Glastonbury: Archaeology is Revealing New Truths About the Origins of British Christianity

Ancient Origins

Roberta Gilchrist/The Conversation

 New archaeological research on Glastonbury Abbey pushes back the date for the earliest settlement of the site by 200 years – and reopens debate on Glastonbury’s origin myths.

Many Christians believe that Glastonbury is the site of the earliest church in Britain, allegedly founded in the first or second century by Joseph of Arimathea. According to the Gospels, Joseph was the man who donated his own tomb for the body of Christ following the crucifixion.

By the 14th century, it was popularly believed that Glastonbury Abbey had been founded by the biblical figure of Joseph. The legend emerged that Joseph had travelled to Britain with the Grail, the vessel used to collect Christ’s blood. For 800 years, Glastonbury has been associated with the romance of King Arthur, the Holy Grail and Joseph of Arimathea. Later stories connected Glastonbury directly to the life of Christ.

Joseph of Arimathea Preaching to the Inhabitants of Britain. William Blake (via British Museum)

In the 19th century, a popular West Country folk tale claimed that Christ had visited Britain with his great uncle, Joseph of Arimathea, in pursuit of the tin trade. The myth that Jesus visited Glastonbury remains significant for many English Christians today and is immortalised in the country’s unofficial anthem, Sir Hubert Parry’s hymn, Jerusalem, based on William Blake’s 1804 poem.

And did those feet in ancient time
Walk upon England’s mountains green:
And was the holy Lamb of God,
On England’s pleasant pastures seen!

 Historical accounts describe an “ancient” church on the site in the tenth century. It was still standing in the 12th century, described by the historian William of Malmesbury as “the oldest of all those that I know of in England”. But this revered and ancient church was destroyed by a devastating fire in 1184, along with much of Glastonbury Abbey.

Reconstruction of the old church. Centre for the Study of Christianity, Culture University of York, Author provided

The old church was the first structure to be rebuilt – a new chapel was erected on the site of the old church that had been destroyed by fire. The Lady Chapel that was consecrated in 1186 commemorates the old church and still stands today at Glastonbury Abbey. Any archaeological evidence for an early church would have been destroyed by the later construction of the crypt beneath the Lady Chapel.

Archaeological Evidence
So how can archaeology shed light on the question of Glastonbury’s origins? Research led by the University of Reading has reassessed the full archive of excavations that took place at Glastonbury Abbey throughout the 20th century.

The excavation records confirm that the site of Glastonbury Abbey was occupied before the foundation of the Anglo-Saxon monastery around AD 700. Near the site of the medieval Lady Chapel, there were traces of a timber hall within the bounds of the early monastic cemetery. A roughly trodden floor contained fragments of late Roman amphorae imported from the eastern Mediterranean, dating back to about 450–550AD.

Plan of the post Roman timber structure and associated late Roman amphorae. Liz Gardner, Author provided

A radiocarbon date pinpoints the demolition of the timber building to the eighth or ninth century. This suggests that the building was in use for a long period – extending from the pre-Saxon phase of the site at around 500AD and into the period of the Saxon monastery – potentially up to 300 years.

This new archaeological evidence does not prove the presence of an early church – or support a connection with Joseph of Arimathea. But it does confirm that the Anglo-Saxon monastery was preceded by a high-status settlement dating back to the fifth or sixth century – one with elite trading connections to the eastern Mediterranean. It may also suggest that the Saxon monastery carefully “curated” the timber building – in other words, preserved it for future generations, perhaps because it held special religious or ancestral significance for the monks.

Spiritual Meanings
Today, Glastonbury appeals to a wide range of spiritual seekers, many of whom are drawn by the abbey’s associations with Celtic Christianity. Joseph of Arimathea is important in making the connection to Glastonbury’s Celtic origins – the belief that Joseph founded a church of British Christianity that predated the Roman mission to England (from 597AD).

