Enlightenment: Thigh Bone

Sheltering from the rain inside an old abbey for his heritage series Enlightenment, historian Dennis Lincoln-Park introduces a glass reliquary said to hold the thighbone of St Erasmus, hailing it as a beacon of civilisation emerging from the Dark Ages. He lifts the case so viewers can see the craftsman's signature carved into its wooden base and stresses that the sacred bone is beyond price, at which point the base drops away and the relic shatters on the stone floor. After a moment of silence he sets the empty glass back on its stand and quietly slips out of shot.

The signature Lincoln-Park reads from the reliquary, "Gislebertus hoc fecit" ("Gislebertus made this"), borrows the real inscription carved on the west tympanum of Autun Cathedral in France, the name associated with the Romanesque sculptor Gislebertus.