Medieval epigraphy of diocesan museum Regina Coeli (Santillana del Mar, Cantabria)

Abstract

Between the funds that integrate the different collections of the Diocesan Museum “Regina Coeli”, they find several medieval inscriptions on stony supports, principally estelas and fragments of funeral tablets proceeding from necropolis or reforms effected in some temples, close to an epigraphic lattice , and metal-workers as some objects liturgical that proceeding from parishes of the Diocese have been moved to the museum to avoid his deterioration or spoliation. In the latter case, it is a question of chalices, custodies, píxides and crossings proccesionals principally, worked in silver or copper.

Fifteen inscriptions that are gathered in this article do not form a part of a collection independent from the museum, but they are included in two of his principal collections, archaeology and Spanish silverwork. There is claimed the reading and critical edition of his texts, attending to the recent trends of the epigraphic investigation that conceive the inscription as a way of communication of advertising character in which they control three elements - author, rogatario and addressee - organized in two phases, actio and conscriptio epigráficas. As for the typology of epigraphs established by some authors in analogy with the documentary science and, in relation to the most frequent groups in the epigraphics collections, we will differ between epitaphia, suscriptiones, invocationes and donationes.