Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 2, 1891.djvu/216

 208 the same colour as that of St. Catharine." And further on: "There is a part of the table on which Our Lord made His Supper, when he made his Maundy with his disciples and gave them his flesh and blood in form of bread and wine. And under that chapel, by a descent of thirty-two steps, is the place where Our Lord washed his disciples' feet, and the vessel which contained the water is still preserved. . . . And there is the altar where Our Lord heard the angels sing mass."

Almost identical with this description is that of Philip, of the twelfth or thirteenth century. The identification of stone and altar, and further altar and mass, is to be met with also elsewhere. It is in fact no more than a simple adaptation of the old notion, that the ark stood upon that stone and that the stone took the place of the altar. To identify the altar in the church and the sacrament with the fundamental events in the life and the teachings of Jesus is in perfect accord with the allegorical and mystical interpretations indulged in since ancient times. The mass in the oriental church has throughout only a symbolical meaning, and the Grail partakes thus of a double interpretation. To one it is merely a vessel or a cup, a portion for the whole, the natural change from the altar and mass to the most prominent portion of it; to another it is still a primitive rock made by hands of angels, and the foodgiving wafer is brought by the dove which represents the Holy Spirit.

In one the change is more radical, and with the time becomes more mystical and symbolical; in the other the original form is better retained, and offers thus more elements for the reconstruction of the oldest form of the legend. The Munsalvasche, where the castle stands, is nothing else than the "Mount of Salvation"—the Armenian church on Mount Sion is dedicated to the "Holy Saviour" the Salvator; and Wolfram was not altogether wrong when he accused Chrestien of having departed too much from the original conception.