Three museums, including the Glencairn Museum in Bryn Athyn, are being accused of displaying medieval stained glass windows that were once stolen from the Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Rouen in Rouen, France, Boston reported yesterday.

According to Ouest France, a French publication, a Parisian association filed a legal complaint against the Worcester Art Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and the Glencairn Museum.

The museums are accused of housing and displaying panes from the Legend of the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus (pictured above and below). The Met said that the collection spans 11 panels created around the year 1200 and were originally in the Cathédrale Notre-Dame.

“Stained glass thefts were committed within Rouen Cathedral at the end of the 19th Century and in the first half of the following century,” the association’s president Philippe Machicote said, according to Ouest France. “Smuggled through the Parisian market, these stained glass windows ended up in the hands of American collectors and, after their death, in museums.”

Glencairn’s Youtube video which discusses the panels says that “Two works of art in the collection of Glencairn Museum represent the only known stained-glass depiction of the centuries-old legend of the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus, which reaches back to the days of Edward the Confessor”.

According to the video, the panels were purchased by Raymond Pitcairn, a collector who once lived on the property that is now Glencairn, at the 1921 auction of the medieval stained-glass collection of Henry C. Lawrence, the former governor of the New York Stock Exchange.

The Met acquired their panel, “Theodosius Arrives at Ephesus,” through Glencairn in 1980, Boston said.

For more on the panels, you can click here or watch the video below:

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Feature photo: Glencairn Museum