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CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

A CASE STUDY IN THE

EMERGENCE OF
BYZANTINE STUDIES
Serbia in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries
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Srd̄an Pirivatrić
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W hen Byzantine studies emerged during the humanistic period, the Serbian
lands were mostly under Ottoman control, separated from the intellectual
currents in Christian Europe. In the wider South Slavic region, the rudimentary
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Byzantine studies of the humanistic scholars from Dubrovnik and Dalmatia were
most often simply excerpts from Byzantine historiographers based on their western
European editions.1 The works by these authors from the eastern Adriatic coast, with
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the significant exception of Mauro Orbini in abridged Russian translation (1722),

had almost no reception among the Serbs. Austrian Count Ðord̄e Branković, learned
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writer of an extensive work with a medieval conception of history (named “Chron-

icles,” written between 1690 and 1711), made scant use of some Byzantine sources in
his work, but nevertheless he became the first Serbian historiographer who, although
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only in a rudimentary manner, worked with original Byzantine source material.

Archimandrite Jovan Rajić, the first ever Serbian author of a modern history
(“of various Slavic peoples,” being the Bulgarians, Croats and Serbs, published
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in 1794–5), having been living on the periphery of the Austrian empire, used certain
Byzantine authors too, but only in the Latin translations of the chrestomathies. In
both cases one is concerned with the reception of European Byzantine studies rather
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than any contribution to their development.

From the uprising of the Serbs in the Smederevo sanjak (1804) in the Ottoman
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empire to the creation of the autonomous (1830) Principality of Serbia and after-
wards of an independent Principality (1878) and Kingdom (1882), several factors
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affected the development of the science of history in Serbia in general, and of Byzan-
tine studies in particular. Besides the general aspirations towards the higher levels of
enlightenment, it had been mostly historicism, as the integral part of the foundations
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of the Serbian nationalism in the nineteenth century, that prevailed. As was natural,
there was a great interest in the Serbian past, most particularly the medieval period.
The other significant factor was methodological in nature. The criticism in the
approach towards the historical sources was evident early on, at the very beginnings
of modern historiography, for example in the works by Jovan Rajić or Vuk Karadzić.
However, the critical historiography of the nineteenth century in Serbia remained for
a long time rudimentary. Gathering and publishing sources were the preoccupation

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of learned men who wanted to contribute to the progress of historical knowledge.

This was particularly visible in the activities over several decades of the Society of
Serbian Senses (Slovesnost) and its heir, the Serbian Learned Society, the predecessor
of the Serbian Royal Academy. Outside of these valuable heuristic activities, the
road to scientifically and methodologically based research was long and slow. Most
particularly, lectures in medieval studies and history in the Lyceum and the Great
School in Belgrade, the predecessor of the university, were under the strong influence
of national-romantic ideas, epic poetry and tradition in general. The teachers and
researchers were all amateurs. Finally, Serbian historiography was thematically
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mostly focused on national issues. Within this general climate, the Serbian transla-
tion of the Ioannina Chronicle, by Jeftimije Avramović in 1862, represents an
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individual attempt by an erudite, although it should be stressed that it was actually

the first Byzantine study in Serbia, and that it remains the only translation of this
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important source to this day.

The key event for the development of Serbian historiography and medieval studies
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was the outcome of the conflict between the representatives of the romantic and
critical schools (the conflict is very well known, although not completely clear in its
details).2 The critical orientation of historiography represented a general phenom-
enon in many countries, and thus could be considered a stage in the development
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of the very science of history. However, besides that general meaning, reconsidered
in the framework of the local situation in Serbia during the last quarter of the nine-
teenth century, the issue of survival or supremacy of the critical historiography was
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in close relation to the issue of the general direction of the culture, with significant
consequences on the cultural policy of the state and social institutions. The victory of
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the critical school, which was strongly felt in the selection of members of the newly
established Serbian Royal Academy of Science in 1886, as well as in the personnel
changes at the Great School, heralded an age of significant progress of the historical
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studies in Serbia. The outcome of this conflict, which for years shook not only the
scientific and educational circles and the Great School, but society in general, was
linked to the archimandrite Ilarion Ruvarac and Ljubomir Kovačević, and also to a
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foreigner, a Czech, Konstantin Jireček. Stojan Novaković did not get involved in this
conflict, although he introduced the critical approach much earlier in his method and
his widely directed research. These scientists touched upon Byzantine themes in their
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works to a greater or lesser degree, but they did so with the aim of researching the
Serbian Middle Ages. Finally, none of them, with the exception of Jireček, was
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professionally equipped for historical studies – based on formal criteria, they them-
selves were amateurs.
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Actually the first Serbian contribution to Byzantine history, namely Constantine:

