ST. TRIPUN FOR 1200 YEARS IN KOTOR

Motifs: on the first postage stamp - an image of St.Tripun from the Statute and the Laws of the Town of Kotor, Venice, 1616., the Historical Archives Kotor; on the second postage stamp - a photograph of the image of St. Tripun depicted on the Central altarpiece, the Cathedral in Kotor, 1440, Master Hans from Basel. A photograph by Stefan Kordić, a Kotor based photographer. Old European towns, particularly medieval and Mediterranean, are especially proud of their patron saints, guardians and guarantors of their identity. Their image as patrons of a town can very often be seen on the places of the greatest symbolic importance, holding a model of a town in one hand – in return they take care of a town as intercessors and advocates in heaven. This is the case with the town of Kotor and its relation to the patron saint of the town - St.Tripun, to whom the cathedral in Kotor is dedicated. He is also considered a key figure of communal self confidence. Kotorans have come into possession of St.Tripun’s remians a long time ago. At the beginning of the 9th century (year 809) they acquired the relics from Venetian traders. Mortal remains of Christian martyrs were precious, and each and every town made effort to acquire as much as possible of consecrated remains, and even wars had been fought over that issue, relics of particularly revered saints used to be stolen and even taken by force. There are no reliable sources about St.Tripun’s (in Latin Tryphon) life and activities, and according to some very ancient documents he was persecuted by the Roman emperor Decius ( mid-3rd century after Christ) and – along with Respicius – tortured in Nicaea. He has been portrayed as a young man carrying a palm of martyrdom in one hand and a stone - instrument of his execution in the other. Else he has been invoked and honoured as a patron of gardeners. As a legend tells us when he was tortured a crown decorated with flowers was placed on his head by an angel at the moment of his departure from this world. Apart from Kotor he has been particularly revered in Arles, the French Provence. When people of Kotor got into possession of Tripun’s scull and a hand, they immediately had them reinforced in the silver reliquary. The relics have been kept in the cathedral treasury up to the present days; however the variant made in the Gothic period, when the town was by far known for its goldsmiths. There used to be fourteen goldsmith’ shops producing and exporting great pieces of work to towns all around the Mediterranean basin. Image of a saint on the first postage stamp has its origins in the Statute and the Laws of the Town of Kotor from the year 1616, and the image of a saint on the second postage stamp is a depiction of a saint on the silver poliptih of the altar in the Cathedral dedicated to him. The central part of the silver poliptih, with the image of the Christ Pantokrator, was created in 1440 by Master Hans from Basel, and the figures on the lateral side – one of them is St.Tripun – were created by national artists, one of them known to us by name Marin Adamov. Though the model of the city placed in the right hand of St.Tripun is featuring a stylized version of a town, abundant number of elements indicate that it is designed by a person well acquainted with a town. According to the Roman calendar the festivities on the occasion of the Day of St.Tripun were held on 10th November. However, the Town of Kotor traditionally organises festivities on 3rd February. Taking into consideration that St. Tripun festivities are held only one day after the Day of St. Vlaho festivities in Dubrovnik, inevitably we make comparisons of the roles of these two saints in the imagination of people and their social function in their midst. To what extent have people from Kotor been identified with St.Tripun has successfully been elaborated in comedies written by Držić, and the tradition has been in the fullest extent observed – for eight hundreds years – by the participation of Boka navy in celebration of the Day of St.Tripun «Tripunjdan» performing the famous «Wheel Dance». By issuing a postage stamp a well deserved tribute has been paid to one of the symbols of religious and cultural «long endurance».