The staurotheke of the church of Sts. Peter and Paul in Ras, Serbia. A contribution to research*

The subject of this paper is the staurotheke which is now kept in the treasury of the Dominican monastery in Dubrovnik, Croatia. It originally belonged to the church of Sts. Peter and Paul in Ras, Serbia, to which it had been donated jointly by the Serbian King Stefan Uroš II Milutin and Bishop Gregory II of Raška (Rascia). The staurotheke in the shape of a double-armed cross is engraved with illuminating donor inscriptions on the front and back of the handle and a poetical epigram on the sides of the cross. Based on the palaeographical features of the inscriptions and the style of gold work, it has been established that the staurotheke was thoroughly renovated in the mid-sixteenth century but that the content of the inscriptions was faithfully copied from the original. The meaning and function of the staurotheke are discussed in the broader context of the cult of the True Cross in medieval Serbia.

The subject of this paper is the staurotheke which is now kept in the treasury of the Dominican monastery in Dubrovnik, Croatia. It originally belonged to the church of Sts. Peter and Paul in Ras, Serbia, to  The staurotheke of the church of Sts. Peter and Paul in Ras, Serbia, is one of the few surviving medieval Serbian reliquaries and as such deserves to be accorded full attention. Even more so because it was a joint donation by the Serbian King Stefan Uroš II Milutin (r. 1282-1321) and the Bishop of Raška (Rascia) Gregory II. This is attested by the quite extensive, excellently preserved inscriptions incised on the surfaces of the cross, which, in addition to being a primary historical source, constitute an interesting example of Cyrillic epigraphy. The staurotheke is also relevant to the typological study of the reliquaries intended as containers for fragments of the True Cross. As a fine piece of goldsmith's work, it is also a remarkable product of religious art (ars sacra). Finally, the story of the staurotheke goes across different epochs and cultural settings, which lends it an exciting historical dimension.

which it had been donated jointly by the Serbian King Stefan Uroš II Milutin and Bishop Gregory II of Raška (Rascia). The staurotheke in the shape of a double-armed cross is engraved with illuminating donor inscriptions on the front and back of the handle and a poetical epigram on the sides of the cross. Based on the palaeographical features of the inscriptions and the style of gold work, it has been established that the staurotheke was thoroughly renovated in the mid-sixteenth century but that
The staurotheke is now kept in the monastery of St. Dominic in Dubrovnik, historically Ragusa. Although known to scholarship, it has not been given any closer study, including physical examination. 1 Since we did not have the opportunity to examine it directly, this research paper necessarily remains limited in some aspects and our conclusions open to further discussion and modification.
The reliquary has the shape of a double-armed cross, 50.1 cm high, 30 cm wide and 1.8 cm thick. The two crossbars are of unequal length. The lower end of the shaft, visually separated from the upper by a thin moulded band, functioned as a handle. The reliquary is made of silver-gilt and decorated with a narrow moulded border along the edges. Its front is decorated with openwork ornaments giving visual access to the holy wood. The openwork rosettes at the intersections of the arms are composed of tiny flowers encircled with three-leaf palmettes, while the rectangular openwork ornaments at the ends of the crossbars, six of them in all, show four-petal flowers. The rest of the decoration consists of tiny triangles in the outer corners of the central intersection and shallow rosette appliqués attached to the end sides of the arms. Observable in several places on the surface of the cross are the 'punches' of St. Blaise-marks stamped on the gold objects produced in the Republic of Ragusa in the form of its patron saint's head topped with a triangular mitre.
The staurotheke is no doubt remarkable by the content of its inscriptions incised in the silver with a thin sharp tool. The upper intersection is surrounded with an inscription executed with a thin and precise line: IC XC NHKA [Jesus Christ conquers]. Especially noteworthy are the incised Cyrillic inscriptions in regular lines on the front and back of the handle, on the left-hand underside of the main crossbar and the left-hand side of the shaft. They contain substantial information about the donors of the staurotheke and their reasons for making the donation. 2 The five-line inscription on the front of the handle reads: Си Частни крст сатвори господин краљ Стефан Урош и син великаго краља Уроша, дому светих апостол Петру и Павлу, јако да му је на здравије и спасеније и на отпуштеније грехов. (This holy cross was made by the lord king Stefan Uroš, son of the great king Uroš, for the home of the holy apostles Peter and Paul, for his health and salvation and for the forgiveness of sins.) at the time of publication: F. Miklosich, Monumenta Serbica spectantia historiam Serbiae Bosnae Ragusii, Vindobonae 1858, 83, LXXVI; Sakcinski, Izvjestje, 336-337; A. Frolow, La relique de la Vraie Croix. Recherches sur le développement d ' un culte, Paris 1961, 443-444;SSZN I, ed. Lj. Stojanović, Beograd 1902, 18, no. 39. Most recently Bishop Gregory's verses and the other inscriptions have been published and commented upon by I. Špadijer, Svetogorska baština. Manastir Hilandar i stara srpska književnost, Beograd 2014, 72-74. Photographs of the inscriptions were published by Đ. Sp. Radojičić, Stihovi u srebro urezani, LMS 389 (1962) 246-249. The inscriptions were translated into Modern Serbian by D. Bogdanović, Grigorije Raški, in: Šest pisaca XIV veka, Beograd 1986, 11-13, 65. I am grateful to Dr. Branislav Cvetković for the photographs of the inscriptions.
