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ac se hwita helm hafelan werede, se þe meregrundas mengan scolde,secan sundgebland since geweorðad, befongen freawrasnum, swa hine fyrndagum worhte wæpna smið, wundrum teode, besette swinlicum, þæt hine syðþan no brond ne beadomecas bitan ne meahton.

‘To guard his head he had a glittering helmet that was due to be muddied on the mere-bottom and blurred in the upswirl. It was of beaten gold, princely headgear hooped and hasped by a weapon-smith who had worked wonders in days gone by and embellished it with boar-shapes; since then it had resisted every sword’. 1

A question

The Beowulf story includes a number of references to helmets ornamented with boar-imagery, which would be considered appropriate headwear for an early Anglo-Saxon warrior or king going into battle.2 The inclusion of bronze boar-heads in relief on the eyebrows of the Sutton Hoo helmet appears to fit these later literary references, and it might be assumed that boar-imagery should be regarded as having a totemic significance relating to warfare, tribal identity or the hunt.3 However, when considering the unique pair of intersecting boars on the shoulder-clasps found in the Sutton Hoo ship-burial, the question arises: what are the boars actually doing? The aim of this paper is to offer an interpretation of what they might be doing and why, and to suggest that the subordinate creatures in filigree around the boars are joining in the same activity. Although the boars stand out in this tour de force of early Anglo-Saxon metalwork quite brilliantly, I believe that there is more to this image than meets the eye. In venturing to understand the meaning of the image, I shall consider analogues identified in Sweden, Macedonia, Apulia, Rome and Syria/Palestine. I shall start in East Anglia and return there for my conclusion.

The shoulder-clasps

Among the remarkable finds made in the royal ship-burial in Mound 1 at Sutton Hoo in July 1939 were two sets of

1  Beowulf, lines 1448-1454 from Beowulf and Judith, ed. Elliott van Kirk Dobbie, ASPR 4, New York, 1953, p. 45; and Seamus Heaney, Beowulf: a new translation (London, 1999), p. 48.2  Beowulf, ed. Dobbie, lines 303-6 (p. 11), 1112-13 (p. 35), 1286-7 (p. 40), 1327-8 (p. 41).3  R. L. S. Bruce-Mitford, The Sutton Hoo Ship-Burial, 3 vols (London, 1975-83), 2 (1978), 168-71; figs. 124, 126-7; Noël Adams, ‘Rethinking the Sutton Hoo shoulder clasps and armour’ in Intelligible Beauty: Recent Research on Byzantine Jewellery, ed. Chris Entwistle and Noël Adams (London, 2010), pp. 83-112, at 102-3.

Chapter 10Besette swinlicum: sources for the iconography of the Sutton Hoo

shoulder-clasps Michael King

gold, garnet and millefiori glass shoulder-clasps, unique in their type, shape and decoration, each set measuring less than 12cm in length when fully assembled.4 They were found close together towards the west end of the burial chamber inside the ship, in a central position close to, but not adorning, the upper body of the dead king, assumed to have been buried there, according to current thinking, between c. 595 and 640.5 Each of the curved clasps consists of two halves, joined by a hinge, into which slotted a gold pin, attached to the clasp by a short chain. Ten staples on the back of each half-clasp then allowed them to be attached to a protective garment, by lacing or stitching.6

The clasps were made from gold, plate garnets (possibly from Sri Lanka) backed by box-gridded gold foil, millefiori glass, and blue glass (Fig. 10.1). The ornamentation can be divided into two zones: a rectangular panel and a rounded terminal, very similar on each of the four half-clasps. Each of the rectangular panels consists of an inner field containing a pattern of three lines of five stepped rhomboid cloisons filled alternately with garnet inlay and chequered millefiori glass, separated by larger stepped rhomboid cloisons filled with garnet inlay alone. Around this field is a border of interweaving garnet-inlaid Style II animals with blue glass eyes, enclosed by lidded gold cells.

The curved ends of the clasps each display a remarkable pair of intersecting boars, with rear legs, backs and heads formed out of individually shaped plate garnets, and shoulders made from chequered blue millefiori glass (Figs 10.2, 10.3). Tiny sections of plate garnet are used for the jaws, front legs, crests and tails of the boars, while on one half-clasp boar-tusks made of blue glass survive intact. A central lozenge in the design is lidded with gold on three of the half-clasps, while zoomorphic gold filigree fills the spaces beneath the boars, and sets the shoulder-clasps

4  Bruce-Mitford, Sutton Hoo Ship-Burial 2 (1978), 523-35.

5  Bruce-Mitford, Sutton Hoo Ship-Burial 1 (1975), 196; figs 111, 126-7. Although J. P. C. Kent (ibid. pp. 588-607) offered a terminus post quem for the burial of c. 625 using the coin evidence, G. Williams has now revised this to c. 595, suggesting that the burial could date to any time within the four decades following the arrival of St Augustine in Kent; see G. Williams, ‘The circulation and function of coinage in conversion-period England’ in Coinage and History in the North Sea World c. 500-1250, Essays in honour of Marion Archibald, ed. B. Cook and G. Williams (Leiden, 2006), pp. 145-92.6  Bruce-Mitford saw the shoulder-clasps as fastening the two parts of a leather cuirass, and offered the statue of the Emperor Augustus from Porta Prima, now in the Vatican Museum, as an example of how the clasps could have been worn; but see Adams, ‘Rethinking the Sutton Hoo shoulder clasps’, pp. 98-101, for a reappraisal of the evidence and a cogent argument for seeing the shoulder-clasps as fastening a linen chest protector worn over a mail shirt. For Anglo-Saxon chain mail see Carla Morini, ‘OE Hring’: Anglo-Saxon or Viking Armour? Anglo-Saxon Studies in Archaeology and History, 13 (2006), pp. 155-72.

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Fig 10.1 the Sutton hoo Shoulder-ClaSpS (© truSteeS oF the britiSh muSeum).

Fig 10.2 the Curved end oF one halF-ClaSp (bruCe-mitFord’S inv.5b; © truSteeS oF the britiSh muSeum).

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apart from other material from the Sutton Hoo ship-burial.7 I shall focus particularly on the curved ends of the clasps and the symbolism depicted within them. In particular, before considering the boars, I shall examine the other creatures depicted on the clasps and what they can tell us about the composition.

