I saw a documentary about this artifact, the Chalice of Doña Urraca at the Basilica of San Isidoro in León, Spain, on some channel. History or Smithsonian or Travel, whatever. This is one of the rare cases where the TV documentary is as good or better than the book. This book is rambling, obviously cobbled together by two authors, and obviously translated awkwardly from the Spanish. The maps are oddly done. The images are hit-and-miss, though the images of the chalice itself are quite good. The endnotes (numbered from 1 to 361 through the entire book) are oddly and awkwardly done, though it is all there. Most of the sources are in Spanish, with a smattering of sources from other languages. There is a bibliography, alphabetical. There is an index.

In short, authors Torres Sevilla and Ortega del Río trace the route of the grail from Jerusalem to Spain through Muslim hands. They give a convincing account of early Christian pilgrims in Jerusalem who viewed the grail. They then trace it through Muslim hands, based on some parchments discovered Cairo's University of Al-Azhar. The grail was given as a gift from the caliph of the Fatimid dynasty in Jerusalem to the Muslim emir of Dénia in Spain as reward for helping the Fatimid's through a famine. The emir of Dénia then gave it as a gift to Ferdinand I, king of León, as a peace offering. It then went into the hands of his daughter, Doña Urraca of Zamora.

The authors make an interesting and convincing case for the shape of this cup, more of a dish or bowl actually, is old and can be traced to to the Fatimid caliphate. Is it as old as Jesus and the cup he used? Who knows. I would love to see some peer-reviewed analysis of these parchments and other sources, because it almost sounds too good. The authors also show how Doña Urraca and her successors could have engendered elements of the later grail legendarium.

An interesting addition to the literature on the Holy Grail. ( )