The Holy Grail is a mysterious relic of Christianity.

The story of the Holy Grail is such a tangled tangle of European legends, oriental traditions, literary narratives and conjectures, rooted not in the biblical source, as one might assume, but almost in the pagan folklore motifs of the Celts, that it’s time to exclaim: “Ah was it a boy? Or rather, an elusive Christian relic in the form of a cup, from which the disciples of Jesus Christ took communion at the Last Supper, into which the blood of the Savior crucified on the cross was later collected.

"Grail" is an old French word that denoted a large dish, a tray. This appointment of the Grail is described by the oldest surviving document about this relic - the novel by the Provencal troubadour poet Chrétien de Troy "Persefal, or the Tale of the Grail", referring to 1182. In this novel, the Grail is presented in the form of a large dish laid out precious stones worn 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, goblet and even a stone. However, none of these works is not known as an authoritative source of information.

The legend of the Grail was based on the Christian apocrypha about the journey to England of Joseph of Arimathea. A countryman of Chrétien de Troyes, also a Provençal poet Robert de Born, refers to an old historical source - a manuscript that 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.

Joseph brought the bowl and spear with which Jesus' body was pierced to Britain, and some legends even indicate the specific place where these relics were delivered - Glastonbury Monastery. 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 represented as a glass carved from an olive tree 12 cm high and 6 cm 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 celebrated in the Grail castle. Another legend tells that the Celtic wizard Merlin, who patronized King Arthur, sent knights to look for the Grail round table but these searches were not successful.

About a dozen writings dedicated to the Grail were compiled between 1180 and 1225 on 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 journeys in search of a shrine. The desire to find her is dictated magical properties Grail: a person who has drunk from this cup receives the forgiveness of sins and eternal life, and according to some sources, immortality, and in addition - quite material benefits - food and drink.

The only person who managed to acquire 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, Percifal, only approached the find: he saw the Grail when he visited his relative, the Fisher King, and witnessed his healing when the king drank from this cup of holy water in front of the knight.

The German Minnesinger poet Wolfram von Eschenbach, the author of Parsifal, in his poem written at the end of the 12th century, claims that the Templaisen knightly order keeps the Grail. This name suggests the order of the Templars - 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 Handsome at the beginning of the 14th century. In some medieval novels, the knight Parsefal searches for and finds the magical castle of Muncalves, in which the Templars keep the Grail under guard. In medieval legends, the Knights Templar also act as 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 either as the "cup of Christ", or as the "body of Christ", in the legends received a strong link to Joseph of Arimathea - the guard over the body of Christ. Therefore, one of the legends speaks of 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 legend of the Grail 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 magical 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 broken magical witch's cauldron of Ceridwen, stored in the castle of Annun, access to which can only be obtained by perfect people with pure thoughts. For all other people, this castle remains invisible. In another Celtic myth, the Grail appears as a stone that can scream. His cry symbolized recognition true king and therefore was installed in the capital of Ireland, Tara.

The well-known 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 Leuco-Syria - Lesser Armenia. It got to the West in the era of the Crusades, and it was brought there by knights and troubadours who participated in campaigns in the Holy Land and heard these Eastern legends.

Later, Eastern legends and images were creatively rethought in the European artistic word. Therefore, in European traditions 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 apocrypha popular in Byzantium - the Gospels of Nicodemus, the Acts of Pilate, and especially the Books of Joseph of Arimathea. One of the Byzantine written monuments "Mabinagion" refers to the storage of the sacred cup with the empress in Constantinople. However, in the Western European source of the XIII century, "The Younger Titurel" by Albrecht von Scharfenberg, we are talking only about a copy of the Grail stored in Constantinople.

Among the holidays of the Byzantine Church was the feast of finding the Holy Chalice of the Lord, celebrated on July 3. There is evidence that in 394 this bowl 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 kept there in one of the Orthodox churches. However further fate shrine is unknown: in 1204, as a result of the Fourth Crusade, Constantinople was captured and plundered by Western European knights. Mentions that the bowl came to the lands of Western Europe are adjacent to the information that it was hidden in one of the castles in the East.

One version of the Grail seekers says that this Christian shrine 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 Gavras dynasty of kings, who had Armenian origin, and was in the sphere of influence of the Byzantine Empire. The ethnic composition of the population was diverse: 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 of the Theodorites with the Genoese (it is known from history that the principality was forced to wage frequent wars with the Genoese), who owned colonies in the southern coastal part Crimean peninsula. During this war, the Genoese set a condition for the rulers of Theodoro: to give them a certain golden cradle, after which the war would be stopped. The situation was so threatening that the prince, together with his family, took refuge in one of the caves of Mount Basman, where he hid this mysterious golden cradle.

