Culture

Stefan Uros II Milutin (1282-1321)

The long reign of one of the most illustrious and powerful medieval Serbian figures - the "Holy King Uros", (Milutin by given vernacular name; pr. mee-LOO-tin) - marked the elevation of Serbia to a dominant Balkan position, and saw cultural and economic prosperity and advances along many lines.

The first 17 years or so of the new king's rule witnessed considerable international activity - through much warfare and some diplomacy - most of it south and east against the ailing Byzantine state, some against decentralized Bulgarian interests in the northeast. Much of that was brought to a close with the Serbo-Byzantine peace treaty of 1299, which recognized the new realities of Serb expansion into the mostly South Slavic ethnic space in Macedonia. The agreement was sealed by a high-level royal marriage between the king and emperor Andronikos' minor daughter Simonida (Simonis), and assured a generally cordial relationship between the two courts for the rest of Milutin's reign. Helplessly caught in the middle of court diplomacy was the unhappy young princess; her unlikely moral vindication ultimately came through her fine portrait, well preserved and juxtaposed to the much older king at Gracanica monastery: her firm forceful gaze, having mostly defied visible Ottoman attempts at vandalism and eradication, remained for generations a famous reminder and symbol - as much of defiance as the transcendental triumph of real values over time.

Why This Serbian Temple Is Eastern Europe’s Sagrada Família

On the descent into Belgrade, the St. Sava Temple protrudes from the top of Vračar Hill like the city’s crowning jewel. But its grand white marble and granite facade topped with copper domes contains a secret: The second largest Orthodox temple in the world is largely incomplete inside. With a story that rivals that of Barcelona’s famously incomplete Sagrada Família, Belgrade’s St. Sava Temple is an eternal work-in-progress—one that’s existed in various stages of creation for more than 100 years.

SebFest in Orlando

This past weekend, St. Petka Orthodox church in Orlando hosted the 12th annual SerbFest. This, now traditional, festival brought over 5,000 people to our church grounds. All of the proceeds made will go toward the construction of our new church. The church parishioners volunteered their time by cooking, baking, selling, cleaning, setting up, etc. all in hopes of raising money to profit the church. Their work helped create three unforgettable days.

Year of the Sword: The Assyrian Christian Genocide, a History

by Joseph Yacoub
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016.
Reviewed by Raymond Ibrahim

This important contribution to genocide studies documents how the world’s oldest Christian communities—variously referred to as Chaldeans, Syriacs, and Arameans, but best known as Assyrians—were, along with the Armenians, “victims of the [Ottoman] plan for exterminating Christianity, root and branch,” to quote Lord Bryce in 1920. In fact, as half of the Assyrian population was massacred—going from 600,000 to 300,000 in 1915-18—relative to their numbers, no other Christian group, including the Armenians, suffered as much under the Ottomans.

Life and Miracles of St. John (Maximovich) of Shanghai and San Francisco—One of the Greatest Saints of the 20th Century

"Sanctity is not just a virtue. It is an attainment of such spiritual heights, that the abundance of God's grace which fills the saint overflows on all who associate with him. Great is the saint's state of bliss in which they dwell contemplating the Glory of God. Being filled with love for God and man, they are responsive to man's needs, interceding before God and helping those who turn to them."

Thus describing the ancient Saints, Vladyka John simultaneously summarized his own spiritual attitude which made him one of the greatest Saints of our time.

Childhood

Michael Maximovitch, the future Archbishop John, was born on June 4, 1896, in the village of Adamovka in the province of Kharkov in southern Russia. He was a member of the Little Russian noble family of Maximovitch, to which St. John of Tobolsk also had belonged. He received at baptism the name of Michael, his heavenly protector being the Archangel Michael. He was a sickly child and ate little.

Together through centuries

Collection “Together through Centuries”: contributions to history of the Russian-Serbian cultural, spiritual and political connections.

Contributor and editor is monk Benyamin (Semenov) from the monastery of All Saints in Kingisepp.

The collection “Together through Centuries” is a work in Russian and Serbian scholars, and it was presented on 4 October 2017 at the Russian Cultural Centre in Belgrade. The event dedicated to of cultural and spiritual ties of Russia and Serbia was opened by His Holiness Irinej, Serbian Patriarch, who thanked for all the efforts that this Collection had been prepared and published, and reminded of the unbreakable ties of two brotherly peoples, of the same faith and the same blood.