Religion: Wanted: Home for a Relic

The Holy Grail—which Sir Lancelot glimpsed for one transcendent instant, which the pure knight, Sir Galahad, and simple Sir Percival sought and found—may now be reposing in the strong room of Lloyd's Bank in Aberystwyth, Wales. It will soon be turned over to a vivacious blonde Englishwoman named Mrs. James Mirylees.

Last week, after five years of litigation, Mrs. Mirylees was in possession of the vast, decaying, 18th century mansion called Nanteos in Cardigan, Wales, and the most precious part of the Nanteos estate is a crumbled, blackened wooden cup held together by wire, which, according to one legend, is the Holy Grail itself, from which Christ drank at the Last Supper and in which Joseph of Arimathea caught some of His blood.* Other tradition has it that the Holy Cup of Nanteos is not the Grail but a vessel later made from the wood of the Cross. During Henry VIII's reign, when monasteries were abolished in England, the relic was smuggled to various monks' hideouts until it reached some distant kinsmen of Mrs. Mirylees. Whatever its origin, the cup is a holy relic of Christendom.

That is why there is so little left of it. Pilgrims through the centuries, drinking water from the Nanteos Cup to heal their ills (especially hemorrhages), have bitten off little pieces to increase the efficacy of the cure. Not only Roman Catholics but Anglicans and Free Churchmen seek healing from the relic, and letters are regularly received asking permission to drink from the cut-glass bowl in which the cup is embedded.

What, wonders Anglican Mrs. Mirylees, should she do with the Nanteos Cup? She is sure that it should stay in Wales and should be accessible to the veneration of pious Christians. But some Church of England clerics regard veneration of relics as rank superstition. Perhaps the cup would be better off, she feels, in Roman Catholic hands—for instance, the Trappist monks on Caldey Island off the coast of South Wales.