From Ritual to RomanceWeston, Jessie L. (Jessie Laidlay)
Religion
From Ritual to Romance
Weston, Jessie L. (Jessie Laidlay)
Grail -- Legends -- History and criticism; Romances -- History and criticism
The fellowship, it may even be, the rivalry, between the two great
Benedictine houses of Fescamp and Glastonbury, led to the redaction, in
the interests of the latter, of a _Saint-Sang_ legend, parallel to that
which was the genuine possession of the French house.[15] For we must
emphasize the fact that the original Joseph-Glastonbury story is a
_Saint-Sang_, and not a _Grail_ legend. A phial containing the Blood of
Our Lord was said to have been buried in the tomb of Joseph—surely a
curious fate for so precious a relic—and the Abbey never laid claim to
the possession of the Vessel of the Last Supper.[16] Had it done so it
would certainly have become a noted centre of pilgrimage—as Dr Brugger
acutely remarks such relics are _besucht_, not _gesucht_.
But there is reason to believe that the kindred Abbey of Fescamp had
developed its genuine _Saint-Sang_ legend into a Grail romance, and
there is critical evidence to lead us to suppose that the text we know
as _Perlesvaus_ was, in its original form, now it is to be feared
practically impossible to reconstruct, connected with that Abbey. As we
have it, this alone, of all the Grail romances, connects the hero alike
with Nicodemus, and with Joseph of Arimathea, the respective
protagonists of the _Saint-Sang_ legends; while its assertion that the
original Latin text was found in a holy house situated in marshes, the
burial place of Arthur and Guenevere, unmistakably points to
Glastonbury.
In any case, when Robert de Borron proposed to himself the task of
composing a trilogy on the subject the Joseph legend was already in a
developed form, and a fresh element, the combination of the Grail
legend with the story of a highly popular Folk-tale hero, known in this
connection as Perceval (though he has had many names), was established.
Borron was certainly aware of the real character of his material; he
knew the Grail cult as Christianized Mystery, and, while following the
romance development, handled the theme on distinctively religious
lines, preserving the Mystery element in its three-fold development,
and equating the Vessel of the Mystic Feast with the Christian
Eucharist. From what we now know of the material it seems certain that
the equation was already established, and that Borron was simply
stating in terms of romance what was already known to him in terms of
Mystery. In face of the evidence above set forth there can no longer be
any doubt that the Mystic Feast of the Nature cults really had, and
that at a very early date, been brought into touch with the Sacrament
of the Eucharist.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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