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KOSOVO IN THE HISTORY OF THE SERBIAN CHURCH
August 21, 2000
Veselin Kesich
The world now knows Kosovo as the site of senseless atrocities
and brutal bombing. This small poor province of Yugoslavia
has had a turbulent history, although direct bloody
confrontations between its two ethnic groups, Serbian and
Albanian, are relatively recent. They began when the Ottoman
and Austro-Hungarian Empires were breaking up. As national
consciousness of both Serbs and Albanians rose, the region
suffered the consequences of external interference. During
World War II Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany as occupiers
encouraged the Albanians against the Serbs in Kosovo, pursuing
their own interests. With the fall of Communist power in
1991, the Yugoslav leadership was determined to preserve its
collapsing totalitarian system at any price, and engaged in
open conflict with the Kosovo secessionists, which led to the
"cleansing" of the Albanian majority. With the entrance
of NATO powers, the "Kosovo crisis" intensified and was
transformed into the "Kosovo catastrophe." These events
have brought suffering to the people of Kosovo, first to the
Albanians and then to the Serbs.
Yet the destruction, hostility and killing of the last decade
of the twentieth century should not obscure the era of
peaceful and constructive contacts between Serbs (Kosovci) and
Albanians (Kosovars). Both are rooted in the land of Kosovo
and share the cultural, religious and emotional attachment to
this region, so rich in history and symbolism. Each
nationality claims rights to the same piece of land. The
purpose of this article is to explore some important
historical links between these two distinct ethnic groups,
with particular emphasis upon the place and meaning of Kosovo
in the history of the Serbian church.
I
Before the Slavic immigration, the province of Illyria, which
included Kosovo, already had an organized church, and among
the fourth century martyrs Phlor and Laur came from the Kosovo
region. Subsequently the invasions of Goths, Avars and
Slavs destroyed many monuments of Christian antiquity in
Illyria.
By the seventh century the Byzantine emperor Heraclius found a
large pagan Slavic population resident in his domains. The
Slavs were spreading widely through the Balkan Peninsula,
looking for farmland along the riverbanks. Here they came
into contact with the indigenous population, Illyrians and
Thracians. When they invaded, the Slavs were speaking a
relatively homogeneous language, but their historical
experience began splitting them apart. Those settling in the
region known as Raska (Rascia), including the territory of
Kosovo took the name of the dominant tribe, "Serbs." Under
the Slavic pressure, the indigenous Illyrians took refuge in
the mountains. The Albanians claim descent from these
Illyrians. This process continued for about three
centuries. By the eleventh century the Kosovo region was
predominantly Slavic.
In the eighth and ninth centuries, the church was still one,
but the two centers, Rome and Constantinople, were rivals in
expanding their influence in the Balkans. Illyria became
increasingly a ground for competing missionary efforts. With
the reign of Charlemagne and the successful Christianization
of the Germanic tribes, Rome experienced a new sense of
power.
Constantinople responded to the challenge by sending two
Slavic-speaking brothers to conduct a mission to the
Slavic-speaking people of Moravia. Constantine, (c. 826-869,
with the monastic name of Cyril) and Methodius (c. 815-885)
had learned Slavonic from Slavic settlers of their native
Thessaloniki. Constantine created an alphabet for the use of
the Moravian Slavs and translated some liturgical texts.
Honored at first by the Popes in Rome for their initiative,
the brothers were eventually suppressed by Latin-speaking
missionaries in Moravia. A group of disciples, among whom
Clement and Naum were the best known, escaped to Bulgaria,
where they continued the Christianization of the Slavic
tribes. Clement established a Slavic school in Ohrid, not far
from Kosovo, and continued translating and copying texts. The
mission launched by Cyril and Methodius proved to be one of
the most successful in Christian history. They brought not
only literacy and liturgy to the Slavs in their own language
but a whole way of life and entry into the philosophical
worldview of the Christian Empire. From Ohrid the written
Slavonic texts went out to all the Slavic people of the
Eastern Empire, reaching Russia within the century. The
nearby people of Raska and Kosovo benefited from this
neighboring activity and were turning from barbarians into
Byzantine Christians.
In an age when the Byzantine Empire was losing authority, the
Slavic chieftains began consolidating their lands into states
within the empire. In 1169 Nemanja, the first great name in
Serbian history, founded a dynasty that ruled the Serbian land
for more than two hundred years. Born in Zeta (modern
Montenegro), Nemanja was baptized according to the Latin rite,
as Zeta was under the Latin jurisdiction within its see in
Bar. When he returned to Raska, under the jurisdiction of the
Greek bishop of Ohrid, he was chrismated according to the
Eastern rite. He united the adjoining regions of Hum (modern
Hercegovina), Zeta and Kosovo to his domain. Within this new
state two Christian traditions existed, Greek and Latin.
Nemanja, an Orthodox, sent gifts to the churches of the west,
particularly to those in Rome and Bari. Together with his son
Sava, he kept good relations with the Western Church. Indeed,
Nemanja had a truly Balkan variety of "ethnic groups" within
his realm, including the Illyrians, who were presumably the
ancestors of the modern Albanians.
Nemanja as a devout Byzantine started a vigorous program of
church construction. His son Sava chose monastic life on
Mount Athos, where he was later joined by his father after
Nemanja renounced the crown and took monastic vows. They
built and organized Hilandar on the ruins of an abandoned
monastery. This spiritual center has played an important
historical role in the life of the Serbian people. Soon after
its foundation, Hilandar was linked to Kosovo, as the see of
the archbishops after Sava was in Pec. Of eleven archbishops
from 1234-1346, seven were spiritually formed in Hilandar.
In the thirteenth century Constantinople suffered its most
grievous defeat. The armies of the Fourth Crusade (1204),
"devout barbarians," destroyed the city, raping and murdering.
They stole and desecrated relics of saints and forcibly
converted the monks of Mount Athos to the Catholic faith.
They drove out the patriarch and emperor, who took refuge in
Nicea, and established a Latin Kingdom in Constantinople.
During these turbulent years, Sava advanced the prestige of
his own church and kingdom. He went to Nicea to ask the
patriarch to grant autocephaly to the Serbian church. He was
successful, and in 1219 Sava became the first Serbian
archbishop, with the right to appoint bishops within his
diocese. He quickly raised the number of bishops from three
to eleven, replacing Greek bishops who had been appointed by
the Archbishop of Ohrid. The new diocese covered regions
where Latin missionaries had been particularly active. His aim
was to strengthen the Orthodox Church in these provinces in
the hope of preventing rivalry between Catholics and Orthodox
in dynastic struggles between his brothers. But he made no
effort to curtail the existing Roman Catholic church in the
Serbian state. Its hierarchs remained undisturbed and its
members were protected in his kingdom. Despite the atrocities
of the Latin Crusaders, Sava retained his vision of Christian
unity.
