The registers of prophets and apostles from the spire tholobate of the St. George Church of Suceava. Liturgical and historical implications

The frescoes of the St. George Metropolitan Church of Suceava, painted inside and outside in 1534, until now have been studied only partly. In the hereby study we aim an iconographic consideration of the paintings within the vaulting system of the nave. Special attention is paid to the registers of prophets and apostles inside the tholobate, which display several important peculiarities. In the superior register are represented 12 Minor Prophets and 3 Major Prophets, to which prophets Elijah and David are added. Surprisingly, the fourth Major Prophet, Jeremiah, is missing, instead of him, even more surprisingly, being represented Naboth the Israelite - the single image of this character within the register of prophets during the Byzantine and Post-Byzantine epoch. In the case of this unexpected insertion, we have attempted to draw several interpretation tracks, connected with the historical realities of the epoch. The inferior register also contains an uncommon mixture, including eight ?gures of apostles and prophets each, as well as a little habitual practice of endowing the apostles with texts written on rotuli. The study draws a repertory of the inscriptions from the rotuli of prophets and apostles, which are analyzed from the perspective of the practices in this ?eld from the Byzantine and Post-Byzantine art, as well as in the context of their liturgical implications. At the same time, the author presented the inscriptions on the rotuli of prophets from the Dodecaorton (The Great Feasts) from the so?t of the oblique arches, trying also to establish a relationship between the prophetical registers of the St. George Church of Suceava and the evolutions of these registers in the Moldavian art from the 15th -16th centuries.