1 GABRIEL MILLET AND SERBIAN MEDIEVAL ART

The fact that Gabriel Millet spent his entire long lifetime as a captive of tireless foreign travels was a destiny bestowed on him both by the cruel fate which befell him already as an infant and by the spirit of the milieu and the times of his coming of age. " Unhappy events, pains of trouble ... at an early age is what it takes to gain that pitiless force of resolve and good common sense without which great deeds can rarely be done" wrote Winston Churchill and Millet, his contemporary, proved by virtue of his own biography the bitter and, at the same time, inalterable truth of both dimensions of that maxim. He was born in 1867 in Saint Louis on the shore of the Atlantic, but that tiny spot on the map was no idyllic village hidden in the westernmost regions of France but an ancient colonial stronghold set on the coast of present day Senegal. It was there, where his father, a marine colonel, was given a post, that Gabriel Millet lost both his parents at the age of two and a half and it is not difficult to comprehend the sheer pain and fear which marked his first big journey, that which brought him back alone to his homeland. There, however, he had a grandmother waiting, a woman who, according to the testimonies of his subsequent associates, played a key role in providing the boy and later young man with an education. It began in Nice but soon soared to Paris and in 1891 resulted in Millet's promotion to the rank of professor of history, at an age of barely over twenty. Speed, a frenzied rhythm of life, a world caught in the thrust of universal movement and an insatiable intellectual hunger are signs of the times of Millet's coming of age. Still, being already a fully formed historian, which in those days meant also an archaeologist, a scholar of ancient languages and letters, an expert in the field of religion and art, he, on the other hand, turned towards the depths of the past. After all, he was an offspring of a milieu which had since the days of Champolion been indisputable heir to the right and capacity to delve into the branched out roots out of which, as he himself wrote, our civilisation grew. And it is precisely that word, undoubtedly used on purpose instead of the expected history, that discloses, perhaps more clearly, although in his own time more narrowed down in meaning, the breadth of Millet's striving, an awareness that, should one desire to get the full picture, numberless sediments of the past cannot simply be reduced to their political framework nor are they to be cruelly separated. It was clear to Millet that history could not truly be studied from Paris alone but rather on its battleground proper,

2 among material testimonies of times past and it was that perception that drove him to set off for Athens in 1891. Today, there can be no doubt that the five years which followed, the time he spent on scholarship at the French School of Archaeology, fully determined his future fate. For it was precisely there, under the Acropolis, where it would have been so easy to become just another scholar of Greco-Roman antiquity, that he was struck by that pitiless force of resolve, an epochal inner spiritual transformation, to direct all attention to studying the flows of ideas through which the perennial values and heritage of classical times lived on as the very foundations of civilisation, culture and, above all, as the creative spiritual edifice of an entirely different world that of Eastern Christianity, Byzantium. And what could more clearly, directly, and strikingly to reveal all the nuances in the dialogue of the two epochs than the church as a symbol of the latter and the images on its walls? Having found himself on appropriate ground, Millet embarked on a voyage through time which he felt to be his own. The courage woven into that decision becomes visible in its genuine dimension only if we point out that, regardless of the already existing knowledge on the East Christian Empire which, given the times, was not so modest at all, the convincingly dominant approach of his original alma mater to Byzantium in general was much like that of tutors constantly reprimanding an orphan of reputable parents to mind the manners of well brought up people. But Paris was farther than ever: the lavish mosaics of Daphni monastery were waiting for him under the cypresses in the vicinity of Athens, an endless gallery of architecture and frescoes of the churches of Mystra stood against the searing hot rocky mountains of the Peloponnesos, living Byzantium endured in the ambience and treasures of Athonite monastic communities, and there were also the monuments of Athens itself, Monemvasia, Arta, Thessaloniki, Kastoria, the imperial monastery of Hosios Lukas in the wilderness of Phocida. And then, on to Constantinople and Trebizond, later also to Italy, Spain, Bulgaria, Serbia, down roads which even today are not easy to travel and which, in those days, practically did not even exist, through terrain not easy to conquer even today, in search of centuries of lost time which he had to uncover and the glow of whose patina glow he was to disclose to his own age. Although, as we know, that does not always happen to great master of their trade, in Millet's case words of approbation were quick to reach the milieu from which he set off into the world. Upon his return home in 1896, he was immediately promoted to maitre de conference at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes and from that moment on to the very last years of his life his biography became a chapter in the story of the lives of the international family of

