Twelfth Century Europe was a time of unprecedented spiritual awakening. The Crusades to the Holy Land had returned with new esoteric secrets from the East. The heretical Cathars were challenging the authority of a divided and corrupt Church of Rome and women were at last accorded a new power and position, forming their own Courts of Love. Out of this extraordinary new age arose a legend which was to surpass all previous Western myths - that of a mystical object called the Holy Grail and a knightly Quest in search of it. Between 1190 and 1220, there was an outpouring of stories about this sacred artifact. Deemed heretical by the Church and yet said to hold the blood of the crucified Christ, the Grail chalice was supposedly brought to Britain two thousand years ago. And although the legend is set in the Arthurian Britain of the sixth century, tradition traces the cup of the last supper to a Cathar stronghold in the Pyrenees, under the guardianship of the Knights of the Temple of Jerusalem. The legend of the Holy Grail is not one story, but many, and this book explores the major, and very different, accounts which appeared within a thirty-year span. The legends of the Quest are taken from many sources including the earliest pagan tales of the Celtic Peredur, the unfinished, courtly epic of Cretien de Troyes, Le Conte del Graal, and a little-known poetic gem called the Diu Crone, or the Jeweled Crown.The great Cistercian epic of the Vulgate Cycle, which includes the Queste del San Graal, is probably the account known best to Western readers, yet many more are examined including Perlesvaus, Joseph d'Arimathie, Merlin, the Didot-Perceval and Parzival.In addition we discover that Mary Magdalene is a central figure within the legends and that the miraculous Black Virgin statues, still found throughout Europe today, have strange and intimate ties with the Grail. Even tarot cards contain the sacred Hallows along with a complete blueprint for the Grail Quest, devised by the Templar knights, who spread its heretical secret while being hidden from the Inquisition.Lavishly illustrated, this thought provoking book bridges an eight-hundred-year gap with a living legend. Read Less