Holy images on blades: unique swords from the State Hermitage Museum (preliminary publication)

The focus of this article are interesting rarities from the collection of the State Hermitage Museum - swords of the 17th-18th centuries with inscriptions in Greek and Slavonic, with images of Christian saints inlaid in gold. The authors offer the general characteristics of 17 exemplars of this kind of arms which are divided into several groups according to the shape of the hilt. A brief overview of the relatively few publications on this subject includes articles by Vasilii Prokhorov (1877); data from the Index of the Medieval Department of the Imperial Hermitage published by Nikodim Kondakov (1891), a catalogue of Count Sergei Sheremetev's collection of arms compiled by Eduard Lenz (1895), and a monograph by E. Astvatsaturian on Turkish arms from the collection of the State Historical Museum (2002). The authors pay special attention to the description and analysis of two swords from the Hermit- age collection. One of them belonged to Count Michail Miloradovich, and was presented to him in 1807 from the city of Bucharest. The second sword came to the Hermitage after the Bolshevik Revolution from the Marble Palace, the residency of the Grand Dukes Konstantinovichi. Besides the traditional inscriptions and images of the Virgin with Child crowned by angels, the blade bears a unique image of Byzantine Emperor Nikephoros Phokas blessed by Jesus Christ with both hands. There are also two cartouches with quotations from Psalms in Greek. The extremely rich décor of this sword and the unique depiction of the Byzantine Emperor leave no doubt that they were made on a special order. The authors connect the sword to the Greek Project initiated by the Russian Empress Catherine the Great. The main idea of the project was a restoration of the Byzantine Empire with Constantinople-Istanbul as its capital, where Grand Duke Konstantin, Catherine the Great's grandchild, would be ascended to the throne. This article is a preliminary publication of a project in process on compilation of a complete catalogue of all swords with Greek and Slavonic inscriptions and with images on Christian subjects from the collection of the State Hermitage Museum.