| The Grail is first featured in Perceval, le Conte du
Graal (The Story of the Grail) by Chrétien de Troyes,
who claims he was working from a source book given to
him by his patron, Count Philip of Flanders.
In this
incomplete poem, dated sometime between 1180 and 1191,
the object has not yet acquired the implications of
holiness it would have in later works. While dining in
the magical abode of the Fisher King, Perceval witnesses
a wondrous procession in which youths carry magnificent
objects from one chamber to another, passing before him
at each course of the meal. First comes a young man
carrying a bleeding lance, then two boys carrying
candelabras. Finally, a beautiful young girl emerges
bearing an elaborately decorated graal, or "grail."
Chrétien refers to his object not as "The Grail" but
as un graal, showing the word was used, in its earliest
literary context, as a common noun. For Chrétien the
grail was a wide, somewhat deep dish or bowl,
interesting because it contained not a pike, salmon or
lamprey, as the audience may have expected for such a
container, but a single Mass wafer which provided
sustenance for the Fisher King’s crippled father.
Perceval, who had been warned against talking too much,
remains silent through all of this, and wakes up the
next morning alone.
He later learns that if he had asked
the appropriate questions about what he saw, he would
have healed his maimed host, much to his honor. The
story of the Wounded King's mystical fasting is not
unique; several saints were said to have lived without
food besides communion, for instance Saint Catherine of
Genoa. This may imply that Chrétien intended the Mass
wafer to be the significant part of the ritual, and the
Grail to be a mere prop.
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