One of the most beautiful and mysterious Christian legends is about the Holy Grail. In Dan Brown's book The Da Vinci Code, the Holy Grail refers to the mystical cup from which Jesus Christ himself drank before his arrest. In this bowl, Joseph allegedly collected the blood of the Savior. But this is one of the historical assumptions. But in fact: none of the existing versions is recognized by the official church. Although in some scriptures it is indicated that Joseph collected the blood of the Savior in a sacred bowl and took this relic with him. Then Joseph founded a monastery in Britain (Glastonbury) and kept the cup in it.
According to surviving sources, the Holy Grail passed from hand to hand, bringing only misfortunes to its keepers. So once, he was with the English king Arthur. The ruler immediately began to misfortune: his wife and the devoted knight Lancelot fell in love and fled to the French kingdom. Arthur followed the fugitives, leaving the country unattended. His nephew took advantage of this and seized power, set a trap for Arthur. King Arthur linked his misfortunes to the preserved Holy Grail. He takes the relic to the mysterious island of Avalon (away from British soil).
Then traces of the Holy Grail were discovered in the thirteenth century. The Albigensians kept the cup in the impregnable castle of Montsegur. The Albigensian heretics did not obey the Pope. Therefore, the Roman Church organized a crusade against the Albigensians. For sixty years, the defenders of Montsegur fought off the papal troops. According to legend, just before the fall of Mosegur, the Holy Grail was carried out of the fortress by a secret passage.
For a long time, the Albigensian monks, who took the Grail, hid from the papal pursuers, but were forced to hand over the cup to the Templar Order. Numerous misfortunes fell on the templars, after receiving the holy relic.
The King of France, who had long wanted to destroy the second power in the country - the Templars, decided to end the Order of the Templars. Having received the support of the Pope, he destroyed the order, and the leaders of Jacques de Molay and Geoffroy de Charnet and most of the Templar soldiers were burned at the stake. But even under cruel torture, the Templars did not reveal the location of the order's treasures, including the Holy Grail. And the traces of the relic were lost again.
Interest in the Holy Grail manifested itself in the twentieth century among the associates of Hitler, who came to power in Germany. The Nazis collected all possible information about artifacts and secrets from all over the world. One of the best scientists and high-ranking employee of the Third Reich, Otto Rahn, participated in the search for the Grail. He was sure that the bowl was well hidden in the Temple of the Sun (Monsegure). He managed to explore in detail all the nooks and secret passages of the castle. In one of the secret rooms he discovered, a sacred bowl was found. This is how the Holy Grail fell into the hands of the Nazis. It is said that Hitler never touched a Christian relic. It is unlikely that the Nazis could be called worthy of the keeper of the holy relic.
According to an ancient German legend, every seven hundred years, hidden treasures come to the surface. The Nazis clearly tracked this dependence. In 544, King Arthur died, in 1244 the defenders of Montsegur were destroyed, therefore, the turning point was to take place in 1944. The Third Reich was doomed. In 1944, the allies recaptured Montsegur from the Nazis, who, during the battle for the fortress, raised a flag with a Celtic cross over the ancient castle, thereby appealing to the higher forces for help.
But the Holy Grail brought only misfortune and misfortune to the Nazis. First, Otto Rahn, who personally handed over the Holy Grail to his boss, Himmler, commits suicide. Second, it became clear to many in Nazi Germany that the Reich was doomed to perish. Which is what happened in 1945.
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After the fall of the Third Reich, the Holy Grail disappeared again. Nobody knows where the relic is located and who is its keeper. The only thing we know is this: if the guardian of the treasure is not pure in thoughts and heart, then God's wrath will surely befall him.
Ancient traditions say that the road to the Holy Grail is a great mystery. However, the search for a holy relic is still ongoing, and it is allegedly "found" in different places on the planet.
In the very first novel that has come down to us, Perceval, or the Novel on the Grail, written in the 12th century by Chretien de Trois, it is said that a wandering knight sees in the castle, where he was sheltered for the night, as the owner is brought bread on a precious dish supports his life, and also in the chambers of the owner there is a mysterious spear, with blood dripping from it. The next morning the castle is empty, but the knight is trying to solve the mystery of the wonderful objects. He finds out that the dish is the Grail (the dish from which the Savior ate during the Last Supper, and the spear is exactly what pierced the body of Jesus on Calvary).
After this book, there were many stories about the search for the Holy Grail. Thus, the poet Robert de Boron in his novel "The Grail" told the story of the appearance of the Holy Grail in Europe. So the author claims that Joseph, having collected the blood of Christ in a cup, gave it to his son-in-law, who sailed with her to distant shores. Wolfram von Eschenbach (German poet of the 13th century) believed that the Grail was a magic stone, not a bowl.
