Old Testament Topics in the Visual Culture of Slavia Orthodoxa in the Middle Ages

A number of Old Testament topics stand at the core of creating the political and visual identities of polities in Slavia Orthodoxa in the Middle Ages. Among them, the topic of the God-chosen and God-protected status of Jerusalem assumes fundamental significance as one of the major topoi underlying the construction of the identities of the capital cities of Slavia Orthodoxa in the medieval era. This idea has continued to function as a topos in Judeo-Christian civilisation to this day, undergoing crucial transformations and definitions of the visual aspects of its realisation and representation in the Middle Ages. This paper aims to point out some key points related to the means of formulating the idea of Jerusalem and its associated spatial-visual matrix in the process of constructing the status of a God-chosen place of capital cities of the Orthodox world. In particular, it focuses on presenting the cases of Tarnovo, Belgrade and Moscow.