It should be understood that the editors of the various texts mentioned in Part I. have prefixed or appended thereto introductory matter of a less or more elaborate kind, and that they are
This writer maintained: (a) That the original Graal Legend was connected with St. John Baptist, whose head was enshrined at Constantinople and was used to maintain the life of a dying emperor in the eleventh century; (b) that the Templar connections of the Parsifal were a mere reflection; (c) that the Templeisen were the Knights of San Salvador de Mont Réal--founded in 1120; and (d) that the Graal and its veneration suggest the Gnostic body called Christians of St. John.
T. H. de la Villemarqué: Les Romans de la Table Ronde et les contes des anciens Bretons, 1842; Contes Populaires de la Bretagne, 2 vols., 1846 (fourth edition); Myrdhinn ou l’Enchanteur Merlin (new edition), 1861.
In the last work Merlin is treated as a mythological, historical, legendary and romantic character. It is entertaining, but largely fantastic, and at the present day it is difficult to accept anything advanced by this writer without careful verification. He considered that a pagan tradition was received from the bards and, in combination with a particular presentation of the Eucharistic mystery, was passed on to the romancers of northern France. The Graal is Celtic, and the word signifies a basin.
Reichel: Studien zu Parzival, 1856.
This work was written in opposition to San Marte, and it denied that the theology of the twelfth century should be applied to the interpretation of the poem.
Louis Moland: Origines littéraires de la France, 1862.
(a) The old history, the high history, was contained in a Latin book; (b) it embodied that chivalrous ideal which it was sought to realise in the Temple; (c) this was connected
