Serbian religious nationalism: Kosovo as Serbian Jerusalem

Israeli scholar Atalia Omer and Jason Springs in their book Religious Nationalism: A Reference Handbook talk about the myth of Serbian Jerusalem and about the interaction of religion and politics in the Balkans:

Consider, for example, the mythical conception of the small region of Kosovo in Southern Serbia as the Serbian Jerusalem. The image portrays the territory as uniquely sacred to Serbian history and national identity. it amplifies the significance of Kosovo as the homeland of the original Serbian Kingdom (dating back to 13th century), the birthplace of the Serbian Orthodox Church (14th century), and a landscape that remains dotted by the oldest Serbian Orthodox churches, monasteries, and relics. It contains the battlefield of Prince Lazar's defeat at the hands of the Ottomans. These and many other associations contribute to the characterization of Kosovo as the cradle of the Serbian nation, a uniquely sacred soil that has been sprinkled by the blood of Serbian martyrs (almost always, the legend says, at the hands of Muslims). It is just these significances of the Kosov territory that Milosevic mobilized and radicalized during his famous visit to Kosovo Polje (the Field of Black Birds) on Vidovdan (June 28, 1989), at the field of the Battle of Kosovo (page 22) ...

We have seen that religion pervaded nationalist and ethnic conflict in the Balkans through the selective retrieval and manipulation of symbols, ritual practices, and mythic histories by nationalist leaders and political elites. We have seen, as well, that religious associations and identities do not merely serve as instruments or superficial markers of divisions that are actually purely political. In fact, the complex dynamic character of religious nationalism is evident in the ways that religious symbols practices sometimes exert influences and meanings that reach beyond the interests and intentions of those political elites who attempt to manipulate them (page 24-5)...

Given the deep histories and prolonged conflicts in the Balkans, it may be tempting to claim that ethnic, nationalist, and religious divisions have always been the source of violent conflict in these regions, and that they always will be. It might be equally tempting of some to claim, by contrast, that sufficient political and socioeconomic incentives would make the ethnoreligious dimensions of these nationalist conflicts disappear. Both such approaches to understanding and addressing ethnoreligious nationalism in the Balkans insufficient. The challenge, then, is to historically and culturally contextualize the religious dimension of these conflicts and explore them thoroughly, rather than to attempt to bracket them or filter them out, or assume that, under conditions of successful globalization, religion will secularize itself out of the picture (page 25)...

The Serbian use of the martyrdom of Prince Lazar is comparable to how Jewish settlers in the Palestinian Occupied Territories interpret historical time in messianic terms. Both positions result from a framing that justifies ethnocentrism and chauvinism, and often leads to violence. In both instances, understanding of national identity interacts with conceptions of ethnicity and religion in ways that cannot be fully comprehended without a careful examination of relevant mythologies, theologies, and historical events and memories (page 26).

Fresco painting of Prince Lazar and his wife Milica in the Ljubostinja Monastery (1405), near Trstenik, Serbia

Source: Lazar of Serbia

Vjekoslav Perica (University of Rijeka) in his article "Serbian Jerusalem: Religious Nationalism, Globalization and the Invention of a Holy Land in Europe's Periphery, 1985-2017" destroys the myth of Serbian Jerusalem:

Although it sounds appealing and seductive, the nationalist discourse about Serbian Jerusalem, like most nationalist manipulations with the past for present purposes, is an invented tradition. According to Hobsbawm and Ranger, the invention of tradition involves “modern nationalist practices of using ancient materials to construct invented tradition of a novel type for quite novel purposes … the new traditions use old materials, invent new language or devices, extend the old symbolic vocabulary beyond established limits …” Applied to the uses of the past about Kosovo, Kosovo is not, to begin with, a “cradle” of the Serbian nation. Neither medieval nor modern Serbia were founded within borders of present-day Kosovo. Modern Serbia developed in what is today northern Serbia at a lengthy distance from Kosovo and other southern regions. The memory and later state patriotic myth about the medieval empire and its downfall at the 1389 Kosovo medieval battle are narratives and practices of nation building inaugurated in the nineteenth century.

