The San Graal, Made From a Single Precious Stone

The Eastern fictions respecting precious stones were transmitted through many ages, and were the delight of old writers in our own country. In the Middle Ages, perhaps none attracted a more reverential and poetic feeling than the San Graal, Gral, or Greal (a word derived, probably, from the old French, perhaps Celtic greal, Provencal grazal, mediaeval Latin gradalis, signifying a kind of dish). In the legends and poetry of the Middle Ages we find many notices of this miraculous object, which was represented as a chalice, made of a single precious stone, sometimes said to be an emerald, which possessed the power of preserving chastity, prolonging life, and other wonderful properties. This chalice was believed to have been first brought from Heaven by angels, and was one from which Christ drank at the Last Supper. It was preserved by St. Joseph of Arimathaea, and in it were caught the last drops of the blood of Christ as He was taken from the Cross. This holy chalice, thus trebly sanctified, was guarded by angels, and then by the Templises, a society of knights chosen for their chastity and devotion, who watched over it in a temple-like castle on the inaccessible mountain Montsalvage. The legend, as it grew, appears to have combined Arabian, Jewish, and Christian elements, and it became the favourite subjects of the poets and romancers of the Middle Ages. The eight centuries of warfare between the Christians and Moors in Spain, and the foundation of the Order of the Knights Templars, aided in its development. The stories of King Arthur and the Round Table, so beautifully enchased in English poesy by Tennyson, were connected with this legend. About 1170, Chretien of Troyes, and after him other troubadours, sang of the search for the holy graal by the Knights of the Round Table, in which they met with extraordinary adventures--a subject revived in all the beauty of poetry and romance, seven hundred years afterwards, by our poet laureate:--

"The cup, the cup itself, from which our Lord

Drank at the last sad supper with His own.

This, from the blessed land of Aromat--

After the day of darkness, when the dead

Went wandering o'er Moriah--the good saint

Arimathaean Joseph, journeying brought

To Glastonbury, where the winter thorn

Blossoms at Christmas, mindful of our Lord.

And there awhile it bode; and if a man

Could touch or see it, he was healed at once,

By faith, of all his ills. But then the times

Grew to such evil that the holy cup

Was caught away to Heaven, and disappear'd."

The metropolitan cathedral of Saint Lawrence at Genoa claims a very dubious possession of the reputed valuable emerald dish, known to the Catholic world as Il Sacro Catino. Its history, making due allowance for questionable tradition, is that at the siege of Palestine in IIOI, the Genoese selected this as the choicest prize. Until 1809, they kept it almost sacredly; the French then took it away, but were compelled to restore it in 1815, but it was returned in a broken state. From its size, as an emerald, it was invaluable when perfect, and the legend stated that our Saviour had eaten the Paschal lamb off it with His disciples, and that it was one of the presents of the Queen of Sheba to Solomon, who had preserved it in the Temple. Unfortunately for all these invaluable influences, the emerald dish, once in the power of the French, was subjected to chemical analysis, and was found to be a spurious composition of green glass.