When I was awarded the Charter of Ivan Crnojević twelve years ago, in my words of thanks I pointed out that the cornerstone of the creation of Cetinje in 1482 was next to it. year, a book was also symbolically laid down.
This historical fact and said symbolism bind us to that important event not only for our local environment but also for the history of culture in general.
The Oktoich phenomenon is a masterpiece of printing of its time. It proves that in the most difficult circumstances, in the struggle for survival, that fundamental human need for creation, for the enrichment of being, for spiritualization and giving meaning to earthly existence is manifested. Less than forty years after Gutenberg's Bible was printed in Mainz, in Cetinje, hieromonk Makarije (1463 -1533) and eight assistants created liturgical books that, due to their artistic and literary quality, still attract the attention of artists and scientists. the first-vowel and Octoich the fifth-vowel live like old stars of unquenchable brilliance. Word, image and body are the three dominant elements that make these editions special. The relationship between word and image is self-explanatory, because the image evokes the word just as the word evokes the image. In this sense, the artistry of Oktoih, the relationship between black and red in the letters, the composition and dimensions of the pages with initials and woodcuts as illustrations, show the refined coherence of the pictorial and the written.
But what in these church books of the Crnojević printing house is based on both the word and the image is the body. It appears in two essential dimensions of its importance. Religiously mystical and biologically social. Apart from David's psalms, the authors of the texts in Oktoich found the dominant source in the canonical gospels of the New Testament. In the Gospel according to John it is written "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God - and the Word was God". In the continuation of the Prologue of this Gospel, we read "And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us" (John 1,14:XNUMX). Jesus Christ is not, therefore, a metaphysical entity but a being of flesh and blood. God-man or Man-god. This distinction is important because to this day it provokes conflicting opinions. For theologians, Christ is God-Man, for philosophers, Man-God. Mereškovski once wrote that in the future the main battle will be fought between the God-Man and the Man-God. I would correct the thought of the great Russian writer and religious thinker, considering that the struggle began already then between those who followed the teachings of the Messiah and those who, while he was crucified on Golgotha, shouted to him: "If you are Jesus, save yourself."
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Christianity is based on the flesh. One of the important authors of the texts in Oktoich and significant for their redaction was Jovan Damaskin, Iohannes Damascenus, (ca. 676 - 749). This church father, theologian, philosopher and poet, an opponent of the iconoclasts, especially responsible for the reform of church singing according to the eight-part "chanting" system, claimed that "the Incarnation is the only new thing under the sun." This statement expresses the absolute of the theological dogma about the mystical incarnation of the word in the flesh, which was immaculately conceived by the Holy Spirit in the womb of the Virgin Mary. On the other hand, in the sense of unity in contrast, which concerns Christ's divine and human nature, therefore understood as unique phenomena, Tertullian (160 BC - 240 AD), a respected writer, one of the most important early Christian theologians, a ruthless opponent, expressed in a paradoxical way heresy. Damascene's dogma of the incarnation is confirmed by Tertullian in an unusual way with the intriguing intellect of the theologian: "And the son of God is dead, which must be believed because it is absurd." And buried he rose again, which is certain because it is impossible".
It should be noted that the texts in Oktoih were used in the Christian religion before the schism on July 16, 1054, when the church split into Eastern Orthodox and Western Roman Catholic. As in Christian eschatology death is the first of the four last things (the other three are judgment, heaven and hell), it is the body of Christ, his holy corpus, that has a fundamental meaning for the Christian faith. The meaning of the mission of the son of God as Redeemer of sins and Savior of the world is fulfilled through the body and its sacrifice. With his death on the crucifixion, he conquered death through resurrection and as the first born from the dead, he gave eternal life. In Oktoich, this dimension of sacrifice is emphasized: "You received death with your body, and you give us immortality". Hyperboles in this church book poetically indicate the importance of the body precisely in its suffering. "Christ, you darkened the sun with your suffering and illuminated the whole world with the light of the resurrection". Damascene's "only new thing under the sun", that is, God incarnate, illuminates the world with the light of a new faith.
It is a radically different teaching from that of the Old Testament. But with the prophet Isaiah in the Old Testament, we find a prefiguration of Christ's suffering, which also inspires the authors of the texts in Octoich. "Agnus dei" is a symbol of Jesus as the Redeemer of sins sung in the same meaning: "They led him like a sheep to the slaughter, he who gave birth to mankind the gift of resurrection". The religiously mystical dimension of Christ's corpus has another important feature of the Eucharistic transubstantiation, when Jesus distributes bread and wine to the gathered disciples at the Last Supper as his sacrificial body and blood.
