.

Belgrade, Kralja Petra I no.5

We are approaching one very important question which refers to the values and needs of one nation to be presented in cultural and spiritual sense and that is to be done best with the Museum of Serbian Orthodox Church (SOC). We will try to, going through that museum area, perceive the values of invaluable significance for the estimation of spiritual and cultural inheritance of Serbian people. That inheritance testifies to our glory and greatness from the 12th century furhter on and tells us of the culture we used to have at the time, when Western Europe sobbed in illiteracy and backwardness.

The Museum of Serbian Orthodox Church in Belgrade was opened on June 14 1954. During the opening ceremony, the then Serbian Patriarch Vikentije was delivered the following speech:

"In hard and suffering Serbian past towns, castles, towers disappeared but one part of the cultural wealth remained at monasteries and churches in which it was kept through ages by Serbian monks and priests... Although many valuables were destroyed in frequent wars we can be proud of what is kept today."

By the opening of this central Museum multidecade activity regarding the collection of church valuables is practically realized. The basic fund of the Museum consists of: icons, church textile, liturgical metal objects, manuscripts and printed religious service books, portraits, graphic arts (wood carving and copper engraving plates), privileges, archives materials etc.

ICONS

Icon painting works in the Museum of Serbian Orthodox Church in Belgrade are considered to be a significant collection of Serbian painting achievements from the 15th to the 19th century.

 
In the most recent paintings which are kept in the Church Museum the icon on which Jesus Christ Pantokrator is presented, the Serbian work from the 15th century is included. Certain stylish characteristics of this icon, as well as the coloring, sufficiently remind of the Serbian fresco painting from the south of Serbia.
 
 
 
 
 
The icon with the presentation of the Birth of the Mother of God appeared some decades afterwards and is also the work of an unknown Serbian animal painter. On this icon, in addition to lavelish robes and gold dishes, in the lower left corner one national motive is presented: a girl with a distaff sitting beside the born Mother of God.

 
 
  To the period of the 16th or the very beginning of the 17th century, belongs the icon of the Mother of God with Christ, is presented, surrounded by Old Testamental prophets, which once belonged to the monastery Krugedol. The stylish characteristics as well as painting skill, classify this icon into the group of those icon painting works which may be considered to be the last but successful, Byzantium painting inheritance from the period of Turkish rule in our regions. 
 
 

The significant entirety in the Museum consists of icons of Cretan painters from the end of the 15th and then from the 16th and 17th centuries. Those are the works which testify to the old painting but gradually indicate also new painting visions. The best example for that gradual transition to the new, so called Italo-Cretian painting, shows the presented icon on which are the Mother of God with Christ, St John as a boy and Saint Nicholas, which were rendered at the end of the 16th century.

A distinguished entity is presented by the icons of Russian painters, mainly from the second part of the 18th century. Among fifty Russian icons, Mother of God of Tihvin particularly stands out, all in chains, ornamented by precious stones, having appeared in the second half of the 18th century.

 
 
The particular position in the exhibit of the Church Museum holds the monumental cross on which the Crucifixion of Christ is presented with Mother of God and St John at its base. This cross, which belongs to the end of the 17th century, stood till the beginning of the Second World War as the top part of the iconostasis in the church of the monastery Velika Remeta. 
 
 
 
   

LITURGICAL METAL OBJECTS

The collection of liturgIcal vessels and other church metal objects in the Museum of Serbian Orthodox Church, presents a separate entity and by artistic value and historical duration it belongs into the most signficant ones.

The most formerly dated metal object in the Church Museum, if the collection of early Christian crosses and Byzantioum seals are taken out, is a metal relief on which the Flight of Christ to Egypt is presented, a German work from the 12th-13th centuries.

 
 
The particular artistic value present the covers on the manuscript and printed liturgical books. The covers on the manuscript Four-gospels from 1514 (on the picture) are done by the goldsmith Petar Smederevac in 1540. On one side of this Four-Gospel-book is the Crucifixion of Christ with a portrait of bishop Maksim and on the other, the Resurrection of Christ - shown as Christ's Descent into the Hades. 
 
 
 
 

  Among the numerous church artistic objects stands out, by its historical significance, a glass, the gift from the Russian Prince Ivan IV Vasiljevi6 - Ivan the Terrible - 1558 to the monastery Milegevo. Ivan the Terrible was a great contributor to Serbian monasteries, particularly to the monastery Hilandar and in the period of Turkish slavery he enabled Serbian monks to collect charity in Russia. He was doing it consciously because he had Serbian blood as well - Jelena Jakgic, by birth from a respectable Serbian family, was married to the count Glinski, the grandfather of Ivan the Terrible. 
 