The Last Emperor of the Greeks or the Conquest of Constantinople by the Turks
(ad 1453), was undertaken not in Serbia, but in London in 1892 by then ambassador
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to the Court of St James and later Count, Čedomilj Mijatović, who was both a highly
positioned politician and a historian. He was also considered a member of the critical
school. The work was quite solid for that stage of Serbian historiography and Byzan-
tine studies. Nevertheless it remained a solitary effort, an expression of the personal
interest of the author in pre-Ottoman Balkan studies and also of some indicative
political views. Significantly, it was dedicated to Prince Constantine, the heir to the
Greek throne. Mijatović was surely among those who considered that the Kingdom

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of Greece should move towards the revival of the Byzantine empire and that Prince
Constantine should take over what Emperor Constantine XI had lost.
Nonetheless, parallel to the rise of historical studies in general, and also to
the important changes in the teaching methodology at the Great School in the last
decades of the nineteenth century, it was becoming increasingly clear that a system-
atic approach to Byzantine studies was needed.3 In 1890 it was decided to found a
department at the Great School with a “special view on Byzantine history,” but this
decision was not realized. After 1893, Byzantine studies were informally introduced
into the curriculum, once Božidar Prokić had become lecturer in the History
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Department on Ancient History and the Middle Ages, and his interests had gradually
turned towards Byzantium.
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At the turn of the twentieth century, Serbia enjoyed its first generation of histor-
ians who had been educated abroad, and were aware of the importance of Byzantine
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sources for the study of national history. Thus Stanoje Stanojević envisaged a
voluminous edition of all the Byzantine sources relating to the Serbs (although of ten
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planned volumes, only two were published in Novi Sad, in 1903 and 1906, entitled
The Byzantine Empire and the Serbs). The government’s decision to provide state
scholarships for the advancement of the talented graduate students abroad was of
utmost significance to the development of Byzantine and medieval studies. These
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developments in Serbia turned out to be a happy concurrence with important

moments in the development of Byzantine studies in western Europe. At that time,
the first Byzantine departments were being established at major European uni-
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versities, in Munich in 1898 and in Paris in 1899. The state scholarships of the
Kingdom of Serbia enabled a group of students to attend the newly established
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seminars given by the already famous Karl Krumbacher in Munich, which had sig-
nificant consequences for the development of Byzantine studies in Serbia as well as in
other areas of historiography. Most of the generation of Serbian graduate students
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who, with the government’s support, became specialized Byzantinists or medievalists

abroad – Stanoje Stanojević, Vladimir Ćorović, Jovan Radonić, Nikola Radojčić,
Dragutin Anastasijević, Božidar Prokić and Filaret Granić – were at some point
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students of Krumbacher.4
Among Krumbacher’s students from Serbia, Dragutin Anastasijević (1877–1950)
could be considered the first specialized Byzantine scientist. After graduation from
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the Great School in Belgrade in the field of classical philology he was a student of
Krumbacher with a state scholarship. He received his Ph.D. from Munich in 1905
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with the dissertation Die paränetischen Alphabete in der griechischen Literatur.

Almost simultaneously, a professor at the Great School, Božidar Prokić (1859–
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1922), received his Ph.D. as Krumbacher’s student in 1906 with the well-known
dissertation Die Zusätze in der Handshrift des Johannes Skylitzes (Cod. Vindob.
Hist. Gr. LXXIV).
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In the meantime some significant changes occurred at the Great School in Belgrade
which brought about the establishment of an independent centre for Byzantine
studies. Namely, the Great School was turned into the university in 1905, where at
the beginning of 1906 the Seminar for Byzantine Studies was established within the
Faculty of Philosophy (FPh), thus becoming the third oldest university department
for Byzantine studies in Europe.5 In May 1906 young Anastasijević was appointed
the chair of the Seminar, at the rank of associate professor. In his first teaching years,

