A History of the World in 100 Objects - Dr Neil MacGregor [166]
The crown itself is now held in the cathedral of Notre-Dame in Paris, but was originally housed in the Sainte-Chapelle, the palace church of the kings of France built in the 1240s to hold what were then the most precious objects in Europe – supreme among them, without question, the Crown of Thorns. For medieval Christendom the central purpose of life in this world was to secure salvation in the next. Relics of the saints offered a direct line to heaven, and no relics were more powerful, or more valuable, than those associated with the suffering of Christ himself. The amazing church of the Sainte-Chapelle, created to exhibit the king’s collection of relics, cost 40,000 livres to build; the Crown of Thorns alone cost the king over three times that amount. It was probably the most valuable thing in Europe. The most precious gift that the king of France could make was a single thorn detached from the crown.
One of those detached thorns is the centrepiece of the Holy Thorn Reliquary, a 20-centimetre (8-inch) high theatre made of solid gold and encrusted with jewels. In it we watch the terrifying drama of the end of the world, the day on which we, along with all the other dead, will be raised and will face judgement. This is a drama in which one day every spectator will be a participant. It is in three acts. At the bottom, as angels blow their trumpets at the Earth’s imagined corners, graves open on an enamel hillside of vivid green. Four figures – two men, two women, naked in white enamel and still in their coffins – look up and raise their hands in supplication. Far above them, at the very top of the reliquary, is God the Father sitting in judgement, among radiant gold and precious gems. In between is the focus of the whole reliquary.
For medieval Christians the only hope of escaping the torments of hell lay in the redeeming blood that Christ had shed. So, at the very centre of the reliquary is Christ, showing us his wounds, and just below him is one of the long, needle-like thorns that caused that holy blood to flow. Ista est una spinea corone Domini nostri Ihesu Christi, reads the enamel label: ‘This is a thorn from the crown of our lord Jesus Christ’.
The Roman Catholic Bishop of Leeds, the Right Reverend Arthur Roche, emphasizes its significance:
It certainly becomes a focus for the reflection on deeper things as to the cost of suffering. Especially when you think that if that thorn is authentic, then it was actually piercing the head of Christ during the course of his suffering and his crucifixion, and in some sense connects our suffering on this earth to his suffering for us; the focus gives us a strength to endure the things that we are presently going through.
It is impossible to exaggerate how powerfully this object would affect any believer kneeling in front of it. The blood drawn by this worthless thorn will save immortal souls, and so nothing earthly can be too precious for it, neither the sapphire it stands on, nor the rock crystal that protects it, nor the rubies and the pearls that frame it. This is a sermon in gold and jewels, an aid to intense contemplation and a source of the deepest comfort.
There is no way now of proving that this was a thorn that actually pierced the head of Christ, but we can say with confidence that it is a type of buckthorn that still grows around Jerusalem. The first mention of the Crown of Thorns as a relic is in Jerusalem around 400. It was later taken from the Holy Land to Constantinople, the Christian capital of the Eastern Roman Empire, where it was kept and venerated for centuries.