Holy Grail Theories: Sang Real, Cathar Heresy and Galahad's Mission

blood genealogy that from the time of Jesus Christ would have been passed down to our days and that today would be the true heir to the throne of France. This would be the secret of the sang Real. The hypothesis is absurd not for a matter of bigotry (that is, because Jesus Christ cannot have had children before baptism or who knows what) but because the question in itself makes no sense: a physical bloodline is confused with a spiritual bloodline. It is the old theme of the son of the slave and son of the free woman: "The Bible says that Abraham had two sons: one born from Hagar - a slave - and the other from Sarah, his wife, who was free. The son he had from the slave was the fruit of human will; the son he had from the free woman was instead the fruit of God's promise." You have loved me secretly and I have loved you, you must not doubt it. Our love will be revealed and everyone will be able to know it; but it will cause grave harm to the wicked Jews, those unbelievers. You will be entrusted with the symbol of my death and you will be its guardian; and after you, those to whom you entrust it must guard it." Joseph of Arimathea, the ancestor of this royalty, was not the son of Jesus Christ, nor was Hebron the son of either Jesus or Joseph of Arimathea, just as Perceval was not, while the Gospel of John says that Joseph of Arimathea was a secret disciple of the Lord. CATHAR-HERETICAL THEORY: More interesting, also subject to numerous deviations and speculations, is the Cathar theory of the Grail. This theory, more or less accentuated depending on the authors, associates the writing of the Grail romances with the Cathar sect. It begins with a medieval book: the "New Titurel" of 1270 and for a long time attributed to Von Eschenbach. This text speaks of the Grail Castle established in MontSalvatsche in Galicia. This indication is then taken up by Wagner in Parzival where in the libretto it is written that the Grail castle is set in a region of the northern mountain of Gothic Spain. To put it simply, after some time the idea of a Pyrenean Grail closely connected to the Cathar tradition began to spread more and more (also through the work of the scholar Otto Rahn - known for later joining the SS and mysteriously disappearing - and Roché). In these studies there may be something good and interesting, the reference to a secret tradition, with Gnostic contents, certainly of Eastern origins, but it has been demonstrated by contemporary philology that the Grail romances are very far from Cathar heresy. One among all is the sacrament of the mass that the Cathars did not practice. If the Cathars were well regarded for their ascetic lifestyle by the Cistercians and by Clairvaux himself, we must nevertheless clearly distinguish Cathar heresy from Christian orthodoxy and underline the fact that the Grail romancers, despite having esoteric elements, are essentially Christian and fully within orthodoxy. The Vulgate draws more than all from Cistercian mysticism and that of Saint Bernard. It is the most declaredly allegorical book and from a certain point of view the most didactic. Every encounter, every action has a commentary and exegesis inserted directly into the text often interpreted in a moral sense and sometimes mystical. GRAIL LITURGY: the "holy Grail" is placed on a table towards which descends, carried by four angels, Josephés, first bishop of Christianity: the angels also carry other objects including the bleeding Lance, whose drops fall into the sacred Vessel. Josephés thus celebrates a true liturgy. At first he extracts a host from the Grail: from heaven then descends "a figure similar to a child, with a face red and burning like fire," which enters the bread and transforms it into human figure. Then Josephés disappears, and from the Vessel comes "a completely naked man, with bleeding hands, feet and body," who after having addressed some words to Galahad and the other knights present personally distributes communion to everyone. GALAHAD NEW MESSIAH: Galahad is called in some way to complete the mission of Jesus Christ on earth. "Just as error and folly were dispelled with His coming" explains another hermit to Galahad himself "and the truth manifested itself clearly, in the same way Our Lord has chosen you among all knights to send you to foreign lands with the task of putting an end to the grievous adventures and explaining why they happened." GALAHAD'S BLOODLINE: The events of the Grail are substantially linked to the vicissitudes of the two lineages of Galahad's parents: the patrilineal one from which Lancelot descends, a royal lineage that converted to Christianity at the time of Joseph of Arimathea and that spread the New Law in the West, and that of the guardian kings of the Grail, whose ancestor is Joseph of Arimathea and from whom descends the mother of the Good Knight, daughter of King Pellés. In Galahad moreover, thanks to his paternal grandmother, flows the blood of the Davidic lineage, the same as Christ's. TERRESTRIAL AND CELESTIAL KNIGHTHOOD: (De Laude Novae militiae) "Now I will tell you the meaning of the tournament. A short time ago, on the day of Pentecost, the earthly knights and the heavenly knights together began a tournament, that is, together they undertook the Quest. The knights stained by mortal sin are the earthly knights, while the heavenly ones are the true knights, the virtuous men who have never been defiled by sin: together therefore they began the Quest of the Holy Grail, that is, the tournament. The earthly knights, with earth in their eyes and heart, wore black armor, a suitable color