Chapter VIII.

Other Theories concerning the Origin of the Grail.

For the sake of completeness I will summarize very briefly certain theories of minor importance that have been advanced to explain the legend of the Holy Grail.

1. Attempts have been made to derive the conception of the Grail from late Jewish, Syrian, and Arabic legends, which are supposed to have reached Western Europe in the Middle Ages. The authors of such theories have none of them been especial students of the Old French romances, in which, of course, the legend was first developed. With the exception of Wesselofsky, they all start from Wolfram's Parzival in which (alone of all the Grail texts) the Grail is not a vessel of any kind, but merely a stone. As we have seen, however, this conception of Wolfram's is indisputably the result of some misunderstanding, on his part, of his French original, and so the whole basis of these oriental theories is false.

The authors of these speculations and the essential features of the respective theories are as follows:

(a) M. Gaster, "The Legend of the Holy Grail," Folk-Lore, II, 50 ff., 198ff., (1891): The Grail quest sprang from an episode of the legend of Alexander the Great, viz. the Iter ad Paradisum, or journey to the Earthly Paradise and the marvellous castle or temple of the sun. The Grail, itself, was a certain sacred stone of the temple at Jerusalem, which is still preserved in the socalled Temple of the Rock of that city. A very severe criticism of Gaster's theory which Alfred Nutt appended to the second instalment of Gaster's study seems to have discouraged him from ever publishing the promised continuation. Nutt pointed out that the idea of connecting the Grail story with the Iter ad Paradisum

had already been advanced by Weismann in his edition (1850) of the Middle High German Alexander by Lamprecht, II, 212, note moreover, that the description of the temple of the sun in the French Alexander romances, which alone Chrétien and the authors of the other Grail romances would have consulted, bears no resemblance to the story of the Grail in these latter works. The conception of the Grail as a stone, he observes, too, is peculiar to Wolfram.

(b) Paul Hagen, Der Gral (Strassburg, 1900): WolframGuiot represents the legend in its primitive form in many respects better than Chrétien, and he may have had an Arabic source. It developed from the worship of baetyli (holy stones) in the East. The author tries to connect it particularly with the legend of Prester John. Hagen's work is important for Wolfram, but not for the Grail legend, in general.

(c) Willy Staerk, Über den Ursprung der Grallegende, (Tübingen and Leipzig, 1903): The Grail legend is simply another form of the legend of an Earthly Paradise, which is found in all parts of the world and, especially, in the East. The author gives an interesting collection of examples of the latter idea, but presents no evidence to establish an historical connection between the two legends.

(d) A. N. Wesselofsky, "Zur Frage über die Heimath der Legende vom heiligen Gral," Archiv für slavische Philologie, XXIII, 321ff. (1901). For a list of Wesselofsky's earlier writings on the Grail theme (mostly in Russian) cp. ibid., p. 321, note. The author, who is an advocate of the Christian origin of the Grail, concentrates his attention on the legend of Joseph of Arimathea and, hence, among the Grail romances, on those in which Joseph plays a leading part, viz. Robert's Joseph and the Grand St. Graal (Estoire del Saint Graal). In these ro

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The oriental Joseph legend which he outlines, pp. 325 ff. is now accessible in a German translation by A. Harnack: "Ein in georgischer Sprache überliefertes Apokryphon des Joseph von Aramathia," Sitzungsberichte der königlich preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Jahrgang 1901, pp. 920 ff. The only part of it which is of interest at all to Grail students, however, is a mere version of the Gospel of

mances, of course, the Grail is, as in the other French romances, a vessel of the sacrament. Wesselofsky's theory involves all sorts of inadmissible assumptions, e. g. that the passages about Joseph and Glastonbury in the De Antiquitate Ecclesiae Glastoniensis are genuine, that the author of the Grand St. Graal drew (independently of Robert de Boron) on an oriental ChristianJewish legend for his conceptions of the Grail. The object of his article is, as he says (p. 322), to prove "dass in den Quellen der Romane vom heil. Gral sich Legenden einer christlich-jüdischen Diaspora in Palastina, Syrien und Athiopien abspiegeln und daß ihre Anpassung an das Abendland sich auf dem Wege der Übertragung vollzogen habe, wobei es augenscheinlich ganz mechanisch herging." In order to establish a connection of the Grail romances with the East especially with localities in Syria and Mesopotamia -the author indulges, inter alia, in the most fantastic Oriental derivations of the names of places and persons in the Grail romances above all, in the Grand St. Graal.

(e) Theodor Sterzenbach, Ursprung und Entwickelung der Sage vom heiligen Gral (Münster dissertation, 1908). He identifies the Grail with a "missorium" (portable altar-stone, according to Sterzenbach) which the Roman general, Aetius (fifth cenPseudo-Nicodemus. To be sure, it offers some variants, but the main one which represents Joseph as receiving the blood of Jesus in a headcloth and a large cloth (p. 923), is irreconcilable with the conceptions of the Grail romances.

