The Grail also played different roles in the various stories where it featured. In the story of Lancelot (as in "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade") it has miraculous healing and life-preserving properties and cures Gawain of a wound inflicted by a magic lance.
In others it is the symbol of God's grace, available to all but attained only by the spiritually pure, and so the hero must prove himself worthy to be in its presence. In the Arthurian cycle, the Knight who embodies these qualities is Galahad, son of Lancelot and of the Grail-bearer Elaine.
The medieval texts also speak about mysterious secrets connected to the Grail which were revealed to a questing knight only after he managed to repair a broken sword. These secrets were probably references to the mysteries surrounding the sacrament of Holy Communion, especially when one considers that the Church took over these romance figures and events in order to be able to control the knightly class and to promote Christian doctrines.
However, these allusions to secrets and mysteries triggered off many debates and theories as to the nature and whereabouts of the Grail.
Although the stories were mainly a French, English and German phenomenon, Spain claimed to have its fair share of Grail cups in Valencia and Catalonia. Another "grail" was found at the beginning of the 20th century at Bride's Well in Glastonbury and another in Wales; in the 1930s two more were found in Palestine. As readers of "The Da Vinci Code" know well enough, there are still rumors that at this very moment the Grail, whatever it may be, is buried in a secret vault beneath Rosslyn Chapel in the South of Edinburgh, Scotland.
During the 19th century, a renewed interest in the legends of King Arthur inspired artistic circles. Chivalric notions appealed to the Victorian mind that idealized the Middle Ages. Lord Alfred Tennyson wrote his Arthurian cycle "The Idylls of the King", Wagner his opera "Parsifal", and the Grail quest provided the subject matter for many paintings by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Edward Burne-Jones and other members of the Pre-Raphaelite brotherhood.
Yet, up to the end of the 19th century, the Grail retained its purely religious symbolism. It was towards the beginning of the 20th century that the idea of some sort of secret knowledge seeped in.
This was a time when secret societies such as the Rosicrucians, although founded centuries before, became a vogue and many off-shoots and new groups were created in Europe. Some members of these societies, such as A. E. Waite, had a genuine personal interest in the Grail even though it did not feature directly in their rituals. Waite found a connection between the Grail and symbols used in tarot cards. He also believed that there was a secret tradition within Christianity that was centred round the Grail. He called this tradition "The Hidden Church of the Holy Grail".
Throughout the 20th century, the Grail has featured in philosophy, neo-paganism, New Age beliefs, and pop culture, not to mention film. It has been the subject of some of the most diverse movies ever made: "Parsifal", one of the first silents; something completely different: "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" (1975); and one of the best-loved adventure stories "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade" (1989). It has appeared in some of the century's most influential poetry, such as "The Wasteland" by T.S. Eliot. It has been the focus of research that ranges from cultural anthropology such as Jesse Weston's "From Ritual to Romance" (1920) to the purely theoretical and controversial such as Graham Hancock's "The Sign and the Seal", Noel Currer-Briggs' "The Shroud and the Grail" (1987) and "Holy Blood, Holy Grail" (1982) by Baigent, Leigh and Lincoln.
It was this last study that revived the Templar-Grail connection theory in a serious way. The first mention of this theory dates back to the 18th century and the German Freemason Lessing. According to Baigent et al., the Grail belonged to the Cathars and the Templars were its custodians. They also connect the Templars to the "Priory of Sion" and to the supposed sacred bloodline descended from Jesus and Mary Magdalene. However, many of the theories in the book have been refuted by their very authors.
Yet the mystery of the Grail remains. Is it the ornate cup or bowl studded with precious stones described in the medieval romances? Or is it the simple carpenter's cup Indiana Jones picks up in "The Last Crusade"? Or isn't it a literal cup after all? Mary Magdalene's remains? The casket which contained the shroud? Or the quest for inner truth and spiritual purity? Maybe, as Captain Kathryn Janeway tells Seven of Nine in Star Trek: Voyager, it is a symbol of humanity's quest for perfection. If that's the case, then let the search go on.
