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New York City 19 38.

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,

mid twelfth century, I should think,

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

to Joseph of Aramathera. 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 do love the holy grail. I love that film. It's my favorite. 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. I had I read endlessly about it. 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.

I thought Life of Brian was great. I was very, very offended.

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

No. I didn't think it was funny at all. 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.

Yeah.

He was it was Terry Get no. It was

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. Occupied from the holy grail becomes. 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. Yeah.

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. That people seek. 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.

The TV series detectors Tom. You're a fan of detectors.

I love the detectors. Yeah.

So it's a for the overseas distance, it's 2 it's set in East Anglia. Isn't it in is it in

the settings?

Suffolk Suffolk Suffolk

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. Yeah.

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. In history, I would say. 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 not. Am I right? It doesn't appear in the bible at all?

Well, the holy

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.

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. Yep. 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. And so this is published in 19 20. And -- Yeah. -- 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. Yeah. 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. Right? 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.

Right?

Yes. And the cup is is is female. Yeah. 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.

It's very cheerleader. The gas house details. Yes. Very

very cheerleader. 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? What is it?

All that stuff. That's what we're looking at today.

Very good. Well, so the crowd doesn't appear in the bible. Right? 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. Is that right?

That's right. So you you learned this when you're doing your medieval French course?

Of course. Yeah. I absolutely didn't read your notes.

Yeah. 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.

Right.

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 very exciting.

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

That's the first on the rest of history.

But of course, it does become sacral. 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. And he's the father really

of the Chivalric romance, isn't he? He attended 1.

I'm not in the chivalrous remarks, but there's a case for saying the entire tradition of the novel. So Dominic, what is French for novel? Rommel. So derives from romance?

Oh, romance. Yeah.

Yeah. 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. Yeah.

And he is to Arthurian romance, watch Jeffrey of Monmouth, who we talked about in our episode on on on King Arthur. Is to the kind of historical traditions. 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. Yeah. And although as with Jeffrey of Monmouth, Jeffrey's Arthur is recognizably a medieval king.

He's not a kind of early 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.

Yeah. 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.

It's not the grail. It's a grail that is holy. So it's kind of key distinction there. It only becomes the holy grail. Over the next the the decades that follow.

So Dominic, the plot of Perceval. And I'm showing you you must have read these. You must have been into king

off I wasn't to this, but Percevala, in my mind, and I am hoping you're gonna shed some light on this. Perceval and Galahad. Are very confused. 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. Nothing has happened. People are just singing constantly and moving in readably, slowly around the stage. Yeah. 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.

Okay. Okay. Well, listen, Dominic. 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.

Okay.

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. But narratively, let me set this up. 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 has no idea what they are. He's completely dazzled. 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. And -- Yeah. -- he has various adventures.

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. Yep. 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. He should not ask needless questions. He should know when to hold his tongue.

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

Not at all. 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. And he's in this great hall.

There's a blazing fire. 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. It's all very kind of aragon.

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. Now Purcell obviously is dying to know. What is going on.

Yeah. 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. Very, very beautiful girl. Beautifully dressed and she, Greta, has says, is holding a grail. So not for grail.

A grail. Right. 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. It kind of provides food for them. So it's a kind of mobile, magical food dispenser.

Right.

And still Percival doesn't ask what's going on. I mean, you think come on, ask ask the questions. What what the hell is this all about? 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?

He hasn't asked about the Grail. 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 he sits down at the round table. And as he does so, alothsome damsel appears.

I remember her from this time. Yeah.

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.

Okay. Right.

Just bear that in mind. 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. They're walking barefoot.

They're wearing hair shirts. They're in possession. And they say to hit to Perceval, why are you in armor? Why are you riding around? 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.

What are the chances, Tom?

Yeah. Absolutely stunning. 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.

Right.

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.

Yeah. But it right.

He should have asked. And everything will be alright. But at this point, creating out breaks off and it's the the story is left uncompleted.

That is an unbelievably disappointing way. It's a massive cliffhanger. Yeah. So we don't ever find out I mean, I would say, Tom, you know exactly what I'm gonna say, I imagine, which is that all that stuff that shafts tips of things are commonly made in holding a cup that there's a very obvious explanation for what's going on here. And this is all about fertility and Actually, that Jesse Western stuff is not That's what you'd say.

