A medieval portable altar containing holy relics
Portable altars allowed for the celebration of Mass outside the confines of a church and, like every consecrated altar in the Catholic Church, this one was built to contain sacred relics. Amongst the relics inside are hairs, apparently from the head of St John the Evangelist, one of Christ's disciples, and the bones of St Goethard of Hildesheim.
It was made in Hildesheim in Lower Saxony around 1200AD. An inscription on the underside names the forty saints to whom the altar was dedicated and their relics were preserved in tiny bundles of fabric beneath the stone slab on which the chalice would have rested.
The object was acquired by the British museum in 1902 but it wasn't until 1979 that the contents were found to be intact. The altar was opened again for a further detailed examination in August 2010, when this sequence was filmed.
