7
O ancient temple, there hath risen for you a light that gleams in our hearts…
…
Ibn al Arabi, The Tarjuman Ai-Ashwaq
It would be easy to see the elaborate descriptions of the Grail Temples in The Later Titurel and elsewhere as the products of the marvelous imaginations of their authors, concocted from descriptions of the Solomonic temple and travellers’ tales concerning the kingdom of Prester John in the East. But there is more to it than this.
The descriptions, as noted above, do indeed resemble the temple of Solomon, but they also resemble another place, an actual site that shares so many of the patterns and descriptions found in Sone and Titurel as to suggest that they were all based on a single building—not a temple of the Grail indeed, or even a Christian foundation, but one worthy of being the home of a sacred relic.
The ruins of Takht-e Taqdis (Throne of Arches), also known as Takht-e Soleyman (Throne of Solomon), now a World Heritage site, lies in the country of Azerbaijan (Northern Iran) midway between Urmia and Hamedan, in a valley set in a volcanic mountain region, close to the present-day town of Takab and 400 kilometers west of Tehran. The choice of this site to erect the temple and other buildings was undoubtedly dictated by its natural setting: an outcrop of limestone about 60 meters above the valley, built up by sediments of calcinating water from the heated waters of the lake which rose at the top of the hill.
Built during the reign of the Persian-Sasanian emperor Khosrow II (AD 590–628) on the site of the sacred city of Shiz, the temple site dominated the surrounding country. It was first visited by the explorer and archaeologist Sir Henry Rawlinson (1810–1895) in an expedition to the area in 1838. Rawlinson recognized at once that what he was looking at was an extensive palace containing a central area that he identified as the remains of a Zoroastrian fire temple. The Zoroastrians, an ancient religious group who followed the god Ahura Mazda and worshipped fire, are still extant in parts of modern-day India and Iran. The origins of the Zoroastrians date back at least as far as the second century BC, and many of their beliefs, including the idea of a messiah, judgment after death, a heaven and a hell, and the acknowledgement of free will, have been seen to influence many of the major religions of the world, including Judaism, Christianity, Gnosticism, and Islam. Zoroastrianism served as the state religion of the pre-Islamic Iranian empire from 600 BC to AD 650. More than one scholar has drawn attention to strands of belief deriving from the Zoroastrians, which may have filtered down into the Grail myth via the Crusades.238 Nor should we fail to note that from the earliest times to the present, the vessel in which the sacred fire is placed in the Zoroastrian temple closely resembles the images of the Grail as chalice. This may be no more than a coincidence, but certainly the spirituality of the Zoroastrians made a fertile soil for the absorption of beliefs from other cultures, including those of the West. The influence was almost certainly a two-way street, bringing beliefs from both East and West together.
Amongst other things, Rawlinson noted the immensely thick walls, many still standing today; the multiple arches, which gave the site its name; and the central fire pit, which was square and covered by a dome mounted upon four pillars. This, of course, bears a striking resemblance to the descriptions of the central hall of the Grail castle with its square fireplace covered by a dome held up by pillars present in virtually every subsequent description of the Grail Temple.
Rawlinson was probably unaware of such parallels. These are only noted much later by the American orientalist Arthur Upham Pope in the 1930s. As a specialist in Islamic culture, he came across the description of the site and recognized at once the resemblance to the descriptions of the Grail Temple in The Later Titurel. Soon after, in 1937, he organized an expedition to the site on behalf of the American Institute of Iranian Art. What he found stunned him. Acknowledging that “Albrecht’s description of the temple is somewhat confused by the inclusion of characteristic features of a Romanesque and perhaps Armenian church,” he goes on to say:
183[We saw the remains of a domed temple] built at Shiz, the most sacred spot in the land, deep in the mountainous heart of Azerbaijan … The Takht was built of precious woods; cedar and teak, overlaid with much gold. Only gold and silver nails were used. The risers of the steps were gold. The balustrades—like those of the Grail Temple—were gold; and again like the Grail Temple, the Takht was heavily encrusted with jewels. As in the Grail Temple, blue stones symbolized the sky—lapis lazuli and turquoise in the Takht, sapphires in the Grail Temple. In the Takht golden astronomical tables—which could be changed according to season—were set in the dome, and on these the stars were marked by rubies, recalling that the stars in the dome of the Grail Temple likewise were marked with red jewels … or other stones, provided they were red, for example, garnets. In both, the sun and moon were displayed, rendered in precious metal. The astronomical adjustment of the Takht went even further: the whole building was set on rollers above a [hidden] pit in which horses worked a mechanism that turned the structure round through the Four Quarters, so that at every season it would be in correct correspondence with the heavens, thus making more potent the celebration of the appropriate rituals … 239
This last detail is important, as there are several accounts of the castle of the Grail revolving in order to make entry more difficult.
