# Fiction of the Holy Grail

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fiction-of-the-holy-grail/241065>\
**Category:** Cecil's Columns/Staff Reports\
**Created:** [April 20, 2004, 6:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fiction-of-the-holy-grail/241065 "2004-04-20T18:50:42Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Skott](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b4bc9f/32.png) [@Skott](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skott)\
**Post date:** [April 20, 2004, 6:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fiction-of-the-holy-grail/241065/1 "2004-04-20T18:50:42Z")

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[http://www.straightdope.com/columns/030404.html](http://www.straightdope.com/columns/030404.html)

> [@Cecil Adams](#):
>
> The Holy Grail is an _invention_.

As I was watching a show on the History Channel last night about the Holy Grail, I got to thinking: Since the Holy Grail is fictional, why don’t more historians, and indeed the general public, seem to know about it? (Admittedly, one of the “historians” on the show last night was the author of [_Holy Blood, Holy Grail_](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holy_blood%2C_holy_grail), so he obviously doesn’t want it to be fiction…)

For instance, [this page](http://www.byu.edu/ipt/projects/middleages/Arthur/grail.html) lists several theories of what and where the Grail is, and goes so far as to state that the idea of the Grail being a purely Celtic invention doesn’t explain everything.

> [@](#):
>
> The author wishes to point out that although the celtic derivations are popular in theory, they by no means explain all events and descriptions within the cycles. Nor, do they explain the sudden interest at the time of Chretien in the Grail. Although the celtic cauldron derivation theory has good grounds it is by no means a complete explanation for the Grail cycles. The author states this in order to warn against the plethora of purely celtic origin based texts.

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**Author:** ![John\_W.Kennedy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_w.kennedy/32/1031_2.png) [@John\_W.Kennedy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_W.Kennedy)\
**Post date:** [April 20, 2004, 7:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fiction-of-the-holy-grail/241065/2 "2004-04-20T19:45:26Z")

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Hey, look at all the movies, books, games… Obviously hobbits are real. Not to mention the NCC-1701 USS Enterprise.

Or, just maybe, if you think about it – perhaps Chrêtien de Troyes just wrote a good story (and left it unfinished). It’s not as though it’s the only one he ever wrote; he also invented Sir Lancelot.

Real historians know that there never was any real Grail cult.

Writers of paranoid phantasies, of course, are not historians.