Plates 2.51-2.52: Malmesbury Chasse (Maidulf Reliquary)
Objects: Plates 2.51 and 2.52 depict front, back, and side views of a champelevé enamel casket produced in Limoges sometime between 1190 and 1200, now known as the Malmesbury Chasse. The chasse was in the possession of the antiquarian Thomas Astle (1735-1803) at the time of the engraving’s publication in 1789, and he provided the original explanatory account that accompanies the plates. The Malmesbury Chasse is currently located at the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGOID.29082).
Transcription:
Plate 2.51: The front view of a Reliquary in the possession of Tho:s. Astle Esq:r / Schnebbelie del. Sumptibus, Soc. Antiquar: Londini. Publish’d according to Act of Parliament April 23 1789. Basire Sc.
Plate 2.52: The back view of Mr. Astle’s Reliquary. / Schnebbelie del. Sumptibus, Soc. Antiquar: Londini. Publish’d according to Act of Parliament April 23 1789. Basire Sc.
Original Explanatory Account: Click here to read the original explanatory account for Plates 2.51-2.52.
Preparatory Drawings Click here to see the Preparatory Drawings for Plates 2.51-2.52.
Commentary by Freya Gowrley: The second volume of Vetusta Monumenta includes two highly detailed plates depicting the front, back, and end views of a “Reliquary in the possession of Tho:s Astle Esq:r.” Published on 23 April 1789, the engravings show what is now known as the Malmesbury Chasse, an ornate champelevé enamel casket produced in Limoges sometime between 1190 and 1200. Reputed to have housed the relics of the seventh-century Irish monk Máeldub (often anglicized as Maidulf), who established his monastic house in Malmesbury, the chasse found its way into the collection of the antiquarian Thomas Astle in 1774 (Lowden and Cherry 2008, 24-25).
The chasse is one of a distinct group of enamelled Limoges-made chasses known as “à fonds vermiculé,” so-named after their ornamentation with vermiculated designs—that is, a tightly woven pattern of scrolled lines, adapted from Byzantine and Islamic forms of artistic production (Lowden and Cherry 2008, 24-25). This typology was first identified and described by the French archaeologist, art historian, and curator Jean-Jacques Marquet de Vasselot (1871-1946), who completed a short study on this type of reliquary in 1905 (Rubinstein 1977, 305). More broadly, the “chasse” of the object’s name identifies it as a casket or box reliquary, whose shape was reminiscent of something akin to house, church, or shrine, and which was a common form of reliquary throughout Europe at this time (Distelberger, Luchs, Verdier, Wilson 1993, 21). This somewhat ambiguous shape suggests the reliquary’s twin signification, reflecting its “dual identity as tomb and paradisaical dwelling in the Heavenly Jerusalem” (21). Relatively small, examples of this type of reliquary were sized so that they could easily be carried in the hands, transported, or otherwise worn, although reliquaries of this period generally tended to be placed on an altar of a church or abbey (Rubinstein 1917, 304).
As shown in the plates, the Malmesbury Chasse is formed from an oblong base crowned with a gabled roof, which terminates in a cresting pierced with keyhole designs at its top, and in a downward extension of four feet at each of its corners, at its base (Rubinstein 1917, 304). As noted by Astle in the original explanatory account that accompanied the plates, the Chasse is composed of gilded and enamelled copper plates, mounted around a hollow wooden core. The cresting features three oval cabochon rock crystals, which Astle identifies as “British beads…worn by the Druids on solemn occasions, and afterwards served as ornaments to the Shrines and Reliquaries of Saints,” suggesting a complex interreligious history and an evocative point of origin for these decorative elements (Astle 1789, 2). One of the ends of the casket features a hinged opening with a locking mechanism. Presumably for the secure storage of its requisite relics, this feature reinforces the reliquary's intended function: eliciting "veneration and to honor the relic" (Hahn 2010, 291).
As an important site along one of the pilgrim routes to Santiago de Compostela, Limoges was a centre of production within what Wilfrid Bonser has called “the Medieval cult of relics,” which saw even minor churches acquire examples, all of which required appropriate containers (1962, 234-56). The production of enamelled caskets at a larger scale was in part enabled by the shift from the more intricate cloisonné enamelling to that of champelevé, which allowed for larger surfaces to be enamelled during a single firing. Although such caskets were undeniably luxury goods, the glittering and brilliantly coloured surfaces created by the champelevé process produced reliquaries that were notably cheaper to make than earlier examples that employed a mixture of gold and semiprecious gemstones, a fact that undoubtedly accounts for their broad geographic spread throughout Europe at this time (Osborne 1975, 332-33).
