Direct from Holy Land Imports: Crown Of Thorns. among other inspirational items

[rpannier]

Item Number: 10633
Holy Land New Collection Package "Olive Wood Cross, Olive Oil, Soil, Water, Incens"

Item Number: 9191
Crown Of Thorns: Life size for Passion Plays (11-12" in diameter)

*I have no problem with this item, per se* For theater productions it's apporpriate, but I needed it for the next item*

Item Number: 9090
Miniture Crown Of Thorns (5"-6" in diameter)

***In case you're crucifying someone between the ages of 5-13***

Item Number: 9292
Large Authentic Crown Of Thorns Enclosed in a Black Shadow Box (10”x10”x3”).


Betcha thought that this sh*t died out with the Crusades, Black Plague, the Enlightenment, etc.
Well...you were WRONG!

All this and more can be found at:
http://www.holylandimports.net/browse.asp?CatID=6

on note: I'm moderately religious and some of the items, like the ornaments, the rosaries, the crosses and the sterling silver crosses I found rather interesting.
But...the authentic crown of thorns...Wow.

Amusing side note: I found the site from an ad on DU

[TechBear_Seattle]

1. "Authentic" Crown of Thorns?

As in the real one allegedly sitting in Notre Dame de Paris? And in the Cathedral of Trier? And in both Santa Croce and Santa Prassede in Rome? And the cathedral in Oviedo, Spain? That Crown of Thorns? And it's for sale for $54.95 marked down from $59.95?

Wow!

[bdamomma]

2. send it to * since he thinks he is.

[kskiska]

5. In Mark Twain's "The Innocents Abroad"

a running theme was that every place he traveled to proudly exhibited a relic of the "true cross." He speculated on how large the cross would be if all these were genuine.

We find a piece of the true cross in every old church we go into, and some of the nails that held it together. I would not like to be positive, but I think we have seen as much as a keg of those nails.

But when he finally gets to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, in Jerusalem, he discovers that the piece of the true cross no longer rests in the niche where they used to preserve it.

The Latin priests say it was stolen away, long ago, by priests of another sect. That seems like a hard statement to make, but we know very well that it was stolen, because we have seen it ourselves in several of the Cathedrals of Italy and France.

[hobbit709]

3. What! No Holy Prepuce??

[TechBear_Seattle]

4. That's been lost for a while now

According to the Wikipedia entry for the Holy Prepuce:

"Depending on what you read, there were eight, twelve, fourteen, or even 18 different holy foreskins in various European towns during the Middle Ages". <1> The relic was originally said to have been given to Pope Leo III on December 25, 800 by Charlemagne on the occasion of his coronation; he in turn is said to have claimed that it had been brought to him by an angel while he prayed at the Holy Sepulchre (although another version of the story says it was a wedding gift from the Byzantine Empress Irene). The Pope placed it into the Sancta Sanctorum in the Lateran basilica in Rome with other relics. <2>

In addition to the Holy Foreskin claimed by Rome, other claimants in history have included the Cathedral of Le Puy-en-Velay, Santiago de Compostela, the city of Antwerp, Coulombs in the diocese of Chartres, France as well as Chartres itself, and churches in Besançon, Metz, Hildesheim, Charroux, Conques, Langres, Anvers, Fécamp, Puy-en-Velay, Calcata, Santiago de Compostela, and two in Auvergne. <1>

According to legends of the village of Calcata, in 1527 a soldier in the German army sacking Rome looted the Sancta Sanctorum; when he was eventually captured in the village he hid the jeweled reliquary containing the Holy Prepuce in his cell, where it was discovered in 1557 and officially venerated by the Church since that time, offering a ten-year indulgence to pilgrims. Calcata thus became a popular site for pilgrimage.<2>

The abbey of Charroux claimed the Holy Foreskin was presented to the monks by Charlemagne. In the early 12th century, it was taken in procession to Rome where it was presented before Pope Innocent III, who was asked to rule on its authenticity. The Pope declined the opportunity. At some point, however, the relic went missing, and remained lost until 1856 when a workman repairing the abbey claimed to have found a reliquary hidden inside a wall, containing the missing foreskin. The rediscovery, however, led to a theological clash with the established Holy Prepuce of Calcata, which had been officially venerated by the Church for hundreds of years; in 1900, the Church solved the dilemma by ruling that anyone thenceforward writing or speaking of the Holy Prepuce would be excommunicated. In 1954, after much debate, the punishment was changed to the harsher degree of excommunication, vitandi (shunned); and the Second Vatican Council later removed the Day of the Holy Circumcision from the Latin church calendar, although Eastern Catholics still celebrate the Feast of the Circumcision of Our Lord on January 1.<3>

[displacedtexan]

6. My favorite item...

Crown Of Thorn Earrings