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A survey will be made in the present article of the existing donor images and inscription in somemonasteries and churches in the bishopric of Vidin in the 14th – 19th c. This type of sources contain immense information, which not only allows us to trace back the foundation and development of the monastic and parish network, but also presents data on the physical features, garments, adornments, haircut and colours of donor’s clothes. The inscriptions, on the other hand, contain rich repertoire of names, thus supplementing to the existing onomastic fund. Data provided by the images and inscriptions in the churches is backed up and supplemented by the Ottoman registers, hagiographic literature and archaeological material.
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The Arhivski Nomocanon (Church History and Archives Institute 1160) is end of the 14th century copy of the Penitential Nomocanon of the Bulgarian church. Its initial composition originated in 913 from translated and domestic legal documents and later new texts were added, among which we identify Patriarch Vasilii’s Ecclesiastical law. In the Law the total number of rules is 117, united thematically in 9 groups, of which the first two are meaningful: the first is about the hierarchy in the autocephalous Church headed by a Patriarch, the second establishes the priority of the ecclesiastical court over the tsar’s court, sign of the uniat with Rome (1204–1232) at the time of Patriarch Vasilii’s rule.
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The article deals with violence and peacekeeping in the Faereynga Saga which had been written in Iceland at the beginning of the XIII c. First, the author focuses on hostilities and limited-scale armed violence on the island. The analysis of textual information leads to a clear identification of several types of hostility activities, not all can be classified as a typical military conflict but rather as acts of revenge and murder. Next, the author concludes that the available information does not allow to fix the frequency and intensity of this type of actions. Obviously, they were relatively rare events that left a long lasting impression for generations. Some of the examples show that the reason or occasion were not only blood feud, but also actions against Vikings or conflicts with foreign merchants. Furthermore, the purpose of armed violence was not only physical injury or murder, but also a demonstration of expulsion or social isolation of an outlawed person or a whole group. In conclusion, the author underlines that the Faereynga Saga provides unique information about small scale conflicts and armed clashes in the Faroe Islands. Also, he concludes that the saga could be a reliable source concerning the victims in the armed clashes. Next, unlike the armed violence, peace should be regarded as private and regional rather than as a political reality. Finally, the author notes that analysed clashes and conflicts provides a valuable information about conflicts and peace keeping in isolated Scandinavian societies in the North Atlantic.
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The article discusses various aspects of Byzantine Empire’s history in the 6th – 7th c., called by some historiographers the “Holy Wars of Early Byzantium”. In the 6th c. the Byzantines built up the most enduring medieval doctrine – the doctrine of the Holy Empire: it is the idea of the Sacred Byzantine Empire understood as a union of State and Church. An important aspect in the Medieval worldview is the unity of religion and politics. The idea of the inextricable link between the Byzantine Empire and the Christian faith turns on the traditional ancient view of the world, which is divided into Roman and barbarian and now began to be divided into Christian and non-Christian. Between the 3rd and 7th c., Byzantium’s main rival in public attitude is the Sasanian Empire. The culmination of these relations are the so-called Heraclius’ Wars with the Sasanian Empire and the restoration of the True Cross to Jerusalem. The emergence of a new religious-political doctrine – the Islam and Byzantium’s attitude to the new historical realities during Nicephorus II Phocas (963 – 969) and John I Tzimiskes (969 – 976) are also discussed. In parallel, the Crusades occurred in Western Europe that creates a new dimension to the concept of Holy War, which even today builds up the image of the so-called Holy wars.
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Ši skiltis skirta supažindinti skaitytojus su Lietuvos ir užsienio fondų finansuojamais mokslo projektais. Informacija pateikta apie projektus, kurių viešinimo pageidavo juos vykdantys mokslininkai.
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The Bulgarian presence in southern Transylvania, limited to four communities, was investigated accidentally, predominating the repertoire of facts – and is almost completely devoid of causal and comparative explanations. On the other hand, the two Bulgarian communities in the vicinity of Sibiu, Bungard and Rusciori, were never explained in relation to the historical era in which they were founded, neither concerning the guardian factor from Sibiu (political-administrative and religious), nor in their mutual relation. In these conditions, our research proposes: to identify and systematize, chronologically and logically, the relevant facts (from an ethnic, religious, administrative, linguistic point of view); to explain in a causal and comparative way the similar and divergent evolutions of the two communities; to discover and evaluate the external influences, which have determined decisive options regarding the adoption of the Lutheran or Orthodox confessions, as well as that of the Romanian or German languages; to explain the causes of the disappearance of the two Bulgarian communities, in terms of relations between external factors and internal decisions – adopted according to the group and individual interests. Specifically, we analyse the processes by which the Bulgarians from Bungard went from Orthodoxy to Lutheranism and then returned to Orthodoxy, while preserving the Romanian language. On the other hand, we point to a unique case in Transylvania, in which a community (Bulgarians from Rusciori), without acquiring the German language – and therefore without access to the founding cultural values of this nation – became a most active contributor to Nazi inspired German nationalism. The destiny of the Bulgarians from there merged (only after the compulsory education during the communist regime made the young Bulgarian-speaking Germans) with the fate of the German community in Romania, who emigrated en masse to “Vaterland”, where they are building their own futures.
