[Gocamino] San Juan de la Penha and the Holy Grai

[Blaroli@aol.com]

Hello, 
Neither a writer begin to attempt to describe  the Monastery of  San Juan de 
la Pena. I don't know whether anyone could.  How can you describe 
breathtakingly beautiful monastery, with a cloisters!, carved out of the rock on the side 
of a huge mountain  down a cliff?  While Linda Davidson does a good job of it 
in her book, I really think that one must see it to believe it.

Neither the town of Santa Cruz nor the San Juan Monastery are, strictly 
speaking, on the Camino, but the many pilgrims who make the small detour, on 
leaving Jaca, that takes them there are delighted by the  Romanic monuments there 
which are the most beautiful to be found anywhere.
(To be fair, the Via de la Plata contains an embarrassment of riches of 
Romanic treasures. The town of Merida, with its Roman theater and circus, 
magnificently preserved, has a Romanic arts museum reputed to be the best anywhere 
outside of the Capitaline museum in Rome. The little town of Zamora has more than 
a dozen Romanic churches built in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, and on 
and on. Those towns after all had been built, and were greatly favored by 
Caesar Augustus).  

I doubt that there is anything anywhere more dazzling than the monastery of 
San Juan de la Pena.  It is stunning.  Once, an English pilgrim standing next 
to me in the monastery cloisters, protected by the rocky mountain that forms a 
roof above them, commented that he could imagine humans traveling to Mars and 
other planets, but that he could not conceive of anyone ever again being able 
to build  something as incredible as the Monastery.  I couldn't agree more.
No one know how it came to be.  Legend holds that a young  "mozarabe" (a 
Christian living under Moorish rule) from Zaragoza was chasing a deer by horse up 
the Pano mountain.  The deer fell off a cliff and as the horse and rider were 
about to follow, the young hunter, whose name was Voto, prayed to Saint John 
the Baptist to save him. Miraculously the horse stopped its galloped pursuit at 
the very edge of the cliff. The imprints made by the animal's horseshoes are 
still there.
Coming down the mountain the young man found a deep cave with a small chapel 
at its end. He also found the body of a dead hermit with an inscription that 
the hermit's name was Juan and that he was from the nearby town of Atares.  
Young Voto buried the body and went to fetch his brother Felix whom he persuaded 
to join him in devoting their lives to prayer at the site. Soon other 
would-be-hermits came and they built the monastery, away from the Moors and wordily 
temptations by the relative inaccessibility of the place.  It is believed that 
patriots who sought the reconquest of Aragon from the Moors also found refuge 
there.
The ancient Roman writer Salustio wrote that history is suffused with "things 
that never happened but exist forever". And thereby hangs the tale of the 
Holy Grial  and its relation to the Monastery.
The Holy Grial is the wine cup of the Last Supper  later used by Joseph of 
Arimatea to collect the blood of Jesus as He was nailed to the Cross.  This 
chalice was not made by human hands, but rather it was carved by angels from the 
emerald that fell off Lucifer's hat
as he fell into the abyss after disobeying God.   The chalice was taken to 
Rome by Saint Peter.  In the third century a priest from Huesca, near Jaca,  who 
was in Rome was given the job to safeguard the good of the church.  His name 
was Lorenzo, and before he was martyred he sent the Chalice to his hometown in 
Spain to keep it from being destroyed by pagans. In Huesca the chalice was 
kept  in an ermita that received the name of Loreto. 
Later the Cathedral of  San Pedro el Viejp (Saint Peter the Old)  was built 
to house the chalice, Then it was taken to the church of San Pedro de Siresa, 
to the church of San Adrian de Sasave and to the Jaca Cathedral, which many 
believe it was built precisely because of the Grial.
In the year 1076 the chalice was taken to San Juan de la Pena  for its 
safety, where it remained for 3 centuries. That was the beginning of the pilgrimages 
to the Monastery since, at a time when people died at the drop of a hat,  
many believed that if you looked at the Grial with a pure heart you wouldn't die 
the following week. The Grial was kept at the monastery on a marble alter 
within an ivory encasement (both are still there).
Eventually the Aragonese king Martin took the Grial and gave the San Juan 
monks  a gold chalice as a consolation. The Grial could be found in 1399 at the 
Aljaferia place in Zaragoza,  and in 1410  at the Barcelona Cathedral. In 1424 
the Aragonese king Alfonso the Magnificent took the Grial to Valencia.  While 
the Reconquest battle raged all over Spain, sometime, in the same century, the 
Grial was taken to O Cebreiro where it remained for a while and where it was 
worshipped by Queen Isabel.  
--A German writer-philosopher wrote a book about the Grial in O Cebreiro. The 
book was the basis for Richard Wagner's  masterful opera "Parsifal" which I 
am absolutely delighted to tell you, will be sung at New York's Metropolitan 
Opera House during May.....Hurrah!--
Eventually the Grial was returned to Valencia where it is venerated  to this 
very day.

One can go to San Juan de la Pena by car or bus from Jaca or  Pamplona.  
While vehicles
cannot remain there because the monastery is, really, on the cliff of the 
mountain, a new monastery has been built on the top of the mountain where there 
is a clearing and aplace to park.  While buses may stop briefly (very briefly) 
to let passangers off in front of  San Juan, they, and all cars, must go on to 
the top of the mountain.  Those in charge of the two monasteries provide a 
free shuttle service with mini buses from the top of the mountain to San Juan 
and back.

Personally, I believe that San Juan de la Pena was not built by humans, but 
rather by those angels that carved out the Holy Grial from that emerald..

Big hug!

Rosina