Original scientific paper
PETAR DE CEGA AND THE RENOVATION OF TROGIR CATHEDRAL IN THE EARLY 14TH CENTURY
Radoslav Bužančić
; Ministarstvo kulture Konzervatorski odjel u Splitu
Abstract
An epigraph carved in Gothic letters on the rim of a rosette discovered during research into the nave of Trogir Cathedral conducted by the present author was written in hexameters that were not at first legible. It was covered by the rim of a subsequently expanded oculus in the wall surface. Reading of the epigraph was also impeded by the mortar that had partly been smeared over the letters while it was being incorporated. After it was taken down and cleaned, the following couplet was revealed:
HOC TIBI DE CEGA PETRVS QVONDAM DOIMI
OPVS CONTVLIT VNVS
SCTE PATER PATRIAE LAVRENTII
SVSCIPE MVNVS
Who was Petar Cega who made St Lawrence the gift of a rosette? The Cegas came to Trogir from Split and became one of the most important clans in Trogir. Petar Dujmov Cega was the member of a powerful noble family that was mentioned in Trogir from the 13th century,
Petar Cega, son of Dujam (1271-1308), cited on the rosette, was probably the commune’s procurator during the building. He is mentioned in the cathedral documents at the end of the 13th century, when he was elected among the forty members of the council, and also again at the very beginning of the 14th century in an agreement of 1305. At that time the papal envoy Gentile de Montefiori brought in the office of master of the fabric of the cathedral, subsequently occupied by distinguished men of Trogir, which allows us to date the making of the Gothic rosette with greater precision to the end of the 13th or the very beginning of the 14th century.
In the Romanesque epigraphy of Trogir Cathedral of the first half of the 13th century, the influences of contemporary liturgical codices can already be seen. The title of Sancte Pater Patrie with which the composer of this text addressed St Lawrence is not only the ancient root of a phrase that led towards the title of the heirs of Augustus but also pertained to a much closer invocational formula from the antiphon of the Franciscans devoted to their heavenly patron St Francis. The antiphon Salve Sancte Pater is composed of three rhyming hexameters:
Salve, Sancte Pater, patriae lux, forma Minorum.
Virtutis speculum, recti via, regula morum:
Carnis ab exilio duc nos ad regna polorum.
It was composed not long after the death of St Francis, between 1231 and 1235, and for a long time was exclusively the major antiphon in the celebration of vespers during the octave of the feast of St Francis, which was celebrated in Trogir on October 4. The composer of the record of the donation, in which the name of the master of the fabric Petar de Cega is mentioned, was extremely well taught, and probably was close to the Franciscan order. In Trogir from the 13th century the Franciscans had a monastery very soon after Francis was canonised in 1228. Their prosperity in the city was supported by the governing family of Bribir. Bishops Columban and Liberius of Ancona were members of the order, although the hexameter in honour of St Lawrence that paraphrased the antiphon was not composed by the Trogir bishop, who was at odds with the commune and the chapter. It was probably written by the primicerius Lampridius Vitturi or by Peter Dujmov Cega, perhaps with the help of some Franciscan, either a religious of the Trogir monastery, or a cleric in some high office like the papal legate Gentile, who belonged to the Friars Minor.
Following the example of the cathedral in Split, the Trogir bell tower was almost certainly built in the axis of the church, in the tradition of Dalmatian Romanesque architecture. As through the Split bell tower or arch of triumph, it gave access through the external and internal portal to the interior of the cathedral, past the sculptural work of Master Radovan, guided by the same soteriological message that we can find in the ground floor of the bell tower in Split. Although there is no direct proof for the hypothesis, the fact is that the rearranged and more finished portal of Radovan had two programmes from his time. One was related to Christ and the Christian year and the other was connected to the sin of the first mother and father and the beginning of the time that created the history of mankind, started after the expulsion from paradise, which can mean, as in the ground floor of the Split campanile, two separate portals. It is not irrelevant to mention that during geosounding investigations in front of the Radovan Portal, massive foundations of some building were found; the soil had been consolidated with a large quantity of lime and stone, in the whole area in front of the portal. At the time of the research works, it was thought that some historical repairs to the foundation of the facade of the cathedral were involved, for a large crack is visible on it. But probably at issue are the foundations of the old Romanesque bell tower.
The bell tower was pulled down for the sake of extending the porch, which in the spirit of Angevin Gothic had to have two towers and a gallery between them. The new architectural concept of the Gothic cathedral brought with it a new formal treatment, in which it is possible to recognise the influences of the great workshops from the other side of the Adriatic. The portals of Master Radovan have been recomposed into a single whole, which is supplemented with new sculptures so as to complete the depiction of the scenes from Christ’s life. What pulls the whole operation together is the iconological concept inspired by the gospels, suffused with a new visual expression brought together under the Gothic pointed tegurium over the portal and the polychrome effect that was created by the incorporation of black elements of the architecture of the portal, the black and white graphic treatment imparting rhythm to the appearance of the sculptural collage. The black and white effects of architectural furnishing were discovered in the interior of the cathedral as well, like the facade on which black columns are incorporated between the reliefs of the portal and the rosette over the gallery fitted in between the planned Gothic towers; black and white stripes are to be seen on the cleaned vault of the pulpit and on the ciborium of the high altar. For the understanding of the operation in Trogir, the rosette built in on the facade after the demolition of the bell tower is of great importance. In the 15th century it was replaced with a large rose and was moved to the rear wall over the apse, where it is located today. The epigraph defines more closely the time it was made, and thus indirectly the time of the modification of the architectural programme of the cathedral, by the demolition of a Romanesque tower for the sake of building two new Gothic towers
The time of the Gothic rebuilding according to this is the turn of the 13th and 14th centuries. This is an important historical moment in Croatia, marked by the extinction of the Arpad dynasty and the ascent of the Angevin Charles Robert to the throne of Hungary-Croatia. The new king, for whom nobles from the house of Šubić went to Naples, confirmed to the Bribir family the heritable title of ban and the privileges that they had had earlier, and they continued to have a key role in the communes of Dalmatia in the 14th century. Almost the whole of the 13th and 14th century, there were members of the family at the head of the city government. The Šubićes were indirectly the patrons of the operation by which the cathedral in Trogir was remodelled, from a Romanesque to a Gothic building, in line with the new tastes that came from the western centres of Europe.
Keywords
Hrčak ID:
193067
URI
Publication date:
20.2.2017.
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