April 3, 1898
Last night I experienced a vision. I
was in my study, preparing a gloss of Wolfram von Eschenbach’s Parsifal for
professor Zeiler’s vernacular lit. seminar. I was sipping claret and a
half-filled glass sat before me on my desk. I had reached the place in the
narrative where Perceval, the holy innocent first beholds
“a thing called the Grail,
which passes all
earthly perfection”
- when all at once the room seemed to grow
brighter. At first I thought it was a surge in the gas line; then I remembered
that at Anna’s insistence we were living in a modern building, lit by
electricity.
It was my wine glass that was glowing –
shining with a light more incandescent than a dozen electric bulbs. And then
before my eyes (and I had not drunk to excess), the vessel rose from the table
and began to flicker. One moment it shone like the full moon and seemed to have a row of pearls about its
rim; then in the blink of an eye it turned to tarnished metal and in place of
the pearls appeared writing; in the next instant it looked to be made of wood.
And the room was filled with a voice that roared like a tornado and yet
whispered like a lover’s secret; (Grail Vision) and it said “Henry Jones, as knights of old
sought this treasure, so shall you!”
and then – the entire incident could not
have lasted ten seconds – the room was silent and my glass was a glass once
more.
Now,
I am not a religious man nor I am given to belief in “signs and wonders” But I
cannot deny what my eyes saw, nor what I heard with my own ears, There is no
question in my heart that I have received a calling. I have been sent upon a
quest. I, Henry Jones, have been granted an opportunity to find that prize of
the centuries, that shining object of man’s spiritual yearning since the time of
King Arthur – the Holy Grail.
From
this day I devote my life, my fortune and my scholarly efforts to the fulfilment of this awesome commission.
I shall find the Holy Grail if it takes me a lifetime, and this book shall be
the record of my quest
Would
that I prove worthy!
Western, Massachusetts
August 24, 1900
In
a sleeping car aboard the Lakes Flyer, returning home from the conference of
the Association of American Medievalists. I am anxious to be home with my wife
and my infant son. Never again will I be such a naîf as to believe that a
document certifying one as a doctor of
something-or-other represents an automatic conferral of dignity and respect.
My
conference paper was greeted with embarrassment, scepticism and ridicule. My
colleagues are unanimous in their belief that the Holy Grail is a fairy tale;
that I would better serve scholarship by studying the inventories manorial
states or the effects of the Black Death on the development of cities – worthy
subjects, I suppose, if one wishes to be an academic drudge, if one possesses
no imagination, no inner life, no… vision. But I am heartened by the knowledge
that Schliemann was likewise mocked when he set out to find the ruins of Troy.
Toujours L’audace!
What
poses me more of an obstacle than the scepticism of colleagues is the sparse
and contradictory nature of existing accounts of the Grail. There is no
certainty as to what it looks like or even what it is. The primary legend, of
course has it as a wine cup – the cup used by Christ at the Last Supper, in
which Joseph of Arimathea caught his blood when he was crucified. Yet the word
grail or graal could mean “a wide-mouthed shallow vessel” – not a cup but a
bowl. In some accounts it is not a vessel at all, but a stone.
(Crucifiction mandala) Indeed, Wolfram
calls it Lapsit Excellis, by which he may mean Lapis ex coelis (stone from
heaven) or perhaps Lapis Exilis, the “philosopher’s stone” of the alchemists,
by which all things are possible.
Chretien
de Troyes (late 12th Century) is the earliest author to use the word
“grail”. Chretien’s Grail is “of pure gold and richly set with precious
stones”. From it streamed such pure light that “the luster of candles was
dimmed”.
Wolfram
von Eschenbach, a generation later, describes it as a stone fallen from heaven,
carried on a piece of green silk. Wolfram maintains he heard the legend from a
minstrel named kyot or Gyot; who found it in Spain in a book by a Jewish
astrologer, written in a “heathen tongue” (probably Arabic or Hebrew). Robert
the Boron and other 14th century writers offer no specific
description but clearly have it as a cup, not a bowl. They tell us that it
appeared in a vision to King Arthur and his knights, covered with a cloth of
white velvet It seemed to “glow with its own light”. It have off “a pleasing
fragrance”. And dispensed food to the company.
