Faithful crosses: on the survival of an early type of goldsmith's cross in late Medieval Catalonia

Three silver crosses created in Catalonia in the fourteenth century – from Vilabertran, St Joan de les Abadesses, and Girona Cathedral – have an archaic design that differs from the Gothic models more common in the region and throughout Western Europe by that time. Recent research on these crosses, particularly on that from St Joan de les Abadesses (now in the Museu Episcopal de Vic), has yielded new findings that contribute to our understanding of this design's final flourishing in the late Middle Ages. These three objects were the last examples created in Catalonia of an old type of multi-functional goldsmith's cross. Crosses of this type were filled with relics that were not always evident to the faithful but that enhanced the ability of the objects' being turned into ideal representations of the True Cross. This, in turn, imbued them with significance beyond sensory perception of their material properties.