El Arca de San Cugat. Notas hagiográficas y documentales

Abstract

The silver coffer that was to keep Saint Cugat’s relics -nowadays conserved in the Diocese Museum of Barcelona but that comes from the monastery of Sant Cugat del Vallès-, is decorated with big storied reliefs. The latter represent scenes of the life and martyrdom of the Saint, in which his disciples Juliana and Semproniana, as it has commonly been interpreted, are also traditionaly portra­yed. We begin with the problem that implicates the representation of these fema­le Saints, with no literary foundation until the XVIIth century, in a coffer dating from the XIVth century. We analyze this rich object of medieval place from a dou­ble perspective: the hagiographic one, trying to determine as accurately as possi­ble the literary source of the represented scenes, and the documental one that includes unpublished notices about the date of its realization (1312), its authors (silver masters in Perpignan such as Arnau de Camprodon and Joan de Génova) and the vicissitudes that it suffered till the XIXth century and that changed funda­mentally its original aspect.