Bruce N H
Active Member
Hi all,
This summer I got the chance to travel to Munich, which was an amazing trip. Anyway, of slight relevance to this forum, one afternoon we spent several hours touring the Munich Residenz, the palace that was home to the Wittlesbach rulers of Bavaria. I was fascinated by one room that was packed full of reliqueries. Supposedly the Bavarian rulers had the largest collection of relics outside of the Vatican itself. I only took a few pictures, as it was kind of morbid, but here are a few. I think this was supposed to be St. Matthew's leg (I couldn't help thinking of Sam's "Troll sat alone" poem while posting this):
I forget who these were supposed to be. There were probably 30 or so reliqueries like this:
This was one of the most impressive. In the top portion there is the sponge that was lifted to Christ's lips on the cross, to the left there is a thorn from his crown, to the right I think one of the nails that hung him there, and in the middle was a huge chunk (not just a sliver) of the cross itself.
That's all the pictures I took in that room, but there were bones of all sorts of saints, part of Mary's dress, a few skulls (I think one of them might have been John the Baptist) and a casket that had the bodies of the Holy Innocents (babies killed by Herod when he was trying to kill off the baby Jesus). It seemed like they were all either major New Testament figures or major saints (as in one that I know as a non-Catholic).
Of course this all got me thinking of the Name of the Rose and Adso visiting the crypt full of such treasures.
Oh, elsewhere in a different museum there was this, which was supposed to hold a sliver of the true Cross.
Bruce
This summer I got the chance to travel to Munich, which was an amazing trip. Anyway, of slight relevance to this forum, one afternoon we spent several hours touring the Munich Residenz, the palace that was home to the Wittlesbach rulers of Bavaria. I was fascinated by one room that was packed full of reliqueries. Supposedly the Bavarian rulers had the largest collection of relics outside of the Vatican itself. I only took a few pictures, as it was kind of morbid, but here are a few. I think this was supposed to be St. Matthew's leg (I couldn't help thinking of Sam's "Troll sat alone" poem while posting this):
I forget who these were supposed to be. There were probably 30 or so reliqueries like this:
This was one of the most impressive. In the top portion there is the sponge that was lifted to Christ's lips on the cross, to the left there is a thorn from his crown, to the right I think one of the nails that hung him there, and in the middle was a huge chunk (not just a sliver) of the cross itself.
That's all the pictures I took in that room, but there were bones of all sorts of saints, part of Mary's dress, a few skulls (I think one of them might have been John the Baptist) and a casket that had the bodies of the Holy Innocents (babies killed by Herod when he was trying to kill off the baby Jesus). It seemed like they were all either major New Testament figures or major saints (as in one that I know as a non-Catholic).
Of course this all got me thinking of the Name of the Rose and Adso visiting the crypt full of such treasures.
Oh, elsewhere in a different museum there was this, which was supposed to hold a sliver of the true Cross.
Bruce
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