Ever since the early days of Christianity, saints have been revered both for the exemplary lives they led and for the help they lend the faithful as intercessors with the Almighty. Saints’ relics therefore count as precious – so precious that costly vessels were made to house them.

At the core of the Treasury of Basel Cathedral are three different types of reliquary: house-shaped coffrets or châsses, so-called speaking reliquaries and monstrances.

House-shaped châsses are one of the earliest forms of reliquary and were widespread in the Middle Ages, as the examples displayed here show.

The «speaking» reliquaries are shaped so as to provide a pointer to the bones they contain. The reliquary busts of St. Pantalus and St. Ursula from the thirteenth andfourteenth centuries, for example, contain skull fragments of these two saints. The treasury also features both half-figure and full-figure reliquaries such as the statuettes of King David and St. Christopher.


New religious needs arising early in the fourteenth century called for the visible presentation of relics and hosts leading to the creation of monstrances with rock-crystal capsules in which to display the relics. Seven such ostensories, made between c. 1345 and 1510, show the typological development from High Gothic disc monstrances to the filigree tower monstrances of the Late Gothic period.