Brown cover

Justin E. Griffin

The Grail Procession: the Legend, the Artifacts, and the Possible Sources of the Story

(Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2004). 188 pp. $35.00. ISBN 0786419393.

Justin E. Griffin, a network technology specialist at the University of Tennessee, has written a book that examines the historical veracity of the "Grail Hallows," four sacred artifacts tied to the life and death of Jesus Christ: the Holy Grail, the Holy Lance, the sword that was used to behead John the Baptist, and the bowl from the Last Supper. For the task he uses extraneous evidence left out of his first book, The Holy Grail: the Legend, the History, the Evidence (McFarland, 2001). The facts and legends surrounding the Hallows are purported to uphold the general theory that the blood of Jesus Christ was indeed taken west by Joseph of Arimathea after His crucifixion. Each of the fourteen chapters guides the reader along the history of the Hallows, periodically pausing to introduce related topics such as the Pelagian heresy and the Knights Templar. For each topic Griffin connects legends and missing artifacts to the Hallows itself. His book being intended for a popular audience, there is an understandable absence of scholarly notations. His conclusion is stated clearly: the Grail Hallows "did, in fact, exist as archaeological relics" (177).

Griffin should be applauded, at least, for attempting to justify his belief in the veracity of classical and medieval legends. In Chapter Fourteen he states, "the point is, to investigate a "legend" is far from an act of sheer folly. It is–and should ever be considered as–a valid study in, and of, history" (169-70). Griffin thus bases his analysis on the position that the Grail stories (most of which postdate the death of Christ by at least a millennium) are equal in merit to studied historical texts. The approach appears to presume that any surviving evidence contains at least a kernel of historical truth, so what follows is a multi-faceted approach to the Grail Hallows in which artistic, historical, and literary documents and artifacts are given equal weight. Griffin's elevation of the legends is unpersuasive, however, because there is little critical analysis of which to speak. His lack of textual study is betrayed by numerous block quotations from secondary authors (15, 18, 20, 40, 46, etc.) and an absence of any historiographical discussion. And although he does probe into the documents' subtexts on occasion, he is silent on issues of credibility and generally accepts each source at its face value.

Griffin's propensity for literal interpretation allows him to draw conclusions that most historians would reject at first glance. For example, he employs the thirteenth-century Prose Merlin to prove the connection between the Grail and the Cathars. The argument proceeds thusly: a certain Blaise transcribed Merlin's Grail story in a fifth century book (now missing); Blaise was familiar with the excommunication of Pelagius, so his book formed part of the Pelagian tradition; finally, because the Cathars were influenced by Pelagian ideas, Blaise's book must have been a part of their canon. Griffin then reveals the full implication: Blaise's book influenced the Cathar's Tarot-based sourcebook (also missing) used to create pictorial La Folie Perceval; therefore, Tarot cards constitute an accurate source on information about the Grail Hallows (112-14). Finally, Griffin offers several images of Tarot cards (now accurate pieces of evidence) to prove various points about the Grail Hallows. That the Prose Merlin, written so long after the fact, even constitutes a valid piece of historical evidence is but the first assumption in a long series of unsubstantiated leaps and bounds through the past.

There is a multitude of factual errors in this book. The Profession of Faith attributed to the Council of Nicaea in 325 is actually the Constantinople version from 381, and the Avignon Papacy and the Great Schism are combined into a single event dated to 1305-1416 (39). The timeline in the Appendix is very problematic: Constantine did not "become[s] emperor" at Milvian Bridge, and he did not make Christianity the "official religion" of the Empire (180); Charlemagne did not "crown himself" emperor in 800; the tip of the Holy Lance was discovered not in Acre but in Antioch (182); and King Arthur's death in 552 is not a historical fact at all (181). Photographs of Roman-era swords and armor are not artifacts but replicas produced by Atlanta Cutlery (163-4). The date provided in the bibliography for The Catholic Encyclopedia is 2003, which is actually the copyright date for the 1917 version of the online encyclopedia at www.newadvent.org.

A few old prejudices emerge in the text as well. Griffin perpetuates the Flat Earth myth (23) and calls the Middle Ages "a time of chaos and anarchy," while Renaissance man "create[d] our modern and scientific society" (3-4). These marks of condescension are familiar enough to medievalists and ultimately serve only to undermine respect for the very period on which Griffin is publishing. Remarks such as these, when combined with the factual errors and lack of analysis, render his otherwise interesting discussion of the Grail Hallows somewhat immaterial.

Griffin is onto something here, and it may very well be that the legends tell us something of the Grail Hallows, but in the end those connections still remain suppositions, not substantiated historical facts. This book will interest those readers who are fascinated by the mystery and intrigue surrounding the Holy Grail, but it has little to offer professional scholars of pre-modern Europe.

John D. Hosler

Mogan State University, Baltimore <[email protected]>

Page Added: June 2005