Welcome to the web exhibition «Tabernacle Shrines». Before the Reformation, Norwegian churches were filled with representations of the saints, both sculpted and painted. But how were they located in the church room? Many probably stood inside so-called tabernacle shrines. Most of these are now lost. This route visualizes the results of a research project carried out over the last years at the University Museum of Bergen.
A tabernacle shrine is a cupboard that holds one single sculpture and that can be closed with the help of movable wings. The wings can be decorated with reliefs or paintings. When opened, the wings’ insides provide the sculpture with a narrative context. Tabernacle shrines were also a means to distinguish the saints, as a token of honor. Tabernacle shrines populated the altars in churches. Most medieval saints’ sculptures found in churches and museums, in Norway and beyond, have lost their shrines, and, as a result, their contexts.
Over the last years, scholars of art and cultural historians across Europe have researched medieval tabernacle shrines, also at the University Museum of Bergen. The University Museum holds a considerable number, consisting of eleven shrines and shrine fragments from medieval churches in Norway. The research has led to new and exciting knowledge on tabernacle shrines as well as on the history of the museum’s collections, as is exhibited in this route.
Tabernacle shrines were a widespread phenomenon in the Middle Ages, but because of the objects’ fragility and changes in church interiors over several centuries, only relatively few are preserved. Concentrations of surviving tabernacle shrines are found in Scandinavia, particularly Sweden and Norway, as well as in Central Italy and northern Spain.The church art collection at the University Museum of Bergen is of great value to our understanding of the object type because the collection shows its entire development from the thirteenth to the fifteenth century. The Bergen church art collection holds the largest number of shrines and shrine fragments in Europe besides the museums in Stockholm, Barcelona, and Munich.
