he holy vessel which received at the
Cross the blood of Christ, which was now become a symbol of the Divine
Presence. This holy vessel had been brought by Joseph of Arimathea from
Palestine to Britain, but was now, alas, vanished quite from the sight
of man. It was the holy quest for this sacred vessel, to which the
knights of the Round Table now bound themselves,--this "search for the
supernatural," this "struggle for the spiritual," this blending of the
spirit of Christianity with that of chivalry,--which immediately
transformed the Arthurian legend, and gave to its heroes immortality. At
once a new spirit breathes in the old legend. In a few years it is
become a mystical, symbolical, anagogical tale, inculcating one of the
profoundest dogmas of the Holy Catholic Church, a bearer of a Christian
doctrine engrossing the thought of the Christian world. And inasmuch as
the transformed Arthurian legend now taught by implication the doctrine
of the Divine Presence, its spread was in every way furthered by the
great power of the Church, whose spiritual rulers made the minstrel
doubly welcome when celebrating this theme.

For there was heresy to be combated; viz., the heresy of the scholastic
theologian Berengar of Tours, who had attacked the doctrine of the
transubstantiation of the bread and the wine of the Eucharist into the
body and blood of Christ. Lanfranc, Archbishop of Canterbury, one of the
most brilliant of the Middle Age theologians, felt impelled to reply to
Berengar, who had been his personal friend; and he did so in the 'Liber
Scintillarum,' which was a vigorous, indeed a violent, defense of the
doctrine denied by Berengar. Berengar died in 1088; but he left a
considerable body of followers. The heretics were anathematized by the
Second Lateran Ecumenical Council held in Rome in 1139. Again, in 1215,
the Fourth Lateran Council declared transubstantiation to be an article
of faith, and in 1264 a special holy day, Corpus Christi,--viz., the
first Thursday after Trinity Sunday,--was set apart to give an annual
public manifestation of the belief of the Church in the doctrine of the
Eucharist.

But when the Fourth Lateran Ecumenical Council met in 1215, the
transformation of the Arthurian legend by means of its association with
the legend of the Holy Grail was already complete, and the transformed
legend, now become a defender of the faith, was engrossing the
imagination of Europe. The subsequent influence of the le