Bring your auction to collectors worldwide!
Get listed nowBy subscribing, you are agreeing to the privacy policy. Unsubscribe anytime.
Barnebys HQ
Brahegatan 10
BOX 5038
114 37 Stockholm
All auctions / Medals, Arms & Armour / 4 Byzantine Copper Alloy Cross Pendants
Eastern Mediterranean, Byzantine Empire. A quartet of cast cross pendants, each pierced or looped at the crown for suspension from a cord worn against the chest. Two are copper alloy, one leaded bronze, and one leaded brass, their surfaces carried from olive to pale ochre by long burial. The largest takes the double-barred patriarchal form, its arms terminating in raised bosses arranged in trefoil clusters; the remaining three are Latin crosses with flaring terminals, punched with ring-and-dot motifs down the shaft and across the transverse arm. Such pendants were the ordinary devotional wear of Byzantine Christians across Anatolia, the Levant, and the Balkans, worn as apotropaia against sickness and misfortune as much as declarations of faith. Simple sand-cast production made them affordable to every rank, which is why they survive in quantity. The ring-and-dot punch seen on three of these crosses is one of the most persistent ornamental marks in the ancient Mediterranean, cut with a simple hollow bit rotated against the metal. On Byzantine pectorals it is usually read as a solar or all-seeing motif, a compact charm against the evil eye layered onto an explicitly Christian form. The double-barred type, with its short upper bar for the titulus board of the Crucifixion, is the ancestor of the patriarchal cross later adopted as an emblem by the Eastern churches and, through Hungarian and Slovak heraldry, by medieval Europe. Please note that these pendants contain up to 23% lead and are not recommended for wear. Item # 204584
Estimate:£263.88
To the auctionView all items fromArtemis Fine ArtsorMedals, Arms & Armour
Estimate:
£263.88
Bring your auction to collectors worldwide!
Get listed now
JAKTHORN, mässing m. m., B&S, Blechblasinstrumente Markneukirchen
09/29/2026
£26.36
Est: £45.44
TÄNDARE. "Tinder pistol", Dunhill, England, 1900-talets andra hälft.
09/29/2026
£90.38
Est: £90.89
SAMISK HALVHORNSKNIV, 1900-TALETS FÖRRA HÄLFT, RENHORN, LÄDER OCH
09/29/2026
£52.72
Est: £76.02
