The story of the Holy Grail is such a tangled tangle of European legends, oriental legends, literary narratives and conjectures, rooted not at all in the biblical source, as one might expect, but almost to the pagan folklore motives of the Celts, that it is just right to exclaim: “And was there a boy? Or rather, an elusive Christian relic in the form of a cup, from which the disciples of Jesus Christ communed at the Last Supper, into which the blood of the Savior crucified on the cross was later collected.
"Grail" is an Old French word for a large dish, tray. This purpose of the Grail is described by the oldest surviving documents about this relic - the novel by the Provencal troubadour poet Chrétien de Trois "Persephal, or the Tale of the Grail", dating back to 1182. In this novel, the Grail is presented in the form of a large dish lined with precious stones, which is carried by the maiden through the halls of the castle. However, in other works about this artifact - poems and novels - the Grail appears in the form of a bowl, a goblet and even a stone. However, none of these works are known to be reputable sources of information.
The legend of the Grail is based on the Christian apocrypha about the journey to England of Joseph of Arimathea. A fellow countryman of Chrétien de Trois, also a Provencal poet Robert de Born, refers to an old historical source - a manuscript, which says that Jesus gave Joseph of Arimathea the cup of the Last Supper, after which Joseph and his sister left Palestine and went to Western Europe to preach Christianity.
The chalice and spear, which pierced the body of Jesus, Joseph brought to Britain, and some legends even indicate a specific place where these relics were delivered - the monastery of Glastonbury. There was an old church in this abbey, but it burned down in 1184, and a later church was built in its place. Tradition says that the Grail is hidden in the dungeons of the abbey.
The bowl itself is most often presented as a glass carved out of olive wood 12 centimeters high and 6 centimeters in diameter.
One of the legends tells that the son of Saint Joseph descended from heaven and took part in the sacrament of the Eucharist, which was performed at the Grail castle. Another legend tells that the Celtic wizard Merlin, who patronized King Arthur, sent the knights of the Round Table to seek the Grail, but this search did not bring success.
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About a dozen Grail writings were composed between 1180 and 1225 in French or are translations from French texts. And each of them offers its own version of the story about this mysterious thing. They are about King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. These heroes - Perceval, Gawain, Lancelot, Bore, Galahad - are the knights of King Arthur who make mystical travels in search of a shrine. The desire to find it is dictated by the magical properties of the Grail: a person who drank from this cup receives forgiveness of sins and eternal life, and according to some sources - and immortality, and in addition - quite material benefits - food and drink.
The only person who managed to obtain the Grail was the knight Galahad. From childhood he was brought up by monks in chastity and a righteous life, and having touched the shrine, he ascended to heaven as a saint. Another knight, Persifal, only approached the find: he saw the Grail when he visited his relative, the Fisher King, and witnessed his healing when the king drank holy water from this cup in front of the knight.
The German poet-minnesinger Wolfram von Eschenbach, the author of Parsifal, in his poem, written at the end of the 12th century, claims that the Holy Grail is kept by the Templaisen order of knights. In this name, the order of the Templars is guessed - the knights of the Temple, active participants in the crusades to the Holy Land. This order was destroyed by the French king Philip IV the Fair at the beginning of the XIV century. In some medieval novels, the knight Parsephal searches for and finds the magical castle of Munsalves, in which the Templars keep the Grail under guard. In medieval legends, the Knights Templar are also the guardians of the Grail. In some of them, the Grail is the blood of the descendants of Jesus.
The etymology of this word is raised to "sang royal" - "royal blood" and even "sang real" - "true blood", which was understood as the blood of Christ. This understanding is dictated, obviously, by the double meaning of the old French word "cors" - both "cup" and "body". Perhaps that is why the Grail, understood sometimes as the “goblet of Christ”, then as “the body of Christ,” in the legends received a strong attachment to Joseph of Arimathea - the guard over the body of Christ. Therefore, one of the legends says about the sacrament of the Eucharist - communion with the body and blood of Christ in the Grail castle, in which the son of Joseph of Arimathea, who descended from heaven, allegedly participated.
