A recent acquisition to the Hilandar Research Library’s holdings of secondary literature includes Set Me as a Seal upon Thy Heart: Constructions of Female Sanctity in Late Antiquity, the Middle Ages, and the Early Modern Period, edited by Andrea-Bianka Znorovszky (Budapest: Trivent Publishing, 2018). Of particular note for Slavicists is the first article by Rosie Finlinson (MSSI 2015), who examines royal women in the Muscovite dynastic structure of the Stepennaia kniga or ‘Royal Book of Degrees.’

Manuscript page of black ink cursive and red cinnabar headings of texts about Princess Olga. Brown water stain on upper right and lower left corners of the page.

The baptism of Princess Olga from a Stepennaia kniga, SPEC.OSU.HRL.SMS.18, f. 13r

Table of Contents

Gerhard Jaritz, Preface [Foreword], 1
Andrea-Bianka Znorovszky, Introduction, 3-4

Part I
Women (Re)constructed


Rosie Finlinson (University of Cambridge, United Kingdom), “Bricks to Bones: Royal Women and the Construction of Holy Place in the Stepennaia Kniga,” 7-28
Andra Jugǎnaru (Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece), “Macrina and Melanie the Elder: Painting the Portraits of Holy Learned Women in the Fourth-Century Roman Empire,” 29-41
Andrea-Bianka Znorovszky (Austrian Academy of Sciences, Universität Salzburg), “The Apocyphal Geography of Virgin Mary in Hagiographic Collections: Dissemination and Liturgy,” 43-65

Part II
Power and Martyrdom

Francesco Calò (Università degli studi di Bari, Italy), “Devozione privata e ostentazione politica: Ruggero I il Gran Conte e la diffusione del culto di santa Lucia tra Sicilia e Meridione d’Italia,” 69-103
Cǎtǎlina-Tatiana Covaciu (“Babeş Bolyai” University, Romania), “Beyond a Hagiographic Cliché. On the Supernatural Sustenance of Saint Catherine of Siena,” 105-134
Silvia Marin Barutcieff (University of Bucharest, Romania), “Between Similarity and Distinction: Notes on the Iconography of Saint Wilgefortis in the Medieval and Early Modern Periods,” 135-156.

Manuscript page of black ink cursive and red cinnabar headings of texts about Princess Olga

About Princess Olga’s arrival in Constantinople, her baptism, and about Tsar John Tzimiskes [sic], from a Stepennaia kniga, SPEC.OSU.HRL.SMS.18, f. 12r