Lismore Crozier

rdf:langString Lismore Crozier

rdf:langString Lismore Crozier

rdf:langString The Lismore Crozier, c. 1100, National Museum of Ireland, Dublin. View of the drop, crook and upper knopes

rdf:langString National Museum of Ireland, Kildare Street, Dublin

rdf:langString wood, silver, gold, niello, glass

rdf:langString height: 116cm

rdf:langString The Lismore Crozier is an Irish Insular type crozier dated to between 1100 and 1113 AD. It consists of a wooden tubular staff lined with copper-alloy plates; embellished with silver, gold, niello and glass; and capped by a crook with a decorative openwork crest. Inscriptions on the upper knope record that it was built by "Nechtain the craftsman" and commissioned by Niall mac Meic Aeducain, bishop of Lismore (d. 1113). This makes the Lismore Crozier the only extant crozier to be inscribed, and the only one whose date of origin can be closely approximated. It was rediscovered in 1814, along with the 15th-century Book of Lismore, in a walled-up doorway in Lismore Castle, County Waterford, where it was probably hidden in the late Middle Ages during a period of either religious persecution or raids. It is now in the collection of the Kildare Street branch of the National Museum of Ireland (NMI) on Kildare Street, Dublin, catalogued as L.1949:1. During a 1966 refurbishment, two small relics and a linen cloth were found inside the crook (the curved top-piece). An early 20th-century copy is in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

rdf:langString early 12th century, probably c. 1100

rdf:langString Lismore Castle, County Waterford, Ireland