Sir
Thomas Malory, a century later, speaks of the vision but the white cloth is
described as silk, not velvet. Maddeningly, Sir Thomas offers no description
either; but maintains that Sir Galahad found the grail on a silver table,
contained in a chest covered with precious stones.
Such a bundle
of contradictions!
Such an
abundance of confusion!
I have underlined the specific elements of
the description that I believe are most pertinent.
The seeds I planted on my European
journey this summer are beginning to bear fruit; received today a most
interesting letter from Marcus Brody, a young scholar I met at Oxford. He informs me that the abbey of Cantaney on the
coast of Brittany is in possession of some old Irish manuscripts, one of which
is said to refer to the Grail, and as a genuine
object, not a legend. I cannot wait to
return next year to confirm!
At last I feel that my Quest has truly
begun. When I think of the single minded dedication of the knights of King
Arthur’s court, who seem to have interrupted their own pursuit of the Grail
only to slay the occasional dragon or to rescue a castle full of maidens now
and then, it is plain that not one among the lot of them was ever troubled with
the necessities of supporting a wife and young son.
To be fair, I have no dragons to
contend with on my quest only the
occasional snake. Right now Junior is sulking in his room, to which he has been
banished after bringing home a rather large specimen, which somehow found
its way into my desk drawer. He is
quite an intrepid child when not hunting rodents in the cellar or running
with the Indian children from the reservation, he is usually finding some
trouble to get into. Yet he is smart as
a whip already he can count to twenty in
Latin and Greek ( and swear resoundingly in Navaho) and I am confident that I can make a scholar
of him.
Auberge
d’Ecume
Cantaney,
France
July 8,1906
Brody was right. The abbey here is a
treasure trove. Finding the item in question took some digging, but with such
results! The Grail is genuine, and
before on this very afternoon was proof; a fragment of verse written by a
survivor of the Vikings sack of the monastery of Iona. The Grail was actually
in the possession of that holy community for three centuries after the time of
King Arthur, brought there by Galahad after Saxon raids and Mordred’s treachery
had destroyed Camelot.
But after then, Where? Could the
Vikings have taken it to Norway? Might they have lost or discarded in one of
their subsequent raids? They roved as far east as Russia and as far south as
Africa.
I dare not
believe that it was lost at sea!
Fragment in
Old Irish found in abbey of Cantaney, Brittany, 7/8/06, attributed to survivor
of the sack of Iona by the Vikings in the ninth century. Obvious Anglo Saxon
influence, but parchment, ink and style of illumination seem to indicate
authenticity.
Their ships like sharks, like shades of Satan,
Rumbled like
whales that walked on water:
Their thirst
axes, slaked on our blood,
Ran with red
in the endless night.
And the holy
books they set to the torch,
Throwing words
and manuscript alike on the flame:
The word and
the flesh to perish together..
…the Cup of Our Lord
Carven of wood
from the tree of peace
On slaver of
silver, on samite of emerald,
Borne to our
house by Galhaut the Pure
In the days of
Arthur, when fair Logres fell,
This holiest
of relics they ravished away to their land of darkness where the Devil is lord.
Of identity pf “the Cup of Our Lord,”
There can be
no doubt! “tree of peace” would seem to imply
that it is made of olivewood.
The “salver (tray) of silver” and
“samite (silken cloth) of emerald” are
identical with the silver table and
green cloth described by Chretien and others. “Logres” is Britain; while
“Galhaut” is none other than Sir Galahad himself!
Mary just returned to my room with
junior, who by now must have our innkeeper, M. Roland de Haie, confirmed in his
belief that Americans are savages and quite untameable at least when armed with a slingshot. We
shall have to find new accommodations tomorrow. Fortunately Mme. De Haie’s cat
seems none worse for the encounter, and we shall not have to pay damages for
our landlord’s priceless thirteenth century vase which by its cross section
cleanly proved to be of considerably more recent origin and of no value
whatever.
Gasthof
Trubselig
Klasen heim,
Austria – Hungary
July 16, 1906
Acting on information from a monk at
Cantaney that the castle here contained artefacts relating to the Grail legend,
I traveled here to see for myself. There is a painting in the chapel by a
Franciscan friar, with an interesting legend connected to it. Local tradition
has it that the friar received his account of the Grail from a knight of the
first crusade who claimed that his brothers had actually found the holy relic
somewhere “in a canyon deep in a range of mountains.”
