Српски градови Константина Филозофа
Serbian Cities in the Works of Constantine The Philosopher

Summary/Abstract: In this paper, various contexts in which Constantine the Philosopher wrote about cities in the territory of medieval Serbian lands are analyzed. Through the examination of his works, The Life of Despot Stefan and History of Letters, a multifaceted role of cities in the last decades of the 14th and the early decades of the 15th century in Serbian lands becomes evident. In these works, cities are portrayed as capitals where rulers resided and received other monarchs and their envoys (Belgrade), as administratively organized settlements (Belgrade, Srebrenica), as targets of attacks or sieges (Kruševac, Borač, Novo Brdo, Temska, Golubac, Svrljig, Bolvan, Lipovac, Stalać, Skadar, Koprijan, Srebrenica), as refuges for those defeated on the battlefield (Ostrovica, Belgrade, Novo Brdo, an unnamed city in Bosnia), as centers of economic (Belgrade, Novo Brdo, Srebrenica) and cultural activity (Belgrade), as well as centers of religious life (Belgrade). None of the medieval Serbian writers depicted the multiple significance of cities as thoroughly as Constantine did in his works. His lively interest in the fortifications and architecture of urban settlements, particularly Belgrade, is also notable. All these exceptional aspects can be explained, on the one hand, by Constantine’s historical style, which naturally incorporated all the knowledge he possessed about individual cities, and on the other hand, by the multifaceted importance that urban settlements had acquired by the time of his writings.

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