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The Strange Knight of the Sacred Book is a novel by Anton Dontchev, a Bulgarian author, published in 1998 in Bulgaria and translated in France in 1999. It tells how, around 1218-1219, the secret Book of the Bulgarian Bogomils arrived in France to their Albigensian brothers, in Languedoc, in Occitan country. It is inspired by numerous readings of epic and courtly literature of the thirteenth century, in Latin and French, in the languages of oc and oïl, and more recent, historical and literary sources, of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. There are also references to medieval tapestries, to 15th century religious paintings, Italian, Spanish or Portuguese, and to modern, English and French painters of the 19th and 20th centuries. It is a singular, Bulgarian look, rare in modern literature, and devoted to the history of the crusade carried out at the beginning of the 13th century, in Occitania, against the Albigensians. It is a long solitary, pseudo-autobiographical reverie, a long return to oneself nourished by past adventures, intimate thoughts and moral and spiritual reflections of the narrator: a French knight, at first a crusader, later a rebel against the papacy and the Inquisition.
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This study looks at bells and bell ringing in the medieval Balkans byfocusing on historical Serbia and Bulgaria. It provides a comprehensive view of the use of bells for religious purposes from the thirteenth century until the early Ottoman period. The evidence examined is organised in two parts; the first one deals with written sources while the second is a catalogue of church bells preserved in the region under study. Dated to the thirteenth, fourteenth and fifteenth century, some of these instruments are recent discoveries while others are not well known among scholars. This is the first time that most extant bells from the region are analysed together, offering the opportunity to trace the development of these artefacts in the Balkans. In a third section the information from written sources and actual bells is discussed in conjunction.
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Monasticism appeared in the Church as an organised community after 313, i.e. after Christianity gained freedom. In Croatia, monasticism was also influenced by the West and the East, the Western and Eastern Churches, i.e. the Catholic and Orthodox Churches. Monasticism in Senj and the surroundings remained faithful to the West, however, it inherited the Glagolitic script and Old Slavic (Old Croatian) worship from the Eastern heritage, due to which it played an important role of local, national and even global proportions. The Benedictines came to the Senj area in the 12th century and had their abbeys in Sveti Juraj, Senjska Draga and Senj. The Templars also came to Senj in the 12th century, the Franciscans a century later, and the Dominicans in the 14th century. The Pauline monasteries in Ljubotina (today Spasovac) and Vlaška Draga (today Sveta Jelena) date from the 14th century, and their presence in Senj itself was recorded in 1634. Around 1622, the Augustinians operated in Senj for a short time. When it came to material support for the monks, the Frankopans stood out in particular, and after them were King Matthias Corvinus and his successors on the throne. Of the women’s religious communities that appeared later, the activities of the Sisters of Charity (in the 19th and 20th centuries), the Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus (in the 20th century), the Sisters of the Immaculata (in the 20th century) and the Franciscans (also in the 20th century) were noted in Senj. The religious communities in this area made a great contribution in a religious sense, as well as in education, the spread of literacy and culture, and the development of the economy and construction. With the departure of the Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus from Senj in 1997, the thousand-year continuity of monastic life and work in Senj and its immediate surroundings was interrupted.
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The periods of crisis that certain societies go through change the already established order. They provoke a rethinking of existence and the need to seek protection from above against what cannot be driven away by any means known to man. The late medieval post-Byzantine Balkan churches fully illustrate this. Some of them, especially those in the places directly affected by a certain epidemic, appear after such critical moments, and in their collection of images, the disease itself finds its own place, acquiring at the same time a set of anthropomorphic features. The protection of God or some of His saints is sought after when it comes to acting against the plague. The article tries in an interdisciplinary way (combining history, culturology and theory of art) to emphasize on the image of the plague in the Orthodox Christian image system. The motif of the Dance of Death (Danse Macabre), in which rulers,clergy and peasants are involved, was influenced by the “procession” of the infection throughout Europe and has been repeatedly discussed in the scientific literature.Within the Balkan Orthodox Christian folklore, the plague appears as a strange girl who is constantly scratching herself, or as an old crone - in most cases presented as a witch. People turn to St. Charalambos to be their intercessor before God and to relieve them from the trouble that befell them. The vernacular idea of St. Charalambos as a victor over the plague, which he captured and chained, is reflected in the church’s visual tradition.