Birds

Angela Evans has proposed that the shoulder-clasps were made in an East Anglian workshop.8 While the clasps were an Anglo-Saxon creation, the zoomorphic filigree located between the heads and legs of the boars appears to have a Scandinavian ancestry.9 Although Bruce-Mitford described the filigree animals on the shoulder-clasps as ‘snake-like creatures’, there is, however, a case for interpreting the opposed animals between the boars’ heads and front legs on one half-clasp as birds (Bruce-Mitford’s Inv. 5), with beaked heads seen in profile and bodies outlined by filigree.10 On this half-clasp, the beaks of these gold filigree birds point upwards, and they appear to have wings infilled with granular filigree. These birds do not resemble the more common predatory type of bird, usually identified as an eagle, found on other items of metalwork from the ship-burial, such as the purse mount, and if they are indeed birds, they must for the time being remain unidentified.11 The creatures in the same position on the opposing half-clasp (Inv. 5a) appear to represent serpents rather than birds, but they too point their heads upwards.

Serpents

Serpents also appear on the other set of clasps (Bruce-Mitford’s Inv.4).12 Between the front legs of the boars is a coiled-up serpent with a tulip-shaped head, opening its mouth upwards and sticking out its tongue, while to either side a smaller knotted serpent points its open mouth directly downwards, onto the gold frame of the rectangular panels below (Fig. 10.4a). As in the case of the birds on the other set of clasps, the serpents on each half-clasp are slightly different. The significance of the open mouths of the serpents on this set of clasps will be returned to later.

7  Bruce-Mitford, Sutton Hoo Ship-Burial 2 (1978), 537.8  Angela Evans, ‘Shoulder-clasps’ in The Making of England: Anglo-Saxon Art and Culture AD 600-900, ed. Leslie Webster and Janet Backhouse (London, 1991), pp. 29-30.9  I am grateful to Niamh Whitfield for giving me the benefit of her close studies of these filigree creatures and related references. See N. Whitfield, ‘Filigree animal ornament from Ireland and Scotland of the late-seventh to ninth centuries: its origins and development’ in The Insular Tradition, ed. C. E. Karkov, M. Ryan and R. T. Farrell (New York, 1997), pp. 218-9; K. H. Nielsen, ‘Style II and the Anglo-Saxon elite’ in The Making of Kingdoms. Anglo-Saxon Studies in Archaeology and History 10 (1999), 185-202.10  Bruce-Mitford, Sutton Hoo Ship-Burial 2 (1978), 529-30; fig. 386.11  See George Speake, Anglo-Saxon Animal Art and its Germanic Background (Oxford, 1980), p. 81. In Anglo-Saxon ornament of the fifth to seventh centuries, George Speake has identified the eagle, or predatory bird with a curved beak, as a protective creature, like the boar and the serpent. See Bruce-Mitford, Sutton Hoo Ship-Burial 2 (1978), 508-12, fig. 375 for the Sutton Hoo purse mount.12  Bruce-Mitford, Sutton Hoo Ship-Burial 2 (1978), fig. 386.

It is also possible to identify a two-headed serpent along the crests of the two boars on all the clasps, with the tiny rectangular cells of the crests also forming the serpent’s scaly body, and the boars’ tails doubling as the serpent’s two heads, each with a central eye, lidded with gold on three of the half-clasps (Figs 10.2, 10.4b). This simple type of serpent-head can be found on other Anglo-Saxon metalwork of the seventh century, such as on the filigree serpents of the Milton Brooch (Fig. 10.4c).13

There can be little doubt that the over-arching two-headed serpent surmounting the Sutton Hoo helmet had a protective function, in both a practical and a symbolic sense. Rupert Bruce-Mitford has convincingly identified this D-sectioned tubular iron crest inlaid with silver wire as the wala surmounting a helmet described in Beowulf in lines 1030-4.14 George Speake has attributed a symbolic protective role to two-headed serpents in cloisonné work encircling coin-pendants from Bacton in Norfolk and Forsbrook in Staffordshire, which he dates to the same period as the Sutton Hoo shoulder-clasps.15

The two-headed serpent is well-represented in early Germanic art, and appears to have been associated with death.16 Its role in protecting warriors against death, as seen on the Sutton Hoo helmet, transferred to Christian apotropaic imagery during the conversion, as can be seen from a bronze seventh-century Visigothic belt-plate, found in the region of Seville, which depicts a two-headed serpent over-arching and protecting the head of Daniel in the lions’ den.17 However, the Germanic two-headed serpent symbol, used here and at Sutton Hoo for divine protection, was subsequently renounced by the Church, and transformed into a symbol of evil, as on fol. 172v of the eighth-century Northumbrian manuscript, Durham B.II.30, known as the ‘Durham Cassiodorus’, where the scaly two-headed beast is trampled on by King David, in the guise of Christ the Warrior.18

13  Compare the garnet serpent-heads of the clasps with the filigree serpent-heads on the Milton Brooch in the Victoria and Albert Museum, M109-1939.14  R. L. S. Bruce-Mitford, Aspects of Anglo-Saxon Archaeology, Sutton Hoo and other discoveries (New York, 1974), pp. 210-13.15  George Speake, ‘A seventh-century coin-pendant from Bacton, Norfolk, and its ornament’, Medieval Archaeology 14 (1970), 1-16, at pp. 11-12. It is possible that the protective nature of the two-headed serpent can be traced back to the two-headed amphisbaena, the skin of which Claudius Aelian describes, in the second century AD, as offering protection against creatures that kill, not by biting, but by striking (not only wild beasts, but also men, can strike and kill): see Aelian, On Animals, Vol. II, trans. A. F. Scholfield (Harvard, 1959), ch. 8. 8.16  See for example the two-headed serpents carved on the lids of Alemannic wooden coffins found at Oberflacht, Germany, pictured in Guida alla Sezione Altomedievale, Civico Museo Archeologica Milano, ed. S. Masseroli and T. Tibiletti (Milan, 2011), p. 32.17  G. Ripoll Lopez, ‘Symbolic life and signs of identity in Visigothic times’ in The Visigoths from the Migration Period to the seventh century: an ethnographic perspective¸ ed. Peter Heather (Woodbridge, 1999), pp. 403-430, pp. 423-4; fig. 11-7. Is it possible that Isidore of Seville, who was familiar with the amphisbaena, might have understood the symbolism of this buckle-plate, which had belonged to a Christian and was found near Seville? See Stephen A. Barney, W. J. Lewis, J. A. Beach and Oliver Berghof, The Etymologies of Isidore of Seville (Cambridge, 2006), ch. XII.iv.20, p. 256.18  Richard N. Bailey, The Durham Cassiodorus, Jarrow Lecture (Jarrow, 1978), p. 11.

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Fig 10.3 SChematiC drawing oF the boarS on the Sutton hoo Shoulder-ClaSpS.

Fig 10.4a the SerpentS on one Shoulder-ClaSp (bruCe-mitFord’S inv.4b).

Fig 10.4bthe boar CreStS/two-headed Serpent along the Curved edge oF one Shoulder-ClaSp.

Fig 10.4C a Filigree Serpent on the milton brooCh (viCtoria and albert muSeum, m109-1939).

