Windows to the Past - Serbia's Written Heritage







 







 



Kosovo 



by William Dorich 








 



 



 



 





 





 



 













Mary Nicklanovich



Windows to the Past -Serbia's Written Heritage













Serbian
writing, in all parts of the former Serbian Empire, had a long and
impressive history. Until the 1900's, relatively little was known about
life and culture in the medieval empire or about the treasure of
ancient documents waiting to disclose their secrets to those patient
enough to search them out and decipher the ancient codes of Serbia's
medieval manuscripts. Medieval manuscripts are collections of
hand-written pages which date before the invention of the printing
press in the 1400's. Their contents range from religious works, such as
Bibles, collections of scripture, Christian philosophy, and Church laws
to legal codes and the biographies of prominent kings and nobles.
Orthodox Christian monasteries, with their tradition of
manuscript writing, became the centers of learning. In many ways, they
are the legacy of the Roman and Byzantine Empires to the cultures of
Europe. When Christianity was accepted by the Emperor Constantine as
the official religion of the Roman Empire, the entire legal system of
the empire became part of the Christian faith. The copying of laws and
Church writings was continued by the Church, both East and West, long
after both Rome and Byzantium had ceased to dominate the European
political scene.
Inside monasteries all over Europe, scribes meticulously copied
important documents for distribution wherever needed. There was no
other way, as printing presses were still in the future. The knowledge
of religion, culture, and history was passed from generation to
generation and from place to place through the precious written
parchments safeguarded in the monasteries and churches.
In the Serbian Orthodox Church many such old, rare, and
valuable manuscripts exist, but they are seldom part of any public
display. In fact, their very existence has always been considered part
of the treasures of the faith - and, throughout the centuries of war
and struggle, the Serbian churches and monasteries have more times than
not had to secrete these sacred documents out of harm's way.
Recently, there has been renewed interest in medieval
manuscripts, the history of the Serbian Orthodox Church, and the
cultural heritage of the medieval Serbian kingdom descended from
Byzantium.
In a historic move, Professor Mateja Matejic, a Serbian
Orthodox priest on the faculty of Ohio State University, spearheaded
the complex and ground-breaking Hilandar Microfilm Project. Between
1970 and 1975, he and his associates photographed approximately 500,000
pages of the priceless manuscripts at the Serbian Monastery of Hilandar
on Mt. Athos in Greece.
This special collection of microfilm, now at Ohio State
University's Special Collections' Hilandar Research Library, makes an
extensive collection of the most important surviving documents about
early Serbian history, civilization, and culture available to modern
scholars.
In Western Europe, before 1850, little was known about the
peoples of the Balkans' much less about their former roles as heirs to
the culture of Byzantium. The fact that there were Slavic Christians
living in Ottoman Europe was in itself a discovery of the mid-1800's.
Today, thanks almost entirely to the study of ancient
manuscripts, historians have been able to discover much about life in
the medieval Serbian Empire. Prior to its fall to the Ottoman Turks,
learning had flourished there just as in the other European lands.
Today scholars are amazed and impressed at the great number and
remarkable quality of medieval Serbian manuscripts which all prove,
beyond any doubt, the high cultural achievements of the medieval
Serbian Empire and the Serbian Orthodox Church.
Following the Turkish occupation, the monasteries and churches
were periodically destroyed, as were their contents - among them the
precious religious books and manuscripts. Only by hiding the documents
and by smuggling them from haven to haven were any of them saved.
Before the Byzantine missionaries, Cyril and Methodius, began
Christianizing the Slavs in the 800's, as far as anyone knows, there
was no written Slavic language. At that time, the brothers first
brought from Byzantium the teachings of Christianity translated from
Greek into Slavic either to Ohrid in today's Macedonia or to
Czechoslovakia's ancient Kingdom of Moravia. Natives of Salonika, both
men spoke Greek and a Slavic language and they developed a Slavic
