Vatican reliquary theca with relics of the True Cross of Jesus Christ - Our Lady of the Miraculous Medal of the Immaculate Conception

A small oval glass-fronted silver pendant reliquary theca decorated on the front with two angels housing precious relics of the Wood from the True Cross of Jesus Christ. The relics are displayed in a cruciform shape on the ground of red silk and identified in Latin on a typeset cedula label as SS Crucis (of the most precious Cross [of Our Lord Jesus Christ).  On the back, under a protective cap with an image of two angels surrounding Our Lady of the Miraculous Medal of the Immaculate Conception originated from apparitions of the Virgin Mary to St. Catherine Labouré in 1830 in Paris, the reliquary is secured with a seal of red Spanish wax bearing an imprint with a coat of arms of Monsignor Basilio Pompili (†1937), Vicar General of Rome (1913-1937). The relic is accompanied by the original silk and velvet lined case.  

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.