Three years later Charles-le-Chauve, paying one of his frequent
pilgrimages to the shrine which he afterwards described as the first
seat of the Virgin in France, beheld the ravages of Hastings. Partly
perhaps as a consolation to the inhabitants for their losses, he now
made their church the depository of one of the most precious relics of
the Virgin known to Christendom--her veil or inner vestment,
presented[24] by the Empress Irene to the Emperor Charlemagne at
Constantinople. It is and was known as the Sancta Camisia, or, in
popular parlance, the Sainte Tunique or Chemisette. Hence the form by
which it is represented in the arms of the chapter and in the
innumerable emblems which from the thirteenth century onwards have been
prepared in metal or ware as tokens for the pious pilgrim. The immediate
result of the possession of this sacred veil and the miracles it wrought
was an influx of pilgrims to Chartres, who brought wealth enough to
enable the Bishop Gislebert to restore the ruined church. He would seem
to have still followed the lines of Castor’s church, but he extended it
eastwards, over and beyond the Gallo-Roman wall, raising the new
sanctuary of the choir so that the floor was two or three yards higher
than that of the nave, as in the case of the Church of S. Martin-au-Val,
and constructing out of the martyrium a crypt where the veil might be
kept safe in the time of danger.
It was not long, if we may believe the chroniclers, before the love and
reverence with which all the inhabitants regarded this relic was to be
justified and the reputation of the veil as the palladium of the town
established.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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