This first Serbian archbishop was an indefatigable teacher,
organizer and builder. The church flourished under
autocephaly. His successor Arsenije (1233-1263) removed the
see of the archbishopric from Zica to Pec in Kosovo. To
expand knowledge of the sources of Eastern Christian
spirituality among his people, Archbishop Danilo (d. 1337)
founded a Greek School in Pec devoted to translation of Greek
Christian classics into Church Slavonic. The name "Pec" comes
from "cave," as monks inhabited the many caves of the area.
Not far from Pec stands Decani, built in 1327 with its gallery
of thousands of medieval frescoes. King Milutin built
Gracanica, near Pristina, in 1315. Tsar Dusan in the
fourteenth century built the Church of the Archangel near
Prizren. Building continued in Kosovo in the fifteenth
century, even after the defeat in the Battle of Kosovo in
1389; the monastery at Devic (c. 1430) is an example.
The Nemanjid State reached its greatest expansion in the reign
of Stefan Dusan (1331-55). Modern regions of Albania,
Macedonia, Epirus and Thessaly were included in Dusan's
empire, which was thoroughly multinational. The church was
elevated to a Patriarchate (1346), and Dusan was proclaimed
"Emperor of the Serbs and Greeks, the Bulgarians and the
Albanians." Under his instruction, the existing legal code
was revised on the basis of Byzantine sources. One article
asserts: "If I [the Emperor] should write a letter [on behalf
or in defense of somebody] and that letter should undermine
the Law Code, then the judges should put no faith in that
letter, but instead they should judge and act according to
justice.
Emboldened by early success, Dusan had the hubris to lay claim
to the Emperor's throne. Emperor John Catacuzene feared
Dusan more than the Ottoman Turks. To prevent him from
capturing Constantinople, he invited to Turks to be his allies
against Dusan. The Ottomans responded, and for the first time
reached Gallipoli. He also had the Patriarch anathematize the
whole Serbian church. Dusan died suddenly at the age of
forty-six, but the disastrous consequences of his claim long
survived him. The way was opened to the Turkish army to
advance into Europe, and it took twenty years after his death
to remove the anathema.
The Serbian kingdom also started to dissolve. Local rulers
fought for the crown and prestige. The Turks soundly defeated
the remnants of the Serbian Empire at the Marica River (1371).
Among the warring claimants, only Prince Lazar, ruler of
northern Serbia, had any success in uniting an opposition to
the Turks. First he turned to the problem of the anathema,
which was disrupting relations between Greek and Serb. With
the help of the Monk Isaiah from Mount Athos, he succeeded in
having it removed in 1375. The Christian forces now could
hope for unity in the face of the daunting Turkish challenge.
The Ottoman armies continued to advance, conquering Macedonia
in 1380 and Nis in 1386. Lazar was the main leader of an
effort to organize an alliance of Balkan peoples to resist
them in a decisive battle. Contingents sent by the Bosnian
king Tvrtko, as well as by Albanians, Bulgarians, Croats and
Hungarians, came to the aid of his Serbian army. On St. Vitus
Day (Vidovdan) June 28, 1389, Lazar's army met the Turks on
Kosovo Polje (the Field of Blackbirds). Lazar died in battle
and is popularly regarded as a martyr.
Among Lazar's allies were Albanians, led by John Castriota.
At the time the great majority of Albanians were Christian,
either Roman Catholic or Orthodox. Castriota's son George,
a hostage at the sultan's court and a convert to Islam,
received the name Iskander Beg or Skanderbeg. Deserting the
Ottoman army, he came to his own country to organize
resistance to the Turks. With the support of Serbs and
Bosnians, he led an army into another battle of Kosovo in 1448
but without success. Skanderbeg came into legend as a hero
for both Serbs and Albanians. The alliance Prince Lazar had
forged ended, and Serbia was conquered for good in l459.
The Battle of Kosovo lived on in the oral tradition of both
Serbs and Albanians. Even into the twentieth century,
observers noted that Albanians and Serbs with roots in Kosovo
were reluctant to start anything of importance on a Tuesday.
They explained that this was because the Battle of Kosovo had
been fought on a Tuesday. Some Serbs would also fast on
Tuesdays. In fact, the battle did occur on Tuesday, June
28,1389.
II
The medieval Serbian kingdom left two remarkable achievements
indelibly linked with Kosovo: religious art and epic poetry.
The frescoes in the great churches and monasteries built there
are supreme achievements, masterpieces in color. After seeing these
monasteries, Andr Malraux wrote: "Culture, when it is the most
precious possession, is never the past."
What reveals the mind and soul of the people does not belong to the
past only. Art historians have seen the frescoes of Visoki Decani,
executed between 1327 and 1355, as an inspirational artistic solution
of the portrayal of the incarnation, where the spiritual manifests
itself through the human. These frescoes, which had survived
centuries of Ottoman rule, were endangered by bombing in April and May
1999, and the subsequent systematic acts of destruction. At
Gracanica, "this treasure of the Balkans," built in 1315 three miles
from Pristina, deep fissures appeared in its frescoes, which are in
danger of separating from the walls. "The collapse of Gracanica's
frescoes would be a cultural disaster," warned Simon Jenkins. Some
commentators have tended to minimize this damage in view of what the
other side was doing. Thus the ethnic cleansing, a crime against
humanity, is used to justify destruction from the air, a crime against
culture.
The second towering Christian achievement of the Serbian
kingdom is the great Kosovo cycle of epic poetry. Lazar of
Kosovo is its protagonist. Liturgical celebrations of
Lazar's death on June 28, 1389, began the very next year in
Ravanica, the church he built in 1383, just a few years before
the battle. From this center many other churches in the
occupied Serbian territories started to worship God "glorified
in his saint Lazar" on St. Vitus Day. The people saw Lazar as
a defender of Christian ideals. Words ascribed to him on the
eve of the battle, recorded as early as 1392, probably by
Patriarch Danilo III (1391-96), revealed him to be a Christian
prince. He foresaw his defeat and exhorted his followers: "We
have long lived for this world. Now the moment has arrived
for a heroic feat of suffering" (podvig stradalnicki), that we
may live forever." Within a decade of his death, when events
were still vivid and close, the wounds not yet healed, the
unknown chronicler of Povesno slovo (c. 1400) pictured Lazar
as a meek, virtuous and brave man in his pre-Kosovo days. He
was praised for being a compassionate and just judge. With
qualities rare among those who have power and authority, he
ruled his country with the care of a father toward his
children. And when he noticed that the battle with Turkish
power was imminent, that the Turks sought to "swallow the
flock of Christ," this ancient biographer records that Lazar
exhorted his people to follow Christ's example. He
reminded them that to redeem one's life it is necessary to
pass through suffering.
