St. Tryphon, the 3rd-century young martyr from Phrygian Campsada, is the patron saint of Kotor (modern day Montenegro). The cult of St. Tryphon appeared in Kotor around 809, when Andrea Saracenis, a citizen from Kotor, bought his relics and built the first church in honor of the saint. The relic of the head of the saint is kept in the “Glorious Head’’ reliquary made in stages between the 13th and 17th centuries. A bone from the body of St. Tryphon is kept in the reliquary made in the shape of a casket with a slightly concave roof. Executed in wood and covered in silver, the reliquary was completed sometime between 1539 and 1551. Both reliquaries are kept in the St. Tryphon Cathedral Treasury and displayed on the altar of the Cathedral and in the procession through the streets of Kotor during St. Tryphon’s Day, each year on February 3.
St. Tryphon’s Reliquary Casket is probably the work of local goldsmiths, who executed numerous reliquaries predominantly in the shape of arms and legs during the late medieval and early modern periods. The silver sheet that covers the chest displays the reliefs of six scenes of the torture and death of St. Tryphon. On the large front sides there are two narrative scenes on rectangular panels, and only one on the narrower, lateral sides. There is a sequence of the following narrative scenes separated by pilasters: St. Tryphon drawn and quartered by horses, St. Tryphon’s flagellation, St. Tryphon tied to a column, the torture of St. Tryphon by fire, the stoning of St. Tryphon, and the death (by beheading) of St. Tryphon. The figure of St. Tryphon with the palm branch and model of the town of Kotor in his hands is represented twice on the longer sides of the casket roof. The patron saint of the town of Kotor is shown frontally, dressed in a toga and a cloak, flanked by two dragons and cherubims. The triangular fields that flank the two panels with the representation of St. Tryphon show medallions with symbols of the Evangelists in palm branches. Pelicans surrounded by zoomorphic and vegetable motifs of dolphins and acanthus leaves can be found on the narrow sides of the casket. All the narrative scenes from the martyrdom cycles of the St. Tryphon are typified by a combining of traditional hieratic late medieval style with the perspectival approach of the early Renaissance.
Feast Day: 01 FEB