Spanish historians say they have discovered what Monty Python could not — the Holy Grail, the legendary cup Jesus supposedly drank from at the Last Supper.
The Spaniards — Margarita Torres and José Ortega del Río — believe the 2,000-year-old vessel is in a church in León in northern Spain.
The pair spent three years studying the history of the chalice and last week published a book, “The Kings of the Grail,” making their case.
The onyx chalice, they explained, was concealed within another antique vessel known as the Chalice of Doña Urruca, which is located in León’s basilica of Saint Isidore.
The historians said it has been there since the 11th century.
“This is a very important discovery because it helps solve a big puzzle,” Torres told The Irish Times. “We believe this could be the start of a wonderful stage of research.”
She said the duo had been researching the history of some Islamic remains in the Saint Isidore basilica. But their discovery of two medieval Egyptian documents that mentioned the chalice of Christ caused them to change direction, the paper reported.
Those parchments told a tale of how Muslims took the sacred cup from the Christian community in Jerusalem to Cairo.
It was then given to an emir on Spain’s Mediterranean coast in return for help he gave to Egyptians who were suffering a famine.
The historians’ research has been backed up by scientific dating, which estimates that the cup in question was made between 200 BC and 100 AD.
The scientists admit the first 400 years of the cup’s history remain a mystery, and they can’t prove the chalice ever actually touched Christ’s lips.
But they insist there is no doubt that this is the cup that early Christians revered as the chalice used at the Last Supper.
“The only chalice that could be considered the chalice of Christ is that which made the journey to Cairo and then from Cairo to León — and that is this chalice,” said Torres, who teaches medieval history at the University of León.
Countless scientists and historians have pursued the Holy Grail, an effort chronicled in Arthurian legend, made into pulp adventure with “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade,” and satirized by the British comedy troupe Monty Python in 1975’s “Monty Python and the Holy Grail.”