Gem In Vatican Art Collection Restored To Byzantine Glory (Nicole Winfield/The Canadian Press; Nov 19)

VATICAN CITY: One of the gems of the Vatican’s priceless religious art collection – a 6th century reliquary containing what are revered as fragments of the cross on which Jesus was crucified – has been restored to its Byzantine-era glory.

The Vatican on Thursday unveiled the restored Crux Vaticana, a 40-centimetre-high, jewel-encrusted golden cross containing what tradition holds are shards of the true cross inside.

The Associated Press was given an early look at the piece and Byzantine art experts said the restoration rendered the cross much closer to what it would have looked like at the time the Byzantine Emperor Justin II gave it to the people of Rome.

Most significantly, the restoration corrected a botched 19th century restoration that threatened to corrode the piece. And it replaced the brightly coloured gems added in previous centuries with the large, imperfect pearls emblematic of Byzantine-era imperial masterpieces, said restorer Sante Guido.

A circle of 12 pearls now surrounds the relic and pearls around the edge now alternate with emeralds and sapphires – the two other gems most often associated with Byzantine emperors, he said.

While there are purported fragments of Christ’s cross in churches around the world – including Notre Dame in Paris and Rome’s Holy Cross basilica – the Crux Vaticana is considered the oldest reliquary of the cross. It is the crown in the Vatican’s Treasury of St. Peter’s collection of religious and historic artifacts.

In addition to the relic inside, the cross itself is an important piece of early Christian art. Measuring 40 centimetres by 31 centimetres it’s a rare example of an imperial gift and an expression of the emperor’s Christian faith. Across the piece is written in Latin: “With the wood with which Christ conquered man’s enemy, Justin gives his help to Rome and his wife offers the ornamentation.”

“It’s the most important reliquary of the ‘true cross’ that we have,” Guido told the AP. “It’s particularly important because it’s the only reliquary that came from an emperor, so there are various levels of religious and historic significance.”

For centuries, the cross was used in the Vatican’s most solemn ceremonies at Christmas and Easter. But 1,500 years of candle wax and smoke had dulled the gems and the warm golden hue of the cross. The grime was removed during the two-year restoration.

The work was paid for by an anonymous donor who didn’t want the pricetag to be made public, officials said.

Ioli Kalavrezou, a Byzantine art history professor at Harvard University who has taught classes on the cross, said the restoration clearly rendered the cross closer to what it would have looked like when it was presented to Romans sometime between 565-578.

“I can’t say it’s exactly as it would’ve been but it comes much closer to what an object like that would’ve looked like,” she said in a phone interview.

The exact circumstances of why Justin gave Rome the relic are unclear….

The cross will be on public display inside St. Peter’s Basilica through April 12.

(Before and After)

Billion Children Still Needy (The Columbus Dispatch/The Associated Press; Nov 20)

UNICEF urged the world to help the 1 billion children still deprived of food, shelter, clean water or health care — and the hundreds of millions more threatened by violence — two decades after the U.N. adopted a treaty guaranteeing children’s rights.

On the eve of the anniversary, the U.N. children’s agency issued a report yesterday on the challenges ahead and the accomplishments since the U.N. General Assembly adopted the Convention on the Rights of the Child in 1989….

[UNICEF Executive Director Ann] Veneman said it is still unacceptable that more than 24,000 children younger than 5 die every day from preventable causes such as pneumonia, malaria, measles and malnutrition. Nearly 200 million youngsters are chronically malnourished, more than 140 million are forced to work, and millions of girls and boys of all ages are subjected to sexual violence….

Given the second story I can certainly understand why the (anonymous) donor in the first story wants the size of the donation to be kept secret.

After all, merely mentioning the cost of this 2-year-long project might raise uncomfortable questions in the minds of people – questions that the journalists who work on stories like these rarely seem to think to ask.

You know – questions like “How much is too much to spend on the preservation of a single symbol of an ancient myth in the 21st century?”

A million dollars?

A thousand dollars?

The cost of a single meal or vaccine?

How might the answer of any one of those 24,000 children dying today differ from that of Pope Benedict and his church?

(For a few other examples of theists willing to spend far more on promoting their silly beliefs than on saving the lives of children, see the entries I posted on June 9, 2008; Aug 11, 2008; Oct 1, 2008; Nov 24, 2008; and Feb 5, 2009.)