MAGNIFICENT SILVER RELIQUARY, LARGE TRUE CROSS RELIC! Start Price USD 399.00 Current Price USD 531.51 Time Left - Bid Count 4 Buy It Now Price USD 1,980.00 Reserve Price - Start Time Thursday, November 20, 2008 End Time Sunday, November 30, 2008 Location Roma See more about 'MAGNIFICENT SILVER RELIQUARY, LARGE TRUE CROSS RELIC!' Description A spiritual treasure, worthy of the treasury of a Cathedral: BAROCQUE SILVER ALTAR RELIQUARY  WITH A SIGNIFICANT RELIC OF THE TRUE CROSS Austria ca. 1740 A wonderful piece from the golden age of the Habsburg Empire: An Austrian Barocque silver reliquary (with hallmark), a masterpiece of the silversmiths of this era with many fine details.  Height: ca. 11 inches. In the center, in an oval-shaped theca with a significant, unusually large relic of the True Cross of Our Lord Jesus Christ, surrounded by filigree gilt paperoles decoration.   The Most Holy Cross of Our Lord Jesus Christ According to several Church historians of the 4th and 5th century, the True Cross was discovered in 325 AD when Emperor Constantine the Great ordered the removal of a pagan temple built by Hadrian over the site of the Calvary and the Holy Sepulchre. Beneath the structure, in an old cistern, three crosses, the title with the inscription "Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews", and three nails were found. In the presence of the Empress Helena, mother of Constantine, the Cross of Christ was identified by the 'titulus' and the nail holes, and later confirmed by a miracle. It was laid upon a sick woman who was immediately miraculously cured. Helena divided the most precious wood into several parts, leaving a fragment in Jerusalem, sending a second to her son in Constantinople and taking a third to Rome. A part of it and half of the title with the inscription I NAZARINUS R... is still preserved and venerated in the Basilica di S. Croce, one of the seven main churches of the Eternal City. In 1998, a careful investigation was commissioned by the Holy See and seven Israeli experts on the dating of inscriptions (comparative palaeography) dated its letters into the 1st century, the time of Christ. This suddenly gave the 'legend of the Finding of the Cross' a lot of credibility. Already in 349 AD, St. Cyril, bishop of Jerusalem, stated that the True Cross "has been distributed, fragment by fragment, from this spot (Jerusalem) and has already nearly filled the world", confirming the early practise of distributing tiny particles of the Most Holy Wood. When St. Paulinus of Nola sent one to a friend in ca. 401 AD, he wrote: "Receive a great gift in a little case and take this segment as an armament against the perils of the present and a pledge of everlasting safety". He stressed that "even the smallest particle bears in it the whole power of the Cross of Christ".  The claim of the "enlightened" sceptics, that all relics of the True Cross would be sufficient to build a ship, was proven wrong in 1870 by the French scholar Rohault de Fleury, who mathematically calculated the volume of all relics of the True Cross in all European Cathedrals and found them all together having the mass of only one third of a Roman cross!   As per Ebay's new rules, this item is allowed as it contains no human remains but objects of devotion; the relic is of wood. Please note that you bid on the precious antique reliquary, the relic is a gift to the High Bidder. Please contact me if you have any questions. If you are interested in reliquaries, you find more in my Ebay-Store - it´s just a mouseclick away! Bid with confidence, the authenticity is guaranteed. Good luck and God bless you!   Place a Bid!