Cathedral of Braga’s Treasury

The collections of the Treasury-Museum of the Cathedral of Braga bear witness to more than fifteen centuries of the history of Art and Church life in Braga.

Among its valuable collection is an ivory vault from the beginning of the 11th century. This finely engraved piece was commissioned by Abd al-Malik, son of the famous Almanzor, the powerful governor and military chief at the height of the Umayyad Caliphate in Al Andaluz. At the end of the 10th century, Almanzor devoted himself to the war against the Iberian Christian kingdoms, which had reconquered the territories up to Coimbra (Portugal) and Toledo (Spain). Between 978 and 1001, he carried out more than 50 sackings and bloody raids, destroying churches and monuments. In 997, he razed the city of Santiago de Compostela to the ground, burning the pre-Romanesque temple dedicated to St James the Greater and ordering Christian slaves to carry the church bells and doors on their backs to make lamps and roofs for the mosque in Cordoba.

But, following the precepts of the Holy Book which forbids the murder of priests, Almanzor preserved the sepulchre of the apostle and the monk who guarded it, which made it possible for the Ways of St James to continue. 

By donation or sack, the vault ended up in the possession of the Cathedral of Braga in which treasury it has been incorporated since the Early Middle Ages.