Various depictions of the Holy Grail, left to right top to bottom: The Last Supper, Arthurian Legend (unknown artist, 14th Century), Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Sailor Moon
"The search for the Grail is the search for the divine in all of us."
— Marcus Brody, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
The Holy Grail is a Public Domain Artifact that plays a central role in Arthurian Legend. In modern media, it usually appears in stories centering around King Arthur and his knights, Jesus and Biblical events and places, or both.
In the most common version of the legend, the Grail was the cup that Jesus drank from at the Last Supper and/or the cup used by Joseph of Arimathea to capture Christ's blood at the crucifixion. Older versions instead describe it as a bowl, a dish, or a stone; it became conflated with the cup that Jesus drank from over time during the codification of the Arthurian legends in medieval France and Norman England. The original story has the knight Percival or Parzifal trying to find this item; later versions have it as a quest object for other Knights of the Round Table, such as Gawain, Galahad, or the entire lot at once.
In any case, the Grail is usually assigned potent healing powers, sometimes extending to the ability to raise the dead or give eternal youth and life. It is always difficult to reach and hidden in a faraway location — Arthurian myth usually places it in the castle of the Fisher King, but modern stories may locate it anywhere sufficiently storied and inaccessible, although ancient fortresses and shrines are still its usual resting place. Because it is usually a divine artifact, it is also often necessary to pass moral tests to find it; sometimes, the Grail or the waters within it may actively harm or destroy the impure. As a result of these conditions, the Grail is something that has to be quested for. The hero of a story will usually need to travel far, surpass difficult trials, and pass the Grail's own moral scrutiny to find and retrieve this item. It may be guarded by a secretive order of knights or by a single watcher, who try to keep its holy power away from unscrupulous hands. Quests to find the Grail are a classic plot of Chivalric Romance.
Appearance-wise, the Grail is typically either a beautiful golden vessel, heavy with jewels and ornamentation to symbolize its holiness and power, or a simple cup of clay or wood such as a Judean carpenter might have drunk from in the days of Tiberius. In some cases, the Grail may not actually be a physical object as such, but rather a spiritual force or concept that needs to be quested for in more abstract terms.
A variant sometimes appears in the form of an Unholy Grail, sometimes linked to Judas in a similar manner to how the Holy Grail is linked to Christ, that has dark powers opposite to those of its sacred counterpart.
Etymologically, "Grail" comes from graal/greal, a term in Old French for bowls or cups, in turn derived (via late Latin gradalis) from the Latin crater and ultimately from Greek krātḗr, for the same general meaning. The term is sometimes believed to come from the French Sang Real ("Royal Blood"), for the blood of Christ, which later became Saint Graal ("Holy Graal"/"Holy Cup"), although this is a false etymology.
Subtrope of Public Domain Artifact. Not to be confused with Grail in the Garbage, which describes precious or rare objects found in an unfitting location such as a trash heap, although the Holy Grail itself may be one of the items found in such a manner.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- Sailor Moon: The Holy Grail is what transforms Sailor Moon into Super Sailor Moon. That being said it may not be the Holy Grail as in the manga, and in the videogame Sailor Moon: Another Story, there's two of them — Sailor Chibi Moon has one as well.
Comic Books
- Batman: The Chalice has the guardianship of the Holy Grail being passed on to Bruce Wayne. The Wayne family are revealed to be descendants of Sir Gawaine of Arthurian Legend. The Grail present as a seemingly ordinary stone bowl with miraculous healing powers. After having to deal with his old enemy Ra's al Ghul as well as a secret society after the Grail, Bruce decides the Grail is best with someone who can keep it safter than he can and entrusts it to Superman.
- Camelot 3000: The Grail transforms a mutated Knight back into human form, and then, when stolen by Mordred and merged into a suit of armor, creates an armor that instantly heals any and all damage, no matter how fatal.
- Demon Knights: Sir Ystin the Shining Knight drank from the Grail centuries ago, having been given a taste by Merlin when he found them mortally wounded upon a battlefield. The drink from the Grail saved their life and made them long-lived, but it also cursed them with an unending quest to find the Grail again after it became lost to time. To date, they still haven't found it.
