One of the most beautiful and mysterious Christian legends that have come down to our time is the legend of the Holy Grail. It takes its origin, most likely, from the ancient Celts.
In ancient Celtic legends, the Holy Grail is a stone vessel in the shape of a bowl made of green stone (presumably an emerald), which the Archangel Michael knocked out of the crown of Lucifer with a sword (in some legends, the Grail is a bowl carved from wood).
Later, Jesus drank from this vessel at the Last Supper. In the Holy Grail, according to old legends, the blood of the Savior was also collected, shed on Calvary. After Jesus' execution, the Grail mysteriously disappeared.
There is still an opinion that the Grail was with the Albigensians for some time, but after the capture of Montsegur, the Holy Chalice was not found. All subsequent searches for the missing relic were never crowned with success, since the path of the Holy Grail can only be traced through various legends. And in the legends, as a rule, only grains of truth have been preserved.
Not much is known about the Holy Chalice - the Grail. The history of the search for this relic, which gives immortality and heals from wounds, began after the death of Jesus Christ on Calvary.
According to one of the legends, after the execution of the Savior, the rich merchant Joseph of Arimathea swore to keep the Holy Grail. According to legend, the blood of Christ was collected in it, shed by him at Calvary. That is why the cup was considered by many to be the source of life and immortality.
It should be mentioned here that none of the Grail legends is recognized by the official church. Not a single church chronicler ever mentioned the Holy Chalice, although all four Gospels speak of a man named Joseph, who asked Pontius Pilate for the body of the crucified Christ and, wrapping it in a shroud, put it in a tomb hewn in the rock.
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To the above, some Christian writers add that Joseph, taking the cup from which the Savior drank on his last evening, collected the blood of the Lord's body into it and with this relic he walked around the world, preaching Christianity (perhaps this is where the church communion originates).
In his wanderings, Joseph reached Britain, where he decided to stop and found a monastery called Glastonbury (according to some sources, it was in this monastery that the Grail was hidden, which later became the embodiment of God's grace for people).
Having founded the monastery, Joseph created a monastic-knightly order, whose members were the first keepers of the cup, and they, despite the desperate resistance they showed in the 5th-6th centuries to the British invaders - the Saxons, were forced to transport the shrine to Sarras (where Sarras is located - unknown), from where, according to one of the existing versions, she was “taken up to heaven”.
According to another legend, the cup was owned by the Teutonic Order for many years, and it was allegedly lost in 1242 in the battle on Lake Peipsi with the army of Alexander Nevsky, i.e. from that moment the traces of the cup are lost. According to the third legend, the Cathars got it. This version has its origins in the legend of King Arthur.
During the reign of the legendary king, the Grail was transported to Britain and hidden at the bottom of an ancient well somewhere in the depths of the island. The Knights of the Round Table, on Merlin's orders, went to look for her. Sir Percival found the cup and brought it to Arthur's court.
Literally at the same moment, various misfortunes fell on the kingdom: Sir Lancelot was imbued with a criminal passion for Arthur's wife Guinevere and fled with her to France; Mordred, Arthur's nephew, taking advantage of the latter's absence, seized power and severely wounded his overlord in battle. Seeing that the chalice did not bring happiness to the kingdom, King Arthur took it with him to the mysterious island of Avalon and thus averted troubles from the land of the Britons.
How long the relic stayed on Avalon is unknown, but the next time traces of it were found only in the XIII century among heretics from the Provencal town of Albi. The inhabitants of this city, located in the province of Languedoc, rejected all religious dogmas, considered the material world to be the creation of the devil and did not believe in the existence of Jesus Christ. The roots of their religion go back to the teachings of the Persian prophet Mani, accused of heresy and executed by the Iranian shah at the end of the 3rd century.
The followers of the prophet dispersed around the world, preaching that on earth there is a constant struggle between light and darkness, God and the devil, that the world around is the embodiment of evil and the true purpose of man is to contribute to the triumph of good, but at the same time not recognizing any power over himself, except Of God.
Thus, the Albigensians lived observing Christian morality, but did not want to obey the Pope. At initiation, they pledged not to kill, lie, or renounce their faith "for fear of water, fire, or any other kind of punishment." Having fallen into the hands of their enemies, they bravely defended their views and calmly ascended the fire.
Montsegur was not just a fortress of the Albigensians, but a kind of observatory, a temple of the Sun, a symbol of goodness and justice. The location of the castle was almost impregnable. Only the snowy peaks of the Pyrenees towered over his stronghold, and bright stars shone at night.
