The crown of thorns is the real story of Jesus Christ's crucifixion and resurrection.
The New Testament states that a crown of thorns was placed on the head of Jesus.It was used to mock Jesus' claim of authority and to cause him pain.Matthew states that when they put a crown of thorns on his head, they bowed the knee and mocked him, saying "Hail, King of the Jews!"It is often referred to by the early Church Fathers, such as Clement of Alexandria, Origen and others.
A relic believed to be the crown of thorns has been venerated.The relic was given to French King Louis IX by the Latin Emperor Baldwin II of Constantinople.When a fire ravaged the Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris, the relic was kept in the Louvre Museum.[3]
What happened to the crown of thorns after the crucifixion is not mentioned in three of the Bible's books.St. Paulinus of Nola wrote after 409 that the crown was a relic that was loved by the faithful.The crown of thorns was one of the glories of Jerusalem.He says that the thorns of the world might be gathered together and broken because the crown was set upon the head of Our Redeemer.The thorns in the crown still looked green, a freshness which was miraculously renewed each day, does not strengthen the historical authenticity of the relic he had not seen, but the Breviary or Short Description of Jerusalem.[6]:42 et seq.The monk Bernard's "Pilgrimage" shows that the crown of thorns was venerated at Jerusalem in the first centuries of the common era.
Constantinople was said to be the capital of the empire.The crown was transferred from Jerusalem to Constantinople before 1063.The Bishop of Paris, St. Germain, is said to have received a thorn from the Emperor in the form of thorns.The history of several of these can be traced without difficulty, as four of them were given to Saint-Corneille of Compigne by Charles the Bald.
Baldwin II offered the crown of thorns to Louis IX, King of France, in order to get support for his empire.Louis IX built the Sainte-Chapelle in Paris after it was redeemed by the Venetians as security for a great loan of 13,134 gold pieces.The relic was deposited in the Cathedral of Notre-Dame de Paris after being restored by the Concordat of 1801.[7]
The relic that the Church received is a twisted circle of rushes of Juncus balticus, a plant native to maritime areas of northern Britain, the Baltic region, and Scandinavia.One of the new reliquaries was made to the designs of Eugene Viollet-le-Duc and was commissioned by Napoleon Bonaparte.The chaplet was presented every Friday at Notre-Dame when the Sainte-Chapelle treasures were exhibited at the Louvre in 2001.Pope John Paul II personally translated it to Sainte-Chapelle.The relic can only be seen on the first Friday of every month when it is exhibited for a special veneration Mass.Also see Feast of the Crown of Thorns.
The relic was saved during the Notre-Dame de Paris fire.[13]
A band of Roman soldiers rushing to hold the thorns together is believed to have been the reason for the helmet of thorns.At the time when the circlet was brought to Paris, the sixty or seventy thorns, which seem to have been afterwards distributed by St. Louis and his successors, had been separated from the band of rushes.None of these are still in Paris.There are some fragments of rush preserved.Both tradition and existing remains suggest that the thorns came from the jujube tree, the bush botanically known as Ziziphus spina-christi.This grows in abundance by the wayside around Jerusalem, reaching a height of fifteen or twenty feet.The crooked branches of this shrub have thorns growing in pairs, a straight spine and a curved one at each point.The relic preserved in the Capella della Spina at Pisa is among the largest in size and is an example of this peculiarity.It was [13].
Not all of the holy thorns are first-class relics.M. de Mély was able to enumerate more than 700."unam de spinis quae fuit apposita coronae spinae nostri Redemptoris" is the statement that Peter de Averio gave to the cathedral of Angers.In Roman Catholic tradition, a relic of the first class is a part of a saint's body, and any objects used in the Crucifixion that carried the blood of Christ is anything known to have been touched or used by the second class.It is not always easy to trace the history of these objects of devotion, as first-class relics were often divided and any number of authentic third class relics may exist.
The Crown of Thorns was purchased by French King Louis IX during a crusade to the Holy Land.It is in the Louvre Museum in Paris.The Holy Thorn Reliquary in the British Museum contains a single thorn, which was given to the French prince Jean, duc de Berry.There are no comments at this time.
Mary, Queen of Scots is said to have given thorns to the 7th Earl of Northumberland.[15][13]
The crown of thorns in art can be seen on the head of Christ in depictions of the Crucifixion or the subject Ecce Homo.The Catholic Encyclopedia reported that some archaeologists claimed to have found a figure of the crown of thorns in the circle which sometimes surrounds the chi-rho emblem on early Christian sarcophagi, but they believed it was only meant for a laurel.
The crown of thorns is often used to contrast crowns on the other side of the world.William Marshall's print Eikon Basilike depicts the execution of the English King Charles I, who put aside his crown to take up the crown of thorns.This contrast can be seen in Frank Dicksee's painting The Two Crowns.