These archaeological findings are relevant to Glastonbury’s spiritual seekers because they push the origins of the site back to a period before the Anglo-Saxon abbey – into the time of the legendary King Arthur. In a personal letter to the director of Glastonbury Abbey, Geoffrey Ashe – the Arthurian expert and doyen of Glastonbury’s alternative community – commented on the significance of these archaeological findings.

To me, the most gratifying thing is the proof – at last – that the original community was British and existed before the Saxons’ arrival, as I always maintained. The foundation has now been moved back 200 years to the period where it belongs. Brilliant!

The archaeological research provides extensive new insight into Glastonbury Abbey in Anglo-Saxon and medieval times – including digital reconstructions of the Anglo-Saxon churches and the interior of the medieval Lady Chapel. For the first time, Glastonbury’s legendary traditions can be assessed alongside its archaeological evidence.

The Anglo-Saxon Church in its modern setting 1100AD. The Centre for the Study of Christianity & Culture, University of York, Author provided

Archaeology will not prove or disprove Glastonbury’s legendary associations with King Arthur or Joseph of Arimathea. But archaeology helps to explain what these myths meant to medieval people, how the story of Glastonbury has changed over time, and why it remains important to spiritual beliefs today.

Top image: The Lady Chapel, Glastonbury Abbey. Source: Public Domain

This article was originally published under the title ‘Glastonbury: Archaeology is Revealing New Truths About the Origins of British Christianity’ by Roberta Gilchrist on The Conversation, and has been republished under a Creative Commons License.

Dan Jones on the Templars and ‘Knightfall’

History Extra

Historian, presenter and author Dan Jones. (David Levenson/Getty Images)

Q. Who were the Templars?
A. To understand the Templars you’ve got to go back to the First Crusade. The Templars were originally formed in the city of Jerusalem to protect Christian pilgrims from the west as they travelled around the Holy Land. Their role later developed so that, instead of just protecting the pilgrims, they began fighting in elite units in crusader armies. They also had a sideline in a huge variety of commercial, business and financial enterprises, ranging from medieval banking through to commodity production (shipping, property leasing, etc). Most famously, they were brought down in a spectacular series of trials in the 14th century.

Q. What can you tell us about the new TV series Knightfall?
A. Knightfall is a historical drama (where history and drama are equally weighted). It’s a story about what I consider to be the most interesting part of Templar history – the fall of the order, and how it was brought down by a propaganda-driven attack led by King Philip of France. Historical drama these days is usually obsessed with origin stories, but what Knightfall does is look at the story of the Templars at its end. It’s a fascinating period of time, and it’s one of the reasons why the Templars have struck a chord with people across history.


The story follow the lives and experiences of a group of Templars in Paris who are dreaming of getting back into their former roles. In episode one, we learn that the holy grail [a mythological artefact closely linked with the Templars throughout history] has gone missing; this launches the action of the next nine episodes. It’s a very human story, with many of the characters projecting their own hopes and fears onto finding the grail.

Templars wear their distinctive uniform in this scene from 'Knightfall'. (Image credit: History)

Q. What’s the real history behind the fall of the Templars?
A. To understand the fall of the Templars, you need to understand a little about the failure of the Crusader states [Jerusalem, Tripoli, Antioch and Edessa]. In 1291, the Mamluks – a cast of Egyptian slave soldiers who had conquered Egypt and Syria – swept through these states into the eastern Mediterranean and the Crusaders lost their foothold in the Holy Land. A lot of blame was attached to the Templars because of this – their duty had been to protect the Crusader States and they had manifestly failed.

Fifteen years later, the order was destroyed by King Philip IV of France. He took aim at the Templars for a variety of reasons – partly because he was having a long-running battle with the pope (and the Templars, as loyal servants answerable to the pope, were an indirect way of attacking the papacy), and partly because he fancied a slice of the order’s wealth. On Friday 13 October 1307, agents of the king turned up at Templar houses with a list of mostly bogus and maliciously concocted accusations against the order. They were accused of worshipping false idols, spitting on the cross, sleeping with one another, denying Christ, spitting on the image of Jesus, kissing one another in lewd induction ceremonies – anything you could think of that would push the buttons of a conservative Christian mind-set in 1307.

