Gilded copper with champlevé enamel, France, Limoges, 1200-1300

Crozier or pastoral staff. The shaft is of gilt copper in four sections, with a spike at the foot: it is surmounted by a knop of repousse with plain bosses, above which rises the head. The socket is decorated with foliated scrollwork on a ground of deep blue enamel: to it are attached three dragons with their heads downwards and their tails curled back; the back of each is set with turquoise pastes. A band beneath the knop bears an inscription in two lines. The knop of flattened spherical form with a central ridge has four dragons on the upper part and four in the lower, in relief in gilt copper on a ground of deep blue enamel. The crook which springs from a collar of leaves has a serrated outer edge and is decorated with a trellis pattern in blue enamel; it terminates in a monster's head from the lower part of which springs a leafy stem (broken) to join the staff. The group of the Annunciation is in gilt metal; the dragon head termination of the crook bites at the wing of the Archangel.

The crosier is an ecclesiastical ornament which is conferred on bishops at their consecration and on mitred abbots at their investiture, and which is used by these prelates in performing certain solemn functions. It is sometimes stated that archbishops do not use the crosier. This is not so, the truth being that in addition to the pastoral staff they have also the right to have the archiepiscopal cross borne before them within the territory of their jurisdiction.

According to Watts, the crosier was certainly in use in Gaul in the sixth century. It was in all probability in the first instance an ensign of office or dignity, an emblem of authority; however the predominant idea symbolised by the form of the crosier became that of pastoral care.

The form of the present crosier, with the spiral of the crook extending into an elongated curl, appears to have developed in the tenth century. The addition of a well defined knop appears in examples from the beginning of twelfth-century. The thirteenth-century witnessed the production of a large number of pastoral staves with a variety of subjects depicted in the volute. Limoges was the chief centre for the production of this type.
By the end of the thirteenth-century the popularity of the enamelled crosiers of Limoges appears to have waned, and the more or less stereotyped models which poured from its workshops in large numbers, made way for crosiers of an increased richness and elaborate magnificence.

J.C. Robinson noted that "The Limoges crosier heads were, in fact, a current article of manufacture, and as such, beautiful as they are, are not to be ranked with the splendidly wrought crosiers in more precious metals, which were possessed by the highest orders of the episcopal order. It is most likely, indeed, that they were more particularly designed as sepulchral crosiers...most of the Limoges crosiers now extant have indeed been removed from tombs...The Limoges crosiers are of very uniform types, a few prescriptive models seeming to have been adhered to with great constancy."

Watts, while not subscribing to this statement in its entirety - concurs that where a crosier is found, which has individuality or shows divergence from an established type, it may reasonably be assumed to be for someone special. The present cross shows no such divergence however. Indeed, the commonest decorative scheme on Limoges crosiers occurs on the present example - the staff head is covered with a scale work pattern in dark blue enamel, the outline of the scales being gilt. The Annunciation is also one of the more frequently occurring scenes placed within the volute of a Limoges crosier.

The crosier is an ecclesiastical ornament which is conferred on bishops at their consecration and on mitred abbots at their investiture, and is used by these prelates in performing certain ecclesiastical rituals.

The form of this crosier, with the spiral of the crook extending into an elongated curl, first appeared in the 10th century. The addition of a well defined knop appears in examples from the beginning of twelfth-century. The thirteenth-century witnessed the production of a large number of pastoral staves with a variety of subjects depicted in the volute. Limoges was the chief centre for the production of this type.

195:1 to 4&PART-1869