The Grésin plaque (sometimes called the plaque du Broc) is a red terracotta tile discovered in France. It is known for its bizarre, intermingled early Christian and Germanic pagan iconography. It has been dated to sometime before the 8th century CE.
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 Photograph of the Grésin plaque at the website of the Musée des Antiquités Nationales |
Provenance
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The plaque was discovered in the commune of Le Broc, Puy-de-Dôme before 1830 by Jacques-Antoine Dulaure. It was supposedly among twenty which covered a tomb unearthed in Blanède, near Grésin.[1] The plaque was thereafter in the possession of Maurice Girot, subprefect of Issoire; Pierre-Pardoux Mathieu, archeologist and professor at Issoire; and Gustave Grange, an antique dealer from Clermont-Ferrand. The stone was donated to the Musée des Antiquités Nationales by Gustave Grange's grandson, Louis, in 1952.[2]
Appearance and interpretation
editThe tile is red terracotta and measures 42 cm by 27.5 cm by 3.5 cm.[1] The tile depicts a human figure head-on, though his feet are in profile, with arms bent at the elbows and spread. His face is circular and beardless. The figure's forehead is marked with a monogrammatic cross in between an alpha and omega and he appears to wear a headdress (perhaps a diadem or tiara). In his left hand he wields a spear, in his right a circular object. A sword hangs off his belt. A serpent slithers underfoot while three lion's heads menace him from the side. (The identical lion's heads appear to have been imprinted on the terracotta using a 3rd-century Gallo-Roman matrix). He is dressed in a belted tunic, cape and boots. His penis is visible between his legs. He also wears a necklace.[1][3][4]
The identification of this figure with Christ was first proposed by Mathieu in 1846. The figure is thus Christ fighting the serpent and lion's heads, symbols of evil. The objects in either hand are perhaps a lance and a globe, mingling symbols of Roman imperial victory with those of Christ's triumph. The archeologist Raymond Lantier is among those who support this interpretation.[1] Pagan influences are on view in the visible phallus; and Inès Villela-Petit sees influence from the Gallic pagan god Lugus in the figure (noting his attributes in the necklace, headdress, spear, and serpent).[1][4]
Though the Christian influence on the plaque is undeniable, the bizarreness of the iconography frustrates identification of the figure with Christ. As archeologist Michael Friedrich has put it, "why is the figure naked, what is the disc-shaped object in its right hand, and what do the three lion heads mean? [...] explaining this figure as a somewhat odd vernacular ‘Germanic’ representation of Christ falls short."[5]: 64 The historian J. M. Wallace-Hadrill has gone as far as to say that "were it not for the presence of the Christian monogram with alpha and omega it would never occur to anyone to detect Christ here".[3]: 28
Date
editDue to its crude execution, the tile's authenticity was, for a time, questioned. Pierre-François Fournier, for example, believed it to be an 18th-century hoax. In the 1980s, a sample was taken from the back in order to perform thermoluminescence dating, which confirmed that the plaque was at least 1000 years old.[1][6] However, a wide range dates before 800 CE have been proposed for the tile. Françoise Vallet and Guirec Querre suggest a date within the 4th and 5th centuries, Inès Villela-Petit in the 5th and 6th centuries, and Alexandra Pesch in the 7th or 8th centuries.[5]: 63–64
See also
editReferences
edit- ^ a b c d e f "Le Christ paléochrétien dit de Grésin". Musée Archéologie Nationale. Retrieved 12 September 2024.
- ^ "Une plaque en terre cuite". Musée Archéologie Nationale. Retrieved 12 September 2024.
- ^ a b Wallace-Hadrill, J. M. (1983). The Frankish Church. Oxford University Press.
- ^ a b Villela-Petit, Inès (September 2018). "[Le descriptif de la plaque de Broc]" (PDF). Lettre du Toit du Monde (26): 10.
- ^ a b Friedrich, Matthias (2023). "The Enduring Power of Images". Image and Ornament in the Early Medieval West. Cambridge University Press. pp. 37–104. ISBN 9781009207768.
- ^ "Une Plaque en Terre Cuite à l'Effigie Mystérieuse: Le Christ de Gresin" (PDF). Musée Archéologie Nationale. September 2019. Retrieved 12 September 2024.
Further reading
edit- Fournier, P.-F.. "Plaques de foyer en terre cuite de Basse-Auvergne" in Auvergne Littéraire (1966): 35–49.
- Lantier, R. "La plaque funéraire de terre-cuite mérovingienne," Jahrbuch des RömischGermanischen Zentralmuseums Mainz 1 (1954): 237–44.
- Pesch, A. "Sterbende, überlebende und auswandernde Götter," in Dying Gods: Religious Beliefs in Northern and Eastern Europe in the Time of Christianisation, ed. Christiane Ruhmann and Vera Brieske. Stuttgart: Theiss, 2015
- Vallet, F. and Querré, G. "Authenticité de la plaque paléochrétienne de terrecuite dite de Grésin (Commune du Broc, Puy-de-Dôme)," Antiquités nationales 21 (1989): 75–81.
- Villela-Petit, I. "Plaque du Broc" in Bardiès-Fronty, Denoël, and Villela-Petit, Les temps mérovingiens. Trois siècles d’art et de culture (451-751). Paris : Édition de la RMN, 2016.