Notre Dame Treasury

Today we had a fabulous lunch at Le Relais de l'Isle on  Île Saint-Louis, and afterwards we walked across the bridge to Notre Dame to have one last look (only one week left!) and to view the relics on display in the Treasury.  Because we came from the other island, we made sure to walk through the garden behind the cathedral.

We've been having iffy weather lately, but today was an absolutely beautiful day.

Along with other relics and valuables, the Treasury purports to have pieces of the true cross and the actual crown of thorns worn by Jesus.  (Recall that St. Louis paid more for that one relic than he did to build the entire Sainte-Chapelle).  Admission to the cathedral is free, but to get into the Treasury it costs 4 Euros.  The first room contains relics of various saints and clergy of the faith.

Reliquary with bones of saints (I'm presuming...it was just labeled "Reliquaire")

Another coffer containing saintly relics:

This reliquary contains an artifact from Saint Louise de Marillac who lived in the 1600's and helped found the Daughters of Charity (with Saint Vincent de Paul).  According to Wikipedia she is, among other things, the patron saint of "disappointing children".  I found it interesting that there is such a thing, and that she is not the only patron (look it up: there are several!).

There were other treasures, such as these vestments donated by Napoleon III at his son's baptism.

Kevin almost never asks me to take his picture, so how could I say no? 

This is a copy of a monstrance (the eucharist would be placed in the empty central circle for veneration) from the time of Louis XVIII.

A view of one of the treasury rooms.

Cases of reliquaries.

A reliquary for the crown of thorns with a monstrance on either side.

Closer view of the Reliquaire de la Couronne d'Epines (Crown of Thorns Reliquary).  This reliquary was designed by Violet-Le-Duc and fabricated by goldsmith Placide Poussielgue-Rusand in 1862.  We could not tell if it actually contained the crown, since it was well above eye level.

I had thought (from looking online) that the crown of thorns reliquary would look something like this (see below), but we did not see anything resembling this anywhere in the Treasury.

Photo courtesy of Notre Dame website

Well this reliquary at least had something in it.  According to the label, this holds a piece of the cross of Saint Claude: "Reliquaire de la croix dite de Saint Claude".  Research on the internet did not turn up any Saint Claudes, Clauds, or Clouds that were martyred on a cross, so I can't figure out what this relic really is meant to be.  Maybe Saint Claude just owned a cross for general purposes, and this is a piece of it.

This is a tunic belonging to Saint Louis (King Louis IX).  It has held up pretty well, considering that he died about 740 years ago.

The painted ceiling of one of the Treasury's rooms.

By the way, if anyone is planning to be in Paris in 2013, the Cathedral of Notre Dame will be celebrating its 850th anniversary (groundbreaking was in 1163).  There are plans for a pilgrimage center and all kinds of other celebrations.  There was a bulletin board in the cathedral (that wasn't there a few weeks ago) that lists a website (www.notredamedeparis2013.com).  But that URL doesn't seem to lead anywhere...maybe the website is still under construction.