Italy--Summer 2005 / it_img_1447

Christ's Holy Crib

Enshrined below the altar of the Santa Maria Maggiore Church is this glass-and-gold urn full of bits of wood that are reputedly fragments of Christ's crib. I am skeptical, but who knows? The church is one of 80 in Rome dedicated to the Virgin Mary and it is apparently built on top of a Roman temple that was dedicated to Juno Lucina, a mother goddess revered by Roman women.