The result was a long-running inquisition, which ran from 1307 in France and spread across every other kingdom in western Christendom. By 1312, the Templars were declared to be institutionally corrupt; they were abolished, rolled up and their property was given away. Two years later, in 1314, the last grandmaster was burned at the stake and that was the end of the order as it had been known in the Middle Ages.

Q. The plot of Knightfall follows a grail quest. How did the Templars become linked with the holy grail?
A. The first links that we know of go back to Arthurian legends and specifically the legend of Parsifal [Percival] by Chrétien de Troyes, which was rewritten in Germany between 1200 and 1210 by a man named Wolfram von Eschenbach. Wolfram placed into his story something called the Gral (the grail), which the Templars have been repeatedly linked to ever since. Although we’re not quite sure what the grail is in Wolfram’s tale, we do know that it’s defended by knights that look very similar to Templars. In my reading of the story – and I think a lot of historians would read it in the same way – the grail is a metaphor for Jerusalem. And who were better to guard Jerusalem than the Templars?

The grail itself has its own history; there is a long history of people being fascinated with it – from Thomas Malory’s Le Morte D’Arthur through to Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code. I think it’s understandable that the Templars and the grail became linked together – the Templars are one of the church’s most controversial orders and the grail is a symbol of the church’s history.

Q. Why did you include this mythological part of the Templars’ history in the series?
A. If we were to just disregard all of the myths and legends, the question would be: why are we making a show about the Templars at all? Why not the Knights Hospitaller? Why not the Teutonic Knights? Why not any of the other military orders? There is a reason that the Templars keep coming back to us and part of that is because they have been consistently linked with these legends and myths, which are just as much a part of their history. For TV, it’s natural to link those two elements together.

The characters in 'Knightfall' (pictured) are a combination of real historical people and characters from established Templar mythologies, says Dan Jones. (Image credit: History)

 Q. Are the characters in Knightfall based on real people from history, or are they fictional?
 A. The characters are a combination of real historical people and characters from established Templar mythologies. There are a whole host of characters who are absolutely based on historical figures – King Philip IV and his wife Joan I of Navarre, Isabella of France, and Pope Boniface VIII. There are also a huge range of fictional characters that originate from the fact that the Templars can be traced right back to the origins of the Arthurian stories in the 12th and 13th centuries. In 1200, fictionalised Templars were appearing in Arthurian legend all the time, so in Knightfall we meet Templars called Gawain, Landry, Parsifal and Tancrede. They are all searching for the holy grail.

Q. Are there any female characters in the series? How are they presented?
A. Absolutely – no one in their right mind would make a TV show with no strong female roles! The roles of women in the Middle Ages are quite sensitively explored in Knightfall and are some of the most interesting in the show.

 In the first instance, we have the wife of Philip IV. She is referred to as Queen Joan in the show, but her real name was Juan. In the show, she’s imagined to be having an affair with Landry, the lead Templar, although this aspect is fictional. We also meet her daughter – Isabella (the future wife of Edward II) who would become known as the ‘she-wolf’ of France and one of the great medieval queens.

Q. How did you get involved with Knightfall, and what was your role as a historical consultant?
A. I first got involved with the show shortly after it was given the green light by History, and from the outset I was reading the scripts and providing informal feedback. As the show went into pre-production and then production, I came on board in a more official capacity to advise wherever I was needed. This involved anything from answering plot points from the writers’ room, to working with the actors on any queries they might have, to working with the prop, costume and set design departments.

Q. How historically accurate is Knightfall? A. Everyone involved in the show wanted to know as much as possible about the history of the Templars. Sometimes decisions were taken because of a desire for historical fidelity; sometimes decisions leant the other way.

What you see with Knightfall is a blending of history with established legends. Some of the storylines are invented, but one of the questions I was able to answer in those instances was: “Is it plausible that this could have happened?”

