The hero of the quest, Peredur, becomes the guest of a nobleman in a large castle. After Peredur severs a huge iron column with a sword (both of which are magically restored two out of three times), the nobleman reveals that he is Peredur's uncle.
"Then Peredur and his uncle discoursed together, and he beheld two youths enter the hall and proceed up to the chamber, bearing a spear of mighty size, with three streams of blood flowing from the point to the ground. When all the company saw this, they began wailing and lamenting. But for all that the man did not break off his discourse with Peredur. As he did not tell Peredur the meaning of what he saw, he forbore to ask him concerning it. When the clamor had a little subsided, behold, two maidens entered, with a large salver (dyscyl) between them, in which was a man's head, surrounded by a profusion of blood."- Peredur
The head, which replaced the grail in Chrétien's account, belonged to a cousin of Peredur's, as he later learns. The cousin was "killed by the sorceresses of Gloucester, who also lamed thine uncle". Peredur then fulfills a prophesy, kills the sorceresses and avenges his cousin.
Transplanted from his pagan Irish origin, Brân " has become King of the island of Britain, crowned in London and has acquired the Christian epithet bendigeid, 'Blessed'....He led an expedition to a foreign land and was victorious. Nevertheless, he was wounded in the foot with a poisoned javelin, and, though no causal nexus is mentioned, the islands of Ireland and Britain were rendered desolate. Brân commanded his followers to cut off his head and to travel with it, first to Harlech and then to the island of Grassholm. Obeying his commands, they spent seven years at Harlech, regaling themselves with meat and drink. Then, setting out for Grassholm, they found there a fair royal place, a great hall, overlooking the sea. That night they spent there without stint, and we may infer that they continued to feast, as they had at Harlech, for eighty years, in the company of the uncorrupted head of Brân. This was called the Hospitality of the Wondrous Head."
"Amongst the Celts the human head was venerated above all else, since the head was to the Celt the soul, center of the emotions as well as of life itself, a symbol of divinity and of the powers of the other-world."
In the cult of the severed head the ancient Celts believed "that the heads of vanquished adversaries should therefore be severed and preserved."
"In Britain human skulls were found in the fortifications at Bredon Hill and at Stanwick, and their position suggests that they had either been attached to poles beside the gateway or nailed onto the structure of the gate itself. Heads feature a great deal on native Celtic coins, being treated with typical Celtic fantasy, having distorted or non-natural features, huge eyes, and wild hair, and often showing tattooing on the cheeks and bearing, or being associated with, cult symbols such as the boar. Sometimes smaller heads are chained to a larger central head; some have horns, others are janiform (two-faced) or in triplicate."
The severed head "figures perhaps most prominently in the myth of Brân the Blessed, whose head, according to tradition, was buried as a protective talisman outside London [White Hill], face turned towards France. Not only did it protect the city from attack. It also ensured the fertility of the surrounding countryside and warded off plague from England as a whole."
"All the evidence for Celtic religion emphasizes the fundamental importance of the human head to early Celtic society. It was a prized trophy in battle; but much more than this it was a potent symbol of the total religious attitudes of the Celtic peoples. The head stood for divinity. It was the supreme conveyer of hospitality, the distributor of the divine feast. It had powers of prophecy, healing, fertility, speech, independent movement and incorruptible life. If was regarded as the essence of being, the seat of the soul, the symbol of evil-averting divine power. Its meaning for the early Celtic peoples is clear throughout their history - it can truly be said to contain the essence of their religious philosophy and to be the most distinctive and powerful of all their cults."
"...This continental romance reflects with extraordinary clearness archaic Welsh traditions which can hardly be detected at all in any other Grail text."
Such traditions are obvious when Perceval sails across the sea to the isle of the ageless elders.
Once an island in a marsh sea, Glastonbury Tor, a conspicuous hill in Somerset, England, was reputedly the site of Caer Siddi, the Celtic Fairy Fortress.
At the castle is a great hall filled with riches - cloths of silk, a depiction of the Savior, tables of gold and ivory and folk "full of great joy and seemed to be of great holiness." Thirty three men in white garments with red crosses on their breasts washed at a rich golden laver before sitting down to feast.
