In New York in the fall I often went down to Little Italy for the Feast of San Gennaro. Inside the church on Mulberry Street a statue of the saint was covered in paper money. Outside in the courtyard spitting fat from cooking sausages fell onto the coals. (I was among the sausage eaters not the money- attachers.) Gennaro's congealed blood is kept in a reliquary in Naples' cathedral and taken out on feast days. During one such occasion in the the 14th century it started dripping. It has been dripping on most feasts days ever since. Plague came and pestilence and Vesuvius belched. The story goes that in the sixteenth century prayers to Bishop Gennaro--who had been martyred a millennium earlier--saved Naples from these threats. People thanked him lavishly and not only Neapolitans. But in recent years who knew that these treasures--the enormous silver statues, gold chalices and opulent jewels given to the people of Naples to celebrate their patron saint? Not many. Now for the first time 70 pieces-- said to be as valuable as England's Crown Jewels-- have left Italy and are on view in Paris. (There is airport style security entering and leaving.) To call these treasures over the top is feeble; over the Himalayas is more like it. It must have been raining emeralds over the Naples cathedral between the late 17th century well into the 19th when these pieces were made. The lagoon-clear Colombian emeralds, however, probably arrived in Europe with the Spanish Conquest. It is something to see. Judge for yourself if this is a must- see. (Captions below.)
The composite collar above was begun in the late 17th century and added to into the 19th. It was worn on the chest of the reliqaury bust of Gennaro. Royalty and aristocrats and the every day very rich were donors; one of the pendant crosses was a gift of Napoleon Bonaparte.
Below is the stiff, gold bishop's mitre created in 1713 for a reliquary bust. It is embellished with 3,326 diamonds, 168 rubies and 198 emeralds large, small, medium and wowee.