Q. How do Templar history and myth come together in the show?
A. The first scene of the first episode is a great example. It’s 1291 and the Templars are evacuating the city of Acre – the setting for the fall of the Crusader states to the Mamluks.

This aspect of the story is true and is based on original chronicle sources that document the Templars evacuating the city. The aspect of the story that’s not based in historical evidence is that the Templars are attempting to move the holy grail. Despite this, I think it’s remarkable how much the writers have stayed faithful to the original chronicles of the time. It’s a really interesting mish-mash between reality and fiction. That’s true of most historical dramas.

Q. As a historian, what’s your verdict on blending fact and fiction for the purpose of historical drama?
A. I think anyone who turns on a historical drama expecting to see something with the narrative architecture and factual veracity of a scholarly article has totally failed to understand the form and the medium that they are watching. The whole idea of historical drama (the clue is in the name) is drama as well as history. The job of the director – and everyone involved in the production – is where to find the balance. There will be people who are personally happy with a great ‘Hollywood story’ with historical props and costumes.

Then there will be people who want a story that is incredibly slow-moving but is absolutely faithful to every historic detail. From a numbers perspective, the former is more effective for television.

I think a lot of people assume that filmmakers who ‘get things wrong’ in period pieces must be stupid. That is absurd. If you’ve ever encountered an enormous television production, you’ll realise that it’s brought together some of the most talented directors, costume designers, actors and screenplay writers. Not all of these people can be stupid and wrong; instead, there is a carefully understood and constantly evolving sense of how to make historical drama that serves both components. Sometimes it is done well, sometimes it is done not so well. But it is never done blindly.

 Q. Why do you find the Templars so compelling?
A. For me, it’s because their history has so many different facets. It’s got faith, it’s got tragedy, it’s got fake news and it’s got incredible battles. The Templars are a window into the world of crusading, but they also have this fascinating mythology that I find as interesting as the factual history. Ultimately, they are a great case study for understanding why certain subjects become so compelling generation after generation.

Dan Jones is a historian, TV presenter and author. His latest book, The Templars: The Rise and Fall of God’s Holy Warriors, is out now. He was a historical consultant for the new historical drama Knightfall, currently airing on History in the US, Canada, Southeast Asia and Italy. A UK air date is to be confirmed.

What Exactly is the Holy Grail – And Why Has its Meaning Eluded us for Centuries?

Ancient Origins

Leah Tether / The Conversation

Leah Tether works at the University of Bristol. She received funding for this research from Anglia Ruskin University, Ghent University, Somerville College, Oxford and the Stationers' Foundation.

Type “Holy Grail” into Google and … well, you probably don’t need me to finish that sentence. The sheer multiplicity of what any search engine throws up demonstrates that there is no clear consensus as to what the Grail is or was. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t plenty of people out there claiming to know its history, true meaning and even where to find it.

Modern authors, perhaps most (in)famously Dan Brown , offer new interpretations and, even when these are clearly and explicitly rooted in little more than imaginative fiction, they get picked up and bandied about as if a new scientific and irrefutable truth has been discovered. The Grail, though, will perhaps always eschew definition. But why?

The Damsel of the Sanct Grael’ (1874) Dante Gabriel Rossetti. ( Public Domain )

The first known mention of a Grail (“un graal”) is made in a narrative spun by a 12th century writer of French romance, Chrétien de Troyes, who might reasonably be referred to as the Dan Brown of his day – though some scholars would argue that the quality of Chrétien’s writing far exceeds anything Brown has so far produced.

Chrétien’s Grail is mystical indeed – it is a dish, big and wide enough to take a salmon, that seems capable to delivering food and sustenance. To obtain the Grail requires asking a particular question at the Grail Castle. Unfortunately, the exact question (“Whom does the Grail serve?”) is only revealed after the Grail quester, the hapless Perceval, has missed the opportunity to ask it. It seems he is not quite ready, not quite mature enough, for the Grail.

