THE HOLY GRAIL: Has it really been found?

 

The word, ‘grail’ means cup or bowl in Old French. When the grail has the word Holy in front of it, it means that it is the cup or bowl that Jesus placed to his lips at the last supper he had with his disciples. Ever since then, the search for the Holy Grail has been undertaken by many people throughout the centuries.

 

Now here is an interesting question to ponder. Who of his disciples went back to the place where the last supper was held and picked up the grail and took it away? Did he pocket it before they all left the room where the last supper was held?

 

With respect to the first question, I doubt any of them went back to the room after Jesus was crucified because they were in fear of their own lives. They wanted to get out of Judea as quick as they could before the priest’s soldiers and/or the Roman soldiers began hunting for them. As to the second question, I don’t think a disciple pocketed it because there were no pockets in their clothing.

 

So who removed the grail from the table? It was probably the owner of the house where the last supper was held in the upper room of the house. I doubt that he would have recognized the significance of the grail that Jesus held in his hands because each of the disciples had a similar grail and since they were alone with Jesus during their last supper, the owner wouldn’t have known which one of the grails on the table was the one that Jesus had held in his hands.             

 

It has been said by some that the disciple, John held Jesus’ grail in his hand and let the blood from Jesus’s wound from the soldier’s spear run into the grail. If that had happened, then it would be John who took the grail from the upper room. But if that is so, then why didn’t he mention this in his testament written at Chapter 19 (in the New Testament) that he had done this. He was the only disciple that was on Calvary when Jesus was crucified. Surely retrieving the blood of Jesus would have been an important enough event to write about it. He didn’t write about it because it didn’t happen. That too is a myth.

 

The search for the Holy Grail

                   

Belief in the Holy Grail and interest in its potential whereabouts has never ceased. Ownership has been attributed to various groups including the Knights Templar, probably because they were at the peak of their influence around the time that Grail stories started circulating in the 12th and 13th centuries.

 

There are cups claimed to be the Grail in several churches. For instance the Saint Mary of Valencia Cathedral, which contains an artifact, the Valencia Chalice, supposedly taken by Saint Peter to Rome in the 1st century, and then to Huesca in Spain by Saint Lawrence in the 3rd century. According to legend, the monastery of San Juan de la Peña, located at the south-west of Jaca, in the province of Huesca, Spain, protected the chalice of the Last Supper from the Islamic invaders of the Iberian Peninsula. Antonio Beltrán says the artifact is a 1st-century Middle Eastern stone vessel, possibly from Antioch, Syria (now Turkey); its history can be traced to the 11th century, and it now rests atop an ornate stem and base, made in the Medieval era of alabaster, gold, and gemstones. It was the official papal chalice for many popes, and has been used by many others, most recently by Pope Benedict XVI, on July 9, 2006. The emerald chalice at the Cathedral of San Lorenzo in Genoa, Italy (of which the chalice is actually a bowl) was obtained during the Crusades at Caesarea Maritima at great cost, but it has been less championed as the Holy Grail since an accident on the road, while it was being returned from Paris to Genoa after the fall of Napoleon, revealed that the emerald was only green glass.

                                                      

Everything mentioned in the previous paragraph is premised on the belief that the disciple Peter possessed the cup that Jesus drank from but that isn’t likely. Nowhere in the New Testament does Peter say anything in his three letters to the Christians about being in possession of Jesus’ cup or the blood that had supposedly been in the cup.

 

That being as it is, then why has so much emphasis been placed on the supposed existence of the Holy Grail being the one that is at Leon’s basilica of San Isodro, Spain?

 

The Nazi SS chief, Heinrich Himmler believed that the Holy Grail was at the Montserrat Abby near Barcelona, Spain. He believed that if he had that chalice, it would give him supernatural powers. He was a supernatural freak and that became obvious to his followers as the years move on.

 

The earliest account of the existence of the Holy Grail is in an unfinished book written by the 12^th century poet, Chretien de Troyes.  He was the first great exponent of the Arthurian legend. Anyone who read the exploits of King Arthur will remember that Sir Lancelot was the knight who was searching for the Holy Grail. That author wrote about that knight also. In his book, he described the Holy Grail as a deep and wide serving dish. That would be the dish where some form of gruel was poured into it. It certainly wasn’t the cup that Jesus drank from. The cup he drank from is what spawned the legends of the Holy Grail in the Middle Ages.

 

There was supposed to be three places in England and Scotland where the Holy Grail was alleged to be in. The place in Southwestern part of England where it was believed to be at was a castle in which monks who had fled from the wrath of King Henry VIII, hid the chalice in the castle and referred to the cup as the Nanteos Cup. The second place the Holy Grail was supposed to be at was in South England in the English county of Somerset. That cup there was mentioned several times in the mythology of King Arthur. The third place it was presumed to be at is in Scotland in a sealed crypt under the Rosslyn Chapel. They also say that the mummified head of Jesus is in that same crypt. Well we can disregard that location as to where the Holy Grail is since that story is nonsense.  I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that legend has it that it was buried in a deep pit on Oak Island in Nova Scotia and it was the knights Templar that buried it there. If you believe that legend to be true, I have a bridge I want to sell you. It connects Manhattan with Brooklyn.

 

Legend also has it that the Knights Templar took it to Latvia and that it is in one of two castles there. It was also rumored that it is in the Rennes le Chateau in France. It is also said that the Holy Grail is hidden in a small mountain village in the south western part of France.

 

In a recent book called, The Kings of the Grail, the authors maintain that the chalice was encrusted with gold and precious stones and concealed in another antique known as the Chalice of Dona Urruca and had been in that church for many years. When the authors were researching the material for their book, they said that they came across an Egyptian parchment that stated that the chalice had been stolen from a Christian community in Jerusalem  and from there to and taken to Cairo. Later is was removed from Cairo and taken to Spain and given to King Ferdinand I of Castile.  Scientific tests indicated that it was made between 200 BC and 100 AD.

 

I imagine all these so-called Holy Grails are covered in gold and emeralds but you can be sure that the cup Jesus drank from was merely a cup made of clay and glazed over. The owner of the home wouldn’t put his best cups and bowls on the table for the thirteen men who were using the upper room of his house for an evening meal.

 

If you ever saw the movies, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, and/or the movie, The Silver Chalice, you will remember that the chalices were built around an ordinary cup that had no handles.

  

If you are faced with the problem of trying to decide if inside those chalices is the cup that Jesus really drank the wine from or the bowl that he ate from is the real Holy Grail, just ask yourself this one question. How did it leave the upper room of the house where Jesus and his disciples had their last supper together?

 

The search for the Holy Grail is great stuff for poems, novels and even movies but like all legends, its existence is in the minds of those who conceived these ideas and those who want to believe that it is really in their possession.  I don’t think the Holy Grail was ever in anyone’s hands but the hands of Jesus and the owner of the house and his family. It will never be found. One cannot find material things that are merely dreamed of nowadays especially when in reality, they existed many centuries ago.