# The Limburg Staurotheke > Anonymous Constantinopolitan court workshop - Cross: 945-959. Box (thekhe): c. 963-985 > Canonical HTML: https://iconotheca.com/artworks/constantinopolitan-court-workshop/limburg-staurotheke-dioezesanmuseum-limburg/ > Published by Servola Systems GmbH. Last verified: 2026-09-24 ## Tombstone - **Artist:** Anonymous Constantinopolitan court workshop - **Date:** Cross: 945-959. Box (thekhe): c. 963-985 - **Medium:** Sycamore wood core covered in fire-gilt silver, decorated with cloisonne enamel, pearls, emeralds, sapphires, almandine garnets and cut gemstones - **Dimensions:** 48 cm long by 6 cm deep; width is given as 35 cm in the German-language literature and 38 cm in the English-language literature (unresolved, see technical notes); weight approximately 11 kg - **Object type:** Goldsmith's work - **Period:** Byzantine, mid-to-late 10th century - **Current location:** Diozesanmuseum Limburg (Cathedral Treasury / Domschatz), Limburg an der Lahn, Germany - **Attribution:** accepted ## Summary A Byzantine reliquary of the True Cross made in two stages in Constantinople in the mid-to-late 10th century: a gilded, gem-set sycamore cross made for Emperors Constantine VII and Romanos II between 945 and 959, later enclosed in a cloisonne-enamel box commissioned separately by the eunuch court official Basil Lekapenos sometime between 963 and 985. It left Constantinople in the sack of the Fourth Crusade in 1204 and reached the Rhineland by 1208 in the hands of the knight Heinrich von Ulmen, who gave it to Stuben Abbey, where his sister was abbess. It stayed there for nearly six hundred years until the abbey's dissolution in 1802, passed through the House of Nassau-Weilburg as secularization property, and was given to the newly founded Diocese of Limburg in 1835, where it remains the centerpiece of the cathedral treasury.Both of its two Byzantine phases are documented by the object's own inscriptions rather than by any external record, and no evidence located for this record supports the idea that either part was later reframed or recased in the West; instead, within twenty years of its arrival, the object itself became the direct model for two new western reliquaries at Trier and Mettlach. How exactly Heinrich von Ulmen came to own it is genuinely disputed rather than simply unrecorded, and this record sets out both the popular account and the more recent scholarly challenge to it. ## Provenance Every link carries a grade. `documented` means a cited source supports it, `disputed` means the identification is argued but not established, `unknown` means we have no owner for that span and have not bridged it. - **945-959** Emperors Constantine VII Porphyrogennetos and Romanos II `[documented]` (origin (cross)) The double-armed cross, with its enclosed fragments of the True Cross, was made for the two emperors during their joint reign; both are named in the cross's own dedicatory inscription. - **963-985** Basil Lekapenos, proedros and parakoimomenos `[documented]` (origin (box)) The surrounding box, with its ten relic compartments, was commissioned separately by Basil Lekapenos, named in the box's own rim inscription as proedros, a title he held from 963 until his fall from power and exile under Basil II in 985. - **-1204** Imperial treasury, Pharos Chapel, Great Palace of Constantinople `[documented]` (custody) Byzantine sources place a relic container of this type among the treasures of the Pharos Chapel, the palace church holding the empire's principal Passion relics, until the Fourth Crusade's sack of the city in April 1204. - **1204-1207** Unknown `[unknown]` (gap) How the staurotheke passed out of the Constantinopolitan treasury and into the hands of Heinrich von Ulmen is not documented. Klein (2004) argues on timing grounds that Heinrich did not loot it personally during the 1204 sack, proposing instead, after Kuhn (1984), that he received it as a reward in Thessalonike one or two years later while serving in the retinue of Boniface of Montferrat. This remains an argued reconstruction, not a documented transaction. - **1207-1208** Heinrich von Ulmen `[documented]` (transport) Heinrich, a knight of the Eifel region, brought the staurotheke and other relics to the Rhineland, arriving by the spring of 1208, later than the main wave of returning Fourth Crusaders. - **1208-1802** Stuben Abbey (Kloster Stuben), Augustinian convent near Bremm on the Moselle `[documented]` (donation) Heinrich gave the staurotheke, as his own donation, to Stuben Abbey, where his sister Irmgard von Ulmen