A votive crown is a votive offering

Votive offering

A votive deposit or votive offering is one or more objects displayed or deposited, without the intention of recovery or use, in a sacred place for broadly religious purposes. Such items are a feature of modern and ancient societies and are generally made in order to gain favor with supernatural...

 in the form of a crown

Crown (headgear)

A crown is the traditional symbolic form of headgear worn by a monarch or by a deity, for whom the crown traditionally represents power, legitimacy, immortality, righteousness, victory, triumph, resurrection, honour and glory of life after death. In art, the crown may be shown being offered to...

, normally in precious metals and often adorned with jewels. Especially in the Early Middle Ages

Early Middle Ages

The Early Middle Ages was the period of European history lasting from the 5th century to approximately 1000. The Early Middle Ages followed the decline of the Western Roman Empire and preceded the High Middle Ages...

, they are of a special form, designed to be suspended by chains at an altar, shrine

Shrine

A shrine is a holy or sacred place, which is dedicated to a specific deity, ancestor, hero, martyr, saint, daemon or similar figure of awe and respect, at which they are venerated or worshipped. Shrines often contain idols, relics, or other such objects associated with the figure being venerated....

 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

Vitruvius

Marcus Vitruvius Pollio was a Roman writer, architect and engineer, active in the 1st century BC. He is best known as the author of the multi-volume work De Architectura ....

 records that when Hiero II of Syracuse

Hiero II of Syracuse

Hieron II , king of Syracuse from 270 to 215 BC, was the illegitimate son of a Syracusan noble, Hierocles, who claimed descent from Gelon. He was a former general of Pyrrhus of Epirus and an important figure of the First Punic War....

 (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

Archimedes

Archimedes of Syracuse was a Greek mathematician, physicist, engineer, inventor, and astronomer. Although few details of his life are known, he is regarded as one of the leading scientists in classical antiquity. Among his advances in physics are the foundations of hydrostatics, statics and an...

 to devise a test. This led Archimedes to his famous eureka

Eureka (word)

"Eureka" is an interjection used to celebrate a discovery, a transliteration of a word attributed to Archimedes.-Etymology:The word comes from ancient Greek εὕρηκα heúrēka "I have found ", which is the 1st person singular perfect indicative active of the verb heuriskō "I find"...

moment, after he realized he could test the crown by comparing its displacement

Displacement (fluid)

In fluid mechanics, displacement occurs when an object is immersed in a fluid, pushing it out of the way and taking its place. The volume of the fluid displaced can then be measured, as in the illustration, and from this the volume of the immersed object can be deduced .An object that sinks...

 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 Visigoth

Visigoth

The Visigoths were one of two main branches of the Goths, the Ostrogoths being the other. These tribes were among the Germans who spread through the late Roman Empire during the Migration Period...

ic Hispania

Hispania

Another theory holds that the name derives from Ezpanna, the Basque word for "border" or "edge", thus meaning the farthest area or place. Isidore of Sevilla considered Hispania derived from Hispalis....

, especially the Treasure of Guarrazar

Treasure of Guarrazar

The Treasure of Guarrazar is an archeological find composed of twenty-six votive crowns and gold crosses that had originally been offered to the Roman Catholic Church by the Kings of the Visigoths in the seventh century in Hispania, as a gesture of the orthodoxy of their faith and their submission...

, from near Toledo

Toledo, Spain

Toledo's Alcázar became renowned in the 19th and 20th centuries as a military academy. At the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in 1936 its garrison was famously besieged by Republican forces.-Economy:...

, which includes no fewer than twenty-six examples in gold, probably hidden as the Muslim invasion

Muslim conquests

Muslim conquests also referred to as the Islamic conquests or Arab conquests, began with the Islamic prophet Muhammad. He established a new unified polity in the Arabian Peninsula which under the subsequent Rashidun and Umayyad Caliphates saw a century of rapid expansion of Muslim power.They...

 drew near. These were excavated in 1859, and are now divided between the National Archaeological Museum of Spain

National Archaeological Museum of Spain

The National Archaeological Museum of Spain is a museum in Madrid, Spain, located beside the Plaza de Colón , sharing its building with the National Library....

 in Madrid and the Musée de Cluny

Musée de Cluny

The Musée de Cluny , officially known as Musée National du Moyen Âge , is a museum in Paris, France...

