Forbidden History - Search for the Real Holy Grail

Episode Date: November 5, 2024

The search for the Holy Grail is one of the most famous and enduring stories in history. In this episode of the Forbidden History podcast, journalist Jamie Theakston visits locations in England, Wales and Spain to examine claims that artefacts in each location could be the real Holy Grail. Cast List: Jamie Theakston: Investigative reporter Graham Phillips: Author & Historian Alan Butler: Author ‘Before the Pyramids’ Simon Cox: Author, Decoding the Lost Symbol Rev. Lionel Fanthorpe: Author ‘Mysteries & Secrets of Time’ Andrew Gough: Writer, presenter and editor of The Heretic Magazine  Lynn Picknett: Historian and researcher specialising in exposing historical conspiracies. She is also the co-author of several notable works Clive Prince: Co-Author, The Templar Revelation Robert Howells: Author, ‘The Last Pope’  Gerald Morgan: Author, Nanteos: House of History Brett Harrison: Shugborough Historian Nigel Jones: General Manager, Nanteos House Fiona Mirylees: Current Owner of the Nanteos Cup Eric Meyers: Narrator Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the Forbidden History Podcast. This program is presented solely for educational and entertainment purposes. It contains mature adult themes. Listener discretion is advised. The Holy Grail. What was it? A cup from the Last Supper? A cup used to help cleanse Jesus' body after the crucifixion.

Does this most famous relic actually exist? There is a real historical possibility that the cup, used at the Last Supper would have been preserved. I don't think the Grail is a physical item. I don't think it can be. It has too much power. It has too much psychological value. We're never going to find the real Holy Grill

if we're talking about the cup that was used at the Last Supper because there's no such thing. Do you think this is the Holy Grail? They've all got a cup. They all, you know, can heal. It's a piece of industry, if you like, or a piece of business. The quest for the Holy Grail. Quest for the Holy Grail is one of the great adventures of all time.

It's attracted Arthurian Knights, Indiana Jones, and dozens of archaeologists and explorers through the ages. The result has been the discovery of a number of cups and chalices, which all lay claim to be the real thing. But are they? Journalist Jamie Thiexton is on a quest to find out. It's always seemed rather strange to me that, in a very simple meal, given a very simple place

2,000 years ago, using wooden or very simple pottery bowls, the cup that Jesus drank out of at the last supper could possibly have survived, or that anyone would have even thought about keeping it. I really don't think that a cup or chalice from the crucifixion or even the Last Supper would have been, Now, there may be cups or chalices that were sacred and used in mass by famous priests such as St. Lawrence or even Paul that had been preserved. And that's entirely possible. You have to look no further than the chalice in Valencia to see that possibility.

One of the problems with identifying the real true Holy Grail is that there's so much debate about what it really is in the first place. The Holy Grail is sometimes thought of as the cup that was used at the Last Supper, Jesus and the disciples, and it's also thought to have been the cup that contained some of his blood. In some ways the question, what is the Holy Grail? Kind of a bit of a red herring, or rather, it's got a very simple answer. That in any given telling of the Grail story, the Grail is, or it represents, whatever it is the writer of that particular story wants it to be. The one great thing about the best of the Grail stories

is that the knights of the round table who seek to find it only ever find it when they're dead. So that the Grail is essentially for me a spiritual thing, a search. You know, there's lots of cups and chalelses that purport to be the Holy Grail and the one and only, you know, It could be from the first century AD, it could be medieval, it could be from a coffee shop in New York City. But the point is, if it's meaningful and symbolic to you, then yes, it is a grail. We shouldn't think there's just one of them.

Jamie's first stop is Hawkestone Park in Shropshire in England. Author and historian Graham Phillips believes that the Holy Grail is a small ointment cup that Mary Magdalene used to heal Jesus after his crucifixion, and that he's found found it right here in the heart of the English countryside. So Graham, what was it that led you here? In the mid-1800s, there was a local historian called Thomas Wright, and he claimed that he was descended from the family that possessed the Holy Grail, specifically the grail that had belonged to Mary Magdalene, the small chalice that she had used,

according to the Bible, to collect a few drops of Jesus' blood when he was on the cross. Okay. Now, Thomas Wright claimed that he possessed this cup and, unfortunately, had no one to hand it onto. So what he did, seeing himself as some perhaps latter-day Merlin, is to hide this cup and leave a series of clues, cryptic clues as to where it was. Now these, it was said, were in this book that he had written, which was basically a poem about the local landscape in this area. Right.

