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GRAAFIAN VESICLES.

GRAAL.

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GRAAFIAN VESICLES, a number of small bodies, varying in size from that of a pin's head to that of a pea, and in number from ten to twenty, which are found embedded in the substance of the ovary. They exist in a rudimentary form at an early age, and as a double vesicular membrane in the adult female.

GRAAL, called more fully the HOLY GRAAL, is variously spelt Grail, Greal, Graaus, Grasal, or Grazal, in Norman French; Grasal, Grazal, or Grazaus, in Provençal ; Grisal, in Old Catalan ; and Grial, in Old Spanish. In modern French it is written Graal, Greal, and Gréal; and in old English Graile, or Grayle, the latter of which forms occurs in the Second Book of Spenser's 'Faerie Queene.' In conformity with the opinions entertained of its etymology, or with the successive fashions of orthography, it presents, besides some other forms, the varieties of San Greal, Saint Graal, Seynt Graal, Sancgreall, Sangraal, Sang Real, and Sank Ryal. Several derivations, bearing more or less of probability-amongst others, one by which it is identified with the Hebrew harala, or ghrala, præputium, and is thus made to signify the cup or vessel used in circumcision-have been suggested for the word Graal, which, by the latest and most trustworthy criticism, has been identified with the Low Latin Gradale, or Grasale, which occurs in Ducange, or in Charpentier's Supplement, in the very numerous forms of gradale, gradalus, grasala, grayale, grassalé, grazala, grassala; with the diminutives, gradella, gracellus, grassella, grassilhia, grasellus, and grasaletus. The signification of the word is, a kind of vessel, of wood, earth, or metal; and it occurs alternatively in the sense of a large, round, and shallow vessel, of a bowl, and of a flat vessel or dish, for the use of the table. The forms given above are severally corruptions from cratella, a diminutive of the Latin crater, or cratera, which again is from the Greek кратhр, or Kратпрíа, a bowl, or mixing vessel; and the Seynt Graal, or Holy Graal, was that sacred vessel, the aggregate of whose distinctions, as collected from one tradition and another, included those of having been a gift of the queen of Sheba to Solomon, of having been used at the Last Supper, of having been stolen by one of the servants of Pilate, who used it on the occasion of publicly washing his hands before the multitude, and who afterwards gave it to Joseph of Arimathea, who collected in it the Holy Blood which flowed from the five wounds of Christ on the cross. As a vessel best adapted for this last purpose, the Holy Dish became converted at the hands of the Romance writers into the Holy Cup or Chalice; and the myth, founded on an account given in the apocryphal Gospel of Nicodemus, or the Acts of Pilate, was supported by a change of san greal, holy vessel, into sang real, royal blood, which has been wrongly interpreted as sanguis realis, real blood, a sense in which it is still occasionally adopted and perpetuated. The etymology of the San Greal, or Holy Graal, has been otherwise involved by the existence of another word written with literal identity, as Graal, a shortened form of the Low Latin graduale, or gradale, first given to the psalm, or anthem, which, between the Epistle and the Gospel, was sung in gradibus, upon the steps of the ambo, or pulpit, in the service of the Romish Church, and afterwards transferred to the Antiphonary, which contained the anthems or verses so recited. [GRADUAL, E. C. S.] For over a thousand years both ecclesiastical and profane writers are silent about the Holy Graal; but in the twelfth century it reappears invested with marvellous attributes, and as the theme of various and varying legends and romances, the outline of which we are said to owe to the genius of Walter Map, or Mapes, the clever satirist of the reign of Henry II., and which were subsequently amplified by Robiers de Borron, Guyot de Provence, and Chrestien de Troyes. The legendary history of Joseph of Arimathea is connected with the once popular belief in the introduction of Christianity into Britain as early as the first century. According to this history, Joseph, after having collected the blood of Christ, and a few days after His resurrection, was seized by the Jews, and imprisoned in a windowless dungeon, where, for a period of forty-two years, he was fed, without human sustenance, by the Holy Graal, which he found