The scholar, the logical man within me,
insists that this tale is pure rubbish. The Franciscan order was founded more
than a century after the first crusade: and the style of the painting clearly
indicates that it could not have been rendered any earlier than the mid-13th
century meaning that this knight must have been more than 150 years old. But
the dreamer, the spiritual man within me, hears such a tale as a confirmation
of its truth that the Grail does indeed
confer eternal life on the one who fulfils its quest!
Am now soaking in an ancient cast-iron
bathtub in the village inn. What an exhausting trip by mule drawn cart, up the
mountain to the castle and back again! I think
of my son, deceptively sleeping the sleep of the innocent in our room
down the hall, and pray that he shall never have to undertake so arduous a
journey.
(Takt-i-Taqdis at
the Center of the World)
Las Mesas,
Colorado
February
22,1912
Can it really have been six years since
my last entry? Could academic
obligations, lack of funds and the responsibilities of fatherhood truly have
kept me so long from pursuit of my quest? Worst of all has been Mary’s tragic
death, a blow from which neither I nor junior have yet recovered. I fear I an
unfit to raise a son alone Junior grows wilder and more undisciplined by the
month Yet my heart will not admit any
other woman to take Mary’s cherished place.
Necessity may have required me to devote these years to more conventional
scholarship and to my teaching duties, but I have not by any means forsaken my
sacred affirmation. It seems I am not the only scholar in pursuit of this
‘fable’, There are other ‘crackpots’ who share my passion, and still others
who, though sceptical, never the less indulge my unconventional interest and
keep me appraised of new discoveries concerning the lore of the Grail. Perhaps
there is more romance in their souls than they would care to reveal to their
respective institutions. Besides young Brody at Oxford, there is Staubig in
Germany, the imminent Byzantine scholar Codirolli at Bologna, even an Arab in
Baghdad who has been so kind as to pass along relevant information to this
‘infidel’. Must arrange to meet them all on my next sabbatical.
Today I received a cable from Codirolli, occasioning this long overdue entry. I am most eager to see the journal of this Paolo of Genoa he is bringing on his lecture tour. He is to sail on the maiden voyage of this new luxury liner Titanic that has been so much in the news this winter. I am envious!
(Venice stained Glass Window)
Las Mesas
May 22, 1912
Codirolli is a marvel. Not only did he
survive the sinking of the ‘Unsinkable’ and the loss of the Paolo manuscript to
Mr. Davy Jones; he has descended upon this forsaken patch of sand and presented
me with a document he found in Constantinople that may have an even greater
bearing on my quest!
Codirolli is
lecturing on the west coast and will be taking the parchment with him when he
returns this way next month. But in the meantime he left it here for my to make
a facsimile copy.
The parchment was found among other
documents in a tin box secreted in a wall of the great basilica of St. Sophia,
and would appear to date from the mid- 13th century. The picture
seems to represent a stained glass window, but the significance of the Roman
numerals quite escapes me. They may have some connection with the writing on
the reverse side of the parchment in the Coptic alphabet of the early Egyptian
Christian church, but the sense of it is not Coptic, and it appears to be some
sort of cipher. What led Codirolli to infer its connection to my quest is the
drawing at the top of the enciphered page. Though crudely rendered, it is a
drinking vessel of some kind and on it is written in good Aramaic the language
of Judea at the time of Christ.
‘father, son,
holy ghost.’
I have little hope of finding intact
the stained glass window I have depicted elsewhere. In all likelihood it has
long since been destroyed. But the cipher may provide a clue perhaps to the location of the sacred relic
itself.
Codirolli is an elegant old gentleman,
and he seem s to have led quite an
adventurous life, assuming that the stories he told on that vigorous evening
last week were more than just the wild exaggerations of a Baron Munchausen. I
admit I was almost as wide-eyed as Junior when he was telling his tales.
Unfortunately my son tends to be overly excited by stories of high adventure.
Certainly it was Codirolli’s recounting of his escapade in ht e Sultan’s harem and his escape down a rope made of – but I am becoming indiscreet- that inspired Junior to steal that Spanish cross this afternoon. I fear he may too rash ever to make a good scholar- but perhaps it is just his youth.
