Bulgaria in old Serbian accounts of pilgrimage

Abstract

A rather small portion of old Slavonic literatures is thematically linked with the journey to the Holy Land. Of many Serbian pilgrims over the centuries only three left more detailed descriptions of Bulgarian places and parts: patriarch Arsenije III, Jerotej of Rača and Silvestar Popović. They described, each in his own way, some of the places and areas along the road to Istanbul or Salonika. Their vivid depiction of encounters with people and observations about the places they saw on their way reveal only a fragment of life in the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Ottoman empire. In a seemingly ordinary way, they incorporate into their own epoch the legends heard from the people they met. The descriptions of Bulgarian parts in the Serbian accounts of pilgrimage have all the appeal that generally characterizes travel literature. Although their literary value is modest they belong among the works characterized by the simplicity and immediacy of experience. Rather than being the result of a strong literary ambition, they are witness to the need to speak about the great journey, quite an adventurous enterprise at the time.

U radu se govori o predstavama bugarskih krajeva prema usputnim beleženjima srpskih poklonika koji su putovali tokom vekova u Svetu zemlju. Najpotpunije podatke o tome ostavili su patrijarh Arsenije III, Jerotej Račanin i Silvestar Popović. Oni su na svoj način opisali pojedina mesta i krajeve koji se nalaze na Carigradskom putu ili na onom koji vodi ka Solunu. Time su ostale neke neprolazne slike bugarskih prostora i susreta sa ljudima tokom XVII i XVIII veka koje su oni zabeležili.