inheritance of her grandmother Eadgyth and her mother Ida (after 986), placed Mathilde in the position to freely use a considerable fortune. With this fortune Mathilde financed artistic treasures to preserve the memory of her relatives and herself. The chronicle which the Anglo-Saxon historian Æthelweard dedicated to Mathilde served as a memorial for her Anglo-Saxon ancestors through Eadgyth. Æthelweard records that it was at her request that he translated (or had translated) his Chronicon de Rebus Anglicis a version of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, including material not found in surviving Old English versions, into Latin. This occurred after 975 and probably before 983. The text survives only in a single copy, now in the British Library, which was badly damaged in the Cotton Library fire in 1731, so that later portions are lost. Mathilde probably repaid Æthelweard with a copy of Vegetius' work De Re Militari which was written in Essen's scriptorium and has long been in England. But Mathilde is especially known for the works of goldsmithery which were made at her order or acquired for Essen Abbey by her. These include two jewelled crosses which she had made for the abbey, now in the Essen Cathedral Treasury, both important works of Ottonian art: both have donor portraits of her in enamel, in the first, the Cross of Otto and Mathilde, she appears together with her brother Otto (died 982), and in the "second Mathilde cross" she is represented with the Virgin and Child. A similar third Essen cross with large enamels may well also have been a product of her patronage. The earliest surviving decorative sword and the Golden Madonna of Essen, an exceptionally rare statue covered with sheet gold, both date to her abbacy at Essen, and were either commissioned by her or given to her. A large seven-armed gilt-bronze candelabrum, over seven feet high, records Mathilde's commissioning of it in an inscription. All these works remain at Essen. Mathilde had an expensive chasse made as a memorial of Empress Theophanu for her son Otto II, which would have exceeded the splendour of the treasures of the churches of Cologne on its own. It is attributed to Mathilde because of the reported inscription in dactylic hexameter: This collection of relics was later known as the Shrine of Marsus after the most important relic stored in it and was the oldest reliquary chasse in the Empire, precursor to the