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Although in the texts in the Octoich Christ is dominantly represented, the glory shown to the Mother of God shows the magnificent adoration of the sinless woman. Church dogmas, as the fundamental values of Christian science, in the texts of Octoich, in the celebration of the Virgin Mary, have a special value in their poetic expression, in the metaphors in which the physical is permeated with the mystical, in such a way that the richness of that expression is, I would say, inherent in the sensibility of modern poet. In a hyperbole about the Virgin in Oktoich, it is written: "God made your womb wider than the heavens". The earthly as limited corporeal and the cosmic as infinite in itself have become one. The attractive interest of the texts of this church liturgical book is that the mystical birth of the Son of God from a virgin woman gives a double meaning to the corpus feminine in its glorification, because the woman "without losing her virginity gave birth to the word of God". "Rejoice unharmed girl who gave birth to our salvation." There is also the metaphor of the blackberry in the fire which, thanks to a miracle, did not burn. "That's how you give birth to a girl and stay a girl."
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The body as a biological social given, that is, our earthly body, also has an important function of expressing what is transmitted or communicated through Octoi. John of Damascus and Cosmas of Jerusalem, as the most important hymnographers, knew the importance of the human voice for praising God, which was the primary role of the sacred plot of the book. As the concept of church singing according to Oktoich is based on chants being performed for every single day within eight weeks of Easter, therefore the melodiousness of the performance, the beauty of the human voice as the "most beautiful instrument" was of extreme importance. The importance of singing is all the more significant, because Jesus used to sing psalms with his disciples after dinner. In order to achieve a performance in which the sung text leads to a mystical experience or rapture, the selection of singers was necessary and made according to strict rules. They were preceded by a rigorous spiritual preparation (as for icon painters) so that they could meet the highest standards for the needs of the Eastern sacred liturgy. (Because not everyone could become a "singer" or "icon painter"). According to the apostle Paul, singing is closely related to prayer. Melodies of the appropriate character were monophonic, designed for one of eight specific voices. By using verses (multi-verse singing) or voice figures, anaphora and epiphora, when words are repeated at the beginning or end of certain verses, a wealth of singing expression is created, which, not without reason, is often given the epithet divine. It should be noted that there was radical resistance from a certain monastic movement who considered church singing, as well as the making of icons, to be sacrilegious, saying that they introduce a "profane spirit" of the essentially ineffable and indescribable Almighty. Oktoich, as an old liturgical book after 530 years since its publication, exists today as a cultural and artistic artifact for which in this 2024, the jubilee year, we express our true admiration and our creators our due gratitude.
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The word and the image in Octoich pentaglasnik function within a carefully conceived whole, whose artistic aesthetic value was often in a certain way, conditionally speaking, placed in the background due to the question of the authorship of those illustrations made in the woodcut technique of the so-called book graphics. Some researchers of the Crnojević edition of the printing house attributed the authorship to the hieromonk Makarios, his iconographic gift and sensibility enriched by the Renaissance spirit of the Venetian art culture of the time. Others believed that Makarije was just a competent connoisseur of printing skills, an adviser to Đurđ Crnojević who suggested or proposed which and in what way the themes of the sacred content would be artistically shaped and functionally correspond to the book block of Oktoih's pentagram. There are also assumptions that Đurđe Crnojević himself, as an educated and gifted leader, directly participated in the design of the graphic sheets of the famous editions of his printing house. In addition to the disputed authorship, researchers and scholars of graphic compositions, "Sabor besplotnih sila", "Sabor st. John the Forerunner", "The Betrayal of Judas", "Sabor st. Nicholas", "Descent into Hell" and "Sacred Melodies" have dealt with the origin of influence, analyzing possible sources for some solutions, especially in the ornamental part of graphic compositions.
There was a lot of discussion about the buildings shown in the graphics "Holy Melody" and "Council of St. John the Forerunner". There was a dispute about whether these buildings represent a church, that is, the Crnojević mansion in Cetinje. What seems to me to be more important than those assumptions is the image, that is, the graphic in itself, the way we perceive it today as a work of art in its artistic aesthetic quality.