- Disney Ducks Comic Universe'': Played for laughs in Don Rosa's "A Letter from Home"; Scrooge McDuck finds a vault containing the treasure of the Knights Templar, and Donald ends up beaning the bad guy with what turns out to be the Holy Grail.
- The Invisibles features the Black Grail, which caught the blood and excreta of Judas when he hanged himself. It bestows ignorance, rather than the enlightenment of the normal Grail.
Fan Works
- A Force of Four: The Holy Grail is used by the villains to banish all magically-powered heroes from the planet.
Films — Live-Action
- The Fisher King: The Holy Grail itself does not show up, but it is used thematically. Jack Lucas, a former Shock Jock who unwittingly sparked a mass shooting by giving thoughtless advice over the radio to an unstable man, is down on his luck and is attacked by a group who think he's homeless. Jack is saved by Parry, an actual homeless man who believes he's on a quest for the Grail. Then Jack learns that Parry used to be a scholar specializing in Arthurian legend until his wife was killed by the man Jack inadvertently triggered. Parry tells Jack the story of the Fisher Kingnote . Jack tries to help get Parry on his feet again. But when Parry is attacked and goes into a comatose state, Jack breaks into a wealthy man's house, where Parry had been convinced the Grail was, and finds a trophy that somewhat matches the description. He also triggers the alarm, saving the life of the old man who lived there after the old man had attempted suicide. Jack presents Parry with the trophy, which causes him to eventually come out of his comatose state.
- Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade: The Grail serves as the MacGuffin, and is hidden in a secret canyon in Hatay (in modern-day Turkey)note . It is hidden among dozens of other cups, and if you drink from the wrong one, you'll age to death. You also can't leave the grail temple or you become mortal again, which is why the Knight who guards the Grail is still alive, while his contemporary brethren who left the area have long passed on. A central point in the trial is that the Grail isn't a fabulous, jewel-encrusted golden cup as commonly imagined, but an ordinary, plain wooden one — the kind that a common carpenter would havenote . Elsa Schneider attempts to leave with the Grail but she steps on the "Great Seal", which sets off an earthquake trap meant to keep anyone from taking it. During the chaos, the Grail falls on a small ledge and Elsa falls to her death while desperately trying to recover it. Indiana nearly suffers her fate as well, but his dad convinces him to "let it go". Ultimately, the Grail is lost forever.
- The Librarian: Curse of the Judas Chalice: The eponymous artifact, the Judas Chalice, is a blasphemous parody of the Holy Grail, a cup that was forged from the Thirty Pieces of Silver paid to Judas which will turn anyone who drinks from it into a vampire.
- Monty Python and the Holy Grail is a parody of Arthurian legend relating to the quest to recover the Holy Grail. They never actually manage to claim it or even see it other than in a vision from God, and the castle where it supposedly can be found is already occupied by French knights.
Gamebooks
- Averted with the GrailQuest series; it might be (very loosely) based on Arthurian Legends, but it has a Non-Indicative Name: at no point do you ever go on a quest for the Holy Grail.
Literature
- Area 51: The Grail turns out to be real, but made by the alien Airlia rather than being a holy relic. Like in the real legends, it can make someone immortal. However, this doesn't entail drinking out of it (the Grail is still cup-shaped though). Rather, simply touching this while the Urim and Thummim stones are connected to it will start making the user immortal. It has been worshiped by many in the past and used by the Airlia to gain loyal human followers using a promise of immortality. Further, The Ark of the Covenant was its carrier and protective device.
- "Chivalry" by Neil Gaiman: An old woman finds the Grail in a secondhand shop, and buys it without realizing what it is because she thinks it will look good on the mantelpiece. Then a knight in shining armor shows up in search of it.
- The Confessions of Peter Crossman: In Stealing God, the Holy Grail is Hidden in Plain Sight, with the Knights Templar keeping an eye on it. Part of the reason it's so hard to find is that all the stories about it being a cup or a dish are wrong (and the Templars have encouraged them to keep people off the scent); Wolfram von Eschenbach's description is said to have been closest to what it actually looks like.
- The Dark is Rising Sequence: While the actual Grail does not appear, a replica of it — "the last trust of Logres, the grail made in the fashion of the Holy Grail, that told upon its sides all the true story of Arthur soon to be misted in men's minds" — plays a key role in the first and third books. It is inscribed with a major prophecy that plays into the plots of the last two books.