was prioress/abbess. It remained there for nearly six centuries. - **1802** In transit, right bank of the Rhine `[documented]` (removal ahead of dissolution) Stuben Abbey was dissolved in 1802 under French administration of the left bank of the Rhine. The staurotheke was moved across to the right bank ahead of the dissolution, along with other relics from the abbey's treasury. - **1802-1835** Festung Ehrenbreitstein (Koblenz), then the princely House of Nassau-Weilburg `[documented]` (custody as secularization property) The staurotheke was held at the Ehrenbreitstein fortress above Koblenz before passing into the possession of the Fursten von Nassau-Weilburg. - **1835-present** Diocese of Limburg / Diozesanmuseum Limburg `[documented]` (gift) Duke Wilhelm I of Nassau gave the staurotheke, explicitly as former secularization property, to the Diocese of Limburg, founded only eight years earlier in 1827. It is now the centerpiece of the diocesan cathedral treasury, museum inventory number D 1/1-3. ## Open questions - How exactly did Heinrich von Ulmen obtain the staurotheke in the aftermath of the Fourth Crusade: did he loot it himself in Constantinople in 1204, as popular accounts assume, or receive it later as a reward in Thessalonike, as Hans-Wolfgang Kuhn proposed in 1984 and Holger Klein finds persuasive on the timing evidence? No source records the transaction itself. - What specifically was found wrong with the object, and what was physically done to it, in the 1935 restoration published by J. M. Wilm and the 1951 restoration published by Albert Boeckler? Both campaigns are documented as having occurred and been published; their technical content was not recovered for this record. - Why do the German-language and English-language literatures give different widths for the object, 35 cm against 38 cm? This record could not locate a primary museum measurement to resolve the conflict. - What happened to the staurotheke during its nearly six centuries at Stuben Abbey (1208-1802)? No display, loss, damage or alteration is recorded in any source consulted for this record for that entire span, which may reflect a genuinely uneventful custody or simply a gap in the accessible literature. - Where, precisely within Basil Lekapenos's twenty-two years as proedros (963-985), does the box belong? The inscription fixes only the outer bounds of his tenure in that rank, not a narrower date. - What is the object's own inventory or catalogue history within the Diocese of Limburg between the 1835 gift and the present museum accession number D 1/1-3? This record could not directly access the museum's own published catalogue entry to trace that sequence. ## Sources - [1] Brad Hostetler, 'The Limburg Staurotheke: A Reassessment,' Athanor 30 (2012): 7-13. - [2] Holger A. Klein, 'Eastern Objects and Western Desires: Relics and Reliquaries between Byzantium and the West,' Dumbarton Oaks Papers 58 (2004): 283-314. - [3] Bissera V. Pentcheva, 'Containers of Power: Eunuchs and Reliquaries in Byzantium,' Res: Anthropology and Aesthetics 51 (2007): 109-120. - [4] Wikipedia (German), 'Limburger Staurothek.' Tertiary source consolidating dimensions, inventory number, provenance dates and the literature list; flagged for replacement with the museum's own catalogue Im Zeichen des Kreuzes: Die Limburger Staurothek und ihre Geschichte, ed. August Heuser and Matthias Theodor Kloft (Regensburg, 2009), which could not be accessed directly for this record. - [5] Wikipedia (English), 'Limburg Staurotheke.' Tertiary source, used for the relic list and an alternate inscription translation credited there to Nancy Sevcenko; flagged for replacement with Sevcenko's own published work. - [6] Wikipedia (German), 'Kloster Stuben.' Tertiary source, used only for the 1802 dissolution date and the removal of relics to the right bank of the Rhine; flagged for replacement with a dedicated history of the abbey. - [7] Wikipedia (English), 'Basil Lekapenos.' Tertiary source, used only for biographical dates (career under five emperors, fall from power in 985); flagged for replacement with a scholarly prosopographical source such as the Prosopographie der mittelbyzantinischen Zeit. - [8] Wikipedia (English), 'Fieschi Morgan Staurotheke.' Tertiary source, consulted only for version-safety comparison against the distinct Metropolitan Museum object of the same reliquary class. --- Images on this record are public domain or CC0 and are hosted by us. No image on this site is generated or simulated. If you quote this record, quote the provenance grades with it.