The Holy Chalice of Valencia

The agate cup Valencia has kept as the Holy Grail since the Middle Ages

In a chapel of Valencia Cathedral set aside for it stands the cup the cathedral has kept since the Middle Ages as the Holy Chalice of the Last Supper, the object most often named as the real Holy Grail. The cup itself is dark red agate about 9 centimetres across, most likely carved in a Levantine or Egyptian workshop between the 2nd century BC and the 1st century AD; the stem, the two handles and the chalcedony base were added later. Its paper trail starts on 14 December 1134, in an inventory of the monastery of San Juan de la Peña that lists the chalice in which Christ consecrated his blood, sent home to Huesca by Saint Lawrence. In 1399 the monks gave it to King Martin I of Aragon in exchange for a gold cup. John Paul II said Mass with it in 1982, and Benedict XVI in 2006 called it this most famous chalice. The Catholic Encyclopedia of 1908 was blunter: no reliable tradition survives about the cup Christ used, and the Grail legend only attached itself to that cup in the late 12th century.