Pope also noted other aspects that recalled the descriptions of the castle of the Grail in Chrétien’s work and in the medieval Welsh copy of the poem included in the collection of mythic stories known as the Mabinogion under the title “Peredur.” There the hero approaches the castle via a forest, a meadow, and a lake. Later he returns and approaches from a different direction by following a river though a valley. Pope noted that the approach to the Takht from the south also passes a grove of trees leading to a lake, and that from the north one comes upon it via a meadow, and in the west by a stream and a valley. While these landscape features may be no more than coincidental, the similarities of the descriptions are intriguing. We may also recall the castle belonging to the magician Gundebald in the Historia Meriadoci (see chapter 3). Here is the description of an arid wasteland of tar, bitumen, and stones, which could certainly be recognized as a description of the desert regions that surrounded the Takht.
The placing of the Takht at Shiz is also significant. This is notably the sacred city of the magi, of whose lineage, we may recall, Prester John is ascribed in the De Adventu Patriarchae Indorum. The fact that the original foundation was Zoroastrian, which to this day has followers in India, is also not without significance. The links between Prester John and India, the Zoroastrians and India, and the history of the patriarch John, also from India, all of which are mirrored in the Grail romances, suggest that the authors of the Grail romances were aware of the existence of these connections.
An early description of the temple, written by the Persian scribe Hamdallah Mustawfi of Qazwin in the early fourteenth century, adds a further stand to the similarities between the Takht and the mystical temples we have been examining. He writes:
It [the palace] stands on the summit of the hill and it was originally founded by King Kay Khusraw the Kayanian [i.e., Chosroes II]. In this town there is a great Palace, in the court of which a spring gushes forth into a large tank that is like a small lake in size, and no boatman has been able to plumb its depths. Two main streams of water, each in power sufficient to turn a mill, continually flow away from this tank; but if they be dammed back, the water in the tank [in] no wise increases [its] level; and when the stoppage is removed the water again runs as before … being at no season more or less in volume.” 240
This immediately recalls the description of the temple built for Prester John at the instruction of St. Thomas, which was surrounded by water for most of the year, which never varied in depths from season to season until the festival celebrating the apostle fell due (December 21). The two streams are also reminiscent of the sacred rivers that fed the area around the Grail Temple. Could it even be that the idea of the dry and dead wasteland, attributed to the wounding of the Fisher King in the later romances, was a distant memory of a desert land once fed by water that somehow drained away?
The Takht itself has a long and fascinating history. It was several times described as a mirror of paradise by Islamic writers of the medieval period, thus echoing the other places described as reflecting the original presence of heaven on earth. This in itself is enough to mark out the area as being of interest to our investigation, but the presence of a whole complex of sites around the central lake and temple buildings makes it even more extraordinary.
Archeological evidence has established the Takht-e Soleyman as the most important surviving Sassanian temple complex. Known as Athur-Gushnasp and dating from the fifth century AD, it is one of only three such temples known about, and the only one to be discovered in a state that enabled it to be studied in any depth.
In his study of the site and its relation to the Grail Temple of Albrecht, Pope cited a bronze salver, now in the Berlin Museum, which dates from either a late or early post-Sasanian period.241 On this dish was inscribed, in minute detail, the image of a circular domed building surrounded by symbols of trees, elegant blossoms, and jars of water, and containing twenty-two arched panels, each framing a decorative tree. Even the elaborate system of rollers designed to make the building revolve are represented on the salver, as is the miniature replica of the building at the centre, an exact correlative to the miniature temple made to contain the Grail in Albrecht. Josef Strzygowski, an expert on Islamic and early Christian church art, offered a detailed analysis of the dish, which he concluded could only be the Takht.242 Pope also notes that “the division of the circular area into twenty-two equal units is practically unprecedented in the decorative arts and is difficult to achieve with ordinary craft methods.”