(Prestor John -
Partly)
Philadelphia
August 19,1916
It has been a bleak year in every
respect. First the European war, which again has occasioned the postponement of
my long anticipated year of research. Then came my estrangement from Junior,
which has caused such grievous injury to my spirit that I can hardly speak of
it even in this private journal. And now, here at my conference, ridicule
heaped upon scorn.
God, grant me the strength of will to
continue this quest! Sometimes my resolve almost fails me. This week I gave two
brilliant papers on mainstream topics in medieval literature: yet everywhere I
went it was “Here comes Sir Galahad” and “Heard you were at the North Pole
seeking the historical Santa Claus,” and “Have a chair Jones, We’ve saved the
Siege Perilous for you!” This last from Carruthers, who is still smarting from
that little comedy in San Francisco two years ago when he was boasting about
his acquisition of a “genuine 15th – century Inca funeral urn” from
some antiquities dealer in Bolivia. I am sure I embarrassed him when I pointed
out the tiny inscription just under the lip, the one that said “Made in Japan.”
And the other day he returned the favour. Blast it to blazes! I should be oblivious to such condescension – God knows I’ve subjected myself to it long enough – but I had to resist the urge to land him one on that smug little grin of his. Right. Henry Jones, the white hope of Las Mesas. Perhaps I am not worthy of finding the Grail after all.
(Galahad, Perceval and Bors)
The North
Atlantic
June 29, 1920
At last I can resume my research in
earnest! Can it really have been fourteen years since I last saw the Old World?
The Great War
is over, Europe is unlocked once again, and I have a year to poke around in
ruins and libraries before I resume my duties – at Princeton! My “legitimate” scholarship has gained
sufficient recognition that I have
been granted tenure at that distinguished institution, despite what the
academic community regards as my fanciful obsession. I am not sorry to leave
Four Corners. I have appreciated the solitude of the desert, but it is too far
from the mainstream of medieval scholarship and it contains far too many
memories of Mary.
And of Junior. He truly loved Colorado,
for all he decided that the state wasn’t big enough for the both of us: and he
systematic explorations of the old Anasazi ruins during the year before he left
home gave me hope that I had indeed raised a scholar.
I have no idea where my son is. I pray
that he is alive, healthy, and not in prison. It still breaks my heart that he
scorned the opportunity for a university education – not to mention his own
father – for a life devoted to dissipation and ruin. Wherever he is, I
assume he is
at this moment galloping across open country on horseback, tearing about in an
automobile, or getting some young girl in trouble. (Just this evening one the
promenade deck I was talking to a young lady I met at Dinner with my own
thoughts of romance – until I realized that this woman who spoke so frankly of
female emancipation, speakeasies, and the scandalous theories of Dr. Sigmund
Freud was a girl of the same age as Junior. It made me feel very old)
(Stoneface)
(Takt-i-Taqdis & SAinte Chapelle)
Oxford,
England
July 14, 1920
I am in my element. I have spent the
past ten days combing the Arthurian collections in the British Museum in London
and the Bodelian library here.. Marcus Brody has become and antiquarian and has
been most useful. He has introduced me to a number of scholars who are supportive of my work. One
is a young German Jesuit, Brother Matthius, who despite the understandable
British hostility toward the Hun”, is well regarded in university circles here.
Matthuis is a
student of the life and works of Abbess Hildegard of Bingen, the celebrated 12-
century religious poet, visionary and musical composer: and he informs me that
certain rare manuscript of the abbess’s book of
visions contain Grail references.
Unfortunately Professor Hawken died in the influenza epidemic last winter, but I have been allowed to see the Abergavenney manuscript. Hawken was not interested in Grail lore and spoke of hermit’s vision only in passing. We are off to Wales tomorrow to make further investigations
(Two Knights)
(Prestor John)
“ The Purple
Dragon’
Mochdref,
Wales
July 27, 1920
Eureka! Just when I was beginning to
suspect that this Welsh excursion was a wild goose chase, we stumbled upon this
village. A local folk legend has it that the past Taliesin, whom the chronicles
speak of as a pupil and companion of Merlin, came to this valley after the
death of Arthur and the breaking of the fellowship of the Round Table. The
natives were most avid informants once I had proved my worthiness by quoting
some of Taliesin’s verses to them ( and by matching them drink for drink in the
common room of the inn.)
