Decoration of the episcopal staff, 13th to 14th century, Church of the Holy Salvation, Žiča Monastery

During the archeological excavations of the Church of the Holy Salvation which was carried out by the Institute for the Protection of Cultural Monuments in Kraljevo in 1988, two pits were found in the Žiča Monastery. After the invasion of Kuman in the 70s of the 13th century, when the monastery was destroyed for the first time, fragments of frescoes, parts of church furniture, and damaged objects from the temple were stored in them. From one of these pits comes the discovery of two parts of the decoration of an episcopal staff, made of ivory, and a bronze wedge that serves to connect. The formwork, cylindrical in shape, is divided into two parts when decorating the surface, so that one is decorated with incised vegetable motifs, and the other with intertwined strips. Both motifs are known from the Romanesque decorative corpus. The objects were finely polished, and with the help of a bronze wedge they were applied to a wooden stick.

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