[dramatic music]
- Tonight, a treasure coveted
by everyone from Roman emperors to Hitler.
Even Indiana Jones tried to find it.
- It could be the most precious sacred object
in history.
♪ ♪
- It possesses miraculous healing powers.
- The key to immortality,
even supposedly resurrecting the dead.
- If you could touch the Holy Grail,
maybe you could possess the power that Jesus had.
Fishburne: But where is this miraculous vessel?
And is it even a cup at all?
♪ ♪
- I don't believe that it is the cup of the Last Supper
that we should be seeking.
- Is it possible it's not the cup of Christ,
but it's something completely different?
Fishburne: Now we uncover the top theories
surrounding the world's most sought-after relic.
- A stone of the purest kind, a stone with endless powers.
- It's not an object.
It's something else more ephemeral.
It's royal blood.
Fishburne: What is the Holy Grail?
And if it exists, can it ever be found?
♪ ♪
[soft music]
England, 1995.
♪ ♪
After years of intense investigation,
British researcher,
Graham Phillips, believes he knows the answer
to a mystery that's long fascinated the world.
- I found something really astonishing,
the last known whereabouts of the Holy Grail.
What we're talking about is an actual relic.
Fishburne: Phillips is convinced his discovery
upends 2,000 years of speculation
about the Holy Grail...
♪ ♪
Speculation that began long ago
in Jerusalem in 33 A.D.
[tense music]
In what is then Judea,
part of the all-powerful Roman Empire,
Jesus of Nazareth gathers his followers
for the Last Supper.
- Most scholars, including atheists,
believe that Jesus was a real person,
and they believe he was executed by the Romans.
And the story of Jesus having a Last Supper,
that is pretty much accepted to be authentic.
At the center of the Last Supper is a cup.
In fact, it's the only object that's mentioned in the Bible.
♪ ♪
Fishburne: The cup Jesus uses during that meal
will come to be known as the Holy Grail.
♪ ♪
- Jesus drinks from it
and passes it around to his disciples.
And he says, "This is the last time we will drink together
before we see each other in heaven."
And what has intrigued people, believers and nonbelievers,
for centuries is the origin of that cup
and what happened to it, where it ends up.
♪ ♪
Fishburne: After his death,
Jesus' followers spread his teachings abroad.
By 62 A.D., disciples Peter and Paul
are allegedly preaching in Rome.
And according to one theory, the Grail is with them.
[dramatic music]
- If you have a religion that's based on an individual,
on Jesus, and he's gone, how do you convince people
to join up with this new religion?
You have to prove it to them. You have to convince them.
And how do you do that? You show them evidence.
And this evidence comes in the form of relics.
♪ ♪
- If you want something that Jesus has touched
to cultivate a sense of loyalty to the church,
that cup is a really good candidate.
♪ ♪
Fishburne: But in 64 A.D. when the great fire of Rome
destroys 2/3 of the city,
emperor Nero blames the disaster on Christians.
He crucifies Peter,
the new movement's leader and its first pope.
Despite continuing persecution,
a line of popes replace Peter,
an unbroken succession for nearly 200 years.
These men hold many secrets, among them the whereabouts
of holy relics including the Grail.
- So we have this tradition about a cup
that people revered as the Holy Grail.
- And if you could touch the Holy Grail,
maybe you could possess the power that Jesus had
like healing powers, resurrections, what have you.
The church continues to grow in power,
and membership, and influence,
and these objects are certainly contributing
to that mission.
Fishburne: Then in 258 A.D.,
Roman emperor Valerian tries
to destroy the Christian movement.
- Valerian orders the execution of anyone
who doesn't worship the Roman gods.
Valerian's first execution of a Christian
is Pope Sixtus II, who happens to be,
according to tradition, the keeper of the Holy Grail.
♪ ♪
Fishburne: Before he's killed,
Sixtus entrusts the treasures of the church
to one of his deacons, Laurence.
- And to keep them from being captured,
St. Laurence actually hands them out.
The problem is now you've got all of these sacred objects
spread out all over the place,
and it's gonna be very difficult
to get them all back.
