Of course Fovel was ready for me. “Well, Javier, there’s an answer to that, and it’s quite interesting.”

“I’m all ears,” I said.

“Very well. The chalice that Juanes painted was in Rome for almost three centuries, before it ever arrived in Spain. Of course, to accept that you have to suppose that after the crucifixion, St. Peter took the cup with him back to what was then the capital of the empire, and that once there, it was passed down through the leaders of the Christian faith like a kind of papal chalice. To me, this makes much more sense than the idea that so many medieval French and Saxon writers from the twelfth century would have us believe, that immediately upon the Messiah’s death, Joseph of Arimathea took the cup to Britain. That’s an absurd notion! Why would someone like him travel to such a remote and unimportant place as the British Isles were in those days? And how is it that there is not one single shred of documentary evidence to support that idea?”

“But still, there were a lot of pretty improbable journeys in the beginnings of Christianity, like the apostle St. James traveling to Spain, for example. Myths like that.”

“I am not talking about any myth!” Fovel’s voice resounded through the gallery. “It has been established that there was a papal chalice in Rome that was passed down from pope to pope during the first centuries of our age.”

“Well then, how did it come to be in Spain?”

“I’ll explain. I’m sure you’re aware that several of the Roman emperors persecuted Christians quite harshly?”

I nodded.

“Well, between the years 257 and 260, the empire under Valerian launched a new campaign of systematic murder and looting of Christians. They also searched the tombs of sect members for valuables. And here comes the interesting part. At that time, the guardian of the papal chalice was Pope Sixtus II. Before he was beheaded, he entrusted what was probably the church’s only treasure to his administrator Lorenzo, a young deacon from Huesca, in Hispania, who couldn’t think of a better hiding place for it than with his distant relatives. He sent the cup to its hiding place in the care of some legionaries from the hills around his native village who had been converted to the faith.”

“Is there any proof of that?”

The Master’s eyes shone. “There is, indeed! In fact, much more proof than for the complete fabrication about the Holy Grail of Arthur and Merlin, which didn’t appear until a thousand years later, or that Joseph of Arimathea took it to Britain! There’s more, too. Just days after packing the chalice off to Spain, Lorenzo was tortured to death on a red-hot iron grill over a slow fire. This was in the year 258. Eighty years later, on the very spot in Rome where he was buried, Pope Damasus I had the Basilica of St. Lawrence outside the Walls built. In the original fourth-century church there was a fresco showing a cup in a frame with two handles being handed to a kneeling soldier by St. Lawrence. Sadly, the image was destroyed in the allied bombings of Rome during World War II, but the fresco has plenty of historical documentation.”

“And that’s the same cup as this one?” I asked, pointing to the painting by Juanes. “You’re positive?”

“That’s not all,” replied Fovel, completely ignoring my question. “Today, in that very same tomb of St. Lawrence, or Lorenzo, you can also find the bones of St. Stephen! Now tell me, do you remember which church in Valencia Juanes painted this Last Supper for? You can look at the card, but I’m happy to repeat—it was the church of St. Stephen! And these other panels by Juanes all around us here, do you know what they are supposed to represent? The life of St. Stephen! All of these panels, including the Last Supper, originally were joined to form one great tableau. This is not coincidence. I believe that Juanes knew all about the relic he was painting and where it came from.”

“Okay, hold on,” I said. “Let’s assume for a moment that he did know all that, and that he painted for this altarpiece all these scenes of St. Stephen and this precious object that his . . . tombmate sent to Spain. But we still haven’t established how the papal cup got to Valencia.”

Fovel didn’t hesitate. “That’s quite simple to explain. In 712, one year after the Moslem invasion of the Iberian Peninsula, the bishop of Huesca had the relic taken to be hid in various places in the Pyrenees, to ensure that it would not be profaned. Its first hiding place was in a cave in Yebra; later, he had it moved to the monastery at San Pedro de Siresa. Eventually, it was moved again to a place near Santa María de Sasabe. Finally, it was taken to the monastery at San Juan de la Peña, where it remained for two and a half centuries. At each of those stops along the way, a church was built and dedicated to St. Peter, to commemorate the first pope to officiate with the papal chalice.

“Then in 1410, upon the death of Martin, king of Aragon—‘Martin the Humane’—as the last Cathars were being slaughtered by the Templars, the cup traveled to Zaragoza and thereafter to Valencia, where it remains to this day. And don’t imagine the church itself has any doubts about this—John Paul II actually said Mass using this chalice.³ None of this is made up, Javier. There are documents verifying every step that this relic has taken though history, something that you cannot say for the Shroud of Turin, for example.”

“That brings us back to this painting,” I said, “in which Juan de Juanes immortalized the chalice in the sixteenth century.”