Baptismal font in Magdeburg Cathedral

The baptismal font in Magdeburg Cathedral dates from the Roman Empire . It has a total height of 97.5 cm and a diameter of 105 cm (measured between two parallel sides of the octagon); the basin is 29.8 cm deep. It consists of two parts that originally did not belong together:

an eight-sided basin with a goblet-like foot;
an eight-sided base plate.

The material for both parts is porphyry , which comes from the quarries on Mons Porphyrites in Egypt.

Both parts have (filled) holes in the middle, which originally served as a water supply line. The polished plate was probably made in the heyday of Roman porphyry processing under the emperors Trajan or Hadrian , which the precisely executed profiles of the edges could prove. On the other hand, the basin is only smoothed, not polished. It has two bead profiles below the edge and at the foot. A very similar basin fragment (Antiquarium on the Celio), which is dated to the 2nd century AD, was found near the Temple of Hadrian in Rome. It served as a base for a fountain basin. That was probably the original destination of the copy in Magdeburg Cathedral . The church of San Zeno in Verona also has a porphyry baptismal font, which originally served as a fountain. The octagonal shape of the Magdeburg specimen shows, however, that it is not the fountain bowl , but the upturned foot of a Roman fountain.

The two parts of the fountain that make up the baptismal font in Magdeburg Cathedral were possibly already assembled in Italy, because only there were so many porphyry artifacts that one could choose two matching parts. It is not known how the precious piece of furniture got from Italy to Magdeburg, but it was probably brought to the cathedral, which he started in 955, at the instigation of Otto I - as well as other ancient spoils that were built into the cathedral: a laborious undertaking, because no alpine pass was passable for wagons at that time. Presumably the building material for the cathedral was transported by ship over the Rhone and Rhine. The base plate could have arrived in Magdeburg already damaged. Around the filled well hole of the current baptismal bowl there are workings, the purpose of which is unknown.

literature

Klaus Fittschen : The baptismal font in Magdeburg Cathedral. In: Bettina Seyderhelm (Ed.): A thousand years of baptisms in Central Germany , Schnell & Steiner, Regensburg 2006, ISBN 978-3-7954-1893-9 , pp. 59–69.
Bettina Seyderhelm (Ed.): A thousand years of baptisms in Central Germany. Schnell & Steiner, Regensburg 2006, ISBN 978-3-7954-1893-9 . Catalog No. A 1, pp. 245-246.