“Who drinks the water I shall give him, will have a spring inside him welling up for eternal life.” A deeply mysterious object which doesn’t appear in the Bible, was the Holy Grail really the chalice used by Jesus during the Last Supper, and the very cup that caught his blood at the crucifixion? Or is it merely a symbol representing Christ’s bloodline? Join Tom and Dominic as they discuss the Holy Grail, the origin of the tradition, and the role it played within medieval Christendom. 
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In a high rise art Deco apartment, America's most intrepid archaeologists

is peering at a mysterious stone tablet found in the mountains north of Ankura.

Sandstone, Imemus, Christian symbol, early Latin texts,

and then almost to disbelief he begins to translate the inscription.

Who drinks the water I shall give him says the Lord will have a spring inside him willing up for eternal life?

Let them bring me to your holy mountain in the place where you dwell.

Across the desert and through the mountain to the canyon of the Crescent Moon, to the temple where the cup that holds the blood of Jesus Christ resides forever.

The holy grail doctor Jones says his host, the chalice used by Christ during the last supper.

The cup that caught his blood at the crucifixion and was entrusted

And so Tom Holland begins our heroes thrilling hunt for the holy grail in the film Indiana Jones and the last crusade.

Now, you love the holy grail Tom thing you

I know that your favorite is the 1 of the first 3 of them, I just thought so we're not covering the temple of doom.

But I so last we said it was definitely my favorite.

And I think the reason for that is that I was obsessed by the holy grail when I was a child.

And so much so that actually when I watched Montepython and The Holy Grail -- Yeah.

-- which for those few who maybe haven't seen it is a comedy mocking the Austrian legends.

I was much more offended by that than I was by Life of Brian.

Don't actually find antibodies in the in the holy grail very funny.

I would say if I as I say, very upset by it.

But I think that, of course, I now understand that it comes from a actually from a position of enormous learning.

Terry Jones, who's a medieval great medieval enthusiast.

Great medieval scholar and full of basically the more you know about the kind of the medieval tradition that gave birth to the holy grail the funnier.

And I think that as with the covenant, which we talked about in our previous episode, so with the holy grail, The holiness kind of is the point because multipyphon are mocking something that is actually rather sacred to them, certainly to to Terry Jones.

I mean, you know, you you can only blaspheme something that you believe in.

And I think that the same is obviously true of the plot of the last crusade, that if the holy grail isn't holy, then the plot doesn't work.

Well, it's basically in the last crusade, it is based at the Ark of the Covenant, all over again, it's Mcguffin.

But, you know, you kind of know what's coming that it will destroy you than you.

I mean, it's they basically reuse the same device.

There's also Are you a big fan of the series so our overseas business won't know what this is, but this is for our British listeners.

So it's a for the overseas distance, it's 2 it's set in East Anglia.

it's set in Suffolk around, I think, around Sutton who,

and it's 2 people with metal detectors who go searching for buried treasure.

I I think last week I did my road trip across England.

And I I saw the field that I think inspired a lot of those episodes near Endorsham where metal detectors discovered a a kind of lost palace.

But anyway, yes, but the holy grail appears in in in that.

There's obviously a episode where the central device of it is whether or not they have discovered.

This cup, which actually could have enormous cosmic significance of the year.

And that idea, so more than almost any other artifacts.

The holy grail caries this extraordinary charge, doesn't it?

It means fascinated people for centuries.

But unlike the ark of the covenant, So the arc of the covenant is biblically attested.

the holy grail is I think it's a much more mysterious object because the question of where it comes from and what it is is something that I mean, it's it's provided fuel for popular entertainment.

We've talked about some of those, but also for in the twentieth century, it helps to inspire what is probably the single most influential poem written in English of the twentieth century, namely the Wasteland.

So TSLit in his notes to the wasteland is is open about this says that he's inspired by a book called from ritual to romance.

By a very great medievalist called Jesse Weston.

And Jesse Weston wrote about the grail that no theory of the origin of the story can be considered really and permanently such factory, unless it can offer an explanation of the story as a whole and of the bearing forms assumed by the grail.

Why it should be at 1 time of food providing object of unexpected blamed form at another a dish, at 1 moment, the receptacle of streams of blood from a lance, at another the cup of the last supper.

Here, something wrought of no material substance there a stone and yet everywhere and always possess the same essential significance in each and every form be rightly described as the grail.

-- the answer that Jesse Weston gives to her own question is basically that the grail is the survival inter Christian times of pagan fertility rights.

And she talks about there being a wasteland that surrounds the castle of the Fisher king.

This mysterious figure who is who guards the Grail.

And she sees this idea of a wasteland that then you have to ask the right question of the Fisher King and then will it will heal the wounds that he's been given and bring him back to life and all the land with him and she sees this as being proof for the origin of the Greyhound story in rituals of death and rebirth.

And there's a sexual element to this too.

That the cup is female kind of sexuality and the and the spear.

So there's the idea of this sort of this dance piercing the side of Christ.