And in this book, at the end of the book, is a picture of somewhere called the Red Castle. And the Red Castle is associated in legend, which is all that's really known about it with the King Arthur's story. Right. One of Arthur's enemies, the Red Knight lives in the Red Castle. But back in 1990 when I first came here, I got to this spot and the keep of the Red Castle exactly as the picture in the book. And this proved to me that, wow, this quest is real, that there has got to be a series of clues, as Thomas Wright claimed.

As I say, nobody really knows what the castle was used for. Now, in here, you've got what is said to be locally a well. But it's not too wide to be one. And look how deep it is. And all around the walls, you've got these little sort of niches into which would have gone wood to support floors. And the only theory people have is somehow this was a series of floors going deep underground

as a sort of medieval bunker, so to speak. And so the first clue in the series if we're supposed to stand here says, lead me to the rock that is higher than I. And the only rock that's in the area that's higher is that one there. And that really is what is known locally as the White Cliff. And it seems to be up there, I've got to go. Graham took Jamie up to the top of the hill to see the ruins of the chapel close up.

If he was right, and the clues did lead to it, then the so-called hawkstone grail lay hidden away inside the hill. So where Thomas Wright wanted us to be at the end of his trail of clues, if he's telling the truth, somewhere here must be hidden the Holy Grail. But where? What have we got in here? This, believe it or not,

was originally an eagle statue. Now, something I have to tell you about that I'd also found out already about Thomas Wright. At the same time as he was leaving this trail of clues, he had a stained glass window designed and donated to his local church. And in that stained glass window is depicted Mary Macon.

Magdalene holding the chalice. Okay. And directly above her head is an eagle. And when I first saw this eagle statue or discovered that it had originally been an eagle, I thought, this has got to be where Thomas Wright hid the grail. Maybe he's hidden it inside it somehow. But it's all broken up. And when I found it, it was in the same condition as this.

So I looked into the history to find out. how it got in this condition. And I found out that in the 1920s, a local businessman called Walter Langham decided that he wanted to have this moved out and put in his garden. When he tried to have it moved, because it is a heavy thing,

the tackle broke and the thing smashed apart. But what was interesting, as I found in a little story in a newspaper from the time, is that when the base broke open, inside, they found a small, stone cup, which they thought was of interest at the time, but they didn't really know why. End of story. And I thought, oh my goodness, quite by accident, quite by accident, somebody had found Thomas Wright's

Grail. A small stone cub is exactly what it was supposed to be. I decided to find out from his descendants, if they were still alive, what had happened to this thing. I managed to speak to his great, great granddaughter, visited her, and I said, do you know, You know what happened to that cup? She said, I think everybody in the family thought it was some kind of Victorian mustard pot or something, but yes, we've still got it.

Really? Can I see it? And she took me up into the attic. Right. And amongst, you know, in newspaper, wrapped up in old newspaper, amongst a lot of cups and sauces and that, was this. And this is... Okay. This is it? This is what was in her attic, all wrapped up in newspaper.

Oh. This is the Holy Grail. You see, I've seen pictures of Jesus drinking from a cup in The Last Supper. This is more of an egg cup size than a... I was expecting a chalice. Well, precisely. The story of the Mary Magdalene Grail is that she used a small scent jar

to catch drops of blood while Jesus was on the cross. I asked the lady who owned it, if I could borrow it. She said, yeah. I went to archaeologists, asked them what this was. I didn't say, is this the Grail or what? I basically just said, you know, what is this? And they firstly said, well, that's a Roman scent jar, probably dating from the first century AD.

They said, secondly, it's made of alabaster. Well, in the Bible, it tells us it's a scent jar, belonging to Mary Magdalene two thousand years ago, made of alabaster. And I said, do you know where it came from? They said, of the type of stone somewhere in the Palestine area. So you may be holding in your hand the most precious artifact in the world. Wow. Stone Cup is interesting because it's not a chalice.

It's actually a first century perfume jar without its lid. And as such, it is not linked with the last supper. It is linked with Mary Magdalene, who anointed Jesus with incredibly expensive spike-nod perfume. And that's very interesting that the family that owned this automatically assume that it's connected with a grail-like thing. It's a grail-like story. The British Museum dates it to the first century Middle East, right? So anything that's dated now to the first century Middle East, well, of course, it has to be the grail, right? And people make this great leap from, no, it's life.

lovely ancient artifact. Maybe it was in the possession of a wealthy family? Fantastic. That's amazing. It doesn't make it the grail. The small egg cup-shaped vessel is not everyone's idea of the Holy Grail, looking rather small and plain. But when you take a closer look at Da Vinci's Last Supper, guess what's sitting on the table in front of Jesus? A small, greenish cup. It's not very probable because of the size and the material of which it is made. But there are those who believe it to be a very interesting piece of history, though I wouldn't put it very high on the list of claimants to be the real Holy Grail.

