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St. Radegund's Reliquary at Poitiers
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 08 January 2012
Extract
The Reliquary of the True Cross which is preserved at Poitiers in the convent of Sainte-Croix is the earliest existing authentically dated object decorated with enamel in a Byzantine workshop. It has never before been reproduced in any accurate form, and no living expert has had the opportunity of examining it. Its history is complete and fully authenticated. The tale is worth brief recapitulation. It involves the doings of two eminent personages, St. Radegund and St. Fortunatus, the one distinguished as the first civilized and refined queen of France, the other still memorable as the last of the Roman poets.
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- Research Article
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- Copyright © The Society of Antiquaries of London 1923
References
page 1 note 1 The coloured photograph of the Reliquary herewith reproduced (pl. i) was obtained for me, through the kind introduction of M. Salomon Reinach, by M. Ginot, the Librarian of the Public Library of Poitiers. The Abbess of Sainte-Croix also deserves heartiest thanks for the great interest she took in the making of the reproduction.
page 3 note 1 My authority for most of these facts is Guerin's Vie des Saints. For what follows my chief authority is a long paper by X. Montault, Barbier de, in the Mémoires de la Société des Antiquaires de l'Ouest, 2nd ser. t. iv (1881), Poitiers, 1882Google Scholar.
page 4 note 1 This MS. is still at Poitiers and is, I believe, preserved in the Library of the Grand Séminaire.
page 4 note 2 The fact that Fortunatus wrote Vexilla Regis and the Poem of Thanks, but no other letter or mention of the Cross Relic before those poems, indicates that his arrival at Poitiers was probably not long before the arrival of the relic.
page 6 note 1 Barbier de Montault was allowed to have the reliquary in his hand for an examination ‘of many hours’ and to have it photographed, but of the eleven negatives none was satisfactory and no other was made before those taken for me, nor, I believe, was the reliquary taken out from under the glass again for any other student.
page 6 note 2 I suspect these to be the result of a restoration, notwithstanding the observations of de Montault with which I do not agree.
page 10 note 1 Bull, de la Commission Imp. archéol. 29th livraison (1909), p. 37, figs. 36, 38Google Scholar; Minns, , Scythians and Greeks, p. 215Google Scholar; Gazette archéol. 1887, pp. 116 and 122,Google Scholar with much better photographic reproduction.
page 10 note 2 Reproduced in Deville, A., La Verrerie (Paris, 1873), p. 39, pl. 43 H, from which the illustration is takenGoogle Scholar.