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The emergence of the first Catholic parishes in the territory of Kosovo and Metohija is related to the development of mining, mainly in the settlements of German miners Saxons and the colony of traders from the coastal parts of the Serbian medieval state (Cattaro, Dubrovnik, etc.). The significance and influence of these trading colonies has experienced its climax at the time of the Serbian despots, while the question of the spiritual and administrative authority over these parishes reflects the pretensions of certain Catholic ecclesiastical centers to protect the interests and rights in the exercise of their obligations.
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The text presents various publications and records of the song of the King Ivan Shishman in an attempt to contextualize it as origination and use. A possible hypothesis is the dating of the song in time immediately after the fall of Bulgaria under Ottoman rule as a reflection of real historical events. However, the song was especially popular during the Renaissance with urban melody and most probably it was the time that the name of the last Bulgarian king was added to the text in the context of constructing our national identity in the second half of the 19th century.
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The peculiar interpretation in French literature of the subject of the “Crusades”, made by politicians and men of letters after the formation of the Ottoman Empire, is examined. Born in the Middle Ages, the so-called “crusades idea” was transformed in time according to the actual political situations. It retained its external form, went through internal metamorphoses and in the 18th c. grew into the so-called “Eastern Question”. On the other hand, at the same time French historiography of the 16th – 18th c., written by armchair men of letters, reflected a bygone age – a dream which the thinking of the Enlightenment fully destroyed. In the 19th c. the deposits of the two currents led to the publication of series of mediaeval French and other chronicles the interpretation of which rested at the foundation of positivism in science.
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The problem of the historical consciousness of the peoples is too wide and not yet well enough researched area in the sphere of the social sciences. In a sense it is a part of a much wider problem of the ethnical consciousness and self-consciousness. The article makes a detailed and critical review of accessible home and foreign publications. On the basis of their review, the author reveals his own understanding upon the raised questions in the specialized literature. A detailed analysis is made on the relations: national consciousness and self-consciousness and historical consciousness and self-consciousness. An original model is built of the historical consciousness considered with the peculiarities of the social development in the different periods of the Bulgarian history for the time from the 7th to the first half of the 18th century. An original principal scheme is presented of composition of ethnical self-consciousness as individual human reflection of a concrete socioimportant ideas. According to the author, this is a complex of complicated, interweaved and mutually connected ideas from which basic are: the idea of community of the origin (from the idea of ethnical identity); the idea of the community of the historical fate (from the idea of a political organization, the idea of state system in society); the idea of cultural peculiarities (from the idea of cultural identity, for cultural community of the society).The first two most precisely reveal the sense of the concepts “historical consciousness” and “historical self-consciousness”.
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The collection of texts known under the title Ponemata diaphora, composed probably before the end of the 14th century, represents part of the decisions of various ecclesiastical legal cases taken personally by Archbishop Demetrios Chomatianos (1216–1236) or by the Synod of the Church of “all of Bulgaria” with headquarters in Ohrid. The content of the documentary material reveals the colorful picture of the daily life of the Bulgarians of that era – their joys, sorrows and daily cares for home and family. One of the most interesting documents in the collection is the one included under No. 16, representing a letter reply to an unnamed ruler – Theodore Comnenus or Ivan II Asen.
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This paper examines the ideological ranges of contemporary stories about Kosovo, as reflections on the social, political, and cultural background in which they arise, as well as the processes of establishing or abandoning the dominant identity matrices, based on the Kosovo myth. As Kosovo is our great story, the constitutive narrative of our national being, but also of Serbian literary-historical consciousness, it proved necessary to shed light on how contemporary Serbian prose reflects this narrative, but also to elucidate the diachronic perspective, which gives ideologies a mythical or symbolic dimension. The five authors and texts I am analyzing are Branislav Janković, “Nightingale the Chicken” (Slavuj-pile), Muharem Bazdulj “From Prizren the tame place” (Iz Prizrena mjesta pitomoga), Dejan Stojiljković, “No cour- age” (Nema hrabrosti), Vesna Kapor “What would you like to remember” (Čega bi voleo da se sećaš) and Ana Radmilović “Kosovo - three hundred miracles” (Kosovo– trista čuda). Among the selected contemporary stories, a range from establishingand empowering to challenging the dominant ideological discourse on Kosovo and its mythology is noticeable. The common intention is to constitute “small” stories by referring to a “private” view of Kosovo resulting from a fragmentation of the world image, and hence deconstruction or rethinking inherited identities based on new policies and ideological constructs represented in our era, which produce internal dissonance in the text itself.
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