Inside Notre Dame | The Story of God
[Music] Notre Dame [Music] More than 13 million people come here every year, yet only a fraction of them knows that these vaulted ceilings house one of the most precious and closely guarded relics in all Christendom: [Music] the Crown of Thorns.
I've been granted special access to see the crown up close and learn more about what the faithful will see in this sacred object. Father Denis 2.4 View is one of its curators.
“This, this is it! This is very rare to show it like that. It's been the prize possession of the Catholic Church in France for almost 800 years. Of course, if it's the genuine article, it's far older than that. The crown, which is made of reeds, of herbs, of weeds, and they put it in this circle of glass actually with gold around it, and they added a few gold wires to maintain it. Well, then the actual reeds are held together now with basil gold wire. Yes, and then they put this glass thing, and they sealed it to preserve it from air, from pollution, from contact. But what we call the Crown of Thorns was actually sort of a helmet of thorns. And so they, on this circle, they made a helmet with the thorns and then they set it on the head. That was really horrible.”
The Gospels say that when Jesus was carrying his cross to Golgotha, Roman soldiers mocked him as the King of the Jews and placed a crown of thorns on his head. “I have this question for you, France. That's a long way from Golgotha.”
“Yes, that's a long story. So Helen, who was the mother of the emperor, took it from Jerusalem to Constantinople in the 4th century. The Roman Emperor Constantine's mother had converted to Christianity and claimed the crown as a key symbol of Jesus's suffering on the cross. [Music] And then nearly 1,000 years, the crown stayed in Constantinople. Then there was a war, but the emperor had no money to pay the army. So to get the money for his army, he put the crown in loan in Venice. Yes, he loaned the crown. And when the King of France learned that, King Louis said, 'It's a shame, so I give the money for the army and I get the crown in a safe place.' That's France, okay?”
“So in 1239, it arrived in France, and when King Louis welcomed this crown in Paris, he went out of the city with bare feet, only a shirt on him, and he said, 'Well, I’m the most powerful king on earth, but I’m nothing in comparison to the true king. My crown is of gold, but his crown is a true one. It was made of thorns.' So it was very, very moving from this man who was the most powerful on earth at the time. And the money he gave was one full year of France's budget. You can imagine it was tremendous, quite a bit of money.”
“So the amount was paid probably opened the doorway for a lot of fake stuff. Well, you can never be sure 100 percent they are the true ones, but in this case, it was analyzed a little bit a few years ago, so we are certain that it is the actual crown which was shown to Helen. So if there is one in the world, it’s this one.”
“I know you said that if there is a crown of thorns, this is it.”
“Yes, but what if it's not it?”
“Well, if it really touched Christ, of course, it is obvious. But even if it's not the true one, it's a way of remembering. Okay, he really was on earth, he was a true man, he could bear that, he could have that on his very head, and this is no story. This is not a tale or a symbol or an abstraction. This is history. This is concrete. We can touch it, you know?”
Got you. [Music] Today is the first Friday of the month when the crown is put on public display. People from all over the world come to attend Mass and get close to the relic. [Music] By so doing, they believe they are getting closer to Jesus.
“People come there with the sufferings, with their hopes, and they come to this crown. They come to Christ, actually, and say, 'Okay, you suffered, you hoped. I suffer, I hope. I want to join with you.' So that's very, very deep—simple in a way, but very, very moving.” [Music] [Music]
Holy relics are symbols of the divine here on earth. As such, they can and do fall on the control of people who would use them for earthly power. But for those who are seeking spiritual strength, relics act as a speaker, speaking of faith that guide them through the distractions of this mortal realm to a more [Music] direct connection with God. [Music] You