The Holy Grail depicted as a dish in which Christ’s blood is collected. ( British Library )

But if this dish is the “first” Grail, then why do we now have so many possible Grails? Indeed, it is, at turns, depicted as the chalice of the Last Supper or of the Crucifixion or both, or as a stone containing the elixir of life , or even as the bloodline of Christ . And this list is hardly exhaustive. The reason most likely has to do with the fact that Chrétien appears to have died before completing his story, leaving the crucial questions as to what the Grail is and means tantalisingly unanswered. And it did not take long for others to try to answer them for him.

Robert de Boron, a poet writing within 20 or so years of Chrétien (circa 1190-1200), seems to have been the first to have associated the Grail with the cup of the Last Supper. In Robert’s prehistory of the object, Joseph of Arimathea took the Grail to the Crucifixion and used it to catch Christ’s blood. In the years that followed (1200-1230), anonymous writers of prose romances fixated upon the Last Supper’s Holy Chalice and made the Grail the subject of a quest by various knights of King Arthur’s court. In Germany, by contrast, the knight and poet Wolfram von Eschenbach reimagined the Grail as “Lapsit exillis” – an item more commonly referred to these days as the “Philosopher’s Stone”.

The Holy Grail depicted as a ciborium. ( British Library )

None of these is anything like Chrétien’s Grail, of course, so we can fairly ask: did medieval audiences have any more of a clue about the nature of the Holy Grail than we do today?

Publishing the Grail
My recent book delves into the medieval publishing history of the French romances that contain references to the Grail legend, asking questions about the narratives’ compilation into manuscript books. Sometimes, a given text will be bound alongside other types of texts, some of which seemingly have nothing to do with the Grail whatsoever. So, what sorts of texts do we find accompanying Grail narratives in medieval books? Can this tell us anything about what medieval audiences knew or understood of the Grail?

Sangreal. ( Arthur Rackham )

The picture is varied, but a broad chronological trend is possible to spot. Some of the few earliest manuscript books we still have see Grail narratives compiled alone, but a pattern quickly appears for including them into collected volumes. In these cases, Grail narratives can be found alongside historical, religious or other narrative (or fictional) texts. A picture emerges, therefore, of a Grail just as lacking in clear definition as that of today.

Perhaps the Grail served as a useful tool that could be deployed in all manner of contexts to help communicate the required message, whatever that message may have been. We still see this today, of course, such as when we use the phrase “The Holy Grail of…” to describe the practically unobtainable, but highly desirable prize in just about any area you can think of. There is even a guitar effect-pedal named “holy grail”.

Once the prose romances of the 13th century started to appear, though, the Grail took on a proper life of its own. Like a modern soap opera, these romances comprised vast reams of narrative threads, riddled with independent episodes and inconsistencies. They occupied entire books, often enormous and lavishly illustrated, and today these offer evidence that literature about the Grail evaded straightforward understanding and needed to be set apart – physically and figuratively. In other words, Grail literature had a distinctive quality – it was, as we might call it today, a genre in its own right.

 In the absence of clear definition, it is human nature to impose meaning. This is what happens with the Grail today and, according to the evidence of medieval book compilation, it is almost certainly what happened in the Middle Ages, too. Just as modern guitarists use their “holy grail” to experiment with all kinds of sounds, so medieval writers and publishers of romance used the Grail as an adaptable and creative instrument for conveying a particular message to their audience, the nature of which could be very different from one book to the next.

Whether the audience always understood that message, of course, is another matter entirely.

Artist’s interpretation of the holy grail. ( CC BY 2.0 )

 Top Image: The Achievement of the Grail. Source: Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery

 The article‘ What exactly is the Holy Grail – and why has its meaning eluded us for centuries? ’ by Leah Tether was originally published on The Conversation and has republished under a Creative Commons license.

