Reliquary theca with a relic of St. Barbara the Great Martyr

Oval glass-fronted brass pendant reliquary theca housing first-class ex ossibus (of the bone) relic of Saint Barbara. The relic is affixed to a red silk ground, surrounded by silver wire ornamentation, and identified in Latin on a manuscript cedula label as S. Barbarae V.M. (Saint Barbara, Virgin & Martyr). On the back, the theca is secured with a perfectly preserved seal of red Spanish wax bearing an imprint of a coat of arms of an unidentified Roman Catholic Bishop.

Saint Barbara, known in the Eastern Orthodox Church as the Great Martyr Barbara, was an early Christian saint and martyr who is venerated as one of the Fourteen Holy Helpers. Accounts place her in the 3rd century in Nicomedia, present-day Turkey or in Heliopolis of Phoenicia, present-day Baalbek, Lebanon. She is a holy patron of Armourers, Architects, Artillerymen, Firemen, Mathematicians, Miners, and Prisoners.