1 - Recutting the Cross: The Anglo-Saxon Baptismal Font at Wilne

Summary

The baptismal font from St Chad's Church in Wilne (Derbyshire) is a rare surviving piece of the material history of baptism in early medieval England (Pl. I). The large bowl (61 cm height, 67 cm diameter) bears upside-down foliate interlace with beasts, griffins, and birds entangled within a sequence of roundels. A fire in the early twentieth century damaged the interior of the church and another register of figural ornament on the font, the feet of six human figures. Now standing in the west end of the nave, this vividly carved font originated as a standing cross in the early ninth-century ecclesiastical landscape of Mercia. While the recycling of material culture – and stone spoliation in particular – during the early Middle Ages is well known, the recutting of stone cross shafts for baptismal fonts has only been suggested for a discrete group of fonts dated to the Anglo-Saxon period.

In this chapter, I explore what the stone font at Wilne and the study of material things can tell us about baptism in early England. Baptism inside the hollowed shaft of a Christian cross incorporated the earlier meanings of the monument into the performance of this essential ritual of rebirth. Through an investigation of the Wilne font's iconography, form, and strategic reuse, I show how contemporary understandings of stone, romanitas, and the cross were all present at the baptismal moment through the material of the font. The stone cross that marked the mission of the Church in the early medieval landscape was brought inside the physical church building through its new use as a liturgical object. Repurposed as a font, the Wilne cross became an interior monument to baptismal victory in Christ.

The study of baptismal fonts offers a material perspective on baptism in early medieval lived religion that is often absent from textual sources. Most narrative accounts of historical baptisms in works such as the Historia ecclesiastica of the Venerable Bede (c. 672–735) consist of brief references to the baptisms of elite figures, which stand in for the conversion of whole regions and peoples. Early medieval authors and compilers such as Alcuin (c. 735–804) and Wulfstan (d. 1023) emphasise baptismal ideals but have less to tell us about baptismal practice.