Whether or not you accept the idea of a Holy Grail
beginning a journey from Jerusalem to Rome,
what we can all agree on is now it's lost.
- There's this object that was regarded
as having incredible power, but it got forgotten.
Fishburne: But it won't be forgotten forever.
- The cup turns up again,
and this time we have an actual date, December 14th, 1134.
Fishburne: At the monastery of San Juan de la Peña
in Northeast Spain,
a monk named Don Carreras Ramirez
is taking inventory.
- And on his list, he writes that he has a chalice
in which Christ our Lord consigned his blood.
So if you believe the lore,
the Holy Grail is back on the map.
♪ ♪
- It's unclear who brings it to Spain,
but the best part of this is from 1134
when Don Ramirez writes his list,
we know exactly what happens to the cup.
The Grail is mentioned again in 1399
when King Martin I of Aragon acquires it from the monastery.
After his death, King Alfonso V of Aragon
brings the cup to Valencia.
♪ ♪
Fishburne: This cup is made of red agate,
3.5 inches across.
Its base has two curved handles
and a knobbed stem,
both thought to be more recent additions.
- But the main part of the cup, the central part,
is the simple kind of cup
that may have been present at the Last Supper.
Fishburne: Researchers agree the stone likely comes
from a Palestinian or Egyptian workshop
sometime between the fourth century B.C.
and the first century A.D.
♪ ♪
- The region is correct. The timeline is correct.
The documentary evidence is there
with a nearly complete chain of custody.
If the cup of Christ still exists,
there's a very good argument that this is it.
Fishburne: Currently held in the cathedral of Valencia,
the cup has even been sanctified
by the highest authorities of the Catholic Church.
According to them, this cup is the Grail.
- It's been used by several Popes to celebrate mass,
which makes a lot of sense in Christian theory
because holy communion comes from the idea
of the Last Supper in the gospels.
- Pope John Paul II certainly believed
it was the cup of Christ.
He actually called it a witness to Christ's passage on Earth.
And he and Pope Benedict XVI refer to the cup in Latin
as hunc praeclarum calicem, this beautiful cup,
the term that the early Popes used
to refer to the Holy Grail.
Fishburne: But not everyone believes it's the Grail.
- Curiously, the Valencia cup and other cups
like it have never been associated with any miracles.
Most of the top Christian relics have long histories
of being associated with miraculous healings
or other kinds of supernatural events.
And you would think that this cup,
which Jesus himself blessed, you'd think that this cup
would have a list of miracles a mile long.
Fishburne: If this alleged cup of Christ
lacks the power most expect,
could the Grail be something else entirely?
♪ ♪
[dramatic music]
Fishburne: According to many, including Pope John Paul II,
this is the so-called Holy Grail,
a cup used by Jesus during the Last Supper.
But others have doubts.
- In the ancient legends,
the Grail possesses miraculous healing powers,
even supposedly resurrecting the dead.
- Now there are some who believe that the Holy Grail,
this chalice, made its way to Valencia.
We don't know.
The chalice is supposed to possess power to do miracles,
but we don't see that chalice doing many miracles today.
Fishburne: If the cup in Valencia
doesn't demonstrate such powers,
could the Grail be something unexpected,
something ancient and mysterious,
and indeed separate from Jesus?
- So stories about the Grail really predate Jesus' time.
And this is what's interesting about it.
So we find the story that there is a magical object
of some kind that can bring healing and immortality.
It's a precious, sacred object that belonged to the Celts.
There's no indication at all
that they had anything like a sacred cup.
They do have something else. They have sacred stones.
♪ ♪
Fishburne: The Celtic civilization begins
as early as 1200 B.C.
and spreads to an area spanning England,
Ireland, and most of central Europe.
♪ ♪
Their spiritual leaders are powerful mystics
called druids.
- The druids are the most respected of the classes
in Celtic society.
They're religious specialists.
They believe, supposedly, in the immortality of the soul.
And they're practitioners of healing arts.
♪ ♪
The Roman authors who write about them are cowed by them.
They're really impressed by them.