- The Da Vinci Code: Cryptologist Robert Langdon becomes the prime suspect in the murder of the Louvre museum's curator Jacques Saunière. Aiming to clear his name, Langdon discovers the killers are pursuing the Holy Grail, which isn't a drinking vessel. Here, the "cup" refers to a woman's uterus, and in this case, the wife of Jesus Christ, who bore him a son. The Council of Shadows, a Secret Circle of Secrets within the Vatican, seek to obliterate all traces of her existence, while the Knights Templar strive to protect her and her holy bloodline.
- The Dresden Files: The Grail is the main object of Skin Game, where it's been secured in a vault belonging to Hades since antiquity. The book describes the Grail realistically, as a small, unremarkable clay cup that nevertheless gives Harry massive supernatural vibes when he touches it. Found along with the Grail are the placard from the True Cross, the Crown of Thorns, The Lance of Longinus, and Christ's actual burial cloth (not the Shroud of Turin, which is fake in-verse).
- Empire of the Vampire: The Holy Grail shows up, initially described as a near carbon copy of the real-world artifact. Apparently, it was held by San Michon to "catch the blood of the Redeemer as He lay dying on the wheel". Later it was carried forth by crusaders spreading the One Faith across the Empire. As it turns out, the "catching blood" part of the saying was a bit more metaphorical than people assumed since the Holy Grail is actually the Redeemer's descendant, Dior Lachance, invested with His powers.
- Ethical Vampires, by P.N. Elrod and Nigel Bennett, combines Arthurian legend and vampires. The Grail also has significance in the pagan/Druid stuff Sabra is part of. Both Richard Dunn, the vampire who served as Lancelot, and an evil vampire are searching for it because their kind isn't immortal and they eventually become locked in a beast form. Only drinking from the Grail can stop it and Richard is desperate to save Sabra, who's getting close to getting locked in beast mode herself.
- The Faerie Queene: The Holy Grail is mentioned in Canto X of the second book, which is an account of Britain's ancient history and references the legend that the Grail was brought to Britain by St. Joseph (a tale of central importance to Arthurian Legend).
- The Forever King by Molly Cochran and Warren Murphy: The Grail is a cup fashioned out of a stone that fell from the heavens, many years before the birth of Christ. Its association with Jesus is only coincidental, and He is not the source of its powers (nor, although the villain initially smugly assumes so, is it the source of His).
- Grailblazers by Tom Holt: Spoofed. The Grail is a bowl that was used at the Last Supper, which was miraculously transformed into Tupperware.
- The Hammer and the Cross, by Harry Harrison: The word "Grail" turns out to be a corruption of "graduale", Latin for "ladder", and refers to the ladder which Joseph of Arimathea used to take Jesus down from the Cross and as a stretcher to bear Him away. King and Emperor, the third book, has the titular King and Emperor both seeking the Grail which is hidden by the Gnostics.
- High School D×D: The Holy Grail is one of the three Holy Relics and allows the user to regenerate and resurrect the dead.
- Holy Blood, Holy Grail
- seems to have been at least some inspiration for The Da Vinci Code. Purports to be non-fiction, but unfortunately for the authors, they were taken in by the Priory of Sion hoax perpetrated by con artist and royal pretender Pierre Plantard.
- Knight Life Series: The Grail plays a major part in the second and third books. Here it shifts between the forms of a Cup, the Sword, and the Land with different abilities for each form. It turns out that it's magical from catching the blood of the Unicorn King, back when Merlin was a young man. It became linked up with Jesus when He drank from it.
- Nightside by Simon R. Green: Inverted in the second book with the MacGuffin being the Unholy Grail — the cup that Judas drank from. In the end, Judas himself, the Wandering Jew who has been forgiven by Christ but can't forgive himself, breaks its curse by using it for Communion, turning it into an ugly bowl with no power.
- Parzival, by Wolfram von Eschenbach, is the Trope Codifier. Parzival, destined to be its keeper, is initially found unworthy to guard it, before embarking on a spiritual struggle to find it. In Wolfram's telling, the Grail is a (precious) stone or "thing", but its true importance lies in how it sustains the community around it. It has a number of useful properties, it can provide you with food and transmit messages; a chaste virgin may lift it on her own, but a sinner cannot, no matter how physically strong he is.