The back of the handle also bears a five-line inscription: И крст сатвори епискуп рашки Григорије втори, јако и она вдовица две цете дадеште. Кто васхоштет си крст узети од светих апостол или от Частнога древа да је проклет. (And the cross was made by the bishop of Rascia, Gregory the Second, just like the widow who gave two mites. Cursed be he that would will to take away this cross from the holy apostles or [to take a piece] from the holy wood.) On the sides of the main crossbar and the shaft is a poetical one-line text: Крстом ограждајеми, врагу противљајем се, не бојеште се казни јего ни лајанија, јако грди упраздни се и попран бист силоју на древе распетаго Христа. (Fenced with the cross, we oppose the devil, unfearful of his traps or snares, like a prideful one he ruined himself and was destroyed by force upon the wood of the Christ crucified.) 3 Finally, incised on the back of the staurotheke above the handle is a later Latin inscription evidencing its renovation in 1548: RENOVATA M. D. XLVIII.
One of the most challenging problems posed by the staurotheke of King Milutin and Bishop Gregory is the chronology and extent of the renovations it underwent over time. In other words, the main question a researcher faces concerns the survival, or not, of original parts in the reliquary as it is today. Needless to say, reliable answers to such questions can only be given after a thorough examination both of the reliquary and of the broader context of its making and subsequent history. Nevertheless, even that which is known at present allows some well-founded assumptions to be made. First of all, reliable confirmation that the reliquary was renovated in the mid-sixteenth century is provided by the abovementioned inscription of 1548 and the 'punches' of St. Blaise, usual marks of the Dubrovnik goldsmiths. That the staurotheke underwent renovation is shown by the nails in the arms of the cross used to secure the silver sheathing at some, currently undetermined, point in time. That the reliquary was repaired can also be seen from traces of quite crude soldering work visible on the crossbars. These facts as well as the overall appearance and decoration of the staurotheke suggest that it has not reached our times in its original condition. Based on their form and stylisation, the openwork ornaments on the front of the reliquary, the appliqués on the end sides of the arms and the decorative triangles at the intersection should be dated to the period of renovation, most likely the sixteenth century.
A separate problem relating to the chronology of renovation is posed by the inscriptions which have been dated to about 1305 but without basing the date on epigraphic and morphological analysis. 4 More recently, however, the view has been put forward that the present appearance of the reliquary, including the inscriptions, is the result of a later renovation. That view, briefly explained, has been advanced by Branislav Cvetković in the context of discussing the renovation of another object, the socalled Trsat reliquary. Pointing out that the palaeographical features of the inscriptions do not match those of Ser-3 Bogdanović, Grigorije Raški, 65. 4 Ibid., 13.  Sts. Peter and Paul in Ras, drawing by I. K. Sakcinski (1857) bian fourteenth-century epigraphy, he has suggested that a highly skilful engraver familiar with the Cyrillic script replicated the inscriptions from the original reliquary and, in doing so, sought to and succeeded in reproducing their content faithfully. 