"This morning, when the canon in charge of the Chapel of the Relics unlocked the door, he was surprised to observe that some of these were lying in confusion on the floor. Fearing that a theft had been committed, he sent for the dean and others of the clergy, who had examination made, and found the following objects to be missing:-- _"A gold cross, presented by King Alfonso the Great, when he attended the consecration of this temple in the year 874._ "Another cross, of silver, dating from the fifteenth century--a present from Archbishop Spinola. "An aureole of the fifteenth century, studded with precious stones belonging to a statuette of the apostle Santiago. "The authorities were summoned and at once began their search. "They find that two of the thick iron bars of the skylight in the ceiling of the cloister have been filed through. This cloister has a skylight which opens upon the chapel. "They have also found, upon the roof, a knotted rope. This rope was only long enough to reach a cornice in the chapel wall. _The wall itself affords no sign that anybody has attempted to descend by it._" The head-shaped reliquary is of beaten silver with enamelled visage, and the hair and beard gilt.[26] The workmanship is French. The cross, which hung till recently above the altar of the Relicario, but which now requires to be placed upon the lengthy list of stolen wealth, was not unlike the Cross of Angels in the Camara Santa at Oviedo, and had a wooden body covered with gold plates in finely executed filigree, studded with precious stones and cameos. Not many days ago, the wooden core, divested of the precious metal and the precious stones, was found abandoned in a field. [26] This form of reliquary was not uncommon. Morales, in his _Viaje Sacro_, describes another one, also preserved at Santiago, saying that it was a bust of silver, life-size and gilded to the breast, "with a large diadem of rays and many stones, both small and great, all or most of them of fine quality, though not of the most precious." Other bust-reliquaries belong, or have belonged, to the Cathedrals of Burgos and Toledo.