A Purchase of Byzantine Relics and Reliquaries in Fourteenth-Century Venice*

Abstract

On 28 May 1359 a contract was enacted in Venice for the sale of a substantial collection of relics and a Greek manuscript in a very precious and elaborate binding. 1 The parties to the sale, which took place in the house of Jacopo Bartolo‘ de Florentia ’ and‘ in Contrata Santorum Apostolorum ’, were principally Andreas Gratia, a syndic of the Hospital of Santa Maria della Scala in Siena, who was buying the relics, and Pietro di Giunta Torrigiani, a Florentine merchant in Constantinople, who was the seller. The second part of this article will provide an analysis of the documentary evidence associated with this transaction, and will seek to demonstrate the origins of the collection in the imperial palace in Constantinople, whence it had been sold in 1356 or 1357 by the Empress Helena, wife of John V. The first part, which follows here, provides the first full publication of the five Byzantine reliquaries which still survive in the possession of the Hospital in Siena. 2

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