SYTË E PRINCESHËS SIMONIDA

In the countries that once belonged to the Ottoman Empire, the frescoes and icons of Orthodox churches often depict saints who have had their eyes gouged out. This fact was frequently reported by Balkan travellers of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, including such well-informed authors as the French consul general at the court of the Vizier of Epirus, Ali Pasha (Pouqueville 1813: 114), the first Russian consul in Sarajevo (Gil’ferding 1859: 230, 313.), an Anglican clergyman (Denton 1862: 90, 148, 197, 211), the Russian consul in Prizren (Jastrebov 1913: 27), a Russian archaeologist (Kondakov 1909: 131, 178), an Austrian archaeologist (Kanitz 1909: II: 296, 358), and several British travellers (Mackenzie and Irby 1878: I, 195–96; Durham 1904: 219; 1905: 122; 1914: 91; Askew 1916: 64). In all cases, the perpetrators were Turks or Albanians, i.e. Muslims whose motive was iconoclasm and/or barbarism. The phenomenon seems to be typical of the Balkans and evokes astonishment and dismay in the reader: The figures of saints which form the subject of several frescoes have suffered from the Turks, who fired pistols at them, and were also at the trouble to poke out their eyes. This latter injury evinced so much of the malice of deliberate insult, that it riled the Serbians more than wholesale destructions which might be supposed to have taken place in the confusion and heat of assault. Besides, the desecrated forms remain on the church wall, so that their injury can never be forgotten; and their marred faces meeting the upturned eyes of the worshippers, seem ever to cry out for retribution. In the Principality of Serbia, where some ruined churches have been rebuilt, these blinded pictures are left unrestored. An old bishop said to us, “We still need them – they are the archives of centuries of oppression and our people must not lose sight of them so long as the oppressor still keeps foot on Serbian land.” (Mackenzie and Irby 1878: I, 195–96)