possession of a sacred lance that in the later versions of the legend is identified with the lance that pierced Christ's side. And we do not have to ask or guess what the reference of such a legend may have been or why the allegory in its time touched so many hearts; the condition of the Church, above described, explains this well enough (Campbell 508).
As the vessel of the initial sacrament of the Eucharist, the Grail legitimates worship and the spiritual authority, not to say hegemony, of Christian theology. There is more than a hint of spiritual mystery and authority associated with the Grail. To participate directly in the experience of it confers a kind of spiritual authority on any who do the participating. Another aspect, of course, as Campbell's summary of the provenance of the legend suggests, is the tension implicit in the sacramental nature of the Christian Grail vis-a-vis the threat of Islam, for which the Crusades were undertaken. By the time chivalric romance had made its appearance in the twelfth century, the Grail had been instituti
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