Description: This is a (large) copper theca with silver front, inside tree gilted crosses with on the middle one a wood of the True Cross of our Lord Jesus. Relic in place and wax seal intact. Comes from a convent in Belgium.Sealed with the seal of Engelbertus Sterckx who was Archbishop at Mechelen belgium. Diameter 3 inch. Shipping and handling US$ 27,00 by insured priority mail and tracking number. All my items are securely packet, to avoid all possible damage.Our Non Paying Buyer process is now automatically managed by Ebay. The process starts four days after auction end and closes as soon as payment is received. Please contact me if you have any questions. Items cannot be returned!Please be carefull when buying relics online. Fake relics are increasingly more and more of a problem. Most of the relics I sell are from convents in Belgium and Italy. I have been collecting relics for more than 25 years. I consider myself an expert. Please contact me if you have any questions.As per Ebay policy,this reliquary does not contain human remains but only objects of devotion. The auction is for the theca, the relic is a gift. Please see my other auctions for more antique catholic items. The Most Holy Wood of the Cross of Our Lord Jesus ChristAccording 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! Engelbertus Sterckx was born 2 November 1792 in Ophem, Brabant. His parents were farmers. He began his studies in Vilvoorde, after which he studied humanities at the college of Enghien (1805-1807). After secondary school in Leuven, he entered the Major Seminary, Mechelen, on 18 September 1811 and in 1813 was named subsecretary of archdiocesan curia of Mechelen in 1813. Sterckx was ordained, with an age exemption, as priest for the Archdiocese of Mechelen, on 18 February 1815. He was vice-regent and professor of philosophy and moral theology at Mechelen from 1815 to 1821 when he was appointed pastor at Boechout. In 1824 he was appointed archpriest of the Cathedral of Our Lady in Antwerp. In 1827, he was named vicar general to Archbishop, Francis Anthony de Méan of Mechelen, and organized the opposition of the clergy to the religious policies of William I.
Price: 1225 USD
Location: Amsterdam
End Time: 2024-09-28T07:52:20.000Z
Shipping Cost: 27 USD
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Item Specifics
All returns accepted: ReturnsNotAccepted
Religion: Christianity
Country/Region of Manufacture: Belgium
Handmade: Yes
