The achieving of the Grail
Three knights reach the vessel. One dies of it, one becomes a hermit, and one goes home to tell them.
Galahad, Percival and Bors come at last to Corbenic, and to the chamber where the Grail is kept, and to a table of silver with the vessel on it.
What follows is a Mass. Nine knights come from three countries; a bishop is lifted from a tomb; and Malory's account is careful and strange — a figure like a child, brighter than fire, entering the bread; then a man appearing out of the vessel with the marks of the Passion on him, who feeds them each with his own hands.
Galahad is then told to take the Grail to the city of Sarras, and on the way to anoint the Maimed King with the blood of the spear, which he does, and Pelles is healed.
At Sarras, Galahad is made king. A year later, at the altar, he sees into the vessel — and what he says is that he has seen what tongue cannot tell and heart cannot think, and he asks to be allowed to die. He is granted it. A hand comes down and takes the Grail and the spear up to heaven, and Malory says plainly that since then there was never a man who could say he had seen it.
Percival goes into a hermitage and dies inside two years.
Bors comes home alone.
That last fact is the one worth holding on to. The three men who succeed are removed from the world — two dead, one holy — and the only one who returns is the one who was merely good: not a virgin, not faultless, a man who had made a hard choice badly rewarded. He rides back to a court he knows is doomed, tells them what happened, and stays.
The quest succeeds and the world is worse off. Two of the three best men are gone, the vessel is withdrawn permanently, and the fellowship that rode out at a hundred and fifty is not a fellowship any more.
In the sources
- MaloryEnglish · c. 1415–1471
achieved, and taken away
The vessel goes up to heaven and is never seen again. Two of the three who reached it die; the survivor is the ordinary one.
“ye have nigh slain me with the avow and promise that ye have made; for through you ye have bereft me the fairest fellowship and the truest of knighthood that ever were seen together in any realm of the world”
Le Morte d'Arthur, XIII.vii · read in place - The Grail RomancesFrench romance · c. 1200–1230
the purge completed
The Queste's logic followed through: the secular order is sorted, the worthy are removed from the world, and the rest go home.
“no one ought to enter upon such a lofty service before being cleansed and purged of all villainy and mortal sins. This Quest is not a quest for earthly things, but is to be the search for the deep secrets and confidences of Our Lord”
The Quest of the Holy Grail, Quest of the Holy Grail - WolframGerman · c. 1170–1220
a Grail you can live with
Wolfram's hero becomes the Grail King and keeps a wife and a kingdom. Nobody has to die of it, and it does not leave the world.
“Anfortas, the gentle monarch, who was courteous as he was bold”
Parzival, Parzival (Anfortas) · read in place - The VulgateFrench romance · c. 1215–1235
the vessel's genealogy closed
The cycle's Grail has come from Joseph of Arimathea to Britain and back to the East, and its story ends by being withdrawn from the world entirely.
“Ah, sword, you are the thing I prized most except for the Holy Vessel called the Grail”
Lancelot-Grail (the Vulgate Cycle), [539]
Wolfram's Grail hero is crowned and lives. Malory's asks to die and is granted it, and the vessel leaves the world. One tradition thinks the sacred can be inhabited; the other thinks it can only be visited.