 

CHURCH TEXTILE

 
 
Church textile, in addition to liturgical metal objects, presents the most valuable entity in the Museum of Serbian Orthodox Church. The epitaphion of King Milutin, from the end of the 13th or at the beginning of the 14th century, by its artistic embroidery and fine artistic contents, is included into the most significant exhibits. It is emroidered on red silk with gold and silver thread according to the model of Byzantium embroidery.
 
 
 
 
 
  The robe of Prince Lazar originated before 1389. The material, which is rightly considered to come from Porta/Luka (northern Italy), is ornamented with woven lions reared on hind legs, and one button has been preserved on which is the heraldic sign: the helmet with oxen horns which is, otherwise, found at the at coins and the seal of Prince Lazar.
 
   

  The greatest amount of church textile consists of vestments (priest's vestments) and among them the particular position hold epitrachelions. Among exposed epitrachelions the two with Greek text should be particularly indicated (1415th century) on the picture. On the upper part of one of them, which is embroidered by gold threads and ornamented by pearls, the presentation of Christ is embroidered and in rectangular fields the feast-days of Mother of God and God are embroidered, and at the end there are four saints: Athanasius the Great, John Chrysostom, Basil the Great and Nicholas of Myra in Lycia. On the second epitrachelion, which is also embroidered with gold and silver thread, in the upper part there is the presentation of Jesus Christ, half-length figures of Mother of God and St John, the Forerunner of the prayer's attitude (Deisis). In the arcades - in the row ~ the following presentations are embroidered: two angels, two apostles, six saints and two venerable men. 
 
 
 
Priest's vestments for liturgical service are numerous (deacon's, priest's and bishop`s) from the 18th and 19th centuries, and in the Museum's exhibit several robes mainly of brocade are exhibited of sakos, felonion, sticharion.

 
 
The particular entity of church textile is the collection of antimensia, over 300 of them, starting from an antimension with cryptograms from 1564. The displayed antimension from 1692 is taken from the copper engraved plate. 
 
 
 
 
 

CHARTERS, PRIVILEGES, SYNCELLUSES
AND OTHER DOCUMENTS

 
In the Museum of Serbiam Orthodox Church there are many charters, privileges, syncelluses, diplomas, among which there is also the charter of King Vukagin, Tsar Dugan and many others. The connections between Serbs and Russians testify the charters of Russian tsars. The particular entity make the privileges and documents of Austrian rulers, and Turkish documents are also kept which were being issued to the monasteries of Frui5ka Gora, mainly from the second half of the 16th and throughout the whole 17th century.
 
 
 
In the archive's fund of the Church Museum there are numerous original letters of Serbian patriarchs, metropolitans, bishops, priests and Serbian leaders from the cultural past of Serbian people.

THE GRAPHIC ART

  In the Museum the most significant collection of Serbian graphics - wood carvings and copper engravings - is kept from the 17th and 18th centuries. Into the earliest wood carvings one plate from 1671 is included (on the picture), elaborated on both sides: on one there is the presentation of Deisis and on the other archangel Michael. There are much more copper engraved boards in the Museum - twenty three of them among which the works of Hristifor Zefarovic and Zaharije Orfelin (on the picture) deserve our particular attention.

LITURGICAL BOOKS
MANUSCRIPTS AND PRINTED BOOKS

In the Museum of Serbian orthodox Church over 700 manuscripts of God's liturgical and theological books are kept from the 13th to the end of the 18th century. Among the earliest manuscript texts, twenty parchment pages of selected Gospel-Book are included from the middle of the 13th century.

  The old Serbian printed book is almost entirely represented in the Museum fund, although only a few copies are exhibited in the constant exhibit. Among the oldest printed books, besides the Octoechos from Cetinje, is the Psalter printed in Cetinje in 1494. Numerous liturgical books have been also kept, printed in Venice, Moscow, Vienna. There is also a great number of Greek, Russian, Valachian manuscript and printed books.
 
 
 

The collection of wood carved crosses out of which the most numerous are those with silver covers ornamented with filigree interlacing, precious stones and enamel, represents the significant historical and artistic value. On many crosses the historical inscriptions of founders, contributors and goldsmiths as well as other testimonies from those times have been preserved.

The Museum of the Serbian Patriarchate evidently testifies how great and what our glorious past was like. All the more we were approaching the newer times, on account of the lack of spirituality, the spiritual values became poorer for us. That is how contemporary modernism have made the real values artificial as if it caricatured the artistic beauty of old works and that is the proof of nervousness and impatience of new generations in giving something better and more worthy.