Sancta Camisa

Sancta Camisa at Chartres

Around the same time, in the early 12th century, the first accounts appeared in the West describing the transfer of a Marian relic in Chartres Cathedral from Constantinople in the 9th century. This relic, the Sancta Camisa, was not usually called a veil. It is usually described as a chemise (undergarment) or tunic, or occasionally a supparum (shawl), all garments typically of linen. According to the 12th-century story, it was donated to Chartres by King Charles the Bald in 876. Later and legendary accounts, like the Pèlerinage de Charlemagne, claim that it was taken from Constantinople by Charles's grandfather, Charlemagne. The relic may have been a diplomatic gift from the Byzantine emperor to Charlemagne, later given by his grandson to Chartres. The earliest source to mention the relic in Chartres is Dudo of Saint-Quentin around 1000. By then the relic had been placed in a reliquary. Later accounts attribute to it the same miraculous properties as the veil in Constantinople. Its intervention supposedly saved the city from a Viking siege in 911. It remained hidden from view until the reliquary was opened in 1712, revealing not a linen undergarment but two long bands of luxury cloth, one in silk wrapped in another in silk and linen with embroidery. By the early 19th century, the actual relic was commonly called the Virgin's veil.