In Christianity, the
Crown of Thorns, one of the
instruments of the
Passion,
was woven of
thorn
branches and placed on
Jesus before
his crucifixion. It is mentioned in the
Gospels of
Matthew (27:29),
Mark (15:17), and
John (19:2, 5) and is often alluded to by the
early Christian Fathers, such as
Clement of Alexandria,
Origen, and others.
John the Evangelist describes it
thus (
KJV, ch. 19):
- "Then Pilate therefore took Jesus, and scourged him. And the soldiers plaited a crown of
thorns, and put it on his head, and they put on him a purple robe,
And said,"Hail, King of the Jews!" and they smote him with their
hands. Pilate therefore went forth again, and saith unto them,
Behold, I bring him forth to you, that ye may know that I find no
fault in him. Then came Jesus forth, wearing the crown of thorns,
and the purple robe. And Pilate saith unto them, Behold the man!"
Christian symbolism
Following
Genesis 3:18— "thorns also
and thistles shall it bring forth to thee..." (
KJV) — thorns were seen by Christian
writers as emblems of the
Fall of
Man.
Cultural context
Plutarch makes reference in his Advice to
Married Couples, to a custom (of parts of ancient Greece) in which
"they crown [the bride] with a wreath of thorny
acanthus." Apparently the prickly plant is
also fragrant, and the custom symbolizes the need for the groom to
be patient with his bride. It is possible that part of the
humiliation intended by the crown of thorns was as an insult
against the tortured man's masculinity.
The Crown of Thorns as a relic
Jerusalem
A few writers of the first six centuries A.D. speak of a relic
known to be still in existence and venerated by the faithful. St.
Paulinus of Nola, writing after
409, refers to "the thorns with which Our Saviour was crowned" as
relics held in honour along with the Cross to which he was nailed
and the pillar at which he was scourged (
Epistle Macarius
in
Migne,
Patrologia Latina, LXI, 407).
Cassiodorus (c. 570), when commenting on
Psalm lxxxvi, speaks of the Crown of Thorns among the other relics
which are the glory of the earthly Jerusalem. "There", he says, "we
may behold the thorny crown, which was only set upon the head of
Our Redeemer in order that all the thorns of the world might be
gathered together and broken" (Migne, LXX, 621).
When Gregory of Tours in De gloria
martyri avers that the thorns in the Crown still looked green,
a freshness which was miraculously renewed each day, he does not
much strengthen the historical authenticity of a relic he had not
seen, but the Breviarius, and the itinerary of
Antoninus of Piacenza (6th
century) clearly state that the Crown of Thorns was currently shown
in the church on Mount
Zion
. From these fragments of evidence and others
of later date (the "Pilgrimage" of the monk Bernard shows that the
relic was still at Mount Sion in 870), it is likely that what
purported to be the Crown of Thorns was venerated at Jerusalem from
the 5th century for several hundred years.
Byzantium
Francois de Mély supposed that the whole Crown was not transferred
to Byzantium until about 1063.
In any case Justinian (died in 565) is stated to have given
a thorn to St. Germain,
Bishop of Paris, which was long
preserved at Saint-Germain-des-Prés
, while the Empress
Irene, in 798 or 802, sent Charlemagne several thorns which were deposited
by him at Aachen
.
Eight of these are said to have been there at the consecration of
the basilica of Aachen by
Pope Leo III.
The presence of the Pope at the consecration is a later legend, but
the relics apparently were there, for the subsequent history of
several of them can be traced without difficulty. Four were given
to Saint-Corneille of Compiègne in 877 by
Charles the Bald.
Someone (not Hugh the Great Abbot of Cluny, who was born 1050, died 1102)
sent one to the Anglo-Saxon King Athelstan
in 927, on the occasion of certain marriage negotiations, and
eventually found its way to Malmesbury Abbey
. Another was presented to a Spanish princess
about 1160, and again another was taken to Andechs
in Germany
in the year 1200.
In 1238
Baldwin II, the
Latin Emperor of Constantinople
, anxious to obtain support for his tottering
empire, offered the Crown of Thorns to St. Louis, King of France.
It was
then in the hands of the Venetians
as security for a heavy loan (13,134 gold pieces),
but it was redeemed and conveyed to Paris where St. Louis built the
Sainte-Chapelle
(completed 1248) to receive it. The relic stayed there
until the French Revolution, when,
after finding a home for a while in the Bibliothèque
Nationale
, the Concordat of
1801 restored it to the Church, and it was deposited in the
Cathedral of
Notre-Dame
. However the relic that the Church received
is a twisted coronet of
rushes. New
reliquaries were provided for the relic, one commissioned by
Napoleon, another, in jewelled rock crystal and more suitably
Gothic, was made to the designs
of
Eugene Viollet-le-Duc.
In 2001,
when the surviving treasures from the Sainte-Chapelle were
exhibited at the Louvre
across the
Seine, the chaplet was solemnly presented every Friday at Notre
Dame. Pope John Paul II
translated it personally to the Sainte-Chapelle during the
World Youth Days.
The
Catholic Encyclopedia asserted "Authorities are agreed
that a sort of helmet of thorns must have been plaited by the Roman
soldiers, this band of rushes being employed to hold the thorns
together. It seems likely according to M. De Mély, that already at
the time when the circlet was brought to Paris the sixty or seventy
thorns, which seem to have been afterwards distributed by St. Louis
and his successors, had been separated from the band of rushes and
were kept in a different
reliquary. None
of these now remain at Paris. Some small fragments of rush are also
preserved ... at Arras and at Lyons. With regard to the origin and
character of the thorns, both tradition and existing remains
suggest that they must have come from the bush botanically known as
Ziziphus spina-christi, more popularly, the
jujube tree. This reaches the height of fifteen or
twenty feet and is found growing in abundance by the wayside around
Jerusalem. The crooked branches of this shrub are armed with thorns
growing in pairs, a straight spine and a curved one commonly
occurring together at each point.