After that, an earthquake and a collapse occurred in the mountains, and the golden cradle was safely hidden from people. Interestingly, this legend is confirmed by the data of archaeological research. Scientists have established that there was a settlement on Mount Basman that was destroyed as a result of a powerful earthquake in the 14th or 15th century. And inside one of the mountain caves, a skeleton of a man was found, crushed by a stone block that had fallen on him.

There are different opinions about what the Mangup golden cradle could have been. Some believe that it was a golden font, presented to Prince Theodoro Isaac by Moscow Tsar Ivan III. Others saw in it a resemblance to the cradle of Genghis Khan. However, the most astute researchers noticed one important detail in the paintings of temples left over from the existence of this small state. They often have the motif of a bowl-cradle with a baby. AT Christian tradition the child in the cup symbolizes Christ. The blood of the crucified Christ, as we remember, was collected in a cup.

In the 20th century, these Crimean legends showed an unexpected interest in the secret services of the two great empires, which were at war with each other, including in the Crimean mountains. And again, as it once happened, the parties in this war were Western European warriors and 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 the 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 that 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, from which the allegorical name of the Grail came from - “a stone from Orion”. This case ended dramatically: the leader 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 secret services of the country of victorious socialism, but also their German colleagues. Adolf Hitler tried to get the Grail, who ordered at the height of World War II to begin an active search for the relic. The Führer, inclined towards mystical searches, wanted, so to speak, to privatize the legendary magical properties this vessel. His henchmen in the Hofburg Museum in Vienna found the spear of the Roman centurion Longinus, with which he pierced the body of Christ. In this artifact, the Nazis also saw the source 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 the 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 the "Einsatzgruppe D". The search was carried out in the fortress of Juft-Kale (Chufut-Kale), where the Karaite kenasses, the mausoleum of the daughter of Khan Tokhtamysh Janike-khanum and numerous caves were examined. They searched in Tatar mosques, and in the ruins of old temples, and in the ruins of the Kermenchik fortress. However, the Germans never found the Grail. Nevertheless, for his work in the Crimea, Otto Ohlendorf received the Iron Cross of the First Class from Adolf Hitler.

There is another interesting Grail story related to England, which is given in their book Quest for the Holy Grail and Precious Blood by Ian and Dyke Begg. Its origins all lead 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 being closed, Catholic priests are being persecuted. In 1535-1539, the king creates special commissions that closed all the monasteries in England. Their property was confiscated and the brethren dispersed. By order of the king, even the relics of saints were opened and plundered.

The last abbot of Glastonbury, shortly before his death, gave the Grail to the monks he trusted. They went with the relic to Wales, to Aberystwyth Abbey. They found shelter in the rich estate of Nantes Maner, owned by Lord Powell. He offered the monks refuge in his domain; where the monks lived and worked quietly. The last of the monks who lived there for many years, handed over the Grail to the owner of the property and bequeathed to always keep it there, in Nantes Mener. The last member of the Powell family died in 1952, and then the Grail passed to the Myeriless family. However, they did not stay long and mysteriously disappeared.

As we can see, with the passing of the glorious times of troubadours and knights, the search for the Grail did not stop. The Grail excites the minds of seekers even today. Italian archaeologist Alfredo Barbagallo claims that the Holy Grail is located in Rome and hidden in a room under the Basilica of San Lorenzo Fuori le Mura. This church is one of the seven churches most visited by pilgrims in Rome. The scientist made this conclusion after two years of studying the 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 instructed by Pope Sixtus V to take care of the preservation of early Christian church treasures.

"Secrets and mysteries of history and civilization"

holy grail

In Western European legends and tales, the Holy Grail is a mysterious vessel, for the sake of approaching which and initiating its good actions, the knights performed feats. Many myths, ancient legends, poems and painstaking works are dedicated to him. scientific research. Troubadours, minstrels, mastersingers of the 11th-13th centuries created a whole genealogy of kings and guardians of the Grail.

On the origin of the legend of the Holy Grail in science long time There were two views that divided researchers into two camps. For some, it was a Welsh fairy tale theme, which was later joined by Christian names and motifs, for other scholars, the Holy Grail is a further development of the Christian apocrypha, which was furnished with fantastic details of a folk tale.

One of the prominent representatives of the Celtic theory was Professor Willmark, who believed that the legend of the Holy Grail passed into medieval literature from a Latin retelling of it, made in the 8th century by a British hermit. He got the idea of ​​a miraculous vessel from the works of bards, where there is a cup that has the name and qualities of the Holy Grail.

According to Willmark, the vessel of the bards bore a name meaning the same as the Holy Grail. The word "per", which occurs in poetic tales, means "a wide vessel, a bowl", and this corresponds to the Grail (as the Gallic dictionary explained it). True, other researchers (for example, Gelinand) doubted such an explanation. According to their theory, the word "per" meant mainly a kitchen vessel in which something is cooked, while the Grail was a dish on which the richest dishes were served. Thus, the description of the bowl by different researchers (as well as by medieval authors) varied greatly. For some, it was a modest bowl from the table of the apostles, for others it was made of gold and adorned with precious stones, while others saw in the Grail a goblet carved from an emerald that fell from Lucifer's forehead during the fall of this rebellious angel.

