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Texts>The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
So I who am about to speak offer a loving salutation to the learned and admirable souls who have preceded me in the way of research. It is because I have ascended an untrodden peak in Darien to survey the prospect of the Quest, and have found that there is another point of view, that I come forward in these pages carrying strange tidings, but leaving to all my precursors the crowns and bays and laurels which they have deserved so well, and offering no contradiction to anything which they have attained truly. How admirable is the life of the scholar--how unselfish are the motives which inspire him--and how earnestly we who, past all revocation, are dedicated to the one subject desire that those paths which he travels--when even they seem far from the goal--may lead him to that term which is his as well as ours, for assuredly he seeks only the truth as he conceives thereof.
As the theory of transubstantiation did not pass into dogma till a late period in the development of the canon of the Graal, so it can be said that romantic texts like the Book of the Holy Graal, the Longer Prose Perceval and the Galahad Quest, but the last especially, which contains the higher code of chivalry, were instrumental in promoting that dogma by the proclamation of a sacrosaintly feast of Corpus Christi maintained for ever in the Hidden House of the Graal, till the time came when the great feast of exaltation and the assumption into heaven of the sacred emblems was held in fine at Sarras. There was, therefore, a correlation of activity between the two sides of the work, for it was out of the growing dogma that the Graal legend in the Greater Chronicles assumes its particular sacramental complexion.
When all has been granted and, after granting, has been exalted even, it remains that the Eucharistic symbol is so much the greatest of all that we can say that there is a second scarcely, because this is the palmary channel of grace, and--in the last resource--we do not need another. If it were not that the literature of the Holy Graal offers intimations of still more glorious things behind this mystery than we are accustomed to find in theological and devotional handbooks, I suppose that the old books would have never concerned my thoughts. Now therefore, God willing, I speak to no one, in or out of churches, sects and learned societies, who does not realise in his heart that the path of the life everlasting lies, mystically speaking, within the consecrated elements of bread and wine, beyond which veils all the high Quests are followed.
Passing from the doctrinal matters expressed and implied in the Graal literature to the sacred palladia with which it is concerned more especially, we enter into another species of environment. Out of the doctrine of transubstantiation, and perhaps more especially out of the particular congeries of devotional feelings connected therewith, there originated what may be termed a cultus of the body of God and of His blood, understood in the mystery of the Incarnation, and the instinct which lies behind the veneration of relics came into a marked degree of operation. Such veneration is instinctive, as I have just said, and representing on the external side, invalidly or not, the substance of things unseen in religion, it is so rooted in our natural humanity that it would be difficult to regard its manifestation in Christendom as characteristic more especially of Christianity than of some other phases of belief. The devotion which, because of its excesses, is by a hasty and unrooted philosophy termed superstition--which no instinct can ever be--manifested early enough and never wanted its objects. There can be scarcely any call to point out that in the considerations which here follow I am concerned with questions of fact and not with adjudication thereon. The veneration of relics and cognate objects, to which some kind of sanctity was imputed, became not only an environment of Christianity at a very early period, but it so remains to the present day for more than half of Christendom. It may be one of the grievous burdens of those ecclesiastical systems about which it prevails and in which it is still promoted, but having said what the sense of intellectual justice seems to require, that it may be exonerated from the false charge of superstition, I have only to add--and this is to lift the Graal literature out of the common judgment which might be passed upon memorials of relic worship--that the instinct of such devotions, as seen at their best in the official churches, has always an arch-natural implicit; it works upon the simple principle that God is not the God of the dead but of the living, and the reverence, by example, for the Precious Blood of Christ depends from the doctrine of His immanence in any memorials which He has left. I need not add that, on the hypothesis of the Church itself, the sense of devotion would be better directed, among external objects, towards the Real Presence in the symbols of the Eucharist; but in the Graal literature it was round about the Sacramental Mystery that the Relics of the Passion were collected, operating and shining in that light.
