A curious commission: the reliquary of St. Servatius in Quedlinburg

• Autores: Eliza Garrison
• Localización: Gesta, ISSN 0016-920X, Vol. 49, Nº. 1, 2010, págs. 17-30
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • Safely back in the treasury of Saint Servatius in Quedlinburg since the early 1990s, the Reliquary of St. Servatius is remarkable in part for the luxuriousness of its materials and the striking nature of the images carved into its Carolingian ivory core and its early-thirteenth-century silver niello base. Originally created in Fulda for someone in the circle of Charles the Bald, it is presumed that the emperor Otto I presented it to the Quedlinburg treasury sometime in the mid-tenth century. The reliquary's present appearance is the result of a renovation sponsored about 1200 by St. Servatius' abbess and prioress. It was at this point that the small box was cloaked with gems, gold filigree, and cloisonné enamels and provided with a new base. This study addresses how the precious additions to the reliquary responded to the Carolingian iconography of the Commission of the Apostles. The coalescence of the imagery and the materials added in the thirteenth-century renovation emphasize the significance of the truth of Christ's physical existence, of his materiality. Indeed, a dialogic relationship between the material and the spiritual had always been embedded in the work's iconography, and the materials added in the renovation provided this connection with added force and clarity. Not least, the embellishments added about 1200 attested to the patronesses' political allegiance to the imperial house at a time when the Quedlinburg abbey and its territories were under attack by King Otto IV and his troops.