alphabet.
Though there is a question as to whether Cyril himself actually
developed the Cyrillic alphabet, which bears his name, it is certain
that the earlier version, called Glagolitic, together with the Cyrillic
alphabet was a direct consequence of Christianization and the need to
transmit the teachings of the Church to the converted Slavs.
For this reason, the first manuscripts were religious in nature
and were intended to teach the history of the Church, its laws,
prayers, and literature. As Christianity spread to other Slavic lands,
the writings were copied by hand and deposited at each new church or
monastery which had been Christianized by the Byzantine missionaries.
The use of the common language in its liturgy has been a remarkable
feature of the Eastern Orthodox Church. By contrast, in the Western
Church, the use of Latin was maintained whether the converted peoples
were Germanic or Magyar or Franks or Lombards.
Because of the use of Old Church Slavonic and the Cyrillic
alphabet, religious documents traveled from the Slavic Balkan states as
far north as Russia and the Ukraine. Many of the earliest of these came
from Bulgaria's medieval kingdom and, especially, from the religious
center at Ohrid.
With the independence of the Serbian kingdom and its growth and
prosperity during the reign of the Nemanjic dynasty, approximately
between 1100 and 1300, the building of Serbian Orthodox churches began
in earnest. As throughout Europe, kings, princes, and nobles built
churches as signs of both their worldly success and their devotion to
God. As the numbers of churches increased, so did the need for
religious instructional writings. Over the centuries, countless written
works have been destroyed. For example, following the successful
Serbian revolt of the early 1800's, the Turks attacked the Serbian
Monastery of Hilandar on Mt. Athos, a region still under Turkish
control. With fires lit from Serbian manuscripts, the Turks baked
bread.
Those that survived often remained hidden and unknown. One
famous manuscript, the Miroslav Gospel, emerged from such obscurity
after more than 600 years. It is the oldest manuscript in Serbia and
dates from 1180 A.D. Miroslav, the brother of Stefan Nemanja, founded
the Monastery of St. Peter (Sveti Petar) in Herzegovina, then called
Hum. There Monk Gligorije copied the religious texts needed, and then
compiled a special gospel known as the Miroslav Gospel in honor of the
monastery's founder.
At some point over the centuries, the gospel was taken to
Hilandar for safekeeping. There it remained in the collection until the
Russian scholar, Porphyry Uspenski, found it in the early 1800's. The
existence of the Miroslav Gospel became known to the outside world
after he took a page back to Russia for his collection.
In 1896 it was presented to the Serbian king, Alexander
Obrenovic. During World War l (1914-1918), the Miroslav Gospel
retreated with the Serbian Army to Corfu and returned with the
triumphant forces at the end of the war. Today it is in the National
Museum in Belgrade.
Though many Serbian monasteries retain their precious
manuscripts, an astounding number of them has been taken out of the
country. While estimates place the number of medieval Serbian
manuscripts in Yugoslavia at 4,500, an equal number is thought to be
abroad.
There are ancient Serbian manuscripts in Bulgaria, Rumania,
Hungary, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Germany, France, England, and
Turkey - but the largest number is in the former Soviet Union.
The Serbian collection is one of the largest Cyrillic
manuscript collections of the former Soviet Union. In the archives
there are 300 manuscripts which date from the earliest period - 900 to
1300 A.D. - and even more dating from between 1400 and 1600.
The collection is lavishly illuminated and covers a wide range
of subjects: Slavic translations of Byzantine works, original Serbian
religious music from the oldest period, collections of sermons, lives
of saints, philosophy, folklore and customs, and original Serbian law
books. Since all the Slavs used the same written materials during the
Middle Ages, the newly converted Russians, after 989 A.D., requested
manuscripts from Bulgaria, Serbia, and Macedonia - whose people were
Christianized much earlier. Materials flowed north to Russia from the
Balkans.
In the 1200's the Serbian influence on Russia was at its
height. In 1220 a major legal document, a copy of Byzantine
Ecclesiastical Law compiled by St. Sava, the founder of the Serbian
Church and son of the first Nemanja, was sent to Russia. Likewise, the
