Editing Holy Grail (section)

===Chrétien de Troyes===
The subject is first featured in ''Perceval, le Conte du Graal'' (''The Story of the Grail'') by Chrétien de Troyes,<ref>Loomis 1991.</ref> who claims he was working from a source book given to him by his patron, Count [[Philip I, Count of Flanders|Philip of Flanders]].<ref>According to a French scholar, the book given by Philip I may be Ovid's ''The Metamorphoses'', in [http://www.zetetique.fr/index.php/nl/450-poz-76#dossier/ POZ #76] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130420082314/http://zetetique.fr/index.php/nl/450-poz-76#dossier/ |date=2013-04-20 }}(in French).</ref> In this incomplete poem, dated sometime between 1180 and 1191, the object has not yet acquired the implications it would have in later works.

While dining in the magical castle of the [[Fisher King]], Perceval witnesses a wondrous procession in which youths carry magnificent objects from one chamber to another, passing before him at each course of the meal. First comes a young man carrying a bleeding lance, then two boys carrying candelabras. Finally, a beautiful young girl emerges bearing an elaborately decorated ''graal'', or "grail".<ref>Staines, David. (Trans.) ''The Complete Romances of Chrétien de Troyes''. Indiana University Press, Bloomington & Indianapolis, 1990, page 379.</ref> Perceval, who had been warned against talking too much, remains silent through all of this and wakes up the next morning alone. Later, a hermit informs Perceval that the latter is a "very holy thing" in which a host is served that miraculously keeps the crippled Fisher King alive.<ref name=bnf/> If Perceval had asked the appropriate questions about the meaning of the lance and the grail, he would have healed his maimed host.

Chrétien refers to this object not as "the Grail" but as "a grail" (''un graal''), showing the word was used, in its earliest literary context, as a common noun. For Chrétien, a grail was a wide, somewhat deep, dish or bowl, interesting because it contained not a pike, salmon, or lamprey, as the audience may have expected for such a container, but a single [[Sacramental bread|Communion wafer]]. The story of the Wounded King's [[inedia|mystical fasting]] is not unique; several saints were said to have lived without food besides communion, for instance Saint [[Catherine of Genoa]]. This may imply that Chrétien intended the Communion wafer to be the significant part of the ritual, and the Grail to be a mere prop.<ref>Loomis 1991, p. 184.</ref>

[[Hélinand of Froidmont]]'s ''Chronicon'' described it as a "wide and deep saucer" (''scutella lata et aliquantulum profunda''). It is also mentioned by others such as [[Rigaut de Berbezilh|Rigaut de Barbezieux]].<ref>"Like Perceval when he lived, who stood amazed in contemplation, so that he was quite unable to ask what purpose the lance and grail." ("''Attressi con Persavaus el temps que vivia, que s'esbait d'esgarder tant qu'anc non saup demandar de que servia la lansa ni-l grazaus.''") Sayce, Olive. ''Exemplary comparison from Homer to Petrarch'', DS Brewer, 2008, p. 143.</ref>