According to ancient legends, untold treasures were kept in the castle, and ancient manuscripts and books were buried in secret dungeons, in which all the wisdom of the ages was collected (perhaps it was thanks to this wisdom that the Cathars found the Holy Grail).
It seemed that no forces could destroy the impregnable fortress. But suddenly everything changed overnight. The power and influence of the Catholic Church grew, and soon the freedom of the Cathars became like a thorn in the eye for the church leadership. And then the Roman Church, based on the reports of its agent in Languedoc, the monk Dominic, organized a crusade against the Albigensians, accusing them of heresy and all mortal sins.
A cruel and terrible war has been going on for sixty years. Especially atrocities were committed by the "Christ" army, which received the blessing of the highest church hierarchs. According to legend, one of the priests, when asked by the crusader on how to distinguish heretics from good Catholics, replied: "Kill everyone - God will recognize his own in heaven."
By May 1243, the only stronghold of the Albigensian resistance was the citadel at the top of the peak - Montsegur. In the end, she did not survive either, but at the very last moment four Cathars fled from the fortress by underground tunnels, taking with them a mysterious bundle with the greatest treasure that ever belonged to them.
Apparently, this was the mysterious bowl. The Cathars who fled and were forced into hiding handed it over to other "perfect" - warrior monks from the Order of the Templars.
This order was created at the beginning of the 12th century in order to defend the conquests of the Crusaders in the East. At first, every rabble was recruited there, but then the order, favored by the church authorities, entered into force and in 1291 moved to Cyprus.
Even then, the Templars were actively involved in trade, lending and usury, creating almost the world's first financial concern. But the core of their omnipotent organization was made up of people who were by no means alien to mysticism and bound by mystery: they knew where the Holy Grail was hidden. She was with them, in one of the many Templar castles scattered throughout Europe.
But the templars were also unworthy of the legendary cup. And for them black days came too. King Philip IV of France the Handsome could not come to terms with this "state within a state" and decided that the time had come to end the unofficial dual power.
True, according to some other sources, the final decision on the fate of the order came after the Grand Master Jacques de Molay refused to accept the king into the brotherhood of the “knights of the cross”, explaining his refusal by the fact that there can be no kings among the brothers. But, one way or another, it all boiled down to the fact that, by order of Philip, mass arrests of members of the order were carried out and the Inquisition took up the Templar case.
The trial of the Templars' case lasted about seven years, after which their once all-powerful organization ceased to exist.
Two of its leaders, Jacques de Molay and Geoffroy de Charnet, were burned at the stake after numerous tortures, but they did not reveal the secrets of the order. Meanwhile, the Holy Grail disappeared again without a trace. And for many centuries no one has heard of her.
A new outbreak of interest in the Grail occurred in the 20th century. The agents of the Third Reich were extremely interested in the location of the bowl. The Nazis' interest in this relic is not surprising, since the occult was the basis of their philosophy, and Hitler himself believed in the ancient Germanic legend, according to which hidden treasures were announced to the world every seven hundred years.
So one of the Nazis, a certain Otto Rahn, went in search of the bowl. Soon he sent a report to the German command, in which he said that he had found the place where the Grail was hidden.
According to Otto Rahn, he was never taken out of Montsegur, but was hidden in the fortress itself in one of the secret rooms. Guided by such conclusions, the German explorer went on an expedition to France. Arriving at the legendary Montsegur, Otto thoroughly examined every meter of the castle and discovered secret rooms in which, according to him, the "treasure of the ages" was hidden.
Further events unfold with surprising speed. Otto Rahn returns to Berlin and starts work as a civilian at the Ahnenerbe Ancestral Heritage Bureau. Soon he was awarded the title of Unterscharführer.
He gives his finds from Montsegur to Himmler (in the book of the French historian J.-M. Angzhebert it is said that among other finds there was the Grail) - after which Otto Rahn was named a great researcher.
Exactly two years after these events, he committed suicide (according to other sources, he died two months after a request for immediate dismissal from the SS). In 1939 "Ahnenerbe" undertakes a second expedition to Montsegur. Everything found there is transported to Germany, and after 5 years it becomes clear that the Reich is doomed.
In August 1944, Soviet troops cleared the countries of Eastern Europe from the Nazis and entered German territory. The further course of events is well known to everyone. The Germans were utterly defeated and the Reich was destroyed, and the cup, if it was there, again disappeared without a trace.
Thus, from all that has been said, one gets the impression that God's wrath again overtook the unrighteous keepers of the Grail, although, perhaps, all this is just a chain of amazing historical coincidences.