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The Franciscan friar was a religious person of the 13th century.

Biography[]

The friar met a crusader knight as he returned to France from Venice, who told the story of how he and his brothers had discovered the Holy Grail, about 150 years previously, and how he and his brother Richard had hidden two markers to find the Grail. The Franciscan recorded the knight's tale in an illuminated manuscript in French.[1]

The friar also recorded the whereabouts of the holy relic somewhere "in a canyon deep in a range of mountains" and made a painting of the Crucifixion which depicted Jesus Christ's blood being caught in the Grail.[1]

In 1267, he passed his final moments in the care of a Jewish physician in Kaffa, in the Crimea, to whom he confessed that he had known the location of the Grail, but had not acted on the information, for fear of "the breath of God, the word of God, and the path of God". The doctor's testimony was later recorded in the Kaffa parchment.[2]

Legacy[]

The friar's painting was kept in a chapel of the castle at Klasenheim. Upon learning that Klasenheim held some artifacts related to the Grail search, Henry Walton Jones, Senior traveled to Klasenheim and viewed the painting in July 1906.[2]

The Kaffa parchment of the testament of the physician was found by G. Codirolli, who kept it in Bologna. In 1920 Codirolli showed it to Jones.[2]

The friar's manuscript eventually ended up in the possession of Walter Donovan in the 1930s, who put it on display in his New York City apartment, and showed it to Henry Jones, and later to Indiana Jones.[1]

Behind the scenes[]

As Indiana Jones: The Ultimate Guide attributes the crucifixion painting as Flemish, this would suggest that the friar came from France or Belgium.[3]

Appearances[]

Sources[]

Notes and references[]

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