The Grail legend also has another genealogical line rooted in Celtic mythology. And even deeper: in Indo-European myths, the magic goblet is a symbol of life and rebirth. In Celtic, Irish and Welsh myths, the story of a magic vessel that gave a person mystical bliss is repeated. In 12th century France, medieval troubadours and minnesingers worked on this narrative, as a result of which the legendary cup became associated with the Christian sacrament of the Eucharist.
In Celtic myths, there is another interesting container with magical properties: the shattered magical witch's cauldron of Keridwen, kept in Annun Castle, which can only be accessed by perfect people with pure thoughts. This castle remains invisible to all other people. In another Celtic myth, the Grail appears as a stone that can scream. His cry symbolized the recognition of the true king and therefore was installed in the capital of Ireland, Tara.
The famous Russian scientist Academician Alexander Veselovsky devoted many years to the study of the legends about the Grail. He proved that the tradition of the Grail originated in the Christian East in the first centuries of our era, in the Christian communities of Syria, Ethiopia and Levko-Syria - Lesser Armenia. It came to the West during the era of the Crusades, and was brought there by knights and troubadours who participated in campaigns to the Holy Land and heard these eastern legends.
Later, oriental legends and images were creatively reinterpreted in the European artistic word. Therefore, in the European legends about the Grail there are many references to the East. The episodes where the personality of Joseph of Arimathea, who was present at the crucifixion of Christ, appears, have their roots in the popular apocryphal in Byzantium - "The Gospel of Nicodemus", "The Acts of Pilate" and especially the "Books of Joseph of Arimathea". In one of the Byzantine written monuments "Mabinagion" it is said about the keeping of the sacred bowl by the Empress in Constantinople. However, in the Western European source of the 13th century, "The Younger Titurel" by Albrecht von Scharfenberg, we are talking only about a copy of the Grail kept in Constantinople.
Among the holidays of the Byzantine Church was the feast of the discovery of the Holy Chalice of the Lord, celebrated on July 3. There is evidence that in 394 this cup was kept in Jerusalem, in the Temple of Zion, erected on the site where the Last Supper was held. Perhaps, later it was transported to the capital of the Byzantine Empire, Constantinople, and was kept there in one of the Orthodox churches. However, the further fate of the shrine is unknown: in 1204, as a result of the Fourth Crusade, Western European knights captured and plundered Constantinople. Mentions that the bowl fell into the lands of Western Europe are side by side with information that it was hidden in one of the castles in the East.
One of the versions of the Grail seekers says that this shrine of Christians is hidden in Ukraine. The cache with the relic is located in the Crimean mountains, and the history of his Crimean wanderings goes back to the Middle Ages. In the XII-XV centuries, on the territory of the mountainous and foothill Crimea, there was a small principality of Theodoro with its capital in the city of Mangup-Kale. Its territory stretched in a narrow strip from Yamboli (modern Balaklava) to Aluston (now Alushta). The principality was ruled by the dynasty of the kings of Gavras, who were of Armenian origin, and were in the sphere of influence of the Byzantine Empire. The ethnic composition of the population was variegated: the Crimean Goths, Alans and Greeks lived there, but they were united by a common religion - the Theodorites professed Orthodoxy.
The position of the small state was precarious. One of the legends that have survived from those times tells about the war between the Theodorites and the Genoese (from history it is known that the principality was forced to wage frequent wars with the Genoese), who owned colonies in the southern-coastal part of the Crimean peninsula. During this war, the Genoese set a condition for the rulers of Theodoro: to give them a kind of golden cradle, after which the war would be ended. The situation was so threatening that the prince and his family took refuge in one of the caves of Mount Basman, where he hid this mysterious golden cradle.
Then an earthquake and a landslide occurred in the mountains, and the golden cradle was reliably hidden from people. It is interesting that this legend is confirmed by the data of archaeological research. Scientists have established that there was a settlement on Mount Basman that was destroyed by a powerful earthquake in the XIV or XV century. And inside one of the mountain caves, a human skeleton was found crushed by a boulder that had fallen on it.
There are different opinions about what the Mangup golden cradle could have been. Some believe that it was a golden font donated to Prince Theodoro Isaac by the Moscow Tsar Ivan III. Others saw in it a resemblance to the cradle of Genghis Khan. However, the most astute researchers have noticed one important detail in the paintings of the temples left over from the existence of this small state. They often contain the motive of a cradle bowl with a baby. In the Christian tradition, the child in the bowl symbolizes Christ. The blood of the crucified Christ, as we remember, was collected in a cup.