Characterized by golden backgrounds with enamelled details in deep blue, white, and green, the designs of champelevé enamel caskets tend to fall within distinct thematic groups. These include those caskets depicting popular saints local to Limoges—including Saint Valérie, Saint Stephen, or Saint Martial—and those showing scenes from the life of Thomas Becket, which make up a definitive group (Lowden and Cherry 2008, 25) While the base metal pilgrim souvenirs that furnished Becket’s cult were produced in Canterbury, it was in Limoges where the majority of reliquary caskets relating to the Saint were made (Alexander and Binski 1987, 225; Luxford 2020, 136). Around fifty such caskets depicting scenes from Becket’s life and death survive, including the famous “Becket Casket” now in the collections of the Victoria and Albert Museum and that which belonged to the collector and writer Horace Walpole (1717-1797), and which was recently displayed in the British Museum's exhibition Thomas Becket: Murder and the Making of Saint (de Beer and Speakman, 2021). Many reliquaries feature unspecific hagiographic iconography, suggesting the need for generic designs that could accommodate the relics of any number of saints. (Distelberger et al. 1993, 22). As in the case of the Malmesbury Chasse, such non-specific arrangements might also include representations of Christ, who appears “in Majesty” on the upper register of the chasse and as part of a scene of Crucifixion, surrounded by the Apostles, below. It seems likely that Saint Peter and Saint Paul (Malmesbury Abbey’s original tutelar saints) appear at either end of the chasse’s design, the former of whom stands alongside the locked door, which, when opened, would once have revealed the relics held by the casket (Lowden and Cherry 2008, 28). The back of the reliquary, as shown prominently in the second of the two engravings included in Vetusta Monumenta, features a pale-blue and green enamelled design of interlocking and encircled quatrefoils (Rubinstein 1917, 305).
Astle, the Chasse’s owner at the time of publication, apparently purchased the reliquary from Richard (Dicky) Bateman’s (1705-1773) sale in 1774 for £2. 7. 6d (Caudron 1977, 16). A fellow of the Royal Society of London, an honorary member of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and one of the trustees of the British Museum, Astle was elected to the Society of Antiquaries of London (SAL) in 1783 (“Some Account” 1802, 243-44). He published extensively on topics such as hieroglyphics, printing, stone pillars, and English history (Astle 1800, 1795, 1784). As both an author and in his role as Keeper of the Records in the Tower of London, Astle was a well-known figure within antiquarian circles. Indeed, an 1802 profile of Astle published in the European Magazine and London Review described him as a “very learned and ingenious Gentleman” (“Some Account” 1802, 243). His reputation as such is confirmed in a letter from Samuel Johnson, who wrote to Astle in 1781 that he had never “been at home without seeing you; for to see a man so skilful in the antiquities of my country, is an opportunity not willingly to be missed” (Boswell 1793, 3.392) Though we know little about Astle’s display of the chasse, he was instrumental in its publication in Vetusta Monumenta, with Astle communicating “an account of his curious Shrine” to the Society on 31 January 1788, and ultimately supplying the text that accompanies the printed plates (SAL Minutes XXII.294).
Prior to Astle’s ownership, the chasse reputedly came from Malmesbury Abbey in Wiltshire. The Abbey was established by St. Aldhelm, the pupil of Máeldub, and, as noted above, originally its tutelar saints were Saint Peter and Saint Paul, whose images accordingly feature on either end of the chasse (Keyser 1878, 284; Lowden and Cherry 2008, 28). It was from Wiltshire that Bateman supposedly acquired the chasse, presumably displaying it as part of the complex antiquarian decorative scheme that characterised his home, Old Windsor. Matthew M. Reeve suggests that the chasse was most likely exhibited in Bateman’s “chapel,” a “centrally planned space set within a bedchamber” (2020, 133). Reeve has firmly established the significance of Bateman as both a pioneer of the Gothic revival in architecture and design as well as a collector of medieval art and material culture (119-44). The Chasse’s placement within Bateman’s “popish” chapel accordingly situates its eighteenth-century display within the context of the growing interest in the Gothic that emerged at this time, as best articulated in the homes of Walpole and William Beckford (1760-1844), both of whom notably owned similar reliquary caskets, as discussed further below (133).
