the part related to the Grail from my article on a Slavonic NT apocryphon
как известно, я уже около 10 лет собираюсь написать о византийских агиографических легендах цикла Грааля. и тут вдруг славянская апокрифическая серия, утраченный греческий оригинал которой имеет массу признаков перевода с сирийского (и вообще она хорошо датируется сиро-монофелитской средой 663-668 годов) сохранил такие элементы истории о чаше Тайной Вечери, которые до сих пор были известны только по Граалю. наличие апокрифического источника у этих мотивов в Граале предполагал в 1929 г. Евгений Аничков, но в такой крайне неудачной (по другим причинам) статье, что об этом все забыли, -- а вот теперь я нашел.
это уже второй случай, когда французская литература времен Третьего Крестового похода черпает из нашего сгустка легенд: первый заметил в 1886 г. Веселовский, увидя в "шансон де жест "Аспремонт" использование легенд о Панкратии Тавроменийском, которые принадлежат к тому же сгустку легенд конца 7 века, что и моя нынешняя антология апокрифических деяний апостолов. (любопытно, что с тех пор специалисты по агиографии все помнят и знают это наблюдение Веселовского и считают его подтвержденным, а специалисты по французской литературе не знают о нем ничего, т.к. не читают работы о Панкратии Тавроменийском!).
The apostles have gathered in this upper room in the night, with the incense and the candles, and chanted some psalms of David. After this chant, they have partaken “of pure [or venerated?] breads and the golden chalice that Simon the Leper has had given to Jesus Christ, and the wine after having mixed (it) with warm water, as we shall tell clearer elsewhere” (чистыя [this word is subtracted under the titlo and could be alternatively read as честныя] хлебы и чашу златую. юже бе дал симон прокаженыи иисус христу. и растворивше с теплою водою вино. якоже инде скажем яснее; B 87 / P 205-206, quote at 206). This sentence has a problematic syntax (the mixed wine is enumerated as if it is a separate item from the chalice) and ends exactly at the end of fragment 1. The most likely explanation of this irregularity is an insertion of the last phrase (about the warm water) by the anti-Latin Byzantine editor: indeed, in 1054 and shortly after, the Byzantine rite of zeon (pouring the hot water into the consecrated chalice) was an important part in the anti-Latin polemics [1].
The most precious detail in this account is, in every sense of the word, the golden chalice. Its first feature is that it was preserved in the upper room of Sion (where our account locates the apostolic liturgical gatherings). The chalice of the Last Supper preserved in Sion has a long tradition of its own [2]. Our text does not claims explicitly that the gold chalice was that of the Last Supper, but it would not have been implied otherwise, because our text provides an account of the liturgical practice of the apostles between the Last Supper and the Pentecost located in the upper room where the Last Supper took place.
Indeed, this chalice is, in all branches of the tradition, precious. Nevertheless, in our particular case, the Sion chalice has other features that so far were never known from the documents of the first millennium: (1) this chalice belonged to Jesus personally, and (2) he acquired it as a gift from Simon the Leper. The earliest witnesses of these features known so far are the verse and prose recensions of the Joseph d’Arimathie romance ascribed to Robert de Boron (otherwise known under the modern title Le Roman de l’Estoire dou Graal) and approximately dated to 1200. This is already the second case where our Slavonic florilegium has a common source with the late twelfth-century French literature: the first case that became known already in 1886 is the chanson de geste dated to ca. 1190, Aspramont, which borrows in the seventh-century hagiographical dossier of St. Pancras of Tauromenium to which belong as well the Acts of Peter in our Slavonic florilegium (s. below, section 9). Therefore, French authors of the time of the Third Crusade (1189-1192) had an access to some of the seventh-century hagiographical legends
- Excursus: Some Jerusalem Legends in the Grail Cycle
According to Robert de Boron’s story, Jesus was arrested at the very place of the Last Supper, and this place was not the Sion upper room but the house of Simon the Leper, which is implied to be located in Gethsemane. The localisation of the Last Supper at the very place of the arrest in Gethsemane, along with but alternative to the Sion localisation, appeared no later than in the early sixth century and continued to be known, at least, until the ninth century [5]. There is no source mentioning Simon the Leper as the owner of the Gethsemane house, but, at least, one early sixth-century Jerusalem source witnesses that this alleged place of the Last Supper has been occupied earlier with sick people [6]. If we still do not know the source attributing the Gethsemane house directly to Simon the Leper, this would hardly justify the view that all these details were invented by Robert de Boron [7].
The relevant part of the Joseph d’Arimathie is now rightly considered as inspired mostly by the Cura sanitatis Tiberii (CANT 69; approximately 6th cent.) and the Vindicta Salvatoris (CANT 70; approximately 7th cent.) [8]. These apocrypha, however, do not contain any motive related to the chalice [9].
