Relics

To the Parish church of Argenteuil some ten miles out from Paris, where Heloise was once Abbess, went devout Roman Catholics by the thousands last week to gaze with pious awe upon a purple woolen garment. To them it was the tunic which Christ wore on His way to Calvary and His Crucifixion; sweat had stained the fabric and on one shoulder were blood spots where the cross had rested. Now as the Holy Tunic, woven and dyed by the Virgin Mary, it was being given solemn ostension for the first time since 1900 because Good Friday commemorated the 19th centenary of the Crucifixion and Easter marked the end of Holy Year.

Given to Argenteuil by Charlemagne a thousand years ago, admitted as a genuine relic by Archbishop Hugh of Rouen in 1156, the Holy Tunic has been zealously guarded down the centuries. Credited with hundreds of miraculous cures, its therapeutic powers were last said to be demonstrated in 1843 when a portion of it sent to the University of Fribourg healed a youth injured in a football game. When its golden reliquary was opened few years later, moths flew out after eating holes in the garment.

Because Gobelin tapestry experts in 1892 fixed its date as about the time of Christ, because chemical analyses proved its stains to be blood, the Holy Tunic would seem to have better claims to authenticity than two other famed relics, the Holy Coat of Trier and the Holy Shroud of Turin. The Holy Shroud of Turin, an ancient piece of linen cloth in a silver casket locked with three silver keys, has belonged to the House of Savoy for 500 years. In 1898 it was the centre of a bitter controversy when art-historians suggested its outline of Christ's body was painted by a French artist in the 14th Century. Guarded day and night by six stalwart carabinieri, its three weeks' ostension last year drew 1,500,000 pilgrims from the ends of the earth. In Cadouin, France, is another Holy Shroud, venerated since the 12th Century, and at Echmiadzin, Armenia, is a Holy Coat which, too precious to be seen, has been sealed beneath a pulpit for 1,600 years.

Elsewhere throughout the world are other famed relics of Christ, many supposedly discovered by St. Helena, mother of the Emperor Constantine, who set out in 326 to find Christ's tomb and the True Cross. In Jerusalem she found the Holy Sepulchre, built a basilica on the spot. She met a Jew named Judas (later St. Cyriacus) who showed her a ditch containing three crosses. When one of the crosses cured a sick woman, pious Helena sought no further. To Constantinople she sent the cross, three nails and the Holy Tunic now at Argenteuil. To Trier she sent the garment called the Holy Coat.

Of the True Cross, which was evidently made of pine, Paris' Notre Dame, Rome's St. Peter's and Santa Croce and a monastery at Reichenau, Germany each claim large fragments. The Three Nails, according to Catholic authorities, are represented today by some 30 enshrined at Rome, Venice, Aix-la-Chapelle, Madrid, Trier, Nuremberg, Prague, Paris, Milan and Monza. A lance thought to be the one with which Longinus, Roman centurion, pierced Christ's side while he hung on the cross, is preserved at St. Peter's. Unduplicated anywhere outside of St. Peter's is Veronica's veil on which Christ wiped his face and left its image.

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