Transfers of Empire, Movements of Mind: Holy Sepulchre and Holy Grail

Abstract

It has long been customary to speak of the interaction between his? torical crises and imaginative ones. But at times there are changes so radical in a civilization that they alter conventional distinctions between history and imagination themselves.1 A radical shift of this kind, I think, develops in European civilization in the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries. During this period a leading form of narrative often luxuriant in its subject matter and largely secular in orientation?chivalric romance?is increasingly trans? figured by a sacralizing story evocative of Christian Scripture. This is the story of the Holy Grail,2 a redemptive object associated (in a formative version of the story) with the Last Supper and initially entrusted to Joseph of Arimathea, the New Testament figure who had furnished a sepulchre for the crucified Christ. In relating how the numinous