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Treasure of Guarrazar

Votive crowns and crosses, from a 19th-century lithograph.
Votive crown of the Visigoth King Recceswinth, made of gold and precious stones in the 2nd half of the 7th century.
Detail of the votive crown of Recceswint hanging in Madrid. The hanging letters spell [R]ECCESVINTHVS REX OFFERET [King R. offers this].[1]
Location of Guadamur.

39°48′41″N 4°8′57″W / 39.81139°N 4.14917°W / 39.81139; -4.14917

The Treasure of Guarrazar, Guadamur, Province of Toledo, Castile-La Mancha, Spain, is an archeological find composed of twenty-six votive crowns and gold crosses that had originally been offered to the Roman Catholic Church by the Kings of the Visigoths in the seventh century in Hispania, as a gesture of the orthodoxy of their faith and their submission to the ecclesiastical hierarchy.[2] The most valuable of all is the votive crown of king Recceswinth with its blue sapphires from Sri Lanka and pendilia. Though the treasure is now divided and much has disappeared, it represents the best surviving group of Early Medieval Christian votive offerings.

The treasure, which represents the high point of Visigothic goldsmith's work,[3] was dug between 1858 and 1861 in an orchard called Guarrazar, in Guadamur, very close to Toledo, Spain. The treasure was divided, with some objects going to the Musée de Cluny in Paris[4] and the rest to the armouries of the Palacio Real in Madrid (today in the National Archaeological Museum of Spain). In 1921 and 1936, some items of the Treasure of Guarrazar were stolen and have disappeared.

Some comparable Visigothic filigree gold was found in 1926 at Torredonjimeno in the province of Jaén, consisting of fragments of votive crowns and crosses.[5]

  1. ^ The first R is held at the Musée de Cluny, Paris.
  2. ^ "Votive crowns from the treasure of Guarrazar I Musée de Cluny". www.musee-moyenage.fr. Retrieved 2022-05-11.The Musée Cluny holds three of these crowns.
  3. ^ M.F. Guerra, T. Galligaro, A. Perea, "The treasure of Guarrazar : Tracing the gold supplies in the Visigothic Iberian peninsula", Archeometry 49.1 (2007) pp. 53-74.
  4. ^ This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Fallow, Thomas Macall (1911). "Crown and Coronet". In Chisholm, Hugh (ed.). Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 7 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 516.
  5. ^ Described and compared in Alicia Perea, "Visigothic filigree in the Guarrazar (Toledo) and Torredonjimeno (Jaén) treasures," Historic Metallurgy 40.1 (2006).

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