Kristina Nikolovska, Tsar or Son of Perdition. South Slavic Representations of Ottoman Imperial Authority in Church Slavonic Paratextual Accounts (1466–1710)
Kristina Nikolovska - New Europe College, Bucharest
TOME LIV 2016
p. 71-86
Online publication date:
02/05/2024
Keywords:
Church Slavonic manuscripts, Ottoman Empire, paratexts, imperial legitimacy, deacon Dimitar of Kratovo, locusts.
Abstract:
This paper explores the various South Slavic viewpoints regarding the legitimacy of the Ottoman rule expressed in Church Slavonic paratextual writings. Apart from the theologically-based view according to which the Ottoman rule was a tyranny sent by God as punishment for sin, some South Slavic writers, I argue, used a neutral voice, and even legitimized the rule of the Sultan. The wider political contexts in which these accounts were created, I suggest, were crucial for the ways in which the South Slavic chroniclers represented Ottoman power in the margins of their religious manuscripts.
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