Journalist Jamie Thiexton is on the trail of the Holy Grail. Lots of cups and chalices down through the centuries have claimed to be the real thing. But are they? His search has so far taken him to Shropshire in England, and the fabled hawkestone grail hidden inside a hillside, and now he has come to a country estate in Wales to see the Nantios Cup, a small wooden drinking bowl that legend says was brought back from the last supper by Joseph of Arimathea. According to people who have drunk from the cup, it has amazing healing powers.

But could this really be the true Holy Grail? I've met somebody who claims to have been healed. I believe her when she says she was healed by it. Why not? As the story goes, Joseph of Arimathea, Jesus' uncle, brought the cup from the Last Supper to Glastonbury, where he founded the first Christian church in Britain. We know it today as Glastonbury Abbey.

It was worshipped there as a sacred relic for centuries, until Henry VIII's disillusion of the monasteries in the 15th century, when a group of monks rescued it and escaped to Strata Florida Abbey in Wales, just a short distance from Nantios house. Before the final monk died, he passed the cup on to Thomas Stedman, the owner of Nantios, for safekeeping. The small wooden cup passed from owner to owner of Nantios without much attention being paid to it. Until the Powell family took over the estate in the mid-19th century,

when it became known locally as the healing cup, There are records of Mrs. Powell allowing people to drink from the cup and then being healed. In 1905, it was exhibited locally and referred to as the Welsh Holy Grail. And almost overnight, its fame spread far and wine. Gerald Morgan has studied and investigated the claims of the Nantios Cup for over 30 years and remembers seeing the original cup on display inside the house. It doesn't look much like a cup. I mean, it's quite badly damaged.

Well, this is the rim, and it would have gone... Nearly half the cup has been lost. The base is still there, but nearly half the cup has been lost. It's been broken. It was probably broken a very long time ago. Of course, the legend grew up that all this was caused by people nibbling it. Well, because they wanted bits, presumably to souvenirs. Well, this is rubbish.

It's a classic folk legend. to explain a phenomenon. What you're looking at is a medieval mazer cup, which probably had a metal rim around the top, might even be silver. It's almost certainly made of witch elm. It's certainly not olive wood, which is very tightly grained and a very, very hard wood.

This isn't very hard. You can see how broad the grain is. There are so many legends about it to try and explain this, justify this story. But certainly it was used as a sort of, a healing cup. The Danteus Cup is of particular interest to me because I've actually handled it and I've taken holy water from it, which I have given when they requested it, to sick friends

or people who'd contacted me about it. Now I have also seen the ancient book in which the cup was recorded when it went in and out of the household to help somebody's sick and there are entries such as Cup was lent to John the Plowman next day. He has brought back the cup, having given his wife water from it and she is now much better after the fever. And there's a whole book of these entries of where water from the cup

has allegedly done good. I know in a lot of the cases that people who come to drink out of these cups quite often are healed and healed from very genuine complaints. Now, is it their own faith that's healed them or is there something more going on? You have these cups that are associated with miracles and various miraculous acts and healing and... But it's all an agenda-driven exercise. These tend to be associated with Christian or with modern. religious ideals and so if you're a believer then the cup is special if you're

a believer then that you will have the miracle because miracles rely on you the person the observer or the person who's getting the miracle actually wanting it owning it and believing it because if you don't it doesn't the other grales look nice and they're pretty chalices but this seems to to actually have a benefit to its to its foreman yes that's because people believe in it it's nothing to do with it having been in the hands of Jesus? Because it never was. It was only made about 500 years ago at the most.

But you don't doubt it's healing properties? No. I've met somebody who genuinely claims to have been healed. I believe her when she says she was healed by it. Why not? Nigel Jones, the chef and general manager of Nantios House, believes that he spotted some discrepancies between two historical photographs of the cup. And he wants to show them to Jamie to see what he makes of them.

That's the damage there, right? It's similar to damage there, but it's not the same, isn't it? It isn't the same? I believe this is the real one, and that's the copy. Why did they make a copy? The Powers made a copy because with people drinking from it, they used to nibble bits off, and it became too damaged, and so to preserve it, they had a copy made.

