Reliquarium:
(Actually finding a definition seems impossible. Here’s the definition of reliquary.)
A container used to hold holy relics, usually of a saint. Generally only large churches, cathedrals, and monasteries would have such relics, and they would usually become popular pilgrimage destinations for people coming to pray to the saint in question. A reliquary could be practically any type of container, but were frequently ornately decorated chests of boxes, like the one on disply at St David’s Cathedral in Wales. Many reliquaries were destroyed during the Reformation, and few that survived are on public display because they are so valuable. [Illustrated Dictionary of British Churches]
Noted in the beginning of Hugo award winning story The Dragon Masters, by Jack Vance (1962):
The apartments of Joaz Banbeck, carved deep from the heart of a limestone crag, consisted of five principal chambers, on five different levels. At the top were the reliquarium and a formal council chamber: the first a room of somber magnificence housing the various archives, trophies and mementos of the Banbecks; the second a long narrow hall, with dark wainscoting chest-high and a white plaster vault above, extending the entire width of the crag, so that balconies overlooked Banbeck Vale at one end and Kergan’s Way at the other.
A fight for survival masks an inquiry into alternative modes of philosophical treatment of the Universe. I no longer read modern SF for want of time, but I had a lust to reread this classic, and finally found it in a collection of Hugo award winning stories.