We know already that the Sacred Vessel of the legends was in the root-idea a Reliquary, and as such that it was the container and preserver of the Precious Blood of Christ. The romantic passion which brought this Reliquary into connection with the idea of that sacrament which communicated the life of Christ's blood to the believing soul, and the doctrinal passion which led to the definition concerning transubstantiation interacted one upon another. John Damascene had said in the eighth century that the elements of bread and wine were assumed and united to the Divinity--which took place by the invocation of the Holy Ghost, for the Spirit descends and changes. The Venerable Bede had said that the Lord gave us the sacrament of His flesh and blood in the figure of bread and wine. And again: "Christ is absent as to His Body, but is present as to His Divinity." And yet further: "The Body and Blood of Jesus Christ are received in the mouth of believers for their salvation." I do not know whether the implicits of this presentation have been realised in any school of interpreters, but there is one of them which covers all phases of sacramental exegesis, however variant from each other, and however in conflict with high Roman doctrine concerning the Eucharist. I state it as one who after long searchings has found a hidden jewel of the sacrament which might be an eirenicon for all the sects alive. It has also the simplicity which Khunrath, in expounding the Hermetic side of Eternal Wisdom, has said to be the seal of Nature and Art. I testify, therefore, that the true mystery of the Eucharist resides in the assumption by the Divine Life of the veils of Bread and Wine, and that even as once in time and somewhere in the world that life assumed the veils of flesh and blood, which became the Body of the Lord, so here and now--daily on every worshipful and authorised altar over the wide, wide world--do those unspotted elements become again that sacred vehicle, so that he who communicates in the faith of spirit and of truth, receives that which is not less truly the Divine Body than the especial polarisation of elements which was born in Nazareth of the sacred and glorious Virgin. Moreover, I am very certain that the one mystery was operated as if in the terms and valid forms of the other by the invocation of the Holy Spirit and the utter consecration of the elements. The reason is that given by Leo the Great, or another, so long and long ago--that Mary conceived in her heart before she conceived in her body. But having so conceived, the elements within her were transubstantiated into the Divine Body. I desire to add with all veneration and homage that this root-mystery of redemption is that which lies behind the devotion to the Mother of God, which has ascended to such heights in the Latin Church. This Church is the one witness through the ages whose instinct on the great subjects has never erred, however long and urgently the powers of the deep and the powers of perdition have hammered at the outer gates. Among other things, she has always recognised in the withdrawn and most holy part of her consciousness that she who conceived Christ--by the desire of the mystery of God satisfied out of all measure in a consummated marriage of the mind--had entered through her humanity into assumption with the Divine, and was to be counted no longer merely among the elected daughters of Zion.
To return therefore, those who say that the Eucharist is flesh and blood are speaking God's truth, and I ask in examine mortis--
that I may never receive otherwise. And those who say that such things are understood spiritually say also the truth which is eternal after their own manner, whence I look to communicate with then when "the dedely flesh" begins "to beholde the spyrytuel thynges"--or ever I set forth in that ship of mystic faith which was built from the beginning of this external order that it may carry us in fine to Sarras, though it is known that we shall go further.
Well, fratres carissimi, sorores ex omnibus dilectissimæ, to whom I speak the wisdom of the other world in a mystery--those who out of all expectation translated the deep things of doctrine, as they best could, into the language of romance--out of the Latin, as they said in their cryptic fashion--the Palladium of all research was that Vessel of Singular Election which contained, in their ingenuous symbolism, the Blood of Christ; but seeing that they were in a hurry to show how those who were worthy to receive the arch-natural sacraments did after some undeclared manner partake at the Graal Mass of corporeal and incorporeal elements which were fit to sustain both body and soul, so did the Reliquary become the Chalice, or alternatively it was elevated and the Christ came down to distribute His own life with the osculum fraternitatis and the consolamentum of all consolation. They collected, also, under the ecclesiastical and monastic ægis, certain other relics about the relic-in-chief. Now, the point concerning all is that most of the minor Hallows were known already as local objects of sanctity no less than the palmary Hallow, but the sanctity ascribed to the latter and the devotion thereto belonging were beginning to prevail generally. It is difficult to trace the growth of this kind of cultus; but as to the worship of spiritual devotion there was offered everywhere in Christendom the Body and Blood of Christ in the Sacrament of the Altar, so at many shrines--as if the more visible symbol carried with it a validity of its own, a more direct and material appeal--there was the reputed sang réal of Christ preserved in a reliquary. Some of these local devotions were established and well known before the appearance of any text of the Holy Graal with which we are acquainted--probably before those texts which we can discern behind the extant literature.