Many researchers see in such a variety of plots a connection with the legends of the pre-Christian era about sacrificial blood, for example, with the goblet that the ten gods of ancient Atlantis drank before the start of their meetings ... Or with the golden goblet of the Germanic tribes, or with the goblet of Styx water, which possessed special properties and was considered a receptacle of ancient and lost knowledge.

The question of the origins of the legend of the Holy Grail in past centuries was devoted to many scholarly works (among which there were quite solid ones), but to this day it remains unanswered. In Russia, this issue was dealt with by Professor A.N. Veselovsky and N. Dashkevich. The latter studied in detail all Western European theories and notes that the novels about the Knights of the Round Table played an important role in the creation of the legend of the Holy Grail. For 400 years, these books were creations that fully embodied the ideal of the nobility. The aristocrats collected them in their libraries, after copious libations they also entertained the guests of the noble feudal lords. Ignorance of the stories about the Knights of the Round Table was considered a sign of ignorance, the names actors(Arthur, Lancelot and others) the baby was named at baptism, etc. For example, Merlin is a zealot of Christian principles in the novels. So, having once bestowed wealth and honors on a poor man, he deprived him of them when he became very proud and turned out to be ungrateful.

Some of the heroes of the Round Table were very popular. At the end of the 12th century, they wrote about the knight Arthur, in particular: “In which of the places where Christian dominion extends, did the winged glory not bring and where did not make known the name of Briton Arthur? Who ... does not talk about him when, as the pilgrims returning from the East tell us, he is almost more famous among the Asiatic peoples than the Britons? The inhabitants of the East speak of Arthur as well as the inhabitants of the West, although they are separated by the space of the whole earth. Egypt speaks about him, the solitary Bosphorus is not silent. His deeds are sung by the lord of states, Rome, and the once-rival of Rome, Carthage, knows the battles of Arthur, which are glorified by Antioch, Armenia, Palestine.

The cycle of novels about the Knights of the Round Table also included a story about the Holy Grail, which protects in court and in battle, it glows and soars in the air, separates the righteous from sinners, nourishes and heals, which was first discovered during the imprisonment of Joseph of Arimathea. This trait playing important role in legends, brings the Holy Grail closer to the mythological symbols of abundance (in Greek mythology this is the horn of Amalthea, in the myths and rituals of the Celts it is a cauldron), as well as with the sacraments of communion “like the bread of angels” and manna from heaven.

It is now quite difficult to find the original antiquity of the original tales of the Grail, and in medieval knightly literature, the Grail motif begins to appear at the end of the 12th century. In the novel by the poet Wolfram von Eschenbach "Parzival", the Holy Grail is not a cup, but a stone brought to earth by angels and possessing miraculous power.

A little earlier than the novel "Parzival" appeared "A novel about the history of the Grail" by the French author Robert de Boron. This work has been preserved in two versions - prose and verse, but, unfortunately, only fragments have survived from the second part ("Merlin"). However, the original volume and content of the poem can be restored from them, and we will focus on the first part of the poem - "Joseph of Arimathea", which reveals the essence of the legend of the Holy Grail.

In Robert de Boron, the poem opens with a story about redemption, which the author considers as liberation from the devil. Then the novel tells about the betrayal of Judas, about the washing by Jesus Christ of the feet of his disciples and the celebration of the Last Supper in the house of Simon the leper. Joseph of Arimathea finds on Calvary the cup from which Jesus Christ drank, and takes it to the Roman procurator Pontius Pilate, who gives him the cup along with permission to remove the body of the Savior from the cross and give it to burial.

Joseph took the holy body of Jesus Christ into his hands and quietly laid it on the ground. Washing him, he noticed blood flowing from the wounds and was horrified, remembering that it had cut a stone that was at the foot of the Cross. He also remembered the vessel of the Last Supper, which had previously been given to him by Pilate, and the pious Joseph decided to collect drops of divine blood in this vessel. He collected drops from the ulcers on his arms, legs and sides in a bowl, and after wrapping the body of Jesus with a rich cloth, he laid him in a cave.

The news of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ greatly embarrassed the Jews, and they decided to kill Joseph and Nicodemus. Warned, Nicodemus managed to escape, but Joseph was seized in bed, severely beaten and then put in a dungeon, which was closed so that the tower looked like a pillar from the outside. No one knew what happened to Joseph, and Pilate was very upset by his disappearance, because he did not see best friend- truthful and brave.

