The DISCOVERY of the GRAIL
PRICE : £ 15.99
by ANDREW SINCLAIR

Hardback 307 pages b&w illustrations ,16.99 reduced to ,15.99

He spoke the blessed words, So sweet and precious, Gracious and merciful, That are rightly called and named The secret of the Grail

Robert de Boron in Joseph of Arimathea

"The story of the Grail has never been told in full. The quest for that vessel which held the blood of Christ has continued for 800 years. The idea of the holy cup dated from pagan sacrifices in Babylon and Greece, the Nordic peoples and the Celts. In the early Middle Ages through the legends of King Arthur, it became the search both for the ideal and the real. One family inherited from the Byzantines and the Knights Templar the precious containers of the Holy Shroud and the Holy veil, while the first crusaders claimed to find the Holy Lance and the Holy Cross. All of these were stained with the blood of Jesus, and at that time, the claims that relics were divine were thought to be facts.

"Just as Malory's Morte d'Arthur enshrined the Grail Legend, rivalling the Bible among the first books to be printed by Caxton, Protestantism and puritanism suppressed the symbol of the Grail, although some Grail objects still existed in Britain and Europe. Through the Rosicrucian Order and the novels of Sir Walter Scott, the concept of chivalry and the Grail began to flourish again in Britain and the United States of America. The need to justify the British dominions turned soldiers into crusaders and the search for imperial power into a quest for grace. Queen Victoria created 2,000 Knights of the Empire, although the massacres of the First World War put an end to any idea of chivalry, and the search for the Grail became perverted into a minor cult of the Nazi régime. There still existed Grail cups in Germany and France and England and Wales and Scotland and Ireland. There were also Grail chapels in Scotland and Europe, as well as in literature and opera from Malory to Lord Tennyson and Richard Wagner.

In many ways, the legend of the Grail remains the ultimate legend of Western Europe, the search for perfection and paradise. And these are the facts of the case, in this book for the first time. If you look for the Grail, here is your guide."
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