We have at the present day the Feast of the Precious Blood, which is a modern invention, and perhaps for some even who are within the fold of the Latin Church, it is classed among the unhappy memorials of the pontificate of Pius IX. This notwithstanding, it is what may be termed popular, and has in England its confraternities and other systems to maintain it in the mind of the laity. It has the London Oratory as its more particular centre, and it is described as an union and an apostolate of intercessory prayer. Without such assistance in the Middle Ages we can understand that the cultus had its appeal to the devotional side of the material mind, for which flesh and blood profited a good deal, in spite of asceticism and the complication of implicits behind the counsels of perfection in the religious life of the age.
The historical antiquity of the local sanctities which centre about certain relics is shrouded like some Masonic events in the vague grandeur of time immemorial, and a defined date is impossible. Because the legends of the Graal are connected with the powers and wonders of several hallowed objects belonging to 'the Passion of Christ, it is essential rather than desirable to ascertain whether at the period when the literature arose--and antedating it, if that be possible--there were such objects already in existence and sufficiently well known to respond as a terminus a quo in respect of the development of the legends. The places which appear as claimants to the possession of relics of the Precious Blood are, comparatively speaking, numerous; among others there are Bruges, Mantua, Saintes, the Imperial Monastery at Weingarten, and even Beyrout. According to the story of Mantua, the relic was preserved by Longinus, the Roman soldier who pierced the side of Christ. Within the historical period, it is said to have been divided, and some part of it was secured by the monastery of Weingarten, already mentioned. This portion was again subdivided and brought from Germany by Richard of Cornwall, the brother of Henry III. Fractional as the portion was, it is affirmed to have been a large relic, and the fortunate possessor founded a religious congregation to guard and venerate it. Later on it was, however, divided again into three parts, of which one was retained by the congregation, one was deposited in a monastery built for the purpose at Ashted, near Berkhampstead, and the third in a third monastery erected at Hailes in Gloucestershire. All these were foundations by Richard of Cornwall; and to explain such continual division, it must be remembered that this was a period when the building of churches and religious houses was prohibited without relics to sanctify them. Now, the story of Richard himself may be accepted as tolerably well founded, but there is much doubt concerning the relics at Weingarten and at Mantua itself. The alternative statements are (1) that in 1247 the Templars sent to King Henry III. a vas vetustissimum, having the appearance of crystal and reputed to contain the Precious Blood; (2) that in the same year, and to the same King, there was remitted by the Patriarch of Jerusalem a Reliquary termed the Sangreal, which had once belonged to Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathæa. Now it is obvious that at the period of Henry III. the canon of the Graal literature was almost closed; the last of these stories is obviously a reflection of that literature; it was also the time when (a) the Sacro Catino of Geneva may have begun to be regarded as the Graal, and when (b) a similar attribution was given to a sacred vessel which had been long preserved at Constantinople; but these objects, whether dishes or chalices, were not reliquaries. It will be seen that the claim of Mantua remains over with nothing to account for its origin. Of Beyrout I have heard only, and have no details to offer. But the relic of Bruges has a clear and methodical history, passing from legend into a domain which may be that of fact. The legend is that Joseph of Arimathæa having collected the Blood from the wounds of Christ, as the literature of the Graal tells us, placed it in a phial, which was taken to Antioch by St. James the Less, who was the first bishop of that city. The possible historical fact is that the Patriarch of Antioch gave the Reliquary about 1130 to a knight of Bruges who had rendered signal services to the church in Antioch. It was brought back by the knight to his native place, and there it has remained to this day. The dubious element in the story is the gift of such a relic under any circumstances whatever; the point in its favour is that the phial has the character of oriental work, which is referred by experts in ancient glass to the seventh or eighth century.
