There was only one theft in the treasury’s long history – and it went unnoticed for two years.
You might know that Zagreb’s Cathedral is the tallest building in Croatia, but did you know that its treasury has one of the richest collections of exhibits in the county?
Well neither did I until a few years back when we went there as part of my tourist guide course. There’s an actual mummy there, from one of the child victims of the Massacre of the Innocents by Herod the Great. It haunted me for days.
The Treasury contains valuable artefacts that bear witness to the long history of Christianity in the area, dating back to 1093 when King Ladislaus moved the bishop’s chair from Sisak to Zagreb. His cape is located in the treasury, as well as the oldest viceroy (or ban in Croatian) flag of ban Nikola Bakač Erdödy.
The most valuable object is the Ivory plenarium from the 11th c., and that’s where it gets interesting – it’s the only object that was ever stolen from the treasury.
A man who lived with the bell-ringer pretended to be Mirko Pyelik-Inna, a count and an art aficionado. He copied the bell-ringer’s keys, got into the treasury, made a copy of the plenarium, and sold the original to a museum in Boston.
The theft was only discovered later, when a Viennese art merchant Maks Gluckselig wanted to buy the plenarium for one million dinars, but his offer kept being refused. Having travelled to Boston, he discovered that Boston Museum bought it for half the amount of money he had offered, took a photo, and brought it to Kaptol, where they discovered 56 differences between the original in Boston and the copy that was planted in its place.
The museum in Boston agreed to return the original to the Cathedral, where it’s still located.
Source: Večernji list and Zagreb Insider.
Read more about Zagreb’s Cathedral here.
