiphany of the grail and has Perceval simply happen upon the ailing Fisher King, who suffers a loss of virility due to a wound in the thigh (a euphemism, as sometimes in the Bible, for penis). Sitting with the king in the palace, he observes a strange procession. One maiden carries aloft a steely lance, unaccountably bleeding from its tip. Another carries “a grail,” a large, moderately deep serving pan, into a closed-off chamber (apparently where
another
lame king, the father of the first one, eats in seclusion). Perceval thinks of asking the meaning of all this: “What is the significance of that grail? Whom does one serve with it?” But he thinks it better to remain tactfully silent, not to speak out of turn. His better judgment causes him to lose his golden opportunity: Everyone was waiting for him to ask these questions, for (as he discovers on the morrow) only when a visitor should ask them would the Fisher King be restored to soundness.

Next morning, Perceval awakens to discover himself alone and abandoned in the castle. Not far off he meets a beautiful maiden, his long-lost cousin, who knows what has transpired and tells him of his error and of the dire consequences it must bring. Much later, back in Arthur’s palace, a hideous old crone appears and repeats the same tidings. Reproaching himself heartily, Perceval vows to find the grail again, and then he will ask the requisite questions. On his quest he suffers amnesia, forgetting both his name and his Christian faith. At length, however, he meets up with his uncle, a pious hermit, who sets him to rights and explains that the grail contained but a single Eucharistic wafer, all the nourishment the hidden king required. But then, prematurely, it is all over. Presumably, Perceval would ultimately have proven his worth and gained the spiritual sensitivity he lacked before. Notice:
Here the grail is not a Last Supper cup
. Not the cup of the blood, and this makes the grail-bloodline link impossible.

PERCEVAL PLUS GAWAIN

The first anonymous continuation of this story is really a separate and roughly parallel account, starring Gawain instead of Perceval. It has been forcibly joined to the original. Sent by Guinevere to apprehend a mysterious knight galloping through Camelot at full tilt, Gawain catches up to him only to witness him being struck down by an unseen assailant. The dying knight, still unknown, bids the hero to undertake his mission, wearing his armor and mounted on his steed. Like Abraham setting out cluelessly from Haran, Gawain accepts the commission and rides through a vast forest. Emerging from it, he reaches the seashore, and stretching away before him he sees a long, tree-lined causeway leading to a great manor house dimly lit by a campfire. Fearing the dark and the wind, he is nonetheless drawn after his frantic horse to the mansion. Soon Gawain beholds a corpse laid out in state, then a funeral service conducted by clergy who vanish when it concludes. Next, a great king welcomes him to a feast, where he beholds a pair of marvels: again the bleeding lance and the grail, which, in this version, magically feeds and serves all present. Then, all the feasters vanish.

The king returns and points to a broken sword lying upon the corpse’s breast. Can Gawain reunite the sword? If so, he may avenge the death of the man who lies before them, and the deed will restore all the adjacent territory, the vegetation of which languishes. He tries and fails. The disappointed king begins to answer Gawain’s questions about the wonders he has seen, starting with the blood-dripping lance. It is that same lance that pierced the side of the crucified Christ. But before Gawain can inquire concerning the grail, his long lack of sleep takes its toll and, despite himself, he falls asleep.

When the knight awakens next morning, he is alone. Even the mansion is nowhere to be seen. But as he rides homeward through the wasteland, the peasants assure him that, by asking about the lance, he has caused the parched streams to flow again. But he had stymied full restoration by his failure to ask whom one served with the grail. Note that, while Chrétien’s original gave no Christian coloring to the bleeding spear, it did at least have the (unexplained) grail contain a communion host. That does not quite make the vessel the cup of the Last Supper. In the anonymous sequel, the bloody spear becomes the crucifixion spear, but
the grail is a magical horn of plenty with no religious association.

The second anonymous continuation tries to tie up loose ends left by the first. Perceval arrives at the mansion where Gawain had failed to reunite the sword of the dead hero. He is offered the same challenge and succeeds. We learn that the dead king, whose passing plunged the realm into ruin, was the King of the Waste Land, murdered by a nearby noble, the Red Knight, who may be slain only by him who restores the sword. The king whom Gawain had met and who tells Perceval all this is the Fisher King, the dead king’s brother. He, too, is wounded in the thigh, but only due to carelessness in handling the shards of the sword. Perceval manages to avenge the King of the Waste Land, whereupon the Fisher King and the vigor of his realm are renewed.
Nothing is said here about the cup or the blood of Jesus
.

PEREDUR PERDURES

In the Welsh
Peredur
, many of the same elements recur, though in different combinations. Peredur (= Perceval) happens upon a castle belonging to an old man who turns out to be his uncle. He bids Peredur to spar with young men in the court to try his combat skills. He does well, and his uncle offers to train him further. Departing, he reaches another castle, shares supper with another old man, another uncle, who also asks about his fighting skills. The man directs him to strike an iron pillar with a sword. Both shatter. He mends them together again, then repeats the blow and the mending. But after a third blow he fails, signaling that he has not reached his full, destined strength. Two young men pass through the hall carrying between them the bleeding spear, at which all present begin to weep and wail. Peredur is curious but refrains from asking the meaning of the spectacle. Next two young women enter, carrying a large salver with a man’s head in a pool of blood! Amid the loud lamentation, Peredur maintains his silence.

He leaves the next day, meets the beautiful young cousin in the woods, and returns to Camelot. There Peredur receives the rebuke of the old hag: Had he asked the meaning of the lance and the head, the Lame King would have regained his health and the land with him. We later learn the Lame King was the second uncle. Later still Peredur learns that the head was that of a cousin killed by the Sorceress of Gloucester, who also maimed the king. And, of course, Peredur is destined to avenge these outrages and to restore plenty to the Waste Land, which he does. The bleeding lance remains an enigma.
In all this there is no Christian reference
. The great platter containing the head fills the space occupied by the grail in other versions, but the head is no sacred relic, such as the head of John the Baptist, as one might expect.