Serbian Monk Gerasim Zelić on the Late 18th Century Istanbul

Abstract

Gerasim Zelić was born in the small village of Žegar in Venetian ruled Dalmatia in 1752. When he was 17 years old he joined the monastery Krupa, also in Dalmatia. Nevertheless, he did not live a secluded life inside the walls of the monastery. His whole life was marked by many travels that he undertook, both to the Western European countries and to the two great Empires in the east, the Ottoman and the Russian. In order to recount his travels and his strife for ever higher positions in the church hierarchy and for the creation of the Orthodox Episcopal see in Dalmatia, Gerasim Zelić wrote an autobiography. The aim of this paper is to present and analyze Gerasim Zelić's description of his two visits to Istanbul in 1784/5. During his second stay in the capital of the Ottoman Empire, he worked for 6 months as a chaplain for the Orthodox Christians employed in the Venetian consulate. He had an opportunity to meet the Ecumenical Patriarch and the Patriarch of Jerusalem, as well as other members of high Orthodox clergy. Zelić used the months spent in Istanbul to visit many parts of the city and to get acquainted with the way of life of its inhabitants. In his autobiography, Gerasim Zelić also wrote a description of the plague outbreak in Istanbul. Gerasim Zelić was not a lonely case of a traveler and generally inquisitive person among the Serbian 18th century clerics and monks. In the paper his experience is compared with that of several other Serbian travelers who visited Istanbul.