Yale professor R. Howard Bloch traces how the crown of thorns, already pawned to Venetian bankers by the cash-strapped Latin emperor Baldwin II, ended up in the hands of King Louis IX of France. Bloch walks through the tense negotiations over the relic's sale, its perilous journey from Constantinople, and the scene of Louis meeting it barefoot and weeping before carrying it into Paris. He details how Louis distributed individual thorns to bishoprics across the realm, binding France together like spokes on a wheel, and kept acquiring further relics for the Sainte-Chapelle, a piece of the true cross, the holy lance, the rod of Moses. The lecture reads these acquisitions as a political and theological project: Louis positioning France as a chosen land and himself as heir to both Rome and Israel, a new Constantine and a new Moses. Part of Yale's open course The Age of Cathedrals, the segment moves briskly through specific names, dates, and objects rather than general atmosphere.