ABSTRACT
In 1971, in the course of a construction project in a Burgundian vineyard at LadoixSerrigny near Beaune, a striking object was recovered from a destroyed Merovingian grave. This plate-buckle depicts a bearded and haloed horseman directly facing the viewer, indeed staring intently at him or her (see Figure 24.1). In his left hand he brandishes some sort of spear and in his right hand an axe; he is seated on a serpentine mount with a prominent erection. To the rider’s left appears an elongated, four-legged creature of some sort (dragon? bird?); to his right, above the horse’s head, a type of chi-rho, which offers an omega suspended from the right arm and an alpha from the left. There is also an equal-armed, footed cross below the horse’s mouth; the scutiform tongue-plate, by contrast, is engraved with a simpler type of chi-rho, an X crossing the long vertical stem. The bottom of the buckle plate is taken up with an inscription in carefully incised capitals, reading as follows on four lines:
+ LANDELINVS FICIT NVMEN QVI ILLA PVSSEDIRAVIT VIVA(t) VSQVI ANNVS MILI IN D(omin)O
A horizontal line divides the inscription into two registers, underlining NVMEN. The Landelinus plate-buckle was first discussed by Werner in 19761 and, more recently, by Treffort2 and Gaillard de Sémainville.3 Before we consider its
1 J. Werner, “Zu den Knochenschnallen und Reliquarschnallen des 6. Jahrhunderts,” in Idem (ed.), Die Ausgrabungen in St. Ulrich und Afra in Augsburg 1961-1968 (Munich, 1977) 1.332-6 and 2 Taf.107.3.