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Although the two-headed serpent was later relegated from overhead to underfoot, we should bear in mind its protective nature in Germanic art of the early seventh century.19 The question arises: what is the over-arching two-headed serpent protecting on the shoulder-clasps? We shall return to this question shortly.

Animals

Niamh Whitfield has also identified filigree bipeds on the same set of half-clasps that feature the birds described above, located between the rear legs of one boar and the head of the other (Bruce-Mitford’s Inv.5).20 These bipeds, again varying slightly on each half-clasp, have a pear-shaped or elongated head with a large eye, a serpentine neck and body, and a hip from which a single leg emerges. Although it is not possible to identify the species of this creature, it is clearly neither a bird nor a serpent, and it must for the time-being remain an animal of indistinct species. Like the serpents described above, the heads of these animals cross over their bodies. Egon Wamers has recently emphasised the apotropaic nature of the serpentine, and often knotted, Style II creatures found decorating Christian artefacts of this period.21

The appearance of three types of filigree creature on the shoulder-clasps – creeping creatures, winged fowl and beasts of the earth – also reminds us of the three types of beasts first created by God, according to Chapter 1 of Genesis:

God also said, ‘Let the waters bring forth the creeping creature having life and the fowl that may fly over the earth under the firmament of heaven’. And God created the great whales and every living and moving creature which the waters brought forth according to their kinds and every winged fowl according to their kind. [...] And God made the beasts of the earth according to their kinds and cattle and every thing that creepeth on the earth after its kind. And God saw that it was good.22

Boars

Boars and boar heads are found decorating a number of artefacts from the Sutton Hoo ship-burial, including, in addition to the shoulder-clasps, the helmet and three hanging-bowl escutcheons (Fig. 10.5a).23 Of special interest are the boar heads in relief which decorate the ends of the eyebrows of the Sutton Hoo helmet (Fig.

19  Speake, Anglo-Saxon Animal Art, p. 86.20  Whitfield, ‘Filigree animal ornament’, p. 221, pl.11.2.21  E. Wamers, ‘Behind animals, plants and interlace: Salin’s Style II on Christian objects’, Proceedings of the British Academy 157 (2009), 151-204, at p. 182.22  The Vulgate Bible, 1, The Pentateuch, Douay-Rheims translation, ed. Swift Edgar (Harvard, 2010), Genesis, Ch 1: 20-21, 24-25, pp. 4-7. See Wamers, ‘Behind Animals, Plants and Interlace’, pp. 159-60.23  Bruce-Mitford, Sutton Hoo Ship-Burial, 3 (1983). pp. 217-9, for the boar head escutcheons.

10.5b).24 Chaney has constructed a case for the boar as a royal Anglo-Saxon cult animal, a symbol of fertility and protection which, if correct, may explain its occurrence on the belongings of the king buried in Mound 1.25

The three-dimensional boar figurines surmounting the helmets from Benty Grange in Derbyshire and Wollaston in Northamptonshire, both found in high status burials, have been interpreted as cult symbols intended to give the wearer strength and protection in battle. The gilded copper alloy boar figurine with garnet eyes found on a helmet in a richly furnished burial in a mound at Benty Grange in 1848 (Fig. 10.5c)) probably dates to the mid-seventh century (the nasal guard on the helmet bears a cross).26 The Wollaston helmet was found in 1997 in the grave of a man aged under twenty-five, and was probably also buried under a mound in the seventh century.27 Although the poem Beowulf in its surviving form was evidently written down much later, probably in a monastery, it still preserves the memory of the boar-helmet in five places in the text.28 Both gilded boar figurines surmounting helmets, like the Benty Grange example, and relief images of boars, as seen for example on the eyebrows of the Sutton Hoo helmet, are mentioned.

There are depictions of warriors wearing boar-helmets from several Swedish sites, pre-dating Sutton Hoo: for example on a bronze die for stamping foil for helmet decoration from Torslunda on the island of Öland (Fig. 10.5d), and on a decorative bronze panel on the helmet found in grave 7 at Valsgärde.29 Wamers has pointed out that the naturalistic boars seen in these depictions and on a number of small gold-foil boar figures from Bornholm are independent of Style I, and so cannot be used to demonstrate an older tradition of Germanic boar representation, leading to his conclusion that the boar in Style II originates from classical or early medieval Mediterranean art.30

The use of intersecting boars in cloisonné work on the Sutton Hoo shoulder-clasps is unique in early Anglo-Saxon metalwork. George Speake has identified boar-heads in cloisonné work on a pendant from Womersley in Yorkshire, and on a disc-brooch from Faversham in Kent, probably associated with the same workshop that produced the Sutton Hoo shoulder-clasps (Fig. 10.5e).31 However, neither the boar-heads on items of cloisonné metalwork

24  See note 3 above.25  William A. Chaney, The Cult of Kingship in Anglo-Saxon England (Manchester, 1970), pp. 121-7.26  Bruce-Mitford, Aspects of Anglo-Saxon Archaeology, pp. 223-52.27  Sonja Marzinzik, The Sutton Hoo Helmet (London, 2007), pp. 40-2. Kevin Leahy has suggested that a silver gilt mount in the shape of a boar’s head, with garnet eyes, found at Horncastle may also have adorned a helmet; see Kevin Leahy, The Anglo-Saxon Kingdom of Lindsey (Stroud, 2007), pl. 16. See also Jennifer Foster, ‘A boar figurine from Guilden Morden, Cambridgeshire’, Medieval Archaeology 21 (1977), pp. 166-7.28  See notes 1 and 2 above; for an English translation see Beowulf, trans. Seamus Heaney (London, 1999), lines 303-6 (p. 12), 1112-3 (p. 36), 1286-8 (p. 43), 1327-8 (p. 44), 1450-3 (p. 48).29  Bruce-Mitford, Sutton Hoo Ship-Burial 2 (1978), figs. 156b and 164f.30  Wamers, ‘Behind animals, plants and interlace’, p. 173.31  Speake, ‘Seventh-century coin-pendant’, pp. 5-8; fig. 4.

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Fig 10.5a boar-head hanging-bowl eSCutCheon, Sutton hoo Ship-burial (aFter bruCe-mitFord, 1983).

Fig 10.5b boar head in relieF on eyebrow oF the Sutton hoo helmet (reConStruCtion aFter bruCe-mitFord, 1978).

Fig 10.5C the gilded Copper alloy boar Figurine with garnet inlaid eyeS, benty grange helmet, derbyShire.

Fig. 10.5e boar-headS in CloiSonné work on a pendant From womerSley, yorkShire (leFt) and on a diSC-brooCh

From FaverSham, kent (right) aFter Speake, 1980.

