Relikvijar Svetog Križa i proslava Uskrsa u Perastu

Abstract

In the year of 1743, Antun Bronza presented the Book of Ceremonies to the City council of Perast. The book contained carefully written descriptions and regulations concerning celebrations of various, both ecclesiastical and secular feast days, the Easter celebration occupying a particularly important place. Namely, every year, these four days of remembering Jesus' Passion and Resurrection were celebrated with processions, liturgies, and religious plays, with the joined participation of authorities and common laypeople. During the Good Friday procession, the main role was given to the reliquary that contained the particle of the True Cross. This very detailed description raises important questions about the relationship between the believer and the object, the object and space, and space and time during these days. Sources from the Church archive in Perast treasure the material necessary for reconstructing the role that the reliquary of the True Cross played in the aforementioned celebration. Its distinguished iconography, materiality, and performative potential contribute to our understanding of Baroque piety in the eastern Mediterranean during the Venetian rule. Moreover, a great number of written prayers, sermons, and religious plays from Perast testify about the various ways of beholding and contemplating this important reliquary. Although lacking the elaborate narrative cycles, exquisite colouring, or anthropomorphic decoration, this tiny object was able to tell a moving story of Jesus' passion to the contemporary believer. Considering numerous and various messages that were successfully transmitted to and received by the beholder during these festive days, we can gain an insight into the dynamic threefold relationship between the object, beholder, and space in the eighteenth century.