Metal-Work in the Service of the Church From the earliest days the Church has employed utensils and vessels of metal in its liturgical ceremonies. This practice increased during the Middle Ages. The history of the metalwork of the Church in the Middle Ages is in fact the history of the art of metalworking in general, and this is not only because the Church was the foremost patron of such works and because almost all the works that have been preserved from the Middle Ages are ecclesiastical in character, but also because until the twelfth century the works of the goldsmith were also almost exclusively manufactured by monks and clerics. But in the period of the Renaissance also the manufacture of church metalwork formed a very important branch of the gold-smith's art, and even in our own day these works are counted among those in the production of which that art can be most profitably developed; but not only the goldsmith's art, that is the artistic treatment of the precious metal, had its growth and development in the service of the Church, the base metals also, especially iron, bronze, and brass, have been largely utilised. As we are dealing, however, with the historical development of the metalwork in the service of the Church, we shall confine ourselves more particularly to works in the precious metals, without however entirely excluding those in the inferior metals from our consideration. I. ANTIQUITY Beginning with antiquity, we must first prove that the Church did in fact make use of valuable works of metal in the most ancient times. Honorius of Autun (d. 1145) makes the remark that the Apostles and their followers had employed wooden chalices in the celebration of the holy Mass, but that Pope Zephyrinus had ordered the use of glass and Pope Urban I of silver and gold vessels (Gemma animae, P. L., CLXXII, 573). This opinion seems to have been widely disseminated during the Middle Ages; it is nevertheless untenable. Recourse to chalices made of wood or some other cheap material was undoubtedly often made necessary in antiquity as the result of a lack of the more valuable materials or during the stormy times of the persecutions, but this custom cannot have been general. If the earliest Christians believed in the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist, and of this there can be no doubt, they assuredly also made offering of their most precious vessels in order that the Sacred Mysteries might be worthily celebrated. The earliest positive notices of the use of metalwork in the service of the Church date from the third and fourth centuries. It is especially the "Liber pontificalis", which is now accessible in the critical editions of Duchesne and Mommsen (see LIBER PONTIFICALIS) from which we derive the most interesting information concerning the subject under discussion. Here we first meet with the statement that Pope Urban had the sacred vessels made of silver, which does not by any means imply that before that time they were all made of glass. Of greater importance are the accounts of the magnificent donations of valuable works in metal made by Emperor Constantine to the Roman basilicas. It would take up too much space to enumerate them all, and we shall content ourselves with mentioning a few examples. To the Vatican basilica he presented seven large chalices (scyphi) of the purest gold, each of which weighed ten (Roman) pounds; furthermore forty smaller chalices of pure gold, each weighing one pound. The church of St. Agnes received a chalice of solid gold weighing ten pounds, five silver chalices of ten pounds each, and two silver patens of thirty pounds each. The metal plates for the Eucharistic bread (patens) are often mentioned in connection with the chalices; thus the Lateran basilica received seven gold and sixteen silver patens of thirty pounds each. Though not to the same extent, the other churches also were in possession of valuable metalwork for the liturgical service. The Church of Carthage, according to the testimony of Optatus, possessed so many valuables of gold and silver, that it was no easy matter to remove or hide them at the time of the persecutions (Contra Parmen., I, xviii). Ibas, Bishop of Edessa, was accused at the Council of Chalcedon (451) of having purloined a valuable chalice set with precious stones, which a pious man had presented to the church. As to the various kinds of metalwork used in the Church, the "Liber pontificalis" mentions the following in addition to chalice and paten as in use in the lifetime of Pope Sylvester: a silver bowl of ten pounds, which was intended for the reception of the chrism at baptisms and confirmations, a silver baptismal vessel of twenty pounds, a golden lamb weighing thirty pounds, which was set up in the baptistery beside the Lateran. seven silver stags that spouted water, each of which weighed eighty pounds, and especially numerous vessels for wine, e. g., in the Vatican basilica two specimens of the purest gold, each of a weight of fifty pounds. Of importance to us also is the statement that beside the golden lamb just mentioned there stood silver statues, five feet in height, of the Redeemer and St. John, weighing l80 and 125 pounds respectively. Furthermore mention must be made of the metal caskets, crosses, reliquaries, and book-covers, which were likewise made either entirely or in part of precious metal. With this enumeration the number of metallic utensils employed in Christian antiquity is by no means complete. The centre of Christian worship is the sacrifice and the altar, for this reason it was early made of valuable material or at least covered with it. Metal plates were furthermore used to adorn the confession (q. v.) and the immediate surroundings of the altar. Great wealth of the precious metals was