Ronald Murphy is George M. Roth Distinguished Professor of German at Georgetown University. He is the author of several titles, including The Heiland: The Saxon Gospel and The Owl, the Raven, and the Dove: The Religious Meaning of the Grimms' Magic Fairy Tales .

• Prologue: In the Beginning


• Grails, the Grail, and the Stars


• 1.: The Idea of the Holy Grail


• 2.: The World of Precious Stones


• 3.: The Crusaders' Quest


• The Holy Sepulcher


• 4.: The Frame Story


• Feirefiz, Parzival, and Their Father


• 5.: The Frame Story Ending


• The Overflowing Grail


• 6.: The Grail in the Inner Story


• 7.: The Paradise Altar of Bamberg


• Afterword


• Aftermath


• Appendix 1: Etymological Excursus


• The Meaning of the Five Women's Names


• Appendix 2: Two Medieval Texts on the Consecration of the Altar and the Veneration of the Sepulcher


• Select Bibliography


• Index

In his Middle High German romance Parzival (c. 1210), Wolfram von Eschenbach depicts the Holy Grail not as a cup, but as a gemstone. Ronald Murphy seeks to illuminate this mystery and to enable a far better appreciation of Wolfram's insight into the nature of the Grail and its relationship to the Crusades. Wolfram's stone, Murphy argues, is actually a sacramental reference to the Holy Sepulcher the Crusaders fought to obtain, and Parzival was intended as an argumentagainst continued efforts by Latin Christians to recover the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem by force of arms. Murphy's investigation of the spiritual nature and meaning of the Grail is accompanied by his quest for and wondrous discovery of the actual altar stone that inspired Wolfram's work. Offering anentirely original reading of Wolfram's famous text, this engrossing and accessible book appeals not only to scholars and students of medieval literature but to anyone who is drawn to the lasting mystery of the Holy Grail.