But Joseph was not forgotten. In the illuminated dungeon, the One for whom he suffered appeared to him and brought a vessel containing His divine blood. Seeing the Light, Joseph rejoiced in his heart, was filled with grace and exclaimed: “Almighty God! Where can this Light come from, if not from You?

“Joseph,” Christ said, “do not be embarrassed, the power of My Father will save you! You will have unceasing joy when you end your life on earth. I did not bring any of my students here, because no one knows about our love. Know that it will be clear to all and dangerous to unbelievers. You will have the memorial of My death, and after you those to whom you will entrust it. There he is".

And Jesus Christ gave Joseph a precious vessel of blood, which He hid in a secret place known to Him alone. Joseph fell on his knees and thanked, but pointed out to the Savior his unworthiness. However, Jesus Christ commanded Joseph to take the Holy Grail and keep it. The grail was supposed to have three guardians.

Then Jesus Christ announced that the Sacrament would never be performed without the memory of the feat of Joseph of Arimathea. Further, the Savior told Joseph the mysterious words that Robert de Boran does not convey in his poem, and at the end said: have advice in your heart, because the Holy Spirit will speak to you. I am not taking you out of here now, because the time has not yet come.”

This is the content of the poem by Robert de Boron, compiled by us according to the retelling of N. Dashkevich. Further, the poem tells about the release of Joseph from prison by the emperor Vespasian, and then briefly conveys about his life in his homeland. Researchers suggest that perhaps the poem refers to the movement of the precious Grail to the West and some other events. This hypothesis arose, probably, in connection with the appearance of relics of this blood in the West shortly before the publication of the novels about the Holy Grail. So, in 1148, part of the blood of Christ was transferred from Jerusalem to Flanders and was placed in the city of Bruges - in the church of St. Basil. And in 1171, blood relics were exhibited in Normandy. These and some other facts perfectly reveal the reason why the pious truver settled on the legend of the collection of the blood of Christ.

The possession of the Holy Grail has always been considered the cherished dream of many knightly orders. The Knights of the Round Table, the Templars, the Teutonic Knights - all of them unsuccessfully searched for this mystical vessel in order to master the subtlest energies.

And now we will touch on a question that, at first glance, may seem unusual. The fact is that Parsifal and the search for the Holy Grail were of particular importance to the initiated Nazis in Nazi Germany. V.Prussakov writes about this in his book “The Occult Messiah and His Reich”. The musical interpretation of the legend of the Holy Grail by R. Wagner made a deep impression on the Nazi mystics. One of them, Otto Rahn, inspired by the story of Parsifal, went in search of the Grail.

In 1931, he went to France and reached Montsegur - the last point of the heroic defense of the Cathars. The legend says that it was from here on the night before the decisive assault of the papal crusaders that three heretic Cathars quietly left, taking with them the sacred relics. At the risk of their own lives, they saved the magical regalia of King Dagobert II and the cup, considered the Holy Grail.

Otto Rahn thoroughly studied Montsegur and discovered many secret passages here, in which (in his opinion) the “treasure of the ages” should have been hidden. Two years later, he published the book "Crusade Against the Grail" - about his findings and the heroism of the Cathars. According to some reports, in 1937

O. Ran sent his Montsegur "finds", among which was the Holy Grail, to Himmler. Jean-Michel Angebert in his book "Hitler and the Tradition of the Cathars" reports that the precious vessel was transported to Wewelsburg Castle, where it was kept on a marble pedestal.

Further information about the fate of Otto Rahn is full of mysteries and contradictions. According to some sources, he was sent to a concentration camp and killed there, according to others, he committed suicide in March 1939 by taking an ampoule of potassium cyanide. Historians speculate that the seeker of the Holy Grail became disillusioned with Nazism and realized that he had handed over the relic the greatest power and the values ​​are not in the right hands ...

The genesis of the legends about the Holy Grail, as already mentioned above, still causes a lot of controversy in science. Scientists argue about the etymology of the word "Grail", and about the areas of Western Europe where Joseph of Arimathea came from Palestine and where his missionary work took place. By tradition, they even used to speak of the Holy Grail in the masculine gender, as is customary in French and German. Meanwhile, "The Complete Orthodox Theological encyclopedic Dictionary”reports: “According to legend, Joseph of Arimathea, who collected the blood of Christ into her, took her to England.”

In East Slavic traditions, the Holy Grail is a basket with fish and a bottle of red wine, and the Latin word “gradual” means a liturgical book.

None of the medieval authors of poems and novels about the Holy Grail fully reveals the essence of this concept, leaving the reader only some hints. In the minds of the entire Christian world, the Holy Grail is the chalice of the Last Supper, into which later Joseph of Arimathea collected drops of blood from the most pure body of the Savior. In illustrations for manuscripts of the 13th-14th centuries, it was depicted mainly in the form of a chalice.