Balkan Idols: Religion and Nationalism in Yugoslav States

(where Saint Sava founded the Church and was enthroned as its first archbishop),
Studenica, Sopoćani, Ravanica, Resava, Manasija, and Milesˇevo (located
across the Drina in today’s Bosnia-Herzegovina). 25 The church and
state then expanded into what is today the Kosovo province and Yugoslav
Macedonia, while also moving westward after the Ottoman conquest. 26
In the Orthodox world, the Church, ethnic community, and state grow
together. From 1217 (the coronation of a king) and 1219 (the recognition
of autocephaly, that is, ecclesiastical autonomy under Saint Sava as first archbishop)
to 1331 (the coronation of a king-emperor) and 1346 (when the
emperor-king established a patriarchate), medieval Serbian state took shape.
Under the long Ottoman rule, Serb clergy actively participated in popular
uprisings and wars for the restoration of statehood. 27 Serbian Orthodox
Church became a warrior-church devoted to the preservation of ethnic identity
and the struggle for statehood and nationhood. A British scholar who
traveled to the Balkans in the mid–nineteenth century wrote about the Orthodox
“warrior-priest Yovan,” who allegedly “had defended the convent of
Morača with 200 men, against 20,000 Albanians.” 28 In a similar vein the
same author described the prince-bishop (vladika) of Montenegro, Petar I
Petrović-Nejgosˇ, as a bishop “of majestic height, of about six feet eight
inches, who can hit with a rifle a lemon thrown into the air by one of his
attendants.” 29
The key element of Serbian religion and nationalism (i.e., “Serbian faith”)
is the Kosovo myth. It commemorates the 28 June 1389 battle at the Kosovo
field in which Turks defeated the Serbs and continued the successful conquest
of the Balkan peninsula. 30 Fused with another mythical historic event,
the 1690 Great Migration of Serbs to northern Habsburg lands when Serbs
left Kosovo under guidance of the Church, as well as the reconquests of the
province in 1912 and in 1918, the Kosovo myth energized numerous efforts
aimed at the restoration of Serbian nation-state. 31 The Serbian Orthodox
Church was founded at Ipek (or Peć or Peje) in what today is Kosovo (or
Kosova) by the Serb emperor Stephen Dusˇan the Mighty in 1346. The patriarchate
of Peć (Pećka parijarsˇija) in present-day Kosovo embodies the continuity
of the Serbian state. During Ottoman rule, from 1557 to 1766, the
Peć patriarchate, that is, present-day Kosovo, became a “capital” of the Serbian
“state.” The patriarch and clergy took the place of secular authority
that did not exist and organized courts, foreign affairs, and the collection of
taxes. Patriarchs from Peć led the first massive migration of Serbs to the
north in 1690 and several subsequent migrations to the areas under Habsburg
rule. Gradually the Serbs abandoned Kosovo, Metohija, and Macedonia.
The non-Slavic people, ethnic Albanians, who had converted from Christianity
to Islam, populated some of the areas earlier settled by Serbs. 32 However,
the Serbian Orthodox Church preserved the memory of the Serbian
state with Kosovo as its major sacred center. Kosovo is the central myth and
symbol of Serbian Orthodoxy. It is also a sacred center, the nation’s rallying
religion, ethnicity, and nationhood 7