Four Narrative Foundations of the Chilandar Monastery on Mount Athos, lecture by Milan Vukašinović (Koç University), Boğaziçi University, December 3, 2019, 5:00 pm

The first foundation of the Chilandar monastery on Mount Athos under the command of the Nemanjić family members is dated to the end of the 12th century. This long-lasting medieval institution is often represented as a focal point of politics, diplomacy, religion, spirituality, literary and visual culture of the medieval Serbian polity. It has rightfully been seen as a privileged place of contact between Byzantine and Serbian politics and culture. Greek and Slavonic texts of its charters, its typikon, as well as a series of saint’s lives, have all been used by historians as more or less faithful representations of the foundation and building of Chilandar. In the vein of spatial and the narrative turns, this presentation argues for the interpretation of these texts as narrative acts of spatial transformation. It sheds light on the diversity of ways a single historical event was storied and incorporated into four distinctive narratives. This approach can help us re-contextualize each of these texts and propose a reading of diverse strategies of mediating the space through textual narratives, in the particular moments when the function of that space was being altered.

Milan Vukašinović is a GABAM-ANAMED postdoctoral fellow at Koç University. He holds a shared PhD in history from the EHESS in Paris and the University of Belgrade. His main interests are narrative, space, and ideology in the thirteenth century.