Tournai - Cathédrale Notre-Dame Treasury

The cathedral treasury, housed in rooms to the right of the choir ambulatory, contains a number of pieces of the first order, the finest of which are two Late-Romanesque reliquary shrines: the shrine of the Virgin (Châsse de Notre-Dame), worked by Nikolaus of Verdun in silver and copper in 1205 and restored in the 19th C., and the shrine of St Eleutherius (Châsse de Saint-Eleuthère) of 1247, a work by Hugo von Oignies created most beautifully with the figures of the apostles, the saint with a model of the cathedral in his hand, and a likeness of Christ in metal. Also very valuable is a Byzantine reliquary cross (sixth/seventh C.) and the manuscript of the Messe de Tournai (1247) the oldest multi-voiced mass of the west. Adjoining the