3 intellectual aristocracy who earned the status of institution even in their lifetimes. In an impressive rhythm, not easy to keep up with, lectures on Christian texts, church history, Byzantine archaeology and art (form 1906 head of chair for history of religion at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes, from 1926 professor at the Collge de France, from 1929 member of the French Academy), alternate with numerous papers published in scientific periodicals, seminal books dedicated either to particular monuments or the greatest subjects of Byzantine art (Le monastere de Daphni, Histoire, architecture, mosaques , 1899; Monuments byzantines de Mistra. Materiaux pour le tude de l'architecture et de la peinture en Grce aux XIV et XV sicles, 1910; L'ecole grecque dans la architecture byzantine, 1916; Recherches sur l'iconographie de l'evangile aux XIV, XV et XVI sicles d'aprs les monuments de Mistra, de la Macdoine et du Mont Athos, 1916; L'ancien art serbe. Les glises, 1919; Monuments de l'Athos, 1927; Byzantine Painting at Trebizond with D. Talbot Rice, 1936; La broderie religieuse da style byzantin, 1939; La dalmatique du Vatican. Les lu. Image et croyances , 1945), the publishing of the first volumes of the corpus of documents of the Empire ( Archive de l'Athos, from 1937), texts on Byzantine art in the renowned History of art edited by Anry Michel, the launching of a series of monographs and collections of papers under the name of "Byzance et l'Orient" and, on top of everything, the founding and constant dedication to the enlargement of a true legacy for eternity, "Collection Chrtienne et byzantine", a monumental collection of photographs in which, collaborating with scholars of medieval heritage from all over the world, he gathered thousands of photographs and negatives of all sorts of east Christian and Byzantine monuments and which, to this day, represents a fundamental source for the study of an art spreading from Dura Europos and the Caucasus to the shores of the Atlantic. Had he been different, inclined toward that discreet softening which is often the companion of benefits gained by positions secured, in other words, had he primarily been a cabinet scholar, Gabriel Millet would have had many reasons and excuses to spend the rest of his life in the silence of Parisian libraries facing an insurveyable amount of gathered material which, even then, could be classified and presented in an appropriate manner by himself alone. However, good common sense, forged from the steadfast decision he made in Athens, made Millet permanently resistant to conformist compromises of all sorts. That is why, in spite of all his duties and honours, Millet never stopped travelling and one could freely say that it was this passion of his which indirectly drew at first the outline and later the clearly drawn lines of methodological coordinates in the framework of which he observed, perceived and expounded the ancient Christian art of the East. Namely, in following the actual

4 geography of that world, Millet was simultaneously moving along two directions, the vertical and the horizontal and the point of their intersection was always embodied in a particular work of art or a group of such objects. From such a crossing, the vertical, path of chronology lead him to the study of currents which from the distant prototypes, modified through time, lead to specific, chronologically fixed, visual expression and the influence of that formula on later works of the same type or subject matter was subsequently subjected to investigation. The horizontal, spatial stratum, implied a comparison between monuments created within the same epoch but in different surroundings which resulted in establishing an indisputable existence of particular regional, and later national workshops and schools. In turn, those schools, drawing on the common source of Christian artistic tradition, gradually formed their on and clearly recognizable artistic idioms. Those being his viewpoints, Millet actually presented the art of Byzantium and the lands of the East Christian Commonwealth in its authentic idiosyncratic context, as an organism within which both the architecture of the church and the wall painting and the icon and the liturgical vessel reflect with equal intensity the currents of their historical-cultural ambience, the circumstances and ideas of a long, well defined and dynamic period of the past. By uncovering the diverse rhythm of its forms, the numerous oscillations in its style, the sophisticated sensibility its creators had for the sublime achievements of the heritage of antiquity, its constant ties with the written word and, above all, its originality demonstrated through a broad spectrum of variations on a given theme, Gabriel Millet restored this art culture civilization to its rightful place on the historical map of the world, gave it back its identity and real life, the pulse of which not many before him were keen to listen to. More than this, once and for all he proved false the deeply rooted misconception that the millennium long empire of Constantinople and its neighbours was nothing more than a decadent and dull offspring born after the fall of old Rome. It was precisely that striving to reach the crests, tides and deep currents of history, together with an angle of observation which was the result of the sheer breadth of his knowledge, which lay at the basis of this book, L'ancien art serbe. Les glises, conceived of and written during World War I. Preparations for its making, however, had begun already in 1906 when Millet first set foot in Serbia of those days. In his own words, that was a magnificent journey from which he brought back inerasable impressions, and the scope of his fascination not only with the land but, above all, with its ancient monuments, is reflected in the fact that several years after the book was published, in the period between 1924 and 1935, he visited Serbia five more times, each time growing more enthralled with its architecture and frescoes which to him represented a unique and original stratum of medieval

