Nanteos Cup

The Nanteos Cup is a medieval mazer bowl, held for many years at Nanteos Mansion, Rhydyfelin, near Aberystwyth, Wales. Legend claimed it to be the Holy Grail.^[1]

Robert de Boron's Joseph d'Arimathie and subsequent medieval tradition says that the cup had been carried over to Britain by Joseph of Arimathea, who is said to have founded a religious settlement at Glastonbury. The Grail then came into the safekeeping of a group of monks from Glastonbury. During the Dissolution of the Monasteries, some of the monks fled to Strata Florida Abbey and took the cup with them. On the closing of the Abbey, the cup was left in the care of the Stedman family (then owners of extensive lands in the area, including Strata Florida Abbey) and subsequently on to the Powells of Nanteos through marriage.

The cup had a reputation for healing and people would drink water from it in the hope of curing their ailments. The Nanteos cup deteriorated greatly over the years (in part because people kept biting bits out of it) and is no longer at the mansion, as it went with the last member of the Powell family when they moved out of Nanteos in the 1950s.

Further information: Holy Chalice

Nanteos - A Welsh House and its Families^[2] describes a claim in the 1960s guide to the Nanteos Mansion that German composer Richard Wagner stayed at Nanteos and was said to have been intrigued by the legend, which eventually inspired him to compose the Grail opera Parsifal. However, although the artistic dilettante George Powell probably met Wagner, there is no record of him visiting Nanteos.

The cup was included in a documentary broadcast on Channel 5 "The Search for the Holy Grail: The True Story". In the programme they concluded that the wood the cup is made from dates from at least 1400 years after the Crucifixion. The Commissioner for Monuments in Wales examined the piece and said it was exactly the right size and shape to be a mazer bowl, a type of medieval vessel, that it was Wych Elm and it was from the 14th century. Similarly, in a 1998 BBC2 documentary Dr Juliette Wood of the Folklore Society confirmed that the "cup" was a wych elm mazer or food bowl, and not made of olive wood as might be expected for a cup.^[3] In a BBC4 documentary The Making of King Arthur, Simon Armitage interviews the cup's current owner, Fiona Mirylees, and examines the cup.^[4]

References

1. ^ Holy Grail & Hauntings
2. ^ Nanteos, A Welsh House and its Families
3. ^ The Search for the Holy Grail, produced & directed by Michael Symmons Wood, shown on BBC2 12 Feb. 1998.
4. ^ The Making of King Arthur, shown on BBC4 17 August 2010.

External links

• Nanteos Mansion website
• BBC Wales Holy Grail & Hauntings
• My Quest for the True Holy Grail
• Nanteos - A Welsh House and its Families, Edited by Gerald Morgan (2001), Gomer Press, Llandysul, Ceredigion. ISBN 1-85902-802-0.
• "Catholic Encyclopedia, Chalis". http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/03561a.htm.