Holy Thorn Reliquary

A History of the World in 100 Objects

BBC

History

4.4 • 2.1K Ratings

🗓️ 5 July 2010

⏱️ 14 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Neil MacGregor's world history as told through things. This week he is exploring the sophisticated ways that people expressed religious yearning in the 14th and 15th centuries. He is looking at the statues of gods and ancestors - in India, Mexico and on Easter Island - and he describes the importance of icon painting in the Orthodox Church. Today he is with an object designed to connect with Christ himself - a stunning Christian reliquary from medieval Europe made to house a thorn from the crown of thorns. Neil tells the story of this highly ornate reliquary while Sister Benedicta Ward and the Archbishop of Leeds, the Right Reverend Arthur Roche, help explain the background and meaning to the powerful tradition of relic worship. Producer: Anthony Denselow

Transcript

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0:00.0	Thank you for downloading this episode of a history of the world in a hundred objects from BBC Radio Form. I'm in Paris and I'm in what was one of the greatest museums of medieval Europe
0:25.0	although it doesn't look like a museum.
0:27.0	It's a two-story gothic building with soaring architecture and spectacular stained glass.
0:33.2	It's the Saint Chappelle, the palace church of the kings of France, built in the 1240s to house what
0:39.4	were then the most precious objects in the world. And supreme amongst those objects was
0:44.7	without question the crown of thorns placed on Christ's head before the
0:49.1	crucifixion and a relic of the utmost sanctity. For medieval Christendom the key purpose of life in this world
0:56.4	was to secure salvation in the next and relics of the Saints offered a direct line to heaven. No relics were more powerful than those
1:05.0	associated with the suffering of Christ himself or more valuable. This
1:10.2	amazing church created to exhibit the King's collection of relics, cost 40,000
1:16.3	leave to build.
1:18.1	The Crown of Thorns alone cost the King over three times that amount. It was probably the most valuable thing in Europe.
1:27.8	The most precious gift that the king of France could make was a single thorn detached from
1:32.4	the crown.
1:35.0	And the object in this program is one of those thorns,
1:40.0	and the reliquary made to house it.
1:42.0	It's not just an object. and the reliquary made to house it.
1:43.0	It's not just an object,
1:45.0	it's got the devotion of centuries behind it.
1:48.0	It looks like a window into another world, which I think is what it is.
1:55.0	A history of the world in a hundred objects. Holy Thorn reliquary
2:16.0	made in Paris around 1370. 17.
	...

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