spent upon the superstructure of the altar, or ciborium, which was decorated with metal statues, with chalices and votive crowns. When Leo III had the ciborium, presented by the Emperor Constantine, restored, he employed for that purpose 2704 1/2 pounds of silver. A large amount of metal was also used for the iconostasis, a screen connecting from two to six columns; thus Leo III had the iconostasis in the church of St. Paul recovered at an expenditure of 1452 pounds of silver. A large amount of metalwork is also required for the illumination of the basilica. Constantine alone presented to the Lateran church 174 separate articles of the greatest variety intended for this purpose. It is sufficient here to make mention merely of the chandeliers or lustres (coronae), the candelabra and lamps; they were made of bronze, silver, or gold. The Lateran church received among the rest a chandelier with fifty lamps of the purest gold, weighing 120 pounds, and a candelabrum of the same material, with eighty lamps. Even the vessels for storing the oil were sometimes made of precious metal. The Lateran basilica was the owner of three such vessels of silver, weighing 900 pounds. Practically nothing however of all these treasures has come down to us only a few small chandeliers of bronze, dating from the fifth to the eighth centuries, have been found, most of them in Egypt. There remains one more article of metal that was much used in the service of the Church from the earliest centuries, the censer. According to the "Liber pontificalis" the baptistery of St. John at the Lateran had a censer of gold weighing fifteen pounds, which was ornamented with green precious stones. If we take account then of all these articles, the conclusion naturally follows that the use of articles of metal in the service of the Church had attained extraordinary proportions in Christian antiquity. More difficult than the enumeration of the works in metal is the description of their decoration and the technical processes employed in their manufacture, because on this point our literary sources are almost wholly silent, while of the old Christian works, which might enlighten us, but very few are extant. We must therefore, in this case also, confine ourselves particularly to the statements of the "Liber pontificalis". Here we find numerous references to images (imagines) of Christ, the Blessed Virgin, the Angels, and Apostles; in most cases it is impossible to determine whether the works were carved or cast, certain it is that both methods were employed. The statues of Christ and the Apostles on the ciborium presented by Constantine to the Lateran church were undoubtedly carved. In some cases the core of the statue was of wood which was overlaid or covered with silver or gold. Painted images also were sometimes decorated with reliefs of silver or gold. Gregory III, for example, employed five pounds of pure gold and precious stones in the decoration of a statue of the Madonna in S. Maria Maggiore. Precious stones in particular were a favourite form of decoration for articles made of metal golden statues were at times completely covered with them. When Sixtus I provided the confession of the Vatican basilica with costlier furnishings, Valentinian presented a tablet in relief with the images of Christ and the Apostles which was studded with precious stones. The baptistery too beside the Lateran church possessed a censer which was adorned with precious stones. The works in bronze were often inlaid with silver decorations. Thus the chapels of St. John received doors with silver ornamentation. This was probably a kind of niello. To obtain colour effects enamel and verroterie cloisonee were likewise employed; of these a more detailed account will be given later. We shall call attention here only to the best-known specimen that has been preserved, the pentaptych in the treasury of Milan cathedral the central division of this is ornamented by this process with the paschal lamb and the cross. Finally, as to the workshops from which the Church derived its metalwork, there can be no doubt that they existed in all the larger cities of the civilized countries of ancient Christendom; but the cities of the Eastern Roman Empire, and especially Byzantium, seem to have been pre-eminent. There is a tendency even at the present day to consider almost all of the larger works that have been preserved as products of Eastern art. In fact a large number of works in metal were brought from the Orient to the Western countries. We mention here only a reliquary cross in St. Peter's at Rome, a present of the Byzantine emperor Justin II. II. MIDDLE AGES A. Byzantine metal-work We begin the Middle Ages with the Byzantine metalwork, in order to remove at the outset the impression that the term Byzantine is used to express a definite period of time; it is used rather to denote a definite geographical circle of art and culture, that is to say, Byzantium with its immediate and more distant surroundings. There were two factors that exerted a powerful influence upon the Byzantine work: first, the almost boundless extravagance which prevailed at the imperial Court, and which, as a result of the intimate relations existing between State and Church, made itself felt also in the latter; second, the close contact with the art of the inland provinces, particularly with Persian art. The Persian, or, to use a more general term, the Oriental, influence gave rise to an extravagant seeking after colour effects in the art of metalworking accompanied by a suppression of the main object, namely the production of plastic works. To understand the latter change, we must briefly explain a few technical terms. To give artistic form to the shapeless mass of metal the processes employed are casting and