THE ROBE OF THE CROATIAN-HUNGARIAN KING LADISLAUS, 11TH C. (S/S)

The souvenir sheet is the joint issue of the Hungarian Post and the Croatian Post. The Croatian Post has also issued the commemorative First Day Cover (FDC) and the Souvenir Card. Motif: CHASUBLE “LADISLAUS’S ROBE”, fabric Byzantium, embroidery Regensburg, 11th c. 190 x 200 cm The robe of Ladislaus is one of the oldest and most precious textile objects that are kept in the treasury of the Zagreb cathedral. Its origin and arrival in Zagreb are in greater part blurred by a veil of medieval legends and tradition. However, the preserved fragment of the original inscription embroidered on a red silk piece LADIZL * REG indicates the authenticity of its origin and connects it strongly to the person of the Hungarian king Ladislaus, the brother of the Croatian queen Jelena and the founder of the Zagreb bishopric in the year 1094. The robe was given as a gift to the bishop of Zagreb, the blessed Augustin Kažotić by the Croatian-Hungarian king Charles I Robert of Anjou at the beginning of the 14th century. Almost immediately after this event the first remodelling of the royal robe into a chasuble had been undertaken. The first documentary reference to the robe of Ladislaus can be found in the treasury inventory from the year 1394, and later on in the years 1425 and later 1602. After that all traces of the robe disappeared from documents, and then, in 1873 Ivan Krstitelj Tkalčić found it in the altar of St.Ladislaus. Tkalčić himself states that the robe was removed and stored there for fear of being plundered by the Turks. The fact that it was stored in unfavourable circumstances in the altar also indicated the reason why only fragments of the original robe have come to us. However, even the preserved part suffices to help determine with certainty the time when it was made and where it had come from. There are two royal figures represented on the robe: king Ladislaus and an unknown queen. There had been attempts at interpreting this scene that considered that the robe featured the moment when the Croatian crown was handed to king Ladislaus by his sister queen Jelena, the wife of the last Croatian king Dmitar Zvonimir. Nevertheless, the prevailing idea is that such an interpretation could not be proved on account of the lack of historical or documentary bases. The fabric of the robe was manufactured from wide silk stripes, woven in the 11th century in Byzantium. It is indigo blue in colour, over its entire surface it is interwoven with the characteristic hexagonal fillings of two kinds of alternately ordered stylized floral ornaments with a palmette and four hearts in the middle. The appliquéd-embroidered figures of the king and queen, and the already mentioned inscription were probably manufactured in the monastery workshop in Regensburg. The figures are linear, bearing the obvious characteristics of the Early Romanesque morphology which undoubtedly places them into the era of the 11th century, the time when king Ladislaus lived. The crown and the royal attire are iconographically closely related to other representations of the king in Croatian art of that time, the relief on the pluteus in the Split cathedral and the fresco in the palace chapel near Ston, all of which additionally proves the connection of these figures with Croatian history. As has already been mentioned, the robe was remodelled into a chasuble immediately on its arrival in Zagreb, and was further remodelled several times afterwards. The latest and most comprehensive conservationist-restoration undertaking took place in 1987, in one of the most highly esteemed restoration workshops for old textiles, Abegg-Stiftung in Riggisburg near Bern, which had given the chasuble-robe its original look from the 14th century. No matter how high the value and meaning of Ladislaus’s robe may be for the Croatian history and art, as a document of one of the key moments of our history, it has the same meaning for the overall European history. There are but few medieval royal robes, even fragmentary, that have survived a tempestuous millennium of constant changes and devastation. Miroslav Gašparović