The relic preserved in the Capella della
Spina at Pisa
, as well as
that at Trier
, which
though their early history is doubtful and obscure, are among the
largest in size, afford a good illustration of this
peculiarity."
Third-class relics
Not all of the reputed holy thorns are authentic. M. de Mély was
able to enumerate more than 700. The statement in one medieval
obituary that Peter de Averio gave to the cathedral of Angers "unam
de spinis quae fuit apposita coronae spinae nostri Redemptoris"
("one of the spines which were touched to the thorny crown of our
Redeemer") (de Mély, p. 362) indicates that many of the thorns were
relics of the third class—objects touched to a
relic of the first class, in this case some part of the crown
itself. (A relic of the first class is a part of the body of a
saint or, in this case, any of the objects used in the Crucifixion
that carried the blood of Christ; a relic of the second class is
anything known to have been touched or used by a saint; a relic of
the third class is a devotional object touched to a first-class
relic and, usually, formally blessed as a sacramental.) Again, even
in comparatively modern times it is not always easy to trace the
history of these objects of devotion, as first-class relics were
often divided and any number of authentic third-class relics may
exist.
Purported remnants
The
Catholic Encyclopedia (1908) reported two "holy thorns"
were venerated, the one at St. Michael's church in Ghent, the other
at Stonyhurst
College
, both professing to be the thorn given by Mary
Queen of Scots to Thomas Percy, Earl of Northumberland (see "The
Month", April, 1882, 540-556).
More recently, a website
"Gazeteer of Relics and Miraculous Images"
lists the following, following Cruz 1984:
- Belgium: Parochial Church of Wevelgem
: a portion of the Crown of Thorns
- Belgium: Ghent
, St.
Michael's Church: a Thorn from the Crown of Thorns
- France: Notre Dame de Paris
: a portion of the Crown of Thorns, now devoid of
thorns, displayed the first Friday of each month and all Fridays in
Lent (including Good Friday)
- France: Sainte-Chapelle: a portion of the Crown of Thorns, brought to the
site by Louis IX.
- Germany:Cathedral of Trier: a Thorn
from the Crown of Thorns
- Italy: Rome
, Santa Croce
in Gerusalemme
: a Thorn from the Crown of Thorns
- Italy: Rome, Santa
Prassede
: a small
portion of the Crown of Thorns
- Italy: Pisa, Spedali
Riuniti di Santa Chiara: a Branch with Thorns from the Crown of
Thorns
- Italy: Naples
, Santa Maria
Incoronata: a fragment of the Crown of Thorns
- Italy: Ariano Irpino
, Cathedral: two Thorns from the Crown of
Thorns
- Spain: Oviedo
, Cathedral:
five thorns (formerly eight) from the Crown of Thorns
- Spain: Barcelona
, Cathedral: a Thorn from the Crown of
Thorns
- Spain: Seville
, Iglesia de la Anunciación (Hermandad del Valle): a
Thorn from the Crown of Thorns
- United Kingdom: Stanbrook Abbey, Worcester
: a Thorn from the Crown of Thorns
- United Kingdom: Stonyhurst
College, Lancashire
: a Thorn from the Crown of Thorns
Crown of Thorns iconography
William Marshall's print depicting
King Charles I taking up the crown of thorns
The appearance of the Crown of Thorns in art, notably upon the head
of Christ in representations of the Crucifixion or the subject
Ecce Homo arises after the time
of St. Louis and the building of the Sainte-Chapelle. The
Catholic Encyclopedia reported that some archaeologists
had professed to discover a figure of the Crown of Thorns in the
circle which sometimes surrounds the
chi-rho
emblem on early Christian
sarcophagi,
but the compilers considered that it seemed to be quite as probable
that this was only meant for a
laurel
wreath.
The image of the crown of thorns is often used symbolically to
contrast with earthly monarchical crowns. In the symbolism of
King Charles the
Martyr, the executed English King Charles I is depicted putting
aside his earthy crown to take up the crown of thorns, as in
William Marshall's
print
Eikon Basilike. This contrast
appears elsewhere in art, for example in Frank Dicksee's painting
The Two Crowns.
The
carnations symbolize the
Jesus
passion as they
represent the Crown of Thorns.
Episcopal Allegory
The
crown of thorns is also an allegory of the
episcopal governance of the church.
Contrasted to a kingly crown, the crown of thorns signifies the
difference between episcopal governance, and kingly governance of
state. It serves as a reminder of the humility required of all
bishops. The interwoven nature of the crown of thorns further
represents the complexity of all the relationships between bishops,
and their necessary interdependence in governing the church.
Photo Gallery
Image:Detail of Crown Reliquary.jpg|Detail
of the 19th century reliquary preserved today at Notre-Dame
Cathedral, Paris
.Image:Late 19th Century Reliquary.JPG|A
second, late 19th century reliquary preserved today at Notre-Dame
Cathedral, Paris.Image:Crown of thorns.svg|Logo of Crown of
Thorns Church.
See also
Notes
- Published in Monumenta Germaniae
Historica: Scriptores Merovingenses", I, 492.
- Geyer, Itinera Hierosolymitana, 154 and 174.
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