Russian Ryazan Book of Church Law from 1284 is of Serbian origin.
Perhaps the most important document of medieval Serbia's
empire, Tsar Dusan's Law Code, is preserved in Moscow. There are two
versions in the Russian capital, one from 1349 and one from 1354.
Nearly 100 years after the composition of Tsar Dusan's Code, a
revolutionary new process began to replace the production of
hand-copied manuscripts. In 1440 Johann Gensfleisch, a man known to the
world as Gutenberg, invented moveable type. With that the production of
books was revolutionized, and despite the fact that Serbia was fighting
for cultural survival, it was among the first European cultures to
adopt the new technique.
No longer was it necessary for monks and scribes to copy out
long manuscripts by hand. Metal letters, called "type," could be
arranged on a press and inked. Then sheets of paper were imprinted with
the text. Though the decoration (or "illumination") of these books was
still done by skilled artists, the number of books in print increased
dramatically.
Just as all hand-copied texts are valued as "manuscripts," the
earliest printed books are also of great value. All books printed
before 1500 are called incunabulae, meaning "in the cradle" or at the
very earliest stage. Estimates run as high as 300 for the number of
Serbian incunabulae at Hilandar Monastery.
Apparently, Gutenberg himself had grave concern about the
Turkish conquest of the Balkans. One of his early productions, The
Turkish Calendar, was printed just 2 years after the fall of
Constantinople in 1453.
Month by month, Gutenberg's calendar calls on all the Christian
princes of Europe to unite against the Turks. All Eastern Orthodox
Christians; the German, French, English, Italian and Spanish princes;
the Poles, Czechs, and Hungarians, Swedes and Norwegians; metropolitans
and bishops; and all the raja, or subject peoples, are exhorted to
unite to defend Christian Europe.
Though the message of his calendar went unheeded, his
spectacular invention made its way around the continent. When
Gutenberg's original press was destroyed in 1462, his assistants fled
throughout Europe, taking with them the secrets of the new invention.
Printing appeared just outside Rome in 1464, in Paris in 1470,
in Venice and Milan in 1469, in Prague in 1488, and in Budapest in
1473.
The very first known printing press in the Balkans was
established in the Montenegrin capital of Cetinje in 1493. It was run
by Monk Makarije and established by Vojvoda Djurdje Crnojevic. Makarije
printed 4 books before he died in 1496.
From Makarije, Bozidar Gorazdanin learned the printing skill.
To finish his training, he went to Venice and later returned to his
native town of Gorazde - where he printed between 1519 and 1523.
At Belgrade's fortress, the industry began with the printing
work of Radisa Dimitrijevic. From him the famous Dubrovnik printer
Trajan Gundulic learned the trade. At the Serbian church at Mrksina,
Monk Mardarije printed several books about 1562.
The longest-lived printing in the Balkans was done at Scutari,
where Stefan Skadranin worked between 1563 and 1580. When his press
stopped, because of continued Turkish authority over the region,
Serbian printing left the Balkans. Later, Serbian books were printed in
Venice, Leipzig, Vienna, or Trieste.
During the 1500's, several Serbs ran printing offices in
Venice. A Montenegrin refugee named Bozidar Vukovic and his son printed
there in Cyrillic between 1519 and 1561. Jakob from Herzegovina and
Hieronymus Zagurovic from Kotor produced Serbian books in Venice
sometime before 1597. These Serbs in exile, through printing, sought to
maintain the high level of Serbian education and culture present in the
Balkans prior to the Turkish conquest.
Though Western Europe subsequently looked at the Balkans and
Serbian lands as backward, the study of manuscripts and incunabulae -
both in terms of quality and quantity - proves quite the contrary. Both
during the Middle Ages and after the invention of printing, high
quality Serbian Cyrillic materials were regularly produced. For a full
200 years after the fall of Serbia, Serbian books continued to be
written and printed whether in the monasteries of free Montenegro or by
Serbs who had fled to Venice. Unfortunately, this early literature was
not well-known in the West until the turn of this century. Since that
time, and especially in the past few decades, early Serbian manuscripts
and incunabulae have become better known. Discovered anew, they are
sharing their centuries-old secrets with the outside world.