Taking the legend at face value does not seem typical of cold minds, but it was what led the Nazis to Montserrat in search of the Holy Grail, which they believed would give them power. The 1940 episode, which caused the monks of the abbey quite amusing, has regained interest now, with the recent visit of the creator of Indiana Jones to that magical mountain.
When riding the Sant Joan funicular, along with his wife and the Obama couple, Steven Spielberg learned last week that while Hitler was meeting with Franco in France, Heinrich Himmler broke into Montserrat ready to snatch the chalice of Christ from the abbot . The president of Ferrocarrils de la Generalitat, Toni Segarra, who accompanied them on the journey, told them about this visit by a Nazi party. And Spielberg, who had treated the theme of the Holy Grail in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, the third installment of the saga, in an adventure key, listened carefully. The filmmaker had no idea and appreciated the explanation. Well, in that film, the father of the adventurous archaeologist, a great scholar of the Grail, has disappeared at the hands of the Nazis!
Casting Hitler in an adventure movie is sacrilegious, but the Spielberg who brings Indiana to meet the Nazi leader is the adventure filmmaker, as film critic Jordi Batlle points out. “It's pure TBO, almost a satire like the one that Tarantino later does in an even more grotesque plan with Himmler in Inglourious Basterds. They laugh. It will be in Schindler's List when the author is portrayed.
It's no secret that Hitler was obsessed with relics of power and believed they were necessary to win the war: the Holy Grail, the spear of fate with which the Roman soldier Longinus would have killed Jesus on the cross, or Thor's hammer. . It is recalled, without going any further, by Esteban Feune de Colombi in his recent Limbos terrestriales (Anagrama). The Argentine actor and poet living in Bruc evokes the phrase with which Himmler, despotic, contradicted Father Ripoll, who spoke to him in German, denying him that no matter how much hood the monks wore, they did not guard such a thing as in the legend of Parsifal. "In Germany everyone knows that the Holy Grail is in Montserrat!" He demanded.
In the light of the latest scientific studies, it is clear that the leader of the Gestapo and the SS would have missed the shot less by going to the cathedral of Valencia. The famous blessing chalice that King Martí l'Humà left there as collateral, together with the rest of his reliquary, in exchange for a loan to pay the troops in Naples and Sicily, has revealed an inscription that is a palindrome six years ago of languages: in primitive Kufic Arabic it says the same thing that in a mirror one reads in primitive Hebrew: “Jesus God”. An indication that leads one to think that it is the chalice that Christ raised with his blood at the dinner held in a wealthy house in Jerusalem. That of Juan Marcos: Saint Mark, a disciple of Saint Peter, whom he followed to Rome with the precious vessel. And it is known that the first popes of Rome officiated with an "original" cup...
"We know the latter from the liturgy, but in the last fifteen years, studies have multiplied and show that the piece has the characteristics of a blessing chalice from the Jewish tradition, which is still passed from father to son today," he explains. to La Vanguardia the canon of the cathedral of Valencia, José Verdeguer. “Their material, for example, is a variant of agate that is only found in Palestine (between Alexandria and Syria), since they always had to be made of a pure, non-porous material. So the Indiana Jones wooden cup thing is impossible,” he jokes. Other clues: the Hebrew University of Jerusalem certifies it as authentic from the first century, made in one piece, and its capacity corresponds to the religious ritual it obeyed.
Himmler did not have this information. But Valencia did not respond to the myth and influence of Wagner either, whose Parsifal takes place in the vicinity of Monsalvat, a concept from medieval fables that the composer places in the Pyrenees. The similarity of the name, together with the visual impact of the imposing mountain, alien to the serious and grandiose character of the Nordic or Alpine mountain ranges, led to Montserrat.
But Wagner did not get to set foot in Spain. Where did the Pyrenean idea of him come from? It was the German philosopher and linguist Wilhelm von Humboldt who in 1800 was fascinated by the hermits of Montserrat, a "magical place of reunion with oneself."
His reflections are sent to Goethe, who turns Montserrat into a symbol of the inner search and creates a romantic imagery. The second Faust of hers includes the hermits... From Goethe he passes to Schiller. Schumann incorporates it into his Faust..., and Wagner takes the most theatrical part, even being inspired by Humboldt's own drawings for the imaginary place... That in fernem land, the distant mountain.
“Wagner makes Montserrat the custodian of the chalice that we see in Parsifal and Lohengrin. And Nazism takes it literally. I remember that when we told the anecdote to the boys of the Escolania, the monks laughed: 'What a fool!'”. It is explained by the music director of the Liceu, Josep Pons, between rehearsals of Parsifal. He was ten years old when he arrived at Montserrat, overwhelmed by the wisdom of those hundred monks, the intellectual life, the art or the content of the Escolania's musical library.
“I didn't even know what a facsimile was. And there they had those by Bach, by Händel... It was his lyrics! The abbey subscribed to the complete works of Hindemith, Schönberg… I saw the newly written score of Ligeti's Requiem arrive”. And he concludes: "Himmler was taken to the museum and it can be seen that when he passed a skeleton, which Bonaventura Ubach must have brought back from his tours of places in the Bible, he pointed out: 'Ario'".