miraculously restored to him on his first incarceration. He was at length released by Vespasian, whom, after himself submitting to baptism, he converted and baptized; and in obedience to a Divine voice, and with the Imperial permission, quitted Jerusalem with his wife and his son Josaphe, and a company of fifty people, with whom, and with the Holy Graal, which he carried inside an ark or box, he arrived at Sarras, whose king, Evalak, he endeavoured to convert. His benevolent designs upon Evalak were furthered by a couple of visions with which the whilst at the same time a vision-the motive of which has been pertinently regarded as suggested by the events of the Holy Sepulchre-was vouchsafed to Josaphe, who, upon looking intently into the Graal-ark, saw Christ first upon the cross and afterwards descending and standing beside an altar, whilst ministering angels were in attendance. Christ ordained Josaphe bishop; and the latter gave Evalak a shield inscribed with a red cross, with an injunction to the king to call upon Christ in the hour of peril or distress in the defensive war which he was about to carry on against the invading army of Tholomer, king of Babylon. A captive, and in desperate circumstances, Evalak complied with this injunction; and in his extremity was succoured and rescued by an angel in the form of a White Knight, who, having slain Tholomer, and helped Evalak to achieve a complete victory over his forces, vanished away. Evalak returned home, and was baptized, assuming at the font the name of Mordeins, whilst Seraphe, the brother of his queen, received baptism with the name of Maciens. Joseph further baptized 5000 of king Evalak's subjects, and after abiding for a consideraable time at Sarras, at length made his way to Britain, where, according to a development or variety of the legend, he arrived in company with eleven other disciples of Saint Philip, and succeeded in obtaining from king Arviragus permission to settle in a small island, where to each of the twelve was assigned, for his subsistence, a certain portion of land called a hide, the whole comprising a district known as the twelve hides of Glastonbury. The name by which the island was distinguished by the Britons was Ynyswytryn, or the Glassy Island, from the appearance of the stream which surrounded it. Afterwards it obtained the name of Avalon, alternatively with reference to the abundance of apples which it produced, or to a British chief who had been one of its sometime possessors; and finally by the Saxons it was called Glæsting-a-burig, the "borough of the Sons of Glast," or Glastonbury,

"where the winter thorn

Blossoms at Christmas, mindful of our Lord."

Here St. Joseph, who is considered by the monkish historians as the first abbot, erected, to the honour of the Virgin Mary, and formed of wreathed twigs, as if in imitation of the booths or tents under which the children of Israel sojourned during the Feast of Tabernacles, the first Christian oratory in England.

In some forms of the legend the Holy Graal remained in the care of Joseph of Arimathea, who, after a life of preternatural extension, died, leaving his authority and his sacred treasure to his son, who, in like manner, consecrated one of his relations in his place as custodian of the Graal. In course of time, through the sins and imperfections of its keepers, the Holy Graal was caught away to heaven;" where it was preserved until there should appear on earth a race of heroes worthy to resume its guardianship. The chief of this line was an Asiatic prince named Perillus, who came to Gaul, where his descendants allied themselves with the family of a Breton prince. Titurel, the hero of the legend of Albrecht von Scharfenberg--which was finished in 1350, and which, along with the 'Percival' of Wolfram Eschenbach, A.D. 1205, was ostensibly referred to the common origin of a poem in the northern French dialect, written by Guyot of Provence, but otherwise unknown-who sprang from this glorious lineage, was the one chosen of God to found the worship of the San Graal amongst the Gauls. Angels brought the vessel to Titurel, and instructed him in its mysteries; and in its honour he erected a temple on the model of the temple at Jerusalem, and organised a band of guardians of the Vessel, a ceremonial for the worship of which he also elaborated. The Holy Graal was visible only to the baptized, and of these only to the in heart and morals. Oracles were given by the pure Holy Vessel, miraculously expressed in characters which appeared for a short time on the surface of the bowl, and then vanished. A spiritual strength and joy, a foretaste of heaven, attended the custody and the vision of the Holy Graal, which stood to its worshippers in the place of all such viands as they

