The Crown of Thorns

“And platting a crown of thorns, they put it upon his head… and bowing the knee before him, they mocked him, saying: Hail, King of the Jews” (Matthew 27:29).

The relic in Paris is a circle of rushes about 21 centimetres across, bound with gold thread. Over the centuries its thorns were given away one by one as relics. It was kept for centuries in Constantinople, the capital of the Byzantine Empire. In 1238 King Saint Louis IX of France acquired it from the Latin Emperor Baldwin II, who had pawned it to Venetian bankers. Louis walked barefoot to receive it. To house it he built the Sainte-Chapelle in Paris, a jewel box of stained glass consecrated in 1248.

The crown survived the French Revolution and was entrusted to Notre-Dame in 1806. On 15 April 2019, as Notre-Dame burned, the chaplain of the Paris fire brigade, Father Jean-Marc Fournier, went into the cathedral with firefighters and carried the relic and the Blessed Sacrament to safety.

When the restored cathedral reopened in December 2024, the crown returned in solemn procession to a new reliquary, the golden disc in the photograph, set in a chapel behind the high altar.

Where

Notre-Dame Cathedral, Paris, France

When to see it

Kept in its new reliquary in the cathedral and presented to the faithful for veneration, especially on Fridays and on Good Friday.

Map

Find it on OpenStreetMap