5 art. In writing down the expressions of awe dedicated to his teacher, ure Bokovi, a pupil and companion of Millet's on those campaigns, paints a convincing portrait of the aura which surrounded this great French explorer: "Not many have really seen him persistently and generously giving away the richness of his work energy which we, Slavs, are so in need of not many have really seen him working for months, day in and day out, without Sundays, holidays, rest, under the most difficult conditions for travelling, boarding and eating, under the blazing sun or drenched by rain, among ruins overgrown with weeds or in cold, drafty churches, on wobbly scaffolding which sometimes reached as high up as the dome. Such work, put together with the exceptional subtlety of French spirit and a rare, purely archaeological sharpness, was predestined to bear fruit. But what was it that truly fascinated him in Serbia? Segments of the answer to this question are found in the words which on many occasions he would himself gladly impart while others are expounded in depth in this and the other books he wrote. Today, when we piece them all together and analyze them, their value becomes even greater because it becomes clear that Millet observed Serbian art not only from the point of view of its strictly visual qualities but more, and just a step away from a contemporary method of interpretation, as a phenomenon, a creative impulse born from the diverse potential of the milieu of its origin. Like never before or after, Millet found himself on a comparatively small territory filled with monuments which offered unbelievable possibilities for observing a multitude of different modes of artistic creation in unbroken chronological continuity which lasted almost half a millennium. At the same time, this artistic production was the result of the spiritual striving and achievements of representatives of all strata of hierarchy of medieval society, from the rulers to the nobles and members of the church elite to monks and village communities. Need we point out at how well aware he was of the fact that such a disposition of this art automatically stood for what we today would see as live broadcasting of life as it really was in those centuries, from the ordinary, day to day routine to that pertaining to the elected of the intelligentsia. It offered an image of reality of long ago which, as he pointed out, could hardly be reconstructed so convincingly and with such well documented precision anywhere else. The other basic streak of originality of old Serbian art Millet recognized on the horizontal axis: having sprung on turbulent ground of a liminal belt adjoining two civilizations, in order to survive it simply had to be open towards both the West and the East. In any case, this was also determined by political circumstances which, according to the general rule of the day, it also had to mirror. Still, already since the middle of the XII century, its genesis did not follow the path of simple reception of diverse, foreign and

6 mutually opposed currents, it was not compilatory in nature. Throughout the three centuries of its classical period, it sought to permanently and carefully balance these impulses and adapt them to its own concepts, thus producing works of a deeply synthetic nature and characteristics which could communicate with the universal coordinates of the medieval world, the earthly and the heavenly realm, on equal terms and untainted by even the slightest touch of the anachronistic or purely local taste. At the meeting point between West and East rose monuments essentially defined by creative interaction of artistic discourses of both worlds and, precisely for that reason, unique. Devoted to history, aware of the measure in which its currents affected those of art, experienced in detecting the variations which explain the whole of artistic creation, Millet dedicated the first chapter of his book to the settings of the story, the circumstances which made Serbia a significant and, at times, even the leading actor in events which took place from the close of the XII to the middle of the XV century. Being extremely sensitive to phenomena and processes which lie at the foundations of any community, he advised, already at that point, against observing Serbia of those days as a simple satellite of Byzantium in any segment of its nature. Prerequisite conditions for the establishment of the Serbian state were precisely the result of confrontation with Constantinople, its economic growth in the XIII century was based on mining which had then been developing as a result of the arrival of workers and experts in the field who came from German lands, as well as on trade with Hungary and Italian communes, Serbian kings kept close ties with the papacy, some, like Uro I (1241-1270) became associated through marriage with renowned ruling houses of the West, the Angevins in this case, while political circumstances from time to time dictated that they join anti-Byzantine coalitions of western allies like, for example, the one formed in 1281 in Orvieto. Faith and spiritual culture, irrevocably and permanently inspired by the heritage of eastern Christianity, created one dimension of Serbian identity. The other, just as important, flowed from the source of real life on the crossroads: at the beginning of the XIV century, in an era marked by the greatest rise of the Serbian state and its seeming all-encompassing byzantinisation, religious rights of Catholics settled in merchant colonies are confirmed by legal acts while monks of western mendicant orders reach the inner parts of the state from coastal towns on the Adriatic. On the whole, facts like these can in no way be regarded as epiphenomena but rather as first rate symbols of long duration of a two way communication between Serbia and both parts of the Christian world, of its progress as a society towards a definite determination of its own authentic and deeply rooted traits, as much idiosyncratic as shared with the other members of the medieval family of nations. Thus, it is by the virtue of