most desired or affected, which maintained them in perpetual youth, and imparted to them a graduated or comparative immunity from wounds and death. The chief of the knightly order who watched the Graal was entitled King; and, as his office was hereditary, he was permitted to marry. Titurel reigned four hundred years, being, to all appearance, of the age of forty; and was succeeded by his son Frimutelle, who, having fallen into impurity, perished in a joust in which he had engaged in honour of his mistress. To him succeeded his son Amfortas, the Pelles or Pellam of Le Mort Artus,' or 'Mort d'Arthure,' who, having in turn fallen into grievous sin, was given over by the Graal to be wounded by a lance. Then it was announced to him that he should not be healed of his wound till one came, pure and young, to Montsalvatsch, who would see the mysteries of the Holy Vessel, and inquire their signification. At this stage, however, the legends of the Graal become involved in the cycle of Arthurian romance; and it may be proper to pause here and interpose a description of the Graal, and to follow its fortunes as fabricated by more prosaic but equally baseless inventions. According to Wolfram von Eschenbach's Percival,' the Holy Graal was a vessel formed of a single precious stone, the lapis herilis, the stone of the Lord, filled with the strength of God the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost; and although it was said to have been finally transported to India, and to have remained there, several cities formerly claimed the honour of the possession of this mighty relic. At the capture of Cæsarea, in 1101, the Crusaders found what they imagined to be the very Dish itself, made of one large emerald. It was sent to Genoa, where it is still exhibited as the Sacro Catino in the treasury of the cathedral of San Lorenzo. Napoleon I. transported it to Paris, from whence it was sent back in 1815, but was cracked on the journey. It is really made of greenish glass, as, in spite of the precautions to prevent its material being tested by steel or diamond, the air-bubbles which it contains sufficiently disclose. It has two handles; is about 3 feet 9 inches in circumference; and is of hexagonal form, with some slight ornaments which appear to have been finished with the tool of a gem-engraver. The colour is beautiful, and the transparency perfect; and its exhibition to the faithful took, or takes, place three times a year in the presence of a prelate of high rank, around whom were ranged the Clavigeri to whose care it was committed. A fee of five francs will unlock the cabinet, the keys of which are kept by the municipal authorities, to the gaze and admiration of the curious stranger.

It has been sought to trace the germ or suggestion of the legend of the Holy Graal otherwise than to Joseph of Arimathea; and it has been variously supposed to have originated in the Heliotrapezon, or Sun-Table of the pious Egyptians; in the highly-prized Black-stone of the Kaaba in Mecca; in the magic mirror or cup of Salvation discovered by Dschemschid, the hero of Persian romance; in the Egyptian Hermes-goblet; and in an assumed divining-cup of the Druids. However the problem may be solved, it remains that the story of the Holy Graal is of the highest interest and importance as a preface to the entire cycle of the Arthurian romances; and their connection, otherwise so obscure, may be to some extent illustrated by regarding the account of the Last Supper of the Saviour with His disciples as at once the germ of the story of Joseph and his followers and of the romance of the Knights of the Round Table. The Holy Graal, as the symbol of Christian salvation to the Romance poets of the Middle Ages, was, like King Arthur and the sorcerer Merlin, for nearly five hundred years the kernel and central point of an extensive cycle of poems, wherein the knights of old found edification, and in writing on which poets believed they should attain final bliss. But the Graal-cycle was distinguished from the other as having no ascertainable foundation, however remote, in historical persons and events. It was rather the development of the pious thought and fancy of chivalrous ages, which sought to symbolize the mysteries and miracles of Christianity in the feigned history of a Holy Vessel; the idea of which was originally distinct from the histories of the Arthurian knights with which it was afterwards so intimately blended.

The Graal legend having been introduced as a foreign and a spiritual element into the Arthurian cycle, it seems a pertinent surmise that the introduction was the achievement of an ecclesiastical or ecclesiastically-inclined poet, who sought to redeem the pursuits of a society of gallant knights from an utter and uniform secularity. This object the poet attained by the incorporation into the Arthurian story of the account of a nobler knight, a purer man, and a more exalted reward, than any which the old

legends furnished, and which he discovered in the Graal and Sir Galahad, the history of the former of which he probably found ready to his hand, whilst the latter was identified as a direct descendant of Joseph of Arimathea. One day, it is said, when Arthur was holding high festival with his Knights of the Round Table in the minster at Camelot, they were startled by a thunderstorm, in the midst of which a sunbeam seven times clearer than the light of mortal noontide entered the hall, and the brotherhood were enlightened by the grace of the Holy Ghost. In the intensity of this miraculous illumination the members of the knightly circle regarded each other, and each man saw his fellows invested with an incomparable beauty and grandeur. For a season there was dumbness and silence; and then the Holy Graal, covered with white samite, entered into the hall, filling it with rarest odours, and without apparent instrumentality supplying each knight with such meat and drink as he best loved in the world. None saw the Graal itself as it was carried through the hall, nor the hand that bore it; and it presently vanished as suddenly as it had arrived, so that none knew whither it had departed. Thereupon the king gave thanks to God for the grace He had vouchsafed them; and when the general power of speech returned, the knights undertook by solemn vows the Quest of the Holy Graal.