Taliesin’s was
reputed to be a shape –changer, and one of the local traditions is that the
poet would often take the form of an eagle and observe the knights disporting
themselves. On occasion he is said to have gazed upon Sir Perceval in his
hermitage (NB: Not Galahad, as in the later accounts.) after he had fulfilled
the quest of the Grail:
And of the
sacred relic the bard sang a verse that I have translated here:
To my embarrassment, I woke this
morning with and axe-blade in my skull, on a straw cot in the local jail. I
will admit to having had a bit too much to drink last night, but only the solemn
confirmation of a dozen witnesses convinces me that I indeed ended the evening
standing on the bar of “The Purple Dragon,” roaring out a medley of Yale
college songs. It did not make matters any easier that it took Brody most of
the morning to find his way there to pay my fine. How a man who can smell out a
rare manuscript with the instinct of a bloodhound can get lost in a village of
twenty houses is a mystery known only to the creator.
Verse fragment in the Welsh language
attributed to Taliesin, sung by a shepherd and folklorist at Mochdref, Wales
and translated by H.J. 7/31/20:
…Silver as the foam of the sea,
Bright as the mirror of Bronwyn,
Fragrant as the flesh of Bladeuwedd,
Mighty as the sword of Bran:
Carven with the spells of blessing
In the shrouded tongue of the East,
This vessel, the coracle of God
Drives out the old before the new.
NB: A coracle is a round boat such as are
still employed by fisher folk in Wales
and western England: and thus Taliesin’s
verse would seem to support the theory that the Grail is a bowl, not a cup.
The native Welshmen tell me that this word would be more accurately rendered as “frothy” or “crystalline” or “luminescent.” In many cases it describes a quality of appearance and should not be taken as a reference to the metal silver.
(De Borron Set)
Sankt-Gallen,
Switzerland
September 4,
1920
It is as Brother Matthuis Promised1 The
library of this ancient abbey contains a volume by Abbess Hildegard of Bingen,
in her own hand, in which she recounts a vision of the cup of Christ!
The incident is dated 1163. There
exists a published Book of the visions of St. Hildegard, compiled by the
sisters of her convent: but the last revelation in that volume dated 1155. The
Abbess is known to have lived until 1179, and the St. Gallen codex clearly
represents visions of the last 24 years of the celebrated mystics life. I
perused it carefully but found no other references to the Grail.
I have excerpted Hildegard’s
description of the Grail in this notebook, but I remain puzzled by two features
of the manuscript. Across the bottom of the page in which this vision is
recounted appears a line of music with the annotation (The Tunes to open the Tomb) PER HOS SONOS SEPULCRUM APERIES- “by these tones shall you
shall open the tomb.” The Abbess was a noted musician; but this is the only
pace in this particular codex where a musical reference appears “ Sepulcrum”
probably refers to the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. I have copied the music-
‘Neumes,” – I believe the medieval notes were called – and the master of the chapel
here has graciously transcribed them into modern notes. But for now their
significance remains a mystery, much like the Coptic cipher in Codirolli's
Constantinople parchment. (I look forward to seeing the old reprobate in
Bologna, but I first must make and unscheduled Rhine journey to Bingen.)
The other oddity is a cluster of
illuminations that appear on the opposite (reverse) page: Twelve medieval
images, in three groups of four each, rendered in an individualized style that
is far more characteristic of fifteenth rather than of Twelfth – century art.
Upon close examination, the parchment
page on which these drawings appear proved to be of an entirely different
quality and provenance – than the rest of the codex – as if the volume had been
rebound and the new leaf added at some time after the manuscript was written. I
reproduce these drawings here, though their relevance, if any, to the object of
my Quest must for now remain obscure.
(The Black Stone Floorplan)
Account of a
vision of Abbess Hildegard of Bingen, found in a manuscript in the library of
the Benedictine abbey of St. Gallen, apparently in Hildegard’s own hand.