That is what I'd say. Well, I mean, doesn't take any great I don't have to I don't take any penetrating. Insight for me to to come up with that. I mean, that's surely blinds and obvious.

Before we come to that, the question of what this might all mean, let's just kind of finish off the the account of how the Grayell legend came to emerge because Credit House all Credit House Real Assets were massively are an influential, but this was the most influential of the law. I think precisely because it was left unfinished, and therefore it was really, really tantalizing. And over the course of the decades that follow, basically 5 decades that follow

--

Yeah. -- there are endless attempts to rewrite it. And so you have 2 particularly influential sequels. 1 of them is written by a guy called Robert DeBoro. Okay?

And he's writing not a romance, but he specifies a history. Of the Grail. So his account is focused not on the romance of finding it, not the quest for the Grail, but the Grail itself and he is the person who introduces Joseph of Arimothiah, who is a biblical figure. Joseph Arimothiah is the person who takes Christ's body after the crucifixion and burries it in the 2. But there are kind of various late gospels in which Joseph and Aron Maffei plays a kind of leading role And Robert DeBora draws on these traditions.

And in his account, we learn how the Grail is the vessel in which Christ break the bread at the last supper. It was taken from the house where the disciples had met by 1 of the Jews who then take Christ prisoner. And this Jew gives it to pilot who in turn gives it to Joseph Arimothaya, and Joseph then takes this cup to the crucifixion and he gathers the blood of Christ that's flowing from the wound where the Roman soldier has stabbed it with the spear. And he gathers it in the in the grail. And he establishes this kind of lineage of people who guard the grail.

So the Fisher King is actually Joseph Gramathay's brother-in-law, a man called Braun. And so he's incredibly venerable. I mean, he's lived for, you know, centuries and centuries and centuries. And he lives in the castle with with his companions who are called the company of the Grail. And in his history, Percival does return to the castle of the Fisher King and he does ask the right question.

And Percival becomes the keeper of the grail. And Braun Departs from the world, having taught in in Robert DeBronos' words, having taught Percival the sacred words that Joseph Aramothoa had taught him and which I cannot and must not tell you. So there you have this idea of the holy grail being the cup of Christ, guardians, secrets, all that kind of stuff. Yep. The second key text that is written as a sequel to to Greta Antetois is by a German writer called Wolfram von Essenbach.

And this is a very radical reworking of basically the French traditions. And in it, the Fisher King is a man called Ann Fortas and he's been wounded through his genitals. So introducing a eunuch into into the story, which we're glad in the hearts of all rest of history listeners, as punishment for an extramarital affair. Yes. The lance is the spear that is carried, you know, in the possession, it's a spear with which the Fisher King has been wounded The grain itself is not a cup.

It's not a dish. It's nothing like that. It's a stone. And passiviral is part of a long kind of line of it's very holy blood and holy grail. So he's he his ancestors include restasian.

A Roman Emperor, it includes a Trojan Prince, and he in turn is the father of Lowinggren, who will be the hero of Vargron Opera. And a long line of keepers of the Grail. So in other words, a sacred bloodline.

So a session back's version that Vardan was really

Yes. So that's what Far can I draw us on? Yeah. Yeah. So these are the 2 key accounts.

There are various other accounts as well, which add further ingredients. So 1 of them, for instance, adds to the detail that the lance is and this is basically what becomes canonical except in Vonage and Bec's version. That the lance is the spirit of a roman soldier called Long Guyanis who used it to stab the the side of Christ. So you have the grail which is gathering the blood of Christ and was used at the last supper and you have the spear. So it's all about the passion of Christ.

Yep. You also have a very detailed romantic account which folds in the whole of the round table. So the quest for the grail becomes something that's not just exclusive to Percival, but all the nights of the round table. And in this version, the person who wins it is not percival, but the night that you mentioned earlier Dominic Galahed. And Galahed is the son of Sir Lancelot, the best of Arthur's Knights and the girl who keeps the grail.

So you remember in Crediting us count. It's a girl who carries the grail. Yeah. Marks a lot in this, sleeps with her, and has this son, Galahad, who is a kind of who who is perfect. And what you have in this romance, Lance what does not get the grail because of his affair with Guinevere.

