Filipova’s latest book is in the scope of the humanistic sciences, more precisely, the field of Christian art history. With this work, the author, an excellent art historian who has devoted her whole career to Christian and medieval art, continues to deepen her scholarly interest in early Christian relics found in the territory of Macedonia. As she states in the foreword, she has widened her interest to the medieval period and the New Age period, with a focus on church insignia and objects. This work also begins to decompose the burning “Macedonian knot” of the taken-away and dispersed church artworks and objects presently in the depots, museum galleries, or private collections of Europe, Asia, and especially the Balkans. It is exactly the highest value of the book that it popularizes the Macedonian artistic and cultural heritage. It announces to the world the need to return the sacral objects to their original place, to the churches and monasteries in Macedonia. It should be noted that there are only a few scholars and ecclesiastical personae who speak about this problem publicly.The book is written in Macedonian and translated into English. It is composed of six parts, along with a foreword and bibliography, and contains over sixty figures that visually document the discussed and presented works of art and church objects.The first part is titled “Short Review of the Organization and the History of the Early Church in Macedonia.” Here, Filipova follows the events from the time of the apostle Paul until the fall of the apostolic church of Justiniana Prima in 602.The second part, titled “Cultural and Episcopal Centers in Macedonia along Via Egnatia in the Time of Justinian I,” is devoted to the Episcopal centers and basilicas in the time of this emperor in Macedonia. The author reviews in detail the popular early Christian saints and cults. She also reveals the possibility that some of the basilicas and churches in Macedonia were part of larger monastic complexes. She further speaks about the continuity of building Christian temples atop older cult objects. In the next section, devoted to the time of the seven Slavic apostles (Sedmocislenici = seven saints equal to apostles) and the time of Emperor Samuel, she points to the clear distinction between the Macedonian language spoken around Thessalonica and the Old Bulgarian language that is a member of the Turkic languages. She further discusses the missionary work of the seven saints as being equal to that of the apostles and especially about St. Clement, including his work and cult. In the next section, titled “Monasticism and the Church Organization in Macedonia,” the author considers the problem of the first monastic centers in Macedonia, noting that it is uneducated to say that only in the ninth century did Christianity spread into the early Christian land of Macedonia, which has dated Episcopal churches from the fourth century; additionally, the number of the discovered churches and basilicas from the fifth and sixth centuries is more than 450 (pp. 26–27). Filipova further discusses the chronology of the Ohrid Archbishopric and the Samuel patriarchy and stresses that it is clear that Samuel’s church and empire could not have had a Bulgarian character because, according to the ecumenical canon laws, the simultaneous existence of the two highest ecclesiastical hierarchies within the same state was not allowed.In the third part, “Early Christian Saints” (saints, church clerks, martyrs, or missionaries), Filipova lists in detail saints mentioned in sources or inscriptions that originate or were active in the province of Macedonia in the first centuries of the first millennium.The fourth part refers to the saints and new martyrs from the medieval and New Age period who had a large impact on the development of Christianity in Macedonia. The author bases her opinion on a large scope of art history bibliographic sources enriched with the history of church literature. She speaks about the cults of the Sedmočislenici (seven Slavic apostles); Constantine Kabasila; Saint John Vladimir; the anchorets Prohor Pčinski, St. Gabriel of Lesnovo, and St. Joachim of Osogovo; Saint Achill of Larisa, who became Saint Achill of Prespa; Saint Angel and Saint Nektarij, both of Bitola; and the few female and male saints from the Turkish occupation period, ending with the twentieth-century saints Saint Gabriel of Lesnovo and Saint Joanikij Rakotinski.The fourth part starts with a section devoted to the early Christian relics and reliquaries that discusses the origin and the meaning of the relics and their usage. Filipova also mentions the holy places that must have been popular among the believers and pilgrims who paid their respects to the holy remnants of the saints. The second section explains the problem of the early Christian reliquaries discovered in Macedonia, and they are categorized into several types according to shape. Filipova provides a detailed description of the most important reliquaries and the contexts in which they were discovered. The next section is devoted to the various types of crypts and crypt reliquaries discovered within archaeological diggings, being cross-shaped, rectangular, rooms for relics, or barrel-vaulted. The next section is devoted to encolpia and unusual human mask relics.The final section is devoted to the diplomatic and ecclesiastical gifts to the Ohrid archbishops from high dignitaries, emperors, and lords.In the fifth part, devoted to the lost and stolen treasury of the Ohrid Archbishopric, the author objectively discusses and gives detailed descriptions of the precious objects that were stolen, especially in the scope of the Balkan Wars in the early twentieth century. Here, the rare, exclusive wooden door from Saint Nicholas of Hospitality (Bolnički) in Ohrid is iconographically presented, today on display at the National History Museum (NHM) in Sofia.The sixth part is devoted to small medieval personal icons, usually found in abandoned churches, the most exclusive of which was stolen and transferred to the NHM in Sofia (p. 70) during the Balkan Wars. The next section is devoted to church embroidery—rarely discussed material. The last section, titled “Insignia of the Ohrid Archbishopric— Symbols of Power,” is mainly devoted to two exclusive artistic pieces with high symbolic value, the miter of Archbishop Joanikij (late eighteenth century), kept in the NHM in Sophia, and the scepter of Archbishop Arsenij, the last Ohrid archbishop, kept at the Zograph monastery in Athos.The rest of the book is the English translation of the text, and it ends with a bibliography.In conclusion, I find Filipova’s book more than useful for the Macedonian audience and also for the international audience, the latter being rarely acquainted with the many facts and proofs about the truth and the Golgotha of the Macedonian ecclesiastical, artistic, and cultural heritage the author presents in her book. She also gives a detailed critical review of the ecclesiastical and historical conditions, along with studious analyses of the artistic qualities and semiotics of the works discussed, not being afraid to speak from the first-person perspective.This type of book is what we need in the scholarly realm, but I believe it will also be very popular with a general audience.