 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

Pendilia

Pendilia are pendant or dangling ornaments for a piece of metalwork such as a crown, votive crown, crux gemmata, or kamelaukion, and are a feature of Early Medieval goldsmith work...

, 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 "RECCESVINTUVS 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

Hagia Sophia

Hagia Sophia is a former Orthodox patriarchal basilica, later a mosque, and now a museum in Istanbul, Turkey...

 by Justinian, now lost, although the Christian practice is at least as old as the 4th century.

The main body of suspended crowns is usually flat around the top as well as the bottom rim; some are merely a open framework of flexibly linked metal pieces. Such crowns were probably found widely across Christian Europe in this period; the will of 572 of Aredius, a wealthy friend of Gregory of Tours

Gregory of Tours

Saint Gregory of Tours was a Gallo-Roman historian and Bishop of Tours, which made him a leading prelate of Gaul. He was born Georgius Florentius, later adding the name Gregorius in honour of his maternal great-grandfather...

 in Gaul

Gaul

Gaul was a region of Western Europe during the Iron Age and Roman era, encompassing present day France, Luxembourg and Belgium, most of Switzerland, the western part of Northern Italy, as well as the parts of the Netherlands and Germany on the left bank of the Rhine. The Gauls were the speakers of...

, describes a crown that sounds very similar in form to the Spanish examples. The Iron Crown of Lombardy

Iron Crown of Lombardy

The Iron Crown of Lombardy is both a reliquary and one of the most ancient royal insignia of Europe. The crown became one of the symbols of the Kingdom of Lombards and later of the medieval Kingdom of Italy...

 was perhaps originally made as a votive crown, although it was later used for the coronation

Coronation

A coronation is a ceremony marking the formal investiture of a monarch and/or their consort with regal power, usually involving the placement of a crown upon their head and the presentation of other items of regalia...

 of monarchs including Napoleon I

Napoleon I

Napoleon Bonaparte was a French military and political leader during the latter stages of the French Revolution.As Napoleon I, he was Emperor of the French from 1804 to 1815...

. Another gold crown was a source of contention in Constantinople

Constantinople

Constantinople was the capital of the Roman, Eastern Roman, Byzantine, Latin, and Ottoman Empires. Throughout most of the Middle Ages, Constantinople was Europe's largest and wealthiest city.-Names:...

; it was given to the Emperor Maurice

Maurice (emperor)

Maurice was Byzantine Emperor from 582 to 602.A prominent general in his youth, Maurice fought with success against the Sassanid Persians...

 (r. 582-602) by his wife Constantina

Constantina (empress)

Constantina was the Empress consort of Maurice of the Byzantine Empire.-Family:Constantina was a daughter of Tiberius II Constantine and his wife Ino Anastasia. Her parentage was recorded in the chronicles of Theophylact Simocatta, Paul the Deacon and John of Biclaro.The Georgian Chronicle...

 and the dowager

Dowager

A dowager is a widow who holds a title or property, or dower, derived from her deceased husband. As an adjective, "Dowager" usually appears in association with monarchical and aristocratic titles....

 Empress Sophia

Sophia (empress)

Aelia Sophia was the Empress consort of Justin II of the Byzantine Empire from 565 to 578. She was specifically interested in economic matters and was involved in financial matters during Justin's reign...

 for Easter 601, intended to be worn by him. Instead he had it suspended by chains over the main altar of Hagia Sophia, upsetting the two ladies. It hung there for nearly two centuries, until Emperor Leo IV

Leo IV the Khazar

Leo IV the Khazar was Byzantine Emperor from 775 to 780 CE.Leo was the son of Emperor Constantine V by his first wife, Irene of Khazaria , the daughter of a Khagan of the Khazars...

 coveted it and took it for his own use. In a suspiciously neat story, the crown was richly decorated with carbuncles

Carbuncle (gemstone)

A carbuncle is an archaic name given to any red cabochon cut gemstone. The name applied particularly to red garnet. The word occurs in four places in most English translations of the Bible...