The legend of the Graal, and the story of the search for it, is told so variously by poets whose principal aim was frequently no more than the invention of new incidents, that it is hopeless to expect unity or even consistency in the several narratives. Those to which prominence is here given may be taken as illustrating the general feeling which dictated their production, rather than as pretending to a strict harmony or consentaneousness of adventures. Mr. Skeat ingeniously discovers in the historical phenomena of the time slightly anterior to the production of the first of the Graal narratives, their efficient suggestion and inspiration. "The great excitement of the middle of the 12th century was the Second Crusade, beginning in 1146. A little earlier the order of Knights Templars had been established. This was a fighting order of Knights, quite unlike to the Knights of St. John. Their object was religious glory, and their destination the East. How exactly all this is reproduced in the history of the Knights of the Round Table, seeking a holy object, and finding it likewise in the East! Godfrey de Bouillon, King of Jerusalem, meets with the success of Evalak, King of Sarras. Galahad's shield bears the Templars' device. The Saracens were then frequently heard of; hence Joseph goes to Sarras, their supposed city. The mention of the instruments of the Passion brings forward the Holy Lance, and especial attention must have been called to it by the extraordinary fraud which gave out that the Lance had been found at the siege of Antioch in 1098. Hence it was introduced naturally enough at the appearance of the Graal. The old romances had in

view a general idea of idealizing Christianity, or rather religious enthusiasm, by adding to it various mysteries and religious vows; but beyond this, the only principle which they showed was that of giving full scope to the imagination."

The fugitive and incomplete vision of the Holy Graal vouchsafed at Camelot to the chivalry of King Arthur is the first attempt at the juxtaposition of two sets of legends which were henceforth to be so closely connected. Years had passed since King Amfortas, or Pelles, first lay down wounded in his palace to await the pure knight, a "clean maid," who should heal him by the application of the sacred blood. The majority of the Knights of the Round Table were incapacitated for success in the quest of the Holy Graal through their want of charity, abstinence, and truth; and it was only to three of them-Galahad, the occupier of the Sege Perilous, Percival the Stainless, and Bors, or Bohors, the Penitent-that the honour of achieving the splendid discovery was assigned. Together the select trio repaired to the castle of King Pelles; where, after they had supped, they beheld a great light in which were four angels bearing up an ancient man in bishop's vestments, whom they set down before a table of silver, on which appeared the San Graal. The aged prelate was no other than Joseph of Arimathea," the first Bishop of Christendom." Then other angels appeared bearing candles, and a spear from which fell drops of blood; and these drops were collected, by an angel, in a box. The angels now placed the candles on the table, and "the fourth set the Holy Spear upright upon the Vessel; after which Joseph proceeded to celebrate the sacred mysteries. At the consecration appeared our Lord Himself, who summoned Sir Galahad, and incited him to ask what the Vessel was which He held between His hands. Christ then declared it was the Holy Dish wherein He ate the

lamb at the Last Supper, a more open and abundant sight of which Galahad should enjoy in the city of Sarras, whither he was to convey it. Galahad, therefore, having anointed the wounded king with the blood which dropped from the spear, and so made him whole, set out, with his friends Bors and Percival, to the mystic city of Sarras, where he was made king. The story is varied in the Percival' commenced by Chrestien de Troyes, and carried on and concluded by his continuators towards the close of the 12th century, which attributes to Percival the cure of the king, from whom he received in return the Sacred Vessel and the bleeding Lance, and retired to a hermitage. On the death of Percival, the Holy Graal and the Lance were taken up into heaven. It is probable that this version was an adaptation of a Welsh tale entitled 'Pheredur,' the hero of which is not a Christian, and the holy vessel of which is a mysterious relic of a past heathen rite. It is Sir Percival whom Schulz regards as the "point of union" between the story of the Graal and the adventures of chivalry for its recovery. "The fable of the Graal," he says, "did not exist in the chronicles of those countries which preserved the traditions of ArthurBritain, France, and Ireland. .. The second group of romances, whose centre is the Graal, constitutes the Provençal and Spanish element; the first is Welsh-and the point of union is the chief hero Percival, the Peredur of the Welsh.

