Marble column on the blackbird field
The marble column on the Blackbird Field was set up in the spring of 1404 by Stefan Lazarević with a text to glorify his father Lazar Hrebeljanović, who was already canonized at the time, on the former battlefield of the Blackbird Field. The marble column stood until the second half of the 15th century and, along with the Ottoman Murat-Türbe, was a central memorial structure of the battle on Gazimestan . The text of the column was passed down in the notes of Konstantin Mihailović from Ostrovica .
Cultural and historical background
The erection of the column takes place in a phase of the rise of the Serbian despotate from an Ottoman vassal state to a resurgent Serbian empire. As a result of the Ottoman civil war in the wake of the catastrophic defeat in the Battle of Ankara, Stefan Lazarević's economy, culture and town charter flourished in the principality.
A boom in mining not only allowed numerous monasteries to be donated, the new royal seat of Belgrade and the central mining town of Novo Brdo also became central locations in the despotate. From Novo Brdo accomplished stonemasons created the numerous ornaments and frieze facades of the Morava school and in Belgrade a literary center began to form at the court of the despot Stefan, in which both the writing and the language of the Serbian culture experienced a decisive enrichment and the most important, Slavic medieval Left behind by the Balkan Peninsula. The completion of a separate Serbian literary genre, which combined ruler's biography and hagiography , reached maturity in the Vita Stefan Lazarevic of Konstantin Kostenecki, her stylistic masterpiece. From this context, the rich and linguistically diverse literature developed from the late 14th century onwards, in which, as an exception, Stefan Lazarevic himself emerged as a poet and from whom the text of the marble column on the Amselfeld comes.
history
While the legends about the Battle of the Blackbird Field and the heroes develop into the Serbian national myth, a rich, orally handed down epic formation emerged, which continued in the Serbian people and neighboring regions for centuries. This literary examination began on the one hand with the more or less exact historical annals of the time, but was further processed in poetic and biographical contexts early on. Stefan's court itself started a literary cult around the Battle of the Blackbird, in which the sovereign and general Lazar experienced religious glorification. In addition to Stefan's memory of his father, written in 1403-1404 ( Pohvalno slovo svetome i mnogomučeniku Hristovu Lazaru ), in which this Lazar immortalized in a solemn and glorious way with the help of symbolic allusions, the marble column heralded the central pictorial and literary testimony of this glorification.
We learn about the marble column and its inscription from Konstantin from Ostrovitza , a Serb or Raitze who was captured by the Ottomans in Novo Brdo in 1455 and who was later able to save himself to the court of Matthias Corvinus . After him, the prince was taken prisoner and the marble column was erected on the spot where he was captured: where Lazar was captured next to a nearby Church of Our Lady with the name Samodreže, a high marble column was set up on this square as a sign of the place where Prince Lazar was captured.
text
On the marble column, a longer text directly described Prince Lazar and his followers in battle. The text, written as the actual epitaph , celebrated the great prince in a solemn rhetorical tale as the "miracle of the earth" and "lords of the Serbs" and described the event of the battle with drastic and heroic intonation: The beginning of this inscription followed in the ancient manner:
“Wanderer, you who walk across the Serbian countryside, no matter where you come from, stranger or local, if you enter this field, which is called Blackbird Field, you will see the bones of the dead on it, and also a stone, cross-like column find adorned and standing upright in the middle of the field. "
| Church Slavonic text | German translation |
|---|---|
|
Човече који српском земљом ступаш / |
Wanderer, you who walk across the Serbian countryside / |
(The year 6897 corresponds to the year 1389 in the Greek-Byzantine calendar ).
Web links
- Text of the marble column (Serbian)
swell
- ^ Ivan Dujcev, Reports litteraires entre les Byzantins, les Bulgares et les Serbes aux XIVe et XVe siecles. In: Vojislav Jj. Duric (edt.), Moravska skola i njeno dova, 77-101, Belgrade 1972.
- ↑ Željko Fajfrić, Sveta loza kneza Lazara Sveta loza kneza Lazara
- ↑ Stefan Lazarevic, Marmorni stub na Kosovu http://www.rastko.rs/knjizevnost/umetnicka/poezija/desp_stefan-reci_sa_stuba_c.html
- ↑ a b Srednjevekovni srpski spisi o kosovu (Medieval Serbian writings on Kosovo) Stefan Lazarević - Ove reči su bile pisane na stubu mramornom na Kosovu
- ↑ Stefan Lazarević : Marble column on the Amselfeld