‘Imagining’ Babylon - geography and hagiography in St Sava of Serbia’s middle eastern itinerary

Abstract

Of all the places St Sava of Serbia had allegedly visited during his second voyage to the East, the attention of scholars was particularly drawn to those which the author of his first vita, Domentijan, designated as ‘Great Babylon’ and ‘Great Egypt’. The article presents a new hypothesis on how this segment of Sava’s itinerary was (re)constructed on the literary plane, i. e. how the perspective of his hagiographer, a hieromonk of the Hilandar monastery, was influenced and shaped by geographical knowledge, personal experience, and finally, by the general conventions of the vita genre.