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I believe I mentioned on this list a few months ago that I've put a few snaps of the Voile Notre-Dame on a website, should folks be curious as to what the venerable object--now (still, I presume) housed in a glass reliquary in the Chapelle Saint Piat, off the East end of the apse of the Cathedral--looks like in the 20th c.: http://www.angelfire.com/de/centrechartraine/ (and, perversely, the thing seems to be loading glacially now, though it was reasonable in January. problem seems to be with Anglefire.com; perhaps they don't appreciate my humor. partial image materializes quickly enough, but the whole thing takes about 5 minutes [!], which is *much* slower than it was previously. sorry.) These photos (taken from postcards) are from an offprint of a short study of 1926-7 or so of the "Voile" by _chanoine_ Yves Delaporte originally published, I believe, in the local publication _La Voix Notre-Dame_ (?? the exact citation may surely be found in Jan van der Meulen's exhaustive bibliography which I do not have at hand), and include : (1) A general view, taken in the ground floor of the St. Piat chapel (with, visible on the left, part of the then newly-unearthed sarcophagus of Bishop John of Salisbury [d. 1180] from the episcopal necropolis at the Benedictine abbey of St. Mary of Josaphat at near-by Lèves) of the "unfolded" fabric, which appears to be a piece less than two meters long by, perhaps, a third of a meter wide. (2) A detail showing the nature of the weave. (3) A detail showing a stylized bird-with-chalice ornament woven (or, perhaps, stamped) into the cloth "servant d'envelopee a la relique", i.e., a sort of pillow-case covering for the relic itself (???). Back in January, there was a bit of an interesting list discussion on the nature of the cloth and other things, which can be found in the Archives of the List under the string "Chartres Voile" from the string "Seamless Robe" from the loins of one of Carolyn's ever-fertile Feastings posts, the memorable "FEAST 13 January." As I mentioned in January, I believe (*easily* wrong) that it was Delaporte who first suggested that the artifact was of Byzantine manufacture, perhaps dating from the seventh or eighth century. And that this assertion (or its corrected version) has not been challenged in later literature, though I would appreciate hearing otherwise (especially if you corrected me in January and I 4got it all the damn ready.) Best to all, Christopher ____________________________________________________________________ Get your own FREE, personal Netscape WebMail account today at http://webmail.netscape.com. %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%