1730 Vatican documented reliquary with relics of the True Cross of Jesus Christ
An oversized oval glass-fronted brass pendant reliquary theca housing precious relics of the Wood from the True Cross of Jesus Christ. The sizable relics are displayed in a cruciform shape on a gilt paper burst on the ground of salmon-colored silk surrounded by silver wire ornamentation and identified in Latin on a manuscript cedula label as L+ D.N.J.C. (of the Wood from the Cross of Our Lord Jesus Christ). On the back, the reliquary is secured with a seal of red Spanish wax bearing an imprint with a coat of arms of Fr. Antonio Maria Santoro O.M. (†1741) Titular Bishop of Samaria (1725–1732) and Assistant to Monsignor Pietro Ottoboni, Cardinal-Bishop of Sabina (1725–1730) and grandnephew of Pope Alexander VIII. The relic is accompanied by the original matching authentics document issued by Bishop Santoro in 1730.
The True Cross is the name for physical remnants that, according to Church tradition, are believed to be from the cross upon which Jesus was crucified. Empress Helena, the mother of Constantine, the first Christian Emperor of Rome, traveled to the Holy Land in 326–28, where she discovered the hiding place of three crosses that were believed to be used at the crucifixion of Jesus and of two thieves, St. Dismas and Gestas, executed with him, and a miracle revealed which of the three was the True Cross. Fragments of the Cross were broken up, and the pieces were widely distributed; in 348, in one of his Catecheses, Cyril of Jerusalem remarked that the "whole earth is full of the relics of the Cross of Christ." Most of the small relics of the True Cross in Europe came from Constantinople after the city was captured and sacked in 1204 during the Fourth Crusade. They were carved up by the present bishops and divided with other very precious relics among the knights, who, after their return to the homeland, donated them to churches and monasteries.
