KRALj MILUTIN I NjEGOVO DOBA U ISTORIJI, ARHEOLOGIJI I NARODNOJ TRADICIJI KRUŠEVAČKOG KRAJA

In this paper, through a multidisciplinary approach and analysis of available written material and material remains, we tried to shed light on the period of King Milutin's rule in the Kruševac area, laying the foundations for some future comprehensive research. According to the Žitije kralja Milutina (1324) by Archbishop Danilo II, this Serbian ruler stayed in the Kruševac area during a meeting with his brother King Dragutin in Mačkovac in the župa of Rasina, before the decisive attack on the state of Drman and Kudelin, most likely in the first half of 1292. Mačkovac can be reliably identified with today's village of the same name, about 8 km west of Kruševac. Based on the favorable geographical position not far from the crossroads of important medieval roads, it can be assumed that this settlement, before the rise of Kruševac in the second half of the 14th century, most likely enjoyed the status of a trg (mercatum, marketplace). At this time, the župa of Rasina was organized as a separate država (lord state) within Milutin's kingdom. Archaeological finds from the last decades of the 13th and the first decades of the 14th century are scarce, and we could talk only about two specimens of silver coins of King Milutin, accidentally found in the area of the villages of Laćisled and Mačkovac. The specimen from Laćisled, which was in secondary use as part of the jewelry, belongs to type 3.1, i.e. the dinar with the flag - de bandera, minted in Brskovo between 1282 and around 1310. The most significant written testimonies from the period of King Milutin's reign are two tombstone inscriptions. The first was carved on a massive river pebble, which today lies on the property of the Gajić family in the village of Zdravinje near Kruševac. It was performed in the Cyrillic alphabet in the Old Serbian language. He testified about the death of Marija Bogoslava (Bogoslav's wife), who died on June 8, 1292. In addition to Marija, the inscription also mentions her three sons, Radoslav, Radič and Vladel (Vladelj). This aristocratic family bore the family name or surname Poljak, from which the toponym Poljaci was derived, i.e. the name of their ancestral village in the neighborhood of Zdravinje. The second tombstone, discovered in 1967, was installed as an spolia in the bell tower of the church of St. Stephen in Kruševac (1377–1378). An inscription engraved on it speaks of the death of Vlkota, Medoš's son, who died between September 1, 1300 and August 31, 1301. It is characterized by East Slavic linguistic features, a consistent distinction between soft and hard semivowel (rabþ, vþ, sŠÿ1nþ, Vlýkota), as well as the use of the form oumér{iŠhþ1, in which é is used as a substitute for soft semivowel ý, which is attested in the tombstone inscription of the noblewoman Stanislava from the village of Gradec near Vidin (14th century), as well as in the fresco inscription between the figures of two deceased lords on the southern part of the western wall of the nave in the church of St. Nicholas in Staničenje near Pirot (1331–1332). Folk tradition links King Milutin to the origin of the toponym Milutovac near Trstenik, which is derived from the anthroponym Milutin, most probably according to the name of the lord or nobleman who owned this village during the late Middle Ages. According to local legend, King Milutin, as the greatest endower of Nemanjić family, was also the founder of the church of St. John the Baptist in Orašje near Varvarin. The original appearance and oldest past of this church, due to the absence of archaeological research and conservation research, as well as the lack of written sources, are not known to us. The existence of a medieval necropolis around its walls, dated on the basis of the appearance of tombstones in 14th and 15th century, and the mention of the priest Jovan in the Ottoman defter from 1476 indirectly indicate that this modest single-nave sacral building could have been erected as an endowment of some local lord during the period of Serbian independence before 1459, and could not be directly related to King Milutin. We hope that this article will draw the attention of the scientific public to the necessity of further multidisciplinary research of the medieval past of the Kruševac region, including the reign of King Stefan Uroš II Milutin, as one of the most famous Serbian medieval rulers.