1871 Documented reliquary with relics of the True Cross of Jesus Christ

An oval glass-fronted silvered brass pendant reliquary theca surmounted by a decorative bow, housing precious relics of the Wood from the True Cross of Jesus Christ. The 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 fancy manuscript cedula label as Ex Ligno SSme Crucis D.N.J.C. (of the Wood from the most precious 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 Monsignor Filippo de Angelis (†1877), Archbishop of Fermo (1842), Italy, Cardinal-Priest of San Lorenzo in Lucina (1867), and Chamberlain of the Apostolic Chamber. The relic is accompanied by the original matching authentics document issued by Cardinal de Angelis in 1871. 

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.