Niederdollendorf stone: Difference between revisions - Wikipedia

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The stone measures 42.5 cm by 22‒25 cm by 16‒19 cm and was carved from [[Lorraine]] [[limestone]]. It was made in the 7th century and reused later as a gravestone. The original purpose is unknown, so the common reference to it as a "gravestone" is slightly misleading.<ref name=Friedrich>{{cite book |chapter=The Enduring Power of Images |title=Image and Ornament in the Early Medieval West |publisher=Cambridge University Press |date=2023 |first=Matthias |last=Friedrich |pages=37-104 |isbn=9781009207768 }}</ref>{{rp|45}}<ref name=Bohner/>{{rp|64-65}}

On one broad side, a spear-wielding man is shown standing on an interlacing[[Interlace design(art)|interlace]] pattern. Rays extend from his head and he has a circle on his torso. Incised lines extend out from the chest and feet.<ref name=Friedrich/>{{rp|53}}<ref name=ODLA/> Archaeologist {{ill|Kurt Böhner|de}} first conjectured this image to be a depiction of Christ, an interpretation that since has been widely adopted.<ref name=Friedrich/>{{rp|47}} Such conjecture reads the interlacing figureinterlace under-foot as a serpent, representing evil trampled on by Christ. The rays, resembling hair, are read as a halo. No consensus has been found for an interpretation of the circle, which has been read as a Christian ''[[bulla (amulet)|bulla]]'', a [[torc]], and as some kind of necklace. Böhner read the incised lines as a stylised [[aureole]], an interpretation which has not been sustained by later scholarship.<ref name=Friedrich/>{{rp|52-53}} The spear is usually read as representative of a Germanic syncretisation of Christ, reconceptualising the triumphant Christ within a Germanic warrior culture.<ref name=Friedrich/>{{rp|62}}

One critic of this interpretation is Michael Friedrich, who instead reads the figure as a (perhaps deliberately) religiously ambiguous appropriation of Roman imperial symbols of power, complaining of the absence of "any distinct symbol or signifier that might enable us to clearly identify Christ or even presume a Christian frame of reference."<ref name=Friedrich/>{{rp|64}} Another critic [[J. M. Wallace-Hadrill]], who favours an identification of the figure with [[Odin]], said of the stone that if it is Christian, it is "a parody of Christianity by and for men still essentially pagan".<ref>{{cite book |last=Wallace-Hadrill |title=The Frankish Church |first=J. M. |publisher= Oxford University Press |date=1983}}</ref>{{rp|20, 29}}