Abstract The double monastery at Kildare, Ireland, developed from a confluence of holy sites and legends associated with St. Brigit into a major metropolitan center in the seventh century. One of the most interesting sources for this development’s apex remains Cogitosus’s Life of Saint Brigit, a collection of miracle stories immersed in the local landscape that reflect her community’s interests. A reassessment of the last three chapters of his Life, in conjunction with surviving material evidence in the landscape, will emphasize the ways in which hagiographical boundaries shaped Kildare’s development into a City of Refuge. It will argue that Cogitosus did not use ekphrasis, but delineated liminal boundaries functional to the dichotomies that Kildare was negotiating (male and female; lay and consecrated; community and pilgrims; Irish and Roman). Cogitosus’s Life provides a lens through which to view Kildare’s development into a major pilgrimage center.

Abstract This publication is a transcription and translation of two texts that relate to slavery in the Danish West Indies. The first text is the second half of a letter by August Spangenberg to Isaac le Long just after Spangenberg’s return to Skippack from the Danish West Indies. It contains Spangenberg’s impressions of life and the mission in St. Thomas six years after its commencement. The second text is a German version of the farewell speech Zinzendorf gave to government officials and slaves in February 1739 concluding his sojourn on St. Thomas. In Zinzendorf’s speech we see the distinction between the enslaved, mortal body and the free, eternal soul, which legitimates slavery within Christianity. Both of these texts are well known from studies on Moravian missions and slavery, but here the full text provides us with a fuller view of the political and social contexts of the early Moravian missions to the Danish West Indies and the complicated history of slavery and Christianity.

This image of Bucharest as it appeared in September 1583 opens a long description of Wallachia contained in the Memoir by the Genoese Franco Sivori, secretary of Petru Cercel, prince of Wallachia, from 1581 to 1589. Conserved among the manuscripts of the Vatican Apostolic Library and written in ancient Italian, it has been recently edited by Alexandra Vrânceanu Pagliardini, recipient of a research fellowship from the Romanian Academy in Rome, Italy. The text, already edited in part by the Romanian historian Ştefan Pascu in 1944,2 is now re-proposed in an unabridged edition.As Vrânceanu Pagliardini points out in the introduction, the Memoir by Sivori is “a complex work, having points in common with both travel accounts of merchants and diplomatic reports of ambassadors.” It also shows “surprising similarities with a Bildungsroman.” Sivori selects the events to describe in order to contemplate “the relationship between ‘fortune’ and ‘prudence,’ which is pivotal in sixteenth-century Italian treatises, especially in The Prince by Machiavelli and the Ricordi by Guicciardini.”3From a strictly historical point of view, the Memoir is a first-hand source for the study of the Balkans and the Romanian lands in the years prior to the anti-Ottoman campaigns led by the Wallachian prince Michael the Brave (1593–1601).4 Noteworthy are the descriptions of Constantinople and the nearby Genoese colony at Pera, where Sivori stayed before reaching Bucharest. “Compared to those of Constantinople, the houses [of Pera] are very comfortable and [the city] has fountains with good waters [. . . ], gardens, and beautiful, well-kept vineyards. In addition to the Greek and Turkish languages, the inhabitants of Pera mainly speak an Italian tending towards the Genoese dialect, and so, in walking, talking and living, they imitate the Genoese very much,” writes the secretary.5The description of Wallachia is even richer, with details on the fertility of the soil; the production of excellent wines; the abundance of game; the presence of gold, iron, and salt mines; and the trading in hides and other commodities. In this regard, Sivori observes: “Wallachians are not involved in trading; this is conducted by Ragusans, Greeks, Jews, and a few Turks [. . . ]. Hides and wax are sent on muleback to Ragusa and [from there by sea to] Ancona, or shipped on the Danube to the ports of Varna and Constanţa on the Black Sea, and then loaded onto ships that sail first to Constantinople and then to Ragusa or Ancona.”6The excursus on Wallachia concludes with original thoughts on the language spoken in sixteenth-century Romania: “Their language, as that of Moldavia, a neighboring kingdom, is a mixture of Latin, Italian, Greek, and Slavonic. On the whole, it is a barbarian language. They write in Serbian, or rather Slavonic, characters, and the most important documents are drawn up in Serbian, just as we write them in Latin.”7By virtue of its references to economics and trading, society and settlements, language and culture, Sivori’s Memoir is essential for understanding the Balkans and, in particular, relations between the Romanian Principalities and Italy in the late sixteenth century.