5 Cvetković's hypothesis has been confirmed and supplemented with several useful observations by Gordana Tomović, an excellent connoisseur of medieval and later epigraphy, who carefully examined the inscriptions. In her view, the morphological features of a few letters cannot be of an early fourteenth-century date but, rather, can only be dated to the fifteenth or sixteenth century. Especially characteristic in this respect are the letters: Ч, very similar to shapes typical of the sixteenthcentury cursive script; shallow З (similar to number 3); T in two shapes (three-legged and ordinary), all of which occur in inscriptions from the late fifteenth or early sixteenth century. The same period is suggested by shallow ; five-stroke Ж; K with a long stem and a short arm and leg meeting at an acute angle; and Д with long descenders, similar to the letter's cursive shape. Gordana Tomović has also pointed out that the use of the three-pointed star for interword separation was characteristic of Latin inscriptions and that it also occurred among notarial symbols. 6 The palaeographical and morphological features of these inscriptions would suggest that they were executed by an engraver from Dubrovnik or its hinterland familiar not only with the Cyrillic alphabet but also with the Serbian language. That he must have been a practised one can be seen from the neat and deft execution of the inscriptions in regular lines. This conclusion, at first sight surprising-especially in view of the commonly accepted date of the staurotheke-should be interpreted from at least two standpoints. The question of the engraver should be looked at in the light of the fact that the Cyrillic alphabet was in wide use in Dubrovnik for centuries. Recorded as early as the thirteenth century, the activity of Slavic scribes (referred to in Latin as scriba sclauonicus, sclauicus, and in Serbian as dijak, gramatik, kanžilerfrom Lat. cancellarius) became ever more frequent from the first decades of the fourteenth century, and many of them are known by name. The Cyrillic alphabet in its cursive and half-uncial variants was used in official correspondence with the neighbouring Serbian areas, in 5 B. Cvetković, Trsatski relikvijar: poreklo strukture, in: Srednji vek u srpskoj nauci, istoriji, književnosti i umetnosti, ed. G. Jovanović, Despotovac 2015, 187-188, where in the author points to the presence of characteristic glyphs in the form of three-armed stars which do not occur in Cyrillic epigraphy, and to the presence of tildes where unnecessary and their absence where necessary; he also observes that the Cyrillic letter 'C' (i.e. Greek 'sigma') in the inscription surrounding the intersection of the cross is written in the form of the Latin G. I express my friendly gratitude to my colleague Cvetković for other useful observations, and especially for having inspiring discussions with me on the Dubrovnik staurotheke and its inscriptions. 6  private writing, and in private-law and other legal documents and their transcriptions. These chanceries continued to operate even after the Ottoman conquest of Christian states, maintaining correspondence with Ottoman officials. Written sources confirm that the Cyrillic alphabet was in wide use in fifteenth-century Dubrovnik as a result of a stronger process of Slavicisation of the population and that there were teachers of the Slavic language. Finally, that Cyrillic literacy was not limited to official correspondence and correspondence on private legal matters in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries is evidenced by the surviving manuscript books. 7 The dating of the inscriptions on the staurotheke to the time of its renovation in the mid-sixteenth century raises, however, a number of other very complex questions. Especially intriguing are those that concern the circumstances of and reasons for such an 'acribic' renovation of a medieval Serbian reliquary and its inscriptions. To solve this problem requires a thorough discussion based on a scrupulous study of the cult of relics as practised in Dubrovnik at the time and of the broader context of prevailing ideas, religious practices and the general social situation. A stimulating direction in which to think, proposed on this occasion, may be provided by contemporary analogous and very eloquent examples from Venice, a centre from which, as is well known, emanated influences that had for centuries an impact on all aspects of life in the Republic of Ragusa.