Fig. 10.5d deSign on a bronze die For Stamping Foil For helmet deCoration, torSlunda, oland.

nor the boar figurines on helmets prepare us for the two intersecting boars on the Sutton Hoo shoulder-clasps. While the Benty Grange boar figurine is a naturalistic three-dimensional model, the Sutton Hoo boars intersect in an impossible manner. There is no explanation from the analogues for why the front leg of each boar is raised up in the air, and why, instead of looking ahead fiercely, the Sutton Hoo boars bow down their heads so that they are touching the golden ground below (Figs 10.2, 10.3).32

32  Bruce-Mitford, Sutton Hoo Ship-Burial 2 (1978), fig. 390.

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If these boars are meant to follow in the footsteps of the protective, royal boars of early Anglo-Saxon, and indeed early Scandinavian, military tradition, why do they adopt the postures they do, and what purpose do they serve?

The boars’ posture

Let us take the raised front leg as a starting–point for examining the strange posture of the beasts (Figs 10.2, 10.3). Each hoof is stepped, in the same manner as the rear hooves, while a pine-cone shape in gold filigree is created between the front legs of the two boars. The pine-cone is treated differently on each pair of clasps (Fig. 10.1). On one pair the pine-cone displays horizontal filigree decoration (Bruce-Mitford Inv. 5), while on the other a serpent is coiled up below it and its head reaches up in front of the pine-cone shape, with its mouth open and tongue sticking out (Mitford Inv. 4; Figs 10.6a, 10.4a). Also distinctive is the lozenge shape that surmounts each pine-cone, lidded with gold on three-half-clasps, and filled with a garnet on the fourth, which appears to represent the central focus of the image.

The boars’ stance seems to have been determined by the need to create the raised pine-cone shape between the front legs, and the narrow stepped hooves appear to have been deliberately shaped to create a set of filigree steps leading up to the pine-cone. The granulation of the horizontal filigree work within the pine-cone shapes on two of the half-clasps mimics the appearance of a real pine-cone (Fig. 10.6a).

In the Roman period the pine-cone was commonly used in the round to mark graves (Fig. 10.6b) and in relief to decorate sepulchral monuments throughout the empire.33 Pine-cones were associated with the cults of Attis, Cybele and Isis, and symbolised death and rebirth, as they contained the seeds of new life. In the fifth century, a marble pine-cone was used to symbolise immortality in a Christian context, at the summit of the central tower of the tomb of Galla Placidia in Ravenna (Fig. 10.7).34 The pine-cone in the centre of the design on the Sutton Hoo clasps echoes the form of pine-cones used on Roman and Late Antique monuments, and is in effect part of a ‘negative’ image, in gold filigree, of the more easily recognised boars above.

The steps beneath the pine-cone may have been inspired by a late sixth-century coin reverse showing a ‘cross on steps’, originating in the Byzantine Empire, and later

33  For a Roman sepulchral pine-cone monument from Scotland (Fig. 10.7b), see L. J. F. Keppie and Beverly J. Arnold, Corpus Signorum Imperii Romani, Great Britain,Vol I, Fasc 4: Scotland (Oxford, 1984), no. 59, Pine-cone finial (p. 21, pl. 19). For a sepulchral monument decorated with pine-cones in relief see D. J. Smith, Museum of Antiquities, Newcastle upon Tyne: An Illustrated Introduction (Newcastle upon Tyne, 1974), no. 17, Tombstone from Carlisle (p. 15).34  Roberta Michelini, ‘Pigna marmorea sulla sommità del tetto’ in Il mausoleo di Galla Placidia a Ravenna, ed. Clementina Rizzardi (Modena, 1996), pp. 210-12.

found on tremisses issued in Merovingian Gaul.35 Six gold tremisses, possibly ranging in date from 585 to 625, from the hoard found in the Sutton Hoo ship-burial, show this device, four displaying a cross on steps, and two a croix ancrée.36 The use of this design can also be seen on the gold solidus of the emperors Heraclius and Heraclius Constantine of 613-32, used upside-down as a pendant cross in the Wilton Cross, found in Norfolk.37 The Wilton Cross has been claimed as a product of the Sutton Hoo workshop, while the ‘cross on steps’ design was later re-used as a reverse design for an Anglo-Saxon solidus produced in south-east England in the mid-seventh century.38 In an ingenious manner, the stepped cloisons containing garnet and chequered millefiori inlay in the rectangular panels of the shoulder-clasps appear to echo the ‘cross on steps’ design when viewed from all angles. As Gale-Owen-Crocker and Win Stephens have recognised, the millefiori inlay sections are carefully positioned with a cross design, occasionally orientated as a saltire or Chi, in their centre (Fig. 10.1).39 A stepped cloison of this shape, containing a garnet inlay, can be seen at the very centre of a mid-seventh century cross-pendant found in Canterbury in 1982, underscoring the deliberate Christian symbolism of this device in this context.40

Pine-cones

Symbolic pine-cones can be seen in Late Antique mosaic depictions of fountains, at which harts drink, following the words of Psalm 42:1: ‘as the hart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God’.41 In the fifth-century tetrachonchal baptistery of the Episcopal Church in Stobi, the capital of the Roman province of Macedonia Secunda, the floor mosaics around the circular piscina are decorated with four eschatological and eucharistic compositions. In the SE panel an antlered hart and a doe approach a central cantharus to drink, while two

35  The cross on steps design itself probably relates to the cross with a stepped base set up by Theodosius II in 417 at the altar of the True Cross in Constantine’s Church of the Anastasis in Jerusalem. See Jane Hawkes, ‘The road to Hell: the art of damnation in Anglo-Saxon sculpture’ in Listen, O Isles, unto Me: Studies in Medieval Word and Image in honour of Jennifer O’Reilly, ed. E. Mullins and D. Scully (Cork, 2011), pp. 230-42, at p. 232.36  Bruce-Mitford, Sutton Hoo Ship-Burial 1 (1975), nos. 13-16, 24-5; 620-3, at pp. 631-2.37  Angela Evans, ‘The Wilton Cross’ in The Making of England: Anglo-Saxon Art and Culture AD 600-900, ed. Leslie Webster and Janet Backhouse (London, 1991), pp. 27-8.38  Anglo-Saxon Coins, ed. T. R. Volk (Cambridge, 1985), no. 3, p. 23.39  For the millefiori glass crosses in the chequerboard panels of the clasps see Gale R. Owen-Crocker and Win Stephens, ‘The cross in the grave: design or divine?’ in Cross and Culture in Anglo-Saxon England: Studies in Honor of George Hardin Brown, ed. C. Karkov, K. Jolly and S. Keefer, The Santa Crux Halig Rod Series, Volume 1 (Morgantown, WV, 2007), 117-37, at pp. 129-31.40  Martin I. Taylor, The Cradle of English Christianity (Canterbury, 1997), p.10. Already by the early sixth century stepped cloisons were being used to decorate Christian artefacts, such as the gold paten from Gourdon (Saône-et-Loire), see J. Lafaurie, ‘Le trésor de Gourdon (Saône-et-Loire)’, Bulletin de la Société Nationale des Antiquaires de France (1958-60), pp. 61-75.41  Bible quotation taken from The Holy Bible, containing the Old and New Testaments, Authorised King James Version (London and New York, 1949).