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Some of the writers of Graal Romances profess to have translated from a Latin original, which, in the case of the History of the Holy Graal,' was said to be "from the original Latin, written by Jesus Christ with His own hand, being the only writing made by God since His uprising." The legend here involved is more particularly stated to the effect that in A.D. 717, in England, Christ, as a beautiful man, appeared to a Trinity-doubting monk, and promised to clear his doubts by means of a book which he presented to him. In this book were four treatises, of which one was the 'Book of the Holy Graal;' which has thus been laid open to the denunciation of Mr. Price, a late editor of Warton's History of English Poetry,' as being no romance, but a blasphemous imposture, more extravagant and daring than any other on record, in which it is endeavoured to pass off the mysteries of bardism for direct inspirations of the Holy Ghost." (Furnival's edition, with a Prefatory Essay by Albert Schulz, On the Saga of the Holy Graal, of Seynt Graal, or the Sank Ryal; The History of the Holy Graal, printed for the Roxburghe Club; Furnival's edition, for the Roxburghe Club, of La Queste del Saint Graal; Skeat's edition, with Preface, of Joseph of Arimathie, printed for the Early English Text Society; Albert Schulz's Essay on the Influence of Welsh Tradition upon the Literature of Germany, France, and Scandinavia; Professor Henry Morley's English Writers; Baring-Gould's Curious Myths of the Middle Ages; Tennyson's Holy Grail; and others.)

GRACE, a title of dignity first conferred on the kings of England about the time of Henry IV., by whose successors it was used-with certain modifications, as "Excellent Grace," first given to Henry VI.-until it was merged, along with the more recent title of Highness, in that of Majesty, which was assumed by Henry VIII., from the time of his being so addressed by Francis I. of France, at the Field of the Cloth of Gold, A.D. 1520. After the royal adoption of the last-named title, the style of Grace-His Grace, Her Grace, Your Grace-devolved upon dukes, duchesses, and archbishops. The title appears to have been originally conceived in the spirit of recognising the sovereign as the fountain of goodness and honour, as the supreme representative and dispenser of favour and clemency.

The radical idea of the word Grace as a free and unconditioned

GRADUAL (Latin, GRADUALE or GRADALE), sometimes shortened into GRAIL, is the psalm, anthem, or hymn, which from a remote antiquity has been sung or said in the service of the Romish Church, between the Epistle and the Gospel; and which received its name from the circumstance of its being anciently chanted on the steps (gradus) of the ambo, or pulpit. The custom, however, has not always been of a strictly universal acceptance, for in the Churches of Gaul and Spain the Gradual was not used, and the Church of England, at the revision of her liturgy, omitted it likewise. Anciently the Gradual was looked upon as a lesson from Scripture, even when it was sung; and in the time of St. Augustine, it is ascertained that in the African Church the Psalm was sung between the Epistle and the Gospel. But there is reason to believe that this was not its original position; for, as a lesson from Scripture, its prescriptive order would have been after the Law and the Prophets, as it is even now observed by the Church of Milan, in the services of which the Psalm is placed between the lesson of the Old Testament and the Epistle. It is probable, therefore, that when the Western Churches generally began to discontinue the lessons from the Old Testament, they placed the Psalm between the Epistle and the Gospel, in order to preserve the semblance of the ancient custom, according to which the Psalm had always intervened between the Old and the New Testament.

By a natural and easy transition, the name Gradual was frequently given to the Antiphonary, the book which contained the anthems, hymns, or verses, to be sung or recited, and originally one of the three service books of the Church-the other two being entitled respectively the Sacramentary and the Lectionary which, about the 11th or 12th century, it was found convenient to unite in a single volume, called the Complete or Plenary Missal, or Book of Missa.

The title of Psalmi Graduales, or Psalms of Degrees, is given to a series of fifteen Psalms, extending from cxx. to cxxxiv. inclusive, some of which are believed to have been written on the return of the Jews from the captivity in Babylon, and which, being distributed into groups of five, have three ascensions, and are sometimes used, with a certain liturgical significance, in the services of the season of Lent. (Palmer's Origines Liturgica, or Antiquities of the English Ritual; Hook's Church Dictionary, and others.)

GRÁFFIER, GREFFIER (Med. Latin, graphiarius or greffarius, French greffier), a registrar, a notary. In France the greffiers are an important body of public servants, appointed and paid by the state, and presided over by a greffier en chef. Greffiers are attached to all the courts. They have the charge of the records, keep the register of causes, enter notes of the several proceedings, issue judgments, &c. Greffiers-adjoints are attached to the tribunaux de première instance, tribunals of commerce, and courts of appeal. In the superior courts the greffiers must be twenty-seven years of age, in the lower courts twenty, five. A large part of the emoluments of the greffiers is derived from fees.