纪录片《大英博物馆世界简史》 066圣荆棘之匣（2）（在线收听）

This week's programmes are about how we talk to our god, or our gods. The objects are, if you like, just aids to conversation, but these conversations are about very big subjects indeed. They are about salvation, not only of individuals but of communities and even empires. Around six hundred years ago, religion and society all round the world were so closely connected that it would have been impossible for most people to say where one ended and the other began. Perhaps that's why unworldly hopes were so often articulated through worldly wealth, and given shape in temples and precious objects. It's a paradox that we see at its most extreme in the Holy Thorn Reliquary, now held here at the British Museum.

The Holy Thorn Reliquary is a one-foot (30 cm) -high theatre, made of solid gold and encrusted with jewels. In it we watch the terrifying drama of the end of the world, the day on which we, along with all the other dead, will be raised and will face judgement. This is a drama in which one day every spectator will be a participant. It's in three acts. At the bottom, as the angels blow their trumpets at the earth's imagined corners, graves open on an enamel hillside of vivid green. Four figures - two men, two women, naked, in white enamel and still in their coffins - look up and raise their hands in supplication. Far above them, at the very top of the Reliquary, sits God the Father, enthroned in judgement, among radiant gold and precious gems. And in between is the focus of the whole Reliquary.