They don't know what's going on with the druids.
They're a little bit frightened, I think, of them
because they know that the druids do these secret rites
that are out there in the woods.
This is one of the most un-Roman ways
of being religious that they could think of.
♪ ♪
Fishburne: Could the Holy Grail
be something entirely unexpected,
not a cup but a sacred stone?
♪ ♪
- So for the people who espoused
this particular theory,
the story of the Grail stone comes directly
from these Celtic druidic traditions of sacred stones.
So it's clear that there's a pre-Christian tradition
of some kind of a sacred stone.
And once Christianity kind of grows and takes over,
that story gets incorporated
into another story about Jesus' cup.
Fishburne: A sacred stone infused with mysterious power
by the Celtic druids.
If this is the true Holy Grail,
where did it go?
♪ ♪
- Now, Christians don't worship sacred stones.
So after the Celts are conquered,
there's no mention of this sort of thing
for about a thousand years.
Fishburne: But the idea of the Grail stone
and its mysterious powers doesn't entirely vanish.
In the Middle Ages, it emerges once more,
first in an unfinished 12th-century romance
by Chretien de Troyes.
A few decades later, it resurfaces again.
- So it shows up in a 25,000-line long poem
by a German poet knight called Wolfram von Eschenbach.
- The poem is called "Parzival."
He refers to the Grail stone as Lapis Exilis.
- And just like in the ancient stories,
this Lapis Exilis brings youth and immortality.
He also says in the poem
that the stone itself is so powerful
that if you approach it and you're wounded
or you're sick, you'll be healed,
♪ ♪
Fishburne: But "Parzival" does more
than just name the Grail stone.
- "Parzival" claims to know what happened
to the Grail stone after all these years.
Fishburne: And according to the text,
this powerful relic may have ended up in the hands
of one of history's most legendary orders,
the Knights Templar.
Fishburne: By the Middle Ages, there are multiple theories
surrounding the mysterious Holy Grail.
According to one,
the Grail is an ancient and powerful stone
once held by Celtic pagans.
- So the theory goes that the stone was once
a precious sacred object that belonged to the Celts.
But once the Celts were Christianized,
that stone falls into the hands of the Christians.
Fishburne: From there, the trail is lost
until the stone reappears
in a 12th-century text called "Parzival."
[dramatic music]
- It is an epic poem that claims to know
what happened to the Grail stone
after all these years.
Fishburne: Author Wolfram von Eschenbach
traces the stone's incredible journey.
- According to von Eschenbach,
the Lapis Exilis, the Holy Grail,
is captured by the Christians,
it's taken to the Temple Mount in Jerusalem,
where it's guarded by the Knights Templar.
♪ ♪
- The Knights Templar are a Catholic military order
operating under the command of the pope
during the Crusades.
- Their official name
is the Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ
and of the Temple of Solomon.
But don't let that name fool you.
The Templar Knights become the wealthiest, most famous,
and most powerful fighting force
that the church has ever had.
It doesn't matter how many soldiers
are in the opposing army,
the Templar Knights' reputation
and their execution of their reputation
is so fearsome that when they're captured, for example,
the other side rarely ransoms them.
They execute them. They're that afraid of them.
Because of this reputation, the popes give them wide reign
to conduct their business the way they want to
in order to execute their job.
Pope Innocent II gives them the responsibility
of policing pilgrim routes in the Holy Land
to keep pilgrims and other Christians safe.
♪ ♪
Fishburne: The Templars set their headquarters
on Jerusalem's Temple Mount, the source of their name.
- This is where the famed King Solomon built his temple
nearly 2,000 years before the Crusades.
But the Templars get a lot more than a name
from being in that location.
It's a seat of power and prestige.
It is reputed to be a seat of wealth,
and Christian treasures are supposedly stored there,
including, according to the story, the Grail stone.
Membership in the Templars eventually rises
to maybe around 20,000 people.
They formed their own rudimentary bank system.
They have hundreds of various buildings scattered
throughout Europe, the Mediterranean,
the Holy Land.
They could be considered
to be the world's first multinational corporation.