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1906–10, Anastasijević taught medieval and New Greek language and Greek palae-
ography, and from 1910 to 1914 he taught the history of the Byzantine empire for
the period 395–1025. The exercises mostly consisted of reading texts and analysing
their language and style. He paid special attention to the creation of the Seminar’s
library and in spite of a scarcity of resources he managed to create a relatively
expansive collection. But it was almost completely destroyed during the First World
War. Prokić continued his career at the National Archive. The basic line of his
research, before and after the publication of his dissertation, was the investigation
of the so-called Samuilo’s state, an important research subject for Serbian histori-
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ography and a subject on which he published several works, not fully surpassed to
this day.
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Nikola Radojčić (1882–1964), who studied in Graz, Zagreb, Jena and Munich,
was a student of Krumbacher, but also of Heinrich Geltzer, who was his mentor for
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his important Ph.D. thesis Zwei letzten Komnenen auf dem konstantinopolischen
Tron, published in 1907. His body of work makes him one of the most significant
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Serbian historians in general; however, after having published several significant

Byzantine studies – on how Byzantine authors of the eleventh and twelfth centuries
named the Croats and Serbs, on Anna Komnene’s information on the Serbs, on the
information supplied by later Byzantine authors on the Serbs – his interests turned
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away from Byzantine themes towards the history of the institutions, state law, the
history of Bosnia and the history of historiography.
For Stanoje Stanojević (1873–1937) and Vladimir Ćorović (1885–1941), students
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of Konstantin Jireček and Vatroslav Jagić, the short time they spent with Krum-
bacher was just an additional, secondary professional advancement. Stanojević’s
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interest in the relations between the Byzantine empire and Serbia, from the beginning
of the century, almost completely ceased in his later years, with the significant excep-
tion of his fruitful Serbian diplomatic studies, which also included the Byzantine
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component. Ćorović, on the other hand, in his remarkable scientific career – over
1,000 published works make him the most prolific Serbian historian – rarely touched
upon Byzantine themes. Nonetheless, the Byzantine component in their professional
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education was very significant for their very important support for the personnel
changes which, in the 1930s, brought about the advancement of Byzantine studies at
Belgrade University.
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The First World War interrupted lectures at the university, which restarted
after the war in significantly different political circumstances, in the newly founded
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Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (from 1931 onwards Yugoslavia). After
the end of the war, Anastasijević, with typical fervour, began working to replenish the
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Seminar library, which in part was covered by German war reparations funding.
However, as was the case in the years before the war, the key problem of the Seminar
was the lack of resources and associates. For many years he conducted his research in
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the archives of the Mt Athos monasteries, primarily Hilandar and the Great Lavra.
He took over 600 photographs of various documents nowadays partly lost, and the
precious collection is now kept in the Archive of the Serbian Academy of Science and
Arts (SANU). He was preoccupied with Byzantine–Serbian relations, particularly
under the first members of the Nemanjić dynasty and the period before the fall of
the Byzantine empire, as well as with Byzantine–Bulgarian and Byzantine–Russian
relations in the second half of the tenth century, in connection to Samuilo’s state. It is

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known that he was working on a synthetic overview of Byzantine history, which was
published in over 100 articles in the National Serbo-Croato-Slovene Encyclopedia
(I–IV, 1924–9). Anastasijević’s studies provided him with international renown as
a distinguished Byzantine scientist. In 1921, Anastasijević started teaching at the
Theological Faculty, but he remained the chair and often the only associate at
the Seminar for Byzantine Studies. The organization of the Second International
Congress of Byzantine Studies, held in Belgrade in 1927, was his great success. In
1931 Anastasijević finally left the Seminar, without leaving behind him an immediate
successor or heir.
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Nonetheless, as early as in 1932, another student of Krumbacher – a monk named

Filaret (Branko) Granić (1883–1948) – was appointed chair of the Seminar. He was
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educated in Novi Sad and Vienna, and later in Munich, where, in 1909, near the end
of Krumbacher’s life, he obtained his Ph.D. with the dissertation Die Subscriptionen
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in den datierten griechischen Handschriften des 9. und 10. Jahrhunderts. He entered