As in our Evodius text, the chalice of the Last Supper belonged to Jesus. In the Joseph, it is not stated explicitly that Simon the Leper gave it to Christ, but it was used in Simon’s house. Thus, Robert de Boron followed the same tradition. The most relevant passages are the following:
La ou Jesu fu pris chiés Simon si estoit laienz ses vessiaus la ou il sacrefioit. A la prise ot un Juif qui trova ce vaisel, si le prist… (p. 61).
Where Jesus was arrested, at Simon’s [home], there was his vessel in which he had celebrated. At the arrest was present a Jew who found this vessel and took it…
Leenz eut un veissel mout gent
Ou Criz feisoit son sacrement.
Uns Juis le veissel trouva
Chiés Symon, sel prit et garda,
Car Jhesus fu d’ilec menez
Et devant Pilate livrez.
(verses 395-400, p. 60)
There was a very elegant/costly vessel
In which Christ had made his sacrament.
One Jew found the vessel
At Simon’s [home], then, took it to himself and kept,
When Jesus has been taken out of there
And brought before Pilate.
Then, this Jew gave the vessel to Pilate, and Pilate eventually gave it to Joseph of Arimathea. Passing the vessel to Joseph, Pilate stressed that this thing belonged to Jesus: …que je ne vel riens retenir de chose qui ce soe fust (p. 73, 75) “…because I do not want to keep anything what was his”; …qu’il o soe ne vouloit / Rien retenir qui Jhesu fust (vv. 514-515, pp. 72, 74) “…because he did not want to keep with him anything what belonged to Jesus”.
The existence of an apocryphal source behind these passages of the Joseph d’Arimathie was first supposed by Evgenij Vasil’evich Anichkov (1866-1937) in an article [10] that has been completely rejected by the scholarly consensus almost immediately after its publication [11]. Not that it did not deserve it, but Anichkov’s supposition of an apocryphon underlying this episode is now exactly confirmed.
Among the legends about the chalice of the Last Supper, we do not know the one that transmits this chalice to Joseph of Arimathea, even though it is unlikely that Robert de Boron arbitrarily handled the chalice to Joseph. The Jerusalem hagiographical dossier of a vessel containing the blood issued from the dead body of Jesus reached us in a much-distorted form within the dossier of martyr Baripsabas [12]. His martyrdom is preserved in very short summaries and references that contradict each other. The modest figure of monk Baripsabas is paralleled in more than modest kind of vessel he used for Jesus’s blood, a pumpkin. Nevertheless, originally Baripsabas was, in Second Temple Jewish and Early Christian traditions, a figure of a divinised High Priest. His place in the actual Byzantine calendar, September 10, still refers to Yom Kippur, Tishri 1o, and, therefore, to a ritual involving the blood and performed uniquely by the High Priest. It seems that in the same manner as the divinised High Priest devolved into a humble monk, his precious chalice, preceding the fate of Cinderella’s carriage, turned into a pumpkin.
A Byzantine legend of Joseph of Arimathea keeping a vessel with Jesus’s blood must have existed being an alternative to the legend of martyr Baripsabas. The latter is available to us in scattered fragments, whereas the former is (still?) unavailable at all.
[1] On the respective liturgical developments, see Robert F. Taft, A History of the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom. Vol. V. The Precommunion Rites (Orientalia Christiana Analecta, 261), Roma, 2000, p. 441-502; А. С. Слуцкий, “Византийские литургические чины «Соединения Даров» и «Теплоты»: ранние славянские версии”, Византийский временник, 65 (90), 2006, p. 126-145; the theological relevance of the rite of zeon for the Greco-Latin polemics has been first discovered by Lodewijk Herman Grondijs (1878-1961) in his 1941 dissertation; cf. his final publication on these theological topics: L. H. Grondijs, “Der Heilige Geist in den Schriften des Niketas Stethatos,” Byzantinische Zeitschrift, 51, 1958, p. 329-354 (not mentioned in Taft, History…).
[2] See a detailed study in B. Lourié, “The Inscription on the Chalice of Solomon: A New Reading in the Light of New Textual and Liturgical Witnesses”, Scrinium, 13, 2017, p. 170-198.
[3] L. Gowans, “What did Robert de Boron really write?” in: Arthurian Studies in Honour of P. J. C. Field, ed. B. Wheeler (Arthurian Studies, 57), Cambridge, 2004, p. 15-28, at 27.
[4] According to the modern critical edition by Richard O’Gorman: Robert de Boron, Joseph d’Arimathie. A Critical Edition of the Verse and Prose Versions (Studies and Texts, 120), Toronto, 1995 (with page numbers within the text). For our purposes is irrelevant the much commented passage corresponding to vv. 893-920 (p. 110; p. 111 for the prose version), which is inspired, as it has been already shown by Richard Heinzel, Über die französischen Gralromane (Denkschriften der kaiserlichen Akademie der Wissenschaften in Wien. Philosophisch-historische Classe, XL, 3), Wien, 1891, p. 103, by the Mediaeval Latin liturgical commentaries; cf. also R. O’Gorman, Robert de Boron, p. 361 (with further bibliography), and, especially, idem, “Ecclesiastical Tradition and the Holy Grail”, Australian Journal of French Studies, 6, 1969, p. 3-8. Allen Cabaniss, Joseph of Arimathea and a Chalice, in University of Mississipi Studies in English, 4 (1963) pp. 61-67 Liturgy and Literature: Selected Essays, University of Alabama Press, [1970]
[5] See John Wilkinson, Jerusalem Pilgrims before the Crusades, Warminster, 1977, p. 61 (Breviarius to Jerusalem, 7, only in form B; early 6th cent.), 66 (Theodosius, The Topography of the Holy Land, 10; before 518), and 144 (Bernard the Monk, A Journey to the Holy Places and Babylon, 13; ca. 870).
