Works in Valencia's Museo de Bellas Artes. — Photos: MANUEL MEYER/dpa
Mysterious signposts illuminate stone walls and archways, guiding a rider through twisting medieval alleys to the Cathedral of Valencia in Spain, where he found the Holy Grail (or Holy Chalice), he says.
The rider, clad in a brown jacket, leather hat and whip, recalls Indiana Jones, a feeling underscored by epic adventure film music playing in the background.
This may resemble a Hollywood trailer but is not the handiwork of a major California studio but Valencia’s tourist office.
The Vatican appears to suggest the Holy Grail’s presence in Valencia as former pope Francis granted the cathedral the rare privilege of celebrating a “Holy Year” every five years due to the Holy Grail’s story, in 2015.
And on Oct 30, that time came round again.
The Holy Grail, on display in Valencia.
Most people associate the Spanish city with white sandy beaches, modern architecture and paella rather than one of Christianity’s most legendary treasures.
“Yet it has been in our cathedral since 1437,” says Vicente Pons, head of the cathedral archive, as he opens a register book from that time, bound in goatskin.
The Latin script confirms King Alfonso V handed several relics to the cathedral, including the Holy Chalice. “It was a pledge for the money he borrowed from the church for his wars in Naples (Italy) and never reclaimed,” says Pons.
According to legend, Saint Peter brought the chalice of the Last Supper from Jerusalem to Rome. In the third century, Pope Sixtus II tasked his deacon Lorenzo with securing the Holy Grail from Emperor Valerian. Lorenzo hid it in the northern Spanish Pyrenees in Aragon.
From the 11th century, it was verifiably located in the rock monastery of San Juan de la Pena until the monks handed it over to Aragon’s King Martin in 1399, whose successor Alfonso V transferred it to his court in Valencia in 1424.
But is it the real Holy Grail? There were also “Grail” legends in England, France and other countries. “But all were excluded as the chalice of the Last Supper due to their age, origin or nature – except ours in Valencia,” says Holy Grail researcher Ana Mafe.
In his workshop for liturgical objects in Valencia, goldsmith Pirol (right) and his sons (only one is pictured here) made copies of the chalice.
Renowned archaeologist Antonio Beltran first discovered in 1983 that it was indeed a Jewish ritual vessel from Palestine from the time of Jesus.
Whether it is the chalice of the Last Supper remains a matter of faith, says Beltran.
Mafe does not doubt it. “I was able to trace the chalice of Valencia iconographically back to the fourth century in Roman catacombs,” she says.
Either way, the chalice has been venerated in Valencia for centuries.
In the Museo de Bellas Artes, there are depictions of the Grail by Joan Ribalta and Juan de Juanes from the 16th century.
Next to the museum are the ruins of the former royal palace, where the chalice lay in the treasury for years.
Following the Holy Grail’s trail, visitors delve deep into medieval Valencia, when the city was one of the most important trading metropolises in the Mediterranean.
They discover San Juan del Hospital, Valencia’s oldest church, founded by Crusaders in 1238. The Iglesia de San Nicolas, known as Valencia’s Sistine Chapel due to its magnificent ceiling paintings, also plays a special role for the Santo Caliz, as the chalice is called in Spanish.
At the end of the 15th century, two priests of this parish church promoted the Holy Grail cult. They were Alfonso and Rodrigo de Borja, who later became popes.
“The chalice was made popular mainly by Archbishop Juan de Ribera, who placed it at the centre of the Eucharistic cult in the 16th century,” says Miguel Navarro, director of the seminary El Patriarca, founded by Ribera.
For the refectory – the dining hall – Ribera commissioned the Renaissance master Juan de Juanes with the imposing painting The Last Supper which shows Jesus surrounded by his disciples. Before them on the table is the chalice from Valencia’s cathedral.
The chalice was originally a simple bowl made of agate stone. Goldsmith Antonio Piro shows how he makes detailed copies of the chalice for churches in his workshop.
“The gold setting adorned with white pearls and red gemstones was only added in the Middle Ages,” says Alvaro de Almenar, canon of the cathedral and official Keeper of the Holy Chalice.
Locals say that Valencia’s cathedral holds the Holy Chalice.
Due to fear of looting, the Holy Grail was rarely shown to the public until the early 20th century.
The Nazis also searched for the chalice, a theme picked up by the Hollywood film Indiana Jones And The Last Crusade in 1989.
Driven by SS (Schutzstaffel) leader Heinrich Himmler, they suspected it in the wrong place, further north in the monastery of Montserrat near Barcelona.
“Shortly before, the chalice was almost destroyed in the Spanish Civil War in 1936 when Republican troops set fire to the cathedral,” says Alicia Palazon from the Foundation of the Holy Chalice.
On the way to the new Holy Grail pilgrimage centre Almudín, housed in a gigantic medieval grain store in the old town, she stops in front of an inconspicuous house on Avellanas Street. “A few hours before the Republicans destroyed the cathedral, the canon hid the chalice here with a churchgoer he knew.”
After the Civil War, the chalice was initially kept in the architecturally unique Silk Exchange from the 15th century in 1939.
And where does the search for the Holy Grail end today? In the small side chapel of the Catedral de Santa María de Valencia. Since the cathedral’s reconstruction, it has shone there in its brownish colours behind thick bulletproof glass.
“At the thought of holding the same chalice that Jesus handed to his disciples at the Last Supper, I become deeply reverent,” says Grail Keeper Almenar.
Many of the pilgrims streaming to the city for Holy Year are likely to feel the same way. – MANUEL MEYER/dpa
