BAROQUE SILVER RELIQUARY, TRUE CROSS, BVM RELICS!

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From the Private Collection of a Roman Monsignore - a spiritual treasure, worthy the treasury of a major Cathedral: BEAUTIFUL BAROQUE SILVER RELIQUARY WITH A RELIC OF THE TRUE CROSS, THE VEIL OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN MARYAND ST. ANTHONY ca. 1760 From the private collection of a Roman Monsignore who passed down in September 2008: A beautiful late 18th century silver altar reliquary, ca. 12 inches in height. A beautiful piece and an extremely fine work of the Roman silversmiths of the Mid-18th century - nearly 300 years old! - with two silver hallmarks. The reliquary is in excellent condition. Its design represents the heaven with clouds and the shining Cross in the center Its foot is inscribed/engraved from the inside:D. DOMINICUS GIAQUINTA CAPPELANUS 1760 - Chaplain Don Dominic Giaquinta, 1760 (Obviously the original owner of this precious piece) In the center of this exquisite piece, behand a hand-carved rock crystal cross, sealed, is the most precious relic, two significant splinters of The Holy Cross of Our Lord Jesus Christ According to several Church historians of the 4th and 5th century, the True Cross was discovered in 325 AD when Emperor Constantine the Great ordered the removal of a pagan temple built by Hadrian over the site of the Calvary and the Holy Sepulchre. Beneath the structure, in an old cistern, three crosses, the title with the inscription "Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews", and three nails were found. In the presence of the Empress Helena, mother of Constantine, the Cross of Christ was identified by the 'titulus' and the nail holes, and later confirmed by a miracle. It was laid upon a sick woman who was immediately miraculously cured. Helena divided the most precious wood into several parts, leaving a fragment in Jerusalem, sending a second to her son in Constantinople and taking a third to Rome. A part of it and half of the title with the inscription I NAZARINUS R... is still preserved and venerated in the Basilica di S. Croce , one of the seven main churches of the Eternal City. In 1998, a careful investigation was commissioned by the Holy See and seven Israeli experts on the dating of inscriptions (comparative palaeography) dated its letters into the 1st century, the time of Christ. This suddenly gave the 'legend of the Finding of the Cross' a lot of credibility. Already in 349 AD, St. Cyril, bishop of Jerusalem, stated that the True Cross "has been distributed, fragment by fragment, from this spot (Jerusalem) and has already nearly filled the world", confirming the early practise of distributing tiny particles of the Most Holy Wood. When St. Paulinus of Nola sent one to a friend in ca. 401 AD, he wrote: "Receive a great gift in a little case and take this segment as an armament against the perils of the present and a pledge of everlasting safety". He stressed that "even the smallest particle bears in it the whole power of the Cross of Christ". The claim of the "enlightened" sceptics, that all relics of the True Cross would be sufficient to build a ship, was proven wrong in 1870 by the French scholar Rohault de Fleury, who mathematically calculated the volume of all relics of the True Cross in all European Cathedrals and found them all together having the mass of only one third of a Roman cross! below are two oval-shaped reliquaries, sealed with the red wax seal of a Roman Curia Bishop, of Ex Velo B.V.M.: Of the Veil of the Blessed Virgin Mary, once the main relic of the Imperial City of Constantinople, venerated in the Blacherne Church of the Imperial Palace, stolen during the 4th Crusade in 1204 and brought to Manoppello, Italy, later donated to the Church of St. Francis in Assisi, with a large fragment given to the Pope, venerated in the Basilica S. John in the Lateran today (Rome Pilgrims can see it in the Treasury!). S. Antonii Pat(avense): St. Anthony of Padua (1195-1231), the great miracle worker... read more

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