The quest for the Holy Grail

History Extra

The Last Supper and first Eucharist, during which Jesus serves wine in the Holy Chalice. © Corbis

In the most popular version of the story, the Holy Grail is a chalice used by Jesus during the Last Supper, which was later employed as a vial for his blood. It was seemingly smuggled across the Holy Land and Europe to Britain. Despite a series of mysterious Grail guardians, including the Fisher King and the Knights Templar, at some point the chalice disappeared.
The sacred silverware became spliced with other legends, invested with mythical powers, and hijacked by conspiracy theorists and demagogues. Pat Kinsella separates the few facts from the profuse fictions that continue to evolve around this elusive relic…

Birth of a legend: Where did the Holy Grail come from? And what might it be?

Holy relics purporting to originate from the earthly life of Jesus are common currency across the Catholic world – with various churches claiming to hold everything from the Holy Prepuce (Jesus’s foreskin) through to nails used during his crucifixion. The most iconic and sought-after souvenir of all, however, is the ever-elusive Holy Grail.
The enduring obsession with the Holy Grail is fuelled by the fact that its form, location and very existence remain a complete enigma. It’s popularly believed to be a goblet used during the Last Supper and then employed by Joseph of Arimathea to catch Christ’s blood when his side was pierced with a spear during his crucifixion. However, some depictions have it as a bowl or a serving plate, or even as the womb of Mary Magdalene – in a scenario where she bears Jesus’s offspring.
The Holy Chalice from the Last Supper is referenced in the Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke (which historians believe were written c80-100 AD), but it was 1,000 years later that the tale of the Grail became popular, when the medieval romantics began to pen poems about it, entwining the yarn with Arthurian sagas.
The first-known reference to the Grail was made by French poet Chrétien de Troyes in Perceval, le Conte du Graal (which translates as ‘Percival, the Story of the Grail’), an unfinished poem written sometime between 1181 and 1190. Chrétien credits a source book, but the original work remains a mystery.
His fantastical yarn sees Percival – one of King Arthur’s knights  – visit the realm of the Fisher King (the last in a line of men entrusted with the keeping of the Grail). There, he beholds several revered items, including a graal (‘grail’) – an elaborate bowl from which the King eats a communion wafer. Although the Grail is more prop than main player in this poem, it inspired other writers to develop the concept.
In Joseph d’Arimathie, written between 1191 and 1202, fellow Frenchman Robert de Boron fused the Holy Chalice used at the Last Supper, and the Holy Grail, a vessel containing Jesus’s blood. Joseph of Arimathea is cast as the protector of the Grail, the first of a long line of guardians that will include Percival.  
In the early 13th century, German poet Wolfram von Eschenbach developed the story in Parzival, (‘Percival’), an epic poem in which the hero embarks on a quest to recover the Grail. The Welsh romance Peredur continued the theme, but the story really took form in the Vulgate Cycle, a series of Arthurian legends written anonymously in the 13th century.
Two centuries later, Sir Thomas Malory translated these legends into English in Le Morte D’Arthur and the sagas – especially the quest for the Grail – have enjoyed waves of popularity ever since, being retold by a colourful collection of raconteurs from Wagner and Tennyson through to Monty Python, Spielberg and Dan Brown. But is there any fact amongst all the fantasy?

The Grail trail: For centuries, explorers have chased the Grail’s shadow all over the planet

Although most popular versions of the story ultimately point towards the chalice being transported to England, committed Grail hunters have chased the holy relic all over the world. Every perceived clue from ancient texts has been painstakingly pursued, while long-shot leads and far-fetched theories have led their followers to some fairly unlikely corners.
Over 200 churches and locations around the globe have laid claim to having current or historic possession of either or both the Holy Chalice and the Holy Grail – with some stretching the realm of credibility much further than others. Having a semi-plausible relic or a good miracle story can generate a boom in tourism for otherwise out-of-the-way destinations. As the public’s obsession with the Grail tale shows little sign of abating, it’s become big business, right around the world…
Basilica of San Isidoro in León, Spain
Home to the Chalice of Doña Urraca, a jewel-encrusted onyx goblet identified as the Holy Grail by author-researchers Margarita Torres and José Ortega del Rio in their 2014 book, The Kings of the Grail. The chalice has been in the Basilica since the 11th century, after apparently being transported to Cairo by Muslim travellers. It was later given to an emir on the Spanish coast who’d helped famine victims in Egypt, and passed to King Ferdinand I of Leon as a peace offering by an Andalusian ruler. Carbon dating suggests the chalice was made between 200 BC and AD 100.

