Holy cup

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The cup of Valencia

A holy chalice (Spanish: Santo Cáliz ) is a chalice kept in Valencia , which tradition assumes is the chalice of the Last Supper of Jesus Christ with his disciples. The Holy Chalice is kept for the worship of the faithful in a dedicated chapel in the Cathedral of Valencia, where it has been since 1437. It is also associated with the legend of the Grail .

The chalice is used on Maundy Thursday and on the feast of the Holy Chalice (October 25th) for Holy Mass . In the last few decades it has also been used twice at a mass, on November 8, 1982 when Pope John Paul II visited Valencia and on July 9, 2006 when Pope Benedict XVI visited. on the occasion of the fifth world meeting of families in Valencia.

Lore

The apostle Peter is said to have brought this chalice to Rome and it is said to have been administered there by the popes up to Sixtus II (257/258). During the persecution of Christians under Emperor Valerian , the deacon Sixtus II., St. Laurentius , who brought the chalice to his native Spain in Huesca .

Testimony in historical sources

The chalice was in the monastery of San Juan de la Peña in Aragon, but it is uncertain since when. A document from 1135 shows that a goblet from the monastery was exchanged for a royal license, but this appears to have been a normal transaction and therefore the goblet is probably not identical to the Santo Cáliz . The first reliable evidence of the relic therefore dates from 1399: the chalice was given by the monastery to King Martín I of Aragon in exchange for a golden cup. At the end of the century, a tradition about the provenance of the chalice had developed, according to which it was brought to Rome by Simon Peter, given to Saint Laurentius by Pope Sixtus in 256 and brought by him to his birthplace in Huesca.

There is evidence that the kings of Aragon were particularly interested in the cup of the Last Supper. Jacob II of Aragon sent a letter to the Sultan of Egypt in 1322, asking him to give him the cup of Christ, which is among the sultan's treasures in Egypt. A century later, Alfonso V of Aragon identified the chalice from San Juan de la Peña with the Holy Grail; in any case, he had his armor depicted by Pisanello in a way that is reminiscent of the Grail legend. But when he pledged the chalice to the Cathedral of Valencia in 1437 to finance his wars, the relic is referred to without reference to the Grail saga as "the chalice in which Jesus Christ consecrated the blood on Maundy Thursday." Since the pledge was not redeemed, the Holy Chalice remained permanently in the Cathedral of Valencia from 1437, with two exceptions:

  • During the War of Independence from 1808 to 1814, the relic was first kept in Alicante, then on Mallorca and Ibiza; In 1812 it returned to Valencia, where it has been shown in a chapel, the former chapter house, since 1916.
  • During the Spanish Civil War, the Holy Chalice was kept in the city of Carlet (Province of Valencia) and then returned to the chapel in the Cathedral of Valencia.

description

Replica of the Holy Chalice in the Monastery of San Juan de la Peña

The total height of the sacred chalice is 17.5 cm. The agate bowl, which forms the cuppa, has a height of 7 cm and a top diameter of 9.5 cm, while its bottom surface measures 5 cm. The bowl, which when turned upside down, forms the base of the chalice, has a diameter of 14.5 cm at the bottom and 4.5 cm at the top; it is 4 cm high.

The most precious part of the chalice is the upper part: this is a relatively simple agate bowl, an artifact that historian Richard Barber believes is difficult to date, but probably originates from the Middle East and Greco-Roman times. Antonio Beltrán Martínez examined the chalice in 1960 and described the agate bowl as a product of an oriental workshop. The time of origin was between the 4th century BC. And the 1st century AD, most likely the 2nd / 1st. Century BC The dark red to brown silicate shell consists of carnelian , also called sarder , a variety of chalcedony . According to Barber, the setting is medieval and the base is an inverted chalcedony bowl, possibly a work from the 12th to 14th centuries. There is an Arabic lettering, the interpretation of which is uncertain. The setting is a Spanish goldsmith's work in the style of the 14th century: a two-handled center piece made of chased gold and gold temples arranged in a cross that hold the onyx bowl set with pearls , rubies and emeralds .

