Le ambiguità di un reliquiario. Il «braccio di s. Ermolao» nella pieve di Calci (Pisa)

Abstract

This paper offers a new reading of a Greek inscription engraved on the silver reliquary of the so-called «arm of St. Hermolaus», an object that has been preserved in the romanesque Pieve of Calci (near Pisa) since the 12th century. The reading of this inscription, usually regarded as the product of an uneducated hand, has always proved difficult. Recently, Gianfranco Fiaccadori went back to supporting the interpretation of the inscription as a rough attempt to repeat the very same text (i.e., «The arm of St. Hermolaus») as that of another inscription written on the reliquary. Furthermore, he formulated the hypothesis that the unskilled hand could be that of a non-native Greek speaker perhaps of Armenian origin, noting some similarity of the letter-tracing to Armenian alphabetic forms. However, in this article I set out to demonstrate that the peculiarity of the letter forms can be explained entirely within the rules of Greek paleography and specifically according to Middle-Byzantine epigraphic usage. By applying these method, an alternative reading of the inscription emerges, namely «<Relic> of the servant of Christ (?) Pantoleon», shedding a new (though not unambiguous) light on the relic itself. Since the inscription read in this way appears to attribute the relic to St. Panteleemon, rather than to his co-martyr St. Hermolaus, various contrasting hypotheses can be raised about this apparent confusion, bearing on the relic’s history and ultimately on the question of its doubtful authenticity.