Written by the treasureguide for the exclusive use of treasurebeachesreport.blogspot.com.
 |
| Old Silver Crucifix Sold In a Previous Sedwick Auction. |
A few days ago I posted a photo of one of my favorite 1715 Fleet finds - a gold corpus. At that time I thought it would have been a good topic for Good Friday, but I posted it anyhow with the intention of coming back to the topic on Good Friday.
Anyone who has done much detecting has found a variety of crucifixes. They can be very old or new and are made using a variety of materials, including non-metallic. You might not know if a crucifix is old or new if there are no obvious signs or markings that tell you.
The above crucifix was sold in a Sedwick auction a few years ago, unfortunately I don't remember which auction it was, but it must have been 2015 since that is when I mentioned it first.
This is an item I personally handled. If I correctly recall it was said to be from late 1700s. When I looked at it I thought that maybe the coins were later replacements, but I don't know that. Unfortunately I don't even remember if the coins were matching coins. One of the most notable things to me is the primitive looking corpus showing a possible indigenous influence.
Below is another silver crucifix from a concluded Sedwick auction. It is dated as 1560 - 1620, but is French rather than Spanish.
This heavy silver crucifix was thought to be earlier than the one above. It also shows a skull and crossbones. The corpus is caricaturish rather than realistic. Notice the common features, such as the skull and cross bones below the feet of Christ.
The bales of older items tend to be heavy and facing front to back.
Here is another from a previous Sedwick auction.
This one is Spannish and dated 1600s - 1800s, a wide date range.
Notice the worn high spots such as the top of the head. The older crucifixes I've seen often show heavy wear to the face of Christ from religious use.
Here is later crucifix, dated to the early 1800s.
This one is a later crucifix. It is made of bronze and ebony. Like the one above, which could also be as late as the 1800s, this one does not show the skull and cross bones at the bottom. It also has a small bale.
Leaving the Sedwick catalogs and going to the Mel Fisher artifact database, I found this gold crucifix from the Atocha site.
This one has the bale facing the other direction and has dangling pearls, which were common from the Atocha. So might that be a clue that it was made in the New World?
One of the common features I've noticed on older crucifixes is that the corpus is attached to the cross at the hands and feet by pins. The pins, or nails, are often very prominent and important features. That means of attachment often can lead to the corpus being separated from the cross, so you will sometimes find the corpus without the cross, or vice versa.
Anyone who has done much detecting has found a variety of crucifixes. They can be very old or new and are made using a variety of materials, including non-metallic. You might not know if a crucifix is old or new if there are no obvious signs or markings that tell you.
The above crucifix was sold in a Sedwick auction a few years ago, unfortunately I don't remember which auction it was, but it must have been 2015 since that is when I mentioned it first.
This is an item I personally handled. If I correctly recall it was said to be from late 1700s. When I looked at it I thought that maybe the coins were later replacements, but I don't know that. Unfortunately I don't even remember if the coins were matching coins. One of the most notable things to me is the primitive looking corpus showing a possible indigenous influence.
Below is another silver crucifix from a concluded Sedwick auction. It is dated as 1560 - 1620, but is French rather than Spanish.
This heavy silver crucifix was thought to be earlier than the one above. It also shows a skull and crossbones. The corpus is caricaturish rather than realistic. Notice the common features, such as the skull and cross bones below the feet of Christ.
The bales of older items tend to be heavy and facing front to back.
Here is another from a previous Sedwick auction.
This one is Spannish and dated 1600s - 1800s, a wide date range.
Notice the worn high spots such as the top of the head. The older crucifixes I've seen often show heavy wear to the face of Christ from religious use.
Here is later crucifix, dated to the early 1800s.
This one is a later crucifix. It is made of bronze and ebony. Like the one above, which could also be as late as the 1800s, this one does not show the skull and cross bones at the bottom. It also has a small bale.
Leaving the Sedwick catalogs and going to the Mel Fisher artifact database, I found this gold crucifix from the Atocha site.
This one has the bale facing the other direction and has dangling pearls, which were common from the Atocha. So might that be a clue that it was made in the New World?
One of the common features I've noticed on older crucifixes is that the corpus is attached to the cross at the hands and feet by pins. The pins, or nails, are often very prominent and important features. That means of attachment often can lead to the corpus being separated from the cross, so you will sometimes find the corpus without the cross, or vice versa.
Of course I can't do much beside introduce a topic like this in a single post, but I thought it was especially appropriate for Good Friday.
You can find crucifixes made of all materials it seems. I found one that had a little plastic compartment which looks like it held water at one time. I think it might have been from Israel.
Here are a couple of the more abstract and obviously modern examples that I've found.
---
I received emails showing interest in a few brief comments I made yesterday concerning the Bible, so I have a recommendation for those of you who might be interested. If you want to study the Bible and especially the Jewish roots of Christianity, the ultimate authority, in my opinion, is the Hebraist J. B. Lightfoot, who authored four volumes of Commentary on the New Testament From the Talmud and Hebraica as well as several other volumes of Bible Commentary. Even though his works were originally published in Latin in the 17th century, they were reprinted in English. Lightfoot was fluent in Greek and Latin, but also classical Hebrew, Mishnaic Hebrew and the Aramaic of the Talmud. He was therefore uniquely qualified to shed light on the Bible as influenced by ancient Hebrew thought and culture. Don't be discouraged by the frequent Koine Greek or Hebrew quotations.
Published by Oxford University Press in 1859, the volumes I own were published by the Hendrickson Press in the 20th century. Excellent, challenging but very worthwhile.
---
I meant to do this before, but forgot. Did you know that you can easily make your own facemasks out of things you will undoubtedly have around the house. It is easy and effective.
Here is one.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JY-29VBkGmw
You don't have to jump in a casket and close the lid to be safe. I won't comment more on that today even though I'm not finding easy to restrain myself.
I can't hold it any longer. Fauci and Birx need to retire. They started out somewhat reasonable, but this mantra of "the numbers are so much better than we predicted because the people did what we told them to do" is not only self-serving but also indefensible. They call for endless randomized double-blind studies to determine if drugs might be effective and safe, but they have no proof whatsoever that the isolation of huge segments of the population is the only factor that caused their predictions to be off in another galaxy. They have no data to prove their conclusion, and no apparent interest in obtaining any. High school students know that correlation does not mean causation. If you do a rain dance and it stops raining that doesn't mean the dance caused the rain to stop. That is where they are with this "mitigation was effective because the numbers are lower" line. They won't even consider or mention any other possible factors - most notably the model that they pushed being way off the mark to begin with. If they want to look like scientists they can't jump to conclusions without data and without considering other possible explanations. The best data they have now was not collected scientifically, and can not be expected to be valid or reliable, coming as it does, from people working in what we are told are extremely chaotic overwhelming circumstances with much more important tasks before them other than reporting. This stubborn anti-scientific insistence on one explanation without data and without consideration of any other possible factors or explanations completely discredits them. They are looking like they are either incompetent or dishonest.
To be clear, I am not saying that there is no danger or that you shouldn't distance and take adequate safety measures, but there are ways to be both active and safe.
More data, less BS please.
On a more positive note, DeSantis just said that 40 - 45 percent of the hospital beds in Florida are open, including ICU. That is a lot. There will be a long backlog of elective surgeries such as knee and hip replacements and other elective procedures when this is over.
---
We are having an offshore wind and small surf. The tides are still high though.
Have a blessed Good Friday,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net
