CHALICE AND CHEST
“The Tazacorte chest is a wooden prismatic chest covered in gold embossed leather with a semi-circular cover. Folding handle on the cover and lock with pin on the front, both bronze. The decoration based on plant motifs in geometric formations and curvilinear tapes of symmetrical design forming bands and medallions, is distributed in a main strip surrounded by separate friezes of vine leaves and scrolls, as a cornice and plinths. All Renaissance with heads of profile symmetrically faced female and male (reminiscent of the effigy of Carlos V) are repeated on the cover and the side faces. Both the format and proportions of the box and its decoration follow the new trends of the Italian Renaissance.”
This chest has the measurements of: 28 x 19 cm (base), 18.30 cm (height) and is prior to 1570. It contains the relics that Pope Saint Pius V handed over in Rome to Father Ignacio de Acevedo. Among the twenty-two inventoried in 1718, the magnificent chest has the following relics: a quill of Santa Cristina (a young woman from Tuscany who suffered the most terrible martyrdoms), the jawbone of Santa Inés (virgin and Roman martyr slaughtered after leaving unscathed of the bonfire), bones of Pope Saint Gregory the Great (one of the four Fathers of the Latin Church and elected Pontiff against his will in 590), clothing of the Eleven Thousand Virgins (shot together with Saint Ursula by the Huns before the walls of Cologne), a rib of the Holy Innocents (the one hundred and forty thousand victims of cruel Herod), a piece of the head of Saint Vincent the Martyr (Aragonese deacon martyred in Valencia in 304 during the persecution of Dioclesan), etc.
The silver chalice was the one that existed in the hermitage of San Miguel de Tazacorte, property of that temple, and could not appear as one of the gifted relics. This famous chalice was kept in Tazacorte for one hundred and seventy-five years, from the date that Father Ignacio celebrated with it, that is, from 1570 until the end of May 1745, when the Honourable. Mr. Bishop Don Juan Francisco Guillén, on a visit he made to the sanctuary of Tazacorte, took it away, giving it to the Jesuit Fathers of Gran Canaria, from where it seems it later went to the Church of the Monastery of religious Bernardas of said island; chalice that in this last residence was only used on Maundy Thursday.
The same bishop determines that it is a constant tradition among the people that the Eucharist on July 13 was in this church and martyrdom was in view of the port. (Look at the tombstone at the back of the Church in the central nave.)
This chalice was in Rome from 1831 until its arrival in La Palma on July 16, 2009.