7 its own holy men that Serbia would take its place in the only history which counted for anything in the Middle Ages, the history of Christianity. That is why the monastery of ia, the coronation church of Serbian rulers, stands alongside Saint Denis, Sainte Chapelle, Aachen, Speyer and Westminster Abbey, its western counterparts in meaning and significance. Moreover, at the close of the Middle Ages, it is with that sense of genuine belonging to Christian civilisation, and not simply for reasons of a geographic nature, an awareness which, one could well say, transcended its historical division, that Serbia would step onto the last rampart of defence against conquerors of a different faith. Each period of Serbian history was marked by specific artistic production which at first was the care of sovereigns and later, with the passing of time, members of other strata of society, too. Their efforts to raise a great number of churches are described in the second chapter of Millet's book. He sees them not just as another result of indisputable politicalideological obligations of the institution of the medieval ruler, but also as an expression of true devotion, of faith in life everlasting to be earned precisely through the construction and embellishment of churches, the sacral space which is the point of convergence and intertwining of the terrestrial and the celestial sphere, a conceptual substitute of the cosmos in those days. And it was precisely in the extraordinarily rich repertoire of visual expression, compositions and symbols, through the use of which this key structuring was expressed in any epoch and in a number of different ways, that the French explorer recognised the fundamental quality of ancient Serbian art. Its spirit was in constant touch with the life of the milieu of its creation, changes in society brought about changes in the art of that society, too, and that could by no means escape Millet's sharp eye, tuned to detect even the slightest nuance. Therefore, the three part, spatial-chronological configuration of the central chapters of the book was a reliable route set by the very impulses of history and the author was well and already long aware of the fact that that history would best explain itself by virtue of its preserved monuments. The first stylistically homogenous group of Serbian monuments, the Raka school, originated and persevered in the central parts of the state in the period between the second half of the XII and the first decades of the XIV century. Its architectural characteristics fully reflected all aspects of the ambivalent image of Serbian medieval art on that territory. Beginning with the church of the Virgin in Studenica, the endowment of the founder of the ruling dynasty and its future saint Stefan (Simeon) Nemanja, the choice of ktetors, their learned councillors, generally from the ranks of church dignitaries and, finally, of the master builders was permanently marked by a striving to encase the space of worship, the concept of