hammering or chiselling. In the former process the metal is brought to a liquid state and poured into a hollow form, which has previously been prepared by pressing a solid model into a yielding mass. Although casting must be regarded as the original mode of treating metals, nevertheless, so far as giving artistic form to gold and silver is concerned, hammering was of greater importance. By means of hammers the sheet of metal is hollowed out and in this way given plastic form. Very closely connected with hammering is the art of engraving this consists in directing the blow of the hammer not directly upon the metal but transmitting it by means of small steel chisels. It is these two latter processes that we have chiefly in mind when we speak of the goldsmith's art. By means of these the ancient art of the Occident produced its most beautiful works in metal. A different state of affairs existed in the Orient, and particularly in the home of the Mesopotamio-Persian and Syrian art, where, so to say, the hand had less plastic training than the eye a gift for colour. The glittering gold here received additional decoration by means of coloured enamels. This preference for coloured representation instead of the plastic was transmitted to Byzantium also. But it will always remain to the credit of the Byzantine goldsmith's art that it produced magnificent works in metal for the service of the Church. The process employed in the Orient and Byzantium is known as cloisonne enamel (email cloisonne); it consists in soldering very thin strips of gold on the gold baseplate so as to form cells into which the coloured enamel paste is pressed and fused in place, the enamel combining with the metal during fusion. In Byzantium cloisonne enamel forced the art of hammering and chiselling into a very subordinate position; enamel was used to decorate secular articles, such as bowls and swords, but especially the metalwork of the Church. The ornamentation consisted partly of decorative designs partly of figurative representations. Among the works that have come down to us there are many of a miniature- like purity, which in spite of their small size are truly monumental in conception. Of the larger works only a very small number have been preserved, the most famous is the golden altar-front (Pala d'oro) of St. Mark's at Venice. The remaining pieces are for the most part relic-cases which were suspended from the neck or placed upon the altar (examples at Velletri and Cosenza), crosses and book covers (a magnificent specimen in the royal jewel-room at Munich). From the period in which this art reached its highest perfection, the tenth and eleventh centuries, we have the so-called staurotheca (a reliquary tablet) in the cathedral at Limburg on the Lahn the reliquary of Nicephorus Phocas (963-969) in the convent of Lavra (Athos), and the lower band of the so-called crown of St. Stephen in the crown treasures at Budapest (1076-77). The terrible pillaging of the capital by the western crusaders, 1204, dealt the deathblow to this flourishing art. Although the examples of Byzantine metalwork decorated with enamel are by far the most numerous, specimens of hammered work are not entirely lacking. In the first place we may mention two architectural relic-cases which are in the form of a central structure surmounted by a dome (at Aachen and Venice). The reliquary tablets with carved reliefs are either in the form of a small folding-altar or of a cross, which often bears the portraits of the emperor, Constantine, and his mother on the obverse, and on the reverse, the crucifixion. A distinct type of the Greek goldsmith's art are the icons; one of the most valuable is in the Swenigorodskoi collection (St. Petersburg). A rare specimen with excellent chasing, a gilded silver pyx with the crucifixion of Christ, is in the cathedral at Halberstadt (eleventh century). At only one place in the West is it possible at the present day to get an idea of the magnificence and costliness of the Byzantine metalwork, in the treasures and library of St. Mark's at Venice, which still possesses a portion of the booty of the year 1204. B. Barbarian metal-work Though the manufacture of artistic metalwork for the Church was accompanied by no difficulties in the countries of the older civilization conditions were much more unfavourable among the barbarian nations which embraced Christianity. Nevertheless we know that among them articles of metal were much used in the service of the Church. Gregory of Tours in one place speaks of sixty chalices fifteen patens, twenty encolpia of pure gold, which King Childebert took as booty in the year 531 in a campaign against the Visigoths. When St. Patrick came to Ireland, he had in his retinue, among others, three workers in metal namely Mac Cecht, Laebhan, and Fortchern. There are still in existence fifty- three small bells, tubular and box-shaped, which belong to this Irish art of metalworking; among the Franks Saint Eligius of Noyon (588-659), a goldsmith, was even consecrated bishop. Here the interesting question arises, how these "barbarians" succeeded in producing artistic work in metal. The works themselves that have been preserved alone can answer this question. There are, it is true, but few of these the most important to be considered here are a chalice and a paten which were found near Gourdon (Burgundy) and are now preserved in the National Library of Paris, a relic-case also Burgundian, in St Maurice (Switzerland), the famous votive-crowns of the Visigothic kings from Guarrazar, especially those of Recesvinth and Svintila (631), a Gospel-cover of Queen Theodolinda in Monza, a reliquary in purse form from Hereford (now in Berlin), a Gospel-cover from Lindau (later purchased by J. Pierpont Morgan) and the Tassilo