Forming a distinct body of objects, Limoges-made enamelled chasse reliquaries are, unsurprisingly, often discussed and explained in relation to one another. This was true even in the eighteenth century, as the explanatory account published alongside Plates 2.51-2.52 highlights: “the work of this Reliquary is undoubtedly of a much later date than either that formerly belonging to Croyland abbey, or that which was preserved in the cathedral of Hereford, called the Shrine or Reliquary of St. Ethelbert, and lately in the possession of Dr. Russell.” (Astle 1789, 2). Here, Astle refers to two known Becket caskets: the first associated with Croyland Abbey and the second associated with Hereford Cathedral, a casket with which members of the SAL would have been familiar, as it was exhibited there in May 1775. This is recorded in the first volume of the published Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of London, which not only notes its presentation by the antiquarian Rev. Dr. Thomas Russell but also the fact that “several curious specimens of the cofra Limovicensis, or, bahut de Limoges, have been communicated to the Society at various times,” here also mentioning Astle’s reliquary as represented in Vetusta Monumenta (Proceedings 1849, 1.24). By the time of Astle’s presentation of the Malmesbury Chasse to the Society, then, casket reliquaries had been firmly established as a type of medieval antiquity in which the Society took an active interest; certainly, Astle’s presentation of the Malmesbury Chasse was not the only shrine exhibited to the Society in 1788 (see SAL Minutes XXII.227; XXII.277; XXII.322).
The significance of such objects to eighteenth-century collectors is further demonstrated by the recorded appearance of enamelled chasses in the ownership of a number of the period’s most prominent and well-known enthusiasts of Gothic design, whose collections were thereby connected by virtue of owning notably similar objects from this distinct class of reliquary. This interrelated pattern of ownership and collecting is reflected even in the text of the explanatory account, which notes the distinction of the Malmesbury Chasse from the example connected with Croyland Abbey. As discussed by Julia Snape, this latter casket belonged to William Stukeley (1687-1765), and is in fact one of the best-known Limoges chasses to have survived to the present day: the aforementioned Becket Casket, now in the Victoria and Albert Museum (M.66-1997). Stukeley was a prominent collector of medieval objects, an interest reflected in his position as a founding member of the SAL (Snape 2013, 44). Stukeley acquired the Becket Casket from Sir John Cotton, but its provenance apparently went back to an “ancient Catholic family” who had been its custodian since the Dissolution of the Monasteries, at which point it was taken from Croyland Abbey (44). While Astle is keen to stress the differences between the two chasses, their related colouring and the similarities between the shape and ornamentation of their respective crestings highlight a visual and material interrelationship shared by the two objects. Significantly, after it left Stukeley’s collection, the Becket Casket passed into the hands of Gustavus Brander, and then, according to the Victoria and Albert Museum’s catalogue, into those of Astle—a suggestion that makes sense given his clear interest in the Croyland Abbey Chasse (“The Becket Casket” 2003). Stukeley showcased the Becket Casket during a paper presented to the Royal Society in December 1748, later published in the Philosophical Transactions (Stukeley 1748, 579-81), in which it appeared alongside two fold-out illustrations of its recto and verso, described by Astle in Vetusta Monumenta as “an accurate engraving of that curious remain of antiquity” (1789, 2).
This precedent is surely significant for a discussion of the Malmesbury Chasse’s appearance within Vetusta Monumenta, as the modes of Stukeley’s display and dissemination of his casket within antiquarian circles seem to offer a model for Astle’s own scholarly practices. Read in this way, Astle is the inheritor not only of Stukeley’s physical object, but of the intellectual tradition of antiquarian remediation in which both men engaged.
Walpole’s reliquary chasse, now in the Burrell Collection, also featured scenes from the life of Becket: a scheme of representation that conjured powerful historical resonances, which Snape argues must have been amongst the driving factors for Walpole’s acquisition of the object at auction in 1758 (2013, 45). Described as residing initially in the Holbein Chamber at Strawberry Hill, Walpole’s chasse eventually moved to the house’s famous Tribune. Known in 1765 as his “chapel,” indeed “a Catholic chapel—bar consecration,” the Becket Casket was subjected to a kind popish display that was perhaps reminiscent of that of the Malmesbury Chasse in its presumed presentation in Bateman’s own “chapel” at Old Windsor (Walpole 1759, 21.306). Between these two residences, Walpole’s and Bateman’s respective chasses occupied a shared exhibitionary context which reinforced the semantic connections between these objects, even while existing physically in different collections. Reeve has highlighted the porous boundaries between Bateman’s and Walpole’s collections, with Walpole acquiring religious objects, including a “cruxifix inlaid with mother of pearl” during the 1774 sale of Batmen’s belongings, an occasion that led Walpole to decry the dismemberment of Bateman’s villa which he thought of in direct relation to his own home (2020, 133).