Medieval Serbia, including both church and state, was founded in the thirteenth century in central Serbia, outside borders of the present-day Kosovo. Kosovo historically signifies the area of the later fourteenth-century imperial expansion of the Serbian state and temporary seat of the Church under Ottoman rule in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In short, the new Serbian nationalism since the 1980s has invented and magnified the importance of Kosovo to the proportions of a Jerusalem and a holy land of the Serbs. The purpose of revitalizing the medieval narrative of the lost pride and revenge was the post- Yugoslav and post-communist mass mobilization of Serbs for the Greater Serbia project. In other words, as the contemporary political discourse would put it: making Serbia great again.

From cradle to golden age: Imprecise Metaphors, Invented Traditions, Myths ofNationhood
Medieval Serbia originated in the early thirteenth century in the province of Rascia/Raška in present-day central Serbia. Almost a century later, the earliest Serb state later expanded to Kosovo (after the Field of Black Birds, later the Kosovo battlefield) and Metohija (denoting monastery-owned land) in the present-day Kosovo. This part of what would be later, when modern Serbia re-emerged at the northern capital Belgrade, called Old Serbia, is the actual “cradle” of Serbia. Because there, not in Kosovo, the princes and bishops of the Nemanjić dynasty established an independent kingdom and a self-governing Christian Church of the Byzantine rite and ruled there for more than a hundred years prior to the foundation of an imperial capital and a supreme church authority in Kosovo.

The principal shrine and historic monument where the Church independence was proclaimed is the monastery of Studenica in the village Studenica, Commune of Kraljevo, Raška District, Republic of Serbia. Established in the late twelfth century by Stevan Nemanja, founder of the medieval Serb state, Studenica is the largest of Serbia’s medieval monasteries. Its two principal monuments, the Church of the Virgin and the Church of the King, both built of white marble, enshrine priceless collections of thirteenth and fourteenth century Byzantine paintings. UNESCO posted Studenica on World Heritage List in 1986, two decades before any of the Kosovo monasteries. Another key sacred historic monument from this earliest period of Serbian statehood is the monastery Žića, located in the heartland of Serbia. Žića lies at the distance of about 300 kilometers to the west from Priština, the present-day capital of Kosovo, and about 250 km from the Kosovo town of Pećh (Ipek), the later seat of the patriarchate. At the Žića monastery built by King Stefan of the Nemanjić dynasty and his son Sava, in 1219, a church council proclaimed an independent archdiocese of the Serbian Orthodox Church electing Sava as the archbishop. The Žića monastery is the place of coronation of the first Serb ruler Stefan and six other Serb kings. There, the first head of the Church was enthroned. In short, the earliest and oldest, historically most important Serb monasteries are Žića, Studenica and Sopoćani. Hilandar, the most important Serbian holy place outside Serbia, is in Greece, built atop the Holy Mountain Athos in Greece.

The four holiest and historically most relevant churches and monasteries, and the indisputably major saintly cult of the church’s founder and the state’s co-founder, St. Sava, are all located in Serbia outside Kosovo. Although there are hundreds of more or less preserved Serb historic monuments in Kosovo, only two, namely the old Patriarchate at Peć and the Dečani monastery, possibly match the historical importance of the four holiest and oldest churches and monasteries of Old Serbia. The two, like the Gračanica Memorial Church at the Kosovo battlefield and other sacred historic landmarks of Kosovo, are relevant, yet they do not make Kosovo the place of the state’s origin and foundation or “cradle” of Serbia.

