page_title: Holy Chalice
section_title: Valencia Chalice
hierarchical_section_title: Holy Chalice / Medieval tradition / Medieval relics / Valencia Chalice
caption_attribution_description: The Holy Chalice of Valencia
context_page_description: The Holy Chalice, also known as the Holy Grail, is in Christian tradition the vessel that Jesus used at the Last Supper to serve wine. The Synoptic Gospels refer to Jesus sharing a cup of wine with the Apostles, saying it was the covenant in his blood. The use of wine and chalice in the Eucharist in Christian churches is based on the Last Supper story. In the late 12th century, the author Robert de Boron associated the pre-existing story of the Holy Grail, a magical item from Arthurian literature, with the Holy Chalice. This association was continued in many subsequent Arthurian works, including the Lancelot-Grail cycle, the Post-Vulgate Cycle, and Sir Thomas Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur. Two main artifacts, a cup in the Cathedral of Valencia and a hexagonal dish in Genoa, have been particularly well known since Medieval times and have been both identified as the Holy Chalice.
context_section_description: One surviving Holy Chalice vessel is the Santo Cáliz, an agate cup in the Cathedral of Valencia. It is preserved in a chapel consecrated to it, where it still attracts the faithful on pilgrimage. The artifact has seemingly never been accredited with any supernatural powers.
  The cup is made of dark red agate which is mounted by means of a knobbed stem and two curved handles onto a base made from an inverted cup of chalcedony. The agate cup is about 9 centimeters (3.5 inches) in diameter and the total height, including base, is about 17 centimetres (7 inches) high. The lower part has Arabic inscriptions. It was most likely produced in a Palestinian or Egyptian workshop between the 4th century  BC and the 1st century AD.
  It is kept together with an inventory list on vellum, said to date from AD 262, that accompanied a lost letter which detailed state-sponsored Roman persecution of Christians that forced the church to split up its treasury and hide it with members, specifically the deacon Saint Lawrence. The physical properties of the Holy Chalice are described and it is stated the vessel was used to celebrate Mass by the early Popes succeeding Saint Peter.
  The first explicit inventory reference to the present Chalice of Valencia is found in an inventory of the treasury of the monastery of San Juan de la Peña drawn up by Don Carreras Ramírez, Canon of Zaragoza, on the 14th of December 1134.  The Chalice is described as the vessel in which "Christ Our Lord consecrated his blood" (En un arca de marfil está el Cáliz en que Cristo N. Señor consagró su sangre, el cual envió S. Lorenzo a su patria, Huesca).
  Reference to the chalice is made in 1399, when it was given by the monastery of San Juan de la Peña to king Martin I of Aragon in exchange for a gold cup.
  Pope John Paul II celebrated mass with the Holy Chalice in Valencia in November 1982. In July 2006, at the closing Mass of the 5th World Meeting of Families in Valencia, Pope Benedict XVI also celebrated with the Holy Chalice, on this occasion saying "this most famous chalice" (hunc praeclarum Calicem), words in the Roman Canon said to have been used for the first popes until the 4th century in Rome. 
  Bennett (2004) argues for the chalice's authenticity, tracing its history via Saint Peter's journey to Rome, Pope Sixtus II, Saint Lawrence, and finally to the Monastery of San Juan de la Peña whence it was acquired by King Martin I of Aragon in 1399. Bennett presents as historical evidence a 17th-century Spanish text entitled Life and Martyrdom of the Glorious Spaniard St. Laurence from a monastery in Valencia, which is supposed to be a translation  of a 6th-century Latin Vita of Saint Laurence, written by Donato, an Augustinian monk who founded a monastery in the area of Valencia, which contains circumstantial details of the life and details surrounding the transfer of the Chalice to Spain.
caption: The Valencia Chalice in its chapel in Valencia Cathedral
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