Carved Ivory Crozier, ‘The Beverley Crozier’

Description

This crozier head is made of walrus ivory. It is finely carved with pictures of biting animals [with their heads turned backwards, mouths open], very similar to manuscript illuminations from the period. This cross is unique as many English croziers of the period were shaped in a Tau [two-headed crozier]. This cross is called the Beverley Crozier as it illustrates the miracles by St John of Beverley who cured a boy who could not hear or speak. The picture carved into the crozier is how Bede the venerable, an English monk described it in Ecclesiastical History of the English People.