Bulletin

Issue: March 2006

Research in Action

Stopover on the Highway of Civilisation

For more than two thousand years the Via Egnatia – from Rome to Constantinople – was the ‘Highway of Civilisation’.

In the past century, political upheavals and changing national borders have removed its value as a physical link but not the historical and architectural importance of the buildings along its route.

One of the world authorities on the Via Egnatia is La Trobe University honorary research associate in Art History, Dr Robert Mihajlovski.

The Via Egnatia, in Italy as the Via Appia, stretches from Rome to Brindisi on the Adriatic Coast and then, on the other side of the Adriatic, from Durres (ancient Dyrachion) to Ohrid, Salonika, Thessaloniki and finally to Istanbul.

Dr Mihajlovski was recently awarded his PhD for research on the architecture, art and the intellectual and religious life around Bitola, a medieval settlement on the Via Egnatia.

Specialising in the segment of the road from the Greek border to Heraclea Lyncestis in the Bitola-Ohrid region of what is now the independent country of Macedonia, his research was supervised by La Trobe Reader in Art History, Dr Joan Barclay-Lloyd.

Dr Mihajlovski said that from the second century BC until the fall of the Ottoman Empire in 1912, the road was one of the most important in the Mediterranean world, the cradle of Western civilisation.

The original Via Egnatia was a Roman military highway first started about 168 BC and named after the man who ordered its construction, Proconsul Gaius Egnatius.

Roman legions marched along it, many crusaders used it to reach the Holy Land, and it was an essential administrative link during the centuries that the Byzantines and Ottomans ruled much of the area.

But its two most important uses were those of trade link and pilgrimage route to many monasteries and shrines on the way to Constantinople, Jerusalem and later to Hejaz. One branch of the road was connected to the Silk Road to China. Until the Italian Renaissance, this route elevated the political and economic importance of south-eastern Europe – the region that dominated European political and economic life.

Dr Mihajlovski began serious research on the Via Egnatia a decade before coming to Australia twelve years ago from Bitola, second largest city of Macedonia after Skopje, where he was curator in a local museum.

He grew up not far from many of its most famous monuments and began to study their origins and significance. This led to a worry that many were falling into disrepair and their historical importance was being neglected.

The situation was exacerbated during the political and religious strife in the Balkans during the 1990s. As a result of this strife, interest in the Via Egnatia subsided further.

Dr Mihajlovski’s intense personal and professional interest remained with him after he came to Australia and six years ago he began his PhD project. He was assisted for a study trip back to the area in 2004 by funds from the Humanities Fieldwork Fellowship Program of the Australian Academy of the Humanities.

He is continuing his interest with a post doctoral research project to catalogue the major basilicas and minor Byzantine churches scattered throughout the area, focusing particularly on their art and architecture.

One of his favourites is the oldest known building on the Via Egnatia, the shell of the deserted Holy Mother of God church in the village of Velushina, built next to the site of a 6,000 year old temple of the Mother Goddess.

There was a very early Christian church on the site which fell into disrepair and was renovated by the Emperor Justinian. Rebuilt in the 10th century and again in the 17th century under the Ottomans, it had its last upgrade in the 19th century before falling again into disrepair. The Government of Macedonia is now restoring the church, with Dr Mihajlovski contributing his knowledge of its architecture and history.

‘This road is a vital part of world history and it is vital that its monuments are protected,’ Dr Mihajlovski says.•