- Feb 5, 2002
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The Vatican Museums on Thursday announced the new permanent exhibition of two relics purportedly belonging to St. Peter and St. John the Evangelist, shedding light on their origin and age.
The conference titled “The Tunics of St. Peter and St. John, Two Extraordinary Relics of the Sancta Sanctorum,” presented a historic overview of the two relics — a tunic of St. Peter and a dalmatic belonging to St. John the Evangelist — as well as presentations on the intensive restoration process concluded by the Tapestries and Textiles Restoration Laboratory of the Vatican Museums and the report analysis performed by the museums’ Cabinet of Scientific Research.
“The tunic with narrow sleeves, in particular, dates back to the sixth/seventh century, while the dalmatic dates back to between the end of the first and the beginning of the third century,” said Alessandro Vella, expert of Christian antiquity at the Vatican Museums, on the museum’s carbon dating analysis.
“If the tunic with narrow sleeves dates from the next years of the pontificate of Gregory the Great,” he continued, “it evidently cannot have belonged either to St. John the Evangelist nor to St. Peter, nor to any of the apostles. It would therefore be a false relic.”
Continued below.
www.catholicnewsagency.com
The conference titled “The Tunics of St. Peter and St. John, Two Extraordinary Relics of the Sancta Sanctorum,” presented a historic overview of the two relics — a tunic of St. Peter and a dalmatic belonging to St. John the Evangelist — as well as presentations on the intensive restoration process concluded by the Tapestries and Textiles Restoration Laboratory of the Vatican Museums and the report analysis performed by the museums’ Cabinet of Scientific Research.
“The tunic with narrow sleeves, in particular, dates back to the sixth/seventh century, while the dalmatic dates back to between the end of the first and the beginning of the third century,” said Alessandro Vella, expert of Christian antiquity at the Vatican Museums, on the museum’s carbon dating analysis.
“If the tunic with narrow sleeves dates from the next years of the pontificate of Gregory the Great,” he continued, “it evidently cannot have belonged either to St. John the Evangelist nor to St. Peter, nor to any of the apostles. It would therefore be a false relic.”
Continued below.
Carbon dating reveals true age of saints’ purported tunics
A conference titled “The Tunics of St. Peter and St. John, Two Extraordinary Relics of the Sancta Sanctorum,” presented a historic overview of the two relics.
www.catholicnewsagency.com