The blood poor and the spear is she's argued that the spear was basically male sexuality.

And so this is very exciting for TSLy who's looking for some way of kind of coordinating his sense of Postwar Europe as a wasteland.

And so he draws on it very kind of openly.

And there there are actually there's kind of there are 2 couple of illusions in the wasteland to this mysterious figure the Fisher King who guards the Grail.

So it's brilliant passage, 1 of my favorite passages from the Waste Management rat crept softly through the vegetation dragging its slimy belly on the bank.

While I was fishing in the dull canal on a winter evening round behind the gas house.

So Dominic, yes, how true is this theory?

How likely is it that the grail was the cup?

That held the blood of Christ or that it was a pet, you know, derives from Pagan fertility rituals or where did it come from?

Well, so the crowd doesn't appear in the bible.

The crowd does not there's there's no cup.

And the word Grail, so I might I you forget that I did French at university.

So I know that the word Grail, it's kind of it's rare in in kind of twelfth century French but not unknown.

So you you learned this when you're doing your medieval French course?

So GRAIL in as you say, it's it's a kind of unusual word but not unknown and it seems to refer to a kind of large serving platter that's large enough to to hold a salmon or a fish.

And it is, you know, it's it's a kind of utensil.

It's it's kind of, you know, it's a piece of crockery, basically, and it carries no particular magical or spiritual significance.

And the etymology, it seems to derive either from Greek cracker, which is a a kind of a shallow to handle drinking cup.

Ordinarily, from the Latin word, Godalis, which was a kind of pot used to hold Gaurav, be fermented fish guts that the Romans used this equivalent of ketchup.

So it basically it has no sacral connotations dynamic in the twelfth century.

I mean, it becomes, you know, it becomes holy.

And so the question there, therefore, is how does this process happen?

And actually, we can pinpoint very, very precisely When it happens, it happens in the 11 eighties, the late 11 eighties.

And the guy who makes the grail into something holy is a French writer called Cretian de Toire.

So toire is a a city or a town on the river seine.

Kratia, literally Christians over Christian from Troy from Troy.

I'm not in the chivalrous remarks, but there's a case for saying the entire tradition of the novel.

And so this this is Romanes, originally, was the word that was given to the language spoke spoken by Gallo Romans in the late Roman Empire, which goes on to become French.

So the key thing is is that Credit Antoine is writing romance and he's doing that in French, not in Latin.

So therefore, it is kind of readily accessible to everybody and not just the scholars.

And he is to Arthurian romance, watch Jeffrey of Monmouth, who we talked about in our episode on on on King Arthur.

He is the guy who takes this great corpus of wealth, Celtic traditions and converts it into a form that makes it readily accessible to people across the French speaking world.

And although as with Jeffrey of Monmouth, Jeffrey's Arthur is recognizably a medieval king.

He's he's a king from the high middle ages.

The same is true of of getting out to twice romances, that although they are set in the Athyrian past, They are actually a reflection of the world in which he is living.

The life of the courts, the tournaments, the nightly codes, and perhaps also specific understandings of of religion at this period.

So Thomas, there 1 text, 1 kind of romance.

From which we get the Grille story with Crete Endotois.

So Crete Endot writes a number of of famous romance.

It's 1 of which Lance Salott has a huge influence on the whole idea of Lancelot as the kind of the paradigmatic night.

But his most influential by Miles is 1 called Perceval after the name of the hero which also, Greta, himself, in his introduction to it, called Lecontograph, the the story of the Grail.

And he wrote that, as I said, in the 11 eighties, and this is the romance that introduces us to the Grail as something holy, although in Cretina's account.

Over the next the the decades that follow.

And I'm showing you you must have read these.

off I wasn't to this, but Percevala, in my mind, and I am hoping you're gonna shed some light on this.

And I think that's the feature rather than a bug.

The other thing, Thomas, I do like the opera passifout, the Vagina opera.

Which peep which seems to go on, as my wife said, we've sat here for 6 hours.

People are just singing constantly and moving in readably, slowly around the stage.

The grail is there the whole time, but I don't understand what's going on and nothing is happening at all.

So that's don't want to I mean, I'm really selling it to the audience.

We will come to Galahad, and we might touch on on Parceval and Van Nuuly as well.

So the so the plot of Parceval I'll go into some detail because it's incredibly influential on the Grail.

I mean, basically, without this story, we would not have the holy Grail.

I think So it begins with this this small boy Percival who is being brought up in a forest by his mother and his mother has lost 2 sums to to they've both been knights, they've both been killed.

Her husband, Percival's father, has has died of grief and of his wounds that he also has sustained from fighting.

And so Pascal's mother is desperate that Pascal doesn't grow up to fulfill his kind of ancestral destiny, namely to become a knight.

Perceval does become a knight because he's wandering through the forest and he suddenly sees these incredible figures in all their armor coming through on horses.

He he asks 1 of them, are you God, and the nights explain who they are, what they are, personalize what's become a knight and he he goes with them without telling his mother.