Most importantly, the old Serbia and its main shrines are associated with the highest Serb Orthodox saintly cult of Saint Sava (Rastko Nemanjić). Sava, the founding father of the state, church, and nation lived in Serbia, travelled to Jerusalem and Greece, died in Bulgaria, and probably never visited Kosovo. Sava mediated in dynastic feuds and obtained an independent church via diplomacy balancing between the Ecumenical patriarchate in Constantinopolis and Rome. Sava’s cult celebrates an independent statehood and church autonomy won by diplomacy.

The oldest preserved portrait of Saint Sava as the first Serbian archbishop is a fresco from the Ascension church of Mileševa monastery, foundation of Serbian king Vladislav, 1222-1228. This monastery was Sava’s original burial place yet his major memorial temple was built in Belgrade commemorating Ottoman Turkish ritual burning of Sava’s relics in the sixteenth century. St. Sava is also the founder of what would be later described as a “Serbian Jerusalem”—a chapel and guesthouse for Serb pilgrims to the Holy Land.

Painting of Saint Sava and his two brothers. Prince Sava helped reconcile his brothers who fought for the Serbian throne

Source:  Who are Serbs?

When the early Serbian kingdom was well established, the Church’s seat relocated to Kosovo, which signifies not the birth or foundation but the kingdom’s expansion into an empire. This stage developed under the emperor Dušan the Mighty who was the most powerful of all Serb rulers yet never became a saint of the Serbian Orthodox Church. The Church’s seat relocated to Peć (Ipek) in Kosovo exemplifies two things: first, the domination of Serbs over the neighboring Balkan peoples under Dušan the Mighty and second, the survival of some form of Serb self-government under Ottoman rule. Imperial Kosovo is associated with the rise of Stefan Uroš IV Dušan, Dušan the Mighty, King of Serbia, 1331-1346 and self-proclaimed Emperor of the Serbs, Bulgars, Romanians, Greeks, and Albanians, (1346-1355). Incidentally, Dušan came into a conflict with the Church and was never canonized. After the Great migration of Serbs in 1690, the patriarchate relocated from Kosovo to northwestern Balkans under Austrian Habsburg authority. If Serbia could have two national “cradles” or founding centers that could be only the earlier described St. Sava’s medieval state versus modern Serbia. Modern Serbia was created at the new church seat at Sremski Karlovci (in the present-day Vojvodina), relocated to the new political capital of Belgrade when Serbia became an independent state recognized and expanded at the Congress of Berlin 1878. In the nineteenth century, the Serbian state revived in official patriotic rituals and through schooling, the mythical narrative about the 1389 battle at the Kosovo Filed and the downfall of the empire. The narrative about the Kosovo battle and the lamentations over the lost empire have been since commemorated on state and church holiday—Vidovdan or Saint Vitus Day. Out of these commemorations rose a nation building ideology seeking expansion and restoration of the size and power of the medieval empire.

There are several references to Jerusalem as the Christian Holy City and Holy Land (in the Middle East) in Serbian folklore and history. Yet none of these references could be taken as the precursor to the contemporary meanings and connotations of the phrase “Serbian Jerusalem” referring to Kosovo. First, there is a mention of Jerusalem in the epic narrative about the 1389 Kosovo battle to suggest that the heroic Prince Lazar received a divine message from the Holy Land. Second, as mentioned earlier, there is the chapel and pilgrim’s guesthouse that St. Sava had built in Jerusalem for Serb pilgrims and therefore a “Serbian Jerusalem” (in the Middle East, not in Kosovo). Third, there is the expression of a “Serb Golgotha.” Church leaders sometimes described the Kosovo battle in which most of the Serb nobility perished, and the subsequent life under Muslim rule as a “Serbian Golgotha.” A similar phrase, namely, “the Albanian Golgotha,” emerged out of the First World War. The Serbian army suffered heavy casualties as it retreated to Greece across the Albanian mountains. Commemorating the First World War as martyrdom and heroism of the Serbs comparable to the Kosovo battle, Patriarch Dimitrije Pavlović in 1918 used the phrase “Serbian Jerusalem” referring to the island Corfu in Greece where the Serbian army retreated during the war and recuperated for the liberation of Serbia. The Patriarch urged Serbs for holy journeys to the isle with memorials and military graveyard, like pilgrims go to Jerusalem.

