Chasse (casket)

A chasse, châsse or box reliquary is a shape commonly used in medieval metalwork for reliquaries and other containers. To the modern eye the form resembles a house, though a tomb or church was more the intention, with an oblong base, straight sides and two sloping top faces meeting at a central ridge, often marked by a raised strip and decoration. From the sides there are therefore triangular "gable" areas. The casket usually stands on straight stumpy feet, and there is a hinged opening to allow access, either one of the panels, but not on the front face, or the wooden bottom; there is usually a lock. The shape possibly developed from a similar shape of sarcophagus that goes back to Etruscan art, or from Early Medieval Insular art, where there are a number of house-shaped shrines, reliquaries or cumdachs ("book-shrines"), with similar shapes. The Monymusk Reliquary is typical of these, having four sloping panels above, so no "gables". A 13th-century example of the fully-sloping type is the chasse of Saint Exupère in Limoges enamel (see gallery of images, below). The word derives, via the French châsse, from the Latin capsa, meaning "box". In English the word may or may not be italicised, and if it is may use the French circumflex: châsse. Regardless of the form used, the term in English is normally only used of "house"-shaped boxes, usually enamelled ones, whereas in French it is a general term for reliquaries with a box, "shrine" or casket form, of any shape, and tends to be used especially for larger examples. The chasse shape was also used for most of the much larger, and far grander, reliquary shrines made by goldsmiths for cathedrals and great monasteries, like the Reliquary Shrine of Saint Eleutherius in the cathedral of Tournai, but these featured elaborate three-dimensional decoration, with gold or silver-gilt the predominant impression. These are less often described as chasses in English, though they are likely to be so termed in French, where the term châsse mostly refers to large sarcophagus-sized reliquaries.