Where is the Holy Grail?

The 1993 movie "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade", by Steven Spielberg, showed us the famous archologist played by Harrison Ford, searching for his father, Henry Jones, and the Holy Grail. The Holy Grail is, depending of the sources, the cup that Jesus Christ used in the Last Supper; or, according to other versions, the cup were the blood from Jesus Christ's wound on the side was kept. The symbolic value for Christians and the alleged magical powers of the Grail has kept its search alive for several centuries.

William Morris, Vision of the Holy Grail, 1890.

In the referred movie, "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade", the nazis are trying to obtain the Holy Grail, to have the power they suposse it would give to its owner. The reader may think that it was only a "creative license", as the search for the Ark of the Covenant in "Raiders of the Lost Ark". But the nazis did in fact search for all these Christian objects. And one little known but significant episode took place one night of 1940.

Himmler in Montserrat with young monk Andreu Ripoll.

That night of October 23rd, 1940, Adolf Hitler and Francisco Franco had a meeting at the french town of Hendaya [Wikipedia]. The same day, Heinrich Himmler, was in Catalonia. He was visiting the Monastery of Montserrat, near Barcelona, one the most important catholic sites of Spain. With him was the General SS Karl Wolf, who was deeply involved in the darkest researches of the Third Reich. At the arrival to the Monastery the Reichführer found that the highest ranks, the fathers Marcet y Escarré, refused to meet him. They were aware of the prosecution that the catholic church was suffering in Austria and Germany. The monks let the young Andreu Ripoll, who spoke german, be the guide of the Reichführer. This generated great tension between the monks and the local authorities, all franquistas, who desired to please the german visitors.

But why did the nazis visit Montserrat in search of the Grail? To find the reason we have to go back to first quarter of the 13th century, when Wolfram von Eschenbach wrote "Parzival"; it was an epic poem of the Arthurian knight Parzival (Percival) and his quest for the Holy Grail. He was inspired by the Grail romance, Perceval, the Story of the Grail, left incomplete by Chrétien de Troyes; claim that Eschenbach refused. In Wolfram's telling, the Grail was kept safe at the castle of Munsalwäsche (Mons Salvationis) or Montsalvat, entrusted to Titurel, the first Grail-King [Literary Encyclopedia entry on Parzival] [Electronic version of a Parzival (Bibliotheca Palatina)] [E-text of Parzival (Bibliotheca Augustana)] [Text of "Parzival" (Gutenberg.spiegel.de)].

So many peopleidentified Munsalwäsche or Montsalvat with Montserrat while others think it is the french Mont Saint Michel.

But there is another reason to think that it refers to Montserrat.

Richard Wagner's Parsifal

Parsifal is an opera in three acts composed by Richard Wagner between 1857 and 1882, based Eschenbach 's Parzival. One passage of the text reads:

"Place:
The region and castle, "Monsalvat", of the Guardians of the Grail: scenery like that of the northern mountains of Gothic Spain.
Later, Klingsor's enchanted castle on the southern slopes of the same mountains, facing Moorish Spain."

And another fact was the poem by Jacint Verdaguer, "El Virolai", dedicated to the Virgin of Montserrat [The Independent]:

"Mística Font de l’aigua de la vida,
rageu del Cel al cor de mon país;"

"Mystical source of the water of life,
fall from Heaven on the heart of my country;"

Monastery of Montserrat