Especially inspiring for our topic are the recent results of research into an as yet insufficiently studied group of reliquaries from St. Mark's in Venice. They were crafted in the early decades of the sixteenth century as more or less faithful imitations of Byzantine ars sacra. They as a rule are very similar to the original objects and their 'antiquity' was reflected in the type of decoration, orthographic errors in inscriptions or the iconography of some representations. A paradigmatic example-and the one of the utmost relevance to our topic-is the so-called staurotheke of the Empress Maria, which has been thoroughly studied by Karin Krause. Made in the 1510s as a faithful replica of a sumptuous Byzantine reliquary from the late eleventh or early twelfth century, it was meant as a memoria of its highly-respected lost prototype. The amount of attention and effort put into achieving 'likeness' to the original is best evidenced by the donor inscription in Greek. From the palaeographical point of view, apart from a few minor alterations, the inscription reproduces the original surprisingly well. 8   to the original epigram, but its content no doubt is. The proposed interpretations based on convincing arguments have greatly contributed to a better understanding of the reasons that guided those who commissioned such copies. By copying Byzantine reliquaries and 'commemorating' the relics they contained, the Venetians staked their claim to being legitimate successors of the Byzantines and, at the same time, enriched their treasuries with high-priced artefacts. In a situation when many relics of dubious provenance and genuineness circulated in the Western world, Greek inscriptions and Byzantine-style manufacture were the strongest guarantee of their authenticity and, therefore, miraculous powers. 9 An inspiring discussion of the reasons behind and purpose of renovating Byzantine staurothekai in Venice in the late fourteenth and early sixteenth centuries has recently been put forward by Holger Klein in his study on the Cross reliquaries of Byzantine provenance and high reputation owned by the Venetian confraternities (scuole) of San Giovanni Evangelista and Santa Maria della Carità. The renovation of these staurothekai was the result of the ambition of the powerful religious confraternities and their leaders to supply their treasuries with particularly valuable relics of proven antiquity and miraculous efficacy. In their struggle for primacy, possessing relics endowed with miraculous efficacy was essential. There is no need to reiterate that such prestige and aura was the privileged property of Byzantine reliquaries, especially those bearing Greek inscriptions. 10 It is in this chronological and cultural framework and focusing on this set of topics that the renovation of King Milutin and Bishop Gregory's staurotheke done in Dubrovnik in the sixteenth century should be discussed. The known facts concerning the Dubrovnik phase of its history leave no room for doubt that the contemporaries held it in high regard. What preceded its arrival in Dubrovnik, however, remains unknown at present. It may be assumed that the treasury of the monastery of Sts. Peter and Paul in Ras had a fate similar to that of other medieval Serbian churches and monasteries, looted and dispersed in the troubled times of Ottoman rule. Many of the objects kept in their treasuries, which had not only a religious but also a high material value, were objects of a lucrative trade. 11 A prominent role in such transactions was played by citizens of Dubrovnik, the city where Serbian rulers and dignitaries traditionally deposited their assets for safekeeping. It may be instructive to remember, for example, that Nikola Bošković, a distinguished Dubrovnik merchant who had business dealings in Ottoman-held Novi Pazar (the area of Ras) in the 1670s and 1680s, came into possession of valuable relics originally from the treasury of the monastery of Mileševa. 12  have been numerous even if they remained unrecorded in the sources.
The circumstances under which the staurotheke of King Milutin and Bishop Gregory II arrived in the city of St. Blaise are still unknown. According to a Dubrovnik chronicler, the Dominican Serafin Crijević (1686-1759), the reliquary was brought to Dubrovnik after the final Ottoman conquest of Serbia (1459). Sometime before 1521 it was donated to the Dominican monastery in nearby Gruž, where it was thoroughly renovated in 1548, as evidenced by the already mentioned inscription on the back of the cross. In 1618 it was moved to the Dominican monastery in the city itself for security reasons. How highly revered the relic was can also be seen from the fact that it was taken to Gruž and displayed in the church of the Dominican monastery for the faithful to venerate on the Feast of the Cross every year until 1812. According to Crijević, in 1697 a Gruž friar stole a piece of the holy wood and gave it to the Emperor Leopold's envoy in Dubrovnik, Baron Saponaro. The latter presented the relic as a gift to the Empress Wilhelmina Amalia, spouse of the Holy Roman Emperor Joseph I (r. 1705-1711), and she 'encased it in gold' , i.e. had a sumptuous reliquary made for it. The Empress wanted to have its authenticity confirmed and, through the intermediary of the Dubrovnik patrician Frano Gundulić, obtained a 'certificate' from the Dominican monastery in 1716. 13 In the light of the circumstances described above, it should be noted that this particular relic was not the only holy wood fragment from the treasuries of the Serbian Nemanjić dynasty that ended up at the Habsburg court. Another known piece of the True Cross enshrined in an opulent staurotheke once belonged to the monastery of Sopoćani, to which it had been donated by Queen Helen, consort of King Stefan Uroš I of Serbia. 14 According to an eighteenth-century source, this reliquary, wrapped in silk, used to be placed around the neck of newly-baptised Habsburg princes. 15 This certainly makes a very interesting and noteworthy topic, which is the reason why we have devoted it a separate study. 16 On this occasion we shall confine ourselves to one of its aspects which sheds additional light not only on the long and winding history of the Dubrovnik staurotheke but also on its reception, i.e. its significance in the religiosity of Habsburg dynasts. The cult of the True Cross lay at the heart of pietas austriaca along with the veneration of the Virgin and Eucharistic piety. This concept of religiosity, deemed one of the most important virtues of a ruler, was at the core of a distinctive ideology of Habsburg emperors, the ideology of a chosen people and its mission in the Christian world. 17  that a piece of the True Cross-furnished with a certificate of authenticity-came into the possession of the Empress Amalia and was given a sumptuous reliquary speaks indirectly but convincingly of the high prestige and charisma of the relic which originally came from medieval Serbia. If we also take into account that the staurotheke had been a royal donation, memorialised by an inscription in Old Serbian-a warrant of its great antiquity, the reasons for making the Dubrovnik replica become entirely clear.