The Throne of Bilquis and the Ship of Solomon
A second site, the Takht-i-Bilquis (Throne of Bilquis), is also of great importance, both as a spiritual centre and an historical foundation. The name, of course, is that of Solomon’s wife, more familiarly known as the Queen of Sheba, and its presence here is highly significant for our argument as it establishes the connection with the biblical king and his consort, both of whom are described in the medieval Grail romances as having a significant role in the mysteries of the sacred vessel.
Midway though the Queste del Saint Grail (“Quest of the Holy Grail,” the central romance within the cycle of the Lancelot-Grail, the foremost Grail knights—Galahad, Perceval, and Bors—along with Perceval’s sister, Dindrane, go aboard a mysterious ship that is to take them to the home of the sacred vessel. On board are a mélange of sacred objects: a sword which has once belonged to the biblical king David and which was intended only for the best knight in the world (Galahad), a scabbard lacking a belt that would be woven from the hair of a virgin (Dindraine), and Solomon’s Crown, which lay upon a great bed made from timbers cut from the Edenic Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Three pillars held a canopy over this bed, and these were made also from pieces of wood from the tree. They were of three colours: white for the innocence of Adam and Eve, green for the fruitfulness of Eve when she and Adam conceived their first child, and red for the blood of Cain when he is slain by his brother Abel. All of these had been placed in the ship at the behest of Solomon himself, who had been told, in a vision, that one of his descendants would achieve a great thing in future times. Despite his great wisdom and knowledge of the stars, Solomon was unable to discover more of this, but he still longed to send a message forward in time to his descendent, showing that he had knowledge of his great deed. It was Bilquis who supplied an answer, telling him to “have a ship built of the best and most durable wood that can be found, such wood as neither water nor anything else can rot.” 243
Solomon duly commissioned the ship and had the sacred objects placed aboard. That night he dreamed that a mysterious man descended from heaven, sprinkled the ship with water, and inscribed the letters that tell of the nature of the sacred objects, then, having lain briefly on the bed, vanished. When Solomon woke he launched the ship upon the waters—waters not only of space but of time also, for it would appear next on the shores of Europe to take aboard the Grail knights and carry them to the sacred city of Sarras, where the sacred vessel resided. The ship indeed links not only eras but beliefs. As Esther Quinn notes in her illuminating essay on the legend, “it spans the gap between the Old Testament and the Arthurian records. The religious allegory has played its part in transforming the romantic tradition.” 244
The idea of a miraculous ship given as a gift to a hero, often by a mysterious woman, appears in several Arthurian romances. Solomon’s ship turns up again in an Arthurian lay written by Marie de France. This concerns the adventures of Guigemar,245 whose story is scarcely relevant to our present argument except that he is sent a mysterious ship containing a bed made by Solomon that takes him to an otherworldly realm not unlike the one described in Sone de Nansay.
In the legend of Seth we see yet another connection to Solomon and Bilquis. Not only was the original temple intended to contain the Ark of the Covenant and the Tablets of the Law, but now comes a ship that would one day carry the Grail itself, as well as its seekers, on the final journey of their quest and that already bears his own crown, the Sword of King David, and the three cuttings from the Tree of Life. Like the temple that would be based upon his own great building, it would carry the most sacred of relics, and both his name and that of his wife would be remembered at the site that became the model for the future temple of the Grail. According to another Grail tradition, Bilquis (sometimes called Sibyl or Sebile in medieval texts) gave a vessel of gold to Solomon as a wedding gift—a cup that later became enshrined in the cathedral of Valencia as a type of Grail.246
To discover the origins of this part of the story, we have to turn to the medieval idea of the history of mankind from the time of the expulsion from Eden. It has long been noted 247 that there are parallels between the Grail quest and the legend of the quest of Seth, Adam and Eve’s third child, for the Oil of Mercy. The story is found in numerous versions, of which the best known is the Cursor Mundi (“The Circuit of the World”), a hugely influential and widely copied poem written in the north of England at the beginning of the thirteenth century.
