An Orthodox Festival Book in the Habsburg Empire: Zaharija Orfelin’s Festive Greeting to Mojsej Putnik (1757)

A transcription and translation of Zaharje Orfelin’s 1757 festival book, Festive Greeting to Mojsej Putnik, this book is one of the most comprehensive accounts of the festival life of the Orthodox hierarchy in the Habsburg lands. While the Festive Greeting remained just an outline for the spectacle and was never publicly performed in its entirety, it remains a fascinating embodiment of Church politics, an issue too dangerous to be made public in the political arena of the Catholic Empire. In addition to the transcription and translation of the festival book, Jelena Todorovic provides a full account of the background to the Mojsije Putnik’s episcopal investiture, beginning with a study of the political and historical context to the foundation and establishment of the Orthodox Archbishopric in the Austrian Habsburg and moving on to an examine the religious politics of the Orthodox Archbishops during this period. With detailed surveys of the book’s illustrations, proposed scenography and music, it concludes with an assessment of the place of the Festive Greeting in the history of spectacles in the Archbishopric as well as in the history of the Orthodox Church.