After the First Balkan War of 1912 when Serbia militarily acquired Kosovo, the Serbian state for the first time in history presented Kosovo to the world as a holy land of the Serbs in order to legitimize military conquest. Church historian Dimitrije Bogdanović (in a book published in the 1980s), argues that the idea of Kosovo as a holy land of the Serbs claimed by Serbia before the world powers, was articulated after three Balkan wars in 1912-1913. The 1913 international conference in London, seeking settlement for the post-war Balkans, heard the following claims based on the historic and cultural rights of the Serbian ethnic minority in Kosovo against the Albanian ethnic majority: "It was rightly said (in the Serbian Memorandum to the ambassadors of the European Powers in London in 1913) that this territory is a kind of "Holy Land" for the Serbian people… In the negotiations about territories and borders in Kosovo and Metohija at the 1913 conference in London, Serbia prioritized the historic, ethnographic, cultural and moral criteria...."Yet, the London conference was by no means fascinated with the Serb sacred heritage and the mythical history in Kosovo, as Bogdanović implies. Neither did the Western powers take seriously the historic and cultural rights of the Serbs in Kosovo to endorse the annexation of Kosovo by Serbia. On the contrary, the world powers pursued Realpolitik by recognizing fait accompli established by Serbia’s military occupation of Kosovo. Concurrently, the London Conference (i.e. Britain and France), took into consideration Albanian nationalism and the Albanian ethnic majority in the neighboring parts of the Balkans, to recognize a newly established Albanian national state, the Kingdom of Albania.

The first published verbatim quote of the phrase “Serbian Jerusalem” referring to Kosovo as a holy land of the Serbs, is most likely a 1939 newspaper article by general Milan Nedić, the World War I hero and later the chief pro-Nazi collaborator presiding over a puppet regime in occupied Serbia.In June 1939, on the occasion of the 550th anniversary of the Kosovo battle, General Nedić wrote an article in the daily Politika about the Kosovo legacy as inspiration for the present. Nedić hoped for a massive resistance to the impending Nazi invasion, so he urged Serbs to invoke the example of the hero Miloš Obilić, the sultan’s assassin amidst the Kosovo battle. According to Nedić, “today, as dark clouds gather in the skies of Europe, we Serbs are yet again returning to Kosovo, Serbian Jerusalem, and the eternal fountain of our vital stamina, to smell the red flowers on the heroes’ graves and inhale the fighting spirt of Obilić [who assassinated Sultan Murad I].” Nedić was no nationalist poet or writer; he was a military leader and he did not himself invent the “Serbian Jerusalem” metaphor. He probably borrowed it from sermons and speeches of the then increasingly influential religious nationalist and leading Serb theologian, later canonized saint of the Serbian Orthodox Church, Bishop of Žića, Nikolaj Velimirović.

To summarize, “Serbian Jerusalem” exemplifies the nationalist practice of the invention of tradition. The contemporary Serbian nationalist movement, focusing on the struggle for Kosovo as seeking weapons in history, religion, and tradition, presented Kosovo as a “cradle” of the nation and the original sacred center where medieval Serbian state was founded. Present-day Serb nationalism intentionally disregarded or “forgot” the primacy of the historic center of the medieval Serbian state which was outside Kosovo, and dwarfed the unquestionably major Serb saintly cult of Saint Sava, worshiped as the Church’s founder, the state’s co-founder and the religious mystic, Christian pilgrim, diplomat, and peacemaker. By contrast, contemporary nationalism, planning for mass mobilization, war, and the replacement of Yugoslavia by a Greater Serbia, prioritized the memory of the medieval empire, the militant saint Prince Lazar and the avenger of Kosovo, sultan [Murad I]’s assassin Milos Obilić. 