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Fig 10.6a the Central pine-Cone and StepS deSign on one Shoulder-ClaSp.

Fig 10.6b roman pine-Cone Finial From a tomb-monument Found near invereSk roman Fort, SCotland (nmS Fv 31).

Fig 10.7 Stone pine-Cone on the Summit oF the So-Called tomb oF galla plaCidia, ravenna (5th Century ad).

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Fig 10.8a pine-Cone Fountain and CantharuS deSign Found on moSaiCS in the baptiStery oF the epiSCopal

ChurCh, Stobi, maCedonia.

Fig. 10.8b pine-Cone Fountain and CantharuS deSign From an apSed room, Stobi, maCedonia.

does are seen in the NW panel.42 In the NE and SW panels peacocks, symbols of Paradise and resurrection, flank a cantharus.43 In each of the four mosaic compositions, the fountain-head takes the form of a pine-cone, showing its distinctive seeds, from each side of which a stream of water flows in an arc into the cantharus below (Fig. 10.8a ).44 Also, in each case, waterfowl flank the cantharus and arch their necks upwards to catch droplets of water from the Fountain of Life, an apt image repeated around the central piscina, which offered new life through baptism.

Ernst Kitzinger recorded a similar mosaic composition in an apsed room in the building he described as the ‘Summer Palace’ at Stobi, which he dated to the fifth century.45 Either side of the pine-cone fountain and cantharus are an antlered hart and a waterfowl, and the symbolism is emphasised by the location of the mosaic next to an actual fountain in the centre of the floor. In this case, four streams of water flow from the pine-cone fountain-head, symbolising the four rivers of Paradise (Fig. 10.8b).46

42  A cantharus was a pool which marked the centre of a courtyard in imperial and Late Antique Rome. See Margaret Finch, ‘The Cantharus and Pigna at Old St Peter’s’, Gesta 30/1 (1991), 16-23.43  James Wiseman and Djordje Mano-Zissi, ‘Excavations at Stobi, 1971’, American Journal of Archaeology 76/4 (1972), 422-4, figs 41, 42 and 47; James Wiseman and Djordje Mano-Zissi, ‘Excavations at Stobi, 1972’, American Journal of Archaeology 77/4 (1973), 398-99.44  Pine-cones flanked by peacocks are also found on at least one capital from the nave colonnades of the fifth-century basilica of Bishop Philip at Stobi; see R. F. Hoddinott, Early Byzantine Churches in Macedonia and Southern Serbia (London, 1963), p. 166, pl. 38e.45  Ernst Kitzinger, ‘A Survey of the Early Christian Town of Stobi’, Dumbarton Oaks Papers 3 (1946), 81-161, at p. 138.46  An antlered hart and doe are also shown drinking from four streams, representing the fourRivers of Paradise, on the side of the fifth- or early

Double-tiered fountains with the same symbolic meaning are depicted around the baptismal font in the mosaic pavement of the Late Antique baptistery at Ochrid in Macedonia, where they are flanked by stags, birds, sheep and gazelles. Streams of water pour from a pine-cone at the top of each fountain into a circular basin on a pedestal, and then overflow into a lower basin, before running through small holes to form a stream around the baptismal font.47 A more recent discovery of a mosaic depicting two antlered harts drinking from a cantharus, in excavations on the site of the church of S. Maria in Canosa, Apulia, suggests that the symbolism of the pine-cone fountain was also known and used in south-eastern Italy by the sixth century.48

These mosaics were meant as visions of Paradise, or Eden, as described in the Book of Genesis, where God created beasts of the sea, air and earth (Genesis 1:30) and a fountain that watered the whole face of the ground, and fed its waters into four rivers (Genesis 2: 6-10). St Ambrose called the fountain in Eden fons vitae aeternae

sixth-century silver reliquary found at Ain Zirara in Numidia. See Robert Milburn, Early Christian Art and Architecture (Aldershot, 1988), pp. 259-60, fig. 168.47  Tania Velmans, ‘Quelques versions rares du thème de la fontaine de vie dans l’art paléochrétien’, Cahiers archéologiques 19 (1969), 29-43 at p. 34, figs 4-6.48  Roberta Giuliani and Danilo Leone, ‘Scavi archeologici 2009-10 nell’area di Piano S. Giovanni a Canosa di Puglia’, Tu in Daunios, 8 (January 2011), 2-4; Roberta Giuliani and Danilo Leone, ‘La cattedrale paleocristiana di S. Maria a Canosa: Nuovi dati sullepavimentazioni musive’, in Proceedings of XVI Colloquium of Italian Association for MosaicStudy and Preservation, Palermo, 17-20 March 2010 (Tivoli, 2011), pp. 219-42. Although the mosaic has been damaged, the outline of the pine-cone fountain-head can still be made out.

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and identified it with Christ, sapientia and the fons gratiae spiritalis.49 Certainly, by the end of the fifth century, the pine-cone had made the transition from being a pagan symbol of death and rebirth to being one of the images used to depict the Christian Fountain of Life. It is therefore possible to apply a Christian interpretation of the pine-cone to the iconography of the Sutton Hoo shoulder-clasps.

The Pigna

As the mission that brought Christianity to Anglo-Saxon England came from Rome, it is necessary to consider the possibility that the pigna (Italian for pine-cone), an 11-foot high massive bronze pine-cone of the first century AD, had been installed in the cantharus in the atrium in front of Old St Peter’s by the time that the shoulder-clasps were made, and was influential in their design (Fig. 10.9).50 The general consensus among scholars is that this monumental fountain-head was removed from the precinct of the Serapaeum, near the Pantheon, in the Campus Martius, to the atrium in front of Old St Peter’s in the early medieval period.51 The pigna still gives its name to a Piazza and the rione or ward of Rome where is it is said to have originally stood. The author of the twelfth-century Mirabilia Urbis Romae believed, mistakenly, that the pigna once stood on the summit of the Pantheon above a statue of Cybele, suggesting perhaps an ancient, but misunderstood, association of the monument with this area of Rome.52