 (jewels), and Leo, who was an iconoclast, soon after died of an outbreak of carbuncle

Carbuncle

A carbuncle is an abscess larger than a boil, usually with one or more openings draining pus onto the skin. It is usually caused by bacterial infection, most commonly Staphylococcus aureus. The infection is contagious and may spread to other areas of the body or other people...

s (abcesses), allowing the church to draw the obvious conclusion; other stories said his wife had poisoned him. Another Byzantine votive crown, given by Leo VI

Leo VI the Wise

Leo VI, surnamed the Wise or the Philosopher , was Byzantine emperor from 886 to 912. The second ruler of the Macedonian dynasty , he was very well-read, leading to his surname...

 (r. 886-912) is now in the Treasury of San Marco, Venice, and is decorated with cloisonné enamels.
In England, a later medieval source says that King Canute gave a, or "his", crown to be placed on or over ("super caput") the head of the rood

Rood

A rood is a cross or crucifix, especially a large one in a church; a large sculpture or sometimes painting of the crucifixion of Jesus.Rood is an archaic word for pole, from Old English rōd "pole", specifically "cross", from Proto-Germanic *rodo, cognate to Old Saxon rōda, Old High German ruoda...

, or large crucifix

Crucifix

A crucifix is an independent image of Jesus on the cross with a representation of Jesus' body, referred to in English as the corpus , as distinct from a cross with no body....

, in Winchester Cathedral

Winchester Cathedral

Winchester Cathedral at Winchester in Hampshire is one of the largest cathedrals in England, with the longest nave and overall length of any Gothic cathedral in Europe...

 (other notables decorated statues with their jewellery or a sword). The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle

Anglo-Saxon Chronicle

The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle is a collection of annals in Old English chronicling the history of the Anglo-Saxons. The original manuscript of the Chronicle was created late in the 9th century, probably in Wessex, during the reign of Alfred the Great...

records that Hereward the Wake

Hereward the Wake

Hereward the Wake , known in his own times as Hereward the Outlaw or Hereward the Exile, was an 11th-century leader of local resistance to the Norman conquest of England....

's men looted a solid gold crown from the head of the rood on the main altar of Peterborough Cathedral

Peterborough Cathedral

Peterborough Cathedral, properly the Cathedral Church of St Peter, St Paul and St Andrew – also known as Saint Peter's Cathedral in the United Kingdom – is the seat of the Bishop of Peterborough, dedicated to Saint Peter, Saint Paul and Saint Andrew, whose statues look down from the...

 in 1070. The Romanesque period

Romanesque art

Romanesque art refers to the art of Western Europe from approximately 1000 AD to the rise of the Gothic style in the 13th century, or later, depending on region. The preceding period is increasingly known as the Pre-Romanesque...

 saw the height of crowned images of Christ, who is often shown wearing a crown on the cross in wood and metal figures, and manuscript illuminations, and also the introduction of crowned images of the Virgin Mary in the West, as the concept of Mary as Queen of Heaven

Queen of Heaven

Queen of Heaven is a title given to the Blessed Virgin Mary by Christians, mainly of the Roman Catholic Church, and also, to some extent, in the Anglican, Lutheran, and Eastern Orthodox churches, to whom the title is a consequence of the Council of Ephesus in the fifth century, where the Virgin...

 became increasingly prominent.

A very small late medieval crown now in the Treasury of Aachen Cathedral

Aachen Cathedral

Aachen Cathedral, frequently referred to as the "Imperial Cathedral" , is a Roman Catholic church in Aachen, Germany. The church is the oldest cathedral in northern Europe and was known as the "Royal Church of St. Mary at Aachen" during the Middle Ages...

 was made for the famously lavish wedding celebrations in 1468 of Margaret of York

Margaret of York

Margaret of York – also by marriage known as Margaret of Burgundy – was Duchess of Burgundy as the third wife of Charles the Bold and acted as a protector of the Duchy after his death. She was a daughter of Richard Plantagenet, 3rd Duke of York, and Cecily Neville, and the sister of...

, Duchess of Burgundy, sister of Edward IV of England

Edward IV of England

Edward IV was King of England from 4 March 1461 until 3 October 1470, and again from 11 April 1471 until his death. He was the first Yorkist King of England...

, and later placed on a statue of the Virgin Mary as a votive offering. It was designed to be worn on top of an elaborate headress and hairstyle, or perhaps on a hennin

Hennin

The hennin was a headdress in the shape of a cone or "steeple", or truncated cone worn in the late Middle Ages by European women of the nobility. They were most common in Burgundy and France, but also elsewhere, especially at the English courts, and in Northern Europe, Hungary and Poland. They...

