Valasse Cross
The Valasse Cross is a Medieval gold cross reliquary, associated with the Empress Matilda.[1] It is an Ottonian processional cross in the crux gemmata style.[2]
History
[edit | edit source]It was made in what is now Germany or Italy between the 11th-century and the start of the 12th.[1] The cross is ornamented with precious stones from India, Iran, Egypt and the Mediterranean.[1] It is in the form of a Latin cross with extremities enlarged, and with a cross within a cross.[2]
The larger outer cross was made in the 1180s, and is contemporaneous with the Coronation Spoon.[3] The smaller cross, set within the larger, is the one associated with the Empress Matilda, and has been dated to the 11th-century.[3] The cross contains a relic of the True Cross, set in wax at the front.[3]
The cross became the property of the Cistercian Valasse Abbey, which had been founded by the Empress Matilda in 1156/7.[1] It is likely that Matilda’s son Henry II gave the cross to the abbey.[3]
The cross was acquired by the Musée des Antiquités de Rouen in 1843.[1] In 1846 Jean-Benoît Cochet wrote that the cross was not an altar cross, but rather a processional one.[4] Jean-François Brianchon recounted that it was rescued from destruction by a parishioner who presented the cross to Jacques-François Begouën when he acquired the abbey in 1792.[5]
Exhibitions
[edit | edit source]It was displayed in 2023 at the Musée des Beaux-Arts – Musée Beauvoisine.[6]
It is on display at St John's Chapel in the White Tower in the Tower of London from March 2025 to January 2026, on loan from the Musée des Antiquités de Rouen.[3]
References
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- ^ Abbot J. B. D. Cochet, "L'Abbaye du Valasse", Revue de Rouen, 14/i (Rouen 1846), 265–75.
- ^ J.-F. Brianchon, "Musée des Antiquités de Rouen, Croix dite du Valasse", in Bulletin de la Commission des Antiquités et des arts de la Seine-Inférieure, 5 (Rouen 1879–81), 68–73.
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