In margine alla stauroteca bizantina di Cortona

The present paper focuses on the reliquary of the True Cross kept in the church of San Francesco at Cortona (Arezzo, Tuscany), to which it was donated by the famous Minorite Elia da Cortona. An early follower of St. Francis, Friar Elia had received the precious relic as a gift during his mission to the East, most likely to Constantinople, in 1243. The reliquary is now composed of a finely carved 10 th -century Byzantine ivory plaque with a central 13 th -century fret- worked metal cross, as well as of a late 16 th -century western frame, all included in a baroque temple-shaped container. The two Greek inscriptions on the reverse of the ivory plaque mention the Byzantine emperor Nicephorus II Phocas (r. 963- 969) and, as a patron, the otherwise unknown Stephen, skeuophy  lax of St. Sophia, resp. Stephen appears to have presented the Byzantine reliquary to the obscure `monastery of Evõ  mi', where he had received his monastic institution. The same monastery shows as the `Prodromos of the Evõ  mi' on three inscribed Byzantine seals that are discussed in an appendix along with the possible explanations of the name Evõ  mi . Adolph Goldschmidt and Kurt Weitzmann have long since asso- ciated the Cortona ivory relief with many other such pieces of the second half of the 10 th century, all clustered around it in the so called Nikephorus group, among them a plaque now at the Cleveland Museum of Art. The reading of a hitherto misunderstood Greek inscription additionally engraved hereon suggests now a later connection of this plaque with (Coptic) Egypt.