History of Baptismal fonts

Written for the course 'The Church and the Arts' at Boston University, this paper uses an analysis of the design and location of six recent baptismal font installations at American Lutheran churches to explore the theological, liturgical, and practical issues faced by these congregations in affirming their sacramental heritage and fulfilling their mission of welcoming people of all ages into the life of the Church.

Architectus, 2023

The article discusses the study of the baptismal font located next to the presbytery of Saint Nicholas parish church in Grudziądz. The aim of the research conducted in 2023 was to verify current views on its centuries-old history. Our study presents the history of the object, its artistic provenance, iconography and ideological content. Based on the research, it was found that the late Romanesque baptismal bowl is an original work of Gotland provenance, dating back to the 2nd half of the 14th century. Its Gotland origin is evidenced by formal, compositional and iconographic analogies connecting its creator with the style of Gotland workshops known as the so-called Fröjel Group that was active in Gotland and southern Scandinavia around the mid-14th century. The decisive argument for the origin of the baptismal font from Gotland was the petrographic examination of its stone carried out in July 2023, which showed that it was made of Gotland limestone found in the Hoburgen deposits. This work should therefore be treated as an import from Gotland. The article also emphasizes that in order to illustrate the theological message, the creator of the baptismal font – in accordance with the tradition present in his artistic environment – used symbolic representations of animals, the iconography of which and the dramaturgy of actions involving them were taken from the medieval bestiary – Physiologus. The beasts shown on the baptismal font, exorcised by baptism, walk in a row towards Christ symbolized by a lion. // W artykule zostały omówione badania chrzcielnicy ustawionej przy prezbiterium fary pw. św. Mikołaja w Grudziądzu. Celem badań prowadzonych w 2023 r. była weryfikacja dotychczasowych poglądów na temat jej wielowiekowej historii. W pracy została zaprezentowana historia obiektu, jego proweniencja artystyczna, ikonografia i treści ideowe. Na podstawie badań stwierdzono, że późnoromańska czasza chrzcielnicy jest oryginalnym dziełem gotlandzkiej proweniencji, datowanym na 2. połowę XIV w. Za jej gotlandzkim pochodzeniem świadczą analogie formalne i kompozycyjno-ikonograficzne łączące jej twórcę ze stylistyką warsztatów gotlandzkich znanych jako tzw. Grupa Fröjel, czynnych na Gotlandii i w południowej Skandynawii około połowy XIV w. Decydującym argumentem o pochodzeniu chrzcielnicy z Gotlandii stało się badanie petrograficzne jej kamienia w lipcu 2023 r., które wykazało, że została wykonana z gotlandzkiego wapienia występującego w złożach Hoburgen. Należy zatem traktować to dzieło jako import z Gotlandii. W artykule podkreślono także, że w celu zilustrowania teologicznego przesłania twórca chrzcielnicy – zgodnie z tradycją obecną w jego środowisku artystycznym – sięgnął po symboliczne przedstawienia zwierząt, których ikonografię oraz dramaturgię akcji z ich udziałem zaczerpnął ze średniowiecznego bestiariusza – Fizjologa (Physiologus). Ukazane na czaszy chrzcielnicy bestie, egzorcyzmowane przez chrzest, idą w szeregu ku Chrystusowi symbolizowanemu przez lwa.

Alyce A. Jordan and Kay Brainerd Slocum, eds.,Thomas Becket in the Middle Ages and Beyond: The Uses and Reception of a Celebrity Saint ( Boydell and Brewer), 2025

Quote from INTRODUCTION by Kay Brainerd Slocum: “An overt use of the Becket cult for political and religious ends occurred in medieval Denmark, as Harriet Sonne de Torrens documents in her essay. She analyses the imagery on two unique baptismal fonts that depict the martyrdom of Becket within the context of the escalating power of the northern Church and the Baltic Crusades, specifically in relation to the role of Bernard of Clairvaux and the Cistercian order. Veneration of St Thomas in Denmark and the Baltic regions was used to consolidate and reinforce the sanctity and authority of the Church. The spread of Becket’s cult was, in part, a result of the patronage of the daughters of Henry II, and some scholars have credited members of the royal Valdemarian dynasty with a similar role in medieval Denmark. While acknowledging the possibility, Sonne de Torrens complicates this attribution by elucidating evidence of anti-royal sentiment in the imagery found on the fonts. In medieval Denmark, the Canterbury saint was understood as a ‘notable martyr’, a miles Christi who died in the service of the Church. Moreover, the Baltic Crusades generated intense interest in warrior saints as part of the ecclesiastical propaganda that justified the campaigns to Christianise the pagan areas surrounding the Baltic Sea. Becket’s role in this conflict is established in a miracle recorded by William of Canterbury, which recounts Becket’s intervention in, and by extension endorsement of, the crusades to guarantee the Danish victory over the Wends.Becket’s engagement in the battle shifts the Danish victory from the agency of the Crown to that of the Church and attests to the strong interrelationship between the development of Becket’s cult and Cistercian influence in the Baltic Crusades, as part of the escalating power and sacred authority manifested by the Church in these newly Christianised regions.” (Images of Thomas Becket in the Middle Ages and Beyond: The Uses and Reception of a Celebrity Saint, pp. 13-14)