an Orthodox monastic order in 1912 and later graduated at the Higher Theological
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School in Sremski Karlovci. After the war he transferred to the Theological Faculty in
Belgrade, and from 1932 to 1941 he taught the cultural history of the Byzantine
empire as an honorary professor at the Seminar. Granić’s work, a significant scien-
tific corpus, did not receive sufficient recognition in his lifetime. He dealt with issues
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that remained outside the focus of scientific interests, or were rather narrow and
recondite. Nevertheless, his interests were diverse, including church history, canon
law, the relations between the state and the Church in the fifth and sixth centuries,
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the first monastic communities, the church policy of Justinian, the founding of the
archbishopric of Ohrid, and the autocephalous state of the Serbian Church and its
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monastic codebooks. He covered these issues in a number of works of permanent

value, first because of his scrupulous approach to the subject and sources, but also
because of his special knowledge gained through his education and his service in
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the Church. Particularly valuable were his notes and outlines published in the
bibliographic sections of Byzantinische Zeitschrift.
The position of chair of the Seminar was given to George Ostrogorsky (1902–76)
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in 1940, even then a well-established Byzantine scientist, who under peculiar circum-
stances had ended up in Belgrade a few years earlier. Ostrogorsky was born in
St Petersburg, which he fled during the October Revolution in 1917, taking asylum in
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Finland. He began his university studies in Heidelberg, continued them in Paris, and
completed them in 1925 at Heidelberg with his Ph.D. dissertation Die ländlische
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Steurgemeinde des byzantinischen Reiches im X. Jahrundert. From 1929, he taught

as a private associate professor at the university of Breslau (today Wroclaw, Poland).
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However, with the rise of Nazism, his living and working conditions deteriorated.
Ostrogorsky decided to accept an earlier invitation from Stanoje Stanojević and
moved from Breslau to Belgrade in 1933. In the first years of his stay in Belgrade he
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worked within the Seminar for Byzantine Studies as an honorary professor, until he
took over the chair from Granić in 1940.
Around the same time when Ostrogorsky started working at the Seminar,
Vladimir Mošin (1894–1987) joined the department at the position of a private
associate professor. He was part of the last wave of Russian scientists who, as refu-
gees from Russia, relocated to the Kingdom of SCS between the two wars, and made
an enormous contribution to their new homeland. Some of them were extremely

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important for Byzantine research, and one might mention Teodor Taranovski
(1875–1936), Sergije Troicki (1878–1972), Aleksandar Solovjev (1890–1971),
although of the group only Ostrogorsky and Mošin could be considered Byzantinists
stricto sensu. In 1936, together with Solovjev, Mošin published a very significant
volume, exemplary for its time, of the Greek charters issued by the Serbian rulers.
However, Mošin’s engagement at the Seminar was casual, while he was waiting for
several years to be appointed associate professor at the FPh in Skopje, which eventu-
ally happened in 1940. On the other hand, Ostrogorsky’s activities were closely
linked to the Seminar from the very beginning, and completely in accordance with
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the wishes of that circle of historians who assisted in bringing him to Belgrade. It
would turn out that his coming was a turning point in the development of Byzantine
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studies in Serbia.
Yugoslavia’s involvement in World War II, in April 1941, did not interrupt
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Ostrogorsky’s scientific work, but rather saw him secluded in his study, away from
the public eye, where in silence he prepared significant studies which awaited better
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times for publication. University life was almost at a standstill during the war, but the
Seminar library was this time spared, and thus facilitated his solitary research.
Without a doubt, George Ostrogorsky was one of the biggest names in Byzantine
studies of the past century. His scientific work is well known in details, and has been
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evaluated on many occasions.6 The first years of his brilliant scientific career were
marked by his remarkable dissertation, and he proceeded to discuss the commercial
and social foundations of the development of the Byzantine empire, the social
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metamorphosis of the Byzantine empire, the relationship between the state and
Church, the tax system, co-rulership, prices and wages. The most important phase of
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Ostrogorsky’s work was in Yugoslavia, where he published seminal works on autoc-

