Holy Grail
Scholarly hypotheses

Scholars have long speculated on the origins of the Holy Grail before Chrétien, suggesting that it may contain elements of the trope of magical cauldrons from Celtic mythology and later Welsh mythology, combined with Christian legend surrounding the Eucharist, the latter found in Eastern Christian sources, conceivably in that of the Byzantine Mass, or even Persian sources. The view that the "origin" of the Grail legend should be seen as deriving from Celtic mythology was championed by Roger Sherman Loomis, Alfred Nutt, and Jessie Weston. Loomis traced a number of parallels between medieval Welsh literature and Irish material, and the Grail romances, including similarities between the Mabinogion ' s Bran the Blessed and the Arthurian Fisher King, and between Bran's life-restoring cauldron and the Grail.

The opposing view dismissed the "Celtic" connections as spurious, and interpreted the legend as essentially Christian in origin. Joseph Goering identified sources for Grail imagery in 12th-century wall paintings from churches in the Catalan Pyrenees (now mostly moved to the Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya), which present unique iconic images of the Virgin Mary holding a bowl that radiates tongues of fire, images that predate the first literary account by Chrétien de Troyes. Goering argues that they were the original inspiration for the Grail legend.

Psychologists Emma Jung and Marie-Louise von Franz used analytical psychology to interpret the Grail as a series of symbols in their book The Grail Legend. They directly expanded on interpretations by Carl Jung, which were later invoked by Joseph Campbell. Philosopher Henry Corbin, a member of the Eranos circle founded by Jung, also commented on the esoteric significance of the grail, relating it to the Iranian Islamic symbols that he studied.

Richard Barber (2004) argued that the Grail legend is connected to the introduction of "more ceremony and mysticism" surrounding the sacrament of the Eucharist in the high medieval period, proposing that the first Grail stories may have been connected to the "renewal in this traditional sacrament". Daniel Scavone (1999, 2003) has argued that the "Grail" originally referred to the Image of Edessa. Goulven Peron (2016) suggested that the Holy Grail may reflect the horn of the river-god Achelous, as described by Ovid in the Metamorphoses.
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