Chapter San Benito to Sangraal of S by Brewer's Readers Handbook

(“Sir Sanglier” is meant for Shan O’Neil, leader of the Irish insurgents in 1567. Of course, this judgment is borrowed from that of Solomon, I Kings iii. 16-27.)

Sanglier des Ardennes, Guillaume de la Marck (1446–1485).

Sangraal, Sancgreal, etc., generally said to be the holy plate from which Christ ate at the Last Supper, brought to England by Joseph of Arimathy. Whatever it was, it appeared to king Arthur and his 150 knights of the Round Table, but suddenly vanished, and all the knights vowed they would go in quest thereof. Only three, sir Bors, sir Percivale, and sir Galahad, found it, and only sir Galahad touched it, but he soon died, and was borne by angels up into heaven. The sangraal of Arthurian romance is “the dish” containing Christ transubstantiated by the sacrament of the Mass, and made visible to the bodily eye of man. This will appear quite obvious to the reader by the following extracts:—

Then anon they heard cracking and crying of thunder. …In the midst of the blast entered a sunbeam more clear by seven times than the day, and all they were alighted of the grace of the Holy Ghost. … Then there entered into the hall the Holy Grale covered with white samite, but there was none that could see it, nor who bare it, but the whole hall was full filled with good odours, and every knight had such meat and drink as he best loved in the world, and when the Holy Grale had been borne through the hall, then the holy vessel departed suddenly, and they wist not where it became.—Ch. 35.

Then looked they and saw a man come out of the holy vessel, that had all the signs of the passion of Christ, and he said…“This is the holy dish wherein I ate the lamb on Sher-Thursday, and now hast thou seen it…yet hast thou not seen it so openly as thou must go hence and bear with thee this holy vessel, for this night it shall depart from the realm of Logris… and take with thee…sir Percivale and sir Bors.”—Ch. 101.

So departed sir Galahad, and sir Percivale and sir Bors with him. And so they rode three days, and came to a river, and found a ship…and when on board, they found in the midst the table of silver and the Sancgreall covered with white samite. …Then sir Galahad laid him down and slept…and when he woke…he saw the city of Sarras (ch. 103). …At the year’s end, …he saw before him the holy vessel, and a man kneeling upon his knees in the likeness of the bishop, which had about him a great fellowship of angels, as it had been Christ Himself…and when he came to the sakering of the Mass, and had done, anon he called sir Galahad, and said unto him, “Come forth, …and thou shalt see that which thou hast much desired to see”…and he beheld spiritual things…(ch. 104).—Sir T. Malory: History of Prince Arthur, iii. 35, 101, 104 (1470).

N. B.—The earliest story of the holy graal was in verse (A. D. 1100), author unknown.

Chrétien de Troyes has a romance in eight-syllable verse on the same subject (1170).

Guiot’s tale of Titurel founder of Graal-burg, and Parzival prince thereof, belongs to the twelfth century.

Wolfram von Eschenbach, a minnesinger, took Guiot’s tale as the foundation of his poem (thirteenth century).

In Titurel the Younger the subject is very fully treated.

Sir T. Malory (in pt. iii. of the History of Prince Arthur, translated in 1470 from the French) treats the subject in prose very fully.

R. S. Hawker has a poem on the Sangraal, but it was never completed.

Tennyson has an idyll called The Holy Grail (1858).

Boisserée published, in 1834, at Munich, a work On the Description of the Temple of the Holy Graal.