8 which was adopted from Byzantine architecture, with facades whose material, building technique, type and disposition of decoration in stone, in other words whose general structure was undeniably rooted in Romanesque and Romano - Gothic architecture of Italy and France. In following the line of development of the Raka school, Millet had, in the manner of a true detective, recognised that prologue to such an idea of architecture was to be found among slightly earlier or contemporary smaller churches raised in cities of the southern regions of the east Adriatic coast, thus momentarily sketching and authentic map of routes of transfer of western influences, underlying the significance of a rather small but exceptionally important territory for Serbian culture and art, which has always been its maritime window to the world. But Studenica was not raised as a hybrid or an overgrown copy, beginning with its dimensions and complex constructional solutions to the overall silhouette of its exterior produced by the marble of its walls, the brick of its dome and its lavish sculptural decoration, it is a capital step forward in creation based on reception, a work of art which even today compares with the best of what the southern and central parts of Italy have to offer because the hand of its master wrote out the iconographic messages of eastern Christianity using the form of western calligraphy. The importance of the monument, the mausoleum of the founding father of the nation, made a deep imprint on all subsequent artistic creation among the Serbs having become a paragon of highest quality which the heirs of Nemanja constantly strove to reach in their own endowments. The reason they never succeeded in this intention did not, however, lie in the lack of talented artists but precisely in that interlocking of art and the times, a touch which, from decade to decade, brought about a constant remodelling of the paradigm model according to novel tendencies and requirements. The rhythm at which these reinterpretations of the prototype appeared in Serbia of those days was strikingly dynamic. For only a couple of years had passed from the completion of Nemanja's final resting place when already work began on the construction of ia, a centre of cult of the Serbian medieval state which was to warrant the legitimacy of the ruling house based on most universal grounds underlying Christian civilisation of the Middle Ages, and thus shared also by the ruling houses of the West, by virtue of the most esteemed Christian relics gathered there, material proof of Christ's life and passion. Therefore, it was already in this instance that the concept of the church from Studenica was modified and augmented by new spatial units which automatically resulted in novel contours of the exterior. Still, its general appearance remained very close to the western idiom on this and all subsequent monuments of the same group. In the XIII century it was particularly conspicuous on the exterior of Sopoani, which corresponds entirely to those of Romanesque basilicas, or the monastery church at Gradac,

9 the endowment of Helene d'Anjou, wife of king Uro I, which, according to the written sources, was modelled on Studenica but, even so, is beyond any doubt a creation of builders with the skill and knowledge typical of masters coming from her own homeland. Identical tendencies were to continue also in the architecture of certain churches raised by Serbian rulers at the beginning of the XIV century: king Milutin, the sovereign who made a decisive turn not only towards Byzantine culture but Byzantine territory as well, modelled his own mausoleum, the church of St. Stephen at Banjska, on the example set by Nemanja. However, the general appearance of the facades made of alternating rows of polychrome marble is much closer to that of cathedrals of Tuscany. And as for Deani, that monumental five nave basilica raised by Milutin's son Stefan, the concept of which is the work of a Franciscan monk, the general tone of Millet's text indicates that there he felt right at home because he saw in the forms of the whole or its particular elements, like the five apse choir of the church, solutions which brought back memories of churches from Normandy like those of Caen or Bocherville. The subject matter of the lavish, supremely carved sculptural decoration of Studenica, Banjska and Deani inspires him to recall ancient paradigms formulated already in preChristian civilisations or in the distant regions of the Christian East. Still, its forms and manner of carving lead him in the direction of Bari, Pavia, Milan, Charlieu. Le parement, les formes d'arcatures, les grandes fentres et les portails, en un mot, les morceaux de choix, restent romans. Ils restent ce que les Serbes ont compris de l'Occident. Ils restent serbes (The walls, the forms of arches, the large windows and portals, in a word, the elements of choice, remain Romanesque. They remain that which the Serbs have taken from the West. They remain Serbian). A new touch with Byzantium, achieved through a gradual conquest of its provinces during the first half of the XIV century, opened wide the door to a turnover in all segments of Serbian society, including artistic production. Serbia was no longer just a neighbour but a specific integral part of the organism of the empire of Constantinople, torn as it was then by civil strife. What's more, Serbia was in a position to exert significant influence on its political scene, it was powerful enough to offer to Byzantine noblemen that which not even the emperor himself could not offer at the given moment. But, as it often happened in the Middle Ages, stepping over the generally undefined state boundaries simultaneously implied an even greater measure of adoption of the older culture on the part of the new arrivals. Thus, it was precisely this thrust which determined that the richly flowing source of Byzantine art in all its forms would gain new freshness through Serbian creation. That is how what Millet called the Serbian Byzantine school came into being, a large group of monuments whose common