Against, or rather in competition with, this simple and consistent claim, there is the monstrous invention connected with the monastery of the Holy Trinity at Fécamp in Normandy. Here there is--or there was at least in the year 1840--a tabernacle of white marble, decorated with sculptured figures and inscribed: "Hic SANGUIS D.N., I.H.V., X.P.I." It is therefore called the Tabernacle of the Precious Blood.
The story is that Joseph of Arimathæa removed the blood from the wounds of Christ, after the body had been taken down from the Cross, using his knife for the purpose, and collecting the sacred fluid in his gauntlet. The gauntlet he placed in a coffer, and this he concealed in his house. The years passed away, and on his deathbed he bequeathed the uncouth reliquary to his nephew Isaac, telling him that if he preserved it the Lord would bless him in all his ways. Isaac and his wife began to enjoy every manner of wealth and prosperity; but she was an unconverted Jewess, and seeing her husband performing his devotions before the coffer, she concluded that he had dealings with an evil spirit, and she denounced him to the high priest. The story says that he was acquitted, but he removed with the reliquary to Sidon, where the approaching siege of Jerusalem was made known to him in a vision. He therefore concealed the reliquary in a double tube of lead, with the knife and the head of the Lance which had pierced the side of Christ. The tube itself he concealed in the trunk of a fig-tree, the bark of which closed over its contents, so that no fissure was visible. A second vision on the same subject caused him to cut down the tree, and he was inspired to commit it to the waves. In the desolation which he felt thereafter an angel told him that his treasure had reached shore in Gaul, and was hidden in the sand near the valley of Fécamp.
I do not propose to recount the various devices by which the history of the fig-tree is brought up to the period when the monastery was founded at the end of the tenth century. The important points in addition are (a) that the nature of the Reliquary did not satisfy the custodians, and, like the makers of Graal books, they wanted an arch-natural chalice to help out their central Hallow; (b) that they secured this from the priest of a neighbouring church who had celebrated Mass on a certain occasion, and had seen the consecrated elements converted into flesh and blood; (c) that a second knife was brought, later on, by an angel; (d) that a general exposition of all the imputed relics took place on the high altar in 1171; (e) that their praises and wonders were celebrated by a guild of jongleurs attached to the monastery, which guild is said to have originated early in the eleventh century, and was perpetuated for over four hundred years; (f) that the story is told in a mediæval romance of the thirteenth century, though in place of Joseph the character in chief is there said to be Nicodemus; (g) that there are other documents in French and in Latin belonging to different and some of them to similarly early periods; (h) that there is also a Mass of the Precious Blood, which was published together with the poem in 1840, and this is, exoterically speaking, a kind of Mass of the Graal, but I fear that a careful examination might create some doubt of its antiquity, and, speaking generally, I do not see (1) that any of the documents have been subjected to critical study; or (2) that Fécamp is likely to have been more disdainful about the law of great inventions than other places with Hallows to maintain in Christian--or indeed in any other--times.
So far as regards the depositions which it might be possible to take in the Monastery concerning its Tabernacle; and there is only one thing more which need be mentioned at this stage. It has been proved by very careful and exhaustive research into the extant codices of the Conte del Graal that some copies of the continuation by Gautier de Doulens state that the episode of Mont Douloureux was derived from a book written at Fécamp. It follows that one early text at least in the literature of the Holy Graal draws something from the Monastery of the Holy Trinity, but, lest too much importance should be attributed to this fact, I desire to note for my conclusion: (a) that the episode in question has no integral connection with the Graal itself; (b) that the tradition of Fécamp, which I have characterised as monstrous, by which I mean in comparison with the worst side of the general legends of the Precious Blood, is utterly distinct from that of the Holy Graal in the texts which constitute the literature; and (c) that this literature passed, as we shall find, out of legend into the annunciation of a mystic claim. It is the nature of this claim, the mystery of sanctity which lies behind it, and the quality of perpetuation by which the mystery was handed on, that is the whole term of my quest, and here it stands declared.
