Crown of Thorns (Civ3)/Civilopedia

The Crown of Thorns holy relic is a ring of twisted relics, adorned with thorns. It is considered to be the wreath placed on Jesus Christ's head to mock him as the King of the Jews. The crown was preserved in Jerusalem until the 4th Century AD, when it was moved to Constantinople. In 1238, Baldwin, Emperor of Constantinople, offered it to Saint Louis, King of France in return for support for his tottering Byzantine state. Louis built the Saint-Chapelle church to house the relic. It remains there to this day and is venerated regularly by Christians in Paris. Before the crown was sent to Louis, various Byzantine leaders had gifted individual thorns to Charlesmagne and other medieval European kings. This caused a number of fake thorns to appear throughout the Middle Ages; one scholar cataloged 700 different relics purporting to be thorns from the True Crown.