So he's been having an affair with Guinevere, the the wife, King Arthur, for 24 years. And so he approaches where the grail is and gets hit by a kind of great fiery blast and he's knocked out for 24 days. 1 day for for each of the year that he's been having an affair with with Guinevere. And basically, Galahad wins it because he has the right lineage to win it. He is descended from the grail keeper.

He's descended from Lancelot, who is after his best night. So he's a fusion of the best of Chivalric. And the kind of the holiness that is required for a a keeper of the grail. And so when he comes to to Kamalot, his approach is signaled by all kinds of supernatural occurrences. So an inscription appears by magic on the on the round table.

There's this empty seat, the siege perilous where only the best knight can sit or he will be kind of consumed and vanished into hell, Galahad sits there and and it's all fine. A sword in a stone floats down the river miraculously and this kind of lettering on it says only the best knight who is destined to win the grail to draw it Galahad draws it and and so it becomes apparent. And so this is the stuff that then feeds into the version of our theory imagine. It's best known to English speakers. Valerie's account.

And basically, that's the account that that has passed into the kind of

Just to be clear, you can't really have both Percelor and Gallat. Can you? Is it kind of either or? Is that right?

Yeah. Pretty much. So so possible is in this account is with another night called Bores, both of whom are kings. In this account. They they do end up kind of attaining the grail, but it is Galahad who has a particular experience of the grail.

That perhaps we could come to in the second half because the spin that is given on what exactly it means for Galahad to win the Greyell is quite an important part, I think. In explaining what is going on here.

Excellent. Well, I mean, to to to put it in simple terms, the next line of your notes, Tom, reads WTF is going on. And and that is what we will explore in the in the second half of the episode, see after the break.

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Welcome back to the rest of history. If you've seen Indiana James in the last crusade, you'll remember that when they finally get to. It's basically Petra isn't it? It's Petra and Jordan. And the adventurers think they've got the Grail, but then there's a remarkable twist at the end on which nobody could possibly have anticipated.

Now, no doubt you've got all kinds of remarkable twists in store. But you were going to explain exactly what is going on because when I hear all this stuff about lances, piercings, cups, I mean, my mind only works 1 way. You think fertility symbols? I do, Tom. It it it it it it may issue to know that, but you've got all kinds of stuff I've seen your notes.

So I know there's all kinds of weird and wonderful things going on in the second half of this episode. We tend to think of this now uniquely inside of Freud and Youngian terms. Don't we?

Well, I think it's clear that the fascination that the Grayell has held for people over the course of the the twentieth and 20 first centuries is fundamentally wrapped up in the sense of it being mysterious. I mean, the the sense that there is there is a kind of truth there, a secret there, that if only you can grasp then you'll understand it. And it's kind of written into the fabric of the romances itself. I mean, they talk about, you know, the secrets of the Grail. You have to win it.

So I think that there have been kind of 3 really influential theories that have grown up over the past century or so to explain it. And 1 is absolutely the 1 that you're alluding to. The idea that it's a kind of which which young pushes himself. The idea that it's a kind of a universal symbol, a key to all the mythologies. I did did you ever read Joseph Campbell's books on mythology?

So Joseph Campbell, his book, the hero with a thousand faces inspired George Lucas, who's the guy who came up with the with the idea of Indiana Jones and for Star Wars. Yeah.

Yeah. So he wrote a 4 volume history of mythology. And his last 1 was called, I think, creative mythology. And and Eschenbeck's passivaldi was kind of central to that. This idea of the Grail as a symbol that explains and symbolizes everything about the relationship of humanity to the kind of the supernatural, the mythological realms.

But the problem with that, of course, is that I think if you are trying to explain it in historical terms because that explains everything, it explains nothing. So, I mean, it might work in terms of psychology, but I don't think it works as historical explanation. The other very popular theory that we have explored in a previous episode is the 1 that is best exemplified by the holy blood and holy grail and then by Dan Brown, the dementia code. The idea of the holy grail as a a secret perhaps. It's the bloodline of Christ.

