The Black Dragon of Wallachia
Ĺabelling lunacy
Digging into the creation of an icon I have delved into some interesting info. Learning about Sveti Pavel I learned about the New Martyrs of the Orthodox Church that fit the time of the Ottoman expansion into the Balkans. Apparently there is a division between old (from the 3rd century) and the new (from about the 13th century).
Using this as a springboard I decided to look at whether or not Greek or Russian would be used on the icon banner. It makes sense to use Greek as far as geography but it falls flat as I can’t add the right text to denote the likeness to anyone. I have yet to find the translation of martyr for icons using Greek. I have, however, found examples of Bulgarian and Serbian icon inscription that lend to Cyrillic characters being useful. From that I then found Russian had the appropriate short form for martyr and now have something to drop onto the banner with the name.
The previous inscriptions are, from left to right, Serbian saint (14th c.), Bulgarian saint (14th c.) and Russian martyr (17th c.). The source of these images combined with the earlier list of Russian inscriptions makes me hopeful to get this arranged properly. No there aren’t any Byzantines running around and I don’t have any Romanian Orthodox connections but it’s making an effort to have a narrative that is mostly plausible which is important. This is gaming in the gaps and needs to be almost believable.
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