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- This article is about the Christian relic. For the legendary object referred to in medieval and modern stories, see Holy Grail.
Christian tradition
According to Christian tradition, the cup is mentioned as being used by Jesus at the Last Supper, in (1 Cor 11:23-25): "...he took the cup when he had supped, saying, 'This cup is the new testament in my blood'...". Later known as the Holy Chalice, it was safeguarded by Saint Peter, who used it to say Mass, and eventually took it to Rome. After Peter's death, tradition states that the cup was passed on to his successor popes, until Sixtus II in 258, when Christians were being persecuted by Emperor Valerian, and the Romans demanded that relics be turned over to the government. Many believe that at that point, Sixtus gave the cup to his deacon, Saint Lawrence, who passed it to a Spanish solder, Proselius, with instructions to take it to safety in Lawrence's home country of Spain.
The relic's history after that point becomes muddled, because of a wide variety of legends about the Holy Grail, oral tradition poems and bardic tales which became mixed with the real story of the Chalice. This mix of fact and fiction incorporated elements around Crusaders, knights and King Arthur, as well as being blended with Celtic and German legends. For example, Sir Thomas Malory, in his King Arthur and the Knights (Le Morte d'Arthur), in 1485, told a tale about the fictional character of Sir Galahad, and his own quest for the Holy Grail.
Another version of the story places the relic in Spain, being safeguarded by a series of Spanish monarchs, including King Alfonso in 1200. At one point when he needed money for a military campaign, he borrowed money from the Cathedral of Valencia, using the Chalice as collateral. When he defaulted on the loan, the relic became the property of the church. (see Holy Chalice of Valencia, below)
Medieval ideas about the chalice
St. John Chrysostom in his homily on Matthew asserted:
- "The table was not of silver, the chalice was not of gold in which Christ gave His blood to His disciples to drink, and yet everything there was precious and truly fit to inspire awe."
Herbert Thurston in the Catholic Encyclopedia 1908 concluded that:
- "No reliable tradition has been preserved to us regarding the vessel used by Christ at the Last Supper. In the sixth and seventh centuries pilgrims to Jerusalem were led to believe that the actual chalice was still venerated in the church of the Holy Sepulchre, having within it the sponge which was presented to Our Saviour on Calvary."
Thurston seems to be referring to the only record of a chalice from the Last Supper, a two-handled silver chalice which was kept in a reliquary in a chapel near Jerusalem, between the basilica of Golgotha and the Martyrium, which appears only in the account of Arculf, a 7th-century Anglo-Saxon pilgrim who saw it, and through an opening of the perforated lid of the reliquary where it reposed, touched it with his own hand which he had kissed. According to his account, De locis sanctis, it had the measure of a Gaulish pint. All the people of the city flocked to it with great veneration. (Arculf also saw the Holy Lance in the porch of the basilica of Constantine.) This is the only mention of the chalice situated in the Holy Land, and, whether or not it was the cup used at the Last Supper, it was most surely of silver.
Four medieval relics
During the Middle Ages, three major contenders for the position of Holy Chalice stood out from the rest. A fourth medieval cup was briefly touted as the Holy Chalice when it was discovered in the early 20th century; it is known as the Antioch Chalice (see below).
- The earliest record of a chalice from the Last Supper is from Arculf who described a two-handled silver chalice which was kept in a reliquary in a chapel near Jerusalem between the basilica of Golgotha and the Martyrium. This is the only mention of the chalice situated in the Holy Land.
- Of two vessels that survive today, one is at Genoa, in the cathedral. The hexagonal Genoese vessel is known as the sacro catino, the holy basin. Traditionally said to be carved from emerald, it is in fact a green Egyptian glass dish, about eighteen inches (37 cm) across. It was sent to Paris after Napoleon’s conquest of Italy, and was returned broken, which identified the emerald as glass. Its origin is uncertain; according to William of Tyre, writing in about 1170, it was found in the mosque at Caesarea in 1101: "a vase of brilliant green shaped like a bowl." The Genoese, believing that it was of emerald, accepted it in lieu of a large sum of money. An alternative story in a Spanish chronicle says that it was found when Alfonso VII of Castile captured Almería from the Moors in 1147 with Genoese help, un vaso de piedra esmeralda que era tamanno como una escudiella, "a vase carved from emerald which was like a dish". The Genoese said that this was the only thing they wanted from the sack of Almeria. The identification of the sacro catino with the Grail is not made until later, however, by Jacobus de Voragine in his chronicle of Genoa, written at the close of the 13th century.
- The other surviving Grail vessel is the santo cáliz, an agate cup in the cathedral of Valencia. It has been set in a medieval mounting and given a foot made of an inverted cup of chalcedony. There is an Arabic inscription. The earliest secure reference to the chalice is in 1399, when it was given by the monastery of San Juan de la Peña to king Martin I of Aragon in exchange for a gold cup. By the end of the century a provenance for the chalice can be detected, by which Saint Peter had brought it to Rome.
