Jerusalem in Paris: Relics of the Passion at Notre-Dame

Jerusalem in Paris: 

Relics of the Passion at Notre-Dame 

By Raven Navarro and Marian Bleeke

 

Sainte Chapelle - Upper Chapel, Paris, France.  Didier B (Sam67fr), CC BY-SA 2.5 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5>, via Wikimedia Commons

 

 

 

 

In the 13th century, when King Louis IX or Saint Louis brought relics of the Passion of Christ to Paris, they were first placed in the cathedral of Notre-Dame. He then constructed a special chapel, the Sainte-Chapelle, to hold and display them. This chapel’s architecture expresses some of the significance the relics had at the time through its tall elegant windows standing like transparent crystals and its slender pillars holding up its vaults like the vault of heaven. Centuries later, during the French Revolution, the relics were moved to the National Library for safe keeping away from the looting. After the revolution, Napoleon Bonaparte made an agreement with church representatives for the return of the relics. Napoleon had a reliquary (a protective enclosure) made for them and they were placed in back in their original Parisian home at Notre-Dame. But where did these relics come from before they first arrived in Paris?

 

“Crown of Thorns in the circular reliquary in crystal of 1896 . Notre-Dame de Paris cathedral.” 16 February 2007. Gavigan. Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

The relics of the Passion are objects that are said to have been on or even in Christ’s body at the time of the Crucifixion. Their importance comes from their physical contact with him at this moment. The single largest relic is the Crown of Thorns that was placed on Jesus’ head by his captors to mock him and cause him pain. Tracing where the crown came from before it arrived in Paris is difficult. Saint Paulinus mentions something like it being kept in a basilica in Jerusalem in a text from the year 409. Next texts dated to approximately AD 530 claim the crown was displayed in the Basilica of Mount Zion, a church on a hill in Jerusalem. And then another text mentions it in another basilica in 570. Sometime in the next few hundred years, the crown was transferred to the Byzantine capitol of Constantinople, now Istanbul, where several thorns were removed by the emperors and given as gifts to other rulers. Then during the Crusades, Emperor Baldwin II offered it to the Venetians as collateral for a loan and Louis IX bought it from the Venetians. 

 

“Replica of holy nail relic made with metal filing from the real holy nail.” 19 May 2017. TrappistMonkStuff.  Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.

The holy nail at Notre-Dame is said to be one of the nails that was used in the crucifixion to hold Jesus on the cross. According to Notre Dame, the nail came from Jesus’s burial place in Jerusalem, the Holy Sepulcher, and was given to the Emperor Charlemagne in 799. Various churches claim thirty-six nails to be the nails of the Passion, more than could possibly have been used in a single crucifixion. Judging which are and not authentic is difficult if not impossible. The discovery of a Roman crucifixion by V. Tzaferis in the 1960s suggested one way of crossing some nails off the list. He found an adult male with a nail still lodged in his feet. It was an iron carpenter's nail of sixteen centimeters in length and four sides. If similar nails were used in crucifying Jesus, then the nail in Notre-Dame is the wrong size. But that is a big if: there is no reason why all nails used in all crucifixions need to have been the same size. The nail at Notre-Dame has as good of a claim to authenticity as any.

 

Reliquary of the True Cross at Notre-Dame, Paris.  KJK, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

 

Likewise there are many, many, relics of the True Cross. Notre-Dame had one ever before Louis IX brought the relics to Paris. This first Parisian True Cross fragment was given to the cathedral in 1120 as a gift from a former canon, Anseau, who had moved on to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. The earliest records of the True Cross go back to the mid-4th century when it is supposed to have been discovered by St. Helena, the mother of the emperor Constantine. Over time, the increasing adoration of Jesus Christ led to the sale of fragments of the cross. To explain and even justify the presence of so many fragments, it was said that the blood of Christ made the True Cross indestructible, so that when divided it would never diminish but just create more and more of itself. This allowed the relic to be multiplied wherever Christianity expanded during the medieval period and fragments of it to be distributed all over.

A church’s status can be linked to the relics it possesses. The practice of honoring them dates back to the earliest years of Christianity and throughout the Middle Ages bishops and canons took every step possible to obtain them. They were so important that there were feasts held in their honor where they were placed on view for church patrons. Relics can remind us that holy men and women were people of flesh and blood. They convey sacred history in a way that is concrete and tangible in place and in time. The relics of the Passion at Notre-Dame continue play this role in history as they were removed from the church at the time of the fire in April 2019 and again placed into safe keeping. We look forward to their return.

Sources: 

Dany Sandron and Andrew Tallon, Notre Dame Cathedral: Nine Centuries of History.  University Park, Pennsylvania, 2020.