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Even though the staurotheke of the church of Sts. Peter and Paul in Ras was thoroughly renovated in the sixteenth century, its original appearance may be conjectured with sufficient probability. Helpful in that respect is certainly the opinion of experts that the text of the inscriptions should be considered authentic, of which more will be said below. Based on the presently available facts and on what is known about the usual practice in cases similar to ours, it seems likely that the thorough renovation of the reliquary was undertaken because it was worn down and the gems that must have adorned it were missing. The text inscribed on the surfaces of the staurotheke which are not readily accessible to view-the handle and sides of the cross-obviously was well preserved and legible. It may be assumed with much probability that the renovators replicated the dimensions of the original staurotheke since the new one had to fit the size of the relic itself. Moreover, it is highly unlikely that the fourteenth- century reliquary was smaller than the existing, unusually large one because in that case there would not have been enough surfaces for the extensive inscriptions.
The original shape and type of the Dubrovnik staurotheke may also be reconstructed with much certainty. It was a reliquary in the shape of a double-armed cross (crux gemina) which can be traced from the period following the iconoclastic crisis in the late ninth century. Along with the panel-shaped staurotheke, it was another characteristic type of Byzantine reliquaries for holding fragments of the True Cross. Apart from being adorned, as a rule lavishly, it quite frequently bore inscriptions of diverse contents. By virtue of its associative power-as a metaphor for the relic itself-the double-armed cross acquired the status of a paradigm and a distinctive identity which, especially in the Western world, implied the Byzantine provenance of the relic and, in that way, guaranteed its authenticity. 18 From the typological point of view, a characteristic element of our reliquary is its handle, in fact the lower end of the shaft engraved with an inscription. It gives the staurotheke its typical elongated form and classifies it into a subtype intended for a specific use. Namely, it has been shown that reliquaries of this type were used in liturgical services or in processions and rituals performed for the feast of the Exaltation of the True Cross. 19   but firmly founded-that many of the Byzantine crossshaped reliquaries with inscriptions crafted about 1100 were imperial donations. 20 How popular this reliquary type was in medieval Serbia is difficult to know because of the small number of surviving specimens. Yet, judging by those that have survived, staurothekai in the shape of a double-armed cross made of different materials and variously stylised can be followed from the thirteenth to the late fourteenth century. 21 An especially close analogy for the Dubrovnik staurotheke in terms of form is the staurotheke of Serbian provenance which is now kept in Pienza, Italy. Although its decoration, which dates from the time of its renovation in the late fourteenth century, is much more sumptuous than the Dubrovnik one, the two are similar in shape, proportions and, most particularly, in having an inscribed handle. 22 The original decoration of the staurotheke of King Milutin and Bishop Gregory can only be a matter of conjecture. Except for the openwork rosettes at both intersections-undoubtedly dating from the time of renovation-the main feature of the reliquary as it is today is an austerity of form and an almost complete absence of ornamentation. In that respect it considerably departs from the usual practice in the medieval Christian world of richly adorning Cross reliquaries with various gemstones. 23 That this practice was pursued in medieval Serbia seems to be attested by the decoration of the abovementioned Pienza staurotheke but also by the written sources which provide information about two now lost Cross reliquaries, close in date to the Dubrovnik one: those of King Stefan Uroš I and his wife Queen Helen. 24 We are, therefore, inclined to assume that the original Dubrovnik reliquary was much more ornately decorated. What makes this assumption even more plausible is the fact that it was a joint donation by a powerful king, proven admirer of supreme forms of royal representation, and a distinguished bishop of the Serbian Church. It is reasonable to assume that the original staurotheke was lavishly adorned with gemstones set in usual places-the ends and intersections of the arms of the cross. A thus designed reliquary, whose origin can be traced back to the early Christian crux gemmata, was also a royal symbol and an emblem of victory which evoked the hallowed model-the triumph of the first Christian emperor and champion of the 'true faith' , Constantine the Great. 