So the song grail, the holy grail becomes the song grail, the the royal bloodline. Yep. And again, in our episode on the Davinci Code, we explored the inadequacies of that as a historical explanation for what the Grail might have been. And then we come back to this idea that I mentioned at the start of the program, the 1 that's so excited TS Elliott, Jesse Weston's idea, that it's all about fertility rituals derived from paganism. And specifically, of course, because these are Celtic traditions, Celtic stories Arthur is a is a figure from pre Anglo Saxon Britain.

The mythology presumably, therefore, if the series correct, must be welsh. And there's a guy at scholar R. S. Luke Loomis. In the mid twentieth century, who particularly argued that that the Grail is a Christianization of Welsh mythology.

And he focuses particularly on this figure called Bran the blessed. Who is kind of involved with a cauldron that is able to bring the dead back to life. And so this idea that perhaps the grail is a cauldron There's also the idea that Brad Brad himself loses his head. It speaks prophecy. It ends up being buried where the tower of London is built.

Perhaps the brand's head is in some way the holy grail. So all this kind of stuff is being teased. Now there are there are kind of problems with this, namely that The idea it sits at the Jesse Western idea that the wasteland is kind of central to the myth. The reason that I emphasized that in Parceval in Cretina de Twaz, telling of it that there's no supernatural link between the Fisher King and the wastelands around him, that it's simply the result of kind of depredations following on from the fact that he can't defend his lands. The idea that there is a supernatural link is medieval, but it's very late.

So in other words, if that tradition is coming from pagan sources, you would expect it to be the other way around. Yeah. It isn't.

Yeah.

So that kind of I think undermines that theory. The other problem with, say, all the arguments Loomis' argument that this is brand the blessing in his cauldron in his head or whatever, is, firstly, the the grays initially is is, you know, it's not a cup, certainly not cordon, it's a platter. And also, so far as we know, there is no translation of the legends of brand into French in the middle ages.

You're persuaded me it's not welsh. It seems very impossible to me. So but if it's not from

let me just say on the on the on the topic of the last crusade, there was also in the fifties, there was a theory that it came from Iran. Interesting. Again, for absolutely nonsensical reasons that okay. I don't want to offend Ali, I'm sorry, who would of course be very keen to know that the holy grail is actually Iranian, but that that perhaps might tie it in with the idea that that it came from petrol or from Turkey or wherever. That you get to the holy grail, perhaps that's where they got the idea.

You get in the last crusade. Yeah. Yeah. So okay. Where does it come from them?

Or or just Christian to try.

He doesn't just stream it up. I think he does.

Oh, cranky.

I mean, I think it's that simple. And I think that that what is interesting is that all these stories, all these motifs, the Fisher King, the lads, the holy grail, those Ramathea, all of it, basically comes in essentially a kind of 50, 60 year period from the 11 eighties through to the, you know, first decades of of of the thirteenth century. And I think therefore that the origins of the Grail do not lie in the midst of prehistory or in human psychology. They lie in a very very specific and massively tumultuous period of medieval Latin history. And that period Dominic is a period that we have already done various episodes on, namely the period of the Abigensin crusade.

It's the age of of innocent the third, the great pope. So this is the kind of the papacy, Latin Christendom, at its kind of militant peak. And so just to go through what is happening at this period and to link it to Certainly, some of the authors of these Gray rail rail romancies. As I said, you've got the Albergensian crusade. This crusade against heretics in the south of France that is very, very bloody.

So the cathars is their called.

The cathars is their called and The people who take the kind of the ideological lead in this are the superstitions, so kind of order of monks who are the the shock troops in the war against these supposed hereditary in the south of France. And 1 of the sequels to to Cretina is is a former poet, a former enthusiast for chivalry called Elyna he becomes a sedition monk, and he actually goes the South of France and he preaches against the Albergensians. So that's the context of his romance.

Yeah. 12:04, you

have the sack of constantinople. So -- Yep. -- this terrible event when the capital of of the the Roman Empire in the east is is destroyed by the Crusaders. And Robert DeBoer, who we mentioned in the first half, he's the guy who comes up with the idea of of the Greyell being the the the cup of Christ. He was in the service of the Lord who actually took part in the sack.