The plot was getting thicker. From what Jamie had found out, there was an original cup, which was supposed to have come back from the Holy Seeer, via Glastonbury to Wales. Mrs. Powell then made a copy of it, once people started biting pieces off, hence the discrepancies in the photos. But today neither are in Nantios, just the replica in the paper bag.

So where is the original cup? Jamie was told that it's kept by a descendant of the Merylis family, who inherited Nantios from the Powell's and is rarely ever seen. But when he explained his question, When he explained his quest to her, Fiona Miraly's agreed to let him see the cup, as well as the actual written records of healings that are kept with it. You believe that this is 2,000 years old? Yes. Why do you believe it's the cup from the Last Supper?

Well, it has such amazing powers in it, you can see like a communion cup. Can I touch it? Only very gently. So this is dated 31st of May 1858 for the use of the wife of James Morgan cured. So what do these actually mean these bits of pain? Well that they've drunk the water from the cup and they're cured. Right. Okay. And this is from, well, 150 years ago. That's right. Do you believe that this

This is the Holy Grail? Yes. Yes, I do. And why do you think that? Well, I've seen a lot of people cured and it has a marvellous feeling to it. Has any analysis been done on the cup to prove how old it is? No, my mother always said she didn't want carbon dating. Why is that?

Well, she just thought people should believe in it. But as far as you're concerned, this was the cup that just was the cup that just Jesus drank from at the Last Supper? Yes. If a person was to drink from one of these cups and they were healed, like interacting with any relic, it becomes true for you. So it may be that that's a spiritual past to your God,

but it's a personal relationship between you and your God and an object that you empower and give the power to and believe that can action that, can enable that, then that will become your growl in a way that becomes real for you. If you drink from a grail, a cup that you believe to be associated with the Holy Grail, and your migraine stops immediately or, you know, you grow another leg or something, obviously it's the Holy Grail for you. It's what matters to you.

And it's a personal association. It's an intimate connection with the magical level of the Grail. Fiona Miraly's has an unshakable faith that the cup in her possession is the real Holy Grail. But maybe the local historian Gerald Morgan's version of events was closer to the truth. He believes that Mrs. Powell was in possession of an old medieval bowl, around which a whole grail saga was weaved, creating the myth we have today. But is there any decent evidence that this small brown bowl was ever in the hands of Joseph of Arimathea, let alone Jesus?

Unfortunately, no. It's a nice story, and one that's convinced enough people to actually bite chunks out of the cup over the years. But is this really the Holy Grail? Most people remain unconvinced. Next on Jamie's list is not so much a grail as a grail clue. At Shugborough Hall in Staffordshire,

there's a peculiar stone monument in its grounds that some claim contains a hidden clue as to what and where the true Holy Grail is. It was built in the early 18th century by a wealthy landowner called Thomas Anson, the son of a famous admiral, who was said to have captured a vast Spanish treasure. It depicts a painting called

The Shepherds of Arcadia by Nicholas Poussin, where three men and a woman all point to a tomb. But here, for no apparent reason, it's carved in bar relief in reverse. Most curious of all are a series of eight letters on the base of the monument, which have so far alluded all attempts to decode them. Even Charles Dickens made an attempt. Brett Harrison works for Shugborough Hall and has become something of an expert on the monument. He thinks that there could well be a number of coded clues to the Holy Grail hidden in the stone carvings,

possibly leading to the tomb of Jesus. It's a classical setting, but what's the Grail connection? Well, if you remember, Jesus was supposed to be a shepherd, shepherd of the flock. The flock being people, all people. So the shepherds guarding the tomb, are they? Remember the Pusanne painting was reversed, the shepherdesses? The tomb could be where the grail is. So we're suggesting that the tomb of Jesus could be the grail as opposed to a cup?

the Holy Grail as a concept, or you can bring in some people the Mary Magdalene side as well. Is she the Grail? She contain the spirit. You can go off at that angle as well. Or you can put your own theories to it. And other people have tried to break this code as well, thinking this is a code. Explain to me how the, why these letters have fascinated people who've tried to answer the Grail mystery. 18th century, it's riddles. They're loving riddles. So they're trying to convey a message.

It may well be that something has been put in after Thomas has done his grand tour, he's seen something else, and these have been added. You might not know what they mean, but someone in 1750s and 60s was well-traveled and as knowledgeable as you would know exactly what that means. On the monument itself, we have three shepherds and a shepherdesses. on the side of the tomb around which they stand is the message, et in Arcadia Ego.

