This is an “oath skull” from the secret “vehmic” courts of northwest Germany’s Westphalia region. Dating to about 1600, it is carved with the initials S.S.G.G., which stood for “Stein, Strick, Gras, grün” (“stone, rope, grass, green”). The whole thing is macabre to modern viewers, and it might have been meant to be spooky and secretive back in the day.
The vehmic courts were not under the jurisdiction of the aristocratic princes who governed much of the Holy Roman Empire in the Late Medieval and Early Modern periods. Instead, local men would be selected to join and to remain secret members. These vehmic courts had the capacity to hand out the death penalty, so they were serious. Part of their authority relied on the cache of mystic/magical/religious power that aspects of the vehmic courts had. Obviously the choice of a skull as the object upon which one would swear an oath testified to the weighty nature of the hearing, and the letter carvings stood for words that the secret members of the court used in part of their initiation.
All of this speaks to many trends extant in Early Modern Germany: the lack of centralized legal authority, the fascination with the remains of the dead, and belief in the power of magical and occult objects.
The second slide has made its way onto the interwebs as another example of such a skull, but with a famous palindrome dating back to Ancient Rome and found in many medieval and Early Modern contexts. The words spell out, in English translated from Latin, “the sower Arepo holds the wheels with care” (and in fact there is a lot of scholarship written about the many interpretations of this formula). Try as I might, I cannot find the museum where it exists so I can’t verify its Early Modern German identity.
The vehmic courts were not under the jurisdiction of the aristocratic princes who governed much of the Holy Roman Empire in the Late Medieval and Early Modern periods. Instead, local men would be selected to join and to remain secret members. These vehmic courts had the capacity to hand out the death penalty, so they were serious. Part of their authority relied on the cache of mystic/magical/religious power that aspects of the vehmic courts had. Obviously the choice of a skull as the object upon which one would swear an oath testified to the weighty nature of the hearing, and the letter carvings stood for words that the secret members of the court used in part of their initiation.
All of this speaks to many trends extant in Early Modern Germany: the lack of centralized legal authority, the fascination with the remains of the dead, and belief in the power of magical and occult objects.
The second slide has made its way onto the interwebs as another example of such a skull, but with a famous palindrome dating back to Ancient Rome and found in many medieval and Early Modern contexts. The words spell out, in English translated from Latin, “the sower Arepo holds the wheels with care” (and in fact there is a lot of scholarship written about the many interpretations of this formula). Try as I might, I cannot find the museum where it exists so I can’t verify its Early Modern German identity.
Sources:
Vehmic court entry in Wikipedia. Skull in slide one in the Ripley’s Believe It or Not Museum, no 22643, “Oath skull from the secret courts of Westphalia,” Colton Kruse, Nov 14, 2018. The second image has info from the following websites which I was unable to verify: trowel and brush.com, “The magical 16th century German oath skull,” Roman Racina, Sept 2, 2023 (she claims it was unearthed in Münster in an archaeological dig in 2015). The “alamy” stock photo description claims it is German from the 16/17th century, but Roman or Celtic skull with later inscriptions. No museum or catalogue number given.