Right. You have to rate conquistad in Spain going on and according to the old friend von Essenbauer who rate passifile, he says that he got the story from a guy who found it written in Arabic in Toledo, which is the kind of the great city where people are finding manuscripts of Aristotle and so on written in Arabic. And translating it. So presumably, he doesn't really. He says that because it makes it seem exotic and exciting and glamorous and dangerous and so on.

So in other words, the railway mattresses are I think, patently influenced by what is going on in the broader world. And basically, what you have is This is a period where a kind of long drawn out century and a half process of revolution is coming to its climax. And this is a revolution that that began back in the eleventh century when radicals seized control of the commanding height of the Roman church, and they embark on this great project to separate out the dimension of the church, the dimension of the holy from the kind of they call the dimension of the secular, the dimension of the mortal, the dimension of things that are born and die that we come to call the secular. Right. And the church defines itself as being over and above this.

It has divorced itself from that. So this is the period when priests, for instance, have to commit themselves to celibacy. And the reason they have to commit themselves to celipacy is that this is enables them to preside over the great mystery that lies at the heart of the claim of the Roman church to hold the keys to heaven, which is the ritual of the eucharist.

This is taking taking mass basically.

Taking the mass. And the claim is that taking the the the host, the wafer, the bread, that this is literally the body of Christ. And that drinking the wine from the the chalice from the cup, this is literally the blood of Christ, thanks to a process called transubstantiation. And this is kind of key to the claim that the church has to embody a holiness, so awesome, so profound, that it it licenses them to established the church as something sovereign and supreme over all the kind of various secular states of Europe. Right.

And as we discussed in our episode on the Alpertencians, there are people who, you know, who are not in the the kind of the cutting edge centers of Latin Europe in this time, whether it's Rome, whether it's the great universities of Boulogneur in Paris and Oxford, but people out in the sticks, out in the provinces who really resent that. And the OpRegenians are kind of emblematic of that. And this is why in exactly the period that the grower images are being written, the Abigensians are being targeted basically for kind of annihilation. Yep. So the church, if it's going to embark on these crusades, whether it's directed against heretics within the fabric of Christendom, whether it's the Muslims in Spain, whether it's schismatic Christians in Constantinople, they can't do this on their own.

They need warriors they need soldiers to do it for them. And this is where lights come in. Because the paradox is that even as the church is claiming to have immense corrugated itself from kind of the earthly demands, the earthly compromises of fallen humanity. It still needs warriors to defend it. And so therefore, the question of what in in what way can being a warrior, being a knight, being a chaffale, who rides around on a horse with swords and shields and lances, in what way can they be integrated into this kind of awesome vision of christened them?

So what they need is stories. They need an ideology or reconcile the military and the and the religious. Right?

I think the ideology comes first. Because what you see in the the 2 centuries that precede the emergence of the the Grail stories is a series of attempts on the part of the church. To sacralize matehood. So the earliest of these is something called the peace of God, where you have all these chiavellas. All these knights were busy attacking each other, attacking monasteries, attacking churches, and the churches bring out holy relics from the from fricking it from their kind of inner sanctor.

And the night are so overwhelmed by the power of this that they kind of swear to hold the peace. They kind of swear to the relics that are paraded through the streets or brought out into fields. And this idea of the peace of God that the church can entrust knights with a kind of holy duty then becomes militarized with the idea of crusades, which is born at the end of the the eleventh century. And these crusades kind of obviously roll out throughout the the century that follows. And are launched both against Constantinople and against the Muslims and against the Albertansians.

But you also have this emergent idea that comes to be known as chivalry. This idea that at night should properly follow Christian missions. So that's the bit, you know, the the the hermit who talks to Percival saying you must look after young girls, after women, after orphans, after widows, and so on. That's where that is coming on. And that feeds into the romances that Cretina tells.

And this, again, I think, is why they are so massively influential, so popular is that because these are being written in French, therefore, they are appealing not to to to clerics, not to scholars. But to the kind of people who would gather in a night's hall. And the kind of the tensions, the complexities, the ambiguity, the hedge figures like Lancelot and the Wayne and indeed percival around, these are stories that directly appeal to nights who are trying to think, I want to be a brave knight, I want to fight but I want to be a good Christian as well. Yeah. What does it mean to be a Christian night?

