1783 Vatican documented reliquary with relics of the True Cross of Jesus Christ

A double-crystal cruciform reliquary theca decorated around the perimeter with intricate silver filigree, housing precious relics of the Wood from the True Cross of Jesus Christ. The relics are displayed in a cruciform shape in the center of the reliquary.  The reliquary is secured by a seal of red Spanish wax bearing an imprint with a coat of arms of Fr. Orazio Mattei (†1792) Titular Archbishop of Colossae (1767-1792) and an important Vatican official. The relic is accompanied by the original matching authentics document issued in the Vatican in 1783 by Bishop Mattei under the authority of Pope Pius VI. 

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.