About twelve years after Kosovo, the nun Yephimia, widow of
Despot Ugljesha, who had been killed on the Marica in 1371,
embroidered in gold thread a cover for Lazar's tomb,
containing her praises and lament for him. She addressed him
as a "new martyr" whom God had singled out for this special
honor. She praised the way he ruled over the land he had
inherited from his fathers and for giving happiness to the
Christian people under his rule. When the day of the battle
arrived, the embroiderer continued, he entered it "with
courage and piety," and received from God "a martyr's
crown." Lazar for her is not dead but more powerful than
ever. She prayed to him: "Do not forget your beloved children
who are left desolate," but "bow your knee before the Heavenly
King" and ask him that Lazar's posterity may live long and
do God's will and "that the Orthodox Church may stand firm
in the land of our fathers." At the end of the lament,
Yephimia offered a prayer for herself, opening her heart to
St. Lazar: "I pray that you will help me and calm the raging
tempest of my soul and body." In our time the poet Milan
Rakic hailed Yephimia, who "embroidered the suffering of her
noble soul."
The memory of Lazar was nurtured by his son Stefan Lazarevic,
who ruled as a vassal of the Turks over what remained of
Serbia after the defeat at Kosovo (1389-1427). Under his
rule, Serbia became a place of refuge for scholars and monks
from Mount Athos and the conquered Bulgarian territories.
Constantine the Philosopher, who had fled to Serbia after the
fall of Bulgaria (1393), contributed considerably to our
knowledge of the post-Kosovo period. In his Life of Despot
Stefan Lazarevic (c. 1431) he writes that after the death of
"the blessed Lazar," there was no place in Serbia where the
"sorrowful voice" was not heard. Everywhere you might hear
"Rachel weeping," not only for her lost children (see
Matt. 2:18), but also for "God-elected Lazar," who suffered
the death of a martyr. "He had a blessed death," continues
Constantine, "and his dear followers prayed to suffer death on
the battlefield before his own, not to see his death."
The Kosovo epic appeared against this background. Long
before this epic poetry was written down and translated into
the languages of the world, its core was transmitted orally,
starting from the earliest years after the battle. The poet
presents Lazar's life as an imitation of Christ's. The
very concept of "imitation" comes from the New Testament. The
apostle Paul exhorts the Corinthian Christians: "Become
imitators of me as I am an imitator of Christ" (1Cor. 11.1).
They had seen him, listened to him, and observed his pattern
of behavior. He had given them a concrete example to follow.
Lazar also manifested Christ's presence by a way of living
that was observable and that could be concretely depicted. In
the Kosovo cycle, the epic bard brings the events of Kosovo
together with the Passion of Christ. He wants us to see an
analogy between them. For example, on the eve of the decisive
battle, the poem describes The Prince's Supper, which Lazar
held with his commanders, corresponding to the Last Supper
Christ shared with his disciples before his crucifixion.
Lazar like Jesus is calm, while all others are agitated.
In the epic cycle, the Supper is followed by the Prince's
agony. In the poem "The Fall of the Serbian Empire," Lazar is
confronted with a choice between a heavenly and an earthly
kingdom. If he wants an earthly kingdom, he will be
victorious, but if he chooses a heavenly kingdom, then let him
build a church, let his army receive communion, and let them
be ready for suffering, "and you, Prince, will die with them."
Lazar's agony corresponds to Jesus' agony in the Garden
of Gethsemane. Like Jesus, Lazar accepts God's will: "not
what I will, but what thou wilt," and prepares himself and his
people for their Golgotha. Lazar's choice is not between
good and evil, but between what may be good (avoiding
suffering) and what is much more than any good thing
(accepting God's will and his heavenly kingdom), a more
difficult choice. Lazar's choice led to his martyrdom, and
the other Kosovo warriors followed his example. Never before,
according to the Kosovo tradition, had the people as a whole,
not as individuals, been brought so close to the cross of
Christ as at Kosovo.
The Kosovo cycle ends with two poems recording events after
the battle. "The Maid of Kosovo" and "Death of the Mother of
Jugovici." Like the women in the Gospel, who, on "the
first day of the week" at early dawn went to see the sepulchre
where Jesus had been buried, so the maid of Kosovo arose early
on Sunday to walk through the battlefield. The poem expresses
the tragedy of defeat, the destruction of the hopes and dreams
of the young people of Serbia. In "The Death of the Mother of
the Jugovici," the most moving poem of the Kosovo cycle, the
magnitude of the tragedy is revealed. News of the death of
all her family stunned her into immobility. All about her
widows and children were wailing and sobbing, the animals were
neighing, squealing, howling. Fathers, husbands, sons,
brothers, as well as the head of the nation, all had perished.
But the mother did not cry. She was not beyond pain, but
enveloped by it. It was too overwhelming to react to it.
When in the morning two black ravens brought her the hand of
her son Damian, a sign to her that the Kosovo heroes do not
have even a grave, that their graves would not be known, the
mother's heart burst for her nine sons and for old Jug
Bogdan.
The Kosovo heroes were not only admirable for proficiency and
valor; they are also martyrs, worthy of imitation. They are
portrayed as people of high moral and spiritual qualities, who
experienced Kosovo as their personal Golgotha. The bard
presents the battle of 1389 as voluntary sacrifice, as the
victory of faith over death. Thus the honor and holiness of
that day, as well as its sorrow, was handed on to future
generations. This poetry enshrines the Serbian historical
memory, interprets what happened on Kosovo in the spirit of
the Gospel account of the death and resurrection of Christ,
and reveals an ultimate truth of human existence.
During these years of hasty analysis, pundits have often
referred to the "Kosovo myth" as a morbid glorification of
defeat and the very root of Serbian nationalism. But the
Kosovo "myth" is a "Christian myth," which does not celebrate
defeat but the victory of life over death, of hope over
despair. It does not inspire hatred, nor does it demand
revenge. The English scholar G. N. W. Locke protests that
there is "no glorification of war---quite contrary, it honors
only courage and fortitude. There is more jingoism, vainglory
and xenophobic incitement to violence in the fourteen lines of
the `Marseillaise' than in the entire body of the
Serbian epics." The poetry of Kosovo has religious,
cultural and historical dimensions that transcend the
boundaries of time and geography.
III
Murad I led the victorious Turkish troops into the Balkans,
but was killed by a Serbian commander just on the eve of the
Battle of Kosovo. His death did not affect the outcome,
however. His successors put into effect his plan for the
conquered territories. After disarming them and assessing
special taxes, but retaining the existing social and cultural
institutions, they were incorporated into the expanding
Ottoman Empire. Like other Ottoman rulers, he aimed to build
a Muslim Empire "with Christian brain and muscle." The
Turkish rulers brought Christians with special skills, as well
as traders on land and sea, into the service of the state.
The captured population now had alien rulers who professed
Islam. The conquerors did not force Islam on the population
at first, but there were advantages for the convert, notably
in a reduction of taxes and an elevation in status. In the
first two centuries after the Kosovo defeat, relatively few
Serbs converted.
