AFTER THE REMAINS of their saintly founder, Archbishop Heribert of Co logne (d. 1021), were elevated in 1147, the Abbey of Deutz commissioned a sumptuous shrine to house them (Fig. 1). The shrine was housed in the abbey church founded by Heribert, a church replaced several times over the centuries, until the abbey dissolved in 1803. Then becoming a parish church, it was charged with the care of the Heribert Shrine until 1896 when the shrine was transferred to the newly built parish church of Neu St. Heribert in Deutz on the right bank of the Rhine across from the city of Co logne. The shrine remains in this church today.

Unfortunately, information regarding the exact placement of the shrine in the abbey church at the time of its creation has not yet come to light, but it was probably placed in the choir, the site of Heribert's tomb from which his relics were elevated. Neither is there contemporary textual information regarding the shrine's creation, dating, or commission; most of this information has been arrived at by analogous contemporary custom or through scientific observation and analysis of the shrine itself, especially by Martin Seidler, who meticulously studied the dismantled shrine from May 1989 to October 1990, the detailed results of which were published posthumously in 2016. Based on stylistic analysis, the shrine most likely came out of a workshop with goldsmiths skilled in both Mosan and Rhenish techniques, its variations in style resulting from a subsequent change of plan in its design. While the shrine was begun in the early 1150s and constructed during two stages, the second phase of the shrine's construction, which entailed the change of plan, occurred from 1166 to 1175. Most likely commissioned by the then current abbot of the Abbey of Deutz, the shrine in its first phase would have then been undertaken by Abbot Gerlach (1146–1159) whereas its second phase, almost two decades later, would have begun under Abbot Hartbern (1161–1169). Fairly large (L 153 × H 57 × W 42 cm), the Heribert Shrine is built in the form of an elongated gable-roofed structure, concomitantly resembling a sarcophagus and a church.