Neo-Gothic Shrine
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At the end of the 19th century, ecclesiastical artistry flourished anew: the goldsmiths employed a wide spectrum of principally Romanesque and Gothic forms developed from printed collections of models. Their works were considered as allusions to a glorious past which they wished to continue after the founding of the Second Reich in 1871. But the goldsmiths also wanted to express a religious renewal during the eventful period of the Reich’s founding.
During the French Revolutionary period, a considerable portion of the Trier Cathedral Treasury was melted down. The relics of the saints themselves remained preserved. In order to reposit them in a dignified manner, the Cathedral chapter had the Trier goldsmith Josef Brems (1859 to 1912) create several Neo-Gothic reliquaries.
Among the preserved relics were the two links of the chain with which St. Peter was held prisoner in Jerusalem, from which an angel freed him. In 1895, on the 50th anniversary of his company, Josef Brems-Varain donated to the Cathedral Treasury a new reliquary for the chain links of St. Peter. For his new creation, he took as his model the 14th century St. Anne reliquary in the Cathedral Treasury. The reliquary stands on a base resting on four lions.
Four pairs of angels facing each other stand on the base and bear the shrine with two poles resting on their shoulders. Except for the four lions and the four angels, the reliquary is gilded, creating an effective color contrast between the architectural elements and the bearers. They recall the angel who had released the Apostle from his prison chains as well as a shrine procession in which relic shrines were carried through the city streets in the Middle Ages during wars and pestilences to ensure the aid of the saints.
In the architecture of the shrine, the goldsmith ultimately freed himself from his model: the idea of the Gothic shrine is retained, but he has provided the walls and the pitched roof with windows, allowing the observer to see the relic. The architecture of the shrine, surmounted by two gables ornamented with crockets and pinnacles is also designed differently: it evokes more than ever a Gothic church from the Middle Ages, the great period of the Trier Church.
Thus the reliquary of St. Peter’s chain is an illustrative example of how the artist, working with historical models, with allusions and echoes from the past, brought the present together with the historical greatness of the Trier Church through an important relic.
Author: Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Schmid