In 1238, Baldwin II, the Latin Emperor of Constantinople, anxious to obtain support for his tottering empire, offered the crown of thorns to Louis IX of France.
Eight of these are said to have been there at the consecration of the basilica of Aachen the subsequent history of several of them can be traced without difficulty: four were given to Saint-Corneille of Compiègne in 877 by Charles the Bald Hugh the Great, Duke of the Franks, sent one to the Anglo-Saxon King Athelstan in 927, on the occasion of certain marriage negotiations, and it eventually found its way to Malmesbury Abbey another was presented to a Spanish princess about 1160 and again another was taken to Andechs Abbey in Germany in the year 1200. In any case, Emperor Justinian is stated to have given a thorn to Germain, Bishop of Paris, which was long preserved at Saint-Germain-des-Prés, while the Empress Irene, in 798 or 802, sent Charlemagne several thorns which were deposited by him at Aachen. Historian Francois de Mély supposed that the whole crown was transferred from Jerusalem to Constantinople not much before 1063. Some time afterwards, the crown was purportedly moved to Constantinople, then capital of the empire. From these fragments of evidence and others of later date (the "Pilgrimage" of the monk Bernard shows that the relic was still at Mount Zion in 870), it is shown that a purported crown of thorns was venerated at Jerusalem in the first centuries of the common era. When Gregory of Tours in De gloria martyri avers that the thorns in the crown still looked green, a freshness which was miraculously renewed each day, he does not much strengthen the historical authenticity of a relic he had not seen, but the Breviary or Short Description of Jerusalem : 16 ) (a short text dated to about 530 AD : iv ), and the itinerary of Antoninus of Piacenza (6th century) : 18 clearly state that the crown of thorns was then shown in the "Basilica of Mount Zion," although there is uncertainty about the actual site to which the authors refer. "There", he says, "we may behold the thorny crown, which was only set upon the head of Our Redeemer in order that all the thorns of the world might be gathered together and broken" (Migne, LXX, 621). 570) speaks of the crown of thorns among other relics which were “the glory” of the city of Jerusalem. The oldest known mention of the crown already being adored as a relic was made by Paulinus of Nola, writing after 409, who refers to the crown as a relic that was adored by the faithful ( Epistle Macarius in Migne, Patrologia Latina, LXI, 407). The three Biblical gospels that mention the crown of thorns do not say what happened to it after the crucifixion. 6 Criticism of the adoration of the crown of thorns.
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