LANDSCAPE AND MONASTIC ARCHITECTURE IN MEDIEVAL LOWER DANUBE

Date

2026-9-17

Author

Saracoğlu, Orçun Sena

Metadata

Show full item record

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Item Usage Stats

38
views

44
downloads

Cite This

Landscape has long played a fundamental role in the formation of Christian sacred space, shaping religious experience, monastic practice, and architectural expression. Yet studies of medieval Orthodox monastic architecture have largely privileged church typology, stylistic development, and modern national traditions, paying comparatively little attention to the agency of landscape. This dissertation addresses that gap by investigating the relationship between landscape and monastic architecture in the Lower Danube between the 13th and the mid-15th centuries. It investigates how tangible topographical conditions interact with inherited sacred topoi to construct sacred terrains. The study integrates textual, archaeological, architectural, and field evidence to discuss how landforms, including mountains, rivers, valleys, caves, cliffs, and plateaus, influenced site selection, settlement planning, enclosure, defense, and territorial expression. It analyzes monasteries in modern Serbia, Bulgaria, Kosovo, and North Macedonia, in four categories: monasteries in vertical contexts, waterside monasteries, rock-cut sites, and large settlements in hilly terrains. The dissertation argues that Lower Danube monasteries should be understood not as isolated monuments but as landscape-based spatial systems in which architecture actively transformed natural settings into sacred terrains. It demonstrates that inherited Orthodox sacred topoi were appropriated through local environmental conditions, producing shared spatial strategies across politically and culturally diverse contexts. Ultimately, this research provides an original interpretation of Orthodox place- making, demonstrating that Lower Danube monasticism produces sacred terrains where built form and natural setting reciprocally shape one another. It not only repositions the Lower Danube in broader debates on sacred geography but also offers a new framework for interpreting medieval Orthodox monasticism(s).

Subject Keywords

Lower Danube, monastic architecture, sacred landscape, Orthodox monasticism, sacred topoi

URI

https://hdl.handle.net/11511/121034

Collections

Graduate School of Social Sciences, Thesis