One of the most recognized relics associated with the legends of King Arthur is the Holy Grail. Few artifacts in history have inspired more speculation and literature than the mysterious grail. For the modern Western individual, its mention typically calls up an image of the mysterious chalice that Christ drinks from at the Last Supper (thanks Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade). But it didn’t take this form until Robert de Boron (a Burgundian knight thought to have written Joseph of Arimathea around 1200) introduced the Holy Grail as the chalice of the Eucharist given by Pontius Pilate to Joseph of Arimathea that the relic took the form we now think of.
Long before it was a chalice, it was first a platter—a dish of plenty. As best we can tell, its original inspiration comes from Celtic myth and arrives in the Medieval mind through Chretien de Troyes who, drawing from some source shrouded in mystery, writes Perceval: The Story of the Grail.
Chretien’s tale follows Perceval (pure fool), a young (and naive) boy raised by his mother in the Welsh wilderness, as he journeys to become a knight in King Arthur’s court. It also introduces us to the mystery of the grail.
Coming, after much wandering, to the kingdom of the Fisher King—a king suffering from a wound in the groin that prevents him from ruling in Wholeness and causes his land to live in decline1—Perceval finds hospitality. Joining the Fisher King in his court for dinner that evening, he observes a strange procession that introduces us to the grail and its mystery:
They sat in a hall lit
As brightly as candles can make
An indoor room. And as
They chatted of this and that,
A servant entered the hall,
Carrying—his hand at its center—
A white lance. He came out
Of a room, then walked between
The fire and those seated
On the bed, and everyone saw
The white wood, and the white
Spearhead, and the drop of blood
That rolled slowly down
From the iron point until
It reached the servant's hand.
The boy saw that wondrous
Sight, the night he arrived there,
But kept himself from asking
What it might mean, for he'd never
Forgotten—as his master at arms
Had warned him, over and over—
was not to talk too much.
To question his host or his servants
Might well be vulgar or rude,
And so he held his tongue.
And then two other servants
Entered, carrying golden
Candleholders worked
With enamel. They were wonderfully handsome
Boys, and the candleholders
They each clasped in their hands
Bore at least ten
Burning candles. A girl
Entered with them, holding
A grail-dish in both her hands—
beautiful girl, elegant,
Extremely well dressed. And as
She walked into the hall,
Holding this grail, it glowed
With so great a light that the candles
Suddenly seemed to grow dim,
Like the moon and stars when the sun
Appears in the sky. Then another
Girl followed the first one,
Bearing a silver platter.
The grail that led the procession
Was made of the purest gold,
Studded with jewels of every
Kind, the richest and most costly
Found on land or sea.
No one could doubt that here
Were the loveliest jewels on earth.
Just as they'd done before,
When carrying the lance, the servants
Passed in front of the knight,
Then went to another room.
And the boy watched them, not daring
To ask why or to whom
This grail was meant to be served…2
What we (and Perceval) learn later from the Weeping woman is that had Perceval asked the question—whom does it serve?—then the Fisher King would have been completely cured of all his wounds: “He would have become entirely / Whole, and ruled as he should. How much good you’d have done!”3
This, of course, raises the question: Why would asking to whom does it serve heal the Fisher King? We (and Perceval) learn later from the Hermit is that the grail served a single life-sustaining wafer to the Fisher King’s father—the Grail King. But this still doesn’t answer the question of why Perceval’s question would heal.
And we never are told in the tale. In fact, after this episode, most of the remaining half of Chretien’s work centers around the adventures of Gawain as Perceval passes largely out of view.
The only other glimpse of Perceval in the back half of the poem comes when the young knight re-surfaces after five long years of questing for answers to his questions about the grail and whom it serves. It is a period, we’re told, where Perceval had so completely lost his memory that he forgets God and never once goes into a church.
Perceval, no longer a young boy but now something like a broken man, comes to a group of Christians leaving the holy place of a Hermit. Looking at Perceval in his armor, they inform him he ought to take off his armor for it’s Good Friday—the day where Christians honor the cross and confess their sins, as they had just done at the holy Hermit’s dwelling.
“Hearing those words, Perceval / Wept, and wanted to speak / With the holy hermit himself.”4 Going to the Hermit, Perceval drops to his knees the moment he enters the chapel. The Hermit sees his honest tears and calls him to confess. Perceval, eager to come clean, reveals to the Hermit how he failed ask the magic question when he saw the lance and grail and, for his failure, the world suffered. The Hermit, hearing Perceval, reveals that the grail served the Fisher King's father (as mentioned above), and then gives Perceval his penance: go to church first thing each morning; love God; honor good men and women; and if anyone asks for help, give it and help yourself.
“Tell me,” the Hermit asks Perceval, “is your heart willing?” “Entirely willing,” answers Perceval, as the two move into two days of fasting, praying, and repenting together. And then we get the last words from de Troyes on Perceval before the knight passes back in obscurity—his mystery growing with the grail’s:
And Perceval learned, once again,
That Our Lord had died that Friday,
Crucified high on the Cross.
He made his Easter communion
Humbly, in perfect simplicity.
And here the story breaks
Away from Perceval,
About whom the tale turns silent…
I'll speak a good deal of Gawain
Before Perceval is mentioned again.5
Perceval is, in fact, never mentioned again after this point. For this reason, among others, many modern scholars believe Chretien left his tale unfinished—dying before he was able to work Perceval back into the tale and bring the grail story and its questions to resolution.
But what one is left to wonder is whether Perceval found the grail (or, at least, something as good) after all.6 Many of the great religious teachers speak of an emptying of self that must come before transcendence. Christian theology has the idea of kenosis (self-emptying) and Eastern religions speak of śūnyatā (emptiness). And it is the state that Perceval finds himself in when he responds to the Hermit's question of whether he's willing with: "entirely willing."
It is this state and stance of complete service to the world that, paradoxically, is the key to self-actualization (as I wrote about in On Developing a Sense of Destiny: Devotion as a Vehicle of Self-Actualizing). It’s enough to make us wonder. Perhaps the purpose of the grail in Perceval is how it reminds us with its question—to whom does it serve?—of what question we ought to be asking: whom do our actions serve?
And perhaps our grasping of the grail—the dish capable of healing king and kingdom—depends on whether we’re asking it.
This type of wound is Medieval speak for castration and a sterile king whose infirmity renders the entire land barren.
Chretien de Troyes, Perceval: The Story of the Grail, translated by Burton Raffel, lines 3188 - 3247 (hereinafter “Perceval”).
Perceval, lines 3585 - 3590.
Perceval, lines 6316 - 6318.
Perceval, lines 6510 - 6520.
Richard Rohlin makes the (persuasive) case in a podcast with Jonathan Pageau that Perceval does, in fact, find the grail with the Hermit.