According to the received history, the Cistercian order was founded in Citeaux, France, in 1098 by a group of Benedictine monks who wished for a stricter community. They sought a monastic life that ca
Did seven monks carry The Grail from Glastonbury Abbey at the time of the Dissolution of the Monasteries in 1539, to the Cistercian Abbey of Strata Florida in Mid Wales? The mystery of the Nanteos Cup and its healing powers has fascinated and intrigued for 300 years. The recent theft and even more remarkable recovery of the Nanteos Cup from a private home in Wales made the headlines in most major newspapers and were featured on BBC Crimewatch. People who had never heard of the Cup began asking what it is - a question that has occupied people for the past three hundred years, since word of this mysterious vessel first began to filter into the outside world. Now it is on display to the public, for the first time since the nineteenth century, at the National Library of Wales. Though unremarkable to look at, stories of the cup's powers and of the miraculous cures experienced by those who drank from it have been in circulation for years. At some point it became associated with one of the
