given as the earliest date of this part of the legend. The captivity of Joseph arises probably from a confusion between him and Josephus. There is no real connection between the Joseph legend and that of the Grail. Wolfram's Templeisen agree closely with the Templars, one of the main charges against whom was their alleged worship of a head from which they expected riches and victuals, and to which they ascribed the power of making trees and flowers to bloom.[1]
San Marte's translation of Wolfram was immediately (1842) followed by Simrock's, whose notes are mainly directed against his predecessor's views on the origin and development of the Grail legend. The existence of Kiot is contested; the differentia between Wolfram and Chrestien are unknown to Provencal, but familiar to German, poetry. The Grail myth in its oldest form is connected with John the Baptist. Thus in the Mabinogi the Grail is represented by a head in a platter; the head the Templars were accused of worshipping has probably the same origin; the Genoese preserved the Sacro Catino, identified by them with the Grail, in the chapel of St. John the Baptist; Chrestien mentions with especial significance, St. John's Eve (Midsummer Eve). The head of St. John the Baptist, found, according to the legend, in the fourth century, was carried later to Constantinople, where in the eleventh century it is apparently used to keep an emperor from dying (even as of the Grail, it is told, no one could die the day he saw it). If Wolfram cuts out the references to the Baptist, en revanche he brings Prester John into the story. The essential element in the Grail is the blood in the bowl, symbol of creative power as is the Baptist's head, both being referable to the summer equinox. Associated with John the Baptist is Herodias, who takes the place of an old Germanic goddess, Abundia, as John does of Odin or Baldur.[2] The essence of the myth is the reproductive power of the blood of the slain god (Odin-Hackelberend, Baldur,
- ↑ It is remarkable, considering the scanty material at his disposal, how accurate Schulz' analysis is, and how correct much of his argumentation.
- ↑ Wagner has admirably utilised this hint of Simrock's in his Parsifal, when his Kundry (the loathly damsel of Chrestien and the Mabinogi) is Herodias. Cf. infra, Ch. X.