Cattedrale di San Lorenzo, Italy
House of the Genoa Chalice, once thought to be made from pure emerald and a hot contender for the Holy Grail, until it was transported to Paris after Napoleon conquered Italy and came back broken – revealing the ‘emerald’ was, in fact, green glass. This news would have come as a disappointment to the Genoese soldiers, who named it as their chief target when they defeated the Moors and sacked Almería in a ferocious conflict in 1147.

_{The Cathedral of Genoa, where a glassy Grail contender resides. © Alamy}

Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City, US
Current home of the Antioch Chalice, a silver-and-gold double-cup design ornament, touted as the Holy Chalice when it was recovered in Antioch, Turkey, just before World War I. The museum has always described this claim as ‘ambitious’ and the relic was recently outed as a standing lamp, not a chalice, believed to have been made in the sixth century AD.  

Catedrale de Valencia, Spain
The Valencia Chalice is housed in its very own consecrated chapel. The agate cup was reportedly taken by Saint Peter to Rome in the first century AD, and then to Huesca in Spain by Saint Lawrence in the third century. Some Spanish archaeologists say the cup was produced in a Palestinian or Egyptian workshop between the fourth century BC and the first century AD.

The Jerusalem Chalice, Israel
In the seventh century AD, a Gaulish monk named Arculf recorded seeing a vessel he believed to be the Holy Chalice contained within a reliquary in a chapel near Jerusalem, between the basilica of Golgotha and the Martyrium. This is the earliest known first-hand report of the Grail after the crucifixion, and the only known mention of the Grail being seen in the Holy Land. The fate of the chalice he described is unknown. It has also been claimed that the Grail is hidden with other holy relics in the vast underground sewer complex of Jerusalem, beneath the legendary Solomon’s Temple.

_{Beneath Temple Mount in Jerusalem some believe there could be a whole host of holy relics. © iStock}

Over to Albion: The Grail myths are as much entwined with British folklore as international history…

After the crucifixion of Jesus, for reasons that remain unclear (and which may well owe more to poetic license and political and economic expediency than historical fact), the story of the Holy Grail is quickly transplanted from the Holy Land to the green and pleasant land of England.
According to legends that have been doing the rounds for at least the last 800 years, the keeper of the Grail, Joseph of Arimathea, arrived in England in the first century AD. He crossed the Somerset Levels (then flooded) by boat to arrive at the foot of Glastonbury Tor on an island known in Arthurian mythology as Avalon.
At the foot of Wearyall Hill, just beneath the Tor, the tired missionary thrust his staff into the ground, and rested. In the morning, so the story goes, his staff had taken root and grown into an oriental thorn bush now known as the Glastonbury Thorn.
Joseph then went on to found Glastonbury Abbey, and set about converting the locals to Christianity – with a staggering success rate. By 600 AD, England had a Christian king: Ethelbert. Meanwhile the Grail – which, according to some stories, was buried at the entrance to the underworld in Glastonbury – became firmly interwoven into myths about King Arthur and the knights of the Round Table.
Contemporary records mention none of this, though, and the story only became popular after the publication of Robert de Boron’s fanciful poem Joseph d’Arimathie at the end of the 12th century. The area may have been a significant site for pre-Christian communities, but Glastonbury Abbey was almost certainly established by Britons in the early seventh century.
However, stories connecting the dots between the site, Arthurian legend, the presence of the Holy Grail and miracles performed by ‘blood relatives’ of Jesus were all excellent marketing for the pilgrimage trade at Glastonbury. The local monks wholeheartedly endorsed the fables, right up until the Abbey was dissolved in 1539, during the English Reformation.
An early example of this can be seen when, in 1184, a fire destroyed most of the monastic buildings at Glastonbury. A few years later, around the time Joseph d’Arimathie was published, King Arthur and Queen Guinevere’s tomb was miraculously discovered in the cemetery. There was a spike in pilgrimage traffic and the funds needed to rebuild the Abbey.

