Gemstone of Paradise: The Holy Grail in Wolfram's Parzival
by G. Ronald Murphy
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Book Summary Information
Author: G. Ronald MurphyEdition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Published: 2006-08-10
ISBN: 0195306392
Number of pages: 256
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Book Reviews of Gemstone of Paradise: The Holy Grail in Wolfram's Parzival
Book Review: Paradise found?
Summary: 5 Stars
Oxford University Press sure missed a trick in marketing this superb book. I only found out about it months after publication, when I chanced on a review in The Tablet. But if the OUP publicity people had done their job properly every newspaper and newscaster in the Western world would have bellowed "Jesuit finds the Holy Grail!"
Which said, you can forget airport ephemera like The Da Vinci Code and The Holy Blood and The Holy Grail - Fr Murphy is Professor of German at Georgetown University, and this is a serious, scholarly work, which is also immensely readable, not to say thrilling, particularly when it comes to the role that gemstones have played in the Bible and Christian thought and indeed in Parzival.
Did Fr. Murphy persuade me that the principal inspiration for Wolfram's Grail was a portable Paradise altar? Yes he did. Did he persuade me that the specific inspiration was the Bamberg Paradise Altar? Not quite. Because that is a kefse, a wooden box, with enamel plates, and a green altar stone set in the top of the box. Whereas Wolfram tells us that his Grail is a stone. Just that. He does use the word kefse in other contexts, but never when describing the Grail itself. Which makes me think Fr Murphy is too hasty in dismissing the one other surviving portable Paradise altar, the simple flat stone in Brussels. This is brownish-beige, and not the green Fr Murphy argues Wolfram must have had in mind - but then Wolfram never tells us what colour his Grail stone is. So maybe Wolfram's Grail was really inspired by the Brussels altar stone, or a similar one which has not survived.
Buy this wonderful book and see if you agree with me or the Jesuit...
Summary of Gemstone of Paradise: The Holy Grail in Wolfram's Parzival
The story of the Grail, usually identified as some kind of mystical vessel, has gripped the imaginations of millions since it first appeared in several medieval romances. Of these, Wolfram von Eschenbach's Middle High German Parzival (c. 1210) is generally recognized as the most complex and beautiful. Strangely, in Parzival, the Grail is identified as a stone rather than a cup or dish. This oddity is usually seen as just another mystery, further evidence of the difficulty of discerning the true sources of the Grail legend.In this groundbreaking study, G. Ronald Murphy seeks to illuminate this mystery and to enable a far better appreciation of Wolfram's insight into the nature of the Grail and its relationship to the Crusades. The Grail, container of the sacred body and blood of Christ, Wolfram was saying, was where God said it would be: on the altar at the consecration of the Mass. Wolfram's "sacred stone" was none other than a consecrated altar, precious by virtue of the sacrament but also, Murphy argues, by virtue of the material from which it was made: a green gem, one of the precious stones associated with the rivers of Paradise. Murphy explores what it signifies for the Grail to be a translucent gemstone and an altar made portable only by a woman. Wolfram's stone is a sacramental reference to the stone the Crusaders fought to obtain - the Holy Sepulchre. Parzival, Murphy believes, was intended as an argument against continued efforts by Latin Christians to recover the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem by force of arms. In Wolfram's story, warring Christian and Muslim brothers are brought together in peace by the power of Wolfram's Holy Grail--a stone Murphy believes still exists.
Murphy's investigation of the spiritual nature and meaning of the Grail is thus accompanied by his quest for and wondrous discovery of the actual altar stone that inspired Wolfram's work. Offering an entirely original reading of Wolfram's famous text, this engrossing and accessible book appeals not only to scholars and students of medieval literature but to anyone who is drawn to the lasting mystery of the Holy Grail.
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