Stefan Uroš II Milutin Nemanjić (1282–1321)

King Stefan Uroš II Milutin Nemanjić (1282—Donje Nerodimlje, October 29, 1321) was a Serbian medieval king, the seventh ruler of the Serbian Nemanide dynasty, the son of King Stefan Uroš I (r. 1243–1276) and Queen Helen Nemanjić (see), the brother of the King Stefan Dragutin (r. 1276–1282) and the father of King Stefan Dečanski (r. 1322–1331). Together with his great grandfather Stefan Nemanja, the founder of the Nemanide dynasty, and his grandson, Emperor Stefan Uroš IV Dušan, King Milutin is considered the most powerful ruler of the Nemanide dynasty. The long and successful military breach of King Milutin, down the Vardar River Valley and deep into the Byzantine territories, represents the beginning of Serbian expansion into southeastern Europe, making it the dominant political power in the Balkan region in the 14th century. During that period, Serbian economic power grew rapidly, mostly because of the development of trading and mining. King Milutin founded Novo Brdo, an internationally important silver mining site. He started minting his own money, producing imitations of Venetian coins (grosso), which gradually diminished in value. This led to the ban of these coins by the Republic of Venice and provided King Milutin a place in Dante’s Divina Commedia. King Milutin had a specific philoktesia fervor: He built or renovated over three dozen Serbian Orthodox churches and monasteries not only in Serbia but also in Thessaloniki, Mt. Athos, Constantinople and The Holy Land. Over fifteen of his portraits can be found in the monumental painting ensembles of Serbian medieval monasteries as well as on two icons.

Editorial

The cover title of the new issue, An Oriental Journey, has attracted a great deal of interest from authors of various disciplines. Scholars of both remote and recent history have passionately explored this theme. The issue section contains three articles related to the medieval Levant. Wojciech Mruk, a medievalist from the Jagiellonian University, analyses the account given by Lionardo Frescobaldi, Simone Sigoli and Giorgio Gucci, who made a peregrination to the Holy Land together between 1384 and 1385. Another article, by Christopher Schabel (Cyprus University in Nicosia), discusses the best-known medieval Cypriot village of Psimolofu and its links with the patriarchs of Jerusalem. Nicholas Coureas of the Cyprus Research Center provides a broad perspective on the presence of the Greek Church on Cyprus during the Lusignan and Venetian rule (1191–1571). The next contribution takes us back to the 20th century and even further to the East. Magdalena Filipczuk (Jesuit University Ignatianum in Cracow) reconstructs selected themes in the reflections by Lin Yutang, a Chinese thinker, translator and editor, based on his work towards explaining and popularizing Chinese culture and philosophy in the West. One more article that takes us to the Far East, but back in time, is by Małgorzata Sobczyk (Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń) undertakes to characterize the image of a Japanese woman in the light of sixteenth-century European accounts. The next three studies invite us to learn more about Poles and their presence in the East. Ewa Siemieniec-Gołaś (Jagiellonian University) makes an attempt to discuss the figure of Władysław Jabłonowski, not only a physician in the Ottoman service, but also an expert and researcher of the East. Beata Gontarz (University of Silesia in Katowice) discusses the cultural experience of Jan Józef Szczepański based on his book Do raju i z powrotem [To Paradise and Back]. The last article in the issue section is a work of turkologist Sylwia Filipowska (Jagiellonian University), who discusses the circumstances of Tadeusz Kowalski’s journey to Turkey in 1927.

Everyday Life of the Russian Nuns in the Holy Land at the Time of Changes in the Middle East, 1940s–1950s

