Our Lady Of Relics
Country : Italy
Year :
Nothing is known of the early history of those things said to be relics of the Blessed Virgin; many of them are first heard of at the time of the Crusades when there was a great transference of them from the Near East to Western Europe. The authentication given them by ecclesiastical authorities is not a guarantee of genuineness but of possibility.
Several churches in the East and the West have claimed relics of Mary’s clothing. The Constantinople girdle was kept in a reliquary which seems to have been identified with Our Lady’s coffin; it is said that this “coffin” was sent with the shroud, to the Emperor Marcian and his wife, St. Pulcheria, by Juvenal, Bishop of Jerusalem in 452. The relics disappeared at the time of the fall of the city to the Turks in 1453. What is said to be Mary’s wedding ring is in the cathedral at Perugia in Italy. Some of her hair was brought to Piazza in Sicily in crusading times.
It need hardly be pointed out that in view of the belief in silken material two yards by eighteen inches is preserved.
Aachen in Germany is said to have Our Lady’s cloak. In Salisbury in England a piece of bluish material thought to be the garment of Mary is venerated.
Other places, too, claim to have similar relics of Mary.