The first reference to a four-columned cantharus by Paulinus of Nola, in the late fourth century, does not mention the pigna, but it could, nevertheless, have been moved to Old St Peter’s at an early date, given the records of Christian Roman emperors closing and pulling down pagan temples in the late fourth century and the early fifth century.53 Not long after Paulinus’ death in 431, a mosaic of God being adored by the twenty-four elders was added to the east façade of St Peter’s, offering a vision of the celestial Eden.54 Evidence from the eighth century suggests that the atrium was known as ‘paradise’, and it is possible that the incorporation of the pigna in the cantharus was part of a papal vision of the atrium that is much earlier.55 The Liber Pontificalis records that

49  P. A. Underwood, ‘The Fountain of Life in manuscripts of the gospels’, Dumbarton Oaks Papers 5 (1950), 43-138, at p. 47.50  For St Augustine’s mission, see Richard Gameson, ‘Augustine of Canterbury: Context and Achievement’ in St Augustine and the Conversion of England, ed. Richard Gameson (Stroud, 1999), pp. 1-40.51  Finch, ‘Cantharus and Pigna’, p. 18.52  R. Valentini and G. Zucchetti, Codice topoggraphico della città di Roma (Rome, 1946), III, 44-45 and 430.53  Paulinus; Epistula, III, 13, in W. de Hartel, Corpus Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum (1894), pp. 94-5. For the destruction of pagan temples, see Averil Cameron, The Later Roman Empire (Harvard, CT, 1993), pp. 75-8. Krautheimer notes the suppression of paganism in Rome in 395 and a decree providing for the conversion of the temples to new uses in 408; See Richard Krautheimer, Rome: Profile of a City, 312-1308 (Princeton, NJ, 1980), pp. 36-9.54  Herbert L. Kessler and Johanna Zacharias, Rome 1300: On the Path of the Pilgrim (New Haven and London, 2000), p. 191. 55  J. C. Picard, ‘Les origines du mot Paradisus-Parvis’, Mélanges de l’École française de Rome 83 (1971-2), 159-86. It is possible that the removal of the pigna to St Peter’s was linked to the great papal building programme of the period 432-461, when classical spolia were often re-

‘at St Peter’s fountain with the square colonnade’, Pope Symmachus ‘provided marble adornments, including mosaic lambs, crosses and palms’, sometime between the years 498 and 514.56 Although there is no evidence that Symmachus was responsible for moving the pigna, he did enclose the atrium, which suggests that the massive bronze pigna had already been moved before the physical barrier around the atrium was constructed.57 It is arguable that a Roman monument of such importance would not have survived intact, had it not been preserved by the Roman Church at an early date.58

Drawings and frescoes of this monument surviving from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries show a square tabernacle protecting the pigna, formed by eight porphyry columns, which were probably installed in the papacy of Stephen II (752-7).59 The tabernacle over the pigna was ornamented with four bronze peacocks brought from the second-century tomb of Hadrian, now the Castel S. Angelo.60 The peacocks were chosen for re-use on this working fountain to evoke the same symbolism of Paradise and resurrection that earned them a place in the fifth-century mosaics depicting the Fountain of Life in the baptistery of the Episcopal Church at Stobi.61

Margaret Finch has seen the pigna as coming to represent the hub of Christendom for the faithful, the equivalent of the omphalos at Delphi in the classical world.62 Possibly in imitation of this Roman symbolism, a much smaller Roman bronze pine-cone fountain, only 91cm tall, was re-used at Charlemagne’s palace chapel at Aachen, and ornamented around the base with the names and personifications of the four Rivers of Paradise (Fig. 10.10a).63 This symbolic Roman bronze pine-cone may owe its re-use to the respect paid by the Carolingian court to the archetypal pigna fountain of Old St Peter’s, located at the centre of the

used; see Krautheimer, Rome, Profile of a City, pp. 51-2.56  The Book of Pontiffs (Liber Pontificalis), The Ancient Biographies of the First Ninety Roman Bishops to AD 715, trans. Raymond Davis, Translated Texts for Historians, 6 (Liverpool, 2010), p. 44.57  Richard Gem (pers. comm.) has pointed out to me that installation after this date would not have been impossible: through the portals, the use of cranes or by a breach in the wall.58  Finch, ‘Cantharus and Pigna’, p. 18. In 663 the Emperor Constans II dismantled all of Rome’s bronze decorations, including the bronze tiles from the roof of St Mary ad martyres (the Pantheon), and sent them to Constantinople, see Davis, Book of Pontiffs, p. 70.59  Finch, ‘Cantharus and Pigna’, pp. 17-18.60  S. R. Pierce, ‘The Mausoleum of Hadrian and the Pons Aelius’, Journal of Roman Studies 15 (1925), 75-103. Lanciani describes the fountain as a ‘masterpiece’ of the time of Pope Symmachus, and relates how in 1613 Pope Paul V melted down two of the peacocks, with the dome, pediments and dolphins that decorated the cantharus, to provide bronze for the casting of a statue of the Madonna for S. Maria Maggiore; see Rodolfo Lanciani, Pagan and Christian Rome (London, 1892), pp. 134-6.61  Peacocks can also be seen decorating the gable-ends of the basilica of Old St Peter’s on the earliest surviving representation of the building, in an eleventh-century Farfa manuscript, reproduced in P. Harbison, Pilgrimage in Ireland: the Monuments and the People (London, 1991), p. 16, fig. 7.62  Finch, ‘Cantharus and Pigna’, p. 20. The tomb of Christ in Jerusalem was also referred to as the navel of the world by Early Christian writers, for example Eucherius in his letter to Faustus, probably dating to between 414 and 449; see John Wilkinson, Jerusalem Pilgrims before the Crusades (Warminster, 1977), v 134, p. 55.63  Finch, ‘Cantharus and Pigna’, p. 22.

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Fig 10.9 the 1St Century ad bronze pigna Fountain, Formerly re-uSed in the atrium oF St peter’S, rome, now loCated in the Cortile della pigna (photo: anna Fox).

Fig 10.10a roman bronze pine-Cone Fountain re-uSed in Charlemagne’S palaCe Chapel at aaChen.

Christian world, and alerts us to the possibility of other symbolic references to the pigna in early medieval art.64

The critical question is whether the pigna could have been moved prior to the fashioning of the Sutton Hoo shoulder-clasps and therefore have been included in their decoration, as a symbolic Christian image referring to the shrine of St Peter, founder of the Roman Church. In short, it is possible that at some time in the fifth or early sixth century, the Roman Church appropriated the image of the pine-cone fountain as the Fountain of Life, and co-ordinated the removal of the massive bronze pigna fountain from a pagan temple precinct to Old St Peter’s, to mark the burial-place of St Peter and provide a symbolic centre-piece for the atrium, which later became widely known by the name ‘paradise’. The pigna could theoretically have been in place before the Roman mission to Kent in 597. However, the pine-cone may well have been significant to the Anglo-Saxons as a symbol of resurrection through familiarity with the general Christian symbolism of the Fountain of Life that we have observed in Late Antique Stobi, Ochrid

64  Einhard records that Charlemagne brought marble columns from Rome and Ravenna for his cathedral at Aachen. See Einhard and Notker the Stammerer, Two Lives of Charlemagne, trans. Lewis Thorpe (Harmondsworth, 1969, reprinted 1983), p. 79.

