Talisman of Charlemagne

[2] Originally, it was set with two large sapphires in the centre, with the supposed hair of Mary between them, but in 1804 they were replaced with a piece of enamel glass.

In fact, the reliquary appears to be a late work of Aachen in the time of Charlemagne, based on stylistic factors.

[4] Charlemagne's pre-eminent theologian, Alcuin (735-804) wrote in a letter to Archbishop Æthelhard of Canterbury, that he was trying to stop the emerging custom of wearing reliquaries around the neck, since it was "better to imitate the example of the saints with the heart than to carry their bones around in little sacks... this is a Pharisee superstition.

[6][7] It would then have formed part of the Aachen cathedral treasury, but again there are many doubts about this because a medallion containing the hair of the Virgin Mary is not mentioned in the records until the 12th century.

At the fall of the Second French Empire, Empress Eugenie entrusted it to Henri Conneau who hid it in a wall of his house and transmitted it to her in England.

In 1919 it passed to the Archbishop of Rheims, Cardinal Louis Luçon, who placed it in the church treasury of the Abbey of Saint-Remi.