#religious object

The Monymusk Reliquary.

I popped into the National Museum of Scotland on Tuesday, I’ll post more pics over the next few days, but this thing is a staoater, as we say in Scotland.

This small casket is  probably one of the most important exhibits in the whole museum. It belongs to a small group of early Christian house-shaped reliquaries. Reliquaries housed the precious relics of Christian saints, although the Monymusk Reliquary is now empty.

It’s thought that the Reliquary once held the relics,(bones) of  St. Columba.  The house-shaped design of the reliquary is similar to an illumination of the Temple of Jerusalem in the Book of the Kells. Only one of two enamelled hinge plates survive, it would have been attached a strap so that the Reliquary could be carried, possibly around the neck. The founder of Arbroath Abbey, King William the Lion, entrusted the reliquary into the care of the Abbey's monks in 1211 under the condition it was paraded before the Scots army before battle. It was

It is believed it would have been worn by a priest, or other religious figure during the Battle of Bannockburn, but the casket is much older,  dating to the early 8th century.  From its ornamentation, possibly the work of Ionian monks, hence the connection with Columba. 

Recent historians have doubted this was the same object though, but I like to romanticise a bit and prefer to think of the earlier interpretations. 

Below is a  digital Reconstruction based on the Reliquary and how it may have looked.