Islam started to take root among the Albanians, now coming down from
the mountains where they had been shepherds. Part of the reason for
this may be the different historical circumstances of Serbs and
Albanians. Living in rival clans, the Albanians lacked a cohesive
state and an autocephalous church. The Serbs, on the other hand, came
under the rule of the Ottomans with strong memories of the past, of
their medieval state and well established church. The Serbian Church
remained active after the collapse of the state and kept its people
aware through the centuries of their religious and historical roots.
The monastery of Hilandar on Mount Athos also preserved national
tradition through sacred objects and documents. All these memorials
stiffened Serbian resistance to conversion to Islam.
The most onerous special tax imposed on Christians throughout the
Balkans was devsirme or "collection," also called "boy tribute" or
"tribute in blood." Over two centuries, around two hundred thousand
boys of eight or nine were taken from their families and raised as
Muslims in the Janissaries, soldiers sworn to lifelong loyalty to the
Sultan and at first forbidden to marry or hold property. For some it
could become a road to power, as it was for Mehmed Pasa Sokolli, a
Janissary of Serbian origin who became Grand Vizier of the Ottoman
Empire. Over thirty Grand Viziers of the Ottoman Empire were of
Albanian origin.
After the conquest the Serbs had repeatedly petitioned the Turks to
restore the Pec Patriarchate, which had been abolished after the
conquest. With Sokolli as Grand Vizier, the patriarchate was
restored, and the Grand Vizier's brother Makarije Sokolovic became
Patriarch (1557-15571, d. 1574). This move served the conquerors well
as their armies advanced into Europe, insuring a peaceful population
on the border. At the time of their power and greatest glory, the
Turks were relatively tolerant, concerned with loyalty and tribute,
and the Patriarchs from the Sokolovich family nurtured the policy of
peace for half a century.
At this time the jurisdiction of the Patriarchate included Serbs in
all the Ottoman territories, extending to Bosnia and those living
north of the rivers Sava and Danube. It thus included those in Bosnia
who had been outside the borders of Dusan's extensive empire. The
Patriarch became Milletbasha or leader of all Serbian and Bulgarian
Orthodox, ruling from Pec in Kosovo. If we look for the seedbed of
the idea of a "Greater Serbia," it may come from the Pec patriarchate
under Ottoman rule rather than from the medieval kingdoms. This
reorganization gave the Serbs the possibility of preserving their
religion, language and cohesive identity. The patriarch now had the
responsibility to collect taxes and pay the annual assessment to the
Sultan. In return he freely administered church affairs and dealt
with grievances and disputes in civil cases, saving his people from
the Turkish courts. In most cases Dusan's Code of Laws prevailed.
The Patriarch would visit the churches in his patriarchate with a
large entourage and armed Janissaries designated for his protection.
By his impressive appearance and freedom of action he secured for his
people, he clearly benefited his Serbian faithful.
After the Sokolovich period, the captive population felt a
deterioration in their position and started a rebellion against
Ottoman rule. On their behalf, the Patriarchs in Pec, notably John
(1592-1613), had almost unlimited confidence that the Christian West
would help them against the Islamic oppressors. Pope Clement VIII,
however, asked him first to accept Unia with the Catholic Church,
which he categorically rejected. His successor appealed to Russia
with the same request, to no avail. For these appeals to outside
powers, the patriarchs were executed, usually by hanging or
strangling. The uprisings had disastrous consequences for the
rebellious Serbs as well, but they continued to believe that they
would soon be liberated.
The turning point came with the defeat of Turkey and its
retreat from Vienna in 1683. The advancing Austrian army
liberated most of Hungary in 1686 and Belgrade soon after in
1688, then moved south toward the Serbian heartland. They
managed to defeat a Turkish army in Kosovo and reached
Skoplje, Macedonia. The Austrian commander, General
Picolomini, died suddenly of plague, creating confusion in the
Austrian ranks and forcing them to retreat.
Arsenije III Crnojevic (1674-90), Patriarch of Pec, had
supported the Austrian campaign as well as the Serbian
uprising. He decided to retreat with the defeated Austrian
army to Vojvodina, accompanied by up to 40,000 families. The
Vojvodina, with its huge group of refugees, mainly from the
Kosovo region, remained under Austrian rule. This movement
was known as the "great migration of the Serbs." The
eighteenth century saw a renewal of the Austrian-Turkish wars.
Again the Pec patriarch, Arsenije IV (1726-37), trusted in
Austrian victory. When the campaign failed, he feared for the
consequences for his people and led another migration out of
Kosovo into Vojvodina.
Now the subjugated Serbs of Kosovo were left at the mercy of
the enraged Turkish army, which killed and punished and left
the monastery in Pec in ruins. Some churches, like the one in
Prizren, were transformed into mosques. The army used
monasteries for their horses and other domestic animals.
After the migrations the Serbian areas in Kosovo were almost
depopulated. The unprotected remaining population came under
pressure to convert to Islam, and several thousand Serbs from
fifty villages around Prizren did so. The Ottomans invited
the Albanians, by now largely Muslim, to occupy the land in
Kosovo abandoned by the Serbs, who had been a majority there
before the migrations. This was the first large incursion of
Albanians since the Slavic settlement of the area and the
lowest point in the life of the Christian Serbs living there.
After the Serbian rebellions and migrations, the Ottomans
proposed abolishing the patriarchate in Pec. At first the
Ecumenical Patriarch staved off this event by appointing a
Greek, Janikije Karadza (1739-46), to the position of
Patriarch in Pec. He came from a rich Greek family in Phanar,
near Constantinople. From 1739 to 1776, six of the ten
patriarchs were Greek "Phanariotes." The last one resigned,
requesting the Patriarch in Constantinople to abolish his
patriarchate, as it was burdened with debts and could not pay
overdue taxes. In 1766, Sultan Mustafa III abolished the
patriarchate and even the very name of Pec. What had been a
united Serbian church was broken into several regional
churches within the Turkish Empire under the jurisdiction of
Constantinople. Those Serbian churches which found themselves
through migration outside Turkish boundaries had to
accommodate to different political conditions under
Austro-Hungarian dominance. The Patriarchate in Pec was
restored only in 1920, after World War I.
Now Kosovo was populated by a diminished and disheartened
Serbian population and a growing Albanian presence, largely
Muslim. Yet some ties remained between these inhabitants.
They both recognized the great Kosovo monuments as their own
heritage. When the angry Turkish troops came in to destroy
the medieval monasteries of Pec and Decani, some Albanians
were observed to protect these sacred sites. They also
prevented desecration of Christian cemeteries, as they were
aware that some of their own ancestors were buried there.
They respected the Byzantine common past, even if they were no
longer Christian. The collective memory and ties between the
people persisted down to the latest flare-up of nationalist
clashes.
