Holy Grail Trivia
0Loading crowd target
0Loading crowd target
7correct to beat the crowd
60 free Holy Grail trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
The Holy Grail has been a cup, a dish, a stone, a bloodline and the most overused MacGuffin in film, and this quiz covers all of it. It starts with the medieval romances - the mysterious 'graal' that first appears in Chrétien de Troyes' Perceval, Robert de Boron turning it into the cup of the Last Supper, Wolfram's Grail stone, and the Vulgate Cycle's Galahad, the Siege Perilous and the voyage to Sarras. From there it moves to the relics claimed as the Grail (the Genoa dish that turned out to be glass, the agate chalice of Valencia, the Nanteos Cup), the places that attached themselves to the legend (Glastonbury, Montségur, Rosslyn Chapel), the conspiracy theories that fed The Da Vinci Code, and the Grail on screen and stage: Wagner's Parsifal, Boorman's Excalibur, Spamalot and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. Easy questions come first and the last ten will stretch a medievalist. Every answer has been checked against a reference page and carries its source, so the set is safe for a classroom, a book club or a pub quiz. If you want the film on its own, we also have a dedicated Monty Python and the Holy Grail quiz.
30 of 60 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In Monty Python and the Holy Grail, which knight fights on after losing both arms and both legs?
The Black Knight
The Black Knight loses both arms and both legs to King Arthur, calls the first wound a scratch, offers to call it a draw, and threatens to bite his legs off as Arthur rides away.
Q 02The Grail became identified with the vessel Jesus used at which event?
The Last Supper
The Last Supper link comes from the poet Robert de Boron, writing around 1200; in the earliest grail story, composed shortly before, the dish is a holy mystery with no past at all.
Q 03Which biblical figure is said to have used the Grail to catch Christ's blood at the crucifixion?
Joseph of Arimathea
Joseph of Arimathea is thrown in prison in the legend, where the risen Christ visits him and explains the cup's mysteries; only later tellings send Joseph himself to Britain with it.
Q 04Which medieval poet wrote the earliest surviving story to feature a 'grail', in the late 1100s?
Chrétien de Troyes
Chrétien de Troyes left the poem unfinished and its grail only half explained, so the writers who followed were free to decide for themselves what the thing was.
Q 05In The Da Vinci Code, the Holy Grail turns out to be not a cup but which woman from the Gospels?
Mary Magdalene
Mary Magdalene, in Dan Brown's plot, is the 'vessel' because she bore the child of Jesus; the book ends with its hero kneeling at the Louvre, sure that her tomb lies beneath the inverted glass pyramid.
Q 06Wolfram von Eschenbach's medieval German epic portrays the Grail as what?
A stone
A stone: Wolfram's Grail is a precious gem that keeps its guardians young, and anyone who looks on it cannot die within the following week.
Q 07In the Vulgate Queste and in Malory, which knight finally achieves the Grail?
Galahad
Galahad achieves it: in Malory, as he dies a hand reaches down from heaven and carries the vessel away, and no one has dared claim to see the Grail since.
Q 08In the Vulgate Cycle, the virgin knight who achieves the Grail is the son of which famous knight?
Lancelot
Lancelot fathered him by trickery: an enchantress made Elaine, the Grail king's daughter, appear to him as his beloved Guinevere.
Q 09The wounded ruler who guards the Grail in its hidden castle is known by what title?
The Fisher King
The Fisher King gets the title in the earliest Grail romance, where the hero first meets him fishing from a boat: his wound has left him unable to ride or hunt.
Q 10Which Indiana Jones film sends Indy and his father racing the Nazis for the Grail?
The Last Crusade
The Last Crusade gave Indy a father because its makers doubted the Grail could carry a film alone; George Lucas later called the relic 'sort of feeble' as a prize.
Q 11Who plays Indy's father, the Grail scholar Henry Jones, in the 1989 Indiana Jones film?
Sean Connery
Sean Connery played Harrison Ford's father despite being only twelve years older; his character reveals that Indy is really Henry Jones Jr. and that Indiana was the family dog.
Q 12In the third Indiana Jones film, what happens to Donovan after he drinks from the wrong cup?
He ages rapidly and dies
He ages rapidly and dies, crumbling to dust, after drinking from a golden cup that Elsa picked out for him; the Grail's knight guardian remarks, 'He chose... poorly.'
Q 13The Grail temple in the 1989 Indiana Jones film was shot at Al Khazneh, in which ancient city?
Petra
Q 21In the earliest Holy Grail romance, what is carried past the hero first, ahead of the grail itself?
A bleeding lance
A bleeding lance comes first, carried by a young man, with the grail only third in line; later writers explained it as the spear that pierced Christ's side on the cross.
