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The essence
of existence which touches upon the basic complexity of
reality and human life, could not be understood
without material traces of the past, without our
cultural and artistic heritage. One's
heritage is, above all,
deeply connected to one's awareness that our lives are not
independent and single, but that we, as conscious
beings, are only a part of the chain in long and
universal history of the mankind. We are the temporary
keepers of the invaluable treasure the previous generations have bequeathed us
with, including the material testimony of their existence and
culture, their beliefs and aspirations. Our one and
single duty is to pass on their legacy intact to
the future
generations.
The golden mosaic of mankind's history, in which each nation
takes a part, can't be understood properly if one of its
least
invaluable stone-pieces, tesserae, is missing, just as each of these tiny fragments
looses its meaning if the totality of the framework
in which it exists is shattered. One
of these invaluable gilded tesserae in the
mosaics of civilizations, as unique
as the Chartres cathedral, Angkor, Taj Mahal, Masada,
Kjoto or Aksum is the cathedral of The Holy
Virgin Ljeviška in Prizren.
During
the night of the 17th March 2004, together with
destroying all other
Serbian churches of Prizren, Albanian
vandals set the fire to the cathedral of The Holy Virgin
Ljeviška. With its exceptional
architecture - a single combination of the mid Byzantine
three aisled basilica from X century and the five
domed church from 1307 - this church was the most
important monument of a cosmopolitan culture
flourishing in the medieval
town of Prizren. During the ten centuries of its
Christian existence, the cathedral of the Holy Virgin Ljeviška
was the symbol of the persistence of the orthodox
faith, but also one of the most important monuments of
Byzantine art and architecture, the artistic value of
which surpasses national borders.
Escaping
from historical forgetfulness, the authentic data
concerning its creators, so rare when the mediaeval monuments are
in question, are preserved to date. The names of
the master-builder Nikola and of the painter Astrapas were
preserved in an inscription on the southernmost arch
of the exonartex. Until present date, their origins
are not
clear: the master-builder Nikola probably came from
Epirus, while the frescoes painter Astrapas, it is supposed,
was a member of a Thessalonica workshop active in the
beginning of 14. century.
While
the architecture of The Holy Virgin Ljeviška
cathedral is representative of the Byzantine
architecture of its time, with its five domes inserted
in a square-cross plan, the open exsonartex and the
picturesque and decorative facades, its painting
paved the way to similar tendencies in fresco painting
occurring some ten years later in the principal
centers of Byzantine art - Constantinople and Thessalonica. Its
frescoes stood at the forefront of innovation,
announcing the
complex and delicate iconography of Palaiologan
Renaissance, the last monumental style of
Byzantine art. Using classical forms and prototypes to express new
and complex theological topics, including allegorical
representation of Christian virtues in the guise of classical figures
in ancient costumes and the first appearance
of
genre
and landscape
themes in Byzantine fresco painting, the frescoes in Prizren, are not only contemporary with the work
of Giotto, Pisano, Duccio and Lorenzetti, but also anticipate the Renaissance, much before its
appearance in Italy.
Beside
the theological compositions, some of the most beautiful portraits of the Serbian
medieval sovereigns, including a portrait of its restorer king
Stephen Uros II (Milutin) wearing Byzantine
ceremonial costume, and the portraits of his ancestors
- St.
Simeon as a monk, St. Sava as a archbishop, Stephen the
First Crowned, and Milutin ‘s son Stephen,
future king Stephen Dečanski,
have adorned the walls of the Prizren cathedral.
Also, the rich fresco cycle of The Holy Virgin Ljeviška
offers a very rare traces of medieval
ethnology in the way in which the frescoes illustrating the life of st. Nicolas depict the
environment of a medieval school.
Even
after the conquest of Prizren by the Ottoman troops on 21.
June 1455,
the
cathedral of the Holy Virgin Ljeviška
was not destroyed. On the contrary, taken by the
beauty of its frescoes, strange and new at once, the anonymous
conqueror from the East, a man of a delicate and rich
spirit, while paying attention not to damage the frescoes
of the exonarthex, carefully wrote these verses in Arab
letters on the church wall: Pupil of my eye is your nest (Honour me of entrance,
this house is yours).
What
were thus the intention of the vandals of Prizren during
this terrible Kristallnacht? What was the
object of their rage?
Was it the church building of the master-builder Nikola
from Epirus or was it the painting of Astrapas, a
humble yet accomplished master painter from Thessalonica?
Was it the splendor of the classical youth carrying
amphorae and ripides in their hands depicted in the
frescoes that brought the classical antiquity and
Christianity together?
Was it Virgin Eleusa
with Christ Nourisher? Or
perhaps the verses of the great Persian poet Hafiz?
Ignorant, and ignorance is always at the base of all xenophobia,
they destroyed also this touching witness to the richness and
depth of their own Islamic civilization expressed here
on the walls of a far-way Christian church in the
words of the Persian poet whose own poetry was
contemporary to
Ljeviška's
frescoes.
In this night, these poor, enraged vandals frightened by the
beauty and the duration of the cathedral of Prizren,
attacked indeed a unique testimony to the fact that
universal beauty equalizes the conqueror and the defeated
relegating them together, as mortal as they are, to
"the same side" of wonder and awe when faced with the eternal
magnitude of human spirit and creativity. Setting fire to
the church of the Holy Virgin Ljeviška at the
same time, they destroyed the most beautiful example of the
possibility of coexistence of different nations and
religions in Kosovo and Metohija.
Revolted by these foolish acts, these frontal
attacks on our historical continuity and our heritage,
we the students and
associates of the
Department of the Applied Arts of the Faculty of Philology
and Arts in Kragujevac, city-martyr the recent
history of which
is marked by similar tragic events, raise our voices, and call upon all artists, art
historians, Byzantinists, Slavists, museologists,
conservators, archaeologists, historians, ethnologists,
anthropologists, and institutions which have the duty of preserving
and protecting cultural
and historical heritage of all people, l'UNESCO
in the first place, ICOM,
ICOMOS,
to stop immediately, by the force of their
authority, this vandalism unknown in civilized world.
Witnessing the vandalism of this scope today, at
the beginning of third millennium, we raise only one
question: Why terror?
In
Kragujevac, March 22nd 2004.
Students and associates of the Department of the
Applied Arts of
Faculty of Philology and Arts in Kragujevac. |