The poem sets out to describe the history of the world based on a biblical understanding, and it includes a number of legends drawn from older and chiefly lost sources, one of which tells the following story:
As Adam feels his death coming upon him, he bids his third son, Seth, to go to Paradise and bring some of the Oil of Mercy, which would sustain his life. The path leading to the garden will be apparent because, when Adam and Eve left Eden, their footprints were burned upon the grass, and no vegetation has grown there since. When he reaches the Gates of Paradise, Seth is at first barred from entering by a guardian angel and is refused the oil. However, he is subsequently granted three glimpses of Paradise. In the first he beholds a barren tree; in the second, an adder wound around the trunk; in the third, a newborn baby held at the top. He is then told that the dry tree and the serpent represent the sins of man and that the baby is Christ, who will become the Oil of Mercy. Seth is then given three seeds from the Tree of Life and on returning home, plants them in the mouth of his dead father. From these seeds grow three trees—a cedar, a cyprus, and a pine—which remain growing in the Vale of Hebron until the time of Moses. At this time the three trees are uprooted by Moses and become the wands with which he sweetens the waters of Marah and brings forth water from the rock. King David then inherits the wands, which are united to form a single staff. Later the staff is planted and grows into a tree. In his own time Solomon attempts to use it in the building of his temple, but however the tree is cut, it is always too long or too short. Recognising its miraculous power, Solomon has the tree placed in the Temple, where a woman named Maximller accidentally sits on it. The tree instantly bursts into flame, and the woman prophesies the coming of the Messiah and his death upon the Cross. As the time of the crucifixion approaches, the wood of the tree is made into a cross that can only be lifted by Jesus, since it was destined for him.248
This brings together a wide range of Christian legends, extending backwards in time to fill in gaps left by the biblical narrative. The references to Solomon are of particular interest here as they tie in with the idea that the Grail Temples are based upon the design of the original Temple of Jerusalem. It is possible to see, within the story of the ship that carried the Grail seekers and finally the sacred vessel itself, a shadow of the mighty temples built to house it. In a certain sense the ship is a floating temple, carrying sacred objects placed there by Solomon himself. However, the reference to Seth’s three glimpses into paradise and his gift of the three seeds are also significant as they make an immediate correlative to the story told in the Quest del Saint Greal and with some variations in Thomas Malory’s Morte d’Arthur concerning the three cuttings from the tree that form a canopy over the bed on which Galahad will lie.
The canopy that is suspended above the bed of Solomon by the three staves of wood from the Tree of Life recalls the ciborium covering the uncorrupted body of St. Thomas in the De Adventu. There is also reason to believe that the Cistercian writer of the Quest knew the Song of Songs, attributed to Solomon, in which are mentioned not only a bed made of cypress and ivory, tents of cedar, swords, and the king’s crown, but references to the kingdom of Galaad, which is sometimes claimed as the origin of the name Galahad. Even the story of the woman who sits upon the wood of the tree is notable—as it bursts into flames, so does the Perilous Seat (set at the table of the Grail in memory of Judas) when a man not destined to do so tries to sit in it.
Thus the vessel dreamed by Bilquis and rendered by Solomon becomes a floating temple containing the sacred relics that were to become familiar to the world through the myths of the Grail.
The Prison and the Stable
A third site, only 2.5 km west of the Throne of Solomon, is a volcanic outcrop called Zendan-i Suleiman, or the Prison of Solomon. It has the same geological formation as the Takht and its lake, but its conical summit is considerably higher. The presence of a water source at the top of Zendan was undoubtedly the principal reason for the constructions at its summit. These constructions belong to an earlier period than those of Takht-e Soleyman and are known to have had a spiritual purpose, though the exact nature of these remains uncertain. The fact that it is described as a prison cannot help reminding us of the pit into which Joseph of Arimathea was placed in various texts such as the Acta Pilate and later in Titurel.
Finally, and most significantly, is another site that bears the name of the biblical king—Tawila-i Suleiman, or the Stable of Solomon. Much has been written over the last few years concerning the apparent fascination by the Knights Templar with the so-called Stables of Solomon in Jerusalem. This large chamber, hidden beneath the foundations of the Solomonic temple, was apparently given to the Templars to stable their horses. Subsequently, rumours began to appear of excavations carried out in this space, some claimed in search of the lost treasure of the temple, more than fifty tons of gold, silver, and scrolls which vanished in AD 70 following the Roman sacking of the temple at the behest of the emperor Vespasian. More recently it has been suggested that the treasure was, in fact, the Grail. Much of this is pure speculation, a great deal without foundation of any kind, which ignores the real purpose of the large empty space below the floor of the temple. This was, in fact, intended to act as a buffer between the deeper earth and the temple above to prevent any incursions by negative forces from the lower world. It was never intended as a stable and certainly not a treasury. However, the stories have continued to be told of something hidden in Solomon’s stable.
