This afternoon happen to when down Simple Toy , saw a "Indiana Jones Holy Grail" ,
so i got it , Somehow the Holy Grail has made it beyond the Great Seal and the protection of the Grail Knight, to make its way onto your desk at the office (even better if you work in a museum).
Although this reproduction does look exactly like the real thing from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, I wouldn't drink from it hoping for eternal life. Just stick to using its magical magnetic powers to keep your desktop free of paperclip clutter or you will have chosen poorly.
*** actualy is a Paperclip Magnet Desk Accessory ***
ok , now back to the oringal "Holy Grail" , below is photo take in Cathedral of Valencia .
The Grail plays a different role everywhere it appears, but in most versions of the legend the hero must prove himself worthy to be in its presence.
In the early tales, Percival's immaturity prevents him from fulfilling his destiny when he first encounters the Grail,and he must grow spiritually and mentally before he can locate it again.
In later tellings the Grail is a symbol of God's grace, available to all but only fully realized by those who prepare themselves spiritually,like the saintly Galahad.
In Etymology the word grial, as it is earliest spelled, appears to be an Old French adaptation of the Latin gradalis,meaning a dish brought to the table in different stages of a meal.
According to the Catholic Encyclopedia, after the cycle of Grail romances was well established,late medieval writers came up with a false etymology for sangréal, an alternative name for "Holy Grail."
In Old French,san graal or san gréal means "Holy Grail" and sang réal means "royal blood"; later writers played on this pun.Since then, "Sangreal" is sometimes employed to lend a medievalizing air in referring to the Holy Grail.
This connection with royal blood bore fruit in a modern bestseller linking many historical conspiracy theories.
The Grail was considered a bowl or dish when first described by Chrétien de Troyes.Other authors had their own ideas; Robert de Boron portrayed it as the vessel of the Last Supper,and Peredur had no Grail per se, presenting the hero instead with a platter containing his kinsman's bloody,severed head.
In Parzival, Wolfram von Eschenbach, citing the authority of a certain (probably fictional) Kyot the Provençal,claimed the Grail was a stone that fell from Heaven (called lapsit exillis), and had been the sanctuary of the Neutral Angels who took neither side during Lucifer's rebellion.
The authors of the Vulgate Cycle used the Grail as a symbol of divine grace. Galahad,illegitimate son of Lancelot and Elaine, the world's greatest knight and the Grail Bearer at the castle of Corbenic,is destined to achieve the Grail, his spiritual purity making him a greater warrior than even his illustrious father.
Galahad and the interpretation of the Grail involving him were picked up in the 15th century by Sir Thomas Malory in Le Morte d'Arthur,and remain popular today.
Various notions of the Holy Grail are currently widespread in Western society (especially British, French and American),popularized through numerous medieval and modern works (see below) and linked with the predominantly Anglo-French (but also with some German influence)cycle of stories about King Arthur and his knights.
Because of this wide distribution, Americans and West Europeans sometimes assume that the Grail idea is universally well known.The stories of the Grail are totally absent from the folklore of those countries that were and are Eastern Orthodox (whether Arabs, Slavs, Romanians, or Greeks).
This is true of all Arthurian myths, which were not well known east of Germany until the present-day Hollywood retellings. Nor has the Grail been as popular a subject in some predominantly Catholic areas,such as Spain and Latin America, as it has been elsewhere.
The notions of the Grail, its importance, and prominence, are a set of ideas that are essentially local and particular,being linked with Catholic or formerly Catholic locales, Celtic mythology and Anglo-French medieval storytelling.
The contemporary wide distribution of these ideas is due to the huge influence of the pop culture of countries where the Grail Myth was prominent in the Middle Ages.
Later legend:
Belief in the Grail and interest in its potential whereabouts has never ceased.Ownership has been attributed to various groups (including the Knights Templar,probably because they were at the peak of their influence around the time that Grail stories started circulating in the 12th and 13th centuries).
There are cups claimed to be the Grail in several churches, for instance the Saint Mary of Valencia Cathedral,which contains an artifact, the Holy Chalice, supposedly taken by Saint Peter to Rome in the first century,and then to Huesca in Spain by Saint Lawrence in the 3rd century.
According to legend the monastery of San Juan de la Peña, located at the south-west of Jaca,in the province of Huesca, Spain, protected the chalice of the Last Supper from the Islamic invaders of the Iberian Peninsula.Archaeologists say the artifact is a 1st century Middle Eastern stone vessel, possibly from Antioch,Syria (now Turkey); its history can be traced to the 11th century, and it presently rests atop an ornate stem and base,made in the Medieval era of alabaster, gold, and gemstones.
It was the official papal chalice for many popes,and has been used by many others, most recently by Pope Benedict XVI, on July 9, 2006.
The emerald chalice at Genoa,which was obtained during the Crusades at Caesarea Maritima at great cost,has been less championed as the Holy Grail since an accident on the road,while it was being returned from Paris after the fall of Napoleon, revealed that the emerald was green glass.
In Wolfram von Eschenbach's telling, the Grail was kept safe at the castle of Munsalvaesche (mons salvationis),entrusted to Titurel, the first Grail King. Some, not least the monks of Montserrat,have identified the castle with the real sanctuary of Montserrat in Catalonia, Spain.Other stories claim that the Grail is buried beneath Rosslyn Chapel or lies deep in the spring at Glastonbury Tor.
Still other stories claim that a secret line of hereditary protectors keep the Grail,or that it was hidden by the Templars in Oak Island, Nova Scotia's famous "Money Pit",while local folklore in Accokeek, Maryland says that it was brought to the town by a closeted priest aboard Captain John Smith's ship.
Turn of the century accounts state that Irish partisans of the Clan Dhuir (O'Dwyer, Dwyer)transported the Grail to the United States during the 19th Century,and the Grail was kept by their descendents in secrecy in a small abbey in the upper-Northwest (now believed to be Southern Minnesota).
any way don't drink from my this "Grail" is not Holy yet!
