The reliquary known as “that of Saint Simeon Stylites” is one of the most precious objects in the Baptistery’s treasury. Its elegant form results from a refined composition of distinct elements, crafted by different hands over the course of several centuries: the hexagonal urn-shaped base was made at the end of the fourteenth century by a goldsmith whom scholars identify as Matteo di Lorenzo; the elegantly decorated shaft, by contrast, is clearly fifteenth-century in style; and the cylindrical container at the top is perhaps already from the sixteenth century. The feet, the small column, and the little dome most likely belong to a restoration carried out by Bernardo Holzmann in the first quarter of the eighteenth century.
The relics of other saints are housed in the base of the reliquary, visible through the crystals that seal the side compartments, some of which are adorned with silver settings bearing inscriptions in Greek characters that identify the relics. The main relic, that of Saint Simeon Stylites—a Syrian ascetic saint who lived in the fifth century, from whom the object takes its name—is preserved in the cylindrical container. The reliquary’s tall columnar shaft may allude to the saint’s life atop a pillar, as implied by the title “Stylite”, from the Greek stylos, meaning “column”.
An inscription runs along the lower frame of the hexagonal case, recording its creation in 1398 and attesting that the relics it contains were collected in the year 805, during the episcopate of Archbishop Turpin, and later donated to Florence by Charlemagne, the legendary refounder of the city. However, the Greek inscriptions on the settings and the date inscribed on the base suggest instead that the relics are among those donated to the Arte di Calimala, the temple’s patron guild, in 1394 by the Venetian noblewoman Nicoletta Grioni, who had imported them from the Byzantine imperial court—specifically, through her husband, the Tuscan merchant Pietro di Giunta Torrigiani, from the treasury of the Eastern Roman Emperor John VI Cantacuzenus.