25  If our assumption is correct, the original staurotheke of the church of Sts. Peter and Paul in Ras should be imagined as a sumptuous double-armed cross made of precious materials and relatively large for this reliquary type. Such a shrine-a self-evident symbol of salvation and, at the same time, a finest work of ars sacra-must have possessed great associative power and complex meanings. Both on a sensory and on a contemplative level, it compellingly expressed the Christian understanding of the nature and significance of relics and their sumptuous containers, evocations of the Heavenly City and paradisiacal abodes. Its use in the liturgy and various rites, especially those involved in the celebration of the True Cross, must have played a very important role in the eyes of the faithful. 26 In the case of the Dubrovnik staurotheke, in addition to its type, such use would be suggested by the inscription engraved on the sides of the cross. Such a location of an inscription, quite rare in medieval reliquaries, will be illustrated here with two representative examples. One of them is the ninth-century niello encolpion kept in the monastery of St. Catherine in Sinai whose incised inscription with the name of the ktetor runs along all narrow sides of the cross. 27 The other analogous example, chronologically much closer to the Dubrovnik staurotheke, is the Byzantine fourteenth-century cross fitted into the staurotheke which is known by the name of its donor, Cardinal Bessarion. 28 The inscription in such a place would become accessible to the eye only when the reliquary was placed, i.e. began to act, in physical space. Regardless of whether the faithful were able to understand its content, it endowed the Cross reliquary, a basically two-dimensional object, with a completely new, three-dimensional quality and, therefore, with a powerful 'performative' force. 29 rand, B. The inscriptions undoubtedly constitute an important element of the reliquary of the church of Sts. Peter and Paul. They certainly formed an integral part of the original design of the staurotheke, but it may be assumed that they had originally been more sophisticatedly executed-in repoussé work commonly used in medieval reliquaries. Recent, very interesting considerations of the visual aspect of text in medieval art, including Byzantine, have convincingly demonstrated the essential synergy of text and image, their belonging to the same level of communication. 30 This approach to the problem has most recently been developed in detail by Ivan Drpić in his study on epigrams occurring on works of late Byzantine art. Emphasising that the verbal content of an inscription was inseparable from its materiality, he has shown, using a broad and relevant sample, that text functioned as an ornament and as a physical artefact-and of the highest order since it was an embodiment of God's word, i.e. a materialisation of the logos. 31 Fully applicable to epigrams, i.e. inscriptions on reliquaries-composite objects which combine verbal messages with the objects' tactile and visual dimensions-these interpretations considerably improve our understanding of the 'rhetoric' of the staurotheke which is the focus of this essay.
It hardly need be said that the content of the inscriptions on the staurotheke of King Milutin and Bishop Gregory II are of the utmost importance for understanding its significance and function. In the unanimous opinion of experts, the text itself is authentic-which is evidenced primarily by its language, use of the soft sign, and proper grammar and verb form usage. 32 What also speaks in favour of this view is the content of the donor inscription and the epigram, with its marked literary quality, of which more will be said below. It has been long established that the verses were composed about the year 1305 by the Bishop of Raška himself, who is known to have copied the Nomocanon of St. Sava (Raška krmčija) and added to the manuscript a lengthy Note of his own. 33 The text inscribed on the staurotheke should be looked at as a thematic whole composed of two basic elements. One is the inscription of the two donors on the front and back of the handle; the other is the epigram engraved on the sides of the reliquary.  Drpić, Epigram, art and devotion in later Byzantium, Cambridge 2016, 186-243 and passim. 32 According to the interpretation by Gordana Tomović. 33 Little is known of Bishop Gregory, a former monk of the Serbian monastery of Hilandar on Mt Athos. For known data, v. Bogdanović,Grigorije Raški,[11][12][13]Špadijer,Svetogorska baština,[72][73][74] S. Kalopissi-Verti, Patronage and artistic production in Byzantium during the Palaiologan period, in: Byzantium: faith and power . Perspectives on late Byzantine art and culture, ed. S. T. Serbia-notably in King Milutin's unparalleled activity as a ktetor. 35 The king's donor inscription on the staurotheke discussed here typologically belongs to the most common category of prayerful address: in return for a gift, good health, forgiveness of sins and salvation are expected. Quite simple at first sight, the inscription in fact provides several important pieces of information: it identifies the donor (lord king Stefan Uroš), emphasising his kingly status and noble descent, i.e. his place in the genealogical succession of the rulers of Serbia (son of the great king Uroš). In the Byzantine world, from the Komnenian period on, such emphasis on a person's descent and kinship ties became not only a sign of their belonging to the social elite but also an important ingredient of their self-identity. 