Graal: The Grail Quest

The quest for the Grail, read as a road of twelve stages. Each day brings one passage from the medieval romances, a short note on where the quest has reached, one question about your own road, and a page in a private quest book.

The Grail is not one thing, and this app never pretends it is. In one romance it is a dish, in another a holy vessel, in Wolfram's Parzival a stone. Every screen says which text you are reading, and three voices are kept apart and labelled: the romance itself, the claims of scholars (with name and year), and our own notes.

THE PASSAGE OF THE DAY
• One passage each day, the same for every reader, in the order of the quest
• Twelve stages of seven days: the Call, the Forest, the Perilous Seat, the Castle of the Fisher King, the Waste Land and on to the Return
• The quest moves only when you press Done, so you are never behind
• A daily image to share: the whole passage, its reference, the translator and year, and the date

THREE ROMANCES
• Sir Thomas Malory, Le Morte d'Arthur (1485), books XI to XVII: Galahad and the Sankgreal
• The High History of the Holy Graal (Perlesvaus), all thirty-five branches, in Sebastian Evans's translation of 1898
• Wolfram von Eschenbach, Parzival, all sixteen books in Jessie L. Weston's verse of 1894, with her verse numbers
• Search across all three, names found with or without their accents, and bookmarks

THE QUESTION
Perceval comes to the Grail castle and keeps silent. Years later Parzival returns and asks his uncle what ails him. The quest turns on a question asked or not asked, and so does this app: each day ends with one, about your own life, never about belief.

AROUND THE GRAIL
• Thirteen articles: many grails, the Fisher King, Joseph of Arimathea, Wolfram's stone, Galahad and Perceval, the Waste Land, Avalon, theories of origin, and what the Grail is not
• A codex of knights, hallows, places and people, with the name each romance gives them and links to the passages where that name stands

The romances are Christian, and the app reads them as literature and the history of ideas: without preaching and without mockery. Modern legends of a bloodline or Templar guardians appear only in the article that explains where they came from.

A home-screen widget shows the day's passage, and an optional daily reminder comes at the hour you choose. Your notes stay on your device. No account and no network needed to read.

Free to install, with ads. A single one-time purchase removes them.