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Since The Silver Chalice was published in July of last year there has been much speculation as to whether the story is based on the Chalice of Antioch, now owned by the Metropolitan Museum in New York and on display in the Cloisters in that city. This famous and much-discussed article of rare antiquity was found in the ruins of ancient Antioch in 1910 and came into the possession of the house of Kouchakji, being sent to the United States at the outbreak of the First World War. Mr. Fahim Kouchakji in New York, convinced that it was of the utmost importance, engaged the services of Dr. Gustavus Augustus Eisen, a Swedish scholar and authority on Christian art, to study it. After nine years of research and with the assistance of a circle of helpers, Dr. Eisen produced a book, which was published in two large volumes under the title of The Great Chalice of Antioch, and in which the conviction was developed that the inner part of the chalice could be the cup which had been used at the Last Supper. Three years ago the chalice was purchased by the Metropolitan with funds donated by Mr. John D. Rockefeller, Jr.

As The Silver Chalice is a work of fiction and is no more than my own conception of how the cup might have come into existence, it was published as such and no reference was made to the Chalice of Antioch. As my book has been in circulation now for over eight months and many readers have wondered about the conception of it, it seems proper to repeat what I have said in print elsewhere many times, that it was the Chalice of Antioch which prompted me to begin the story in the first place. I desire to add that I am indebted to Dr. Eisen’s work, under the sponsorship of Mr. Fahim Kouchakji, for much of the information about the cup itself.

THOMAS B. COSTAIN

March 26, 1953