The fact that a site known as the Stable of Solomon is within a complex of sacred buildings in Iran, linked by the name of the famous king, presents us with an intriguing possibility. If there is any truth in the persistent rumour of Templar interest in the stable, could it be that these actually refer to the complex of buildings in Iran, which also, as we saw, include a site associated with Solomon’s wife Bilquis and a temple bearing an unquestionable similarity to a medieval description of the temple of the Grail? Nor can we ignore the fact that the sacking of Solomon’s Temple was carried out at the command of Vespasian and his son Titus—both of whom we have seen to be associated with the Grail story.
The Temple of Vision
A detailed account of the archeological investigations at the Throne of Solomon is beyond the scope of this book; however, a very useful and accessible entry can be found in the online Encyclopedia Iranica.249 Some details are pertinent to our investigation, such as an extended history of buildings on the site. Interestingly, the entry mentions that the earliest level of archeology, from as early as 550 BC, shows that the designs for the oldest complex were sketched out on the ground as a master plan that was followed by the builders. This detail is so close to the description in Titurel of the temple plan sketched out on the onyx slab at the top of the mountain for Titurel and his builders to work from as to be astonishing. It seems impossible that the medieval author—or a traveller to the site itself—could have known this detail, yet it stands as an exemplar of the way in which events could remain in memory for hundreds of years.
When Arthur Upham Pope reached the site of the Takht, he knew at once that his evidence did not rest on literary evidence alone.
Here was the mountain, a dome-like extinct volcano, dramatically set apart from the surrounding terrain, with a plateau-like top, and it was ringed by a powerful, still-standing stone wall … There were remains of important buildings … testifying to the historic role of the site; here was a crystal lake in the center, and here also the flattened, smoothed-off area such as Albrecht described, and even more astonishing, a gleaming, crust-like deposit made by the mineral waters of the lake, which, particularly around the shores where it is more exposed, has taken on the appearance of onyx, with striations of white, buff, brown and other tints. These look sufficiently like onyx to justify Albrecht’s assertions that the Grail Temple stood on a bed of onyx, which formed the substance of the mountain … 250
Even if one accepted none of the patterns of similarity between the Takht and the Grail Temple, the fact that the name of the site is the Throne of Solomon and that nearby lie the Throne of Bilquis, the Prison of Solomon, and the Stable of Solomon, these extraordinary links cannot be seen as merely coincidental. We have seen how the first temple in Jerusalem became a model on which most of the subsequent Grail Temples are based; we have seen also that it was Bilquis who foresaw the coming of the Grail in the Queste del Saint Graal and who persuaded her husband to build the ship that would later carry not only the sacred relics but also the three successful Quest knights to their journey’s end in the mystical city of Sarras. The stable with its curious connection to the Grail search seems almost too perfect.
Was this place the origin of the Grail Temple? It seems possible, even probable, that Albrecht, and perhaps the author of Sone had either visited the site or talked with someone who had. Pope believed that soldiers from the army of the Roman general Heraclitus, who virtually destroyed the Takht in AD 628, could have carried descriptions of the site back to the West. Another important point is that Chosroes II had attacked Jerusalem in 614 and carried off the cross on which Christ was said to have been crucified. Heraclitus set out to get it back in 628 and, having sacked the Takht, returned it to Rome. But during the time between its theft and recovery, this sacred relic was kept in the Takht—just as The Later Titurel describes! Deep links between the Byzantine Empire, the Armenian Church, and European Christians have long been recognized and offer numerous opportunities for cross-cultural overlays and shared knowledge. The mysterious temple in a far-off land, containing miraculous relics, could have easily fed into the growing awareness of the search for the Grail. One of the oldest surviving manuscripts from Germany, the Sächsische Weltchronik (“Saxon World Chronicle”), a history of the world compiled between 1229 and 1277, mentions the Throne of Arches and even shows a miniature of Chosroes II seated on a mechanical throne in the heavens, holding a dove and a cross and looking very like later images of God the Father in Christian manuscript tradition. This almost certainly also inspired the creation of actual buildings, as we have seen.