IV
Throughout the rest of Serbia and Bosnia the pattern of
rebellion and repression continued through the nineteenth
century. In 1875 the Christian rayah, heavily taxed in Bosnia
and Hercegovina by their Muslim landowners, began a
large-scale rebellion. The scale and success of the uprising
shook the declining Ottoman Empire. The European powers
convened a congress in Berlin in 1878 to solve the Bosnian
problem. It made decisions that would affect the future
course of events in the Balkans. It confirmed the independence
of Serbia and Montenegro. Unwilling to condone the complete
withdrawal of Turkey from Europe, however, it left Macedonia
under Ottoman rule. This led to the Balkan wars of 1912 and
1913. By placing Bosnia and Hercegovina under Austro-Hungarian
rule, the Congress sowed the seeds of the First World War.
The Albanian tribal chieftains of Kosovo, expecting their
freedom, met in Prizren and founded what would become the
Prizren league. They asked to be put on the agenda of the
Berlin Congress, but the appeal was rejected. Bismarck, the
German chancellor, declared that there was no such thing as
"an Albanian nationality." Kosovo was left in the Ottoman
Empire, which now confronted a threat from the Albanian
national awakening. The Young Turks, who seized power in the
1908 revolution, concluded that, as the Berlin Congress had
confirmed the independence of Serbia and Montenegro, these two
states represented the greater danger. After Turkish troops
brutally suppressed an Albanian rebellion in 1910, they made
peace with the Albanians, granting them a degree of autonomy
and promising not to change the structure of their tribal
society. We see the first tentative outline of Albanian
borders, within which was the province of Kosovo and Metohija.
When the Balkan War of 1912 broke out, an alliance of Serbia,
Montenegro, Bulgaria and Greece against Ottoman rule, the
Turks entrusted the defense of Kosovo exclusively to the
Albanians, and in 1912 Serbs and Albanians faced each other as
enemies in harsh warfare for the first time. In the end, the
Kosovo province was once again united with Serbia after five
hundred years, but this lasted only a short time. On June 28,
1914, the day when Serbs commemorate the Battle of Kosovo in
1389, the Austrian Archduke Ferdinand was assassinated in
Sarajevo. This drastically changed the situation of Kosovo,
as well as all of Europe. Austria accused Serbia of
responsibility, sent an ultimatum demanding total capitulation
within forty-eight hours, and then on the excuse of
non-compliance declared war.
Confronted with the full brunt of the well-prepared Austrian
and later the German armies, the Serbs in retreating made a
last stand on the field of Kosovo, where for the first time in
military history they were attacked by Austrian airplanes.
Defenseless, they moved across snowbound Albania to the
Adriatic coast, and from here French and British ships
transferred them to the Greek island of Corfu. The American
reporter Fortier Jones chronicles the incredible hardships of
the retreat. He recounts how the Austrian planes bombed
civilian refugees and soldiers indiscriminately. Men and
animals starved, and blizzards froze the soaked clothing.
Many dead lay unburied "until only their bones were found the
following spring." It is estimated that out of a quarter
of a million Serbian soldiers, a hundred thousand died during
the retreat. On the whole, in World War I Serbia and
Montenegro lost one million out of a total of five million
people.
After the Serbian army retreated from Kosovo, the province,
like most of the territory that would become Yugoslavia,
remained for three years (1915-18) under Austrian occupation.
During this period the occupiers favored the Albanians of
Kosovo, allowing Albanian language schools and encouraging
Albanian nationalism. At the same time they tried to reduce
the Serbian presence there.
With the end of the war in 1918, the Austro-Hungarian and
Ottoman Empires were broken up, and a new state, the Kingdom
of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, was proclaimed, with the
province of Kosovo within it. The state was renamed
"Yugoslavia" in 1929.
Almost from the start, nationalist parties arose in opposition to the
new state. The Albanian extremists in Kosovo were allied with the
Croatian Ustasha movement. Both also found support from the newly
founded Communist Party.
At first the Party took a benevolent attitude toward the new
state. In 1920 Sima Markovic, General Secretary, hailed the
creation of Yugoslavia as a positive political development in
the Balkans, the fulfillment of South Slav aspirations.
Shortly afterward, however, the Comintern (Communist
International), directed from Moscow, labeled this position
"reactionary." It demanded the destruction of Yugoslavia as a
"prison house of nations." In 1925, at a special meeting in
Moscow in which Stalin himself participated, Yugoslavia was
labeled a "creation of Versailles." In summing up Party
policy, Stalin distinguished between Serbian "nationalism" and
the nationalism of the "subjugated people," such as the Croats
and the Albanians. The Party's enemy, he declared, was the
ruling class of Serbia. All other nationalists should be
regarded as Communism's natural allies in the revolutionary
struggle against the king and government of Yugoslavia.
Tito, who became General Secretary in the thirties, faithfully
followed and implemented the instructions of the Comintern,
even supporting the Ustasha movement in Croatia and the
Albanian separatists in Kosovo. If we are to understand the
Kosovo crisis today, we must remember the activities of the
Communist Party in the first Yugoslavia. Ironically, those
who had worked to destroy the first Yugoslavia (1918-41) were
to become the builders of the second Communist Yugoslavia
(1945-91), which was organized ostensibly on federalist
principles, but under the slogan of "brotherhood and unity."
In our days, the heirs of Tito's Partisans have been
carving their own national ethnic states out of this
multi-ethnic country.
The royal government in Belgrade tried to redress the balance
in Kosovo, from which thousands of Serbs had been expelled
over the years by Albanian pressure under Turkish and Austrian
occupation. Special inducements were offered to Serbian
settlers who would recolonize Kosovo. This devastated land
with its blasted infrastructure was not regarded as desirable
farmland, but there was some modest resettlement. In the
inter-war period, the medieval churches with their monasteries
were repaired, and new churches were built. Kosovo's
historic role as the cradle of the Serbian state, its epic
poetry and national memory was enshrined.
Germany invaded and vanquished Yugoslavia in April 1941, two
months before invading the USSR. Taking exceptional revenge
on Yugoslavia for its defiance, the Nazis and their allies
split the country up into occupied zones under the control of
Germans, Italians, Hungarians and Bulgarians. Local fascists
in Croatia, the Ustasha, installed a particularly cruel
regime. They aimed to eliminate the substantial Serbian
minority either by death, conversion or expulsion. In the
first years of the occupation, an estimated 500,000 people,
including Jews and gypsies, were killed outright in the
"Independent Croatian State." The overwhelming majority
were Orthodox Serbs.
The church suffered with its people. Of 577 Serbian priests
who had served in the territory now under Ustasha terror, 217
were killed and 334 were "cleansed" to Serbia. Of the ruling
bishops in seven Orthodox dioceses in this region, three were
murdered, three expelled to Serbia, and one detained in an
Italian prison camp. The rest of the country was also
subjected to severe conditions. The Patriarch and the most
outstanding Bishop, Nicholai Velimirovich, were imprisoned in
Dachau.