Fishburne: The Templars thrive for nearly two centuries,
and von Eschenbach thinks
he knows the secret to their success.
- This isn't a coincidence according to von Eschenbach.
This is because of divine power.
He says that the Templars live by a stone of the purest kind.
- A stone with endless powers
that they possess everlasting life,
wisdom, wealth, the Grail stone.
♪ ♪
- Easy to think that von Eschenbach
is making this whole thing up.
And of course, there's a lot of creative license there,
but he is probably working from a few facts.
Most poets in the Middle Ages had a patron.
And von Eschenbach's patron was a man
by the name of Count Hermann.
He was a German knight,
and he had fought in the Crusades
alongside the Knights Templar.
Fishburne: Von Eschenbach supplements Count Hermann's
firsthand accounts with extensive research.
- Wolfram also goes to a Morrish library
in Toledo where he absorbs everything
that he can about the Knights Templar.
Wolfram is writing poetry, and he's creating fiction,
but he also wants to ground it
in some kind of historical reality.
Fishburne: Unfortunately,
within a few decades of "Parzival,"
the trail of the stone goes cold.
On Friday, October 13th, 1307,
the Knights Templar are brutally disbanded.
- The French King Philip IV,
who's actually in significant debt to the Templars,
forces Pope Clement V to remove their authority,
to seize their assets.
Some of them are executed rather brutally.
Others are removed from the Order of the Temple
and moved to other orders.
Fishburne: And their great wealth,
including perhaps the Grail stone,
ultimately disappears.
- If there was a Grail stone in the Templar's treasures,
as Eschenbach says there was,
it could have gone to the French kings,
it could have gone to the Pope,
but it wouldn't be clear where it had gone.
- So the stone disappears,
and the story of the stone Lapis Exilis,
Holy Grail, also disappears.
People stop reading it.
And all that's left is this other tradition
about the cup.
♪ ♪
- And in a way, that's too bad
because who wouldn't rather find the stone?
That's where all this power lies.
Imagine the key to immortality just sitting
in a storage room somewhere, or in a landfill,
or who knows where,
all thanks to a case of mistaken identity.
Fishburne: Two theories, two different objects,
but which one is the true Grail?
- For 200 years,
you have the cup, and you have the stone,
and it basically stays that way.
♪ ♪
Fishburne: That is, until 1982,
when a shocking new theory on the Grail appears.
What if the Holy Grail isn't a physical object at all?
♪ ♪
- After 2,000 years of debate
on what the Holy Grail is and where it could be,
a new theory emerges in 1982,
and it's a bombshell.
A team of British researchers published
the best-selling book,
"The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail,"
which makes a bold claim,
the Holy Grail isn't an object at all.
The author's theory dates back to the Middle Ages,
and it begins with a word.
When medieval manuscripts refer to the Holy Grail,
they call it San Gréal.
- The term appears in writings beginning in the 12th century
with authors like Chrétien de Troyes
and Robert de Boron.
- You've got a word that's already a combination
in its etymology.
You have san that comes from sanctus,
from the Latin for holy.
And you have gréal, which is a Celtic word,
which means a vase or a vessel of some kind.
Fishburne: But could the term San Gréal
have been translated by mistake?
- So a lot of the words that we find
in our common modern English
come from older linguistic traditions.
This is something that is part of how we get our language.
Our language is made up usually of elements
from a lot of different language groups.
- What they argue in this theory is
that there's a mishearing here
of what the word actually was.
[dramatic music]
Fishburne: If correct,
the Grail is not the San Gréal.
It is the Sang Réal,
which translates to "royal blood."
- In this case, it's not an object.
It's something else more ephemeral.
It's royal blood.
♪ ♪
Fishburne: And the royal blood in question is
that of Jesus of Nazareth and his alleged descendants.
- The idea of a bloodline of Jesus
goes against 2,000 years of Christian teachings.
At the same time,
it's not completely out of the range of possibilities
when you consider that Jesus was a Jewish man
in the Roman empire coming from a culture
that very much valued family and marriage.