Precisely the same criticism applies to Miss M. A. Murray's attempt to establish an Egyptian origin for the Grail legend. See her "Egypt in the Grail Romance," in the organ of Egyptian research, edited by Flinders Petrie and entitled Ancient Egypt-volume for 1916, Part I, pp. 1 ff., Part II, 54ff. She takes the Estoire as the basis of her studies and in Part I offers fanciful Egyptian derivations for some of its names. In Part II, she gives some illustrations of the Eucharistic ritual of the Coptic churches. These illustrations are interesting in themselves, but throw no additional light on Grail problems. Outside of the Estoire, the author evidently has little or no acquaintance with the long and intricate Old French texts, which must constitute the true basis for all study of Grail origins. She, accordingly, makes no allowance for invention on the part of the authors of these texts, the possibility of one developing suggestions from the other, etc.

tury) is said to have presented to Thorismund, King of the Westgoths. He still further identifies it with a "tabula Salomonis" that was captured by the Arabs in their invasion of Spain in 711, and King Roderick, the Spanish monarch, who was slain on that occasion, is the Fisher King. This is all, really, too flimsy for discussion.

(f) Ludwig Emil Iselin: Der morgenländische Ursprung der Grallegende (Halle, 1909). The author argues that a Syriac book of sagas, Book of the Cavern of Treasures, is the source of the Grail legend. This book dates from the fifth or sixth century. It is one of the numerous Oriental works that pretend to give a complete and edifying history of Adam and his earliest descendants, filling out gaps in the Scriptures. The only tolerable analogue to the Grail conceptions, however, which the book offers is in the story of Melchisidek, who guarded the tomb of Adam (this tomb being unapproachable by the profane) and obtained strength and nourishment in a supernatural manner, and on whose offerings the Holy Spirit descended. But the similarity here is of too vague a nature to count for anything and the theory has gained virtually no adherents.3

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2. Leopold von Schroeder, the eminent Sanskrit scholar, in his treatise Die Wurzeln der Sage vom heiligen Gral, has endeavored to prove that the Grail legend is simply a variant of the

See the very good review of Iselin's book by E. Brugger, Zs. f. frz. Spr. u. Litt., XXXVI, 74ff. (1910). A. Nutt, in The Academy for May 7, 1910, though rejecting the theory of the origin of the Grail legend advocated by Iselin, commends his book as "the most convincing plea for the purely Christian origin of the bulk of the Grail cycle with which I am acquainted." But, as I have said above, Iselin proceeds on the assumption that the Grail, according to the primary conception of it, was a stone. Now, that assumption is indisputably false, and, consequently, his solution of the "psychological problem involved," as to how the sacrament of the Eucharist came "to be adapted for the purpose of secular entertainment," which Nutt finds "plausible", is without any real basis.

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Sitzungsberichte der Kaiserlichen Akademie der Wissenschaften. Philosophisch-Historische Classe, Band 166, 2. Abhandlung. Wien, 1910.

sun-myth. He seeks analogies in the Rig-Veda, which some scholars have dated as far back as 1500 B. C. In the Rig-Veda, the sun is conceived of as a vessel containing hot milk or broth. Schroeder thinks that the same thing is true of the moon, though here the matter is not so clear. He cites (pp. 34 ff.) parallels also from the mythological conceptions of other Indo-European races and believes (although there is no extant evidence to that effect) that similar conceptions prevailed among the Celts and passed from them into the Grail romances. Altogether Schroeder ransacks mediaeval legend for parallels to various features of the Grail legend. He shows no knowledge of the Old French romances and the Indian analogues are so remote in time (some 2,000 years) and in space that they are really of no value. One may remark that at one time or another, it has been the fate of virtually every great saga to be reduced to the condition of a mere variant of the sun-myth. The turn of the Grail-legend was bound to come. Another Austrian scholar, Victor Junk, in his Gralsage und Graldichtung des Mittelalters, accepts Schroeder's theory of the ultimate derivation of the Grail-legend, but regards as the immediate source the Breton tale of Peronnik l'idiote, which he takes as the myth reduced to the form of a fairy-tale. This tale however, was first written down by Emil Souvestre in 1845-6, so that no one can say whether it was in existence in the twelfth century, or, if so, whether it may not have been modified in the course of subsequent centuries directly or indirectly by the Old French romances concerning Perceval, or finally whether the suspicion expressed by some scholars may not be well-grounded

viz. that Souvestre "cooked" the story as it was current in oral form. But, after all, the story resembles the Grail-romances

For a refutation of Schröder's theory, see the reviews of his work by E. Brugger, Zs. f. frz. Spr. u. Litt., XXXVII, 163#. (1911) and A. C. L. Brown, Journal of English and Germanic Philology for Jan. 1913 also, E. Windisch, Das Keltische Britannien bis zu Kaiser Arthur, pp. 119ff.

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Ibid., Band 168, 4. Abhandlung, Wien, 1911. W. Hertz, Sage vom Parzival und dem Gral, p. 25, (Breslau, 1882), had already spoken of Peronnik l'idiote as plainly connected with the Perceval story.