December 27
I don’t know which was the bigger event, photographing St.
Vincent’s arm or the Holy Grail. I got to do both on Thursday.
Four and a half euros get you a recorded tour of the Valencia cathedral in your favorite language. Each chapel and other architectural
highlight has its number and you key that into your player. Since I chose
English, I heard a man with a very pleasant Brit accent pointing out details.
The original parts of the church building date back to the
13th century to a dedication, I believe, by Jaime I el Conquistador. Like all big structures, the cathedral added parts as time went by. Now it
is a sprawling amoeba even attached by a bridge to the neighboring church, Our
Lady of the Forsaken.
There was a major restoration a few years ago, and as
always happens with these ancient monuments, they rediscovered stuff. For
instance, the restorers uncovered some brilliant early frescoes in the ceiling
of the sanctuary. Nobody remembered they were there, and they had been covered
by baroque decorations added in the 18th century. I don’t know why, but I find
that kind of story fascinating.
It reminds me of the tours you can take through the
foundations of the York and Geneva cathedrals.
Some of the side chapels were restored to their original
Gothic bones, others not.
There is a lot of cool stuff in the cathedral.
I knew there were Borgia popes and have been watching the
TV mini series about the family on Netflix. That’s how I learned, for instance,
that the Borgias were actually Spanish, not Italian. What I didn’t know until
my tour is that there is a Borgia saint. Really.
Francisco Borja (the original Spanish form of the name)
was a duke who left home to become a Jesuit. There is a chapel dedicated to him
in the cathedral, and it contains two Goyas.
I had read that the St. Vincent’s arm was “behind the
altar” at the cathedral, but being an American, I wondered if it was considered
an invasion or privacy or otherwise politically incorrect to let people see
it.
Not to worry. It’s in a glass reliquary in front of an
altar called the Chapel of the Resurrection, which is in the rotunda directly
behind the sanctuary. Number 12 on the tour.
His are not the only body parts. One of the side chapels
off the nave is dedicated to St. Thomas of Villanueva, a sainted former archbishop
of Valencia. His effigy has a window in the chest where his skull is preserved.
A glass box below him has his bones on display.
According to my narrator, what is now the Chapel of the
Holy Grail was built as a place to hold the tombs of bishops. It wasn’t
attached to the main church until a corridor was built later.
Everything goes by two names here. The Valencian for Holy
Grail, I believe, is Sant Calze. Santo Caliz is Spanish. I know this only
because there is a street outside the cathedral named for it in Valencian on
the map and in Spanish on the road sign.
The tradition of the Grail says that St. Peter brought the
chalice to Rome, where it was venerated until a later Pope sent it west to
protect it during the persecutions of Valerian in the third century.
Everything after the Holy Grail is kind of anticlimactic
to relate. Still wonderful, of course, because this is Valencia, but hey, it’s
not the Holy Grail.
We rested over some squid and Rioja and then climbed the
201 steps (Joanna counted; I didn’t even try.) to the top of the Micalet, the
Little Michael bell tower of the church. We were surprised at how many of the
buildings we could recognize after only a few days in town.
Later on, we ran into the demonstrators again, but this
time they were blocking the streets in front of City Hall.
The Grail is hard to see, even though it’s in a lighted
glass case. It is high to your left in the altar niche, but there is a large
silver screen on the altar. When we were there, two priests were in prayer
venerating the transubstantiated Host. At first, I mistook the monstrance for a
possible container of the chalice.
I moved to the right side of the chapel and sat on the old
stone bench to see what the monks felt. Joanna came over to me and pointed.
There, you can see it now.
Photos are permitted in the Chapel of the Holy Grail, and
that actually surprised me.
I rested the camera on the back of a wooden choir bench
and used no flash. The fathers, after all, were still praying.
On reflection, I have to say the Holy Grail tops
everything else. Grainy though it is, here is the photo of the day.
King Arthur, eat your heart out. I’ve seen the Holy Grail.
Harry
Dec. 28
That can't be the real grail.
Everyone knows it was lost forever when Elsa took it past the seal.
Matt
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