Category Archives: Jewellery

Take a tour around a church or other holy site and you may well come across a reliquary; a shrine or container of holy relics. Typically, reliquaries were created to contain the remains or belongings of a revered saint and designed to be a place for pilgrims to visit and gain blessings. The relics themselves could take many forms, if not the remains of a saint, then jewellery; clothing; or pieces of fabric taken from shrouds or other significant religious events. Many saints requested that upon, their death, their remains be divided across multiple locations, to enable a greater audience to visit them. The containers in which the remains rest were customarily ornate affirmations of the valuable belongings which lay within. As an acknowledgment of the reverence in which saints are held, many reliquaries or larger ‘ossuaries’ (containers sometimes for multiple human remains) were decorated in gold, ivory and semi-precious stones. Continue reading →