Compare with the account in the following archaic poem:
One of the masters inquires about the Holy Grail and Perceval verifies that it is in the Fisher King's chapel. (In this account Perceval conquers the grail Castle after his uncle dies.)
"There was...a legend of Joseph of Arimathea centuries before he was associated with the grail. It started with historic fact, vouched for by the four gospels, namely, that after Christ died on the cross, a rich disciple of Arimathea named Joseph begged the holy body from Pilate, wrapped it in a linen cloth, and placed it in a new tomb. St. John's gospel adds that Nicodemus brought spices for the burial, and that is all we learn from the Scriptures.
"But in the large body of New Testament apocrypha which grew up one of the most widely know was the Evangelium Nicodemi. Here we read that during the trail of Christ before Pilate, Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews, testified in His favor infuriated the accusers. After Joseph had deposited the body of the Crucified in the sepulcher, the Jews imprisoned him, but when on Easter day the door was opened, he was not to be found . Search was made at Nicodemus's advice, and Joseph was discovered at his home in Arimathea. Brought to Jerusalem he testified that at midnight of the Sabbath day, the prison in which he was confined rose into the air, and fell to the earth. The risen Christ appeared to him, lifted him up, and brought him to his house."
"The so-called Evangelium Nicodemi (Gospel of Nicodemus) had been in use in England as a basis for various Christian poems since the 8th century, and Joseph of Arimathea, who plays a leading role in it, became a favorite figure in the Passion Plays. Then about the beginning of the 11th century another apocryphon was translated into Old English: the Vindicta Salvatoris. Joseph of Arimathea then became a figure in western literature for the second time. Joseph always stood in close relationship with the apostle Philip and the evangelisation of England. Whether or not such a connection is justified or not is hard to judge. It is however conspicuous that 10th and 11th century manuscripts in the Georgian (or Gruzinian) language, originating in Palestine, translated into Greek, and probably based on a Syrian original, yet again characterize Joseph as the protagonist. Here, the story is told by Joseph himself, which is almost identical with Robert's: Christ's burial, Joseph's captivity, the appearance of the risen Jesus, and the collection of Jesus' blood. In this originally Syrian version, a sort of grail-slab [Grals-Tafel] is erected - as was done by a man named Petrus in Robert's version - and also a special sacrament was introduced. In 1974 Burdach came to the conclusion that a comparison of the two texts compels one 'to assume that the Joseph-legend known and loved in England in early times derives from a Syrian source, or at least partially through Syrian traditions'. In this Syrian version, however, there is no vessel resembling the grail. Therefore the essential grail part of the legend, deriving as has been shown from Celtic origins, should be considered separate from the Christian components such as Joseph of Arimathea and the collection of the blood."
The story of Joseph and Nicodemus is recounted in the Interpolation in the First Continuation of Chrétien's Perceval which Loomis calls "the shortest and simplest account of Joseph's connection with the grail and his voyage to Britain."
"Joseph caused the grail to be made and took it to Calvary, where he caught in it the blood that flowed down over the feet of the crucifed Jesus."
"The keeping of the soul-substance of God in a sepulchral vessel corresponds to a particular archetypical idea, which goes back to ancient oriental roots. She [Emma Jung] draws attention to the burials of African chieftains, at which bodily secretions from the corpse are collected and venerated as holy. Similar procedures took place at Ancient Egyptian burials, in which certain parts of the body were removed and put aside in special vessels. These vessels then contained the magical soul-substance of God, and it is not improbable that similar ideas were later carried over to the grail."
The text continues as Joseph of Aramathea takes custody of the grail.
"Joseph and his company prepared their fleet and entered without delay, and did not end their voyage till they reached the land which God had promised to Joseph. The name of the country was the White Isle; well I know that thus it was called. One part belongs to England, which is enclosed and locked by the sea. There they made port and went ashore, built lodges there and whatever else they needed. Two whole years they were there before anyone made war on them or seized a foot of land. But in the third year the people of the country gathered together and made war and often wrought harm. Often they fought and either won or lost. When Joseph was defeated and there was a famine, he prayed to God, his creator, that He would lend him, by His favor, that Grail of which I tell you and in which he had collected the blood. Then he caused a horn to be blown and all went to wash their hands, and seated themselves ceremoniously at the tables. the grail came at once and served the wine to all and other dishes in great plenty. Thus Joseph preserved the land against his enemies as long as he has life and health.
