Cross of Otto and Mathilde

It is named after the two persons who appear on the enamel plaque below Christ: Otto I, Duke of Swabia and Bavaria and his sister, Mathilde, the abbess of the Essen Abbey.

Mathilde became Abbess of Essen in 973 and her brother died in 982, so the cross is assumed to have been made between those dates,[1] or a year or two later if it had a memorial function for Otto.

Through their double ridges and triangles, the trapezoidal extensions are very close to those of Cross of Lothair in Aachen, which is usually dated to around 1000.

Furthermore, the absence of symbols of a duke, such as a sword or a lance, for Otto suggest that the siblings are depicted as family members and not as dignitaries.

Otto holds the cross with two hands, but with outstretched fingers, while Mathilde grips it with a tightly closed fist.

[9] The donor portrait, especially the positioning of the siblings' hands, was earlier interpreted as indicating that Otto donated the cross to the abbey which his sister oversaw as abbess.

On this basis it is believed that Mathilde donated the cross to the memory of her brother after his death in Otto II's Italian campaign of 982.

Likewise, the Liber ordinarius, which regulated the liturgical use of the Abbey treasures, only mentions processional crosses in general terms.

In 1794, as the French advanced on Essen, the cathedral treasury was brought to Steele (modern Essen-Steele) and hidden in the orphanage donated by Abbess Francisca Christina of Sulzbach.

At secularisation, the Catholic church of St Johann Baptist took over Essen Abbey and its property, including the cross.

After the war it was found there by American troops and, along with the rest of the treasury, the cross went to the State museum in Marburg and later to a collection for displaced artworks in Schloss Dyck in Rheydt.

A special role is specified in the Liber Ordinarius for the procession of the Easter vigil, which passed from Peter's Altar in the westwerk of the Minster, through the cloister, to the cemetery of the order where the graves were sprinkled with holy water, while the nuns made reference to salvation through the cross in an antiphon.

With the Cross of Otto and Mathilde this would have the effect that the siblings depicted on the donor portrait on the front side would be part of the procession, a fraternal prayer from beyond the grave which would be perfect for a donation made in memoriam.

At the enthronement of the first Bishop of Essen on 1 January 1958, it was carried in front and it was used as a processional cross by him on high feasts and in processions.