"Professor Loomis, in his authoritative work, The Grail, makes it evident beyond question that the matière of La Queste del Saint Graal was derived in the main from Celtic myths, largely of Manannan Mac Lir and his Welsh counterpart, Brân; the Blessed: the 'Rich Fisher', Bron, with his 'blessed horn of plenty', cors-benoiz (corbenic); his boat, the moon that rides celestial seas; and his whirling castle of mist and dream from the fairyland 'below waves'."
     - Joseph Campbell, Creative Mythology

La Queste del Saint Graal, compiled by Cistercian monks in the thirteenth century, "is first and foremost a Christian book, and nothing in it suggests a conscious use of any pagan mythology, ritual, or folklore in their primitive forms....Once the pre-Christian elements had been appropriated, they became thoroughly Christianized and entered completely into the symbolic structure of the new religion. They had, in fact, been chosen for their insight value and as a means of illuminating the context of the new gnosis."
     - Frederick Locke

"The Queste is part of the compilation called the Prose Lancelot (1215-1230), which deals with the adventures of Lancelot and his love affair with Guinevere. There are warnings in the Lancelot that his adultery with Guinevere will debar him from achieving the Grail, and the author of the Queste invented a new character as the Grail-winner, Galahad, who was 'so grounded in the love of Christ that no adventure could tempt him into sin."
     - Richard Cavendish, "Grail",
     Man, Myth & Magic, An Illustrated Encyclopedia of the Supernatural, Vol. 9

"For the Christian medieval world the Holy Grail (the chalice used by Jesus at the Last Supper) symbolized the truth and knowledge needed to achieve the experience of salvation. Led in search of the Grail by divine grace, the naive hero Perceval inquired directly about the Grail, a question other knights had failed to ask. His simplistic question, put to the ailing Fisher King, revitalized not only the royal body but the entire drooping cosmos. The human condition is rejuvenated by the graceful quest for the truth of salvation. Perceval was superseded by Galahad [son of Lancelot] as the winner of the Holy Grail in later variations, Galahad being viewed as a descendant of Joseph of Arimathea (the member of the Jerusalem council in whose tomb the body of Jesus was laid), who was believed to have gone to Glastonbury, Eng., with the Holy Grail."
     - Encyclopaedia Britannica

"The castle of the Grail is no longer the setting for obscurely motivated combats and nightmarish sounds and spectacles, but rather for meaningful sacramental mysteries. The adventures, the visions are interpreted with conscientious precision, morally or typologically or mystically, by hermit or monk or anchoress. At times this tale of knight-errantry rises to a level of solemn beauty comparable to that of the Holy Scriptures. The author has left on his work the stamp of his highly individual genius."
     - Roger Sherman Loomis, The Grail, From Celtic Myth to Christian Symbol

"In the Queste the Grail is the dish from which Christ ate the Passover lamb with his disciples. It was brought to Britain by Joseph of Arimathea and was guarded by his descendants at their castle of Corbenic. It retains some of its earlier functions, for the sight of it heals the sick and when it appears at King Arthur's court it provides each person with the food he desires. But Arthur and his knights are told that the quest of the Grail ' is no search for earthly things but a seeking out of the mysteries and hidden sweets of our Lord, the divine secrets which the most high Master will disclose...'"
     - Richard Cavendish, "Grail",
     Man, Myth & Magic, An Illustrated Encyclopedia of the Supernatural, Vol. 9

"And then the King and all estates went home unto Camelot, and so went to evensong to the great minster, and so after upon that to supper, and every knight sat in his own place as they were toforehand. Then anon they heard cracking and crying of thunder, that them thought the place should all to-drive. In the midst of this blast entered a sunbeam more clearer by seven times than ever they saw day, and all they were alighted of the grace of the Holy Ghost. Then began every knight to behold other, and either saw other, by their seeming, fairer than ever they saw afore. Not for then there was no knight might speak one word a great while, and so they looked every man on other as they had been dumb.
Then there entered into the hall the Holy Grail, covered with white samite, but there was none might see it nor who have it. And there was all the hall fulfilled with good odors, and every knight had such meats and drinks as he best loved in this world. And when the Holy Grail had been borne through the hall, then the holy vessel departed suddenly, that they wist not where it became. Then had they all breath to speak. And then the King yielded thankings to God, of his good grace that he had sent them"
      - La Queste del Saint Graal (Translated by Sir Thomas Malory)

"When his knights swore the quest of the Grail, King Arthur lamented that this meant the end of the fellowship of the Round Table. He was right, for the Queste's author intended Galahad's success to be a demonstration of the superiority of Christian ideals and the inadequacy of the worldly ideals of romantic chivalry. The one knight who is utterly dedicated to God and entirely free from any contamination of worldliness is the only one who fully achieves the quest. "Galahad, Perceval and Bors receive Mass from the Grail at the hands of the crucified Christ himself and 'it seemed as though the essence of all sweetness was housed within their bodies'."
     - Richard Cavendish, "Grail",
     Man, Myth & Magic, An Illustrated Encyclopedia of the Supernatural, Vol. 9

At that moment, however, only to Galahad was revealed:

"...those things that the heart of mortal man cannot conceive nor tongue relate, my heart was ravished with such joy and bliss...for so great a host of angels was before me and such a multitude of heavenly beings, that I was translated in that moment from the earthly plane to the celestial."
      - La Queste del Saint Graal (Translated by Sir Thomas Malory)

"It is certain that the Cistercian monk who was the author of the Queste had been greatly inspired by the confirmation at the Fourth Lateran Council, in the year 1215, of the Catholic dogma of the Real Presence of Christ's body in the sacrament of the altar (the Host in the ciborium)."
     - Joseph Campbell, Creative Mythology