(Translated from the Latin and excerpted by H.J. 9/2/20)
“On Good Friday (of the year 1163), I was in chapel at the hour of Matins…And of a sudden it seemed that the chapel was filled with a light brighter than the day, though outside was darkness… And I was visited by the Holy Ghost and granted a vision of Our Lord on the cross… And by his side stood Joseph of Arimathea, who held a chalice of brass to catch our Saviour’s blood, and on it was inscribed as it seemed in the Greek language, the words “ Take ye, this is my blood.”…
(Stag & Top of Window)
(Knights of the Quest and Defender of Faith)
(Wilderness of the Wanderings)
(Knight with cup & Malchizadek)
Bologna, Italy
September 29,
1920
Codirolli continues to amaze me. He is
past seventy, but his energy is equal to that of a twenty year- old. Right now
he is out carousing somewhere, leaving me to pour over the fruits of his
remarkable labours of the war years. Hostile borders have been no barrier to
him nor has revolution, as he was able to slip into Constantinople (or as we
now must call it, Istanbul!) and Russia (or as we now must call it, the Soviet
Union!!) and bring out some of the most amazing items.
I have before me a parchment, this
wonder obtained from the ruin of Kaffa, in the Crimea. It is a testament
written in good Byzantine Greek by a Jewish physician who was in attendance at
the death of a Franciscan friar in that city the year 1267. As it happens, in
one of those happy accidents of scholarship, this was the same Franciscan who
painted the Crucifixion I saw so many years ago at Klasen heim – the friar who
was said to have met a crusading knight who claimed that he and his brothers
had found the Grail!
The physician relates that the friar
was sick at heart and fearful of damnation because he “had known for years of
the location of the Holy Grail and failed to restore it to Christendom for fear
he was not worthy ‘to feel the breathe of God and live, to tread upon {?} the
word of God and be saved, ore to walk the path of God and not tumble into the
abyss.”
I have no clue as to the meaning of all
this, but I must believe that to one armed with the proper knowledge it
provided directions to the location of the Grail!
Also before me is a translation of
another of Codirolli’s findings, a much older account of a Byzantine merchant
which offers yet another confounding description of the item. Its provenance –
Russia _ and its date – the mid-10th century imply a connection with
the fragment I found at Cantaney that refers to the Vikings having stolen the
Grail from Iona From Kiev, with all the trading and raiding that was going on
during those centuries it could easily have made its way south to where it
could have been found by the knights of the first Crusade.
Excerpt from
the journal of Byzantine merchant in Kiev, early 10th century,
Translated by
G. Codirolli and shown to me 9/29/20
“…And though the Kingdom of Rus is pagan there are many Christians among its people, and Jews and Saracens as well. And in the market a man, knowing me to be Christian, offered to sell me a chalice, which he said was the holy cup that caught the blood of our Lord Jesus Christ. But I have been to Jerusalem, and to Antioch, and many liars and charlatans have tried to sell me bones of saints and pieces of the Cross and fragments of Christ’s garments. And the cup he had was plain, of base metal and with no ornamentation, and surely could not have been the glorious Cup of Our Lord…”
(Dead Sea Map)
Bingen was a bust. There was nothing in
the voluminous manuscripts of Abbess Hildegard that yielded a clue to the
musical notes in the St. Galen codex; and seeing the devastation wrought in the
Rhineland by the war was dismaying. But what a journey this has been! A few
more findings such as these and I may discover the Grail before I must return
home!
Aboard the
steamer Atalanta
Midsummer day. The Atalanta is steaming
westward across a perfectly calm sea, bearing me home from what I must on
balance consider a failed voyage. The heady successes of the summer months have
been overshadowed by the three subsequent seasons of false trails, blind alleys
and near misses – in Italy, Germany, The Balkans, Turkey and the Near East. I
will not say that the year was without its joys – the Holy Land was a precious
experience, to say nothing of my encounter with Lady E.! – but as regards my
quest, everything after Bologna was disappointment and frustration.
Yet I have Princeton to look forward to, new adventures in scholarship and future opportunities to return to the Old World. I am only forty-five, and I have Codirolli to look at as an example of what can be accomplished at an advanced age. The search for the Grail is a lifetime quest. I was summoned to this mission two decades ago, and I can only believe that I have been chosen by some higher power to fulfil it.
(Grail Mass & Omphalos)
(Map with no Names)
(Gulf of Aqaba Map)
(The Venice Map)
Princeton, New
Jersey
June 19,1923
As Sherlock Holmes might say, I am back
on the case. Since receiving Lady E’s letter earlier this week, I have been
constructing a map, based on all the accounts I have gathered of the rout of
the Grail.
How fragmentary they are! The Burton
tidbit Lady E. recounts to me speaks of traveling “eastward from the city” –
but which city? The legends of Klasenheim had to “in a canyon in the midst of a
range of mountains? And al-Musafir’s informant placed it near the source of a
river which he reached after traveling south from an oasis” – but which river;
which oasis? “Oasis” implies desert – but which desert?
