The two visual sources from Boudan and Mabillon depict the center portion of the shrine and focus on the sculptural imagery on the arch and architrave. However, a significant part of the shrine is missing from both representations. This may have been due to the artists’ interest only in the sculptural program relevant to the legend of the Holy Tear, or that the missing portion of the shrine could have been dismantled by the seventeenth century. The Benedictine monk Germain Millet, who was a resident at La Trinité as a member of the Congregation of St. Maur, offers a likely first-hand account of the shrine when it was installed in the choir.

We offer this potential reconstruction of the shrine based on Millet’s text and the visual sources by Boudan and Mabillon We also considered the marble tomb of Dagobert, a contemporaneous structure installed in the choir of Saint-Denis in Paris and the façade of Chartres Cathedral, as comparative monuments.  Click on the images below to see the text from Millet, Histoire de la Sainte Larme, pp. 34-35.

The monks installed the shrine in the choir of La Trinité, with the shrine’s back lodged in the choir screen, so that the sculptural program faced inwards towards the  altar.