Врањина и Св. Арханђели у Јерусалиму – Још један осврт на традицију даровне повеље цара Стефана Душана
Vranjina and the Holy Archangels Monastery in Jerusalem – Аnother Look at the Tradition of Emperor Stefan Dušan’s Donation Charter

Summary/Abstract: The paper discusses three surviving copies of emperor Stefan Dušan’s 1350 charter for the monastery of the Holy Archangels in Jerusalem, which transfers the right to the so¬called Ston tribute to its brotherhood and grants them the monastery of Vranjina on Lake Scutari: 1) a plain copy dated 1348, preserved in Dubrovnik; 2) a copy in a Dubrovnik cartulary from the mid¬15th century (Codex ragusinus), and 3) a copy made no earlier than about 1500, preserved in the monastery of Hilandar. Among the three documents, special focus is placed on the latest. In addition to providing a new edition of its disposition and concluding formulas, the paper presents the hypothesis that this copy was created from an excerpt (perhaps contained in a cartulary) of the now lost original charter in the possession of the Jerusalem monastery. The purpose was to complete the set of documents proving the claims to the Ston tribute and the monastery of Vranjina put forth by the monastery of Hilandar after the monastery of the Holy Archangels was temporarily deserted. The same text appeared in the Dubrovnik original which is also lost, transcribed by the author of Copy 2 – Dubrovnik’s Slavic scribe Nikša Zvijezdić. Copy 1 would be a transcription of a draft submitted by the Jerusalemites to Dušan intended to specify their rights over the monastery of Vranjina, which arrived in Dubrovnik only later as a supplement to the original document. All three surviving documents were of relevance to contemporaries in terms of content and legal effect, and scholars should take them as being historical sources of equal importance. They are also clear proof that emperor Stefan Dušan did indeed grant Vranjina to the Holy Archangels even though this act of donation apparently remained without a lasting legal effect.

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