Monday, April 12
Query of a more Unusual Kind
Or, How to Restore a Reliquery?
My family, being of Swiss descent, has long been associated with the Swiss Guard. In fact, our cousins who opted not to leave the Olde World sent a son into the Swiss Guard not 15 years ago. But much longer ago, at least 200 years in fact, one of my ancestors distinguished himself in the line of service to the Pope sufficiently so as to be given a small sliver of the Cross. Subsequently, this sliver has been passed down to the eldest son, and for a few years has been in the keeping of yours truly.
The reliquery was a very simple affair: it is a small wooden container, about the size of a quarter and a centimeter deep. The top screwed off and revealed, sealed under glass, a very small sliver of the Cross suspeneded between two gilded scrolls of paper filigree, with the authenticating Latin scroll tucked beneath.
But there was a bit of a problem along the way. For some period of years it found its way into the hands of a late great aunt who, upon her death bed, for some reason or another, opened and unsealed the reliquery in which it was kept. Opening it was quite exceptional: my grandfather opened it perhaps twice in his life -- and certainly never unsealed it. Worse, in the process of unsealing the reliquery, the suspension, scrollwork, and authentication were disturbed and the relic itself displaced. It remains in this disrupted condition years after her death.
So. The time has come to attempt some sort of restoration of our reliquery's mangled insides. But who do you approach to restore a very simplistic yet very signifcant item such as this? The Vatican? A museum?
Anyone?
![[SMMMHDH]](http://www.mgilleland.com/music/smmmhdh.png){kind=small}