racy in the Byzantine empire and the Slavic world, the medieval hierarchy of the
states, the agrarian situation in the Byzantine empire, Byzantine iconography, and on
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relations between the Byzantine empire and the Slavic world. Out of this extensive
and modern research came his famous synthesis of Byzantine history, considered for
many decades the best of its kind, and in many ways unsurpassed – Geschichte
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des byzantinischen Staates, Munich 1940 (2nd edn 1952, 3rd edn 1963, Sonderaus-
gabe 1965).
Radical political changes came about by the end of the Second World War, namely
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the Communist Party of Yugoslavia coming to power in Belgrade and Serbia (1944)
and then the rest of Yugoslavia (1945), as a result of a series of international
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circumstances, war operations of the USSR army and activities of the Yugoslav
Partisan-Communist movement. These had a significant and long-lasting effect on
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both Serbian and Yugoslav historiography, in a degree and manner that thus far has
not been the subject of any scientific research. One might offer a general opinion that
medieval and Byzantine studies were, compared to other disciplines, relatively
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unscathed, and the opportunities for scientific work and university lectures in these
fields remained relatively good, although they did not approach the favourable
conditions that had existed before the war.
The material resources at the university, in the difficult post-war years of
“reparation and rebuilding,” were scarce, and thus it could not have been expected
for the Seminar to be transformed into a significant scientific centre. However, the
possibility of establishing scientific centres within the academies of science at the

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federal level resulted in the foundation of the Institute for Byzantine Studies of SANU
in 1948, under the leadership of Ostrogorsky. In the decades that followed, the
Institute proved itself to be the organizational nucleus of large projects, mostly
visible in its journal Zbornik radova Vizantološkog instituta (ZRVI), a series of
monograph studies and an edition of Vizantijski izvori za istoriju naroda Jugoslavije
(VIINJ) which offered translations of and commentaries on excerpts from Byzantine
sources that related to the history of the peoples of Yugoslavia. The scientific work was
organized in several larger thematic groups, consisting of the history of the Byzantine
empire, Byzantine–South Slavic relations, Byzantine literature and philology, and
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Byzantine and post-Byzantine art.

Ostrogorsky was the initiator of and driving force behind all initiatives in
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Byzantine studies during the three post-war decades. He continued working on the
themes outlined in his pre-war research. Numerous fundamental studies followed,
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including those on peasants, the Byzantine land register, Emperor Dušan and his
aristocrats in their struggle with the Byzantine empire, the Byzantine emperor and
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the world hierarchic order, the internal structure of the Byzantine empire, the cre-
ation of the thematic system, the history of tax-exemption in the Byzantine empire,
Byzantine towns in the early Middle Ages, the Byzantine village municipality,
the feuds under the Komnenos dynasty, the Byzantine aristocracy, and the evolution
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of the Byzantine coronation ceremony. A particular mention should be given to the

significant monographs on the pronoia and the Serres region after the death of
Dušan. His synthetic history was published in many languages, including in English
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for the first time in 1968. Almost all of his works were published in the Collected
Works of George Ostrogorsky, in five volumes (1969–70). Under his firm hand,
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the Twelfth International Congress of Byzantine Studies was held in Ohrid in 1961,
after which he became the honorary President of the International Association of
Byzantine Studies, and was a recipient of significant national and international
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honours and awards.

Common activities of the Seminar and the Institute under Ostrogorsky’s
leadership brought about the phenomenon known in international circles as the
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“Belgrade School of Byzantine Studies.” From the early 1960s through to the end of
the 1980s, over twenty graduate students, fifteen of whom were foreigners, under-
took their specializations at the Seminar, under then rather restrictive conditions for
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attending the graduate courses. Under Ostrogorsky’s supervision, several prominent

local Byzantine scientists and medievalists graduated, first and foremost Jadran
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Ferluga, Božidar Ferjančić and Ljubomir Maksimović.

Jadran Ferluga (1920–2004) received his Ph.D. in 1956 for a dissertation on
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Byzantine administration in Dalmatia. His career as a professor at the FPh

lasted until he transferred to Münster in 1971, where he took over the Seminar
for Byzantine Studies. His significant career focused on the issues of Byzantine pro-
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vincial administration, Byzantine rule over Dalmatia and Byzantine–South Slavic

relations, as well as some particularities of the Byzantine feudal system. Particularly
interesting are his commentaries with the translation of excerpts from Leo the
Deacon and John Skylitzes, where he elaborated in great detail on many issues relat-
ing to the so-called Samuilo’s state. His fruitful career in Münster was unfortunately
stopped prematurely, in 1993, due to illness.
Ostrogorsky’s immediate successor at the Seminar and the Institute was his

