Ardennes Cross
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Cross of the Ardennes, front and back views
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The Ardennes Cross is a lecture cross from Carolingian times, which supposedly came from a monastery in the Luxembourg Ardennes and has been in the Germanic National Museum in Nuremberg since 1894 (inventory number KG 763).
The cross was probably made in northern France in the 2nd quarter of the 9th century by an unknown craftsman. It is 73 cm high, made of wood, studded with gold and set with a few precious stones.
It is one of the few examples of a gem cross (Crux gemmata), i.e. a grand cross set with precious stones ( gems ), from the Carolingian era. These crosses were made from 5th to 12th Used in Christian liturgy in the 16th century . They were placed at the altar and are therefore more ornate than large processional crosses , but do not have figurative representations. The symbolic meaning and the impression from a distance were more important than the value of the cross. That is why colored glass was often used next to the precious stones, as was the case with the Ardennes Cross.
literature
- Ernst Günther Grimme : Goldsmithing in the Middle Ages. Form and meaning of the reliquary from 800 to 1500. M. DuMont Schauberg, Cologne 1972, ISBN 978-3-7701-0669-1 , p. 21.
- Rainer Kahsnitz : The art of medieval church treasures and the bourgeois handicrafts of the late Middle Ages. In: Bernward Deneke and Rainer Kahsnitz (eds.): The Germanisches Nationalmuseum. Nuremberg 1852–1977. Contributions to its history. München & Berlin 1978, pp. 690–760 (far reaching article).
- Rainer Kahsnitz: The Ardennes Cross. A crux gemmata from the Carolingian era. In: Rudolf Pörtner (Ed.): The treasure house of German history. The Germanic National Museum Nuremberg. Munich 1982, pp. 151-175.