The Holy Grail: Its Origins, Secrets and Meaning Revealed

Twelfth-century Europe was a time of unprecedented spiritual awakening. The Crusades to the Holy Land had returned with new esoteric secrets from the East. The Cathars were challenging the authority of a divided and corrupt Church of Rome, and women were at last accorded a new power and position, forming their own Courts of Love. Out of this extraordinary new age arose a legend which was to surpass all previous Western myths - that of a mystical object known as the Holy Grail and a knightly Quest in search of it. Between 1190 and 1220, there was an outpouring of stories about this sacred artifact. Deemed heretical by the Church and yet said to hold the blood of the crucified Christ, the Grail chalice was supposedly brought to Britain two thousand years ago. And although the legend is set in the Arthurian Britain of the sixth century, tradition traces the cup of the Last Supper to a Cathar stronghold in the Pyrenees, under the guardianship of the Knights of the Temple of Jerusalem. The legend of the Holy Grail is not one story, but many, and this book explores the major and very different accounts which appeared within a thirty year period. - From the Publisher