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student Božidar Ferjančić (1929–98). Born and educated in Belgrade, after under-
graduate studies of history at the FPh in Belgrade he received his Ph.D. in 1960 for a
thesis on despots in the Byzantine empire and South Slavic states. He took over the
running of the Seminar from Ostrogorsky as a tenured professor, and ended his
career at the FPh in 1994, while he worked as the director of the Institute from 1976
until his death in 1998. After Ostrogorsky’s departure, Ferjančić took over the large
responsibility of the further development of Byzantine studies in Serbia. Quietly
and unobtrusively, he organized the scientific research and took care in educating
new generations of researchers. Concurrently, his scientific career was receiving
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international acclaim.7 He was a Byzantinist of wide horizons, with interests mostly

focused on the late Byzantine period, particularly the issues of internal development,
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society, institutions and economy, which are the themes that became almost a
trademark of the Belgrade School of Byzantine studies in the last decades of the
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twentieth century. Among these are the famous studies on the dignities of despotes,
sebastokratores and kaisares, about the internal conflicts between the last Palaiolo-
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goi, properties of the Palaiologoi and the institution of co-rulership under the
Palaiologos dynasty. Besides, as a mentor for graduate studies, with his selection of
topics, he orchestrated the production of several monographs on the Palaiologoi
at the school. He also wrote monographs about Thessaly in the thirteenth and four-
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teenth centuries, and Serres under Serbian and Byzantine rule during the fourteenth
century. For the VIINJ, he translated and wrote commentaries for excerpts from the
work by Constantine Porphyrogenitos, the historians of the second half of the tenth
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century, data from different hagiographies and finally from the Byzantine rhetors of
the second half of the twelfth century. His translation and commentary of the
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excerpts from Nicephorus Gregoras and John Kantakouzenos, in collaboration with

Sima Ćirković, are outstanding. Two more almost completed larger works were
found after his death among his papers: the translation of and commentary on
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excerpts from the legal collection of Demetrios Chomatenos, and a monograph

about the king and emperor Dušan, also written in collaboration with Ćirković.
Ostrogorsky envisaged the Belgrade School of Byzantine Studies primarily as a
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school of historians, and thus history was the main focus of the scientific activities at
the Institute for Byzantine Studies, but other disciplines had their place within this
framework, notably philology and art history, and among the most important
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scholars were Franja Barišić (1914–88), Ivanka Nikolajević (Stojković) (1921–90),

Ninoslava Radošević (1943–2007) and Ivan Ðurić (1947–97). The principles laid
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out at the time by the founder of the Belgrade School, George Ostrogorsky, were
sustained through this period under the careful leadership of Božidar Ferjančić.
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During years when Yugoslavian society and the state were plunged into crisis, at the
end of the 1980s, Byzantine studies were for Serbian science “one of the few remain-
ing windows onto the world.” In the hard 1990s this enabled the small organism to
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survive, if not to flourish. The atmosphere at the Seminar and the Institute enabled
members not only to continue with their true vocation, but also, in a milieu of
intellectual and spiritual tolerance, provided them with a safe haven.
It is paradoxical that exactly at the time when the dissolution of the Socialist
Federal Republic of Yugoslavia started, the institutional nature of Byzantine studies
began to consolidate on the national level – the Yugoslav Committee for Byzantine
Studies organized the First Yugoslav Conference of Byzantine Studies in Zadar in

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November 1990. The scientific gathering in the heart of the old Byzantine theme of
Dalmatia was also the last of its kind. After the successive secession of the republics,
the break up of Yugoslavia followed, and in the light of further political develop-
ments, the Yugoslav Committee for Byzantine Studies became Serbian, within the
appropriate legal succession. In the meantime, two more conferences were held
(Studenica monastery, 1995; Krusevac, 2000), exclusively attended by Byzantine
scientists from Serbia.
After Ferjancić retired in 1994, Ljubomir Maksimović (b. 1938) became the chair
of the Seminar, and after the death of the former in 1998 he also became the director
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of the Institute. He took over both duties under very difficult and special general
conditions of delayed transition in Serbia, the UN sanctions on SR Yugoslavia and
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international isolation of the country. The principle of historical distance would

demand that our overview of the history of the institution of Byzantine studies in
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Serbia, namely the activities of the Seminar and the Institute, should stop at this
point, with a note that at the end of the second millennium, the life of the Belgrade
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School was marked by the representatives of the older and internationally acclaimed
generation of Serbian Byzantinists. Besides Ljubomir Maksimović, there were also
Gojko Subotić (b. 1931) and Mirjana Živojinović, another pupil of Ostrogorsky,
who all led the scientific projects or participated in them as the members of SANU,
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followed by Radivoj Radić (b. 1954), a distinguished middle-generation representa-

tive of the Belgrade School.
It is evident from this overview that the Seminar and the Institute were the axis of
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Byzantine studies as a scientific discipline in Serbia. However, other institutions

and many individuals also contributed fundamentally to the development of the
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discipline. Space permits us to mention only a few of them at this point.