So why, therefore, why then the Grey or why the the spear with the blood, why the phishing, why or why all those details, why those details specifically?

Right? So it is only the priests who can approach the eucharist. This is their awesome power. This is why they have sworn themselves to celipacy. Nights can't do that, but what Cretina does in a very, very bold maneuver is to construct a kind of a myth in which nights are shown doing exactly that.

Percival goes to the castle of the grail and he beholds the spear and he beholds the cup. And we're not told in in creating us account that this is the spear that appears the side of Christ. Or that the grail is the cup that gathered the cup of the blood of Christ. But it's it's pretty evident from the speed with which people come to understand that that's what it is. But that probably was his intention.

That that probably was the the plot twist that he was building up to. And so aside from Vonage and Max, Parsafar, in which it's a stone, pretty much all the other grail accounts are absolutely making play with these symbols of the passion. The grail, the spear dripping with with blood. And in these romances, the Fisher King is able to stay alive for despite his wound, for, you know, decades, centuries, millennia because he is consuming a host. This is what keeps him alive, the body of Christ, And this similar miracles are reported in this period.

So you have, you know, there's a girl who's supposed to have lived for 40 years on nothing, but but the host, which is said to be brought to her by a dove every Friday and then given to her by a priest every Sunday, There's a woman who lives only on the host that she gets a commune in for 30 years. So this is an idea that is Simultaneously pretty heretical, the idea that knights can approach the body and blood of Christ without priests to mediate it but it's also very orthodox because it's upholding the mystery that lies at the heart of the claims of the Latin church to its suit, you know, to its supremacy. And this is basically 1 of the things that the Albertansians are being targeted against.

This is the idea that the heart of Christianity. Isn't it the the you have the body and blood of Christ and you will get eternal life?

In essence, that's what the Christian promised is. Yeah. But the idea that it is literally the body and blood of Christ is something that's been a kind of building up here for several centuries, but it gets weaponized in this kind of particularly revolutionary period, the eleventh century, through the twelfth century, into the early thirteenth century. So the period that culminates in all these various crusades and in the Grail stories kind of emerging. So I I think, essentially, that is what is going on.

That the grown mets remets is they're dangerous. They are kind of faintly treading on the toes of of the clerical establishment. And that I think is why basically, the church never just mentions them. I mean, it preserves a very frosty silence about them. But at the same time, it tolerates them because they recognize that it is embodying a kind of very militant understanding of trans substantiation of this idea that the body and the blood of Christ is incredibly that is dispensed by the priests is indeed you know, the the mystery of mysteries, the kind of the profoundest thing that you could possibly have, and it's that that gives the frail sense of holiness, and it's that that that underpins the whole plot of of the last crusade.

Yeah. You know, famously, the the night, who guards the Grail in the the last crusade, you have to choose which grail do you drink from? Which cup do you go for? Someone chooses poorly? Someone chooses wisely.

And basically, you know, to put to revert back to early thirteenth century terms from the perspective of of the establishment of the Latin Church. The Argentians, the Saracens, the Schismatic Christians in Constantinople are choosing poorly, the devout, those who who follow the teachings of the Latin Church, are choosing wisely. And in that sense, the gray lights are choosing wisely.

From the church's point of view, even if this does verge on heresy, surely, the the point is that basically, the Grail story is an excellent recruiting tool. So all of these Savara romances are fantastic in recruiting people to be nice to fight for Christendom, to fight for in the name of the papacy, all of that sort of stuff that that's what they're after. Right?

Yeah. And I so I think that that's why Galahad gets introduced and replaces Perry. Because to begin with, and this is why Parcelain has been so influential not just in the middle ages, but right the way through the the nineteenth, twentieth, and 20 first centuries, It does have the quality of a dream. You see that the action through the eyes of Perceval. These strange haunting images, I mean, they're so powerful They live so vividly in imagination.

But with the introduction of Galahat, it becomes much more kind of programmatic. So Galahad is a mountain that is name checked in the song of songs. Very important for the cessternians, this, you know, these these monks who were taking the lead in the the war against heresy. And they say that that, you know, this mountain, Galahad is the head of the church. So there's a kind of very self conscious kind of almost allegorical role that is being played by Galahad that I think makes those stories less influential less effective actually.