The Church of the Grail
The desire to give substance and dimension to the Grail Temple was, as we have seen, very much in the mind of both Arnoul the Elder and his descendants at Guines and the emperor Rudolf II at Karlstein. A third building, which can be seen to owe something of its design to the work of Albrecht in The Later Titurel, is the monastic Abbey of Ettal, some 45 miles southwest of Munich in Southern Germany.251 Founded in 1330 by the emperor Ludwig (Louis) IV of Bavaria (1282–1347), it immediately garnered several myths. In one of these the emperor’s horse was seen to genuflect three times on the site of an earlier church, while in another a mysterious monk gave a statue (still extant) of the Virgin and Child to Ludwig and told him to create a home for Our Lady before vanishing. The statue was said to have been carved by angelic hands and to be made of a stone “fallen from heaven.” It thus recalls the miraculous painting of the Virgin that appeared with the church founded by Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus at Lydda. It is also strongly reminiscent of the magical stone cited in Wolfram’s Parzifal and again in Albrecht’s work, which he had previously dedicated to Ludwig’s father, Duke Ludwig II (1229–1294). Emperor Ludwig therefore must have known The Later Titurel, so that when he decided to create the abbey church at Ettal, he seems to have used the description of Albrecht’s Grail Temple as a template. Ludwig himself chose the name for the foundation: unser Frawen etal. This can be translated in a number of ways, including “pledged to Our Lady,” “sworn of Our Lady,” “the valley under the law of Our Lady,” etc.252 If we remember that the titles ascribed to the Virgin in the sixteenth-century Litany of Loretto include “Mirror of justice/seat of wisdom/spiritual vessel/vessel of honor/singular vessel of devotion/mystical rose/tower of David/tower of ivory/house of gold/Ark of the Covenant/gate of heaven,” we can see how appropriate the dedication of Ettal was.
What he created was certainly spectacular. Despite the fact that the original building was partially destroyed by fire in 1744 and restored in the Baroque style, it is still possible to make out the original Gothic design. This consisted of a twelve-sided rotunda with a choir or chapel to the east and a central pillar supporting a corbelled roof, which must have been spectacular in its day. It seems likely that the statue of the Virgin and Child was placed against the pillar, in much the same way as the Grail stood at the centre of the temple described by Albrecht. Both these forms featured rarely in German ecclesiastical architecture.
The Abbey of Ettal was dedicated to the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin and was the home to a Benedictine double monastery with an adjacent house for a group of Teutonic knights. This gave rise to some notable misconceptions on the behalf of one of the church’s first serious explorers, Hyacinth Holland, who wrote a short book about Ettal and its founder in 1860.253 The author drew attention to the Rule of the monastery, describing it as “of such a strange nature, and so incomparable with any previous monastic institutions, that one could perhaps suspect that the emperor had in mind to realise an ideal Munsalvach (sic) with its temple knights and servants of the Grail.” 254
In fact it appears that Holland had misunderstood the nature of a double monastery, which in Benedictine terms allowed for the presence of monks and nuns in adjacent buildings. Thus the description of the foundation as holding twenty monks, six widows, and twelve married knights—with a married master to rule over the knights and a married mistress to rule over the wives—seems to be a confused understanding of the double foundation and the adjacent house for the Teutonic knights.
The other legend of the church, concerning the miraculous statue, also appears to be a fiction, as Ludwig IV seems to have brought the statue from Pisa. How Ludwig perceived the foundation is less easy to understand. Possibly the best interpretation is suggested in Simon Wilson’s perceptive essay on the subject. He sees the existence of the church as symbolically intended to “entice” the Grail back to Germany, thereby restoring his country’s fortunes—a device which failed in historical terms since the Holy Roman Empire was already in the process of breaking apart.
The importance of the Abbey of Ettal, leaving aside the legends, is the way in which it gave a new dimension to the ideas underlying The Later Titurel, Sone, and the other major Grail romances—the idea that it was possible to manifest the home of the Grail and thus offer a physical destination as part of the spiritual quest. In this it was like the chapel of the Grail at Guines and the Grail chapel of Karlstein. These places were not the actual home of the Grail, which as we noted earlier remained as mysterious to medieval pilgrims and seekers as it does today, but it gave a shape and substance to the ideas expressed by the Grail writers.
This idea continued well into the nineteenth century and eventually came to the attention of Sulpiz Boisserée (1783–1854), an art historian and collector with a strong interest in antiquarian studies and the Gothic revival in architecture. Boisserée wrote the first study of the Grail Temples in 1835,255 making it clear that he saw the abbey church as based firmly on Albrecht’s work. Boisserée’s projections, based on Albrecht’s depiction of the Grail Temple, demonstrated the links between the text and its physical representation. Other German antiquarians followed in his footsteps and throughout the nineteenth century helped establish the idea that Ettal was a Grail site. The ideas first set forth by Boisserée became the foundation of a much longer and more important work, Graltemple und Paradise, by the Swedish historian and culturist Lars-Ivar Ringbom, who also recognized the importance of the Takht-e Taqdis as a source for Albrecht’s poem.256 This book remains to this day the most important account of the buildings designated as temples of the Grail.
