England and Wales company registration number 2008885. Spanish historians say they have discovered what Monty Python could not — the Holy Grail, the legendary cup Jesus supposedly drank from at the Last Supper. [1], A "grail", wondrous but not explicitly holy, first appears in Perceval, le Conte du Graal, an unfinished romance written by Chrétien de Troyes around 1190. More recent cinematic adaptations include Costain's The Silver Chalice made into a 1954 film by Victor Saville and Brown's The Da Vinci Code turned into a 2006 film by Ron Howard. This identification has inspired a wider legend asserting that the Cathars possessed the Holy Grail. Regardless of mythological roots, literary embellishments, and popular fancies, the Holy Grail became firmly linked to the Catholic doctrine of the Real Presence. The term "holy grail" is often used to denote an elusive object or goal that is sought after for its great significance. Salon reports this was the premise behind the "non"-fiction early '80s best-seller Holy Blood, Holy Grail and perhaps more famously of the early 2000s cultural phenomenon that ripped it off, Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code. The opposing view dismissed the "Celtic" connections as spurious and interpreted the legend as essentially Christian in origin. By the 14th century an elaborate tradition had developed that this object was the Last Supper chalice. Setting aside the fact that the very idea of the Holy Grail actually being a descendant of Jesus is roughly the same as someone a few hundred years from now saying, "Yes, lightsabers were real and also Abraham Lincoln was killed by one, but actually the lightsaber was a person–John Wilkes Booth–who was a secret descendant of Socrates whose family was protected by SEAL Team 6," some of the conspiracy theories behind the Holy Grail require some real misinterpretation of history. These include the Nanteos Cup, a medieval wooden bowl found near Rhydyfelin, Wales; a glass dish found near Glastonbury, England; and the Antioch chalice, a 6th-century silver-gilt object that became attached to the Grail legend in the 1930s. But one notable work of Arthuriana managed to buck the trend of interpreting the Holy Grail as Jesus' last cup and dared to ask, "What if it's a rock, actually?". The actual cup Jesus would have used at the last supper would have been made from wood and would have decomposed to dust unless, of course, it was infused with sacred qualities, which is yet again impossible to prove.

Notably, the Fisher King bears more than a passing resemblance to the legendary Celtic god-king Bran the Blessed, who features heavily in the cycle of medieval Welsh legends known as the Mabinogion. All About History is part of Future plc, an international media group and leading digital publisher. In fact, the only information we have about Joseph of Arimathea is he was a member of the Jewish high council and a devoted follower of Jesus who offered his own tomb as a burial place for Jesus after the crucifixion.

He founds a dynasty of Grail keepers that eventually includes Perceval.

[47], In the early 20th century, esoteric writers identified Montségur, a stronghold of the heretical Cathar sect in the 13th century, as the Grail castle. Scholars have long speculated on the origins of the Holy Grail before Chrétien, suggesting that it may contain elements of the trope of magical cauldrons from Celtic mythology and later Welsh mythology combined with Christian legend surrounding the Eucharist,[25] the latter found in Eastern Christian sources, conceivably in that of the Byzantine Mass, or even Persian sources. Glastonbury was associated with King Arthur and his resting place of Avalon by the 12th century.

There is, of course, no shortage of other contenders. [22] The Queste del Saint Graal (The Quest of The Holy Grail) tells also of the adventures of various Knights of the Round Table in their eponymous quest, some of them including Percival as Galahad's on-and-off companions. Finally, a beautiful young girl emerges bearing an elaborately decorated graal, or "grail". It wasn’t until the grail appeared again in Robert de Boron’s verse romance Joseph d’Arimathie between 1191 and 1202 that the grail or ‘chalice’ is linked to Christ, claiming that the sacred cup was used in the last supper and to collect … It is not associated with Joseph of Arimathea or Jesus' blood; it is said to have been taken to Rome by Saint Peter and later entrusted to Saint Lawrence. L'influence des Metamorphoses d'Ovide sur la visite de Perceval au chateau du Roi Pecheur, Journal of the International Arthurian Society, Vol.