From Huesca to Valencia

Valencian tradition traces the cup from the upper room in Jerusalem to Rome, carried by Saint Peter and used by the early popes, until the deacon Saint Lawrence, facing the persecution of the emperor Valerian in 258, sent it for safety to his home region around Huesca in the Aragonese Pyrenees. There it is said to have passed among monasteries and cave sanctuaries during the centuries of Muslim rule, notably the monastery of San Juan de la Pena, before the crown of Aragon took possession of it.

King Alfonso the Magnanimous handed it to Valencia Cathedral in 1437 in settlement of a debt, and it has remained there since, apart from removals for safety during the Napoleonic wars and the Spanish Civil War. The documentary trail becomes firm only in the medieval Aragonese record; the earlier journey is a matter of pious tradition. Whatever its ultimate history, the cup made Valencia a Grail city, and in the twenty-first century a waymarked pilgrimage, the Camino del Santo Grial, was created to link the sites associated with its passage through Aragon and Valencia.