In the 20th century, the secret services of two great empires, waging war among themselves, including in the Crimean mountains, showed an unexpected interest in these Crimean legends. And again, as it happened before, the sides in this war were Western European warriors and the heirs of the Byzantine tradition.
In 1926-1927, a group of employees of the special department for cryptography of the NKVD of the USSR, headed by Alexander Barchenko, launched activities in Crimea. According to the official version, the group explored the cave cities of the Crimea. But this group included astrophysicist Alexander Kondiain, who spoke about another, unspoken goal of the KGB expedition, namely the search for a stone of extraterrestrial origin, which fell to Earth from the constellation Orion several hundred thousand years ago.
By the way, in the already mentioned poem by Wolfram Eschenbach "Parsifal", the Grail is presented in the form of a stone that fell to the ground from the crown of Lucifer, hence the allegorical name of the Grail - "stone from Orion". This case ended dramatically: the head of the expedition, Alexander Barchenko, was shot in 1941, just before the start of the war with Germany.
Interest in the Grail was not only the special services of the country of victorious socialism, but also their German colleagues. The Holy Grail tried to get hold of Adolf Hitler, who ordered an active search for the relic in the midst of World War II. The Fuhrer, inclined to mystical searches, wanted, so to speak, to privatize the legendary magical properties of this vessel. His henchmen in the Vienna Hofburg Museum found the spear of the Roman centurion Longinus, with which he pierced the body of Christ. The Nazis also saw this artifact as a source of magical power, and Hitler believed that the spear would help him defeat his enemies in the war - the USSR, America and Great Britain.
When the Germans came to Crimea, they, like their predecessors, launched a search for the Grail in the Crimean mountains. The head of the search for the relic was Otto Ohlendorf, who bore the pseudonym Graalritter - the Knight of the Grail, under his command was "Einsatzgroup D". The search was carried out in the fortress Dzhuft-Kale (Chufut-Kale), where the Karaite kenassas, the mausoleum of the daughter of Khan Tokhtamysh Janike-khanum and numerous caves were examined. They searched in Tatar mosques, in the ruins of old temples, and in the ruins of the Kermenchik fortress. However, the Germans never found the Grail. Nevertheless, Otto Ohlendorf received the Iron Cross of the first degree from Adolf Hitler for his work in the Crimea.
There is another interesting Grail story related to England, which Ian and Dyck Begg cite in their book The Quest for the Holy Grail and Precious Blood. Its origins lead all the way to the same Glastonbury Abbey. In the 16th century, during the reign of King Henry VIII, the Reformation was established in England. Catholic monasteries are closed and Catholic priests are being persecuted. In 1535-1539, the king created special commissions, which closed all monasteries in England. Their property was confiscated, and the brethren were dispersed. By order of the king, even the relics of the saints were opened and plundered.
The last abbot of Glastonbury Monastery, shortly before his death, gave the Grail to the monks he trusted. They went with the relic to Wales, to Aberystwyth Abbey. They took refuge in the wealthy estate of Nantes Maner, owned by Lord Powell. He offered the monks a refuge in his domain; there monks lived and worked in peace. The last of the monks who lived there for many years handed the Grail over to the owner of the property and bequeathed to always keep it there, in Nantes Maner. The last member of the Powell family died in 1952, and then the Grail passed to the Mayeriless family. However, he did not stay with them for a long time and mysteriously disappeared.
As we can see, with the passing of the glorious times of the troubadours and knights, the search for the Grail did not stop. The Grail excites the minds of seekers today. Italian archaeologist Alfredo Barbagallo claims that the Holy Grail is in Rome and is hidden in a room under the Basilica of San Lorenzo Fuori le Mura. This church is one of the seven most visited churches in Rome by pilgrims. The scientist made this conclusion after two years of studying medieval iconography inside the church and the structure of the catacombs under it. According to the archaeologist, the Grail disappeared in 285, after the death of the priest Lorenzo, who was commissioned by Pope Sixtus V to take care of the preservation of early Christian church treasures.
Author: A. V. Dziuba
"Secrets and mysteries of history and civilization"