Yes, it seems there is useful research
I can do in New Jersey. I must scour every atlas, ancient and modern, until I
find a map that matches mine.
As for lady E. – who would have
believed she would remember me so fondly? I am feeling like a schoolboy!
Princeton
May 29, 1927
The news out of Egypt has held me in
thrall all this spring. I have haunted cable offices and made daily phone calls
to the wire services in New York, anxious to receive every tidbit of news about
Hawe’s discovery as it becomes available. While everyone else in the world
seems to be ecstatic over this Lindberg fellow, it is the papyrus unearthed at
Kozra that has claimed my undivided attention. If the scroll is authentically
“the gospel according to Joseph of Arimathea,” then its description of the
Grail could be the authentic one.
And even if it
isn't, it may prove to have some connection with Codirolli’s Coptic cipher.
Poor Codirolli! My urgent desire to get
to Egypt and examine the Hawes papyrus is mitigated by his senseless death last
year in Rome, an old man beaten to death in the street for making an obscene
gesture at one of il duce’s Fascist bully-boys. I have lost a good friend, an
invaluable colleague, and for now, at least, my taste for travel as well.
Ironically it was the same journal that
carried the news of his death that brought me my first news of Junior in more
than a decade. At least I assume that the “Dr. Indiana Jones” spoken of in
connection with the Ravenwood expedition in Sun kiang is my son! I am gratified
to learn that he is alive and has earned his doctorate – but Indian??
It was our
dog’s name in Las Mesas.
The boy
continues pointedly to wound me. I wrote him a letter in care of Ravenwood at
Chicago addressed to Dr. Henry Jones, Jr., but I have yet to receive a reply.
Cambridge,
Massachusetts
October 2,
1928
Have seen the Hawes papyrus at last. I
have nothing to add to the controversy over its genuineness, about which only a
theologian would care. It is clearly of
great antiquity and of interest of historians whether or not it is really and
eyewitness account of Joseph of Arimathea. It is a transcription and a translation in any case: Joseph would have
written in Aramaic or perhaps Greek, certainly not Coptic, which did not exist
as a written language until perhaps 200 AD. Only when I find the object of my
quest will I be able to attest to the accuracy of the author’s description.
Do I sound discouraged? Perhaps I am, after all these years of false hopes, flimsy discoveries and disappointments, Perhaps I am. The search fort the Holy Grail is the search for the spark of the divine in all of us. But Just now I feel all too mortal, and I fear I have wasted my life in pursuit of a chimera.
(Jesus and the Grail)
(Rock slide)
(Map of the Moutainroad)
(Lycurgus & Falling Rocks)
(Obstacle & Cruciform Scrap)
(Iron Cross)
Salisbury,
England
September 17,
1930
I am shivering, but neither form cold
nor from fear.
I write this entry in a cell that has
graciously been lent to me by one of the canons of the Cathedral, where in a
secret alcove high up in the buildings’ stonework a badly damaged copy of a
diary of St. Anselm was found this summer by a mason making repairs. Brody
advised me by cable last month of the
discovery. How the manuscript came to be here instead of Canterbury, where
Anselm was archbishop, I do not know;
but it appears to have been hidden away because of one very un-Anselmlike
visionary lacuna that some priest may have adjudged “Satanic.” Thank God this
did not destroy the manuscript utterly!
The passage seems to date from the
period of the great theologian’s exile from England. In the midst of a typical
philosophical discourse on the nature of God the father, Anselm broke off and
wrote the words EQUESTRI SEPULCRUM IN (obscured) REGINA (obscured) DALMATIAE –
“the knight’s tomb in (the crypt of?) Queen (her name?) of Dalmatia.”
Below this sentence is a crude
representation of a wine cup surrounded by a nimbus over which are written the
words CHRISTI CALIX – cup of Christ. And Below this was written the following
passage:
“The challenges will number three.
First, the breath of God; only the penitent man will pass. Second, the word of
God; only in the footsteps of God will he proceed. Third, the path of God; only
in a leap from the lions’ head will he prove his worth.” In the margin next to
these words are two drawings of a mechanical device resembling a pendulum, and
a man, seeming to walk on air.
