The Gandersheim Casket is an eighth-century Anglo-Saxon chrismatory, a container for holy oils, made from whalebone, and held together with bronze mounts. The relief carvings feature “Mercian” beasts, a style of zoomorphic knotwork popular during the Mercian Supremacy in the 8th century, frequently in the form of a pair of animals facing towards or away from one another in symmetrical pairs, then dissolving into interlacing tails. Influenced by Byzantine art, exotic birds, lions, centaurs and chimeras feature heavily, and would have been wholly unfamiliar in the Germanic animal interlace that preceded it.
The animals featured on the front and back of the casket – quadrupeds, birds and serpents – reflect the divinely created animals of earth, air and water, and are framed into grids of six or twelve, important numbers in Christian cosmology. Among other things, they connote the days of creation, the hours of the day and the months of the year – the framework of a divinely created universe. On the ends and lid are beasts interlaced with fruiting vine bushes, representing the medieval Christian notion of Christ as the true vine, nourishing the soul as fruit nourishes the body. On the reverse, one of the panels features a Celtic-style roundel with six trumpet scrolls and four beasts eminating out into the corners of the panel, symbolic of the world, with creatures emerging from the whirling cosmos to inhabit its four corners. This cryptic symbolism is an example of the theological tradition of Ruminatio, the process of teasing out the meaning encrypted in an image, thought to strengthen the mind and test one’s patience, a great virtue in Christianity.
The Casket features a runic inscription on the inner side of the lid, which as yet has not been confidently translated. The casket may have been made as a gift for Gandersheim Abbey – Anglo-Saxons had a strong presence in eighth-century Germany and had been instrumental in converting their Old Saxon cousins to Christianity. Saint Boniface led the Anglo-Saxon mission to Old Saxony, and the insular-style Cutbercht Gospels were copied and illuminated by an Englishman in Salzburg. This missionary work may have introduced Carolingian rulers and clergy to Anglo-Saxon art, inspiring imitation in the form of the Tassilo Chalice, featuring Mercian-style animal ornament, or the lower cover of the Lindau Gospels, with its delicate animal interlace. Perhaps these links were the catalyst for the commissioning of the Gandersheim Casket, which is now in the Herzog Anton Ulrich Museum in Braunschweig, Germany.
Source: Anglo-Saxon Art, Leslie Webster, pp. 29, 106-109, 140-141, 163-164.
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The Gandersheim Casket is an eighth-century Anglo-Saxon chrismatory, a container for holy oils, made from whalebone, and held together with bronze mounts. The relief carvings feature “Mercian” beasts, a style of zoomorphic knotwork popular during the Mercian Supremacy in the 8th century, frequently in the form of a pair of animals facing towards or away from one another in symmetrical pairs, then dissolving into interlacing tails. Influenced by Byzantine art, exotic birds, lions, centaurs and chimeras feature heavily, and would have been wholly unfamiliar in the Germanic animal interlace that preceded it.
The animals featured on the front and back of the casket – quadrupeds, birds and serpents – reflect the divinely created animals of earth, air and water, and are framed into grids of six or twelve, important numbers in Christian cosmology. Among other things, they connote the days of creation, the hours of the day and the months of the year – the framework of a divinely created universe. On the ends and lid are beasts interlaced with fruiting vine bushes, representing the medieval Christian notion of Christ as the true vine, nourishing the soul as fruit nourishes the body. On the reverse, one of the panels features a Celtic-style roundel with six trumpet scrolls and four beasts eminating out into the corners of the panel, symbolic of the world, with creatures emerging from the whirling cosmos to inhabit its four corners. This cryptic symbolism is an example of the theological tradition of Ruminatio, the process of teasing out the meaning encrypted in an image, thought to strengthen the mind and test one’s patience, a great virtue in Christianity.
The Casket features a runic inscription on the inner side of the lid, which as yet has not been confidently translated. The casket may have been made as a gift for Gandersheim Abbey – Anglo-Saxons had a strong presence in eighth-century Germany and had been instrumental in converting their Old Saxon cousins to Christianity. Saint Boniface led the Anglo-Saxon mission to Old Saxony, and the insular-style Cutbercht Gospels were copied and illuminated by an Englishman in Salzburg. This missionary work may have introduced Carolingian rulers and clergy to Anglo-Saxon art, inspiring imitation in the form of the Tassilo Chalice, featuring Mercian-style animal ornament, or the lower cover of the Lindau Gospels, with its delicate animal interlace. Perhaps these links were the catalyst for the commissioning of the Gandersheim Casket, which is now in the Herzog Anton Ulrich Museum in Braunschweig, Germany.
Source: Anglo-Saxon Art, Leslie Webster, pp. 29, 106-109, 140-141, 163-164.