Galahad

Symbols: White shield; red cross

Culture: Western European

Mother: Elaine of Corbenic

Father: Sir Lancelot

Sir Galahad was one of the knights of King Arthur’s Round Table, and he is famous for having achieved the quest of finding the Holy Grail. The Holy Grail was the cup from which Jesus had drunk wine at the Last Supper, and it had long been sought by Arthur’s knights. Galahad was able to succeed in the quest because he was completely virtuous—he was chaste, chivalrous, brave, and courteous.

Galahad is connected to Joseph of Arimathea. Joseph was a figure of the Bible, a follower of Jesus who took him from the cross after the crucifixion and buried him in his own tomb. A legend arose that Jesus had entrusted the Holy Grail to Joseph, who had then traveled to spread the teachings of Jesus. According to this legend, Joseph carried the cup and Christianity to England, allegedly reaching Glastonbury. He then entrusted the cup to his brother-in-law. In the Arthurian story, that individual was an ancestor of King Pelles of Corbenic, Galahad’s grandfather.

In Mythology

The story of Galahad began when Pelles set out to ensure that one of his descendants would seek the Holy Grail. He had his daughter Elaine trick Sir Lancelot into thinking that she was Arthur’s queen, Guinevere, with whom Lancelot was in love. The two slept together, and Elaine conceived Galahad. Thus, the child carried in his veins the blood of Lancelot, the bravest and most accomplished knight of Arthur’s Round Table, but one unable to succeed in the Holy Grail quest because of his impurity. Lancelot’s quest, growing from his profane love for Guinevere, failed, whereas Galahad’s more pure and spiritual quest succeeded.

When Lancelot learned of the trick played on him by Pelles and Elaine, he left their castle to return to the Round Table. After Galahad was born, he was sent to his aunt, the abbess of a nunnery, to be raised. When he reached adulthood, he encountered Lancelot, who knighted him. Galahad then traveled to Camelot, which he reached on Pentecost—the Christian feast day that celebrates the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the apostles and the beginning of their mission to carry the Gospel to the world. Thus, Galahad is linked to that same holy calling to spread the message of the Gospel. His special status became evident to all when he appeared. His name suddenly was engraved on the Siege Perilous. The siege, a chair (siege in French means "seat"), had been set aside for the Grail Knight, the one who would succeed in the Holy Grail quest. Many other knights had sat in the seat, but none had survived. Galahad was the first and only knight to do so.

Arthur, impressed by the results of this test of Galahad’s worthiness but wanting an additional assurance, gave the knight a second challenge. Earlier, the day before Galahad’s arrival, a stone with a sword embedded in it had appeared in a lake outside the castle. Since Galahad himself did not have a sword, Arthurs challenged the visitor to pull it from the stone. He did, and Arthur gave him the sword and made him a knight of the Round Table.

The knights resolved to go on a quest for the Holy Grail, and Galahad, along with Sir Bors and Sir Percival, was naturally named one of the three knights to undertake the journey. During Galahad’s first adventure, the knight was able to acquire additional gear. He stopped at an abbey, where he learned of the existence of a shield that had once belonged to Josephus, one of his ancestors. Josephus, it was said, had been baptized by Joseph of Arimathea himself. One of Galahad’s companions tried to steal the shield but was stopped, and the shield—white with a red cross that had been made using the blood of Josephus—was delivered to Galahad.

The knight had additional adventures, but he eventually came upon the Holy Grail, along with Bors and Percival. Galahad had a vision of angels and felt deeply moved. The three knights returned the Holy Grail to the island of Sarras, where it had been kept, and they restored Christianity to that island’s people. Then Galahad prayed that he be allowed to die, and his wish was granted.

Origins and Cults

Although it has a British setting and a Welsh origin, the Arthurian legend also appeared often in medieval French literature. The twelfth-century French writer Chrétien de Troyes introduced the quest for the Holy Grail in one of the five Arthurian romances he wrote. He placed the innocent knight Perceval (an earlier version of the character known as Percival) at the heart of the Holy Grail quest. Galahad first appeared in the thirteenth century in a group of Arthurian romances called The Vulgate Cycle (ca. 1210–30); in this version of the legend, he replaced Perceval as the story’s hero. This cycle may have been written by Cistercian monks. Clerical authorship is reflected in the Christian values of this version of the legend, including Galahad’s chastity and his self-sacrifice after achieving the quest, an echo of Jesus’s own sacrifice.

The story in The Vulgate Cycle became accessible to English readers in the fifteenth century when Sir Thomas Malory wrote his Le Morte D’Arthur ("The Death of Arthur"), a prose retelling of the Arthurian legend that included Galahad’s successful quest. Malory’s work became the basis for later retellings of Galahad’s story.

In Popular Culture

The Arthurian legend has been reworked countless times since Malory’s Le Morte D’Arthur first appeared. Among the most well known are Alfred Lord Tennyson’s Idylls of the King, a collection of several poems related to the legend that includes "Sir Galahad" (1842). Tennyson portrayed Galahad as virtuous and resolute. William Morris, in "Sir Galahad, a Christmas Mystery" (1858), described a lonely, troubled man who needed reassurance from Jesus. The most popular twentieth-century reworking of the Arthur story, T.H. White’s The Once and Future King (1939), includes the Galahad story—but only indirectly. In this version of the legend, although the other knights relate his adventures, they do not always cast him in a favorable light. He disappeared in the Broadway musical reworking of the Arthur story, Camelot (1960) and in the movie made from it in 1965. He did reappear in Monte Python and the Holy Grail (1975), the comic retelling of the story in which his chastity was sorely tested.

Bibliography

Jung, Emma, and Marie-Louise von Franz. The Grail Legend. 2nd rev. ed. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1998. Print.

Lacy, Norris J., Geoffrey Ashe, and Debra N. Mancoff. The Arthurian Handbook. 2nd ed. London and New York: Routledge, 1997. Print.

Lupack, Alan. The Oxford Guide to Arthurian Legend. Oxford and New York: Oxford UP, 2007. Print.

Malory, Sir Thomas. Le Morte D’Arthur. Ed. Joseph Glaser. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 2015. Print.

McShane, Karen L. "Galahad." The Camelot Project. Robbins Library, University of Rochester, n.d. Web. 4 Feb. 2016. <http://d.lib.rochester.edu/camelot/theme/galahad>.

Pearsall, Derek. Arthurian Romance: A Short Introduction. Malden and Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2003. Print.

"Saint Joseph of Arimathea." Encyclopaedia Britannica. Encycloaedia Britannica Inc., 2016. Web. 4 Feb. 2016. <http://www.britannica.com/biography/Saint-Joseph-of-Arimathea>.