He was in his 30s,
and the idea that he wasn't married at all
would have been quite unusual.
♪ ♪
[soft music]
Fishburne: Is it possible the many authors of the Bible
have been trying to hide the secret family
of Jesus for millennia?
- Jesus became for the church a model for priesthood,
and so the church had a vested interest
in presenting Jesus as chaste.
They want him to be divine.
- The theory goes like this, that the historical Jesus
marries Mary Magdalene
and that the two of them had one or more children.
- But Mary Magdalene is definitely a character
that pops up in the Jesus tradition.
And we see her not only in the canonical gospels,
but she also pops up as a follower of Jesus
in several noncanonical gospels
written in the second century.
- She travels with Jesus.
She's financially supporting his ministry.
She is there for his death,
and in some of the gospels,
is the first witness to his resurrection.
♪ ♪
Fishburne: But their connection
might not end there.
- So the authors of this theory continue on to say
that after Jesus' death, Mary Magdalene,
possibly her family, traveled to France,
and the bloodline of Jesus continues.
Fishburne: The authors of "The Holy Blood
and The Holy Grail" insist they have proof.
- There are these documents
that have been miraculously found in Paris
buried in the French national library
that connect the bloodline of Jesus
to something called the Priory of Sion.
Fishburne: According to the text,
the Priory of Sion is a secret organization
that's existed since at least 1099.
Its illustrious members allegedly include
Leonardo da Vinci and Sir Isaac Newton.
- The text even suggests that the Priory of Sion
created the Knights Templar
as its military and financial branch
and that their job,
their entire reason for existence,
was to protect the bloodline and the offspring.
- The Priory of Sion is essentially at war
with the Catholic Church
because the Catholic Church and its system of popes
want to hold onto their power and discredit
or push away the story of the bloodline of Jesus.
Fishburne: But could this be true?
[tense music]
- As it turns out, this is completely bogus,
100% false.
♪ ♪
- So there's one major problem here.
I mean, there are a lot of problems here,
but the biggest problem is that the Priory of Sion is a hoax.
Fishburne: The Priory of Sion isn't created in 1099 A.D.
It's created in 1956.
And despite the long list of famed members it claims,
it's actually the work of a French con artist
named Pierre Plantard.
- This guy Plantard wants to be royalty.
I mean, he's not royalty,
but he really wants to be royalty.
So he pulls off what is still thought to be one
of the greatest hoaxes in French literary history.
Fishburne: Plantard creates a fake secret society
complete with an imaginative backstory.
To add credibility,
he plants false documents around France.
- He commissions a friend
to make two forged medieval parchments,
and they hide those in the French national library.
- Plantard and his pal create a paper trail.
They say that this Priory of Sion
originated in the Middle Ages,
that they produced a long line of grandmasters,
and that they protected this whole bloodline,
which, remarkably, Plantard himself claimed
to be a descendant.
♪ ♪
Fishburne: And it's this document
that co-author Henry Lincoln discovers
and uses to form the basis of the bestselling book,
"The Holy Blood and The Holy Grail,"
along with two colleagues.
- "Holy Blood, Holy Grail" was published
by Michael Baigent, Henry Lincoln,
and Richard Leigh.
It was an immediate bestseller.
- You can just imagine Henry Lincoln stumbling
upon this and finding what he thinks
is the Holy Grail itself,
and it's all fake.
♪ ♪
To be fair, when Lincoln writes his book,
Plantard hasn't been caught yet.
It's not until 1993 that French police raid his house
and find all kinds of documents
that Plantard used to create this terrible hoax.
- Plantard eventually admits under oath
that all of this was a lie, all of this was a hoax.
- Now, some people have come forward and said,
"No, wait, wait, wait.
"Just because the Priory of Sion is a hoax
"doesn't mean that Jesus and Mary Magdalene
couldn't have produced a child."
Fishburne: The bloodline theory continues
to inspire stories of the Holy Grail today,
including Dan Brown's bestseller,
"The Da Vinci Code."
But there's another more recent theory
that also has Mary Magdalene at its center,
and it puts the Grail over 3,000 miles
from Jerusalem.
