The Silver Chalice takes place in Israel and other parts of the Roman Empire shortly after the death of Jesus. A young man, Basil, is adopted by a rich man, but loses his fortune when his father dies and his uncle defrauds him claiming he was purchased as a slave and sells him. As a slave he survives by working as an artist and silversmith. He gains his freedom, becomes a Christian and is commissioned to create an outer covering for the cup Jesus drank from at The Last Supper.
The plot of The Silver Chalice centers on the Grail—the cup from which Christ drank at the Last Supper. Tired of “all the Arthurian tripe about the Holy Grail,” Costain imagined his own version of the story. Joseph of Arimathea hires Basil of Antioch, a lowborn artisan, to fashion a beautiful silver casing to hold the plain original cup that Jesus used. The casing is to be decorated with the faces of Jesus and the twelve apostles. To fulfill the commission, Basil travels throughout the ancient Mediterranean world to meet these men and those who knew them intimately.
Famous quotes containing the word silver:
“So long as you write what you wish to write, that is all that matters; and whether it matters for ages or only for hours, nobody can say. But to sacrifice a hair of the head of your vision, a shade of its colour, in deference to some Headmaster with a silver pot in his hand or to some professor with a measuring-rod up his sleeve, is the most abject treachery, and the sacrifice or wealth and chastity, which used to be said to be the greatest of human disasters, a mere flea-bite in comparison.”
—Virginia Woolf (1882–1941)