One of the translations is, I too am in Arcadia. And if we take the idea of Arcadia as being paradise, then the message of the Shugbra monument is that the Holy Grail is in another world. I think the Shagra Monument gives a location. I think it's a code towards a specific place. I think it's part of a tradition of what's called

the underground stream of knowledge and information and proof of perhaps alternative versions of Christianity of alternative ideas. And I think these objects and documents would have been passed on through families and would have been secreted in specific places. And Shaghaner and Monument is encoded to maybe move people onto the next level. location. Nobody knows what the inscription means. It probably is something to do with the family that the family themselves has forgotten. This happens. They even brought in a former Bletchley Park codebreakers and they couldn't get a handle on it at all. So if they can't

do it, I'm sure I don't know of anybody who can. Is this helping me understand what the grail is or might be? it might be helping you go in a different direction, or several different directions. It could be that the grail is a tomb containing Jesus, might contain Mary Magdalene. It might not be a cup. It might be a concept. So it may be whatever your holy grail is, whatever your belief, this could put you in the right direction. The final grail on Jamie's quest is in Valencia in Spain. It's a small stone cup called the Santo Caliz, and it's kept under tight security in Valencia Cathedral.

According to the legend, the cup was used by Jesus and his disciples at the Last Supper. It was then brought back from the Holy Land to Spain by the Crusaders in the 12th century, where it was hidden in the cliff-top monastery of San Juan de la Pena, before being brought to Valencia centuries later. The cup has been analyzed and dated to the first century, AD, giving it a good provenance. But what makes the Santo Calais so extraordinary is that it has been used to celebrate Mass by not one, but two popes, John Paul II, and Benedict the 16th. This is a cup that's historically traceable in literature and art to the 3rd century AD,

and which was taken to Spain, and castles and fortresses were built to protect it. Yaka, San Juan de la Pena, Huesca, Yucca, Yacca, Yacca. Zaragoza and today in Valencia, and in fact, recent times, popes have kissed it. And so of all the cups and chalices, the one in Valencia, you know, that's darn interesting. The cup in which the whole thing is built around is from the right date and from about the right place.

Huge doubts about whether that therefore makes it the cup of the Last Supper, because, you know, how did it get there? There's no story of how it got from the first century to, I think it was it the 11th century, was the first time it's actually actually appears in documents. When two different popes have actually used the Valencia Cup in mass,

they are tacitly, of course, endorsing it. They are saying, this is special, and allowing people to put two and two together and make five, basically, and so this is the Holy Grail. As befitting what the Catholic Church believes is the actual Holy Grail, the Santo Calais is kept in its own Grail chapel in the cathedral, with its own group of Grail priests guarding it. When people can go on pilgrimage to see a holy object,

they will believe that they have been blessed by looking at it, and we come to that old question again of the power of the mind. If you believe that a certain object which you have just seen or handled, as I handled the Nanteos Cup. You do feel a certain sense of well-being because you've had this good and sacred holy object in your hands, or at least very close to you, when you've looked through the glass of the case in which it's held.

The endorsement, or the tacit endorsement of the Valencia Cup, has to be good for the Catholic Church. It says, look, we've got it. Nobody else has got it. No other church has got it. we can lay our hands on it. This is the cup that Jesus used, the Pope's using it, hurrah.

Relics are incredibly important to the Catholic Church because of the effect they produce, just talking about them, produces in the mind of the believers. Basically, it pulls the whole church together and it says, look, we are in control of the Jesus story, which is real, by the way, because look, we have this thing that Jesus held himself. It's difficult to decide which of the numerous contenders for the title might be the real Holy Grail,

the real cup from which Christ and the disciples drank at the Last Supper. My best guess would be for Valencia, if I was compelled to say which my favourite was, that's the one I would go for. but I wouldn't really want to put money on it. Jamie's quest to find the one true Holy Grail has taken him from Hawkestone Park in Shropshire through to Abergavenny in Wales, the Shugborough Monument in England, and now to Valencia in Spain.

All of the Cups he was shown have their own fascinating story, their own history, their own claims of authenticity. But which one, if any, is the real Holy Grail? The truth is, they all require a leap of faith, a belief in the idea of a grail existing at all. But the strongest evidence and the best provenance seems to point to the Santo Calais. There's no definitive proof, but it's possible that the little stone cup locked away inside the cathedral could have been drunk from by Jesus Christ 2,000 years ago.