doiSerbia

Sacred and profane topography in a medieval Serbian parish - an outline

Bojanin Stanoje (Institute for Byzantine Studies of the SASA, Belgrade)

This article presents a basic research scope of the social importance of microtoponyms and topographical features of villages and their precincts, which in the Middle Ages were organized as parish communities. The social space of the rural environment is segmented by different entities important for the social and religious life of the local community, such as a parish church with its yard, a cemetery, other churches and chapels in the fields and groves, freestanding crosses, certain bodies of water or some marked trees, typically the oak. The issue of the methods of analysing medieval sources of different provenience and fragmented data is of major importance. In order to understand the sources properly, we have to be aware of the social segmentation of a medieval society, from which diverse interpretation and functions of the cultural artefacts and performances (rituals, festivities) originated.

Keywords: sacred and profane space, parish, popular culture, popular religiosity, local religion, the penitentials, canon law

Projekat Ministarstva nauke Republike Srbije, br. 177032: Tradition, innovation and identity in the Byzantine world