2016

Rezension zu: Pierre Colman & Berthe Lhoist-Colman: Les fonts baptismaux de Saint Barthélemy à Liège. Chef-d'oeuvre sans pareil et noeud de controverses (Académie Royale de Belgique, Mémoire de la Classe des Beaux-Arts, Collection in-8°, 3e série, Tome XIX); Bruxelles 2002; ISSN 0378-7923, ISBN 2-8031-0189-0; 341 pp., ill.

2012

offers some interesting burial evidence, much of it from the later Middle Ages, regarding the possibility that a number of children may not have received baptism before the age of two. Material evidence is unfortunately incomplete for the twelfth century.

ICO - Iconographisk Post, 2020

Since 1823 the consecration date of 1129 for the Church of St. Boniface inscribed on the Freckenhorst baptismal font from the imperial convent of St. Boniface (Westphalia, Germany) has continued to be considered, by some, the date for when the font was carved. For over two hundred years this precocious date has divided academic communities, despite the numerous and comprehensive counter arguments asserting that the font is a later twelfth century if not early thirteenth century vessel. This raises the question, “Why has there been such resistance to recognize this vessel as a later product of the prolific Westphalian stone industry?” This article reviews the historiography to uncover the roots of the ‘sanctified status’ that the Freckenhorst font acquired over the centuries from the post-Imperial period of Germany through the two World Wars. The literature reveals not only why the Freckenhorst font came to symbolize ‘Germanic ingenuity’ for German art historians but also the challenges and changes within the evolving discipline of art history and the scholarly networks that connected art historians in the first half of the twentieth century.

Studia Liturgica, 2006

There is a group of thirty-five octagonal baptismal fonts which were carved in stone on the eve of the Reformation in England bearing images of the seven sacraments. All but two are in Norfolk and Suffolk.' They were first described in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and have more recently been the subject of a major study by Ann Eljenholm Nichols." Nichols establishes the archaeological data for the fonts and locates them within a comprehensive survey of the iconography of the sacraments.' The fonts are particularly interesting because they witness to sacramental practice at a well-defined time and place: they were produced during a fifty-year period after the mid-1460s, though a couple of them were carved later, at the very last possible moment, in 1536 and 1544. One area of research which has been left underdeveloped is the contribution these panels make to our understanding of the celebration of the liturgy on the eve of the Reformation in England." Nichols has shown that the variety in the images indicates that the fonts were not produced in a workshop according to a standardized formula. In addition, the rather crude carving on a number of the fonts

This brief article is the first part of a planned multi-part project tentatively entitled "A Visit to the Church" (which is proceeding at a glacial pace). It looks at the history and spiritual significance of the holy water font.

Baptême et baptistères entre Antiquité tardive et Moyen Âge: Actes du colloque international qui s’est tenu à Paris, à Sorbonne Université, les 12-13 novembre 2020 (eds. Beatrice Caseau and Lucia-Maria Orlandi), 2023

My study, in addition to being the first relative chronology of baptismal fonts in Ethiopia, seeks to explain both their relative rarity after Late Antiquity, and their Medieval disappearance through the material and liturgical record. I argue baptismal fonts were exceptional after Late Antiquity. Their rare appearance is likely due to Ethiopian Christian preference for baptism in natural bodies of water, a practice justified both in the Apostolic Tradition (translated into Ge’ez in Late Antiquity), as well as biblical and early Christian precedents. By the late Middle Ages, the preference for baptism in natural bodies of water was recodified in canon law, both in the Ethiopic Sinodos and the Fetha Nagast (the law of kings), which outlined religious codes in Ethiopia (written in Arabic in the thirteenth century and translated into Ethiopic in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries respectively), which continued to justify natural water baptism instead of piscinas.