"At the end of his life he prayed God sweetly that He would consent that Joseph's lineage would be rendered illustrious by the grail. And thus it befell; it is the pure truth. For after his death no man in the world of any age had possession of it unless he was of Joseph's lineage. In truth the Rich Fisher descended from him, and all his heirs and, they say, Guellans Guenelaus and his son Perceval."
"One of the most important and most puzzling texts about Joseph is the poem written by Robert de Boron, a Burgundian from near the modern Swiss border. Boron, which may have been his birthplace or his property, is a village near Montbéliard, and he tells us that he wrote under the patronage of a certain lord known to history, Gautier de Montbéliard, who departed for Italy in 1199, took part in the Fourth Crusade, and never returned."
"The first writer to make serious use of Christian legend in connection with the grail was Robert de Boron, author of the metrical poem Joseph d'Arimathie."
"Many people believe that he [Robert] began his work before Chrétien, but only finished it after Perceval. Other authorities differ, holding that the entire body of Robert's work was written after Chrestian's."
"Robert introduces an entirely new group of persons, headed by one Brons, who is to be keeper of the grail after Joseph's death and, springing out of this, in the introduction of a mission of conversion.
According Robert's Joseph d'Arimathie, "When on the third day, the Jews discovered that the body was missing, they accused Joseph of stealing it and threw him into a dungeon. They Crucified appeared to the prisoner in a blaze of light, presented him with the same vessel in which he had collected the holy blood, and told him that he was to have the guardianship of the vessel and would have only three successors, in token of the Trinity. Christ also instructed Joseph in the symbolism of the mass, and informed him that the vessel containing the divine blood was to be called 'calice'. Then the visitant departed."
"With his brother-in-law, Hebron or Bron, Joseph left Palestine for foreign lands. He founded the table and service of the grail, which only those who believe in the Trinity and lead clean lives may attend, and there they have everything their hearts desire. An empty seat at the table, corresponding to the seat of Judas at the Last Supper, is reserved for a descendant of Bron (this is the Siege Perilous which Galahad would later fill). On the grail table in a fish, the symbol of Christ, placed there by Bron, who in consequence is called the Rich Fisher."
Robert de Boron dispatched Petrus (one of the sons of Bron) to the quot;vales of Avaron" - or Avalon, the low lying marshlands which surround Glastonbury Tor, England. Tradition states that the Tor is the entrance to Annwn, the Celtic underworld. In Arthur's time the Tor was an island unconnected by dry land - and strategically important because of its natural spring water. Boron, however, does not specifically mention Glastonbury.
Other authors which emphasize the Christian-religious aspect of the grail include "Gautier de Dourdan (writing between 1190 and 1200), Manessier (1214-1220), Herbert von Mostreuil (before 1225), Perceval li Galios (around 1225), and the unknown author of the Grand St. Graal (after 1220). They all either continue Chrétien, or else adhere to Robert de Boron's version, adorning it with additional detail, and particularly emphasising the Christian elements of the grail story: that is, the grail as a chalice, and as the bowl with the blood of Christ."
The Estoire del Saint Graal is a long prose romance, which forms "the first member of the Vulgate cycle, but probably composed after the Lancelot and the Queste.
The current Christian version of the grail states that Joseph of Arimathea brought the Last Supper chalice used to catch Christ's blood to Glastonbury, England. There the grail was hidden at the bottom of Chalice Well. The Glastonbury Tor, a natural hill which rises high above the surrounding landscape, has a terraced double maze sculpted around it that leads to the top. The original meaning of "grail" is "saucer" and the root of "grail" is derived from "crater".
"...A riddling medieval Welsh poem entitled 'The Spoils of Annwn' tells how some of Arthur's men entered an enchanted fortress, Caer Sidi, the Spiral or Revolving Castle. Only seven returned; the number is reiterated and stressed. Some Celtic ritual at a maze shrine could underlie this poem."