The association of Ettal continued to exert a strong fascination over the German people. A later descendent of Ludwig IV, the so-called Swan King, Ludwig II of Bavaria (1845–1886), was enchanted with the abbey church, which he clearly saw as a Grail Temple. In a letter written when he was only 19 to his great hero, the composer Richard Wagner, he wrote:
In the distance, at the end of the valley, towers the church at Ettal … Emperor Ludwig the Bavarian is said to have built this church after the plan of the Grail Temple at Mont Salvat. 257
From this moment, the impressionable and dreamy young man wanted to build his own Grail castle, which he finally achieved in 1886, when he moved into the still-unfinished castle of Neuschwanstein (New-Swan-Stone), on the hill above the village of Hohenschwangau in southwest Bavaria. The castle was not completed until after the untimely death of Ludwig, while his idol, Wagner, never set foot there at all—though he was later to compose his ritualistic work Parzifal, based on Wolfram’s great poem utilizing the depiction of the Grail Temple as a stage set.
We may see Ludwig II’s extraordinary vision as the latest and perhaps the last attempt to replicate the temple of the Grail in the everyday world—as the same desire as that of his predecessors Ludwig IV, Albrecht, Arnoul the Elder, and even Chrétien.
When we consider any of the buildings, whether real or imaginary, we have to keep in mind that even the most ordinary churches were not as we are used to seeing them today. Instead of the mostly bare walls, they were indeed hugely decorated, the walls covered in murals showing the delights of heaven and the pains of hell, as well as scenes from the lives of biblical figures and the Passion of Jesus. They were made like this because the builders wanted to remind their congregations of the way they were supposed to live their lives, as well as what to expect afterwards. The temples of the Grail, or the various buildings created in emulation of them, were the same: the symbolism of sacred stones, patterns, carved reliefs, altars, and flying angels represented the book of life spread out before them. This is the reason that the Grail Temples existed: as guidelines for those who sought to better understand life, death, and the beyond.
The association with the stories of the Swan Knights, which we examine in Appendix 1, brings the story into yet another sphere entirely, where the Goddess of Love is seen as holding court inside a hollow mountain, surrounded by heroes and beautiful women, apparently in possession of the Grail. This was a different kind of earthly paradise, one that the church frowned upon. There are several accounts in German poetry from the twelfth to fifteenth centuries that refer to the mountain as the Grail, thus allowing Perceval, King Arthur, and others to dwell within the vessel.258 Such a twist in the matter of the Grail must have given many seekers pause for thought.259
The Divine Mirror
The contemplation of the sites near Takht-e Soleyman leads us into waters that are less frequently plumbed by Grail seekers—what we might call the Eastern Grail. Writers such as the Indian antiquarian J. C. Coyajee 260 and the French traditionalist philosopher Henry Corbin261 have long since noted the parallels that exist between the medieval understanding of the Grail and Eastern mystical ideas such as the divine drink of Soma and the mystical Cup of Jamshid, which does indeed share much of its symbolism with that of the Grail.
Corbin gave particular attention to the Sufi mystic Suhrawardi (1154–1191), who flourished at the same time as Chrétien de Troyes and Robert de Boron, thus at the time when the Grail stories first flowered in Europe. Amongst Suhrawardi’s collections of parables is one that actually refers to Kay Khosrow, otherwise known as Chosroes II, the builder of the Throne of Arches. Referring to the Cup of Jamshid, Suhrawardi describes it in terms of a mirror that enables Khosrow to contemplate not only the physical world but the invisible worlds also. This reference to the Grail as mirror (on which, he adds, the imprint of the world is inscribed) reminds one both of the mirror possessed by Prester John and that of the magician Clingchor in Parzifal. All three allow their masters to see beyond the outer world, as does the Grail itself. Corbin also drew attention to the similarity between Suhrawardi’s vision of the heavenly mirror and the moment when Galahad looks into the sacred vessel in the Quest del Saint Graal, and also in Malory’s interpretation of the scene, quoted here:262
Now at the year’s end, and the self same day after Galahad had borne the crown of gold, he arose up early and his fellows, and came to the palace, and saw to-fore them the Holy Vessel, and a man kneeling on his knees in likeness of a bishop, that had about him a great fellowship of angels, as it had been Jesu Christ himself; and then he arose and began a mass of Our Lady. And when he came to the sacrament of the mass, and had done, anon he called Galahad, and said to him: Come forth the servant of Jesu Christ, and thou shalt see that thou hast much desired to see. And then he began to tremble right hard when the deadly flesh began to behold the spiritual things. Then he held up his hands toward heaven and said: Lord, I thank thee, for now I see that that hath been my desire many a day. Now, blessed Lord, would I not longer live, if it might please thee, Lord.263
In the mirror of the Grail, Galahad sees the truth of all things and can no longer sustain his fleshly existence.