During the Axis occupation, Kosovo came under Italian control
at first, but with the fall of Italian Fascism in 1943 Germans
replaced the Italians. The Albanians assisted the Germans in
their war effort. They formed the Skanderbeg Division, an SS
unit of Albanian volunteers, which carried out punitive raids
on the non-Albanian population. The Prizren League, which had
gone underground, was once again activated, pursuing its goal
of an ethnically pure Kosovo. Under the aegis of the
occupiers, the League terrorized the Serbs, driving them out.
As thousands of them were being forced out of Kosovo, the
Germans blocked the roads to prevent an even greater number of
refugees flowing into Serbia. They feared that this exodus
would increase the guerillas opposing them in Serbia proper.
At the end of the war, Tito's Partisans occupied Kosovo,
but had to fight the entrenched Albanians. Thousands of
Albanians left for Turkey. Tito was only partly successful in
controlling the Kosovo separatists, whom he had nurtured in
the pre-war period. The expelled Serbs appealed to the
authorities to return to their homes in Kosovo, but the
government refused to let them go back. A historian has
estimated that Kosovo has been "ethnically cleansed" six times
in the twentieth century; and three of these cleansings have
been of thousands of Serbs.
V
Tito was credited in the world at large with maintaining
outward peace. The official policy was "brotherhood and
unity." In actuality profound national tensions remained.
After what had been essentially a civil war, the winner took
revenge on the losers. There was no political freedom to
express grievances or to right injustice. The Party
controlled the justice system, and there was no independent
press to point out shortcomings or corruption. No one
confronted the recent past in order to accelerate the process
of healing. The wartime and post-war mass killings, including
those of Tito's rule, were kept in "deep freeze" for
forty-five years. When the system of repression broke down
after Tito's death the ethnic groups began exposing their
many grievances as they came out of "cold storage." Each
ethnic group felt it had been humiliated under the Communist
system and complained that it had suffered more than others.
Without transforming the oppressive system of governance, the
ethnic leaders now on stage exacerbated tensions by reviving
ethnic hatreds. Raised and educated in the school of
international Communism, overnight they became exclusive
nationalists preaching civil war and denying human rights to
minorities in the regions where their ethnic group was in
control. In order to create "pure" ethnic states, they helped
release nationalistic passions. Each national group used
ethnic cleansing and committed atrocities against minorities.
The term "ethnic cleansing," we should note, was not coined by
Radovan Karadzic during the Bosnian Civil War (1992-5) but by
Victor Gutic, the Ustasha leader of Banja Luka during World
War II, who openly called for "ciscenije," "cleansing" of the
Serbian population under his reign of terror.
Tito's death in 1980 marked the end of deep freeze and the
beginning of unrest, first of all in Kosovo. In Pristina, the
press reported, "there have been almost weekly incidents of
rape, arson, pillage and industrial sabotage, most seemingly
designed to drive Kosovo's remaining indigenous Slavs out
of the province." This led to another surge of refugees
into Serbia. Slobodan Milosevic, a minor Communist
functionary, used the Kosovo crisis to rise to power. In 1989
he revoked the Kosovo autonomy granted in the Yugoslav
constitution of 1974, an abrupt reversal of previous policy.
The Serb minority obtained rights to state services at the
expense of the Albanians, many of whom were forced out of
their jobs as Serbs assumed their positions. A robust police
force arrived to keep Kosovo under control. In this way
Milosevic set the stage for the disaster of 1999.
What was happening in Kosovo was of particular concern to the
Serbian Church. The province, with its numerous churches,
medieval monasteries and cultural monuments had been its "holy
ground," its Jerusalem. Milosevic aimed to punish the
Albanians who had resisted his authority. He retained the
Communist policy of weakening the Orthodox Church by
disrupting its unity, keeping it isolated from society. The
official picture of the church was that it was an outdated
institution of a bygone era. But the persecuted church, with
the modification of totalitarian rule, came out of "cold
storage" and assumed a position highly critical of state
policies. It had not performed this role previously
throughout the Communist era. Now it stepped beyond purely
confessional matters to address large social and national
concerns.
With several public pronouncements, church leaders pleaded with ethnic
leaders to stop the bloody civil wars, which were suicidal madness for
Serbs in particular. Due to the migrations throughout the centuries,
starting with their defeat in the Battle of Kosovo in 1389, Serbs had
spread further than any other ethnic group in the former Yugoslavia.
Almost a third of them lived outside the republic of Serbia proper.
With the formation of ethnic states, Serbs became unprotected
minorities overnight. The state of Croatia is a case in point. Serbs
had settled in the Krajina region over four centuries ago. By making
the Republic of Croatia "the national state of the Croatian people,"
the new constitution reduced the six hundred thousand Serbs living
there to an unprotected minority. Now they were no longer citizens of
Yugoslavia, but second-class citizens who must apply for permits to
stay in their native land.
From the start of the civil war, the church stood in defense of human
rights for the persecuted minorities and raised its voice against the
folly of the ethnic leaders, particularly against the government of
Milosevic in Belgrade. In May 1992, The Council of Bishops of the
Serbian church issued a proclamation, confronting the years of forced
silence. It first reminded the secular authorities and the faithful
that the church had been the victim both of the Nazi occupation and
Communist terror. The post-war leaders had written their own history
of the war, lying about their role as well as about the activities and
intentions of their opponents. After referring to the recent past,
the Council of Bishops in this document turned to the activities of
the ruling party in Serbia under the leadership of Slobodan Milosevic.
For the first time it criticized the neo-Communist system now
installed in Serbia. Now styled the "Socialist" Party, the rulers
retained the structure and organs of the Communist system. The
bishops recognized that there was now a multiparty system in Serbia
and some freedom of expression but warned that in reality there has
been no democratic development and sharing of responsibility. The
Serbian ruling party still exercises restraints on church activities
and influence, and by excluding it from the schools does not allow it
to assume the place it claims in Serbian society.
The council attributed the present conflict, starting with Slovenia
and leading to Croatia and Bosnia, to fifty years of ideological
poisoning of all ethnic groups in the former Yugoslavia. Tito's
generals and their successors have fought against each other in all
the ethnic armies of this conflict. They all used the same methods to
eliminate their opponents. Without exception the leaders of the
ethnic groups involved in the civil war must be condemned, regardless
of which side they belonged to. Blame should be distributed equally.
The bishops worried that the Western powers, especially the United
States, were reducing their condemnation exclusively to the Serbs.
Throughout the nineties Patriarch Pavle has insisted on individual
responsibility for crimes and atrocities committed on all sides. We
may note that the church under his leadership has more consistently
criticized Milosevic and his regime than the Western leaders, who
shifted their approach to him, depending on his usefulness to them.
It is true that some individual church hierarchs have shown a friendly
attitude toward Milosevic, but the church as an institution under
Patriarch Pavle has consistently criticized him.
The tensions and accusations between the Church and the governing
authorities increased throughout the nineties. Church leaders,
including Patriarch Pavle, encouraged the peaceful demonstrations of
the winter of 1996-7, provoked by the result of local elections that
the regime refused to accept. The Assembly of Bishops denounced the
distortion of voting results and the suppression of political and
religious freedom. In a public announcement, the church stressed that
the people's will and dignity must be accepted. It also reproached
the state for reducing the Serbian people to beggars, "alienating us
from the rest of the world."
