ПАЛОМНИЧЕСТВА ЮЖНЫХ СЛАВЯН НА СВЯТУЮ ЗЕМЛЮ В XVI-XVII ВВ. И СОЗДАНИЕ ОБЩЕГО ПРАВОСЛАВНОГО ПРОСТРАНСТВА ОСМАНСКОЙ ИМПЕРИИ
Études balkaniques (Sofia) 2023, N 3
Dmitriy POLYVYANNYY
Ivanovo State University, Russia
Abstract: Pilgrimages of the South Slavs to the Holy Land in the 16th-17th cc. and Shaping of the Common Orthodox Space within the Ottoman Empire : After 1517 the Holy Places of Jerusalem, Palestine and Sinai as well as the three ancient Eastern Patriarchates of Alexandria, Antiochia and Jerusalem were included into the imperial domain of the Sublime Porte thus connecting its Orthodox subjects in Rumelia, Greek islands, Asia Minor and the Danubian Principalities to the most worshipped common Christian shrines. In the following two centuries the number of the pilgrims to the Holy Land from the Ottoman Balkan provinces was permanently increasing. The South Slav pilgrims’ glosses and travel notes reveal the shaping of the common orthodox space, the parts of which were the visitors’ living places, sacral centers, monasteries and travel communications. The pilgrimage to Jerusalem and the return back lead them across administrative, canonical, ethnic and territorial metes and bounds creating in their minds the image of the Ottoman Empire as mighty world power with multinational and multi-confessional population thus laying foundations for the development of proto-national identities.
Keywords: Ottoman Empire, Jerusalem, pilgrimage, Orthodox Southern Slavs