Crucifix Reliquary with relics from the Wood of the True Cross of Jesus Christ

Solidly built metal ebony-fronted crucifix reliquary decorated with a realistically modeled figure of crucified Christ. The reliquary opens by removal of the top screw, revealing an inner glass-fronted metal cruciform insert housing large relics from the Wood of the True Cross of Jesus Christ. The relics are identified in Latin on typeset cedula label as Ligno SS Crucis D.N.J.C. ([from] the Wood of the Most Holy Cross of Our Lord Jesus Christ). On the back, the insert is secured by a perfectly preserved seal of red Spanish wax with an imprint of a coat of arms of Archbishop St. Guido Maria Conforti (†), Bishop of Parma (1907-1931), who himself was canonized as a Saint in 2011 by Pope John Paul II on account of his life of heroic virtue. 

The True Cross is the name for physical remnants which, by the 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 very 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.