Despite the resemblances between the Malmesbury Chasse and the reliquaries owned by Walpole and Stukeley, the casket reliquary that the chasse actually has the most in common with belongs to yet another collector of medieval art and antiquities: William Beckford. In fact, the Malmesbury Chasse and Beckford’s Chasse are so close in design that the pair are frequently referenced against each other and often, even, confused. As Tancred Borenius writes, the chasse that “shows the closest affinity” to the Malmesbury Chasse is that “which formerly belonged to Lord Zouche” (i.e. Beckford’s reliquary), with the resemblance between the two so close that “there can scarcely be any doubt as to their being products of one and the same workshop” (1930, 134). Like the Malmesbury Chasse, the design of Beckford’s reliquary, now at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York (17.190.514), features images of both the crucified Christ and Christ in Majesty. Marquet de Vasselot argues that the Beckford’s reliquary was the first time that this design appeared, subsequently being “universally imitated,” an analysis which identifies both this and the Malmesbury Chasse as part of the shared decorative tradition of those made “à fonds vermiculé” (Rubinstein 1917, 305).
Beyond the broader significance of the resemblance between the Beckford casket and the Malmesbury Chasse to the history of design, the fact that an almost identical pair of reliquaries passed through several important collections of Gothic art and material culture at different points of the long eighteenth century is compelling. While there is no evidence that the two chasses were known to their respective owners, certainly the Malmesbury Chasse’s appearance in Vetusta Monumenta is often referenced, suggesting that it was a touchpoint for antiquarian research into this type of object (Keyser 1878, 284). Although the date that Beckford came into possession of his chasse cannot be precisely ascertained, it was in his collection some time before 1822, when it was published in John Rutter’s extensive illustration of Beckford’s extravagant Gothic revival pile, Fonthill Abbey (1823). Rutter describes the chasse as follows: “Over one of the chimney pieces stands a Greek shrine of metal for containing relics. On one side of it, in compartments, is a crucifix with various figures of Saints, the heads of metal, gilt and embossed, the draperies of coloured enamel. This extremely curious article was brought by St. Louis from Palestine, and had been deposited at St. Denys, whence it was taken during the French revolution” (1823, 30).
Beckford’s chasse is also recorded at length in John Britton’s Graphical and Literary Illustrations of Fonthill Abbey (1823), which records the chasse as being displayed in Saint Michael’s Gallery: a gothicizing space in Fonthill Abbey that included a “pair of folding doors, of oak, glazed with plate glass, and ornamented with mullions and tracery,” pointed arched windows, elaborate fireplaces, and a vaulted roof “adorned with fan-shaped tracery” (52). Here, Britton describes the casket in familiar terms, namely through comparison with the Malmesbury Chasse. Crucially, he notes that Beckford’s reliquary “so nearly corresponds with a reliquary engraved for and described in the second volume of ‘Vetusta Monumenta’ of the Society of Antiquaries, that many persons might regard it as the same article” (1823, 55). Yet the frontispiece for Britton’s Graphical and Literary Illustrations of Fonthill Abbey makes exactly this error: it depicts the Malmesbury Chasse instead of the so-called Zouche casket belonging to Beckford (fig. 1). It is difficult to rationalise this mistake; why point out the possibility of confusing the two objects only to do just that? Perhaps Britton is cracking a knowing joke—but more likely the mistaken frontispiece attests to the high quality of the prints featured in Vetusta Monumenta, which, after all, Britton references directly, suggesting he may have had a copy to hand. Such a richly-detailed engraving surely made a useful point of reference for the design of Britton’s frontispiece, which showed a reliquary so similar that many would simply be unable to spot the difference. Indeed, even in the 1960s The Burlington Magazine published an article that described Britton’s frontispiece as featuring “the ‘Gaignikres’ Vase,” “the antique agate ‘Rubens Vase,’” and finally, the “‘Zouche Casket’ of twelfth-century Limoges enamel, now in the Metropolitan Museum, New York,” an error that shows how the similarities between the chasses could trick even an expertly connoisseurial eye (Lane 1961, 129).
As Snape has argued, Stukeley’s presentation of his reliquary casket to the Royal Society allowed him to position it “as a curiosity” which occupied “multiple epistemological fields” (2013, 46), a reading that reflects the diverse, overlapping, and potential significations of these objects. Indeed, considered in the distinct contexts conjured by their situations within distinct collections, the group of chasse reliquaries discussed in this piece variously evoked their originating cults, the destruction of histories and landmarks, a generic air of Catholicism, and the queer cultures of eighteenth-century collecting. At the same time, however, the chasses were united by their shared designs and decoration; their repetitive materiality encouraging a reading of them as a definitive typology within the category of objets d’art. Mediated through numerous texts and images, chasse reliquaries came to represent a discrete category of medieval decorative arts production self-consciously acquired by a distinguished group of collectors: a process supported and facilitated by the Malmesbury Chasse’s depiction in these plates, and its description in the pages of Vetusta Monumenta.
Works Cited:
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