“In Wolfram's telling, the Grail was kept safe at the castle of Munsalvaesche (mons salvationis), entrusted to Titurel, the first Grail King.”
“From the miracle of the fish that feeds the Company so miraculously, their leader becomes known by a new title, ‘The Rich Fisherman’. In time this was to be changed to ‘The Fisher King’, a title that resonates with the mystery of the one who bears it, who is guardian of the wondrous Grail. The Table mentioned in the preceding excerpt prefigures the Round Table, which King Arthur will ordain in a later age. The two are thus linked, and in time Arthur’s fellowship of knights will seek the holy vessel. Sometime after the events narrated above, we learn of a certain man named Titurel, who is called upon to build a great temple to house the Grail. This takes place long before the days of Arthur, and tells us something of the Grail’s history before the time when the Knights of the Round Table set forth on their great Quest. Titurel himself is one of a family of guardians...” - The Gifts of the Grail: The Challenges and Achievements of the Arthurian Quest by John Matthews
“When Titurel was fifty years old, an Angel appeared to him and said that the rest of his life should be devoted to the service of the Grail. The Angel led him into a wilderness, Foreis Salvasch, which was overgrown with many exotic plants and trees. Strange birds filled the air with song, and hidden in the earth were countless precious stones. In the centre of the forest was Mount Salvasch, which had always been concealed and protected from fallen humanity…. The mountain and everything on it was protected from all evil. Titurel found encamped there workers from all the nations of the earth to assist him in his work. The Grail could be seen hovering over the mountain, held by the invisible hands of angels. Titurel built a great castle on the mount…and resolved to build a Temple for the Grail, using only the purest of materials. He asked advice from those learned in the properties of precious stones, as once taught by Pythagoras and Hercules. They told him of the Firestone asbestos, which sends forth a fire that does not burn; and the water-stone elitropia, whose water is cool in the summer and warm in the winter. These were chosen as the basic materials of the Temple…. Titurel cleared away parts of the summit which consisted of a single piece of Onyx, and polished its surface until it glowed like the moon. One morning he found engraved in the stone the ground plan for the Temple. Recognising the Grail as the source of inspiration, he arranged for construction to begin. The work took thirty years to complete. During this time the Grail supplied the workers with all their needs; it sent forth the precious substances from which the Temple was built, as well as food” - The Gifts of the Grail by John Matthews
“Till at length, in the land of Anjou, the story to light was brought. There, in true and faithful record, was written of Mazadan And the heroes, the sons of his body, and further the story ran, How Titurel, the grandsire, left his freedom to Frimutel, And at length to his son, Anfortas, the Grail and its heirdom fell; That his sister was Herzeleid, and with Gamuret she wed And bear him for a son the hero whose wanderings you now have read.” —from Parsifal: a Knightly Epic by Wolfram von Eschenbach, trans. by J. L. Weston.
The Younger Titurel (c. 1270-1272), attributed to Albrecht von Scharfenberg but long thought to be Wolfram's work, expands the genealogy and introduces explicit themes of longevity. Spanning over 6,300 stanzas in Middle High German, it describes how:
"God sent to Titurel, by now fifty years old and still remaining virginal, through an angel, the Grail, and showed him the way to Mont Salvat, on which the Grail temple was to be built... Titurel married at the age of four hundred years with Richaude of Spain." Sacred Texts ArchiveWikipedia
The Grail sustains life for extraordinary periods. Titurel's life exceeds 500 years, sustained by the Grail's presence. As Arthur Edward Waite's analysis notes: "It is understood that the successive kings and wardens lived to extraordinary ages, and in the case of Titurel the term of his life exceeded five hundred years. The Grail sustained him in his old age, and it was only when, having consigned his burden to Frimutel, he was removed from its immediate presence that he began to fail and died after a very brief period." catholiccultureSacred Texts Archive
The text explicitly states virginity as requirement for receiving the Grail: "Gott sendete Titurel, mittlerweile fünfzig Jahr alt und noch immer jungfräulich geblieben" (God sent Titurel... still remaining virginal). This requirement extends through the dynasty to Repanse de Schoye, connecting her purity to the Grail's life-preserving power.
Those in the Grail's presence cannot die; they do not age; their youth is preserved. The connection between virginity, purity, and the capacity to bear eternal life becomes explicit—the virgin vessel can contain and transmit immortality.