. The word gradalis, of disputed origin, meaning a kind of serving dish, is attested in medieval Latin as early as 718. A well-known definition from ca. 1200 reads: “A gradalis, or in the Latin of Gaul gradale, is a wide dish, somewhat deep, in which costly foods in their broth are usually set out for the rich with pieces arranged in order [gradatim], one after the other, in different patterns; and in the vernacular it is called a graalz [grail]” (Hélinant de Froidmont, 1294). Association of the words for grail with gradatim ‘by steps, in stages’ and the notion of orderly arrangement may originate in a flight of etymological fancy typical of the Middle Ages; but the grail’s use in serving food at a rich meal is consistent with the word’s earliest occurrences in French, in the decasyllabic Roman d’Alexandre (1165–70) and in Chrétien de Troyes’s Perceval, or the Conte du Graal (ca. 1180), as is the implication that a grail was a rare and costly dish that would nevertheless be known in wealthy households in northern France.
In the Conte du Graal, Chrétien seems to play familiarity with grails in general against a particular Grail’s extraordinary qualities. Four facts distinguish the special Grail that Perceval first sees at the Fisher King’s castle. (1) It is valuable beyond measure, made of gold and studded with rare gems. (2) Along with candelabra and a cutting platter, it appears in a procession (not an unusual event at a banquet), but the procession is headed by a squire carrying an amazing Bleeding Lance. (3) It is not used to serve the diners in the main hall but follows the procession into a room beyond. Meat is served from the platter; the Grail passes by at each course but does not stop at the table. (4) It is accompanied by a bright light apparently emanating from within. Later, Perceval learns about the extraordinary food the Grail contains that makes it a “holy thing” (and that might explain the light): neither pike, lamprey, nor salmon, which one might expect to be served in an ordinary grail, but a consecrated Mass wafer, the only sustenance taken for years by a king, Perceval’s grandfather, who lives in the inner room.
The Grail is simultaneously an ordinary and a mysterious object. Mystery arises, in fact, because it behaves or is treated in unexpected ways. One of its functions is to provoke inquiry about what makes it mysterious. Perceval ought to ask questions about where the Grail goes and whom it serves, not about its material nature. It is “holy” because of what it conveys, rather than for what it is; the purpose of the questions is thus to draw attention beyond itself toward what lies hidden from view.
Just as Chrétien’s Grail is meant to be the object of questions, so he makes of it as well the object of a quest. The Grail Castle and its inhabitants disappear the morning after Perceval’s failure; later, reminded of the consequences of his failure, he resolves to search until he finds it again and can ask the right questions in order to heal the wounded Fisher King and restore the Grail kingdom.
In the wake of Chrétien’s unfinished Conte du Graal, a series of verse continuations arose, which extend Chrétien’s story for over 40,000 lines before giving it a form of closure. The theme of the Grail extends through these romances and into several prose reworkings of the legend as well. A decade or so after Chrétien, Robert de Boron (fl. 1190–1210) is the first to turn this Grail (so named, according to Robert, because it brings pleasure [<agreer]) into an object that is holy in its own right, the Holy Grail. His writing concretizes associations of the Grail with religious experience that Chrétien leaves poetically implicit. Robert does so by creating a “sacred history” for the Grail and reinforcing its place in Arthurian history by accounting for its presence in Britain. The prose Didot-Perceval, written under the influence of the Second Continuation as well as Chrétien, is a romance of ambition and failure, for which a Grail quest is an act of atonement; this prose work is the earliest romance to include a successful conclusion to the hero’s quest.
The First Continuator, drawing on Chrétien’s implication of a quest by Gawain for the Bleeding Lance, elevates the secondary hero to the status of Grail quester; in the endings provided by Manessier and Gerbert de Montreuil, however, the final triumph is reserved for Perceval alone.
Continuing the process of christianization, the First and Second Continuations identify the Bleeding Lance, ignored by Robert, with the spear of Longinus, thus linking both objects definitively to the Mass. However, the Grail’s extraordinary character continues to elevate its sacramental functions. Hardly a chalice destined for service at an “ordinary” Mass, it figures, in the Vulgate Cycle and subsequently, as Chalice par excellence, the central material object in a vision of Christ’s own service at the altar as Victim and as Priest. Moreover, the goal of the Grail quest can no longer be a dream of heroic liberation but is a pious search for personal worth and purity. Perceval is replaced as the ideal Grail quester by the flawless Galahad; after Galahad witnesses the extraordinary ceremony, the Grail is removed to Heaven, its appropriate abode.
Perlesvaus, another early 13th-century prose romance, incorporates material from Robert de Boron and from Chrétien and the first two Continuators with matter from a wide range of other sources to produce an idiosyncratic and heightened account of the Grail as Mass chalice, the object of the Perceval figure’s quest, in which the Crucifixion drama is replayed.
The Grail as a source of plenty is one characteristic that brings its literary manifestations into contact with mythic and folkloric themes and motifs. Among the most evocative and provocative of many possible examples are the cornu copia, magic sources of abundance, the vegetative cycle, cycles of destruction and restoration, impotence and fecundity, feminine sexuality. Such resonances enrich the medieval texts poetically, but they do not, in most cases, emerge as a major focus of interest. Nevertheless, they help explain the widespread appeal of the Grail and its continued renewal in literature throughout the Middle Ages and down to the present day.
Frappier, Jean. “Le Graal et ses feux divergeants.” Romance Philology 24(1970–71):373–400.
Imbs, Paul. “L’élément religieux dans le Conte del Graal de Chrétien de Troyes.” In Les romans du Graal dans la littérature des XIIe et XIIIe siècles. Paris: CNRS, 1956, pp. 31–53.
Marx, Jean. La légende arthurienne et le Graal. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1952.
——. Nouvelles recherches sur la littérature arthurienne. Paris: Klincksieck, 1965.
Owen, D.D.R. “From Grail to Holy Grail.” Romania 89(1968): 31–53.
Pickens, Rupert T. “Le conte del Graal (Perceval).” In The Romances of Chrétien de Troyes:A Symposium, ed. Douglas Kelly. Lexington: French Forum, 1985, pp. 232–86.
Roques, Mario. “Le nom du Graal.” In Les romans du Graal dans la littérature des XIIe et XIIIe siècles. Paris: CNRS, 1956, pp. 5–13.
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