The authors of the Estoire del Saint Graal and Perlesvaus both "dealt very freely with their traditional material and indulged in much pure fabrication, at the same time that they pretended to have the highest sanction for their veracity. Perhaps the author of Perlesvaus was...a mild case of schizophrenia, and so cannot be held to strict standards. As for the Estoire, its author, if sane, must have been aware that the Lord Jesus Christ had nothing to do with the story he himself told, and must be classed with Geoffrey of Monmouth and Baron Munchausen as the conscious purveyor of fiction under the guise of solemn truth."
The Charter of St. Patrick, believed to have been forged about 1220 with official sanction of the Abbey at Glastonbury, gives a fabricated first hand account of St. Patrick finding a Christian community at the Tor. While St. Philip and St. James, the Apostles to Gaul and Spain, are mentioned as introducing Christianity to Britain, the name of Joseph of Arimathea is conspiculously absent.
"Since the legend of Joseph of Arimathea "was a continental product and was totally unknown to the monks of the abbey...we may imagine the surprise and bewilderment of these tonsured worthies when, say about 1240, a manuscript of the Estoire Del Saint Graal came into their hands, and they read an elaborately detailed rival account of the evangelization of Britain, which failed to give credit to St. Philip and St. James, mentioned neither Ynyswytrin [Glass Isle] nor Avalon, and which silenced all skepticism by the claim to be a faithful transcript of a work written by Christ's own hand and delivered by him to the author!"
Glastonbury traditions which appear to be of relatively recent invention include:
The Nanteos Mansion near Aberystwyth, Wales, has also laid claim to the grail Cup for over 300 years
Richard Wagner reportedly visited Nanteos Mansion just before starting his opera 'Parsifal'.
"When their enemies fall, they cut off their heads and fasten them about the necks of their horses...and carry them off as booty, singing a paean over them and striking up a song of victory, and these first fruits of battle they fasten by nails upon their houses...The heads of their most distinguished enemies they embalm in cedar oil and carefully preserve in a chest, and these they exhibit to strangers, gravely maintaining that in exchange for this head someone among their ancestors, or the speaker himself, refused the offer of a great sum of money. And some men among them, we are told, boast that they have not accepted an equal weight of gold for the head they show..."
After killing the Roman consul-elect, the Boii (a Celtic tribe occupying part of the Po valley) "...stripped his body, cut off the head, and carried their spoils in triumph to the most hallowed of their temples. There they cleaned out the head, as is their custom, and guilded the skull, which thereafter served them as a holy vessel to pour libations from and as a drinking cup for the priest and the temple attendants."
the grail Knights and the Fairy Fortress
"Lo, two damsels issue from a chapel, and one holds in her two hands the most holy Grail, and the other the lance of which the point bleeds into it, and they walk side by side and come into the hall where the knights and Sir Gawain are eating. So sweet and so holy an odor accompanies the relics that they forget to eat. Sir Gawain gazes at the grail and it seems to him that there is a chalice within it, albeit there was none at the time. And he sees the point of the lance from which the red blood drops, and he seems to behold two angels who bear two candelabra of gold with lighted candles."
The damsels go into another chapel, then reappear. Sir Gawain "seems to behold three angels where before he had beheld but two, and he seems to behold in the midst of the grail the form of a child." On the third pass Sir Gawain "looks up, and it seems to him that the grail is wholly in the air. He looks and there appears aloft a man nailed to a cross, and the spear was fixed in his side."
"The ship has sped so far by day and by night, as it pleased God, that they saw a castle on an island of the sea....They came near the castle and heard four trumpets sound at the four corners of the walls very sweetly....They issued from the ship and went by the seaside to the castle, and within there were the fairest halls and the fairest mansions that one has ever seen. Perceval looks beneath a very fair tree, which was tall and broad, and sees the fairest and clearest fountain that anyone could describe, and it was all set about with rich golden pillars, and the gravel seemed to be of precious stones."
"Perfect is my seat in the Faery Fortress (Caer Siddi).
Neither plague nor age harms him who dwells therein.
Manawydan and Pryderi know it...
And around its corners are ocean's currents.
And the fructifying spring is above it.
Sweeter than white wine is the drink in it."
"While he was thus looking, he perceived above him a golden chain descending, adorned with precious stones; and in the midst was a crown of gold. The chain descended with great precision, and it held on to nothing but the will of Our Lord. As soon as the masters saw it being lowered, they opened a large, wide pit which was in the midst of the hall, so that one could see the hole plainly. As soon as the entrance of this pit was uncovered, there issued the greatest and most dolorous cries that anyone ever heard."
