Dec 22, 2025
Wood slats from the Holy Crib are encased in a reliquary and are on display at Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome.
In the 640s, Sophronius, the patriarch of Jerusalem, sent several unassuming wooden slats to Rome for safekeeping after the Muslim conquest of Jerusalem. Sophronius asked Pope Theodore I to protect the pieces of wood, which he said were the remains of the Holy Crib — Jesus' manger.
Today, five pieces of wood from the manger are preserved in a gold, silver and glass reliquary in a crypt chapel in the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome. The reliquary was commissioned by Pope Pius IX in 1802, when it replaced an older urn that was stolen by Napoleon's troops in the late 1700s. (The troops left the wood behind in the basilica.)