Today it is believed that there are seven points on the map of the modern world where the Grail can be stored.
First place is the ancient Glastonbury Abbey in Somersetshire in England. It was founded in the 8th century. It was there that in 1191 the monks found the grave of King Arthur and his wife Guinerva. It is believed that in the Middle Ages, the first bishop of the abbey was Joseph, who arrived there from Palestine. He brought with him a sacred cup with the blood of the Savior. In the place where he hid the relic, a source was hammered. Today tourists gaze with amazement and awe at the well of the Chalice.
The second place is the ruins of the Montsegur fortress in the French Pyrenees. The search for the Grail in the castle is associated with the name of the Nazi scientist Otto Rahn. There is no confirming information that the Grail was found by him - there is only an assumption.
The third place is the Benedictine Abbey of Fécans in Normandy. There has been a beautiful legend about a sacred vessel since the 12th century. According to her, a certain righteous man Nicodemus collected the blood of Christ from the cross on Calvary, and in a dream he had a vision of how to deal with it further. Obeying the will from above, he sealed the vessel, hid it in the trunk of the fig tree and threw it into the sea. The tree sailed to the coast of Normandy. Richard I, Duke of Normandy, soon built the Church of the Holy Trinity, where he placed the relic he found.
Fourth place - Valencia in Spain. In the Cathedral of the Assumption of the Virgin there is an agate bowl, which is considered an artifact of the 1st century. The earliest mention of it dates back to 1399, when it fell into the hands of the King of Aragon. There is a legend that the apostle Peter himself gave it to the king. The king of Arogone donated the bowl to the Cathedral of Valencia in 1437 as payment for military expenses.
Fifth place - the Cathedral of San Lorenzo (Italy, Genoa). It contains a bowl made of green glass. According to legend, this cup was brought in 1101 by crusaders from the Palestinian city of Caesarea. The assumption that this is the Holy Grail is connected with the work of Jacopo Voragisky "The Golden Legend", which, with reference to Christian traditions, says that at the Last Supper Jesus drank from an emerald cup. When Napoleon entered Genoa with his army, he ordered to transport the shrine to Paris. A few years later it was returned back, but on the way the shrine was damaged - it cracked.
Sixth place - the New York Metropolitan Museum. There is a vessel from the Antioch treasure. The cup was found in 1910 during excavations near the Turkish city of Antakya (in ancient times it was called Antioch). The find is a glass bowl set in a gilded setting. In 1933, its owners announced that this is the holy grail. It has been in the New York Museum since 1950.
Seventh place is the Spanish city of Leon. In the Basilica of San Isidoro, you can see an onyx bowl set in gold and decorated with precious stones. The chalice was presented to the basilica by dona Urraca, one of the daughters of the king of Castile and Leon Ferdinand I. In 2014, the book "Kings of the Grail" was published. Authors Margarita Torres and José Ortega del Rio argue that this particular cup is the Holy Grail. True or fiction, but curious tourists flocked to the temple museum.
The Holy Grail is the most wanted artifact. Everyone was looking for the sacred relic: knights, monks, inquisitors, NKVD commissars and the Nazi mystical organization Ahnenerbe. But there is another version that researchers rarely consider: the Russian reformer Tsar Peter I was the guardian of the Grail. Legend claims that the Holy Grail is hidden on a mysterious Baltic island. The Christian shrine is preserved by the Masonic organization, which is a follower of the Knights Templar.
In his youth, Peter I entered the Maltese Order, which in its essence was Masonic. Having unleashed the Northern War, Tsar Peter built a new capital in the Baltic. By the way, the name Peter means "Holy Stone", therefore, the city had the name "City of the Holy Stone". On the Hare Island, by order of the king, a fortress was erected, the walls of which form a six-pointed star (the Masonic sign of the symbol of life). It so happened that the Peter and Paul Fortress turned out to be the center of the new capital. Here Peter I decided to equip a tomb for the Romanov family. All buildings of the fortress were wooden, except for the bell tower, lavishly decorated with Masonic symbols.
The whole history of the Peter and Paul Fortress is connected with mysterious events: otherworldly voices, unexpectedly appearing and dying fires, mysterious disappearances of people, unexpected chimes, mystical glow of the spire …. Everyone who ever tried to unravel the secrets of the fortress died under strange circumstances. In 1927, the body of the mathematics teacher Ilya Arets was found in the fortress. In the man's hand was a piece of ancient parchment on which one could make out the word for the Grail. In the apartment of the deceased, who turned out to be a descendant of a Freemason of Peter the Great's time, they found old plans for the Peter and Paul Fortress.
A century has passed since then. But no one managed to find the Grail.