"Perfect was the prison of Gweir in the Faery Fortress (Caer Siddi);
Before the spoils of Annwn dolefully he chanted...
In the Four-cornered Fortress, the isle of the strong door,...
Bright wine was their drink before their retinue...
It was difficult to converse with their sentinel.
"I saw the grail', says the master, 'before the Fisher King. Joseph [of Arimathea], who was his uncle, collected in it the blood which flowed from the wounds of the Savior of the World. Know well all your lineage and from what folk you are descended."
Joseph of Arimathea
The Host, the 'Body of Christ', was now shown openly and lost all the mystery which had previously surrounded it. The result was that the mystique, the secrecy, was transferred to another object: to the grail. A description such as that which Robert de Boron [below] gave of the grail filled the gap exactly, even though, from the church's point of view, the grail was in no way an object worthy of sanctity or veneration."
"But rumor, which is swifter than the wind, swiftly brought the news to the Jews, who were by no means delighted but rather were deeply dejected. Among themselves they held a council in order to banish Joseph and expel him from the land, and they informed him at once that he must depart because of his crime, he and all his friends, and also Nicodemus, who was a marvelously wise man, and a sister of his."
"Most scholars have been inclined to accept Robert's claim to originality, in the sense that he was the first to combine the already existing apocryphal legends of Joseph of Arimathea, St. Veronica, and the destruction of Jerusalem with selected elements from the literary tradition of the grail."
"The legend, mysteriously hint[s] at a sAcred object which was carried away by a holy man [Jeremiah] before the fall of Jerusalem in 586 BC...and which then became the heart of a blessed community in a distant land..."
"According to the Vindicta Salvatoris Vespasian, son of the Roman emperor, was converted as a result of the miraculous cure effected by the sight of Veronica's veil, in which was imprinted the face of Christ. [This would have been after the fall of Jerusalem in 70 AD.] He promptly set out to avenge the death of Jesus, assembled the Jews, and, learning from their own lips their responsibility for the Crucifixion, caused a number of them to be executed. One, however, tried to save his life by revealing where Joseph was incarcerated. Vespasian had himself lowered into the dungeon and found him still alive. When Joseph expounded the doctrines of the Fall and the Redemption, Vespasian was convinced and delivered the prisoner."
The Estoire "adds to the story of Joseph, bringing him to Britain as an evangelist, and carries the history of the vessel and its successive keepers almost down to Arthur's time, has often been thought to be an elaboration of Robert's poem, since it was composed later and the manuscripts attribute it to Robert de Boron."
" The Estoire remained more faithful to tradition than the Joseph."
"...The brothers showed me writing of St. Phagan and St. Deruvian, wherein it was contained that twelve disciples of St. Philip and St. James had built that old church in honor of our Patroness aforesaid [the Virgin Mary], instructed thereto by the blessed archangel Gabriel."
The result was "the insertion into a copy of William of Malmebury's book on Glastonbury of a passage about the evangelists sent to Ynyswytrin by St. Philip, which contains the statement that 'over them he [St. Philip] appointed, it is said, his dearest friend, Joseph of Arimathea, who buried the Lord'. Soon after, a scribe made bold to write in the margin:
'That Joseph of Arimathea, the noble counselor, with his son Josephes and many others, came to Greater Britain (which is now called Anglia) and there ended his life is attested by the book of The Deeds of the Famous King Arthur'
- a plain reference to the Estoire del Saint Graal. Thus began the process of interweaving the two variant versions, insular and continental, of the first mission to Britain. But many decades were to pass before the officials of the abbey began to take Joseph's coming to the Isle of Avalon seriously."
"The Cup which was the same one used in the Last Supper, made of olive wood. Joseph of Arimathea brought the Cup to Glastonbury where it remained until the 16th century when the seven Monks of Glastonbury in the Dissolution escaped with it and left it in the safe keeping of the Cistercian Monks of Strata, Florida. It was then given to the Stedman Family by the last remaining monk when they escaped to the original house, Nanteos, and were looked after until, one by one, they died."