The strong and complex relationship between old Serbian art and Byzantine art
opened up a whole new scientific field, which required interdisciplinary research.
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It was enabled primarily by the relative wealth of preserved archaeological artefacts,

and over time the fact that some of the areas with numerous or particularly import-
ant monuments (Kosovo, Metohija, the northern part of the Vardar valley in
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Macedonia) became part of the Kingdom of Serbia after the Balkan Wars ended
(1912–13). Lectures and scientific research in the fields of archaeology and art his-
tory were established at the FPh in Belgrade, as well as at the Institute of Archaeology
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of SANU and the Institute for Art History at the FPh. Several institutions created in
Skopje after the First World War, and which lasted until the Bulgarian occupation
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in 1941 – such as the Scientific Society, the FPh and the Museum of Southern Serbia
– gave Byzantine studies an important place, though not at an institutional level.
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Mihailo Dinić (1899–1970) worked on topics relating to the Serbian Middle Ages,
primarily based on material from the Dubrovnik Archives, and contributed signifi-
cantly to Byzantine studies in Serbia in the research into Byzantine–South Slavic
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relations. The same applies even to a greater extent to his student and immediate
successor at the chair of the Middle Ages National History at the FPh, Sima Ćirković
(1929). Besides his aforementioned contribution to the edition of the VIINJ, in
cooperation with Božidar Ferjančić, he focused on Byzantine–Serbian relations
in many of his works. Jovanka Kalić, professor of Medieval History at the FPh,
collaborated too on the VIINJ edition, with the commentary on the excerpts of
John Kinnamos and Niketas Choniates, and made also numerous contributions on

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different Byzantine–Serbian topics. The significant opus of Miodrag Purković

(1907–76) is often neglected, especially his studies of Serbian church and dynastic
prospography.
The very beginnings in the field of history of old Serbian arts are linked primarily
to Mihailo Valtrović (1839–1915), and then Vladimir Petković (1874–1956), Miloje
Vasić (1869–1956), Milan Kašanin (1895–1981), Radoslav Grujić (1878–1955) and
Nikolaj Lvovič Okunjev (1886–1949), while the rise and the greatest achievements
in the research are primarily linked to Svetozar Radojčić (1909–78), and then also
to some of his students, including Vojislav J. Ðurić (1925–96), Gojko Subotić
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(1931–) and Gordana Babić (1932–93). Aleksandar Deroko (1894–1988) and Ðurd̄e
Bošković (1904–90) focused on old Serbian architecture, and around the second
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half of the twentieth century, their successor, Vojislav Korać (1924–), made an inter-
nationally acclaimed contribution to this field. Vladislav Popović (1930–99), a
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member of the French Institute, made a significant mark in the field of early Byzan-
tine archaeology, while Vojislav Jovanović (1930–2005) complemented him in the
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field of old Serbian archaeology.

In discussing the emergence and consolidation of Byzantine studies in Serbia, we
have focused on the people who contributed most, and have not mentioned many
who are today working hard to preserve and advance that legacy.8 The contribution
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of scholars based in Serbia to Byzantine studies has been immense, but in many ways
it has been limited by the fact that most scholarship was published only in a language
that remains inaccessible to many Byzantinists, and to most other medievalists.
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Moreover, the Serbian contribution must be measured against similar contributions

by scholars and institutions in neighbouring states and in western Europe and
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Russia.
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NOTES
1 Barišić 1961.
2 Ćirković 1988.
3 Maksimović 1988.
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4 Maksimović forthcoming.
5 Maksimović 1988; Radić 2008.
6 Ferjančić 1993.
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7 Maksimović 2001.
8 For biographical and bibliographical details on all mentioned scholars see Ćirković and Mihaljčić
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1997. For more recent material see entries on Ferjančić in ZRVI 38 1999/2000, on Ćirković in ZRVI
41 2004, on Subotić in ZRVI 44 2007 and on Radošević in ZRVI 45 2008.
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