Chalice from the Beth Misona Treasure (c. 500–700): Art, History and Details

Chalice from the Beth Misona Treasure (c. 500–700) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

These four liturgical silver vessels—a paten and three chalices (1950.378–81)—form what is now called the Beth Misona Treasure, named for the village in northern Syria for which the objects were made. While nothing is known about the exact location and circumstances of the treasure's discovery, the people of the village of Beth Misona were, like other Christian communities in Syria and Palestine, probably forced to bury their church silver to hide it from the Persians or Arabs, who conquered their lands in the first half of the 600s. The paten, which held pieces of Eucharistic bread used during Mass, is decorated with an engraved Latin cross surrounded by a dedicatory inscription that names the paten's donor—Domnos—and its original location, the church of Saint Sergios in Beth Misona. The chalices, which contained the Eucharistic wine used during Mass, feature broad cups decorated with portrait busts of Saints Peter and Paul, Christ, and the Virgin. One chalice bears a dedicatory inscription naming its donor—Kyriakos, Domnos's son—and the priest of the church that received the pious gift—Zeno.

Object facts

• Title: Chalice from the Beth Misona Treasure
• Date: c. 500–700
• Culture: early Byzantium, Constantinople or Syria, Byzantine period, 6th-7th Century
• Type: Metalwork
• Technique: silver
• Dimensions: Overall: 17.1 x 14.9 cm (6 3/4 x 5 7/8 in.)
• Collection: MED - Byzantine
• Department: Medieval Art
• Accession number: 1950.379

Collection credit

Purchase from the J. H. Wade Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Milliken, William. "The Cleveland Byzantine Silver Treasure." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 38, no. 6 (June 1951): 142-145.
• Cleveland Museum of Art, “Recent Acquisitions Press Release,” July 9, 1951, Cleveland Museum of Art Archives.
• The Cleveland Museum of Art. The Cleveland Museum of Art Handbook. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1958.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.