36 The inscription also informs us about the recipient, i.e. the intended owner of the gift (home of the holy apostles Peter and Paul in Ras). It ends with the king's prayerful hope that the gift would secure to him 'health, salvation and forgiveness of sins' . Research has shown that it was these 'benefits' and 'rewards' that were usually hoped for by ktetors in the complex, 'reciprocal' practice of giving and returning. 37 The part of the inscription concerning Gregory, Bishop of Raška, is somewhat simpler. It begins with the name and title of the ktetor (bishop of Raška Gregory the Second) and concludes with the habitual sanctiona curse pronounced upon he who would dare take away the donated relic or reliquary from the church of the Holy Apostles. It also contains a telling detail, the likening of Gregory's donation to the New Testament model, the widow's mite . This biblical parable is an exemplum for a gift of small material but great moral value. The exempla that emphasise the humbleness and insignificance of human gifts as opposed to the unique and invaluable gifts of God have recently been the subject of a comprehensive study. It has shown that in interpreting the act of mikrodōria, as a way of emphasising the donor's piety and humility, biblical models were frequently invoked-humble but pious gifts open-heartedly accepted by the Lord. Some of these models were especially popular, such as the story of the widow's mite, Gregory of Nazianzus' favourite. 38 The parable of the widow's mite was widely used in Serbia too. 39  the donor's pious intentions to. 40 The widow's mite as a scriptural prototype was also used by the monk Timothy to describe his contribution, the copying of the Apostolos in the 1360s. 41 Undoubtedly one of the best known examples of the use of this parable is the katapetasma that the nun Euphemia donated to Hilandar in 1398/99. 42 That the kind of piety expressed through the metaphor of the widow's mite was close to Bishop Gregory's heart may be seen from his already mentioned note added to the Nomocanon. Apart from using the formula of self-humiliation, calling himself 'a man very sinful, a monk in appearance, a bishop in rank' , he adds to his name the favourite topos of monastic copyists: to him, his fatherland is his grave, his mother is earth, and his wealth are his sins. 43 Finally, the text inscribed on the sides of the reliquary also deserves attention. The true meaning and purpose of these verses and their broader, literary context may better be understood owing to the results of remarkable recent research work on Byzantine epigrams. This research has shown that epigrams were much more than a poetic form constructed in keeping with the rules of me-40 V. Mošin ter, usually in the so-called Byzantine dodecasyllable. Depending on the object on which they are inscribed, i.e. on the context in which they are used, epigrams emerge as a source of abundant information: they identify and honour the donor, specify ownership, record and characterise the pious act through prayers to heavenly powers. Since such verses occur on objects worked in a variety of media-architecture, wall-painting, icons and icon revetments, liturgical textiles-epigrams are also a precious source for studying general topics such as the relationship between text and image, the verbal and the non-verbal, art and piety. 44 It is safe to say that the abovementioned findings are applicable to the epigram on our staurotheke in virtually every respect. It has long been established that the composition of an epigrammatic nature on the staurotheke of King Milutin and Bishop Gregory is a translation of a Byzantine  sticheron included in the Slavic Octoechos as the sticheron sung at Matins on Wednesdays. 45 It is composed of four lines, the first two of which are fourteeners, and the other two, classical Byzantine dodecasyllabic verses. It should be noted that these are the earliest surviving verses in this genre in medieval Serbian literature. 46 The presence of a text of an epigrammatic nature on the Serbian staurotheke from the very beginning of the fourteenth century should be looked at in a broader context, that of a vigorous process of Byzantinisation which strongly marked the age of King Milutin. The vogue for this poetic form may have also been one of the consequences of the fact that epigrammatic poetry flourished in the Palaiologan era. 47 Judging by what research into this subject has come up with, the content of the epigram on our staurotheke is in full conformity with the character and purpose of the object itself. Namely, recent research-especially Wolfram Hörandner's specialist studies-has shown that the repertoire of motifs in Byzantine epigrams relating to the True Cross includes a few typical ones, the motif of the cross as protector holding the central place. These poetic compositions interpret the cross as a protective symbol triumphant over visible and invisible enemies, as a guardian and defender, and, above all, as a weapon against demons. 48 It is not an accident, then, that the epigrams that emphasise the role of the cross in the struggle against otherworldly forces occur particularly frequently on Cross reliquaries. This practice is confirmed by abundant examples of Byzantine ars sacra from different periods. 