Holy Grail takes eyes off the ball

03 April 2014 - 02:00 By An Wilson, The Daily Telegraph
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Wine glass from the Last Supper - or maybe not
Wine glass from the Last Supper - or maybe not
Image: AFP

So, they've found the Holy Grail! Or so two historians believe, having examined an elaborate chalice in a museum in the Basilica of San Isidoro, in León, Spain.

Hitherto, the vessel was known as the Goblet of the Infanta Dona Urraca, daughter of King Fernando of León in the 11th century. But the two experts say the upper part of the cup dates from somewhere between 200 BC and 100 AD.

Suppose that is true. From there, it is an apparently easy leap to say that this ancient piece of glass, encrusted with medieval jewellery, is the Holy Grail. Whatever the Holy Grail is or was.

Medieval romances about the quest for the Holy Grail - usually undertaken by knights of the court of King Arthur - have led to the cliché in modern journalism of any far-fetched goal being a "holy grail".

It has been applied to all manner of humdrum things, such as a football team being promoted to the top division.

But in Arthurian legend the pursuit of the grail was seen as a form of madness, a distraction from the useful job of being a knight of the Round Table. Gawain, Galahad and pals should have been rescuing maidens from dragons and fighting for their king. The pursuit of the grail took their eyes off the ball. While the madcaps pursued the elusive chalice, wicked Mordred could sow treachery and discord at home. The search for the grail led to the destruction of the Round Table.

Anthropologists have been divided about what the Holy Grail actually is. It has been seen as a fertility symbol, which has very little to do with the cup of wine used at the Last Supper. Wagner made his own crazy myth of the thing in Parsifal, with the Grail Knights keeping watch over "The sacred cup, the vessel pure, unstained" - which had served both as a drinking goblet at the supper, and as the container that caught the sacred blood spurting from Christ on the cross. The music might be sublime, but the story is downright peculiar.

We must assume Spanish historians José Manuel Ortega del Rio and Margarita Torres wrote their book, Kings of the Grail, in which they explain why they think this particular goblet is "the" Holy Grail, with the purest of academic motives. The aim of writing a sensationalist bestseller could not have been further from their minds.

Equally, the cathedral authorities who are thinking of building a larger exhibition space to accommodate the floods of credulous pilgrims coming to see the "Grail" must really believe that it is the cup used by Christ at the Last Supper, and the last thing they want is to amass the sort of cash that is raked in each year at Fatima and Lourdes.

Even if you think the Last Supper took place in history you would nevertheless look in vain in the New Testament for any reference to a Holy Grail.

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