CRUCIFIXES FOUND UNDERNEATH THE DUBROVNIK CATHEDRAL The numerous numismatic items found during the excavations underneath the Dubrovnik Cathedral and “Pujiška pijaca” led by Josip Stošić in the 1980s included around 60 saints and...
moreCRUCIFIXES FOUND UNDERNEATH THE DUBROVNIK CATHEDRAL
The numerous numismatic items found during the excavations underneath the Dubrovnik Cathedral and “Pujiška pijaca” led by Josip Stošić in the 1980s included around 60 saints and pilgrimage medals and small crosses from the 16th and 17th centuries. The article analyzes the crosses – grave goods from Graves 21 and 22.
Commemorating the premature death of our dear, longtime friend and distinguished colleague Zdenko Brusić, we are using the opportunity to publish several beautiful crosses found during the excavations underneath the Cathedral of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Dubrovnik, popularly known as Our Great Lady's Cathedral. Not for a long time have we seen in any pilgrimage center in Croatia and Europe crosses and saints and pilgrimage medallions even remotely as beautiful as these. Although the present-day demand for such devotional objects is by no means lesser than a few centuries ago, the production of medals and crosses has been reduced to the deplorable plastic or aluminum articles. Even the most productive mint for such items – Stabilimento Johnson in Milan – has been closed down. The only solid, strock medals that can be bought everywhere are the ones with the inscription Crux sancti patris Benedicti, which, of course, no one can read or interpret unless they come with an explanatory label. After all, who understands Latin today?
Way back in 1984, the Numismatic Department of the Archaeological Museum in Zagreb received anof the Archaeological Museum in Zagreb received an invitation from our colleague Josip Stošić, leader of archaeological excavations in Dubrovnik who, sadly, also deceased, to cooperate on the classification of the entire numismatic material. The first specimens of the coins excavated (45 of them) were delivered on 4 June 1984. Another 607 specimens were added on 6 July and five more on 10 October of the same year. On 10 August 1985, J. Stošić brought additional 44 specimens. Together with the final 17 pieces delivered on 4 November 1985, the total number of numismatic objects grew up to 718. The 107 coins from all the periods from ancient Greece to the 17th century (59 individual finds and two smaller hoards of Dubrovnik coins from the 15th and 17th centuries found in Grave 21) – handed over to J. Stošić on 18 September 1984 and then shown at the exhibition on the Dubrovnik excavations – were returned the same day. At the encouragement of Josip Stošić, the Department of Art History of the Center for Historical Sciences (represented by its secretary Đurđa Kovačić) and Ivan Mirnik signed on 13 March 1987 the contract on expert analysis of the coins found on the Dubrovnik Cathedral and Bunić poljana sites. Over a number of years, this interesting numismatic material was gradually classified despite its very poor, worn out and corroded condition. Of course, the budget-conscious people of Dubrovnik would not waste money that was in circulation at the time, unless they dropped it and could not find it any more; they would rather throw away worthless, worn out, corroded coins or some contemporary forgeries. The numismatic material was first washed and exposed to preliminary mechanical cleaning so that something could be made out from it. After a lengthy, rather arduous work on identification of every single specimen that ensued, the task was completed. While carrying out the excavations underneath the present-day Dubrovnik cathedral, archaeologists put every single numismatic find into a separate little paper bag, writing down the date, exact place and depth of the find. Some specimens of medals, crosses and coins were found in tombs. In the beginning, lists of identified coins would be typed on a typewriter, chronologically, as they would be discovered. Later, the lists – cut individually for each identified specimen – were manually arranged and glued by periods and countries and, within these categories, chronologically. As a result, new lists were composed, more suitable forpublishing. Afterwards, a quarter of a century ago, when the Numismatic Department of the Archaeological Museum in Zagreb bought the license for the Numiz computer program developed by the Numismatic Cabinet of the National Museum of Slovenia, the whole job had to be done all over again. All the specimens were thus described again and fed into Numiz program – the best tool for classification and publishing of coins and medals – not a minor task.
Some of the coins have already been published – for example, the coins very important for the site, such as the Byzantine money. Later, something was written about the ancient coins – yet another strong piece of evidence of the long continuity of human presence in the Ragusa area.Headed by Damir Doračić, the laboratory of the Archaeological Museum in Zagreb has recently carried out the cleaning and conservation of the least legible coins, saints and pilgrimage medals and crosses. Due to their poor condition and thick incrustation, the latter devotional objects could not be touched until now. The major problem with this metal was the fact that it had been exposed to abundant underground waters rich with salt due to vicinity of the sea – the conditions favorable to corrosion. While the coins were mostly found in the grave fills, the crosses and medals were found around the necks of the deceased or on their rosaries, having been intentionally placed in the graves.
Unfortunately, numismatics has neglected crosses and saint medals to a rather large extent – not only in Croatia. In our country, Ana Azinović Bebek has recently meticulously analyzed not just saint and pilgrimage medals, but also crosses and rosaries. Even earlier, after the excavations carried out on several sites, she published the saints medals found in graves from several sites.6 Some other Croatian authors have also found similar material during excavations or have analyzed the material from museumcollections. The complete bibliography can be found in the said dissertation of A. Azinović Bebek. Fortunately, this valuable dissertation was published in the most up-to-date format: as a PDF document on the bonus disk9 enclosed to the catalogue of the exhibition entitled Sacred Places of Old Zagreb People held in the Zagreb City Museum in 2015.
The best known among the earlier authors who dedicated their attention to crosslets was Leo Ferdinand Kuncze, a Benedictine monk. He classified them into 21 sets: Cruces in genere/Kreuze und Kreuzmedaillen, and subsets: A. Kreuze an Medaillen (Crosses on Medals, like the ones found in the Dubrovnik material); I. Invocationes SS. Crucis, II. Signa crucis, III. Pendants-Kreuz-Medaillen, IV. Missionsmedaillen are also here. Next category includes: B. Kreuze als Medaillen (Crosses as Medals; 11 variants). The 22nd set includes Cruces de Sanctis vocatae/ Nach Heiligen benannte Kreuze (Crosses Named after Saints).12 In B category, Kuncze describes crosses with angel heads (leaves, small roses) at their ends13 and those with the Veil of Veronica and Instruments of the Passion of Christ14 like the ones found among the described Dubrovnik specimens. Besides A. Azinović Bebek, who tackled the crosses in her dissertation, D. Knez also wrote about the crosses16 after he had published the saints medals from the collections of the National Museum of Slovenia.
Unlike the crosses, some of the medallions have the year of manufacture inscribed on them but all of them should be dated to the period before the disastrous earthquake that shook Dubrovnik on 6 April 1667, changing not just the urban scenery of the town but also its future. Just like the medals, the crosses also probably come from Italy. We classified them by types. Four of them are almost identical but are of different sizes. Two of them are different. As our colleague Rodolfo Martini from Milan has kindly informed us, these four crosses are of the so-called “Spanish type”, created in the late 16th century. In the early 17th-centurySpain, it was customary to put the Mother of Godon the empty back side of such crosslets. The customn soon spread throughout the Catholic Europe, particularly in Italy, from where the Dubrovnik specimens (which are of the top quality) probably come from.
The cross pendants described here are evidence to the highly developed taste of the Dubrovnik noblemen and their wives from past centuries. On the basis of both the crosses and the saint medallions we can tell which Italian shrines were the destinations of their pilgrimage and from where would they bring home beautiful devotional objects for themselves and their families.