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The most famous and most published graphic is the "Council of St. John the Forerunner". Like the other graphics of the Octohy pentagram, the composition is framed by a symbolically decorative refined ornament of plant interweaving, meticulously carved like lace, with appropriate symbols - four evangelists, winged boys, animal symbols, a small enigmatic cupid and the coat of arms of Crnojević. The ornament frames a precise geometric surface of a joined square and a semicircle of symbolic meanings of earth and sky, similar to the longitudinal section of a single-nave church with a dome. The main theme of the composition of the graphic sheet is located in that space. Considering that on this occasion I am particularly interested in the relationship between the image and the word as a body, the graphic "Council of St. John the Forerunner" inventively depicts a biblical event based on the New Testament source. "When he saw many Pharisees and Sadducees coming to him for baptism, he said to them: Serpent's birth! Who bids you flee from the wrath to come? Bring forth, therefore, fruit corresponding to conversion. Do not think that you can say within yourself: We have Abraham as our father, because I tell you, God can raise Abraham's children from these rocks. The ax has already been laid at the root of the trees: every tree that does not bear good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire. I baptize you with water as a sign of conversion, but he who comes after me is stronger than I", (Mt, 3, 7, 11).
The forerunner in the picture simultaneously invites and baptizes the Jerusalem regiment. The ascetic body of the Baptist is symbolically enlarged and in the composition as a whole, with other elements, harmonized in relation to the group of smaller bodies that approach him devotedly. Stylistically, the body of the Baptist corresponds more to the medieval canon represented on Byzantine icons than to the Renaissance representation of the body of the holy hermit who fed on locusts and wild honey. Space is flat on the graphic. Only the suggestion of depth is apparently created by the architectural object. The geometrized structure of the walls of the building is formally harmonized with the other details of the composition and with the ornamental frame of the scene. The inventiveness of the compositional concept is reflected in the talent and artistic intelligence of the author of this graphic. What simultaneously divides and unites the Forerunner from the regiment that approaches it is the Jordan River, as a formal element that cuts vertically through the composition. In dynamic linear graphics as whirlpools, the water descends like a waterfall, without a trough and flows from the source high in the rock, spreading its flow towards the bottom of the composition.
The dynamism of the action in a static image is effectively achieved. One of the penitents is already in the water. With the face of a convert, he looks devotedly at the Baptist who is preaching. The head of the convert is in an ideal formal relationship with the figure of the one who is curiously watching the miraculous ritual of the Forerunner from the window of the left tower. The body, image and word are united in this subject of baptism not only by artistic precision and clarity of stylized graphics but also by the text on a large scroll. It is as if the scroll is just being unwound, following the rhythm of the river with the undulations of its surface, on which the words of the Forerunner are written: "Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven has come near". The flatness of space opens up two symbolically united dimensions. Earthly, in which the act of conversion takes place, and heavenly, as the eternal abode of the righteous. This symbolic effect is achieved with tiny white dots resembling a starry sky, which harmonizes in an artistic aesthetic way with the leaves of the trees, with the cracked rock and with the richness of the meticulously ornamented frame.
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Another biblical scene is placed in the same frame, less well-known than the previous one, but artistically also particularly interesting. It depicts the betrayal of Judas. Stylistically, as the "Council of St. John the Forerunner", it belongs to the character of Byzantine icon paintings in the overall simplicity of the stylized bodies. Although the author of the graphic adheres strictly to the New Testament original, expressing the dramatic moment when the One who is to be crucified is marked with a treacherous kiss, an extremely impressive composition has been achieved artistically.
Looking at the graphic scene, it's as if we hear the words of the Gospel: "And while he was still speaking, Judas, one of the Twelve, came, and with him a crowd armed with swords and clubs sent by the chief priests, scribes and elders. His betrayer had arranged a sign with them: Whoever I kiss is the one... And when he came, he immediately approached him and said: Rabbi! - so kiss him. They raised their hands on him and caught him" (Mk, 14, 43, 47). The simplicity and dynamism of the composition are masterfully established. The center of the action scene is Christ's calm demeanor. The strength of his calmness, because he knows that God's will must be carried out, seems to emphasize the cruelty and aggressiveness of the persecutor, which is unleashed precisely at the moment when the traitor is about to kiss the teacher. The dramatic effect was brought to a paroxysm. Clubs, spears and swords are ready to punish the reprobate. Metal spikes and blades in the distance suggest even more numerous pursuers. Only one of Christ's followers offers resistance in the lower left part of the composition, cutting off the ear of the bully from Judas' entourage with a knife.
The night of betrayal is without stars. Opaque blackness graphically effectively emphasizes the depicted action and has a symbolic function of predicting the darkness of Calvary and the death of Christ on the crucifixion.
The word and the image as a body in the Octoich pentagram and the Christian faith derived from the incarnated body of God make this liturgical book a body in itself, in its real givenness and spiritual transcendence.
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