Fishburne: When it comes to theories on the Holy Grail,
researcher Graham Phillips has heard them all.
- I'm thinking to myself,
I know every story about the Holy Grail,
the cup of the Last Supper, the enchanted stone,
the bloodline of Mary Magdalene, and more.
[dramatic music]
Fishburne: So what does Phillips think
the Holy Grail is?
- It's a powerful cup, yes. That much I believe.
But I don't believe that it has anything to do
with the bloodline of Mary Magdalene.
However, I do think that Mary Magdalene
once possessed the cup.
♪ ♪
Fishburne: According to Phillips,
there is not one but two sacred cups
used during the last days of Jesus Christ,
and a majority of Grail seekers
have been looking for the wrong one.
- I don't believe that it is the cup
of the Last Supper that we should be seeking,
but a cup that belonged to Jesus' follower,
Mary Magdalene.
The gospels describe how
she anointed Jesus' body with oils,
and these came in a small scent jar.
Fishburne: Early Christian tradition states
that Mary Magdalene visits the site
of Jesus' crucifixion.
There, she collects some of his blood
in a sacred vessel.
That small jar becomes known as the Marian Chalice,
the cup Graham Phillips believes
is the true Holy Grail.
♪ ♪
- Forget metaphorical bloodlines.
What we're talking about is an actual relic
which contained Jesus' blood.
And if so, its value would be immeasurable.
♪ ♪
The question is, where does it go from there?
- That theory says that Mary Magdalene
left the cup in Jesus' tomb
and that it remained there undisturbed, undiscovered
for about 400 years
until the Roman Empire finally becomes Christian,
and people start to search for those kinds of things.
Fishburne: Around 326 A.D.,
Roman emperor Constantine orders
the excavation of the Holy Sepulchre,
a potential site of Jesus' tomb in Jerusalem.
- So during the excavation, a vessel is uncovered,
which is thought to be this Marian Chalice,
or the Holy Grail.
And it's taken from there in Jerusalem to Rome,
where the leaders of the church believe
that it had special powers.
♪ ♪
- It remains in Rome until 410 A.D.
when the city is sacked by barbarians.
♪ ♪
But the chalice, along with other treasures,
is taken out of Rome in a convoy of armed carts
and eventually brought to the safety
of one of the last outposts of the Roman empire, Britain.
Fishburne: From there, Mary Magdalene's chalice
becomes the inspiration for one
of the most famous legends in history.
- This idea of the Marian Chalice
in England is what inspires some
of the Arthurian tales.
In the story of King Arthur and his knights,
the Holy Grail is kept in a secret chapel
in a fortress called the White Castle
in a place known as the White Town.
Fishburne: And as it turns out,
those locations aren't entirely fictional.
- Actually, most of the Arthurian stories
have a lot of historically accurate detail.
They're mixed in with fantasy,
but some of it is absolutely true.
- In the early 13th century, a real-life Crusader knight
by the name of Fulk Fitzwarin claimed
to have possessed the Chalice of Magdalene.
And he kept it in the chapel of his castle,
which was known as the White Castle,
exactly the same as where the Grail is kept
in the Arthurian romances.
It's in a town known as Whittington,
which is old English for White Town,
exactly, once again, as in the Arthurian romances.
Fishburne: Unfortunately, once Fitzwarin dies,
his White Castle spends several centuries
falling into disrepair.
If the Marian Chalice was once held here,
it's not likely it remains.
- Modern society has fallen out with the idea of magic,
the hope of something powerful and unexpected.
The Holy Grail wasn't just gonna show up.
I was gonna have to go and search for it.
♪ ♪
[dramatic music]
Fishburne: For thousands of years,
the faithful have searched for the Holy Grail,
a mysterious object believed
to grant healing and eternal life.
- It pops up here. It pops up there.
This person has it. That person has it.
It's everywhere at once, yet nowhere at all.
Fishburne: According to English researcher
Graham Phillips, the Grail is a small oil jar
that was used by Mary Magdalene
to catch Jesus' blood.