Q 22In the earliest grail romance, why does the young hero fail to heal his wounded host?
Never asks about the grail
Never asks about the grail: his tutor had taught him that talking too much was bad manners, so he holds his tongue, and learns the next day that one question would have cured the king.
Q 23In Wolfram's medieval German epic, the Grail is kept safe at which castle?
Petra's rock-cut Treasury is named for a legend that its carved urn held hidden riches; Bedouins fired guns at the urn hoping to break it open, and the bullet scars remain.
Q 14In the third Indiana Jones film, a knight's shield in Venice points to which city, today Turkey's İskenderun?
Alexandretta
Alexandretta, now İskenderun, is said to have been founded by Alexander the Great to mark his victory over Persia at nearby Issus; both names preserve his.
Q 15Who played symbologist Robert Langdon in the 2006 film of The Da Vinci Code, Dan Brown's Grail thriller?
Tom Hanks
Tom Hanks played Langdon; Westminster Abbey refused to let the film shoot inside, calling the book's claims 'wayward', so Lincoln Cathedral doubled for it.
Q 16Which bestselling 1982 book by Baigent, Leigh and Lincoln claimed Jesus married and his descendants settled in France?
Holy Blood, Holy Grail
Holy Blood, Holy Grail grew out of three BBC Chronicle documentaries and recast the Grail as Jesus's bloodline; two of its authors sued Dan Brown's publisher for copying the idea and lost in 2006.
Q 17The Grail-bloodline theory rests on a hoax about which supposed secret society?
The Priory of Sion
The Priory of Sion was set up in 1956 by Pierre Plantard, a convicted fraudster who planted a forged list of its past Grand Masters, Leonardo da Vinci and Isaac Newton among them, in France's national library.
Q 18According to the bloodline theory, the descendants of Jesus became which French royal dynasty?
Merovingian
Merovingian kings had long been figureheads when the last of them, Childeric III, was deposed in 751 with the pope's consent and shut in a monastery; his palace mayor Pippin took the crown.
Q 19In 15th-century England, a pun on the Old French for Holy Grail made the words mean what instead?
Royal blood
Royal blood: move the break in 'sangreal' one letter to the right and 'san greal', holy dish, becomes 'sang real'; the pun is often credited to the chronicler John Hardyng, and modern conspiracy writers revived it.
Q 20In the earliest Holy Grail romance, what does the grail hold as it is carried past the hero?
A single communion wafer
A single communion wafer: a grail then meant a wide serving dish for rich food, yet a hermit later explains that this one holds only the wafer that keeps the wounded king's father alive.
Munsalvaesche
Munsalvaesche, usually read as 'mount of salvation', cannot be found by looking: the hero is told that many seek the castle, but only those who come upon it unawares ever see it.
Q 24In Wolfram's Grail poem, the hero's son reaches a duchess in need aboard a boat guided by what?
A swan
A swan guides the Grail knight to Brabant, where he weds the duchess on one condition, that she must not question who he is; years later she does, and the swan returns with a little boat to carry him away.
Q 25In Wolfram's telling, which beings tended the Grail before it passed to a human dynasty?
Angels who stayed neutral
Angels who stayed neutral when Lucifer rebelled were sent down to tend it, the hermit Trevrizent tells the hero; near the poem's end he admits he bent the truth to talk him out of the quest.
Q 26In the Welsh romance Peredur, the hero is shown not a grail but a platter carrying what?
A severed head
A severed head lies on the salver, and nobody explains it; the hero later learns it was his cousin's, killed by the Nine Witches of Gloucester, whom he then helps Arthur destroy.
Q 27In the German poem Diu Crône, unusually, which knight achieves the Grail?
Gawain
Gawain breaks the spell on the Grail castle: its old lord and his court turn out to be dead men kept in a semblance of life, and only the maidens who serve the Grail are alive.
Q 28Which Victorian poet retold the quest for the Holy Grail in Idylls of the King?
Alfred Tennyson
Alfred Tennyson has Arthur warn that most of his knights will 'follow wandering fires' and be lost; when the quest ends only a remnant comes home, 'scarce returned a tithe', barely a tenth.
Q 29In the Vulgate Queste, the Grail leaves Britain for which Eastern city?
Sarras
Sarras first throws the Grail knights into prison, then makes one of them its king; a year later he dies there, and a hand from heaven carries the vessel away for good.
Q 30When the Grail feeds Arthur's court in Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur, what odd property does it have?
It is invisible
It is invisible when it visits Arthur's court at Pentecost: Malory says none might see it 'nor who bare it', so the knights vow to search until they have seen it more openly, and the quest begins.