Columbus Chapel
By Susan Field
VISITORS TO THE COLUMBUS CHAPEL IN BOALSBURG are transported back to 16th century Spain. As they walk through the chapel adorned with striking historical treasures, Renaissance paintings and religious relics from the 14-1800s, all eyes are drawn to the altar, an ethereal centerpiece surrounded by beautiful artwork framed in gold.
It is the resting place of the chapel's most sacred item: a reliquary containing two pieces of the True Cross of Jesus Christ. In Christian tradition, the True Cross is the name for physical remnants believed to be from the actual cross upon which Jesus was crucified. In 1958 a scientific investigation conducted by Madrid's Forestry Research Institute (recorded on the official Web site of the monastery of Santo Toribio de Liebana in Spain, from which the Columbus Chapel's True Cross relics came) concluded that the relics are of a Mediterranean Cypress Wood that is very common in Palestine. The wood could be more than 2,000 years old. Pieces of the True Cross ended up in the chapel in Boalsburg on the Boal Mansion Museum's grounds through inheritance, explains Christopher Lee, museum CEO and an eighth-generation descendent of the Boal family.
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