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and Canosa. Although the argument for the influence of the pigna on the Sutton Hoo shoulder-clasps is attractive, because St Augustine’s mission originated in Rome, there is currently no solid evidence to prove that it was in place in the atrium of Old St Peter’s before their manufacture.65

The Fountain of Life

If we nevertheless consider the general symbolism of the Fountain of Life in relation to the Sutton Hoo shoulder-clasps, it is possible to see how the central inlaid garnet shapes above the pine-cone, flanked by the millefiori front haunches of the boars, create the effect of water gushing from a fountain, with a golden lozenge as its spout (Fig. 10.10b). The crests of the intersecting boars create the impression of four streams of water, representing the four Rivers of Paradise, cascading outwards from the centre of the image. In the spaces between the front legs and heads of the boars on two of the clasps, it is also possible to see that the gold filigree birds point their beaks upwards, as if they are drinking the water falling from the fountain, or blue droplets underneath the main jets of water, represented by the chequered millefiori glass inlay. The birds, although of indistinct species, remind us of the waterfowl and peacocks approaching the pine-cone fountains on the mosaics at Stobi, where they reach forwards to catch droplets from the Fountain of Life.

We also have an explanation of the bowed heads of the boars themselves, since they are clearly drinking the water that has fallen from the fountain, which is represented by

65  For what it is worth, the form of the pine-cone on the shoulder-clasps resembles more the shape of the pigna than that of the round-topped mosaic pine-cones at Stobi.

Fig 10.10b the Fountain oF liFe deSign interpreted on the Shoulder-ClaSpS.

the golden ground, or rather a pool or cantharus below. In contrast to the boars with closed mouths decorating the pendant from Womersley and the brooch from Faversham, the additional cloisons between the jaws of the boars on the shoulder-clasps show that their mouths are open (Figs 10.3, 10.5e).66 They are in effect bowing down before Christ and drinking from the fons vitae. The bodies of the boars also cross over, forming a symbolic Chi shape, that evokes the name of Christ.67

The vertical filigree shown within the body of the steps on one set of clasps gives the impression of water from the fountain flowing down the front of the steps into the shallow cantharus below, where the boars are drinking (Fig. 10.6a). The posture of the boars, with only the tips of their stepped hooves touching the ground, finds an intriguing parallel on two fragments of a marble transenna panel from Palestine or Syria, upon which two harts are depicted in relief, lowering their heads to drink from the Four Rivers of Paradise emanating from a hill, upon which stands the cross of Golgotha.68 Like these antlered wild

66  Speake, ‘Seventh-century coin-pendant’, fig. 4.67  Paired creatures are commonly found crossing each other’s bodies in Early Christian art to form a cross or Chi symbol, for example paired fish on a mosaic in the narthex pavement in the large basilica at Heraclea Lynkestis in Macedonia, and on the much later Cross of SS Patrick and Columba at Kells; see Henry Maguire, Earth and Ocean: The Terrestrial World in Early Byzantine Art (Philadelphia, PA and London), fig. 48; Peter Harbison, The High Crosses of Ireland, An Iconographical and Photographic Survey, 3 vols (Bonn, 1992), 2, fig. 346.68  Age of Spirituality. Late Antique and Early Christian art, third to seventh century, Catalogue of the exhibition at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, November 19, 1977, through February 12, 1978, ed. Kurt Weitzmann (Princeton, NJ, 1979), nos 577-8, at p. 638. The fragments of the transenna panel are now in different museums, the left-hand section is in the Baltimore Museum of Art (54.108), and the right-hand section (extensively trimmed) is in the Dumbarton Oaks Collection, Washington

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harts or stags from the forest, the boars would normally be regarded as fierce (and highly dangerous) creatures. Yet the tiptoe stance of the boars on the clasps shows them balancing carefully on the steps of the Fountain of Life to drink from its waters, evoking the same sense of careful reverence as the harts on the transenna panel fragments, gingerly approaching the central cross of Christ to drink from the Rivers of Paradise issuing from its base.69

If we then re-examine the half-clasps with gold filigree serpents, it appears that the knotted serpents between the back haunches and heads of the boars have their heads pointing downwards with open mouths – in the same manner as the boars beside them – and that they too are drinking water that has fallen from the fountain (Fig. 10.4a). The central serpent, coiled up in front of the steps and the pine-cone, has its mouth pointing upwards and its tongue sticking out, as if it is trying to taste the water at the apex of the fountain above. We have seen how the serpent functioned as a protective creature in early Anglo-Saxon art, but here we see its transmutation into a creature seeking the Fountain of Life – a worshipper of Christ – on the shoulder-clasps. According to Physiologus, the way in which the serpent sloughs off its skin makes it symbolic of resurrection.70 This meaning may also have been present in the mind of the designer.

There seems, therefore, adequate supporting evidence to see the imagery arrayed on the Sutton Hoo shoulder-clasps as representing an Anglo-Saxon vision of Paradise, in which the Fountain of Life, issuing forth the Four Rivers of Paradise, is adored by serpents, birds, and animals, representatives of the beasts of water, air, and earth created in chapter 1, verses 20-25, of the Book of Genesis (Fig. 10.2).71 Whereas we might expect harts drinking from the fountain in the Mediterranean regions, they are replaced here by boars, the familiar protective beasts that appear to be associated with early Anglo-Saxon royalty. Here then is my answer to the question posed at the outset: the boars are drinking from the Fountain of Life.

The Sutton Hoo king: a lapsed Christian?

There is other evidence of Christian influence in the burial-chamber in the Sutton Hoo ship-burial. Two silver spoons inscribed with the names of Saul and Paul, probably conjointly symbolising the conversion of St Paul on the road to Damascus, may have been baptismal gifts to the man buried in Mound 1, perhaps from the Pope himself, a bishop, or a sponsoring Christian king.72 As the spoons

D.C. (36.44).69  This tiptoe stance can also be seen in the depiction of an incised hart on the Pictish symbol stone found prior to 1865 in digging a knoll known as Cnoc-an-Fruich near Grantown, Scotland; see The Pictish Symbol Stones of Scotland, ed. Iain Fraser (Edinburgh, 2008). This stone is now in a fine display in the Museum of Scotland (NMSX.1B.10).70  Physiologus, trans. Michael J. Curley (Austin, TX and London, 1979), p. 16.71  The Vulgate Bible, 1, The Pentateuch, Douay-Rheims translation, ed. Swift Edgar (Harvard, 2010), Genesis, Ch. 1: 20-21, 24-25, pp. 4-7.72  Bruce-Mitford, Sutton Hoo Ship-Burial 3.1 (1983), 125-46. See also

do not match, the sponsor went to some trouble to make up the pair, to imbue them with symbolic power before presenting them to the king, who was later to be buried with them in Mound 1. The spoons probably meant something to the buried king, and suggest he may have been baptised.

