On the night of 10–11 June 1194, fire consumed the Romanesque cathedral of Chartres, including its wooden roof and most of the town. The relic that had drawn medieval pilgrims for three centuries — the Sancta Camisia, the linen tunic believed to have been worn by the Blessed Virgin at the Annunciation — was thought lost.
Three days later, clergy and townspeople digging through the smoking crypt found the reliquary intact, the veil unburned. Cardinal Melior of Pisa, present as papal legate, took the recovery as a sign that the Virgin willed the cathedral rebuilt on a grander scale — and personally led the appeal that funded the present Gothic cathedral, begun that same year and consecrated in 1260.
The Sancta Camisia is still displayed in a dedicated chapel of the north aisle at Chartres Cathedral. Carbon dating in 1927 placed the linen in the first century AD, consistent with the Marian tradition attached to it.