The ‘Holy Grail’

The ‘Holy Grail’, an agate dish, was held to be the vessel that caught the blood of Christ on the Cross and was therefore of major religious significance. It was rumoured to contain a sequence of characters relating to Christ, later interpreted as the name of its maker or even as an optical illusion. Today this is no longer visible. Together with the Ainkhürn (unicorn’s horn; in fact a narwhal tusk), it formed the ‘inalienable treasure of the House of Austria’, which could be neither divided nor disposed of.