BOOK I

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THE ROOTS OF THE HOUSE OF MEANING

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THE ARGUMENT

Heads of a General Summary of the whole subject, with the analysis thereof, including:--I. SOME ASPECTS OF THE GRAAL LEGEND.--The word which came forth out of Galilee--The sacramental vessel--Its history and the quests thereof--The Graal in the books of chivalry--The Graal in modern poetry--The composite elements of the Legend--The Graal as a reliquary. II. EPOCHS OF THE LEGEND.--The higher understanding of the Quest--The outlook of romanticism--The attitude of poetry--The direction of archæology--The prospect which is called spiritual--The consideration of the present thesis--The hidden motives of the literature--Its critical difficulties--Concerning the interpretation of Books. III. THE ENVIRONMENT OF THE GRAAL LITERATURE. The Catholic Doctrine of the Eucharist--The passage of Transubstantiation into Dogma--The Cultus of the Precious Blood--Relics of the Passion, and, in the first place, concerning those of the Precious Blood--The discovery of the Sacro Catino--The invention of the Lance at Antioch--The Sword of St. John the Baptist--The state of the Official Church--The Church in Britain--The Holy Wars of Palestine--The higher life of Sanctity and its annals in the Graal period--The sects of the period. IV. THE LITERATURE OF THE CYCLE.--Its various modes of classification and that mode which is most proper to the present inquiry--The places of the Graal Legend--The Welsh Peredur and the English Syr Percyvelle--The Conte del Graal--The Lesser Chronicles of the Holy Graal--The 

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[paragraph continues] Greater Chronicles of the Holy Graal--The German cycle--The question which is posed for consideration. V. THE IMPLICITS OF THE GRAAL MYSTERY.--The first consideration concerning a concealed sense of the literature--The Secret Words of Consecration and what follows therefrom, namely, that a true Mass has never been said in the world since the Graal was taken away--The super-apostolical succession, the peculiar Divine Warrant and ecclesiastical pre-eminence claimed for the Graal Keepers--That these claims must be distinguished from errors of doctrinal confusion and theological ignorance, of which there is evidence otherwise--That any concealed sense must be held to co-exist with manifest insufficiency, even within its own province, and more especially regarding the Eucharist--That there is no intention to present the Graal Mystery as that of a secret process at work outside the Church--The Lesser Implicits of the literature.