10 architectural trait was space of the cross-in-square type with one, two or five domes resting on massive, free-standing supports or the lateral walls of the church. The described disposition of units in the interior was the direct result of previous and contemporary developments of main currents in the history of church building of Constantinople, Thessaloniki, Epirus. But while that long repeated spatial matrix inevitably lead Byzantine masters into a routine, Serbian builders saw in it a new opportunity for creating original variations. The architecture of Milutin's five-domed churches, above all of Graanica, with its extraordinarily dynamic rhythm of alteration of smaller and larger spatial units which, from the ground up, grow into a unique organism of double tiered vaults carrying the central dome, undeniably displays an awareness that the process of redefining the standard elements and their mutual relations leads naturally to the emergence of new entities. On the other hand, the understanding and appreciation of one of the most significant elements of late Byzantine art, i.e. of classical heritage, gave church facades a rational, calm appearance, cleansed of overflowing decoration and entirely focused on a gradual build up of the basic mass of the building which, in the end, would actually produce a monumental pyramidal shape. Still, this generation of artists in Serbia also had an ear for the other trade mark of art of the day. On Graanica it appears in rather reduced form but on other monuments of the same epoch it clearly makes a statement. The detail or ornament made of pieces of brick joined together to form numberless variations of geometric and floral patterns, joined organically to the rows of arcades spreading on the exterior faces of church walls. From simple applications, this element grew into the hallmark of an unprecedented visual intensity of the facades which set the exteriors of churches far apart and made them entirely different from any seen in previous periods. Architecture thus gained an entirely new visual quality epitomized in the use of polychrome material, a jagged silhouette or, rather, pyramidal build-up of masses and decorative motifs. Together, these elements finally transformed this architecture into an image made of brick and stone, one which, by its very nature and opulence of detail, stood up fully to any fresco of the same period. In studying numerous Serbian churches raised by rulers and noblemen and concentrated on the territory of Kosovo and FYR Macedonia, churches whose architectural discourse was based on such tendencies, Millet noted with equal precision both the elements taken over from Byzantine centres and those which gave them the mark of originality. The final chapter of ancient Serbian art, the so-called school of the Morava, got its name in Millet's book after the territory which, from the closing decades of the XIV to the middle of the XV century, persevered in the face of Turkish conquests as the last, partially independent Christian state on the Balkans. The balance in power between its two neighbours,

11 the Turks and the Hungarians, both equally oriented towards conquest, brought it to the verge of utter disaster soon after 1389. However, only fifteen years later, as a result of the weaknesses of the conquerors and the diplomatic skill of its leading men, Serbia of the Morava period would rise up under the rule of despot Stefan Lazarevi and for the next quarter of a century live under comparatively stable political and economic conditions. Mainly through his own efforts and dedication, its would also become the scene of truly particular artistic production which, both visually and semiotically, represented the sublimation of the fundamental and perennial ideas of medieval Christendom. In the architecture of the churches raised by Stefan's father, prince Lazar, especially in that of his mausoleum in the monastery of Ravanica, there is a resounding of echoes of spatial concepts of Athonite buildings, of the structure of the mausoleum of Serbian tsar Duan, and of the already mentioned tendency towards a decorative effect of the exterior as a general trademark of architecture of the times. In other words, what was generally modern came together with that which belonged to local tradition. However, already in the case of Lazar's court chapel of St. Stephen in Kruevac, the local is practically inexistent for the entire corpus of architecture of that period, and art in general, opens up again to welcome novelties. More than ever before in Serbia, exiles from all over the Orthodox world are present in its midst because, at least for a while, it was a safe haven for those fleeing from Turkish threat. Those members of the last generation of the intellectual elite of the Christian East, monks from Sinai and Athos, noblemen and artists from Constantinople and Greece, men of letters from Bulgaria, all under the patronage of an exceptionally learned ruler writer and his aristocrats, created what we today could call an international style of Serbian art, a number of diverse works sharing the concept and deeply rooted in an awareness of the imminent end of the world and close proximity of the second coming of Christ. In the world of ideas of medieval man that implied faith and hope that he would find himself in the eternal bliss of the Kingdom of Heaven which could be earned only by God-approved deeds here on earth. That is why any better-off member of the community, each according to his own potential, is dedicated to raising a smaller or larger, humbler or more lavishly set up church, painters are devoted to subjects from the life of the Virgin as the mediatrix of mankind, architects and sculptors are focused on producing opulent ensembles so dear to Millet in which motifs of squares and rosettes in brick and stone appear as ancient symbols of Paradise. Despot Stefan himself is hastily engaged in building Belgrade whose summits, in the words of his biographer, are entirely like the summits of Jerusalem. Together with Belgrade, he is also dedicated to raising the heavily fortified monastery of Resava, a paradigm of the age old vision of a blessed cove

