Silver-gilt beaker and cover, set with medals commemorating Luther and the Reformation, Nuremberg, after 1717; maker's mark of Sigmund Dockler, born 1667; active 1696/7-1753

Silver-gilt (re-gilt) beaker and cover set with medals.The beaker is raised out of a single sheet of metal, the foot is soldered over the base. Both foot and lid are embossed with gadrooning with discrete use of the matting tool between the gadroons. The decoration on the beaker and around the medal set in the lid is engraved with foliated ribbon-work against a matted ground. The beaker is set with five coins and metals. The medal in the lid is a Nuremberg one dated 1717, by Philipp Heinrich Müller (1654-1719). The base is set with a Frankfurt Reichstaler of 1717; three coins and medals are set into the sides of the beaker. One is a half thaler of 1717, perhaps from Nuremberg; the second is an Augusburg medal of 1717, again by Müller; the third is a Saxon electoral medal of 1717 by Georg Wilhelm Vestner (1677-1740).

Nothing is known of this beaker's early ownership, although no doubt its first owner was a wealthy Protestant. It was acquired by the Museum from a Mr Whitehead in 1864 for £31 (see Museum file RP/1864/5338 - Art Referee reports, vol. I, part 6).

Historical significance: The beaker is one of a series of objects which include cups, plates, engravings and medals, made over the centuries to commemorate anniversaries associated with Martin Luther's campaigns to reform the Catholic church, and with the emergence of the Protestant movement. Medals celebrating Luther were issued in his lifetime, and commemorative objects associated with him still appear today (see Export Porcelain, lot. 249; Maedebach, et al., eds, Martin Luther Ausstellung; Coins and Medals of Martin Luther).
Records in the Frankfurt city archives reveal that the City Concil instructed their finance department to design and strike commemorative medals to celebrate the 200th anniversary of the Reformation (Senatsprotokoll 1717, fol. 36v f, for 15 July 1717). On 28th September 1717 they decided that two of the smallest commemorative medals should be given to every pupil attending the town grammar school, and that each child in the German schools should receive one (ibid., fol.87r). A council resolution of the 2nd November states that three different silver commemorative medals were struck (ibid., fol. 100r). There is no record of the Council commissioning a commemorative cup, so this lidded beaker was almost certainly commissioned by a private individual and incorporates one of the many medals struck and distributed by the Frankfurt authorities that year (information kindly supplied by Dr Michael Matthäus, Institut für Stadtgeschichte, Städtisches Archiv Frankfurt).
Its tapered form and slightly raised, gadrooned lid are very similar to a larger example now in the Germanischen Nationalmuseum, Berlin, dated around 1710-20 and made in Liegnitz by Johann Ludwig I Hummel. The Berlin beaker is also set with coins, although these do not commemorate Luther. (See Pechstein, et al., Deutsche Goldschmiedekunst, cat. no. 70, pp. 157-8, where the ornament is described as 'typical Regency ornament of its time'.) Setting coins in cups was an established practice by the eighteenth century. In the sixteenth century, Roman coins (genuine and fake) were set into cups and dishes to show off the taste and erudition of their owners. See two examples in Schroder, The Art of the European Goldsmith, cat. nos 6 and 7 (pp.43-6).

The five coins set into this beaker commemorate the two hundredth anniversary of Luther's nailing of 95 Theses on the door of the castle church at Wittenberg.The Theses were a list of challenges to church practices, such as the sale of pardons for sins issued by the pope (known as indulgences). Luther also sent a copy of his Theses to the local archbishop, Albrecht of Brandenburg. He was called to account by the church for his views, and met the pope's representative to argue his views at Augsburg, on 11 October 1517. Although Luther was not the first to call upon the church to reform its practices, his 95 Theses and the debates which followed upon them acted as a catalyst for a reforming movement that split the Western church into catholics (who accepted the pope as supreme spiritual leader on earth) and protestants (who did not). On Luther and the reformation, see New Catholic Encyclopaedia, sub nom. Luther; also McKim (2003).
The imagery and inscriptions on the coins and medals set into the beaker focuses on light, as Protestants interpreted the criticisms of Luther's 95 Theses as the dazzling light of reform shining upon the Catholic church. The image of one of the coins on the side of the beaker shows Luther and an angel removing the bushel measure that covered a candle, thereby symbolically revealing the light of the Gospel (see Juncker, Das Guldene und Silberne Ehren-Bedaechtniss, p.382, and also Juncker, Vita Martini Lvtheri, p.299. The face of the medal visible on the underside of the lid provides another example of this light imagery. The text engraved round the edge is a quotation from the Old Testament Book of the prophet Isaiah, and refers to the 'morning light'. Luther, in his lectures on Isaiah, had interpreted the 'morning light' as 'the Gospel, the Word of God, which is the light that has arisen in Christ'. See Pelikan and Oswald, Luther's Works, p.95.
Abbreviating verses from the bible by turning them into acronyms was a characteristic of Protestant iconography, and was part of the word games and theological allusions which Protestants and Catholics used to convey their arguments. The abbreviation 'M.J.A.' ('Manet In Aeternum') used on the medal set into the lid was frequently inscribed on objects relating to Luther, so much so that Catholics reinterpreted the meaning of the letters 'V. D. M.I. AE' to stand for 'Martin [Luther] remains in tribulation' ('Vbi Doctor Martinus? In Aerumnis' - see Juncker, Das Guldene und Silberne Ehren-Bedaechtniss, p.380.
The image of the bible set on a rock above water, visible on the inside of the base of the beaker, may also be a witty allusion to the way in which the reforming message of the coins would emerge as the liquid that filled the beaker was drained. The image also emphasises how the bible alone (and not the institution of the Catholic church) is the foundation upon which Christian faith rests.

The simplicity of the Régence ornament on this beaker highlights the applied Nuremberg and Augsburg medallions which commemorate the 200th anniversary of Martin Luther's first act as a Protestant reformer in Germany in 1517. One of the medallions shows him nailing his famous '95 theses'--suggested reforms to Catholic theology--onto the door of Wittenburg cathedral, a bulletin board for the university at which he taught. The second personifies the reformed Protestant church. Ingeniously, if one isolates the larger capital letters within the inscription on the third medallion, they read as the Roman numeral for the year 1717.

260:1, 2-1864