Izvorni znanstveni članak
Territorial Expansion of the Ragusan Commune/Republic and the Churches of Its Patron Saints
Ana Marinković
Sažetak
The churches of St Blaise but also those of the earlier Ragusan patron saints (primarily St Pancras) on the territory of the Ragusan commune/Republic are analyzed hagiotopographically from the oldest sources available up to the fifteenth century. Geographical distribution of the church buildings points to two major patterns of topographic expansion and the use of the patron cults for everyday political purposes in the course of Dubrovnik’s transformation from commune to republic. In the earlier period, up until the fourteenth century, the churches dedicated to St Pancras were built as expression of Ragusan territorial identity and demarcation (at Obod as easternmost outpost and Kurilo and Šipan as westernmost). The remains of the churches dedicated to St Sergius and St Tryphon also testify to programmatic planning of this kind. Following the acquisition of new territories in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the building of the churches focused on the centers of the newly-established administrative units (Lastovo, Ston, Slano, Babino Polje, Pridvorje, Janjina). Well-developed structure of the Ragusan Republic was accompanied by just as equally sophisticated devices of symbolic governmental representation, among which the strategy of spreading the cult of St Blaise as the city patron may be singled out, from a defensive act of marking the borders with temples to a developed system of implanting the state cult into the administrative seats, often in a symbiotic form of a parish church and the residence of the local count. Such a strategy of spreading the cults of the city patron saints from a more implicit demarcation (defense) towards a more symbolic sign of governing (control) reflects a tendency towards a more finely structured Ragusan government.
Ključne riječi
Hrčak ID:
16203
URI
Datum izdavanja:
3.8.2007.
Posjeta: 4.187 *