Bishop Vlaho or Vlahoepiskop
Vlaho episkop ili vlahoepiskop

Summary/Abstract: In three different sources written in Serbian — the inventory of the estates of the monastery of the Holy Virgin in Htetovo as well as in the second and third charter issued by king Dusan to the monastery of Treskavac — there is mention of a church prelate identified as vlahoepiskop. One group of historians interpreted this title as referring to a bishop by the name of Vlaho. On the other hand, historians analysing the clauses of all the charters issued to the monastery of Treskavac noticed that in the first charter issued to that monastery the term Vlach bishop stands in place of the term vlahoepiskop found in the second and third charter. Therefore, although with some vacillation, they interpreted the term vlahoepiskop as a synonym for the bishop of the Vlachs, one of the subordinates of the archbishop of Ohrid. This entirely correct conclusion can further be sustained with new arguments in its favor. Judging by the sources available, the name Vlaho is a hypocorystych of the name Vlasi(je), a transcription of its Greek form, Blasioj. However, although Blasioj is a calendar and thus also a monastic name, its Slavonic diminutive (Vlaho) was never used in the Serbian or any other Slavonic Orthodox church. The name Vlaho is a specific feature of Dubrovnik onomastica (as is the fact that the name of Vlasi(je) is derived from the Greek and not the Latin form of the name, Blasius). In that form it was used solely by the subjects of the Dubrovnik Republic, in the medieval period exclusively as a personal name, while its basic form, Vlasi(je), referred to the saint. In Cyrillic literacy and the anthroponymia of medieval Serbia, only the form Vlasije, never Vlaho, appears as an equivalent of the Greek Blasioj. Thus, Vlaho could by no means have been used as a monastic name of a high ranking prelate of the Serbian church. As it has already rightfully been pointed out by the Hungarian Byzantologist, Mathias Gyoni, the term vlahoepiskop is a calque (or, I may add, a transcription) of the assumed Greek word blacoepiskopoj, denoting a prelate of the bishopric of the Vlachs.

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