Political Grail: On Theological Fictionality

Does the invention of the Grail legend in France at the end of the twelfth century have anything in common with a phenomenon that has, in our own day, boldly, and often successfully, challenged basic values that have governed social, political and religious institutions in the West since the Enlightenment? I mean of course the rise of religious fundamentalism we are witnessing within the major monotheistic communities—Islam, Judaism, and Christianity. At first blush, the two would seem to have little in common.

Dissimilarity, however, is no bar to keeping company. In matters of religious orthodoxy, dissimilarity may be less absolute than adherents believe. What may appear disparate at one level—such as the difference between foundational texts of a religion and vernacular romance—may, on closer examination, turn out to be close philosophical allies. The vernacular work, for example, can inflect fundamental religious tenets with the signature of a given historical context. Foundational religious works are meant to transcend time and place. And yet the full force of revelation must disclose itself parochially, to individuals living in real time. All of which suggests that the separation between the religious and the secular that we have come to take for granted in the West is of recent origin and has shallow roots.

Medieval Christianity, for example, excelled in devising parascriptural tales that not only translated Scripture into contemporary terms, but also into the politics of everyday life. Such works ranged from complex theological treatises to sermons, morality plays, and other forms of religious drama. In this category, one thinks of the Jeu d'Adam, a liturgical play in Old French that casts the Fall as a dysfunctional family drama. Against stark scenes of mayhem and murder, the play concludes with a procession of Old Testament prophets announcing the Messiah with his promise of redemption.

While the many works of this kind do indeed render the Christian message in a contemporary idiom, they do not make an explicit link between the sacred past, in illo tempore, and contemporary France (or Europe). That changed in the late twelfth century with the invention of a legend that set out to reveal France as the designated container of the most sacred relics of Christ's Passion. More somberly, the legend also raised the specter of purification and exclusion, where sacred law defines "the land" as a privileged space reserved for believers. Not coincidentally, at the moment when this legend emerges, another, darker myth begins to circulate and this, too, features ritual blood: the rise and spread of the Jewish blood libel.

That legend, of course, is the Grail myth, elaborated by Robert de Boron in two octosyllabic romances, Joseph d'Arimathie and Merlin, written at the end of the twelfth or the beginning of the thirteenth century. More than other vernacular works from the turn of the century, these romans trace a path between doctrinal assertion and invention, a mode that I call "theological fictionality," and will elaborate below. Suffice it to say here that the Grail legend captures and exploits aspects of monotheism crystallized as fables of divine election typical of religious fundamentalism. This bent is not proprietary to medieval Christians—although the Crusades may have stimulated it more than may be observed in the two other monotheisms of the period. This may well arise from the consciousness—even marked anxiety—of popular Christianity in the face of perceived encroachment from the other religions. This is true to such an extent that we cannot comprehend the startling boldness of the Grail invention without insight into rival claims for the Holy Land.

Perhaps these interests rankled the more bitterly because of common denominators between otherwise heterodox faiths. One thinks for example of such factors as divine origins for key cult figures; access to the deity by prophets, and strict protocols governing life style and codes of conduct for the faithful. Such identitarian rules also define boundaries of exclusion for so-called infidels. There are also elaborate mythic modes that spawn patterns of narrative repetition. Not uncommon are claims of religious dominance that spilled over into secular politics.

Most strikingly, the three major...