Votive crown

A votive crown is a votive offering in the form of a crown, normally in precious metals and often adorned with jewels. Especially in the Early Middle Ages, they are of a special form, designed to be suspended by chains at an altar, shrine or image. Later examples are more often typical crowns in the style of the period, either designed to be placed on the head of a statue, or re-used in this way after donation.

There were pagan votive crowns in the ancient world, although these are essentially known only from literary references. Vitruvius records that when Hiero II of Syracuse (died 215 BC) suspected his goldsmith of cheating him over the making of a votive crown for a statue in a temple, for which he had supplied the gold to be used, he asked Archimedes to devise a test. This led Archimedes to his famous eureka moment, after he realized he could test the crown by comparing its displacement of water to that of the same weight of pure gold; in fact the goldsmith had taken some gold and added silver instead. From other references, it seems that in classical times not just statues of the gods, but also living rulers were presented with crowns in the hope of a favourable response to a request.

The largest number of surviving examples of the Christian Early Medieval suspended type come from 7th century Visigothic Hispania, especially the Treasure of Guarrazar, from near Toledo, which includes no fewer than twenty-six examples in gold, probably hidden as the Muslim invasion drew near. These were excavated in 1859, and are now divided between the National Archaeological Museum of Spain in Madrid and the Musée de Cluny in Paris. However the type was originally Roman or Byzantine, and adopted widely across Europe; nearly all these have been lost, as the objects were naturally extremely vulnerable to theft or looting. These could not be worn, as they were too small and also very often had pendilia, or dangling ornaments on chains hanging from the main crown, often with jewels and perhaps formed into letters which spelled a word or phrase. In the example above, the letters on the pendilia spell "RECCESVINTHVS REX OFFERET", or "King Recceswinth offered this". These royal donations signified the submission of the monarchy to God. Such objects were probably influenced by the thirty suspended gold crowns placed round the main altar of Hagia Sophia by Justinian, now lost, although the Christian practice is at least as old as the 4th century.

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