In addition, it is possible that the great gold buckle from the ship-burial, ornamented with zoomorphic interlace, was a Christian reliquary, in a way that has been proposed for the silver buckle from Crundale in Kent.73 The latter is ornamented with a fish, a common Christian symbol. Neither the silver spoons nor the buckle establish, of course, that their owner died a Christian. Ship-burial in a mound, as opposed to burial inside a church, rather suggests that he did not.74

That the Sutton Hoo king did not die a Christian, however, does not mean that he was never baptised, and in this connection it is worth recalling Bede’s description of a well-known baptism and apostasy:

… Redwald had in fact long before this received Christian Baptism in Kent, but to no good purpose; for on his return home his wife and certain perverse advisers persuaded him to apostatize from the true Faith. So his last state was worse than the first: for, like the ancient Samaritans, he tried to serve both Christ and the ancient gods, and he had in the same temple an altar for the holy Sacrifice of Christ side by side with an altar on which victims were offered to devils.75

A royal baptism, carried out by a Roman bishop, makes a very plausible occasion for the creation of a unique pair of gold, garnet and millefiori glass shoulder-clasps, depicting an Anglo-Saxon vision of the Christian Paradise, for a newly converted king, even if that king later reverted to his old pagan religion.

An Anglo-Saxon depiction of Paradise?

A closer look at the Sutton Hoo shoulder-clasps, in the light of the imagery of the Christian Paradise described above, strongly suggests that they were made by a craftsman who was familiar with the protective beasts of the early Anglo-Saxons, but who worked with members of the Roman mission with a deep knowledge of Early Christian symbolism.76 The iconography of the shoulder-

D. A. Sherlock, ‘Saul, Paul and the Silver Spoons from Sutton Hoo’, Speculum 47/1 (1972), 91-5.73  Bruce-Mitford, Sutton Hoo Ship-Burial 2 (1978), 556-60. Wamers has recently described the Sutton Hoo gold buckle as a ‘Style II-ornamented private reliquary’; see Wamers, ‘Behind animals, plants and interlace’, p. 187.74  Bruce-Mitford, Aspects of Anglo-Saxon Archaeology, pp. 23-5. See especially Martin Carver, Sutton Hoo: Burial Ground of Kings? (London, 1998), p. 165.75  Bede, A History of the English Church and People, trans. Leo Sherley-Price (Harmondsworth, 1955, reprinted 1983), II.15, p. 130.76  Bede records that the original Roman mission sent with Augustine included 40 members, and no doubt this number increased as the mission spread its influence: Sherley-Price, Bede, History, I.25, p. 69.

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clasps subtly subjugates Anglo-Saxon protective creatures, the boar and serpent, to the power of Christ, the Fountain of Life, from which these beasts now symbolically drink. The symbolism of the clasps suggests that members of the Roman mission worked closely with an Anglo-Saxon craftsman of immense skill to create a symbolic ‘Venn diagram’, in which elements of the old and new religions were ingeniously inter-connected and overlapped in two dimensions, while clearly showing Christ, the fountain-head, supreme at the centre, represented by a lozenge symbol surmounting the pine-cone.77

At first glance, the boars and serpents on the shoulder-clasps appear to perpetuate older apotropaic imagery, with Swedish connections, found on royal items in the burial, such as the Sutton Hoo helmet, with the boars pivotal to the entire design of the rounded terminals of the clasps.Attention to detail shows, however, that these beasts were symbolically subdued and employed to protect the Fountain of Life, a raised pine-cone fountain surmounted by a lozenge-shaped fountain-head, which was ingeniously framed by their own contorted bodies. The beasts appear in a scene evoking the Paradise of Genesis, in which the iconography shows boars and serpents supplementing their traditional protective role with their new role as

77  Hilary Richardson, ‘Lozenge and Logos’, Archaeology Ireland, 36, vol. 20, no. 2 (summer 1996), 24-5; Janina Ramirez, ‘Sub culmine gazas: the iconography of the Armarium on the Ezra Page of the Codex Amiatinus’, Gesta 48/1 (2009), 1-18, at pp. 5-6.

supplicants, and accompanied by birds, reminding us of the peacocks and waterfowl often seen approaching the Fountain of Life in Late Antique art. If it could be established that the fountain image is actually modelled on the pigna placed in the atrium of Old St Peter’s, then the boars are not only protectors of Christ, but protectors of St Peter, the founder of the Church of Rome. By extension, this role, as defender of the Christian faith, would also be expected of their owner – the king buried in Mound 1.78

In the imagery of the clasps, is it perhaps possible to pick up echoes of Gregory the Great’s advice to his missionaries, to turn temples into churches and celebrate holy days with feasts, replacing the pagan sacrifice of animals to idols?79 The intricate design of these items of Anglo-Saxon regalia, rooted in the Germanic-Byzantine world and appropriate to a military commander, is a triumph in the accommodation of the beasts of early Anglo-Saxon royal and military tradition within the Christian universe, with the Church of Rome at its hub.80 If accepted, this interpretation of the Sutton Hoo shoulder-clasps transforms their significance, as they are possibly the first items from the ship-burial to show highly sophisticated Christian symbolism being used by an Anglo-Saxon craftsman, and being displayed on his person by an Anglo-Saxon king.81

78  An expectation that he appears to have failed to live up to, given his pagan ship-burial.79  Sherley-Price, Bede, History, I.30, pp. 86-7.80  For the arguments for classical continuity and the European and Byzantine military context for the clasps, see Adams, ‘Rethinking the Sutton Hoo shoulder clasps’, pp. 101-3.81  Thanks are due to Gale Owen-Crocker, Niamh Whitfield, Richard Gem, Richard Sharpe, Pamela King and Martin Henig for references and advice on various subjects. The ideas in this article would never have come together without a number of guided visits to Rome and Ravenna, expertly facilitated by Éamonn O’Carragáin, and guided by Tom Brown in Ravenna, and to them I am most grateful. I would like to thank Jim Parish for advice on the presentation of this paper prior to my participation in the Manchester Centre for Anglo-Saxon Studies conference in March 2010, Patrick Devlin for help with Italian translations, and Tanya O’Sullivan for constant encouragement; any errors are my own.