The Holy Chalice of Valencia
An artifact identified with the vessel of the Last Supper is still preserved in a chapel consecrated to it at the Cathedral of Valencia, where it still attracts the faithful on pilgrimage. The piece is a hemispherical cup made of dark red agate about 17 centimeters/ 7 inches high, including the base, and about 9 centimeters/ 3.5 inches in diameter. The upper agate portion, without the base, fits a descripton by Saint Jerome. The lower part contains Arabic inscriptions.
After an inspection in 1960, the Spanish archaeologist Antonio Beltrán asserted that the cup was produced in a Palestinian or Egyptian workshop between the 4th century BC and the 1st century AD. The surface has not been microscopically scanned to assess recrystallization of its surfaces.
The Chalice of Valencia comes complete with a certificate of authenticity, an inventory list on vellum, said to date from 262 AD, that accompanied a lost letter of which details state-sponsored Roman persecution of Christians that forces the church to split up its treasury and hide it with members, specifically the deacon Saint Lawrence. It goes on to enumerate all precious items. The physical properties of the Holy Chalice are described and it is stated the vessel had been used to celebrate Mass by the early Popes succeeding Saint Peter.
The first explicit inventory reference to the present Chalice of Valencia dates from 1134, an inventory of the treasury of the monastery of San Juan de la Peña drawn up by Don Carreras Ramírez, Canon of Zaragoza, December 14, 1134: "En un arca de marfil está el Cáliz en que Cristo N. Señor consagró su sangre, el cual envió S. Lorenzo a su patria, Huesca". According to the wording of this document, the Chalice was considered the Grail in which "Christ Our Lord consigned his blood". For the subsequent separate development of a Grail myth see Holy Grail.
Pope John Paul II himself celebrated mass with the Holy Chalice in Valencia in November 1982, causing some uproar both in skeptic circles and in the circles that hoped he would say accipiens et hunc praeclarum Calicem ("this most famous chalice") in lieu of the ordinary words of the Mass taken from Matthew 26:27). For some people, the authenticity of the Chalice of Valencia failed to receive papal blessing.
In July 2006, at the closing Mass of the 5th World Meeting of Families in Valencia, Pope Benedict XVI also celebrated with the Holy Chalice, on this occasion saying "this most famous chalice", the words of the Roman Canon used for the first popes until 4th century in Rome, supporting this way that the tradition says about the Holy Chalice of Valencia. This artifact has seemingly never been accredited with any supernatural powers, which superstition apparently confines to other relics such as the Holy Grail, the Spear of Destiny and the True Cross.
In Saint Laurence and the Holy Grail, Janice Bennett gives an account of the chalice's history, carried on Saint Peter's journey to Rome, entrusted by Pope Sixtus II to Saint Lawrence in the third century, sent to Huesca in Spain when the Hispanic saint was martyred on a gridiron during the Valerian persecution in Rome in AD 258, sent to the Pyrenees for safekeeping, where it passed from monastery to monastery, in accordance with all the claims to former possession of the Chalice, and venerated by the monks of the Monastery of San Juan de la Peña. Emerging there into the light of history, the monastery's agate cup was acquired by King Martin I of Aragon in 1399 who kept it at Zaragoza. After his death, King Alfonso V of Aragón brought it to Valencia, where it has remained.
Bennett presents as historical evidence a 6th-century manuscript Latin Vita written by Donato, an Augustinian monk who founded a monastery in the area of Valencia, which contains circumstantial details of the life of Saint Laurence and details surrounding the transfer of the Chalice to Spain. The original manuscript does not exist, but a 17th-century Spanish translation entitled "Life and Martyrdom of the Glorious Spaniard St. Laurence" is in a monastery in Valencia. The main source for the life of St. Laurence, the poem Peristephanon by the 5th-century poet Prudentius, does not yet mention the Chalice that was later said to have passed through his hands.
In 1960 the Spanish archeologist Antonio Beltrán studied the Chalice and concluded: "Archeology supports and definitively confirms the historical authenticity". "Everyone in Spain believes it is the cup," Bennett said to a reporter from the Denver Catholic Register. "You can see it every day that the chapel is open."
The Antioch Chalice
The silver gilt chalice, now at The Cloisters, part of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. It was apparently made at Antioch in the early 6th century, and is of double-cup construction, with an outer shell of cast-metal open work enclosing a plain silver inner cup, as if to embellish it. When it was first recovered in Antioch just before World War I, it was touted as the Holy Chalice, an identification the Metropolitan Museum characterizes as "ambitious". Historians do agree that this may be the earliest surviving Christian chalice.
References
- Salvador Antuñano Alea, Truth and Symbolism of Holy Grail: Revelations Surrounding Valencia's Sacred Chalice (in Spanish, with a prologue by Archbishop Agustin Garcia Gasco of Valencia), 1999
- Janice Bennett, Saint Laurence and the Holy Grail (self-published through the Catholic Ignatius Press), 2004.
See also
References
- Relics of the Passion, 2005, History Channel video documentary
Valencia Chalice
- The Grail of the Last Supper:with a chronicle of the supposed movements of the Santo Caliz
- Catholic Encyclopedia: Chalice (illustration of the Holy Chalice of Valencia)
- Report in the Denver Catholic Register
Antioch Chalice
- Metropolitan Museum: Antioch Chalice
"Holy Chalice"