Abstract

This study examines the historical existence and location of the Church of St. Vladimir on Mount Sumë (Brejsha), challenging its modern misidentification with the summit of Mount Rumia. Drawing on a corpus of Venetian, ecclesiastical, cartographic, and ethnographic sources from the 15th to the 20th century, the paper documents a continuous tradition that situates the church on Mount Sumë, at the border of the dioceses of Shkodra and Tivar. Newly published evidence from Pjetër Bogdani’s 1681 report is central, confirming Catholic participation in annual religious processions to the site. Together with archaeological remains and oral tradition, these sources demonstrate the unique, long-term veneration of St. Vladimir at Sumë and establish the mountain as the authentic locus of his cult.

Based on a document according to Pjetër Bogdani, Bishop of Shkodra.

About the existence of this church on the top of Mount Suma (or Brejsha) several documents have been published so far that textually and geographically mention it at the Top of Mount Suma. Today, the church of Vladimir is mistakenly considered at the Top of Rumia. Below we are listing the relevant documents, as well as the evidence from Bogdani’s report.

It is first mentioned in two Venetian documents of the 15th century, namely on September 13, 1406 and November 11, 1426, as S. Vladimiro on the border between the District of Ulcinj and the District of Shkodra, but without its precise geographical location (photos 2 and 3).

It is secondly mentioned in the canonical visit of the Bishop of Shkodra, Francesco Cruta in 1641 in Anë i Malit. Visiting the villages of Anamala, he mentions among others the Church of St. Vladimir the Martyr “On the 29th we arrived at the village called Midas (Milla) and settled there, on a hill there is a chapel in honor of St. Kolli.

On the top of the mountain there is another chapel in honor of St. Vladimir the Martyr [. . .] There were 20 families of believers, none of the Turks [. . .]”.

In this paragraph of the published report, the symbol [. . .] is marked in the middle of the sentence by the author of the publication, not marking the full text from the original report. This raises doubts about what the author wanted to hide and did not publish. It is likely that something more about Vladimir was explained there that the Serbian author Marko Jaçov did not like. (photo 2)

The third document is from the report of the Archbishop of Tivat Francesco Leonardi on 14. 10. 1642 where he says: “Vladimir is among the holy martyrs and his solemnity is celebrated by all believers, especially by those who are near Shkodra around a mountain where his Church is located on May 22.” (photo 3)

The fourth is this document (photo 1) that we are publishing for the first time to the public. Pjetër Bogdani in a report dated January 1, 1681 says that when he was Bishop of Shkodra he participated in the religious procession to the top of Mount Sumës where there was a church dedicated to this Saint. He literally says:

“Marino Urbini and the Church Writers remember him among the saints. And he lived in Shkodra, where on the borders towards Antivar on the top of a mountain there is a church with his title and his feast among others is always celebrated on the third day of Pentecost, where when I was bishop of the city of Shkodra every year I performed the divine duty with my priests, as my predecessors had done.”

Bogdan was Bishop in Shkodra in the years 1656 – 1671. According to his testimony, on a mountain peak on the border between the Diocese of Shkodra and Tivar a religious procession was held in honor of Vladimir and Catholic priests also participated in it.

From the cartographic materials we have the cartographer Giacomo Giovanni Rossi, who in 1689 among other toponyms of Anësmal also presents the place S. Valdimir (Saint Vladimir) which geographically seen from Ulcinj represents the Mountain of Sumës. (photo 5)

Recently the Archbishop of Tivat, Vincens Zmajevic, in his report of 1703, to the Diocese of Shas, among other things, physically describes the church of Vladimir in Sumës. He says: “…in Sumë Saint Vladimir the King, whose body is said to be in Terra Nuova, is a church of medium size but uncovered and with 25 scudi it could be repaired…” (photo 6)

In 1960, the Croatian ethnographer Marijana Gušić recorded from a 90-year-old woman from the village of Lulaj (between Millë and Sumë) a “legend” about King Vladimir, the religious procession and the church on the mountaintop (photo 7). In other words, the inhabitants of Anamala in the 20th century still had the exploits of this medieval king/saint recorded in their memory, an important document that proves the Albanian origin of Vlad the Good (Vladimir).

In the last photo (photo 8) we have also presented the archaeological description of the Sumë mountain where the remains of the church ruins are also presented.

In conclusion, it is worth noting that there are many documents that without any doubt chronologically locate the church dedicated to Vladimir in Sumë and document the religious procession to the top of this sacred mountain for Orthodox believers, but also of the Catholic and Muslim religions. There is no other place in the Balkans where a church in the name of Vladimir is documented for centuries from the Middle Ages to the present day.