12 in the wilderness, only to have, as an ultimate expression of the spirit of the times, figures dressed in contemporary costumes quite like his own and those of his courtiers painted in scenes representing the life of Christ, that is - life everlasting. Christian myth was becoming reality and reality was becoming a Christian myth. Well aware of the fate which awaited them, the Serbs wrought their final swords from the stone of their churches and the colour of their frescoes. Still, did they not share the same fear and the same weapons which in turn clouded or irradiated the skies of the late Middle Ages of Western Europe, too? At that point, however, the geographic location of Serbia had to play its part for, sooner or later, life on the crossroads in the Middle Ages inevitably lead to obliteration by the drive of a greater force overtaking its path. When this book came out of print in Paris in 1919, Gabriel Millet was actually only at the start of his Serbian project. His intention was to publish a corpus of wall paintings from the churches he visited already in 1906 and he kept working on that task during his subsequent visits to Serbia, constantly enlarging the existing documentation. Although four large volumes including photographs and drawings of frescoes appeared before the French public only in the period between 1954 and 1969, already at the beginning of the XX century the power of Millet's words written out in this and other books of his, his great esteem in academic circles and constant communication with other great and most renowned scholars of the medieval past, lead Serbian monuments down that path of glory to a place they rightfully deserve and one which they will permanently hold in the general history of art, culture and civilisation of the Middle Ages. To paraphrase the thought of Fernand Braudel, a master of equal skill in exploring the past, we could say that Gabriel Millet, with his eye finely tuned to detect diversity, but also with his awareness that history was not made up of diversity alone, bore within himself that crucial precondition to perceive, on the territory of the seemingly so different Balkans, and present to the world the nature of originality of ancient Serbian art as warranty of it authentic European identity. In the decades which followed, the noted followers of Millet's work branched out traditional or blazed new methodological approaches in studying the artistic heritage of the Middle Ages but regardless of the chosen point of view that heritage could no longer be truly perceived without Serbian architecture, wall painting, sculpture. In carefully chosen words, Serbian medieval monuments or specific questions related to them have since been the subject of a great number of the most distinguished encyclopaedias, great surveys of Byzantine architecture ( R. Krautheimer, Early Christian and Byzantine Architecture; C.Mango, Byzantine Architecture) or art in general ( A. Grabar, Medieval Art of Eastern Europe; D. T. Rice, Art of the Byzantine Era ), up to the grand

13 exhibition Byzantium: Faith and Power, held in 2004 at the Metropolitan Museum in New York, in which exhibits from Serbia had a very noted place. In all mentioned texts and on all mentioned occasions, two basic components of Serbian medieval art are pointed out: its idiosyncratic nature displayed in various fields which obliges the observer to view it as a distinctive, particular stratum of Byzantine creation, and an exceptionally high artistic quality of a large number of its works. Thus, in a word, by virtue of its nature and meaning, if not only by criteria of absolute quality, it joins that specific trans-cultural gallery of art works which houses such creation as the Capella Palatina in Palermo, the cathedrals of southern Italy, the church complex in Pisa, the basilica of San Marco in Venice, the chapel of Charlemagne in Aachen, the domed churches of western France. A small but, beyond any doubt, well chosen party. The entire work of Gabriel Millet has, unquestionably, shown the the broadest public throughout the world that the churches and monasteries of Kosovo and Metohija are an inseparable part of the Serbian historical, spiritual and cultural milieu and heritage. The irrevocable truth of his conclusions has only been confirmed by subsequent results of scholarly interest in the subject and have thus gained force. It is, therefore, the duty of the international community to preserve, by all possible means, Serbian monuments, as beacons of one-time and, thus, also contemporary European civilisation, from constant threat of permanent destruction. Ivan Stevovi, Ph.D. Department of Art History Faculty of Philosophy University of Belgrade Translated by Jelena Erdeljan, M.A. Department of Art History Faculty of Philosophy University of Belgrade