AUSTRIAN BAROCQUE RELIQUARY, TRUE CROSS RELIC, DOC! Start Price USD 3,480.00 Current Price USD 3,480.00 Time Left - Bid Count 0 Buy It Now Price - Reserve Price - Start Time Monday, September 01, 2008 End Time Monday, September 08, 2008 Location Roma See more about 'AUSTRIAN BAROCQUE RELIQUARY, TRUE CROSS RELIC, DOC!' Description A spiritual treasure, worthy of the treasury of a Cathedral: BAROCQUE ALTAR RELIQUARY  WITH A RELIC OF THE TRUE CROSS, Document Austria 1760 A wonderful piece from the golden age of the Habsburg Empire: An Austrian Barocque reliquary, a masterpiece of the silversmiths of this era with many fine details, silver, partially fire-gilt, the cross on top decorated with a ruby-red stone.  The reliquary was donated to a convent in Tuscany, near Florence, when an Austrian princess became its Abbess in ca. 1830.  Height: ca. 11 inches. In the center, in an oval-shaped silver theca, sealed with the red wax seal of a Bishop with the threads intact. Inside, surrounded by beautiful filigree decoration of the "armae Christi", the instruments of the Passion of Our Lord and the "lamb of God", also surrounded by four river pearls, is the most precious relic: Two splinters of the True Cross of Our Lord Jesus Christ The relic comes with a document, re-issued during a visitation, by Cardinal Elias dalla Costa, Archbishop of Florence, on 12 April 1938. Since the Canon Law (CIC) which was released by the Holy See in 1917, required a document in case a reliquary is exposed for public veneration, often, when the original documents were lost, new ones were issued during the 1920iues and 1930ies. Here, the newly issued document describes the oval-shaped silver theca in which the relic is enclosed.   SS. Crucis D.N.J.C. Of the Most 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!   As per Ebay's new rules, this item is allowed as it contains no human remains but objects of devotion; the relic is of wood. Please note that you bid on the precious antique reliquary, the relic is a gift to the High Bidder. Please contact me if you have any questions. If you are interested in reliquaries, you find more in my Ebay-Store - it´s just a mouseclick away! Bid with confidence, the authenticity is guaranteed. Good luck and God bless you!   Place a Bid!