International conference discusses whether Spanish relic could be the Holy Grail

Local author Janice Bennett, who holds a master’s degree in Spanish literature and is the author of “St. Laurence and the Holy Grail” (Ignatius Press, 2004) published last month in Spanish (Ciudadela Libros), was a speaker at the first International Conference on the Holy Grail held in Valencia, Spain, earlier this month.

By Janice Bennett

VALENCIA, Spain—The history of the Holy Chalice of Valencia and the legends surrounding it brought 200 international participants, including 40 journalists, to the city of Valencia, Spain, to attend the first International Conference on the Holy Grail, held Nov. 7-9.

It is believed by many that the upper agate cup of the Holy Chalice of Valencia, housed in the city’s cathedral, is the cup Christ used to institute the Eucharist at the Last Supper.

There were more than 20 speakers at the three-day conference, including Manuel Martín Bueno, professor of archaeology, epigraphy (ancient inscriptions) and numismatics (coins) at the University of Saragossa; Jaime Sancho Andreu, curator priest in charge of Veneration of the Holy Chalice; Vicente Pons Alós, professor and historiographer at the University of Valencia and canon archivist-librarian at the Cathedral of Valencia; and Michael Hesemann, a German historian and specialist in relics.

Rita Barberá, mayor of Valencia, opened the conference by declaring the importance of celebrating the congressional sessions “in the city that has the privilege of taking care of the Christian relic par excellence” in the 1,750 years since St. Laurence was martyred in Rome.
“For a great part of this time,” Barberá said, “Valencia kept watch over the permanence and preservation of the Holy Cup, thanks to the courage and determination of those from Valencia who believed firmly that it, and no other, was the Holy Grail, the Holy Cup that came to the Iberian Peninsula—then called Hispania—through the Pyrenees to remain in Valencia. King Alphonsus the Magnanimous was the one who deposited it here, first in our former Royal Palace and later in the cathedral.”

My report documented a manuscript from the sixth century that St. Laurence was born in Valencia and sent the Holy Grail to Spain from Rome during the third-century persecution of Christians under the Emperor Valerian. (The news agency AVAN reported that it was the first time this document has been disclosed in Spain.) I also presented historical evidence from two early 17th-century historians that confirm Laurence was born in Valencia rather than Huesca.

The document, written by the sixth-century Augustinian monk St. Donato, was translated by the Augustinian priest Lorenzo Mateu y Sanz in 1636 and is in the National Library of Madrid. It narrates the life of St. Laurence and mentions that Pope Sixtus II entrusted the Holy Cup of the Last Supper to St. Laurence before his martyrdom in 258 A.D. St. Laurence gave it to a Spaniard with instructions to take it to Huesca, where his parents were born and their relatives still resided, among them the mother of St. Vincent, who was the younger sister of Laurence’s mother. Vincent was baptized in the Church of San Pedro el Viejo in Huesca. According to more than 15 Latin documents, the relic was sent from Huesca to the Pyrenees after the Muslim invasion of Spain in 711 A.D.

Professor Bueno proposed that a new study of the Holy Chalice be carried out, because “with current technology we would be able to determine much more concerning its authenticity.” His proposal would involve revising the study done in 1960 by Antonio Beltrán, a former archaeologist at the University of Saragossa who is now deceased. Beltrán came to the conclusion that “the Chalice of Valencia is the one that has the most likelihood of being the one that Christian tradition tells us was that of Jesus.” Beltrán determined that the base of the agate cup was added in the Middle Ages.

Bueno stressed that most modern methods would not be invasive or destructive and would allow scientists to specify the exact area where the cup was manufactured and compare it to pieces made in that epoch that are found in other museums, such as the two sardonyx cups in the British Museum of London that I discovered in 2001.

In his presentation, Hesemann stated that the medieval legends about the Holy Grail, such as Wolfram von Eschenbach’s “Parzival,” do not have their origin in the Anglo-Saxon stories about King Arthur, but in the deep-rooted tradition that the Cup of the Last Supper was in Spain in the Middle Ages. The first grail legends contain many details that are completely identifiable with the morphology of the Holy Chalice, the places where it was safeguarded during the medieval era, and historical personages.

Hesemann pointed out, for example, that in the 13th century Eschenbach described the Holy Grail as a stone cup filled with radiance, which accurately describes the Holy Chalice of Valencia. The Chalice has veins that have often been described as flames, especially when light penetrates the transparency of the agate stone.  Eschenbach’s cup has an inscription on the base, just like the Holy Chalice. In 12th century France, Crétien de Troyes, the first author who wrote a legend on the Holy Grail, accurately described San Juan de la Peña, the monastery where the Chalice was kept from 1071 until 1399, including the number of columns, arches and chimneys in the main hall.

The congress concluded with the statement that the evidence in favor of authenticity was overwhelming, that nothing contradictory was demonstrated, and that the relic should continue to be venerated in the Cathedral of Valencia as the cup used by Jesus at the Last Supper as a symbol of the Catholic faith in the Eucharist. The sponsors of the conference resolved to petition UNESCO that the Holy Chalice of Valencia be declared “patrimony of mankind” for future generations.

The conference was organized with the collaboration of the Order of Knights of the Holy Sepulcher of Jerusalem, the Foundation “COSO,” the Catholic University of Valencia, the Spanish Center for Sindonology, and the Brotherhood and Confraternity of the Holy Chalice.
A historical documentary “In Search of the Grail. When Reality is Hidden Behind the Legend”) was produced by Radio Televisión Valenciana (RTVV) to coincide with the conference. Noelia Bonifacio and Paloma Insa recreated the history of the Chalice, incorporating documentation from many of the specialists who presented their research at the conference.