Traditionally, the Holy Grail is considered to be the cup in which Joseph of Arimithea caught the blood of Christ, or the cup with which Jesus performed the first Eucharist. Heretical Christian traditions, however, insist the Grail is not in fact a cup or any physical object, rather it is a secret about Jesus, a hidden fact about the origins of the Christian faith.
Some historians have tried to link the Grail to the pre-Christian Welsh legend of the Mabinogion, the “Black Cauldron” with the power to resurrect slain warriors. Yet the Grail romances do not appear in literature until after the First Crusade and were first penned by French writers. Additionally, the original grail romances make no mention of King Arthur, nor are they even set in Britain. These seminal versions of the Grail myth place most emphasis not on the Grail itself but on the “Grail Family” (see de Boron, Robert; de Troyes, Chretien; and Von Eschenbach, Wolfram).