"A brief passage in the French text, which Malory omitted, makes the messianic role of Galahad quite clear. The venerable man in white who brought the youth to Camelot, addressing Arthur, said: 'I bring thee the desired knight (le chevalier desiré), who is descended from the high lineage of king David,'"
"Indeed the very name Galahad was chosen to carry out this concept. Its biblical origin has long been known, since it occurs in the Vulgate Old Testament, the standard text of the Middle Ages, in the form Galaad. sometimes it refers to a place, sometimes to a person. It remained for Pauphilet [Études] to discover its astonishing fitness for the messianic hero of the Queste. He showed that, according to Genesis 31:47-52, Galaad meant 'heap of testimony', and that Isidore of Seville, Walafrid, Strabo, and the Venerable Bede construed this etymology as a reference to Christ."
     - Roger Sherman Loomis, The Grail, From Celtic Myth to Christian Symbol

"Who is this heap of testimony but Christ, on whom all the testimonies of the prophets are piled, to whom the prophets, John [the Baptist], the Heavenly Father, and His own works bear witness?"
     - Gilbert of Holland, Sermons on the Canticles (Cistercian)

"If one may sum up the essential doctrine of the Queste, it is this. The Grail is a symbol of grace, and grace is God's love for man. One of the supreme manifestations of that love was the descent of the Holy Ghost in the form of fire [the first Pentecost]; thus the entrance of the Grail in the hall at Camelot was preceded by a dazzling ray, and all were at once illumined of the Holy Ghost. Through grace all man's spiritual desires may be satisfied, thus the Grail dispensed to every knight such meats and drinks as he best loved in the world. God's love begets a response in the hearts of men and draws them to Him; thus the knights of the Round Table were moved to seek the Grail."
     - Roger Sherman Loomis, The Grail, From Celtic Myth to Christian Symbol

"And therewithal beseemed them that there came an old man and four angels from heaven, clothed in likeness of a bishop, and had a cross in his hand; and these four angels bare him in a chair, and set him down before the table of silver whereupon the Sankgreal [Holy Grail] was; and it seemed that he had in middes of his forehead letters the which said' 'See ye here Joseph(se) [son of Joseph of Arimathea], the first bishop of Christendom, the same which Our Lord sacred in the city of Sarras in the spiritual palace'. Then the Knights marveled, for that bishop was dead more than three hundred year tofore."

Angels appear bearing candles, a towel and the bleeding spear. The bishop performs a mass in which a fiery childlike figure smites the bread and transforms it into a fleshy man.

"Then looked they and saw a man come out of the holy vessel, that had all the signs of the passion of Jesu Christ, bleeding all openly, and said:
'My knights and my servants and my true children, which be come out of deadly life into spiritual life, I will now no longer hide me from you, but ye shall see now a part of my secrets and of my hidden things; now hold and receive the high meat which ye have so much desired."

"'This is,' said He, 'the holy dish wherein I ate the lamb on Sher-Thursday [the Last Supper before Christ's crucifixion].'"
      - La Queste del Saint Graal (Translated by Sir Thomas Malory)

"Sir Thomas Malory's Le Morte D'Arthur, a much later epic, dates to the mid-fifteenth Century. As in The Arabian Nights, "the battle scenes might comfortably appear in the Morte D'Arthur; the tales of enchanted castles, miraculous swords, talismanic trophies, and quest in the realms of the 'Jinn', are reminiscent, in numerous features, of the favorites of Arthurian romance; the pattern of romantic love is in essence identical with that of twelfth-century Provence..."
     - Joseph Campbell, Creative Mythology

"Malory took the bulk of the Grail material for the Morte D'Arthur from the Queste. The Grail is taken away from Britain because of the sinfulness of the inhabitants. Galahad dies and the Grail is carried up into heaven. This is immediately followed by Lancelot's return to Guinevere and the public denunciation of the lovers. The knights divide into warring factions, the fellowship of the Round Table is destroyed and Arthur's reign comes to its bitter close."
     - Richard Cavendish, "Grail",
     Man, Myth & Magic, An Illustrated Encyclopedia of the Supernatural, Vol. 9

"Readers of Malory may well have been puzzled by the fact that, though he sometimes refers to the sacred vessel as 'the Holy Grayle', a correct translation of the French words 'le saint graal', he also refers to it as 'the Sankgreal' and takes it to signify 'the blyssed bloode of our Lorde Jhesu Cryste', evidently because of a confused notion that 'Sankgreal' contained the element sang, 'blood'."
     - Roger Sherman Loomis, The Grail, From Celtic Myth to Christian Symbol

"Sangréal" can also be interpreted as "sang réal'" or "royal blood". It has been hypothesized that the Holy Grail represents not an object but the blood-line of Christ - a secret protected throughout the ages by a hidden order called the Prieure de Sion.

"The Grail (according to the Queste and other later recensions of the legend) contained the holy blood of Christ; before she gave birth to him, Mary had contained Christ himself within her womb; therefore, QED, the Grail was - and always had been - a symbol for Mary.
"According to this logic, Mary Theotokos, the 'God Bearer', was the sacred vessel who had contained the Spirit made flesh. Thus, in the sixteenth-century Litany of Loretto, she was the vas spirtuale (spiritual vessel), the vas honorabile (vessel of honor), and the vas insigne devationis (singular vessel of devotion)."
"The Litany of Loretto had also referred to the Blessed Virgin as arca foederis - which...was Latin for 'the Ark of the Covenant'....In the twelfth century, the redoubtable Saint Bernard of Clairvaux had also explicitly compared Mary to the Ark of the Covenant - indeed he had done so in a number of his writings."
     - Graham Hancock, The Sign and the Seal

Hyperlinks

·Founding of the Knights Templar
·Prieure de Sion
·The Rosy Cross