Manuscript Cultures
'Hermann Made Me.' The Story of a Baptismal FontNew edition of 'Artefact of the Month' published
15 November 2021
Photo: Jochen Hermann Vennebusch
In the new edition of our series 'Artefact of the Month', Jochen Hermann Vennebusch examines a 'living fountain' in bronze, which played a key role in a mysterious medieval ritual.
In many churches in northern Germany, you can still find large, bronze baptismal fonts from the Middle Ages, elaborately designed and inscribed. Every year at Easter Vigil, they played an important role during a mysterious ritual: the consecration of baptismal water. During this ritual, a priest mixed fresh water with oil and asked God to give the liquid a life-giving and purifying power. It then remained in the font for an entire year.
In the new episode of our series ‘Artefact of the Month’, Jochen Hermann Vennebusch, Principal Investigator of the project 'Epigraphies of the Corpus - Textual Negotiations of Sacred Power on Medieval Liturgical Artefacts', takes a closer look at a baptismal font from 1310. It stands in the church in the convent of the Benedictine nuns in Ebstorf (near Uelzen) and was produced by the bronze caster Hermannus Clocghetere. Vennebusch explains why fonts like this one were understood as 'living fontains’. So living indeed that their inscriptions spoke for the font itself: ‘In the year of the Lord 1310 this receptacle was made. Hermann made me.’
Read the full story of this unique artefact here. In every edition of 'Artefact of the Month', an expert in the field shares the story behind a special written artefact in a compelling and approachable fashion. Editorial duties are overseen by Wiebke Beyer and Karin Becker, who greatly welcome ideas for future editions.
'Artefact of the Month' is the successor of 'manuscript of the month', a full archive of which can be accessed here.