Monstrance
also called Lantern of Bégon
or Lantern of St. Vincent

pictured: Reliquary monstrance.  May have been a reliquary for a saint's head.  Constructed of wood gilded with good and embossed precious metals. Probably built in the Conques workshop in the eleventh century.

The upper part was a lantern.  The entire monstrance was designed like the lamps used by the Christians in the catacombs outside Rome in the early centuries.  They were intended to recall the funeral processions of Christian antiquity, with the tomb of Lazarus and the tomb of Jesus embossed on the sides.  The inscription is partially lost, but seems to support the contention that the lantern was built on order of Abbot Bégon for the relics "of Daniel","the three  young Hebrews" and   of a prophet.

The restoration of 1955 brought back several images which had been obscured.  One of the sides of the base shows Christ sovereign, in accordance with Psalm 90, with the Serpent and Dragon at His feet.  Christ holds a globe of the world in his right hand, and an open book in his left.  Another image is generally taken to be that of St. John the Baptist.