49 The staurotheke of King Milutin and Bishop Gregory II is the only surviving Serbian reliquary with an inscription that has this type of content. Yet, its messages were well known to the medieval Serbs. The presence of demons in the human world was deemed to be an unquestionable reality, as evidenced convincingly by hagiographic literature, testimonies on the ascetic practice of anchorites, themes in painting or some manifestations of popular piety. Plentiful written as well as material evidence-such as encolpia, amulets, cryptograms, acronyms-show clearly that the sign of the cross was believed to be the most efficient weapon against 'demonic attacks' . 50 Naturally, it was from True Cross relics that this power of the cross emanated most strongly, but it consequently also emanated from the reliquaries in which they were kept. * Viewed in the broader context of relic practices in medieval Serbia, the staurotheke of King Milutin and Bishop Gregory II is an important testimony to the strength and continuity of the cult of the True Cross. Inaugurated in the reign of Grand Župan Stefan Nemanja (r. 1166-1196), to whom his pectoral cross was a victorious holy weapon and to his state 'a refuge and a rock' , in the next generation of his Nemanjić dynasty the cult of the True Cross was given a strong boost and new representative forms owing to the programmatic endeavour of his youngest son, Sava of Serbia. The breadth and sagacity of Sava's endeavour, the ultimate goal of which was to secure sacral legitimacy for the Serbian kingdom, can best be appreciated from the relic programme carried out in the cathedral and coronation church of Žiča. The meaning and function of the cult of the True Cross as defined in Sava's times turned out to be a far-reaching achievement. This is compellingly evidenced by the fact that from the reign of Sava's brother, King Stefan the First Crowned, the Serbian monarchs as a rule possessed precious fragments of the True Cross, which they donated to their foundations and other distinguished monasteries. This set of notions and customs is confirmed by the donations made by King Milutin's dynastic ancestors. It is reliably known that sumptuous Cross reliquaries were owned, and donated, by King Stefan Vladislav (r. 1234-1243) and by King Stefan Uroš I (r. 1243-1276) and his consort Queen Helen. 51 The cult of the True Cross and the Serbian kings' taste for sumptuous staurothekai should certainly be interpreted in the broader ideological context of promoting the Nemanjić rulers as New Constantines. Recent research into this subject has shown that the 'Constantinian' programme, based on the concept of the divine patronage of secular power guaranteeing worldly victories, was an essential ingredient of the royal ideology of the Nemanjić dynasty. The concept had been sustained continuously from the time of Serbia's grand župans and fostered by means of knowledgeably selected topoi and emphases, depending on the ideological and political needs of the moment. 52 The 'Constantinian' idea gained particular momentum in the reign of King Stefan Uroš II Milutin. It was in that period-marked by victorious military campaigns and an expansion of the Serbian state at the expense of the Byzantine Empire-that a new type of an ideal ruler, embodied in King Milutin, was created. He was cast as an invincible warrior knight, defender of the 'true faith' with emphatically Christian virtues, God's elect who owes his success to the patronage of heavenly powers. 53 The motif of the king's faith in God, who is the true 'force and help' , is threaded through the accounts of Milutin's warfare, which, 51  in his Life, was cast as a chivalric enterprise. 54 The concept of God's chosen ruler and invincible warrior made his identification as a New Constantine explicit. In the Life of King Milutin this idea is communicated through associations, such as the one about the king 'fencing himself with the sign of the cross' in battle, or through directly likening the king, 'worthy of God's help' , to 'the holy and great kings, the meek David and the glorious Constantine' . 55 Similar parallelism is observable in the fresco programmes in some of Milutin's foundations. The rationale behind placing the portraits of Sts. Constantine and Helena next to the Serbian royal couple in the katholikon of the monastery of Staro Nagoričino and in the King's Church at Studenica was to present King Milutin as the defender of the 'true faith' and continuator of the work of the first Christian emperor. 56 Just as telling is the claim of Milutin's biographer that the king had a church dedicated to St. Constantine built in the city of Skoplje. 57 The fact that Milutin gave his son the imperial name Constantine, uncommon in Serbia at the time, has also been interpreted in the described ideological context. 58 Finally, the participation of Gregory practice, but it should also be viewed in the broader context of intensive patronage activity by church dignitaries in the Palaiologan age. 60 As we have seen from the above discussion, which has endeavoured to present the staurotheke of the church of Sts. Peter and Paul in Ras as thoroughly as is possible at this stage of knowledge, the reliquary provides ample interesting information and enables important insights into various aspects of medieval art and culture There should be no doubt that future research will considerably improve these insights, subjecting our conclusions to critical scrutiny.