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This article explores the concept of perversity (contrariness) in Dostoevsky, concluding that it should be understood as a religious notion as opposed to merely ethical. In fact, perversity in Dostoevsky facilitates the conflict between the ethical and the religious. At its most intense contrariness in his novels is always apocalyptic — which is to say utterly destructive. Nastasya’s tragic embrace of death in The Idiot is the prime example in this paper of contrariness refusing to negotiate any “ethical” solutions and deliberately pushing moral discourse into the nihilistic register. However, nihilism in Dostoevsky does not exist for its own sake. Its purpose is to create a critical boundary between the ethical and the religious, where for the religious metaphysic to become manifest, the ethical metaphysic has to be actively and continuously renounced.

The church complex of the monastery at Peć achieved its final form with the projects undertaken by archbishop Danilo II (1324-1337). He began with the church of the Virgin Hodegetria (circa 1330) that would house his tomb. His sarcophagus was placed in the northwestern corner of the church below the vault of a small, elongated space. A shared narthex was added to the three monastery churches included in the Peć complex in the early 1330s. The western fazade of the church of Hodegetria displays a monumental image of the Mother of God above the entrance that leads from the narthex to the interior. The iconography of the Virgin in Peć has been compared to that of the Virgin as the Fountain of Life as well as with that of the icon of the Mother of God Zoodochos Pege from the homonymous monastery in Constantinople. Such imagery was not, however, associated with the sacrament of baptism and its role in salvation and resurrection. This paper argues that a shared association with the rite of baptism links the image of the Virgin Mary with the funerary function of the church and the tomb of Danilo II, reflecting Danilo II’s personal concern with the Last Judgment and salvation. [Project of the Serbian Ministry of Education, Science and Technological Development, Grant no. 177032: Tradition, innovation and identityin the Byzantine world]