_{According to myth, King Arthur’s wizard Merlin still roams Glastonbury Tor. © Alamy}

A good story: From medieval poems to modern action movies, the Grail has provided centuries of entertainment

For two millennia, the legend of the Holy Grail has been reported and contorted by imaginative poets, painters, writers, comedians and filmmakers – to such an extent that the small number of known facts have become increasingly hard to sift from an overwhelming mountain of speculative or purely artistic ideas.
Amateur historians and professional authors have gone off on wild tangents, generating countless pseudo-historical books masquerading as seriously researched non-fiction. Indeed, a vast amount of flimsy and fantastical evidence has been reported as fact to support questionable theories. As a result, the Grail story has assumed a life of its own – one that constantly plays out on the pages of books and websites, and on TV and cinema screens – and each generation consumes a new version of it.

Back in the limelight: Victorian revivalism
During the deeply religious fervour of the Victorian era, medievalism was the all the rage and yarns from the Middle Ages, such as Malory’s Le Morte D’Arthur, were constantly being reprinted and consumed by a public hungry for tales of chivalry and salvation.
The quest for the Holy Grail was a recurring theme across the arts throughout the age, but everything was based on the medieval myth, rather than known facts and historical events.
Painters began to depict scenes from Arthurian legends, especially members of the ever-earnest Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. When commissioned to decorate Oxford University’s new union building, founder of the Brotherhood Dante Gabriel Rossetti used the Holy Grail as his central theme – thus seeding an awareness and interest in the subject in the fertile minds of future generations of scholars. It was a theme that Rossetti would return to numerous times in his watercolour paintings.
Over several decades, the pre-eminent poet of the era, Alfred Lord Tennyson (Poet Laureate for 40 years during Victoria’s reign), published the epic Idylls of the King, a cycle of twelve narrative poems that retell the legend of King Arthur and his knights – including, of course, the quest for the Grail. These immensely popular poems were dedicated to the late Prince Albert.
William Morris, one of the most significant cultural figures of the era whose talents spanned everything from poetry to interior design, was also acutely interested in the sagas. He wrote verses about the Holy Chalice, and collaborated with Pre-Raphaelite artist Edward Burne-Jones to produce vast tapestries depicting the quest for the Grail, which were hung on the walls of the wealthiest businessmen of the industrial age.

_{This vast Victorian tapestry, named ‘The Achievement of the Grail’ measures 2.4 metres high by nearly 7 metres long. It is currently on display in the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery. © BAL}

20th-century style: The quest on screen
The Grail has been quested after on big and little screens since technology made it possible, but most people will recall the story from at least one of three successful cinematic renditions…
Excalibur (1981), was directed by John Boorman and starred Nigel Terry, Helen Mirren, Patrick Stewart and Liam Neeson, among many others. An action-packed adventure fantasy, it follows the story of King Arthur, from the moment he pulls the sword from the stone, to the quest for the Grail (via Guinevere and Lancelot’s affair). The film, in contrast to most of the medieval literature, has Percival retrieve the Grail for an ailing Arthur, who sips from it and is restored to health.

Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975), was the Python posse’s first foray into full-length feature films and it is a gloriously ridiculous romp through the Arthurian sagas, with Graham Chapman in the lead role. As the hapless knights search for the Holy Grail they face various challenges and dangers, not least a killer rabbit.

_{A shot from Monty Python and the Holy Grail. © Kobal}

Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989), the third of Steven Spielberg’s successful series of movies starring Harrison Ford as a swashbuckling archaeologist, sees Indy in action trying to rescue his father (Sean Connery). He then needs to find the Holy Grail before the Nazis get hold of it and use it to achieve world domination. Sound stupid? You might be surprised how close some of the plot elements are to the truth...