This study aims at providing an overview of the everyday life of Russian nuns in Palestine after World War II. This research encompassed the following tasks: to analyze the range of ego-documents available today, characterizing the everyday life and internal motivation of women in choosing the church jurisdiction; to identify, on the basis of written sources, the most active supporters of the Moscow Patriarchate to examine the nuns’ activity as information agents of the Russian Orthodox Church and Soviet government; to characterize the actors influencing the everyday life of the Russian nuns in the context of the creation of the state of Israel and new borders dividing the Holy Land; to present the motives and instruments of influence employed by the representatives of both secu-lar and church diplomacies in respect to the women leading a monastic life; to describe consequences of including the nuns into the sphere of interest of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the USSR; to show the specific role of “Russian women” in the context of the struggle for securing positions of the USSR and the Russian Ecclesiastical Mission in the region. The sources for the study were prodused by the state (correspondence between the state authorities, meeting notes) and from the religious actors (letters of nuns to the church authorities, reports of the Russian Ecclesiastical Mission, memoirs of the clergy). By combining the methods of micro-history and history of the everyday life with the political history of the Cold War, the study examines the agency of the nuns — a category of women traditionally unnoticeable in the political history. Due to the specificity of the sources, the study focuses exclusively on a group of the nuns of the Holy Land who came under the jurisdiction of the Moscow Patri-archate. The majority of the Russian-speaking population of Palestine in the mid-1940s were women in the status of monastic residents (nuns and novices) and pilgrims, and in the 1940s–1950s, they were drawn into the geopolitical combinations of the Soviet Union. The Russian Ecclesiastical Mission in Jerusalem, staffed with representatives of the Russian Orthodox Church, becomes a key institution of influence in the region. This article shows how elderly nuns became an object of close attention and even funding by the Soviet state. The everyday life of the nuns became directly dependent on the activities of the Soviet agencies and Soviet-Israeli relations after the arri-val of the Soviet state representatives. At the same time, the nuns became key participants in the inter-jurisdictional conflicts and began to act as agents of influence in the region. The study analyzes numerous ego-documents created by the nuns themselves from the collection of the Council on the Affairs of the Russian Orthodox Church under the USSR Council of Ministers. The study shows how nuns positioned themselves as leading a monastic life in the written correspondence with the ROC authorities and staff of the Soviet MFA. The instances of influence of different secular authorities on the development of the female monasticism presented here point to promising research avenues for future reconstruction of the history of women in the Holy Land based on archival materials from state departments, alternative sources should also be found. The study focused on the life of elderly Russian nuns in the Holy Land and showed their activity in the context of the geopolitical transformations in the Near East in the 1940s–1950s.

Mapping Imagined Territory. Quaresmio's Chorographia and Later Franciscan Holy Land Maps, in Constructing and Representing Territory in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe, edited by Mario Damen and Kim Overlaet (Amsterdam University Press).

This contribution examines pre-modern cartography as a territorial technique for representing imagined territory, linking social groups to geographical space. It suggests that pre-modern maps could project territory by means other than visualising boundaries, and that accompanying texts could play a significant role, as in the case of Friar Francesco Quaresmio’s map of the Holy Land in Terrae Sanctae Elucidatio (1639). By analysing the immediate context of Quaresmio’s map – a lavish book publication – I show how Quaresmio’s Chorographia represents Franciscan territorial claims through an interaction between the map’s visual content and its immediate textual context within the book. Like other Franciscan maps also discussed here, it employs the imagined territories of the Bible as a versatile cartographical topos for various purposes, territorial or otherwise.

Relics and Reliquaries in Colonial Mexico

The cult of saints, through their relics in colonial Mexico, is related to the importation of relics from the great centers of pilgrimage in Europe and the Holy Land. Reliquaries were artifacts made to preserve the relics, avoid their fragmentation, and expose them to the faithful. Since the Middle Ages, different types were created with different forms whose function was to protect and exhibit the content. These designs passed to American territories, where it is still possible to admire some European reliquaries as well as some of local manufacture. The circulation of relics began in 1521, after the consolidation of the evangelization and the inauguration of the new viceroyalty government. The circulation and donation of relics should be understood as a long process. They were imported objects that were difficult to acquire, as their sale was prohibited by law. Typically, it was necessary to have contacts in the high clergy abroad. Acquiring relics also required a significant investment of funds to cover both the relic’s purchase and the costs of its transfer from abroad. Despite these difficulties, little by little, the relics of various saints and martyrs made their way to the Americas, some in carton boxes, others in gold urns or even in small paper envelopes. Reliquaries were soon manufactured to house these relics. Their design generally depended on two factors: the quantity of the relics obtained, and the shape of the relics. The collections of reliquaries with their respective relics were displayed both in the cathedral headquarters and in the temples of the religious orders. Because they were incorporated at different times, they were made in different styles using different materials, and so it is possible to find a great variety in their manufacture. Various types of reliquaries can be classified from this time, from the reliquary chapels to the altarpiece reliquaries, anthropomorphic reliquaries, and medallion reliquaries, and they stand as a testament to the cult of saints in colonial Mexico.

Waters of Palestine in the Series of Oriental Sketches by V.D. Polenov. The Natural and the Symbolic

The article is devoted to the series of Oriental sketches created by V.D. Polenov during his journey to the East in 1882. The main object of the study are the landscapes belonging to the second part of the artist’s trip, after he leaves Jerusalem and moves from the Dead Sea, along the Jordan, to Lake Genisaret and further north to the limits of the Biblical lands. During this time the “set” of stable landscape motifs to which the artist refers in his sketches changes. The artist’s own movement from the place of Christ’s execution and passionate journey to the lands of his ministry and birth corresponds to his move from the solid and cave motifs to the waters in his sketches. And the water motif itself undergoes various changes correlating to Christian symbolism of the places Polenov visits. The internal theme of the series of field sketches from the Holy Land is associated with the semantics of the Gospel cycle.