Chosen Places: Constructing New Jerusalems in Slavia Orthodoxa

In Chosen Places. Constructing New Jerusalems in Slavia Orthodoxa, Jelena Erdeljan focuses on the Old Testament topic of the divinely-chosen status of Jerusalem and translatio Hierosolymi, including the history, process and media of formulating and disseminating this idea and its spatial-visual matrix in Christian visual culture. Firstly the study presents the case of Constantinople, the capital of the Byzantine Empire, as New Jerusalem, and secondly, in relation to Constatinople, discussion focuses on the cases of the capitals of Slavia Orthodoxa in the later Middle Ages: Turnovo, Belgrade and Moscow. The idea of Jerusalem corresponds with the idea of a mystical center, the center of the historical Christian world, which travels and follows the path of eschatologial realisation.

Jelena Erdeljan, Ph.D. (2008), University of Belgrade, is Professor of Art History at that University. She has published monographs, articles and edited volumes on aspects of visual culture of medieval and early modern Balkans.

''Lo studio della Erdeljan rappresenta pertanto sia un’utile discussione su una cospicua parte di bibliografia inerente al mito di Gerusalemme in Europa; sia una valida ricerca autonoma sulla reviviscenza di questo mito nella Slavia orthodoxa ". Tommaso Migliorini in Medioevo Greco , 19 (2019).

"The book serves as an introduction to the topic and its ramifications for a broader audience, but it speaks more directly to the specialists versed in the textual and especially the visual sources analysed. [...] This study is an important scholarly contribution that opens up the possibility of future explorations: on the one hand, of the particulars of how the spatial, material, ideological, and textual constructs of these capital cities of the Eastern Christian world relate to artistic representations of their respective topographies and their symbolic meanings and functions; on the other hand, of the later transformations of these centers, and others, after the fall of Constantinople in 1453''. Alice Isabella Sullivan, in Speculum 95 (2), April 2020.

"The book offers a bold conceptual framework for a bright range of phenomena, and therefore will surely serve as a starting point for meaningful discussions". Mikhail A. Boytsov in Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas 70(1-2), December 2022.