- Perceval, the Story of the Grail, a 12th-century story by Chrétien de Troyes, is the Ur-Example of the artifact. It describes it as a dish to serve fish (the original medieval meaning of the word "grail"). The protagonist, Perceval, finds himself in the court of a maimed king, where he witnesses an enigmatic procession featuring a grail and a spear whose tip is bleeding. It is strongly implied in-universe that the scene was very important but its intended meaning we'll never know — the book is unfinished because the author Died During Production. It's never called "holy" in the text, and it has at least been speculated that this grail was more along the lines of Celtic tropes about magic serving dishes that constantly refill with food, such as the Cauldron of Dagda (one of the Four Treasures of Ireland in Celtic Mythology). Perceval was followed by a series of "continuations" by other authors finishing the story. They were the Trope Makers, connecting the grail to the cup from the Last Supper.
- Shadow Grail: In the fourth and last book, the heroes find various items from Arthurian myth that they need, including the Grail, disguised as ordinary items in a junk box at the Goodwill store.
Live-Action TV
- Babylon 5: "Grail" features a man named Aldous Gajic, who is the sole remaining member of a group dedicated to finding the Holy Grail. As he and his predecessors have searched everywhere on Earth, he has extended the search to space and seeks to meet with alien ambassadors to see if any of them know where it is. Most humans think he's simply crazy, but the Minbari ambassador Delenn greatly respects him, arguing that his devotion to the search is more important than whether the Grail actually exists or not; she promises him that, should they ever come across it, they will bring it to him. Sadly, Aldous is ultimately killed when Taking the Bullet for someone else, but a young man he had taken under his wing vows to continue the search in his place. As Aldous dies, he tells his protégé that he can see the Grail.
- Blood of the Templars: Instead of being a physical vessel as believed, the Grail is Jesus' bloodline a la The Da Vinci Code. That said, there is a physical Grail in this film, only that it is basically a mass of blood.
- Het Huis Anubis: The plot of season 1 concerns the students and teachers alike hunting for the Holy Grail. In the British/American Foreign Remake, this was changed to be an Egyptian cup of life.
- Kaamelott: King Arthur's dedication to finding the Grail is met with perplexity by his knights, who still can't decide if it is supposed to be a cup, an incandescent stone, or a mason jar.
- The Librarians: Jenkins is actually Sir Galahad, aka Galeus, the knight who succeeded at finding the Holy Grail. As a result, he is immortal, although he transfers that immortality to Eve Noone in Season 4 to spare her life. However, that was undone by a Reset Button at the end of the season, so presumably Jenkins remains immortal.
- Merlin: A variant — as a show based on Arthurian Legend without any Christian elements, the Cup of Life, a relic of the druidic Old Religion, is coded as an Expy of the Holy Grail. It has the power to restore life to the dead or mortally wounded and can be used to resurrect an army of the living dead.
- Once Upon a Time (2011): Season 5 reveals that the Grail is the source of most of the magic in the setting, good and evil. Merlin found it thousands of years ago, and drinking from it granted him immortality and gave him his vast magical powers, and he later melted it down and reforged it into Excalibur in an attempt to render himself mortal again. Unfortunately, before he could do that, Nimue selfishly drank from it to gain magic and immortality as well, so that she could take revenge on the warlord Vortigen for destroying her village. Her killing of him subsequently corrupted the Grail's magic within her, turning her into the first Dark One.
- Stargate SG-1: A major part of the plot of the tenth season is the Sangraal, also known as the Holy Grail. As Daniel points out, the original Arthurian legend doesn't have anything to do with Christ (as that part was added in later), and the Holy Grail is depicted in multiple ways, including "a stone that fell from the heavens". This is what they need to find, as it's actually a weapon created by Merlin, who was a Sufficiently Advanced Alien, and this weapon is the only thing capable of destroying their enemy.
- Warehouse 13: The cup is mentioned by name in "Age Before Beauty" and implied to be real. It's alluded to again in "The Ones You Love" when Mrs. Frederick tells a Vatican priest that their cup is in the Warehouse and safe, if slightly dented.
Podcasts
- Hero Club: Adversary mentions the Holy Grail, though it has been found and been destroyed by a different group of adventurers by the time we hear about it. It was sacrificed to create a powerful bullet that can kill anything it strikes.
