“Christian Art and Privileges under the First Ottoman Sultans”
by
Lilyana Yordanova
Discussant: Discussant: Cecily Hilsdale, McGill University
Morrice Hall/Institute of Islamic Studies, Room 328 (Third Floor)
McGill University
On February 22, Wednesday
5 PM (EST)
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Speaker Bio
Lilyana Yordanova is a research fellow at the École française d’Athènes in Greece. She holds a Ph.D. in Art History and Archeology of the Byzantine and Post-Byzantine world from the École Pratique des Hautes Études in Paris. Since 2020, she is conducting a project about cross-cultural and interconfessional relations in the long 15th century based on the analysis of Christian and Muslim architecture and its impact on urban morphology in the Central Balkans. As of 2022, Yordanova also co-ordinates a five-year research program with Olivier Delouis (Centre national de la recherche scientifique, Maison française d’Oxford) which aims to promote the study of the interim period of the 14th-16th century in South-Eastern Europe as an emerging field through a series of workshops and seminars that read across disciplinary divides as well as linguistic and ethnic limits. Her book, entitled À la gloire de Dieu ! Commande et donation pieuses en Bulgarie médiévale (XIIe-XVe s.), will be published by the Éditions de l’École française d’Athènes in 2023.
AbstractSince the early 1360s, the Ottoman state gradually asserted control over Western Thrace and Eastern Macedonia by reducing local lords to vassals and by conducting several successful military campaigns. With the halt of attempts by Christian rulers to reclaim lost territories about a century later, the two above-mentioned regions became the firm core of the Rumelia beylerbeylik, with the city of Sofia as its capital. Once divided among the Byzantine,Serbian, and Bulgarian medieval states as well as Albanian potentates, the area retained the attention of Ottoman rulers over time because of the Via Egnatia and Via Diagonalis, two strategic routes not only from an economic but also from a military standpoint. It is again this area that witnessed intense building activity and artistic effervescence since the second half of the 15th century, shedding light on cultural contacts not evidenced by other sources.
Reaching beyond current national borders to embrace the material in its interconnectedness, this presentation shall address three aspects pertaining to the history and art history of Western Thrace and Eastern Macedonia in the long 15th century: 1) the patronage of Ottoman sultans over Christian monastic foundations and the reception of their image by the Christian community; 2) the emergence of new artistic networks after the reconfiguration of political and ecclesiastic borders, and 3) the incorporation of “Ottoman aesthetics” in Christian iconography and monumental decoration.