The existence of such concepts in the culture that also produced the Takht and its familial sites is fascinating. While we would not suggest that the origin of the Grail derives from Eastern mysticism, there is no escaping the fact that there are striking parallels between the two very different and endlessly conflicted worlds. The Grail can, perhaps, be seen as a kind of beacon suggesting the possibility of reconciliation between East and West, where it came into focus for both hemispheres’ art at much the same time. After all, according to Albrecht, the Grail resides with Prester John, king over Far Eastern lands, while Robert de Boron states in his Joseph that “even as the world goes forward, diminishing every day, it is needful that all this people should go towards the west.” 264
Certainly the imagery of the Grail Temples points to a profound awareness of the similarities that exist between all humans, rather than to the divisions and contradictions that seem to speak more loudly than any idea of polarity or union. For this reason alone we can still learn from them and their stories.
238. In particular, Kahane, The Krater and the Grail; von Schroeder and Jacob, The Grail; and Coyajee, “The Legend of the Holy Grail.”
239. Pope, “Persia and the Grail.” See plate 4 for a map of the Takht-e Soleyman site after D. Wilber, who helped survey and record the site during Pope’s expedition.
240. Mustawfi Hamdallah, The Geographical Part of the Nuzhat al-Qulib, translated by Guy Le Strange, 2 vols. (Brill/Luzac, 1915–19).
241. The Art Bulletin XV (1933), 10. Also featured in Ringbom, Graltempel und Paradies.
242. In a lecture given at the Second International Congress of Persian Art in London in 1931. See also Josef Strzygowski, Origin of Christian Church Art: New Facts and Principles of Research (Oxford University Press, 1917). See plate 3 for a projection of the Takht-e Soleyman based on a bronze salver from the time of Khosrow II (after Ringbom).
243. Matarasso, The Quest of the Holy Grail, 232.
244. Quinn, The Quest of Seth for the Oil of Life, 198.
245. Glyn S. Burgess and Keith Busby, translators, The Lais of Marie de France (Penguin Books, 2003).
246. Margarita Torres Sevilla and Jose Miguel Ortega del Rio, Kings of the Grail: Tracing the Historic Journey of the Holy Grail from Jerusalem to Spain (Michael O’Mara, 2015).
247. Quinn, The Quest of Seth for the Oil of Life.
248. Ibid.
249. http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/takt-e-solayman
250. Pope, “Persia and the Grail.”
251. See Wilson, “The Grail Utopia in Southern Germany.” I owe much to this article for the exposition of the Church of Ettal.
252. Ibid., 152–153.
253. H. Holland, Ludwig der Bayer und sein Stift zu Ettal (Munchen: August Rohsold, 1860).
254. Wilson, “The Grail Utopia in Southern Germany,” 144.
255. “Ueber die Beschreibung des Tempels des heiligen Grales in dem Heldengedicht Titurel Kap. III” in Abhandlungen der philosophisch-phillogischen Classe der Konglich Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenchaften, 307–92 (translated in the appendix to this book).
256. Ringbom, Graltempel und Paradies. (An English translation is expected.)
257. Wilson, “The Grail Utopia in Southern Germany.”
258. Barto, Tannhauser and the Mountain of Venus.
259. Prester John and the Mountain of Venus by J. Matthews (forthcoming).
260. Coyajee, “The Legend of the Holy Grail.”
261. Carey, “Henry Corbin and the Secret of the Grail.”
262. Carey, “Henry Corbin and the Secret of the Grail,” 175–176.
263. Malory, Le Morte d’Arthur, book 17, ch. xix.
264. Translated by John Carey in “Henry Corbin and the Secret of the Grail.”