Tabletop Games
- GURPS:
- GURPS Magical Items 3: "God's Cup" is the Holy Grail interpreted for the GURPS Goblins setting. It has the same origin and is a golden chalice that can heal any ill...if the user is suitably Godly. An unworthy user instead receives a Bolt of Divine Retribution. Naturally, this includes most goblins.
- GURPS Warehouse 23: The Grail, the cup that Christ drank from and that later collected His blood, is one of the items that the Warehouse might contain or seek to retrieve. It is described as either a golden, jeweled goblet or a simple cup of wood or clay; the book notes that it might have started as the latter but have been gilded by the Crusaders. It is served by a secretive order of knights or an ancient family, and has a host of wondrous powers — it can create sumptuous feasts, give youth and health to those who drink from or even look at it, and grant transcendent understanding if quested for.
- The Strange: The search for the Grail is one of the central issues in Camelot le Morte, as it is believed to be able to cure the machine sickness that has turned many of the kingdom's people into malevolent automatons.
- Warhammer Fantasy Battle: The Grail is a golden cup kept by the Lady of the Lake, the patron goddess of Bretonnia, a kingdom based heavily around medieval knightly legends. Knights who feel the calling put aside their worldly ties and strike out into the wilderness, seeking the Lady and her Grail. There is no set location; each must go where chance and omens take him. Eventually, if he survives the perils of the world, performs great deeds, and proves himself worthy, the knight will be graced by the Lady's presence and permitted to drink from the cup. Those who do so, known as Grail Knights, are granted prolonged lives and superhuman strength, resilience, and endurance.
Theatre
- Spamalot is the stage adaptation of Monty Python and the Holy Grail, so the Grail is naturally here. Unlike the movie, it is found under one of the seats of the venue that the show is being performed at. The show also has a theme of "Find Your Grail" as a metaphor for reaching your goals.
Video Games
- Azrael's Tear: The protagonist is a sort of high-tech professional tomb robber who investigates the fate of a rival who disapeared while searching for the Holy Grail in northeast Scotland.
- Baten Kaitos: Eternal Wings and the Lost Ocean: Holy Grail is an incredibly weak healing item, but one with a two in three chance of working even on a downed ally. Furthermore, using it in combination with most wine-based magnus allows you to create the Sacred Wine item, which is a fairly decent healing item and one of the most easily acquired ones with a 100% chance of working on a downed ally.
- The Binding of Isaac: Holy Grail is an angel deal item that grants Isaac an extra heart and the ability to fly.
- Crystal Caliburn: The ultimate goal is to assemble the Knights of the Round and retrieve the Holy Grail.
- Epic Battle Fantasy 5: The Holy Grail is a very rare crafting item that can be dropped from certain Holy-based foes. Its Flavor Text is "A legendary relic. Let's melt it down for materials!"
- Fate Series: A central element of the series is the Holy Grail War, a ritual that calls out to the spirits of legendary heroes with unresolved wishes, binding them to local mages as Familiars with the promise that once only one Heroic Spirit remains, the Holy Grail — which is both a real artifact and also a metaphysical reward for winning the War — will manifest to grant any wish. The Grail War was originally conceived as a simple sham, where pre-arranged Masters would lure in Heroic Spirits and then immediately command them to kill themselves to power the Grail. However, every War has gone Off the Rails due to infighting before the Grail could be claimed. By the time of Fate/Zero, the Grail has been corrupted into a Jackass Genie.
- Fate/Grand Order revolves around multiple Holy Grails scattered throughout time, which much like Fate/stay night are once again not the original but rather creations of the villain. Several other characters in the story, particularly the wealthy ones, even have Holy Grails of their own, gained not from the villain's machinations but rather from their own historical exploits.
