Ciborium c. 1330 - 1350

This Ciborium was created by an anonymous artist, likely from Europe, and crafted from copper alloy, enamel, and gilding. The function of such an object is clear: it’s a container, and the cross at the top tells us that what it contains is of Christian significance. Likely, it would have held the Eucharist in a church or chapel. But its social and cultural role is harder to pin down. Who made it? Who paid for it? Who used it? Many such objects survive in church collections. A historian would need to study the archives of such institutions to learn how their patronage worked. The presence of enamel and gilding suggest that this was a costly item, and its iconography would have played a key role in establishing the authority of its clerical users. Its message is self-consciously conservative, reinforcing traditional hierarchies. Only through attention to its institutional and social context can we begin to recover its meaning.