Balkan Idols: Religion and Nationalism in Yugoslav States

point and its lost paradise. Kosovo is often referred to as “Serbian Zion” or
“Serbian Jerusalem.” Parallels between Kosovo and Jerusalem and between
the Serbs and the people of Israel appeared as early as the fifteenth century
in folk poetry and have been passed by the Serbian church’s liturgy down
to this day. 33 The phrase “Serbian Jerusalem” reverberated in political discourse
in Yugoslavia in the 1930s, in the 1960s and 1970s, and most strikingly
during the crisis of the 1980s and 1990s.
In addition to the Kosovo myth, the cult of ethnic saints, rather than
Orthodox theology, helped the creation of the Serbian nation. The Serbian
Church commemorated Serbian medieval rulers as saints. Eric Hobsbawm
noted that “religion and Orthodox church would not have distinguished the
Serbs from say, Bulgarians, but ...thememory of the old kingdom defeated
by the Turks was preserved in song and heroic story, and, perhaps more to
the point, in the daily liturgy of the Serbian church which had canonized
most of its kings.” 34 The cult of native saints is one of the hallmarks of
Serbian Orthodoxy, but it is also an important element of Serbian national
identity. According to church historian Radoslav M. Grujić, “beginning in
the late sixteenth and through the seventeenth century, leaders of our
church had inaugurated a wise and far-reaching practice, by supporting the
faith and national pride through the worship of our national saints and martyrs.”
35 According to the secular historian Milorad Ekmečić, the church councils,
held from 1769 to 1787 (dealing with restructuring of Church calendar),
marked the beginning of the Church’s relevant contribution to modern Serbian
nationalism. 36 In the interwar kingdom, the Serbian Church worshiped
over 30 national saints. In communist Yugoslavia, the number of saints more
than doubled; new saints were inaugurated by the assembly of bishops in
1962, 1965, 1973, and most recently in 1998. From the beginning of the systematic
worship of the national saints in the late sixteenth century to the
present, the Serbian Orthodox Church canonized 76 saints who were all ethnic
Serbs. Most Serbian national saints are Church leaders and clergy, with
22 rulers and statesmen, several peasants and artisans, and six women. 37
At least since the eighteenth century (according to Milorad Ekmečić), the
Church turned ethnic nationalism into a religion and fused pravoslavlje (the
Orthodox faith) with the ideology of the restored nationhood. 38 Religion,
wrote the Serb bishop and theologian Nikolaj Velimirović, gave “to this nationalism
its aura, revolutionary fervor, prophetic vision, and justification.” 39
For Nikolaj, “the healthy nationalism of the Gospel is the only right path.” 40
The day of the Kosovo battle—Saint Vitus’ Day (or Vidovdan, 15 or 28 June)
became a main Serbian state holiday in 1903, and the Serb army, as the
avenger of Prince Lazar, occupied Kosovo in 1912. In the Yugoslav monarchy,
all Orthodox believers from Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia, Bosnia-
Herzegovina, and Croatia were brought under the jurisdiction of the Serbian
patriarchate (Srpska patrijarsˇija); hence the patriarch’s seat was relocated
from Srijemski Karlovci to the capital city of Belgrade. The Church was
governed by an assembly of bishops, the Sveti Arhijerejski Sabor (Holy As-
8 balkan idols