International congress of byzantine studies belgrade, 22 27 august 2016

Tsvetan Vasilev
Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski”, Sofia, Bulgaria; 
[e-mail]
Bilingualism of the Post-Byzantine Mural Inscriptions in the Balkan Art: 
Historical Background and Function
Cyrillic and Greek texts, simultaneously and systematically inscribed on wall paintings, occur 
regularly from the period of the late Byzantine art (1204–1453) on. Their appearance in the church 
of The Mother of God Evergetis in Studenica (1208–1209) is correlated by V. Dzhourich with the 
personal activity of St Sava and the preparation of the Serbian ecclesiastical independence. On the 
other hand, I. Djordjevich notes the pragmatic function of the Cyrillic inscriptions analyzing the 
frescoes in the chapel of St George, Hilandar monastery, dated to thirteenth century. Influence of 
Greek language upon Cyrillic text can be detected in an inscription from Boyana church (1259), 
Bulgaria. All of them indicate the efforts of the medieval Balkan countries to lay claim on both the 
continuity and the reception of the Byzantine cultural heritage.
The Ottoman invasion in fifteenth century, however, brought a dramatic change regarding 
the function of the Greek language inscriptions on the wall paintings: these texts were no longer an 
expression of national identity, but only an attempt to revive – at least partially – the already lost 
prestige of the Eastern Orthodox Christianity.
The difficult circumstances for building and renovating monasteries and churches in the 
sixteenth and seventeenth century put their impact on the character and language features of the 
Greek inscriptions from that period. Wall painting is often commissioned to itinerant painters with 
less professional experience not only in decorating churches, but also in the Greek language. The 
data of more than two hundred and twenty seventeenth-century Greek inscriptions, examined 
by the author of this paper, provide evidence for further conclusions upon the functions of the 
bilingualism in post-Byzantine art, which could be summarized, as follows:

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1. Functional bilingualism, prevailing in the late Byzantine art before the Ottoman conquest. Its 
peculiarities are determined by the demands of the bilingual audience in regions with mixed 
Slavic and Greek population. This type of bilingualism is attested in the mixed inscriptions of 
the church of St George, Staro Nagorichino (1316–1318), Republic of Macedonia, and in the 
church of Dormition of the Mother of God, Gračanica, Kosovo. 
2. The second type could be defined as asymmetrical bilingualism – in this case the level of 
the second (or Greek) language is lower than the level of the first (Slavonic) language. The 
difference between the functional and the asymmetrical type of bilingualism is easily perceived 
in the comparison of the language of an epigram from the scroll of John the Baptist in the 
church of St Nicetas, Banjane (c. 1320), Republic of Macedonia, and the scroll of the same 
prophet in the narthex of Kremikovtzi monastery St George.
3. The last type of bilingualism could be described as fictitious – it is attested mainly in the post-
Byzantine churches from Serbia, Bulgaria, and Macedonia in the sixteenth and seventeenth 
century. The main feature of that type of bilingualism is that both the audience and the scribes 
have no sufficient knowledge of Greek language. The last type of bilingualism is a natural 
consequence of another important aspect – the texts from the scrolls of prophets and saints 
had rather the function of sacralized complement to the paintings.
These theoretical observations will be exemplified by analysis of particular Greek inscriptions, 
some of which unpublished or read and commented anew.