He has the whole kind of comedy of it is that he's he's somebody who's wholly ignorant of what's going on.

And so in a sense, it's it's a kind of story of how somewhat, you know, a bumpkin becomes a a sophisticated chivalric figure.

And he has to although he has a completely natural aptitude for fighting, for doing everything that a night showed in tournaments and so on.

He has to be instructed in what is expected of a night.

And so he's aware of this and he he hunts out people who he think will be good tutors, and among the lessons that he's taught by his tutors is that a good night should not japa too much.

Is that a hand from you, Tom, to to your co presenter?

I mean, obviously, that would make Percival a a terrible broadcaster.

If you just sat there, not asking questions or not being allowed to say anything.

But as a night, this is the lesson that he takes on board, and this is very important.

So he's coming on leaps and bounces and I he's, you know, knocking rival nights out to their saddles and rescuing ladies and doing all the things that a night errand should.

And he's out and he reaches a river and there he meets 2 men 1 of whom Dominic is fishing.

And this man, who is the Fisher king, it turns out, offers percival lodging.

And he says the Perceval right up through the cleft in that rock.

And when you come to the top, you'll see a castle in a valley ahead of you.

This is where I live near the river and the woods.

And Persil rides up, looks around, can't see the castle at all.

They sign a bit, and then suddenly, it materializes.

And so you have this sense of it that you he's passing into dimension of something of the weird, of supernatural, of the strange.

So he rides into the castle, and there he discovers not the Fisher king, but the man who turns out to being the the father of the Fisher King, who is terribly wounded, can't get up off the couch that he's lying on.

Gretzia tells us that 400 men could have sat around the fire and each would have been warmed by the flames.

So it's a tremendous place, clearly a place charged with adventure and immediately strange things start happening.

So a magical sword is brought to Percival and he he's told this has been waiting for you and it's kind of strapped onto him and it's the best sword he's ever seen.

He's chatting away to the to the wounded king on his couch, and then I I will describe what happens in creating our own words.

While they were talking, a boy from a chamber clutching a white lance by the middle of the shaft came out and passed between the fire and the Lord and his guest, a drop of blood issued from the tip of the lance's shaft and right down to the boy's hand this red drop ran.

There's a lot going on there, I think, Tom.

He remembers his his his coaching, and so he he doesn't ask what's going on.

Then 2 other boys appear and they're holding candlesticks and then comes a girl.

Beautifully dressed and she, Greta, has says, is holding a grail.

And when she comes in holding this grail, this kind of brilliant light radiates the entire room so that all the candles lose their brightness.

And then after her comes another goal, holding a silver trencher.

And the Gray Oak Cretina says, which went ahead was made of fine pure gold and in it was precious stones of many kinds, the richest, the most precious in the Earth of the sea, those in the grail surpassed all other jewels.

And the grail then magically serves all the assembled guests.

So it's a kind of mobile, magical food dispenser.

And still Percival doesn't ask what's going on.

I mean, you think come on, ask ask the questions.

But he doesn't and he goes to bed and he still hasn't asked what's going on and he wakes up and the castle is completely empty.

And it becomes apparent that his seeming lack of curiosity has been understood as a lack of compassion because he hasn't asked the wounded king how did you get wounded?

And this gets bundled up with another piece of devastating news he's brought namely that his mother has died of grief because he's gone away without telling her, wrote.

And he comes back to to to Cam a lot, feeling a bit press fallen.

And as he does so, alothsome damsel appears.

And she announces Percival in front of all the nights of the round table in King Arthur, and she says to Percival.

That ladies will lose their husband's lands will be laid waste.

Girls will be left in distress and orphaned and many nights will die and all of these evils will happen because of you.

Now, it's important to say this is not because of any supernatural connection between the Fisher King or his wounded father and their lands.

It's because the wounded king cannot adequately defend his lands.

That is why there will be all this suffering.

So at this point, there is no supernatural connection between the idea of the wasteland and and the king.

Perceval is so devastated by this that he basically he loses all his faith in God.

He just rames around kind of fighting and and doing his stuff and 5 years pass and he comes across.

He's riding along in full army and he comes across 5 nights 10 ladies.

And they say to hit to Perceval, why are you in armor?

Don't you know it's good Friday, the day on which Christ suffered death.

And Percival is is ashamed by this, shocked by this, and he says that he will seek redemption, and he's guided by the the knights and the ladies to go and seek instruction from a nearby hermit.

Who is conveniently located just around the corner.

And even more amazingly, this hermit turns out to be Percival's uncle.

And this hermit, Percival's uncle, tells Percival the story of of the Grail.

And he says, you know, that the grail is is holy.

This is where you get the idea that the of of the grail being holy.

And the hermit instructs Percival in how to be a godly night that he has to defend girls with those orphans, and Percival, we were told by Greta, I came to recognize that God received everything was crucified on the Friday.

And at Easter, most worthily, Percival received communion.

And presumably, this is setting him up to go back to the Grayell Castle and ask the questions.

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346. The Mystery of the Holy Grail