The church also engaged in a persistent struggle with the Socialist
government over church property, which had been expropriated by
Tito's regime. The parliament had enacted a law returning church
property, but Milosevic, president of Serbia at the time, had never
signed it. Property claimed by the church, such as a memorial
building donated to the church several centuries before, was even
offered for sale by the state.
VI
After the Dayton peace accords in 1995, terminating the civil war in
Bosnia-Hercegovina, the attention of the world turned to Kosovo.
Dayton had ignored the problems of Kosovo, where the Albanian majority
claimed independence. As their complaints were not addressed, the
extremist leaders of the Kosovars turned from the policy of passive
resistance of their moderate leadership to guerilla tactics and
violent acts against the Serbian population. The Kosovo Liberation
Army (KLA), successor to the Prizren League, was formed. Their
activities prompted the State Department to label them a "terrorist
group" in February 1998. A year later, however, the Western powers
invited the KLA to represent Kosovo at Rambouillet.
In August 1997, the church assembly under the able and courageous
leadership of Bishop Artemije of the Raska-Prizren Diocese convened in
Prizren. It criticized the activities of the Serbian special forces as
well as the Albanian KLA. As for the KLA aim of independence for
Kosovo, they warned that this "would immediately produce large scale
instability in the whole region, resulting in a disastrous multiethnic
war." The church urged that ethnic Albanians try to find a
satisfactory status in a "democratic Serbian state." They recognized
that this ideal was far from the Milosevic regime.
By 1998 the conflict was in full force. Church spokesmen repeatedly
criticized the excessive use of force by the Milosevic police and
paramilitaries in Kosovo but also denounced the KLA, which had started
murdering Serbian policemen and ethnic Albanians who they thought were
cooperating with Serbian authorities. They strongly condemned the
role of the KLA in abducting civilians. Three months before bombing
started the KLA clearly had already declared war on the Serbs in
Kosovo.
In February 1999 the international community called a meeting in
Rambouillet, outside Paris, to stop the conflict. The negotiators
were dealing with the self-appointed KLA leaders and representatives
sent by Milosevic. As a spokesman of the Patriarch, or even as an
observer, Bishop Artemije tried to reach the negotiators. He was
determined to present the viewpoint of the local Serbian population
and the church in this ecclesiastical center, but was rebuffed by
Milosevic and by the diplomats. The church delegation got as far as
Paris, where it was received by a staff member of the French Ministry
of Foreign Affairs.
Here they presented a plan for the cantonization of Kosovo, based on
respect for ethnic distribution and cultural heritage. They proposed
that five cantons be reserved for the mixed population of Serbs,
Slavic Moslems and others. The great majority of the cantons would be
allotted to Albanians where they were a distinct majority. The
multiethnic towns could serve as bridges connecting the Serbian and
Albanian cantons into a whole. If this plan had been realized,
Kosovars and Kosovci might have been spared much suffering.
The pronouncements and interference of Patriarch Pavle and Bishop
Artemije of Prizren in the negotiations enraged Milosevic. He
regarded this as treasonous and dismissed them. When Patriarch Pavle
went with Alexei II, Patriarch of Moscow, to call on Milosevic during
the NATO bombing, the Serbian leader "stood demonstratively with his
back turned to Patriarch Pavle."
What made the Rambouillet plan unacceptable to the Serbian delegation
was not the demand that Kosovo's autonomy be restored, but a secret
codicil giving NATO representatives the right to free access to any
part of Yugoslavia, to occupy the whole country. No national leader
could have accepted such a capitulation, and in the agreement
terminating hostilities on June 10, 1999, this demand was
rescinded. The codicil recalls the Austrian ultimatum in 1914,
demanding access to Serbian institutions and leading to the outbreak
of World War. After the failure to procure Serbian assent, the bombing
of Kosovo by NATO began almost immediately.
The "precision bombing" led to unintended consequences, which we will
not detail. We may note that the United States and its allies
carefully timed the attack on Iraq to avoid Ramadan, the Islamic holy
season, so as not to offend the Muslims. However, there was no such
sensitivity here; the bombers were out full force on both Western and
Orthodox Easter. In a challenging article, "Robin Cook's
Wasteland," Simon Jenkins concludes that Yugoslavia was the victim of
two mistakes, "one by its own rulers, the other by NATO." After the
bombing "NATO merely shrugged and turned elsewhere. The Danube
`blocked for twenty years'? Who cares?"
Disaster did not end with the termination of bombing on June 10 and
the arrival of NATO occupying troops. It was soon clear that the
returning Albanian refugees claimed the whole territory for
themselves, driving out and killing the local population. The KLA
went beyond revenge killings to trying to eliminate all traces of
Serbian culture in the region by systematically looting, bombing and
burning churches and monasteries. Patriarch Pavle, who before his
selection as patriarch in 1991 had been Bishop of Kosovo for
thirty-four years, warned: "These acts of vandalism cannot be called
acts of individual and blind revenge. It is becoming increasingly
evident that there is a systematic strategy in the background to
annihilate once and for all traces of Serb and Christian culture in
Kosovo." From June to December 1999 some eighty Orthodox churches
had been destroyed.
The most ancient of the churches razed include:
- The 14th century Holy Trinity Monastery, near Suva Reka, looted,
set on fire and finally destroyed by explosives.
-
14th century St. Cosma and Damian Monastery, Zociste (with frescoes).
Monastic quarters looted and set on fire in June. Church destroyed by
explosives Sept. 21.
-
Church of the Dormition, Suva Reka,, built in 1315, destroyed by
explosives. Regarded as one of the most beautiful examples of
Byzantine style in Kosovo.
-
Monastery of St. Mark, Korisa (near Prizren), 1467, vandalized and set
on fire.
-
Monastery of Archangel Gabriel in Binac, 14th century with frescoes,
set on fire and almost completely demolished.
-
Monastery of St. Joanikije, Devic, built around 1440, looted and
vandalized, marble tomb of the saint desecrated.
-
Church of the Dormition, dedicated to St. King Uros, Gornje
Nerodimlje, 14th century, restored in 1996, destroyed by explosives.
-
Holy Archangels Monastery (14th century, restored in 17th century),
Gornje Nerodimlje, torched and destroyed by explosives, cemetery
ruined. The famous "pine of the Emperor Dusan," originating from the
14th century, cut down and burnt.
-
Church of St. Nicholas, Donje Nerodimlje, 14th c., restored 1983,
torched and destroyed by explosives.
-
Cemetery Church of St. Stephen, Donje Nerodimlje, 14th c., restored in
1996, torched and destroyed by explosives.
-
Monastery Church of the Presentation, Dolac. 14th c., frescoed.
Vandalized, torched, altar table destroyed. Later the church was
completely destroyed by explosives.