, and is much smaller than a conventional crown for wearing directly on the head. This is now a rare example of a medieval votive crown that has survived above ground. A few years later, in 1487, the crown that had been used by the pretender Lambert Simnel

Lambert Simnel

Lambert Simnel was a pretender to the throne of England. His claim to be the Earl of Warwick in 1487 threatened the newly established reign of King Henry VII .-Early life:...

 was given to a statue of the Virgin in Dublin.

Crowns for designed solely for statues became increasingly elaborate, especially in the Baroque

Baroque

The Baroque is a period and the style that used exaggerated motion and clear, easily interpreted detail to produce drama, tension, exuberance, and grandeur in sculpture, painting, literature, dance, and music...

 period, and in the Spanish world; they often have a flat radiating "sunburst

Sunburst

Sunburst is a type of finish for musical instruments such as electric and acoustic guitars and electric basses. At the center of a sunburst-finished surface is an area of lighter color that darkens gradually towards the edges before hitting a dark rim...

" around them, in the style used for monstrance

Monstrance

A monstrance is the vessel used in the Roman Catholic, Old Catholic, and Anglican churches to display the consecrated Eucharistic host, during Eucharistic adoration or Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament. Created in the medieval period for the public display of relics, the monstrance today is...

s, as in the example illustrated. Statues of the Virgin Mary and the Infant Jesus, of the Infant Jesus of Prague

Infant Jesus of Prague

Infant Jesus of Prague is a famous statue of infant Jesus located in the Church of Our Lady Victorious in Malá Strana, Prague.- History :Its earliest history can be traced back to Prague in the year 1628 when the small, 19-inch high, wax statue of the Infant Jesus was given by Princess Polyxena...

 type, are among those most commonly crowned. The Crown of the Andes

Crown of the Andes

The Crown of the Andes, or La Corona de Nuestra Senora de los Andes, is a votive crown originally made for a larger than life-size statue of the Virgin in the Cathedral of Popayán, Colombia. The crown is 34.5 cm high, 52 cm in circumference, weighs 2.18 kilos in all and is made from 18 - 22 carat...

 is a votive crown from Colombia

Colombia

Colombia, officially the Republic of Colombia , is a unitary constitutional republic comprising thirty-two departments. The country is located in northwestern South America, bordered to the east by Venezuela and Brazil; to the south by Ecuador and Peru; to the north by the Caribbean Sea; to the...

 in gold with 450 emerald

Emerald

Emerald is a variety of the mineral beryl colored green by trace amounts of chromium and sometimes vanadium. Beryl has a hardness of 7.5–8 on the 10 point Mohs scale of mineral hardness...

s, apparently made between the late 16th and 18th centuries, perhaps originally as an offering in thanks for the city of Popayán

Popayán

Popayán is the capital of the Colombian department of Cauca. It is located in southwestern Colombia between Colombia's Western Mountain Range and Central Mountain Range...

 being spared from a plague. It is now in private hands in the US. Votive crowns have continued to be produced in Catholic countries in modern times. Often such crowns were kept in the church treasury except for special occasions such as relevant feast-days, when they are worn by the statue. Christ and the Virgin Mary are frequently conventionally shown wearing crowns in Christian art, in subjects such as the Coronation of the Virgin

Coronation of the Virgin

The Coronation of the Virgin or Coronation of Mary is a subject in Christian art, especially popular in Italy in the 13th to 15th centuries, but continuing in popularity until the 18th century and beyond. Christ, sometimes accompanied by God the Father and the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove,...

, and are the most common figures to be crowned, but other saints may also be given crowns, especially if the saint was royal, or a martyr

Martyr

A martyr is somebody who suffers persecution and death for refusing to renounce, or accept, a belief or cause, usually religious.-Meaning:...

, as martyrs are promised crowns in heaven by many texts.

In Greece a tama

Tama (votive)

thumb|300px|An [[icon]] of [[Paraskevi|Saint Paraskeva]] with tamata hung beside it. , 2001. The saint holds a plate with two eyeballs on it. She is considered to be a healer of the blind...

or votive offering of, or depicting, two small wedding crowns, as used locally, indicates a request for a good marriage. Actual crowns used in ceremonies were normally retained by the couple.