Interpretation by Ana Mafé Garcia

The art historian Ana Mafé García advocated in her dissertation in 2019 ( Contributions from the perspective of art history to cultural tourism: The Holy Grail of Valencia as the fulcrum of the tourist background on which the path of the Holy Grail in the 21st century is based ) the thesis that the Chalice authentic with a probability of 99.9%, i.e. H. was used by Jesus at the Last Supper. She justifies this with the fact that the agate bowl comes from the time of the Second Temple in Jerusalem, more precisely from the reign of Herod and “was made with a stone, which in antiquity is called a sarder and represents the tribe of Judah, who also Jesus of Nazareth belonged. ”Mafé Garcia is referring to the jeweled breastplate ( choschen ) of the Jewish high priest; the stone for the tribe of Judah stands for the commandment of love, and the evangelists' report on the Last Supper is related on the one hand to the tribe of Judah and on the other hand, especially in John's Gospel, to the commandment of love. Mafé Garcia leaves it to the readers of her dissertation to draw conclusions from this agreement. She got in touch with Israeli archaeologists, in particular Yonatan Adler (Ariel University), who is a specialist in stone vessels from the Second Temple period. Her interlocutors in Jerusalem assured her that the city had been so destroyed during the Jewish War and then again during the Bar Kochba uprising that there are no comparable objects there.

El Camino del Santo Grial

The “Path of the Holy Grail” is a tourist route inaugurated in 2016 between the Monastery of San Juan de la Peña and the Cathedral of Valencia. It is based on the hypothesis that the Grail described by Chrétien de Troyes and Wolfram von Eschenbach in Parzival and the Arthurian legend is identical to the relic that is venerated as the Holy Chalice in the Cathedral of Valencia. Ana Mafé Garcia is Vice President of the Cultural Association "Way of the Holy Grail."

literature

  • Antonio Beltrán Martínez: Estudio sobre el Santo Cáliz de la Catedral de Valencia , Valencia 1960 (2nd edition 1984).
  • Richard W. Barber: The Holy Grail: Imagination and Belief . Harvard University Press, Cambridge (Mass.) 2004. ISBN 0-674-01390-5 .
  • Ana Mafé Garcia: El Camino de Santo Grial en la Comunidad Valenciana: Tradición oral, aspectos intangibiles y turismo cultural . In: International Journal of Scientific Management and Tourism (2018) 4/1, pp. 303–331.
  • Ana Mafé Garcia: La gestión del turismo cultural desde la Historia del Arte. Bases para el desarrollo teórico del Camino del Santo Grial, la Ruta del Conocimiento, camino de la Paz , 2019.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f Richard Barber: The Holy Grail: Imagination and Belief , Cambridge 2004, p. 169.
  2. ^ Richard Barber: The Holy Grail: Imagination and Belief , Cambridge 2004, p. 169 f.
  3. ↑ Ana Mafé Garcia: El Camino de Santo Grial en la Comunidad Valenciana: Tradición oral, aspectos intangibiles y turismo cultural . In: International Journal of Scientific Management and Tourism (2018) 4/1, p. 313.
  4. ↑ Ana Mafé Garcia: El Camino de Santo Grial en la Comunidad Valenciana: Tradición oral, aspectos intangibiles y turismo cultural . In: International Journal of Scientific Management and Tourism (2018) 4/1, p. 314.
  5. ↑ Ana Mafé Garcia: El Camino de Santo Grial en la Comunidad Valenciana: Tradición oral, aspectos intangibiles y turismo cultural . In: International Journal of Scientific Management and Tourism (2018) 4/1, p. 314.
  6. ↑ a b Art historian: Holy Grail in Valencia is real In: Katholisch.de . March 1, 2019, accessed March 8, 2019
  7. ↑ a b Carmela Sanchez: La tesis de la Doctora en Hª del Arte Ana Mafé revoluciona el paradigma del Santo Grial . In: ViuValencia, March 3, 2019.
  8. ↑ Ana Mafé García, M. Lynne La Mantia, Sergio Solsona Palma: ARAGON - VALENCIA: Holy Grail Territory . In: Sociology and Anthropology 5 (11), 2017, pp. 954–967, here p. 954 note 1. ( PDF )
  9. ↑ Ana Mafé Garcia. In: Academia. Retrieved December 17, 2019 .

See also