Chartres, Reims, Nancy… The most lovely treasures of the cathedrals | EUROtoday
Get real time updates directly on you device, subscribe now.
QWhat would cathedrals be with out their treasures? The buildings are filled with treasured items, amassed because the 4the century by the monarchs and princes of the Church. Chalices, patens, monstrances, liturgical dishes, gold and silver shuttles, usually embellished with treasured stones. Priestly vestments with distinctive materials or embroidered altar cloths. Liturgical books, like gospel books, lined with goldsmith’s plates. Historical masterpieces too, for instance the tunic of King Saint Louis at Notre-Dame de Paris, the talisman of Charlemagne at Notre-Dame de Reims, and even all of the devices of the coronation of the kings of France on the Basilica of Saint -Denis.
“Originally, these treasures were kept in strong cabinets, they were not intended to be shown to the public,” explains Marie-Anne Sire, basic inspector of historic monuments and member of the scientific council for conservation and restoration. of Notre Dame. In 2018, she coordinated Treasures of the cathedrals (ed. du Patrimoine, with Judith Kagan), the results of a listing mission in 42 cathedrals in France. The treasures are ultra-protected: they characterize a financial reserve for the Church. A reserve that the revolutionaries will get their fingers on, inflicting many uncommon items to vanish by melting them down…
ALSO READ Notre-Dame: the miracle of a unprecedented development web siteThe wealthy treasure of Notre-Dame de Paris will thus be largely drained, earlier than being restored to worth by Viollet-le-Duc. It comprises priceless items: the white linen tunic of King Saint Louis, and the relics of the Passion of Christ, a chunk of the cross and a nail, and, above all, the crown of thorns.
In the treasures of cathedrals, the spectacular items are sometimes the reliquaries, chests – whose picket “soul” is roofed with enamel – which function receptacles for the stays of saints or objects that belonged to them. It is to venerate them that pilgrims go to cathedrals. “In the Middle Ages, showing relics made it possible to generate donations to finance the beautification and expansion of buildings,” continues Marie-Anne Sire.
In Chartres, the Virgin and the Hurons
The veil of the Virgin, provided within the ninthe century by Charles the Bald, grandson of Charlemagne, continues to be on show in Chartres Cathedral. It nonetheless attracts crowds at present and, to permit its veneration, it’s positioned not within the treasury, however in a chapel within the ambulatory. This relic benefited from quite a few donations and contributed to the enrichment of the treasure of the cathedral, which reopened on September 20, after greater than twenty years of closure.
ALSO READ Splendors and miseries of the treasure of Notre-Dame
It presents to the general public, on two ranges, treasured objects, together with wampum belts provided by the Abenakis and the Huron-Wendats, Amerindians of New France (Canada), within the seventeenth century.e century: they’re “bordered with porcupine quills and made of shell beads, white and purple, as well as glass beads, white and black, threaded into leather straps which draw inscriptions dedicated to the Virgin”.
In Saint-Denis, the coronation devices
“It’s a fundamental treasure,” emphasizes Marie-Anne Sire. It reached its peak underneath the route of Abbot Suger, within the twelfthe century, for whom the fabric fantastic thing about works allowed entry to “immaterial things”. It can be the primary open to the general public, our interlocutor explains, on the request of the kings to be able to present the individuals the devices of coronation, that are referred to by the time period “regalia”.
“A piece on the historical past of the abbey written by the Maurist Dom Félibien, in 1706, provides Marie-Anne Sire, presents engravings by Nicolas Guérard which present the ordering of the treasure and the group of the valuable objects in every showcase . This first scenography will function a reference for all tasks to develop cathedral treasures. »
In Reims, the unbelievable talisman of Charlemagne
It is the article with protecting virtues pampered by emperors. Charlemagne wore this talisman round his neck. It was allegedly discovered in the course of the exhumation of the physique by Emperor Frederick Barbarossa in 1166, and was subsequently preserved within the Aachen treasury. The metropolis’s bishop provided it to Empress Josephine in 1804 to thank Napoleon for having returned to Aachen Cathedral the relics which had been confiscated in the course of the Revolution.
Joséphine then handed it on to her daughter, Hortense de Beauharnais, who entrusted it to her son Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte, the longer term Napoleon III. After his abdication, his spouse, Eugénie de Montijo, took refuge first in England, then in Germany, the place she was in September 1914 when the Reims cathedral was focused by German bombings.
Upset, she donated the talisman to the cathedral treasury. It came about in a reliquary chiseled by the goldsmith Froment-Meurice within the nineteenth century.e century, subsequent to the chalice of Saint Remi, introduced from the East in the course of the Crusades, a masterpiece of Byzantine artwork – which Pope John Paul II requested to make use of for the mass he gave in full air on September 22, 1996 throughout her go to to Reims -, and the nave of Sainte-Ursule, a carnelian vessel in gilded silver, provided to Queen Anne of Brittany when she visited Tours in 1500.
All these treasures are stored on the Tau Palace, the previous bishops’ palace, within the speedy neighborhood of the cathedral, at present being redeveloped.
In Nancy, rarities from the IXe ande centuries
To Discover
Kangaroo of the day
Answer
This treasure is made up of a number of very previous items, since they belonged to Gauzelin, bishop of Toul within the tenthe century, turn into holy. Most of the objects have been introduced within the Thirties in a secure show case which is able to quickly give solution to a brand new exhibition machine.
ALSO READ When Notre-Dame de Paris was pillaged by ParisiansThere we discover his episcopal ring, in truth a reliquary ring – the stone of which comes from the stoning of Saint Stephen. Among the opposite outstanding items, a liturgical ivory comb from the ninthe century and a big rocaille chalice enhanced with pearls, treasured stones and enamels. Last object of selection: a gospel guide made up of a manuscript of 227 illuminated leaves, which dates from the ninthe century and would have been enriched by Saint Gauzelin.
https://www.lepoint.fr/politique/les-pieces-spectaculaires-des-tresors-des-cathedrales-24-12-2024-2578600_20.php