- Fate/stay night revolves around Shirou Emiya, an Inept Mage with self-destructive levels of Chronic Hero Syndrome, stumbling into the fifth iteration of his city's secret Grail War, with Shirou eventually learning that his own father ended the last War by destroying the Grail's manifestation before it could be used. It turns out that someone in the Third War, attempting to summon a God of Evil in order to steamroll the competition, accidentally inserted a wish to "Embody All the Evils of the World" into the Grail, turning it into a Jackass Genie overflowing with corruptive "mud" that will warp any wish into an attempt to kill as many people as possible. All three arcs of the novel end with the heroes discovering this and deciding to destroy the Grail. It's explicitly stated that this Holy Grail is not the genuine article that received the blood of Christ, nor the chalice that Galahad claimed, but rather an 18th-century replica of both formed from alchemy (beginning life as a human-like homunculus whose heart absorbs the defeated Servants to transform into the cup). Its true purpose is to open a path to Akasha, the root of all existence, though it can also theoretically grant wishes. However, the Church routinely investigates any artifact that claims to be the Holy Grail, and even if this one isn't the real thing, its power is close enough to the original that they appoint a priest to Fuyuki City to monitor and supervise the Grail War.
- Golden Logres: Returning the Grail to Camelot resurrects King Arthur and grants eternal prosperity to Logres.
- Heroes of Might and Magic: The Grail is a side objective, and sometimes the win condition of certain maps. It varies between games, but typically it works by consulting special structures that reveal puzzle pieces, eventually showing where the Grail is buried. Finding it allows the player to build an insanely powerful structure in the town they take it to.
- Hidden Expedition: A King's Line is centered around the search for King Arthur's tomb, and the Holy Grail factors into this, with the game positing that Arthur was in fact successful in his quest to find it. The player unearths it in a magnificent chamber beneath Mount Snowdon in Wales.
- Magic and Mayhem: The Holy Grail, here the same object as the Cauldron of Dagda, is one of the artefacts the Overlord is seeking to reverse the ageing effect of magic use.
- Persona 5: The Holy Grail is the Treasure of Mementos and represents the apathetic masses' desire for a great leader like Arthur to "save" them from The Evils of Free Will. It's actually the first form of Yaldabaoth, God of Control, Big Bad and Final Boss of the game.
- Pharaoh Rebirth combines the legend of the Holy Grail with the Seven Dragon Balls, since the goal of the game is to recover all seven Grails and use them to make a wish.
- Romancing SaGa 3: The Holy Grail once held the Holy King's blood. Ironically, it is currently in the hands of a vampire.
- Serious Sam:
- Serious Sam: The Second Encounter: In the last two levels, Sam needs to find the Holy Grail to access a Sirian spaceship so that he can leave Earth and confront the Evil Overlord Mental back on Planet Sirius. But before he can get to it, one of Mental's servants reaches it first and takes it to the Church of Sacred Blood somewhere in Eastern Europe. While the forces of evil can't actually do anything with it, they can keep it away from Sam.
- Serious Sam 4: The plot revolves around the Earth Defense Force trying to find the location of the Holy Grail, which they believe to actually be an alien artifact, to use it against Mental's armies and turn the tides of war in their favor. Most of the game is spent following the Alien Artifact Acquisition team on their journey to obtain the Holy Grail with the guidance of Badass Preacher Father Mikhail. Unfortunately, it turns out what they were seeking was not the Holy Grail at all, but rather an Artifact of Doom that the A.A.A.'s superior officer General Brand takes for himself, intending to hand it over to Mental and gain a position in the winning team.
- Soul Sacrifice has the Sacred Chalice, which was renamed from the Holy Grail to avoid tension in Europe where Arthurian legend is still pretty important. The Chalice appears before individuals who have crossed the Despair Event Horizon and offers to make their wish come true. Should they accept, the chalice will take a sacrifice from them and transform them into a horrifically-mutated mockery of their wish: an Archfiend. Yeaaaaah, turns out the Chalice is the creation of the resident God of Evil meant to sow chaos, greed, and destruction.
- Treasure of the Rudra: The Holy Grail is a sealing receptacle that holds a netherworld spirit in it. It's considered "Holy" since it repels monsters.
- Worms Forts: Under Siege: One of the missions in the Medieval campaign involves completing three trials in order to acquire the Holy Grail. The mission ends with the player's worm concluding that the Grail isn't really all that it's cracked up to be, and abandoning it.
Western Animation
- American Dad!: "Season's Beatings": After Stan is excommunicated, one of the only ways to get back into the Catholic church is to find the holy grail. As it turns out, Roger's "Pimp Cup", which he drinks eggnog and purple drink out of, is it.
