NARRATOR: This large object is one of only two surviving enameled tabernacles from the Middle Ages. Essentially an elaborately decorated cupboard, it may have housed consecrated communion wafers presented to the devout during mass. Curator Barbara Drake Boehm.

BARBARA DRAKE BOEHM: It wasn’t until much later, in the fifteenth or sixteenth centuries, that tabernacles were required in churches. And what strikes me in particular in looking at this is the close correspondence between the decoration of the object and the use for which it was intended. Because if you look at the scenes, there’s quite a strong emphasis on the physical body of Christ, which is of course what the wafers kept inside this tabernacle were transformed into in the course of the Mass. If you notice the scene of the Crucifixion, it’s not just the moment of Jesus being placed on the cross, but rather the moment at which his followers take down his body, take care of his body.

NARRATOR: The roundels continue this emphasis on the body. Those on the left thematically relate to their counterparts on the right, in quite a sophisticated fashion. In the upper left roundel, for example, Jesus tells Mary Magdalen not to touch him.

BARBARA DRAKE BOEHM: Opposite it, in a kind of visual parallel, and also a thematic parallel, is the scene of St. Thomas, whom we know as Doubting Thomas. When Jesus appeared to the rest of the disciples one evening, Thomas was not among them. When they all told him what had happened, he said, I won’t believe it unless I myself see it and touch his wounds. And subsequently Jesus appeared to him directly and Thomas touches the body of Christ.