Bringing the Holy Land Home: The Crusades, Chertsey Abbey, and the Reconstruction of a Medieval Masterpiece

Where was this produced?

By Brooke Hendershott '23


This statue was made in Northern France, with the relic and fine textile wrapping originating in North Africa. The iconography present in the statue and its carvings are French Gothic in many ways.

The priest has soft, European features and the "tonsure" hairstyle of Medieval monks. This specific style of tonsure has a circle at the top of the head shaved, which was a strictly Latin Catholic practice that would have been mostly concentrated in Western Europe, with France being the largest Latin Catholic nation in the 13th century.

However, most of the French Gothic iconography on this piece is present on its base. The base has cutout quatrefoils (four petaled flowers) on its faces, a motif that is present in many French Gothic sculptures and much Gothic architecture. It is also carved with leaves and vines, another pattern often used by Gothic designers. Finally, there are mythical beasts and lion feet at the bottom of the base, figures present in other French reliquaries and bases at the time, seen in the base from the Boston MFA's collection.


Finally, the relic tube uses the champlevé enameling technique which was developed in France in the 12th century and was rarely used outside of the country for multiple centuries, pointing again to this reliquary being French.

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