Were they less strange on me? Although there is a kind of strangeness in the climax of Galahad's vision of the Grey when he attains because basically what Galahad has is what Dante also gets in the divine comedy, which is what's called the beatific vision, the vision of the artist, the the happiness, the joy, that the Christian soul after death has when beholding the face of God. You're not supposed to get it in this life. But Galahad does get it. And what's amazing is the description of of of how this beatific vision is framed in the in the romance.

This is from the quest of the holy grail which kind of describes Galahat's winning of the grail. And Galahat as he sees the as he has the beatific vision, the revelation of the grail the face of God. For now, I see openly what tongue cannot describe nor heart conceive. Here I see the beginning of great daring and the prime cause of prowess. Here I see the marvel of all other marvels.

And it's being couched in nightly terms. You know, these are not terms that know, Thomas Aquinas or other great theologians would would would go for. He's describing it as being brilliant. The beatific vision is all about being a great night, going on adventures, going on quests. But you can see why I think this is a problem for protestants.

So you said that the people have been continuously fascinated for the girl. Actually, they haven't been. The moment the reformation comes, interested in the grail kind of stops because the scene is superstitious. Absolutely. Transit substantiation.

I mean, this is the idea of whether the the wine and the bread a communion are literally the the blood and the body of Christ is fundamental to the reformation gods and say it isn't. And so I think that they kind of instinctively recognize that the grail rituals, the grail romances are very much a product of of the Catholic middle ages, and that's why they kind of drop it like like a hot plate. And I but I think it also explains why when the railway mattresses get rediscovered in the nineteenth century and into the twentieth century, there's a sense that you've got the hardware there, but the the software has been erased. And so all the kind of theories, whether it's the Youngian theories, the idea that it's kind of secret bloodlines or that it's pagan myths that have been Christianized. This is attempt to kind of rewrite software that can power the hardware, if that makes sense.

Right. So the yes. So we like the story, but we've lost sight of actually the the essence, the meaning.

Yeah. We've got all these amazing images with these kind of adventures. But we can't quite get a handle on it. We want to know what the secret of the Grail is. I mean, actually, the Secret of the Grail is there.

It's written very very obviously in the history of the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries. But because we're not familiar with that anymore, we look for for other secrets, other ways of explaining it.

Right. Yes. Okay. That makes complete sense to me. And also, Tom, that explains why, to my mind, Indiana Jones, the last crusade is the weakest of the original trilogy.

Because actually the grail is just a pure McGuffin.

It doesn't quite have that. It's a very Christian symbol, which is why it's my favorite.

No. No. No. No. There.

It's not as powerful as the Ark of the Covenant. Which is really weird and the ending of that film for those people who've seen greatest of the lost art. And when you first see it if you're a child comes as a great shockiness, really charged with this kind of supernatural power. What's temperate doom as everybody knows is the best of the 3 films? So under Greyhound, Tom, 1 place you haven't mentioned at all finally, just as we come to an end, we're getting towards midsummer, well, late summer, Gladstonebury.

It's not a glass from Brie?

Where does that idea come from? It's not a glass from Brie and that's never really part of of the glass from Brie myth. The the abbots of glass and Brie do very late in the fifteenth century. So just after Mallory has written his his accounts of the arthurian myths, they do start saying that the holy grail was bought to Glastonbury. But it's a bit late because we've gone 30 years later.

But, yeah, he gets closed down and there's no place in Thomas Cromwell's world for holy thorns and supernatural chalices or any of that stuff.

Alright. Well, listen. So you've rather debunked the holy grail, which is kind of a shame.

I didn't think I have debunked it. I've placed it in the context of the great miss that lay at the heart of medieval Christendom.

Yeah. But I think a lot of people are looking for lost bad lines, aren't they in aliens, in Atlantis, and things? Tough. Sorry. Alright.

Well, on that bombshell, Tom, that was really, really fascinating. You've inspired me to go back and listen to Vargas Parcefel, which is a terrifying prospect for the other members of my household who knew that 2 podcasts about Indiana Jones would end on such a high brown note. And on that note, we will say

goodbye. Goodbye.

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