Churches and monasteries that had withstood five centuries of Ottoman
rule have been destroyed in a few months.
At present the monastery churches of Gracanica, Pec and Decani have
survived. They have received appreciative attention by discriminating
observers. Rebecca West, for example, called Gracanica "as religious
a building as Chartres Cathedral. The thought and feeling behind it
were as complete. There is in these frescoes, as in the parent works
of Byzantium, the height of accomplishment." These three
treasures are now protected by a ring of NATO tanks and sandbags,
under twenty-four hour guard. Of the 25,000 Serbs who lived in Pec,
none now remain. The Serbs in Kosovo now live in ghettoes under KFOR
protection. Finally, and ironically, the monument to the Battle of
Kosovo in Kosovo Polje, where Serb and Albanian stood side by side to
resist Turkish conquest in 1389, has been leveled and destroyed.
History has come full circle.
In conclusion. The future of a multi-ethnic Kosovo is dubious.
NATO has yet to prevent "ethnic cleansing in reverse" and the further
destruction of the medieval religious and cultural monuments. Over a
thousand churches, monasteries and other religious sites witness to
the Serbian Orthodox involvement in the region over centuries. As
Belgrade's policy of cleansing the Albanians from Kosovo was brutal
and misguided, so are the revenge killings and appropriation of
non-Albanian property, driving thousands out of the province into
Serbia. This flood has swelled the refugee population already there
from Bosnia and Croatia to 800,000.
The historian Timothy Ash concluded from a recent visit to the
province that Kosovo today is an "almighty mess." Yet he reported one
hopeful sign, that the thirst for revenge sickens "many among the
older generation of Kosovars, who still have preserved memories of
peaceful coexistence with the Serbs." We must make use of the
persistence of memory before it entirely disappears.
Can religious leaders on opposing sides bring hope to the conflict?
About a week before the bombing raids started in March 1999,
representatives of the Serbian Orthodox, Roman Catholics and Islamic
communities, meeting in Vienna, appealed to the Western political
leaders gathered at Rambouillet to find a way to a peaceful and just
solution. They offered help to implement an agreement that would avoid
intensification of the Kosovo conflict, and warned: "Peace has to be
promoted from the top down, but it grows and is nurtured from the
bottom up." Their appeal was rebuffed at Rambouillet, but the
occupation authorities now seem more receptive to their help. They are
resuming the interrupted contacts and seek to restore trust among the
people of Kosovo in order to promote the common good. Admittedly,
Christian and Muslim leaders are increasingly marginalized in their
secularized societies.
Suffering such as the people of Kosovo are enduring calls out for a
search for meaning. Meaningless suffering is truly unbearable.
Rebecca West, in that epic of our own time, Black Lamb and Grey
Falcon, describes a Montenegrin woman she met while walking in the
high mountains. The woman had lost her husband, son and daughter
during World War I. "I am walking about to try to understand why all
this happened," she went on. "If I had to live, why should my life
have been like this?" The author experienced a shock of revelation.
"She was the answer to my doubts," wrote Rebecca West. "She took her
destiny not as the beasts take it, nor as the plants and trees; she
not only suffered it, she examined it. As the sword swept down on her
through the darkness she threw out her hand and caught the blade as it
fell, not caring if she cut her fingers, so long as she could question
its substance, where it had been forged, and who was the wielder"
(p. 1012). Deeply and traditionally Christian, this representative of
an earlier generation transmits the religious culture as truly as the
monuments and the poetry of medieval Kosovo. The question remains
whether this treasure of traditional faith can still give meaning to
the sufferers of Kosovo today.
[The author, Dr. Veselin Kesich, is a Professor Emeritus at
St. Vladimir's Orthodox Theological Seminary in Crestwood, NY, where
he taught New Testament and Serbian Church History.]
Original published in St. Vladimir's Theological Quarterly 44:3-4, 2000, St.
Vladimir's Seminary Press: Crestwood, NY.
- Konstantin Jirecek, Istoria Srba, 2d ed., Beograd, 1952, p. 25.
- Miranda Vickers, Between Serb and Albanian: A History of Kosovo, New York:
Columbia Univ., 1998, p. 6.
- Quoted in Waldemar Januszczak, "On Serbian Art," The Sunday Times, Culture,
Art, May 16, 1999.
- See David Talbot Rice, "Preface", Yugoslavia (Medieval Frescoes), New York:
Graphic Society, UNESCO, 1955, pp. 5-11.
- Jenkins, "Not War but Vandalism," The Times (London) May 7, 1999.
- The last three poems of the cycle are conveniently available in Serbian
and English in Thomas Butler, Monumenta Serbocroatica, Ann Arbor MI, 1980,
pp. 375-396.
- During World War I, when the British were allied with Serbia, the British
attitude toward this epic tradition differed sharply from what we found during
the recent Kosovo war. R.W.Seton-Watson, the renowned British historian, published
his translation of "The Mother of the Jugovici." He was an organizer of the
Kosovo Day Celebration in London in 1916, when the Serbian army had been completely
driven out of its homeland. In 1917 G.K.Chesterton and others published a
Kosovo Anthology, with English translations from the Kosovo cycle. See Muriel
Heppell, "British Historians and Serbian History," South Slav Journal, vol.
18, No. 1-2 1997, pp. 50f.
- Locke, "Myths About Myths: The Serbian Epics," South Slav Journal, vol.
20, Nos. 3-4 (1999), p. 43.
- Ferdinand Schevill, History of the Balkan Peninsula, 1933, p. 185.
- See the discussion of the decisions of the Berlin Congress in Fromkin,
pp. 102ff.
- Jones, With Serbia into Exile, 1916, p. 230-1, also quoted in Vickers,
pp. 90-2.
- This estimate, the genocide of the Serbs and its link to Kosovo have been
discussed recently by David Fromkin, Kosovo Crossing, New York: Free Press,
1999.
- Dr. Oliver Sack's story "Cold Storage" has been used as a metaphor for
the cold and post-Cold War periods in Yugoslavia. See our essay "Bosnia; History
and Religion" in New Perspectives on Historical Theology (Essays in Memory
of John Meyendorff), B. Nassif, ed., W.B.Eerdmans, 1996, pp. 92-3.
- New York Times, Nov. 28, 1982.
- See G. Biryakov, "A Russian Perspective on the War in the Balkans," South
Slav Journal, Nos. 3-4 [1999] p. 84.
- London Times, Oct. 12, 1999.
- "Christmas Desecrations," The Spectator, Dec. 18/25/1999, pp. 22-23.
- A complete list is available in Raspeto Kosovo (Crucified Kosovo), Z. Stefanovic,
ed., 2000. Also see photos of the originals and their present state.
- Black Lamb and Grey Falcon, New York, 1953, pp. 846, 864.
- "Anarchy and Madness in the Balkans," New York Review of Books, 47:2 Feb.
2000, p. 48.
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