[6] Breviarius, 7, rec. B: “A basilica is there where at one time sick persons used to wash and be healed. <…> There too Judas betrayed our Lord Jesus Christ. There too is the place where the Lord had supper with his disciples and from which he went up onto the Mount” (Wilkinson’s tr., ibid., p. 61). These pilgrims’ reports are witnesses of what they have been told by their guides. Possibly, some of these traditions reported by guides were exclusively oral.
[7] It became rather common, among a part of Arthurian scholars, to consider this literature as “imaginative” in the sense that its Christian legends would have been invented without any sources: cf. a manifesto of such an approach in Richard Barber, “The Search of the Sources: The Case of the Grail”, in: A History of Arthurian Scholarship, ed. by N. J. Lacy (Arthurian Studies, 65), Cambridge, 2006, p. 19-36, esp. at p. 36. Such attitudes are concomitant with a lack of knowledge of relevant hagiographical legends. Thus, no Grail scholar supposed that the scene with Jesus’s arrest after the Last Supper on the spot and the role of Simon the Leper has had any background in the real sacred topography of Jerusalem, even though pilgrims’ accounts were widely known already in the 19th century. Robert de Boron in his search for early Christian traditions underlying the Grail legends was working as a hagiographer and not as a modern author of fiction. He was obliged to looking for the truth, and the truth has been verified with ancient hagiographical legends.
[8] See Gérard Gros dealing with Robert de Boron in his commentaries to his edition of the Josephus of the Vulgate: G. Gros, “Joseph d’Arimathie. Notice”, in: Le Livre du Graal. I. Joseph d’Arimathie. Merlin. Les Premiers Faits du roi Arthur, ed. Ph. Walter, D. Poirion, (Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, 476), Paris, 2001, p. 1665-1681, p. 1668 ; cf. already R. Heinzel, Über die französischen Gralromane…, p. 102 (but Heinzel still did not know Cura sanitatis Tiberii first published by Ernst von Dobschütz in 1899). Cf. also Rémi Gounelle, “Les origines littéraires de la légende de Véronique et de la Sainte Face: La Cura sanitatis Tiberii et la Vindicta Salvatoris”, in: Sacre impronte e oggetti. «non fatti da mano d’uomo» nelle religioni. Atti del Convegno Internazionale - Torino, 18-20 maggio 2010, a cura di A. Monaci Castagno, Torino, 2011, p. 231-251.
[9] Some scholars thought, however, that Robert de Boron followed the legend of the Mandylion but changed its object into a vessel. See, most recently, Daniel Scavone, “Joseph of Arimathea, the Holy Grail, and the Edessa Icon”, Arthuriana, 9, 1999, p. 1-31, who failed to quote R. Heinzel, Über die französischen Gralromane…, p. 102, where this hypothesis has been already formulated (among others).
[10] E. Anitchkof, “Le Saint Graal et les rites eucharistiques”, Romania, 55, 1929, p. 174-194, here p. 175: “Cette version doit remonter à un apocryphe…” (concerning vv. 395-400 quoted by us above).
[11] The decisive voice was that of Myrrha Lot-Borodine (1882-1954): M. Lot-Borodine, “Autour du Saint Graal. À propos de travaux récents. II. Les Rites eucharistiques chez Robert le Boron et Chrétien de Troyes”, Romania, 57, 1931, p. 147-205. [12] For his full hagiographical dossier, see B. Lourié, “John II of Jerusalem’s Homily on the Encaenia of St. Sion and Its Calendrical Background”, in: Armenia between Byzantium and the Orient: Celebrating the Memory of Karen Yuzbashian (1927-2009), ed. B. Outtier, C. B. Horn, B. Lourié, and A. Ostrovsky (Texts and Studies in Eastern Christianity, 16) Leiden-Boston, 2019, p. 152-196, esp. p. 176-177 (with further bibliography). There is a commonly overlooked article on Baripsabas’s cult in possible connexion with Grail legends: G. Mayer, “Parzival und der Hl. Varipsava. Zur Vorgeschichte der mittelalterlichen Gralsdichtungen”, in: Slawistische Studien zum V. Internationalen Slawistenkongreß in Sofia, eds. M. Braun, E. Koschmieder (Opera slavica, 4), Göttingen, 1963, p. 319-341.