In addition to the invention of tradition, the contemporary Serbian nationalist movement operating within a globalizing world, espoused new religious practices such as notably religious nationalism. According to Roger Friedland, religious nationalism is “a set of discursive practices by which the territorial identity of a state and the cultural identity of the people whose collective representation it claims are constituted as a singular fact.”34 Religious nationalism calls for a new theocracy. It is an anti-liberal and anti-secular ideology influential since the 1970s that rejects the modern secular type of nationhood as a de-secularized community organizing state and territory according to religion and myth. Thus, according to Peter van der Veer’s research on contesting territorial claims and religious monuments in northern India, “sacred sites are the physical evidence of the perennial existence of the religious community and, by nationalist expansion, of the nation. … The history of shrines, as told in religious tales, and established by archeological evidence, is the history of the nation.” In the Balkans, religious nationalism, Dino Abazović explains, following the destruction of multiethnic Yugoslavia, assisted the formation of an ethnoconfessional type of nationality and based on this service, wants to influence politics to decide on the model of statehood and nationhood particularly opposing ethnoreligious pluralism and secularism.

In sum, Kosovo is not Serbia’s “cradle” but it symbolizes Serbia’s pre-modern “golden age.” The discourse about the “cradle” of the state that integrated the people and paved the way to nationhood combines two archetype nationalist myths: myth of ancient origins, and myth of rise and fall. According to Pål Kolstø’s 2005 study on ethnic nationalist myths in the Balkans, the key nationalist myths of the Balkan ethnic nations are the myth of antiquity (ancient origins, deep historic roots of the nation), and the myth of golden age (the state’s rise and expansion and In sum, Kosovo is not Serbia’s “cradle” but it symbolizes Serbia’s pre-modern “golden age.” The discourse about the “cradle” of the state that integrated the people and paved the way to nationhood combines two archetype nationalist myths: myth of ancient origins, and myth of rise and fall. According to Pål Kolstø’s 2005 study on ethnic nationalist myths in the Balkans, the key nationalist myths of the Balkan ethnic nations are the myth of antiquity (ancient origins, deep historic roots of the nation), and the myth of golden age (the state’s rise and expansion and if applicable, collapse and commemoration).37 The recent nationalist discourse needed both constitutive nationalist myths, namely the myth of the nation’s “cradle” (ancient origins) and of the golden age of its expansion and glory followed by a tragic yet not forgotten downfall, for contemporary purposes of mass mobilization aimed at reframing collective identity and restoring the past glory preferably within the boundaries of the medieval empire. The invention of tradition and the material evidence of the sacred heritage and religious symbols from the nation’s golden age, have overall served well the purpose of the Serb mass mobilization for the destruction of multiethnic Yugoslavia. Regarding the restoration of the empire (in contemporary parlance called Greater Serbia), the results have been less successful. The Serb republic in Bosnia-Herzegovina seems as the only palpable gain. Croatia emerged from the 1991-1995 Serb-Croat war militarily strong and furiously anti-Serbian with its Serb minority largely “cleansed.”

Kosovo eventually seceded from Serbia and the local Serbs have been largely “cleansed.” Although the sacred monuments are still there as reminders of the bygone empire and the enduring Serbia’s imperial ambitions, they could not prove that Serbs “got there first.” On the contrary, according to a number of impartial studies, the Albanians are presumably the indigenous residents of the Balkans, sometimes linked to the ancient Illyrians, whose ethnic name South Slavic nationalist movements had appropriated, settling in Kosovo and present-day Albania long before the Slavic migrations of the seventh to ninth centuries.38 However, the actual history is only one dimension of the Kosovo controversy. The Kosovo myth, as part of a “religion of Serbian nationalism” as Ivan Čolović describes it, have since the nineteenth century when Serbian secular and clerical elites began using it for state and nation-building, become an autonomous socio-cultural phenomenon creating representations of the past or present that often contradict reality.