- The last known whereabouts of the Chalice of Magdalene
is with Fulk Fitzwarin and his castle
at Whittington in the early 1200s.
And where the trail ends is where I begin.
The chalice resurfaces in the mid-19th century
with one of Fulk Fitzwarin's direct descendants,
Thomas Wright.
Thomas Wright actually claims
that the cup had been handed down to him by his ancestors.
It is described as a small stone cup
made from alabaster or green onyx.
And Thomas Wright is absolutely convinced
that this was the very cup that Mary Magdalene used
to collect drops of Christ's blood
during the crucifixion.
In 1855, with no children to hand it on to,
Thomas Wright decides to hide the cup
and leave a series of clues as to where it is hidden
for some future generation to follow.
♪ ♪
Fishburne: Wright hides his clues in an 1855 poem
he publishes called
"Sir Gawain and the Red Knight."
- It concerns Arthur's knight, Gawain,
and his search for the Marian Chalice.
And he finds it at the end of the poem
and then hides it again, but we're not told where.
♪ ♪
Fishburne: To figure it out,
Phillips analyzes the poem
as it was originally published.
- There are two lines of Roman numerals
on the title page of the book.
They seem to have absolutely no purpose.
And at the end of the poem are the final lines,
"The shepherd's songs to guide the way,
the horn was blown, the treasure lay."
The only thing that comes to mind about shepherd's songs
is the Psalms in the Bible.
They are said to have been written
by the Israelite King David
when he was a young man and just a shepherd.
♪ ♪
Fishburne: When Phillips compares the Psalms
to the cryptic Roman numerals,
Thomas Wright's secret message is finally revealed.
- I think perhaps the top line refers
to the number of the Psalm,
and the second line might refer
to the verse of that particular song.
Fishburne: Based on his theory,
Phillips begins with Psalm 31 verse 3.
"For thou art my rock and my fortress:
Therefore for my name's sake, lead me and guide me."
- A rock and a fortress, but where?
At the end of the poem, Sir Gawain,
when he has hidden the Chalice of Magdalene,
he stands on the battlements
of a place called the Red Castle.
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Fishburne: Phillips visits the Red Castle
and from there follows more clues left
by the Psalms through a series of caves,
which lead to a small church in the village of Hodnet.
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- And when I enter the church, the next verse reads,
"I turn upon my right hand and behold."
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And when I look up,
I see I am staring at a stained glass window,
and the window was designed
and paid to be installed by Thomas Wright in 1855,
exactly the year he wrote the poem.
Fishburne: Unfortunately, Phillips arrives
at the church too late.
- In the stained glass window, we have a figure that looks
exactly like Mary Magdalene holding a chalice.
And above her head is the figure of an eagle.
And I discovered that years ago,
when the eagle statue at Hawkstone Park
in the caves is being moved, it falls over, breaks,
and in the base, they discover what is described
as an interesting curio, a small stone cup.
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Fishburne: This cup is found by a worker
named Walter Langham.
- He didn't know what it was, but he found it interesting,
so he kept it.
I discover that his descendants still have it,
and it's kept amongst a load of junk in their attic.
♪ ♪
Fishburne: Phillips then tracks down
Langham's descendants and acquires the cup.
♪ ♪
- And here it is,
a small stone cup made from green alabaster.
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It matches every description I've read.
♪ ♪
Fishburne: Next, he has it analyzed
by the British Museum.
- It's found to have been a Roman scent jar
dating from the first century.
It's from the right time.
It's made from the right material.
It is the long-lost chalice of Mary Magdalene
once used to collect a few drops
of Christ's blood.
A holy stone, a Grail stone.
This is the Holy Grail.
♪ ♪
- Although Phillips believes his cup is the true Grail,
we may never know the answer.
If it turns out he's right, imagine the implications.
The Holy Grail itself,
perhaps the most coveted object in history,
one day simply falls out of the base
of a broken statue and is quietly purchased
from an English attic.
Or could it still be out there
hiding in plain sight?
I'm Lawrence Fishburne.
Thank you for watching "History's Greatest Mysteries."
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