In Christian mythology the Holy Chalice is the vessel which Jesus used at the Last Supper to serve the wine. It is not specifically mentioned in any account in the canonic New Testament nor in any early non-canonical literature. In the development of their legends, the Holy Chalice has often been identified with the Holy Grail, which is said to be the cup used to catch Jesus' dripping blood on the Cross.

St John Chrysostom in his Homily on Matthew asserted: "The table was not of silver, the chalice was not of gold in which Christ gave His blood to His disciples to drink, and yet everything there was precious and truly fit to inspire awe."

Herbert Thurston in the Catholic Encyclopedia 1908 concluded that:

"No reliable tradition has been preserved to us regarding the vessel used by Christ at the Last Supper. In the sixth and seventh centuries pilgrims to Jerusalem were led to believe that the actual chalice was still venerated in the church of the Holy Sepulchre, having within it the sponge which was presented to Our Saviour on Calvary.

Thurston seems to be referring to the only record of a chalice from the Last Supper, a two-handled silver chalice which was kept in a reliquary in a chapel near Jerusalem, between the basilica of Golgotha and the Martyrium, which appears only in the account of Arculf, a 7th-century Anglo-Saxon pilgrim who saw it, and through an opening of the perforated lid of the reliquary where it reposed, touched it with his own hand which he had kissed. According to him, it had the measure of a Gaulish pint. All the people of the city flocked to it with great veneration. (Arculf also saw the Holy Lance in the porch of the basilica of Constantine.) This is the only mention of the chalice situated in the Holy Land, and, whether or not is was the cup used at the Last Supper, it is of silver.

The legends of the chalice spread, until by the 16th century there were about 20 cups that claimed the honor of being the authentic cup used by Jesus at the Last Supper. They included the sacro catino of Genoa, long thought to be an emerald, which is a green glass antique cup, discussed at Holy Grail. Today the two foremost surviving contenders for the title are the Holy Chalice of Valencia and the silver Antioch Chalice, now at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

The Holy Chalice of Valencia

An artifact identified with the vessel of the Last Supper is still preserved in a chapel consecrated to it at the Cathedral of Valencia, where it still attracts the faithful on pilgrimage. The piece is a hemispherical cup made of dark red agate about 17 centimeters/7 inches high and about 9 centimeters/3.5 inches in diameter. After an inspection in 1960, the Spanish archaeologist Antonio Beltrán asserted that the cup was produced in a Palestinian or Egyptian workshop between the 4th century BCE and the 1st century CE. The surface has not been microscopically scanned.

It comes complete with a certificate of authenticity, an inventory list on vellum, said to date from 262 CE, which details state-sponsored Roman persecution of Christians that forces the church to split up its treasury and hide it with members. It goes on to enumerate all precious items. The physical properties of the Holy Chalice are described and it is stated the vessel had been used to celebrate Mass by the early Popes succeeding Saint Peter.

Pope John Paul II himself celebrated mass with the Holy Chalice in Valencia in November 1992, causing some uproar in skeptic circles.

This artifact has seemingly never been accredited with any supernatural powers, which superstition apparently confines to more bloodshed-related relics such as the Holy Grail, the Spear of Destiny and the True Cross.

Janice Bennett, Saint Laurence and the Holy Grail (self-published through the Catholic Ignatius Press, 2004) gives an account for the Catholic faithful of the legend of the chalice, carried on St Peter's journey to Rome, entrusted by Pope Sixtus II to St. Laurence in the third century, sent to Spain when the Hispanic saint was martyred on a gridiron during the Valerian persecution in Rome in 258 AD, sent to the Pyrnees for safekeeping, venerated by the monks of the Monastery of San Juan de la Peña. Emerging there into the light of history, the monastery's agate cup was acquired King Martin I of Aragon in 1399 who kept it at Zaragoza. After his death, King Alfonso V of Aragon brought it to Valencia, where it has remained.

Bennett presents as historical evidence a 6th-century manuscript Latin Vita written by Donato, an Augustinian monk who founded a monastery in the area of Valencia, which contains circumstantial details of the life of Saint Laurence and details surrounding the transfer of the Chalice to Spain. The original manuscript does not exist, but a 17th-century Spanish translation entitled "Life and Martyrdom of the Glorious Spaniard St. Laurence" is in a monastery in Valencia. The main source for the life of St. Laurence is the poem Peristephanon by the 5th-century poet Prudentius. In 1960 the Spanish archeologist Antonio Beltrán studied the Chalice and concluded: "Archeology supports and definitively confirms the historical authenticity".

"Everyone in Spain believes it is the cup," Bennett said to a reporter from the Denver Catholic Register.. "You can see it every day that the chapel is open."

References

• Salvador Antuñano Alea, Truth and Symbolism of Holy Grail: Revelations Surrounding Valencia's Sacred Chalice (in Spanish, with a prologue by Archbishop Agustin Garcia Gasco of Valencia) 1999
  • "Spanish academic revives speculation about authenticity of the Holy Grail", October 1999

Valencia Chalice: external links

• Catholic Encyclopedia: Chalice (illustration of the Holy Chalice of Valencia)
• Catholicism.org website
• Image of the Holy Chalice (the small agate bowl at the top is the Holy Chalice itself, the gold handles and the pearl-laden base are later additions
• Report in the Denver Catholic Register
• Press release concerning Alea's book

The Antioch Chalice

The silver gilt chalice, now at The Cloisters, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York), apparently made at Antioch in the early 6th century A.D., according to the museum's curators, is of double-cup construction, with an outer shell of cast-metal open work, enclosing, as if embellishing a relic, a plain silver inner cup. When it was first recovered in Antioch just before World War I, it was touted as the Holy Chalice, an identification the Metropolitan Museum characterizes as "ambitious". Historians do agree that this may be the earliest surviving Christian chalice.

Antioch Chalice: external links

• Metropolitan Museum: Antioch Chalice