The breath of God, the word of God, the path of God – the same enigmatic words that were spoken more than a century and a half after St. Anselm’s death by the Franciscan friar who knew the location of the Grail – spoken as if they were tests of some kind that he unworthy to pass.
(The Tree Trials)
(The Trap)
(Leap of Faith)
Suddenly everything begins to connect;
Both Anselm
and the friar refer to these three tests, the Burton fragment refers to
“passing the three trials, the lost journal of Paolo of Genoa refers to the
Grail as being guarded by “lethal protective devices, the drawing in the Anselm
Manuscript
certainly could be some sort of lethal contraption! Abbess Hildegard in her
vision of the Grail heard musical notes “by which you shall open the tomb.” St.
Anselm here speaks of the Grail in connection with “the knight’s tomb in the
queen of Dalmatia” –the Latin name for the Yugoslavian coast.
“The knight”
could be the knight of the first crusade who told the friar where the Grail was
to be found.
The knight’s tomb in the queen of Dalmatia! I am of to Paris tomorrow, from whence I take the Orient Express to Belgrade!
(Triangular Floorplan)
Princeton
October 1,
1932
Letter came
from Staubig today. How ironic that the Book of Spells of Merlin should turn up
in Dubrovnik! I would be more excited about his discovery were it not for my
bitter
Disappointment
of two years ago when I failed to find any trace of the Grail in Yugoslavia.
The Merlin account of the Grail provides some connection – The Aramaic
inscription is identical to the one described in the Kaffa parchment – but it
leaves me no closer to finding the item that has now eluded me for thirty-four
years. What does it look like? I now have ten descriptions of the Grail, each
one unique. Where is it located? I have an almost useless map and a cryptic
reference to a knights’ tomb “in the queen of Dalmatia” that may be opened by a
musical phrase. Danke Schaon, Herr Staubig, but unfortunately your discovery
comes under the heading of too little, too late.
News of Junior continues to reach me
through the popular press, most recently from Indo-China where he is apparently
in pursuit of a jade idol – “The demon monkey of Laeng-Tran” – that is said to
posses some sort of occult power. I simply can’t understand his obsession with
such fanciful nonsense. My God, what will he be after next? The lost cities of
Cibola? The ark of the covenant? How could I have raised such a son?
And why must he insist on going by that ridiculous name?
(The Tree Trials and Knights)
What a fool I have been! I hold the have held the key to the Grail in my hand for more than seen years and have failed to recognize it!
Not Yugoslavia but Venice. The cryptic
reference in the Anselm manuscript should be reconstructed as, EQUESTRI
SEPULCRUM IN URBE REGINA MARIS DALMATIAE – “The knights tomb (is) in the queen
city of the Sea of Dalmatia”- that is the Adriatic. Venice- the Queen of the
Adriatic- is where I will find the knight’s tomb. And within the tomb is to be
found a “marker” that locates the Grail!
How I came by this knowledge is a tale
too long the relate in detail in my excitement of the moment. I am in a luxury
suite in the Prague Hotel, provided e by one Walter Donovan, a wealthy
industrialist and collector of antiquities who has long been a benefactor of
scholarly institutions and museums. He is in possession of the friar’s
chronicle- the friar, the one who died at Kaffa, the one who learned of the
Grail’s location form the 150-year-old-crusader, et cetera, et cetera – and,
more astonishingly, of an incomplete stone tablet which the three brothers left
as a “marker” to seekers of the Grail. Donovan has allowed me to make a rubbing
of the partial inscription on the tablet; but according to the friar’s account,
a second “marker” that may lead to the Grail is buried with the knight’s
brother.
The knight’s tomb!
My insight concerning Venice I have
kept to myself! Donovan is as anxious to find this second marker as I am; he
has a great deal of money to spend on the project, and tonight he has asked me
to lead his research team. As soon as I can extricate myself from my
obligations at Princeton, I am to sail, no, fly – to Berlin to meet with Dr.
Schneider, who will be working on the project with me. I do not intend to
mention Venice until I am ready to depart. Donovan may well have this Schneider
begin the investigation without me. (The Sword) (I’ve never heard of any Schneider, must
ask Staubig if he knows him.) Besides, it will be rather embarrassing if I am
proven wrong.
But I am right. This time I am sure of it.
(Venice Libery)