International congress of byzantine studies belgrade, 22 27 august 2016

Ljubinka Džidrova
N. U. Archaeological Museum of Macedonia,
Skopje, Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia; 
[e-mail]
A New Personality in the Prosopography of Late Medieval Skopje
The early photographs of Kale at Skopje often display its neglected south-east plateau in late 
nineteenth-early twentieth century, surrounded by almost fully demolished ramparts, where recent 
archaeological excavations revealed a multystratified complex. Former settlement area existed there 
continuously in several phases, the earliest dated in late ninth-early tenth century, and a later from 
the eleventh century onwards, abruptly terminated about the end of the thirteenth century. 

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820
The remains of a large civil residential settlement were erased from the ground during military 
conflict, leaving this ground on the outskirts of interest for even half a century during the flourishing 
decades of the Serbian Kingdom. Only later, about mid fourteenth century, it became a site of an 
ecclesiastical building. Architectonically it belongs to the group of churches densely concentrated 
within the north half of the Republic of Macedonia and southern Serbia. It has a spatially united 
extended cruciform ground plan composed of a naos with a high dome held by monolithic columns, 
unseparated from the narthex apart from the massive pillars that once existed along the dividing 
line, both spaces coherently articulated along a common longitudinal axis. Raised shortly before 
forthcoming tumultuous historic events, it survived and extended its existence in several phases 
well into the Ottoman times, when the church continuously converged Christian religious life 
and rite inside the walls of the Upper Town. Its identity unconfirmed by a written source, and of 
unpreserved trace of devotion to a particular saintly figure, demonstrates its significance through a 
large multilayered necropolis developed in even three phases of urban organization. 
Its prominence is best judged on its identification as a patrimony of a high dignitary of 
the Serbian kingdom, almost completely preserved in an epitaph inscription found at the site. It 
informs of the death of Vlatko in the days of Milosh in the year 1378, sixth indiction, and calls to 
his memory. Within the narthex were unearthed the graves of the ktetorial family, which allow 
their identification with a part of a recognised ktitorial family depicted on a fresco painting in 
the St. Nicolas church at Psacha in Macedonia. A family of three generations of dignitaries, the 
elders knez Paskach, after whom possibly the present day village was named, with his wife Ozra, 
representatives of the landed aristocracy of modest status, accompanied by their son Sevastokrator 
Vlatko following his promotion to the status, and his wife Vladislava, as well as their three sons: 
Stephan, of questionable identification, Ugljesha, at the age of 7-9, the probable future ruler of 
Vranje and the surrounding district, and an anonymous youngster. The fresco was painted around 
1358-1360, and it may be presumed that about this date Vlatko probably had already raised his 
khtetorial at Skopje. The new data clarify the khtetor’s local origin, a member of well-established 
landed aristocracy, his relationship to Skopje, and finally the family’s place among the governing 
aristocracy during the late fourteenth-early fifteenth century.