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The original Crkva sv Tripuna (St Tryphon Church) was founded in
809 by Kotor citizen Andreacius (Andrea Saracenis), whose
sarcophagus was rediscovered in 1840 and is now on display. The
church was consecrated to St Tryphon, martyred in 250 AD at
the age of 18 for refusing to recant his faith, whose relics were
given to the church by the Byzantine emperor in a ploy to extend his
influence into the region. The cult of St Tryphon flourished, and in
1124, when the city council decided to build a new cathedral, it was
this site and not the one on Trg od Drva that was chosen. The
original Romanesque Basilica was heavily damaged by earthquakes, and
the current Baroque exterior, including the non-identical-twin Korčula
stone towers, with their incomplete decorations, date from
reconstruction work carried out from 1671 until the money ran out in
1683.
Dominating the interior is the ornate 1362 ciborium of the main
altar, carved with a vast array of scenes from the life of St
Tryphon that seem to go on far longer than the martyr’s brief life
itself. This supports a magnificent silver-gilt altarpiece, bearing
reliefs of 20 saints, central of whom is St Tryphon, holding the
city of Kotor. Four side-altars contain an early 17th-century
Venetian painting of the Blessed Virgin Mary encased in
silver, a 17th-century statue of St Rochus, an 18th-century
painting of St Nicholas by Pietro Antonio of Venice,
and an 18th-century wooden cross, while the 1618 silver altar in the
southern apse was the main altar and houses a votive altarpiece from
those that survived the 1772 plague.
Other artifacts include the 15th-century stone Gothic Pieta, the
16th-century crucifixion by Jacopo de Bassano of Venice, and
my personal favourite, a 16th-century painting by Hironim Santa
Croce, showing a somewhat anachronistic gathering of St
Bartholomew the Apostle with St George and St
Antoninus, which I find an unlikely meeting ever to have
occurred. The oldest surviving decorations are the fragments of 1331
Greek-style frescos that can still be seen, but the cathedral’s
real treasures are upstairs in the reliquary. Decorated in marble by
Venetian sculptor Francesco Penso Cabianca from 1704-08 and
plundered many times, it is still home to many reliquaries,
including the 18th-century golden Reliquary of the True Cross, the
15th-century Capsella Reliquary, bearing a relief of the martyrdom
of its occupant, St Tryphon, and the ornate silver Slavia Glava
(Glorious Head), originating in the 14th century and containing
the skull of St Tryphon.
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