Balkan Idols: Religion and Nationalism in Yugoslav States

The concordat ...would eventually make our country and state subordinated
to the Roman Curia,” they wrote.
Nikolaj Velimirović, a prominent Serb theologian and bishop of Z ˇ ića, was
the leading outspoken opponent of the concordat and one of the organizers
of the protest liturgy of 1937. In his letter to all senators of Serb Orthodox
background, as a follow-up to the proclamation in which the Church threatened
excommunication for a vote to ratify the concordat, Velimirović warned
that the concordat “gives enormous rights and privileges to an international
organization at the expense of our national Saint Sava’s Church.” 2 In a
sermon before 30,000 faithful in Valjevo on 26 September 1937, Bishop
Nikolaj argued that modern principles of separation of church and state
cannot be applied to Serbia. On this occasion, Nikolaj exclaimed:
Rise three fingers Orthodox Serbs! This popular rebellion does not undermine,
it will fortify our homeland. Down with all antinational elements:
parasites and bloodsuckers, capitalists, godless, and communists! The Serbian
faith is awakened because it is hurt. Serbian national consciousness
is awakened because it resists the attack from all internationalists and
those who build bridges for the pope of Rome and his Church—the oldest
international, the oldest fascism, the oldest dictatorship in Europe! 3
The Catholic Church, especially its Croatian branch, was embittered.
Church leaders resented the Serbian Orthodox Church’s status of a privileged
state religion because equality of religions had been agreed on by the
founders of the Yugoslav state. That is why the interwar Yugoslav kingdom
(1918–41) never secured legitimation from either of the two largest religious
institutions. The Serbian Church, as early as the mid-1920s, obtained a
special law by which it became the de facto state religion. 4 For Serbian
Church leaders, the Yugoslav state was “a Serbian state born in the blood
of the victorious Serbian Army” in World War I. 5 The major state holiday
in the interwar kingdom was Vidovdan (Saint Vitus’ Day), commemorating
the 1389 Kosovo battle. Most of the patriotic myths commemorated the
Serbian medieval kingdom, the battle of Kosovo, the subsequent Serbo-
Turkish wars, and Serbia’s martyrdom and glory in World War I. In consequence,
the Catholic Church, especially its Croatian branch, was upset.
Church leaders never granted legitimation to the Serb-dominated kingdom.
Catholicism conditioned legitimation by concordat. For the Catholic Church
and ethnic Croats, the new state was initially a necessity because Catholic
Croats and Slovenes would have become minorities in several states: Italy,
Austria, and Serbia. Nevertheless, the new state was also an opportunity for
the expansion of Catholicism. The Croatian historian Muzˇić pointed out that
the Vatican welcomed the chance to “expand eastward and brought Orthodox
‘schismatics’ into union with the papacy.” 6 Back then, conversion of the
Orthodox was official Vatican policy, not to be changed prior to 1965.
Facing the conspicuous showing of the Serbian Orthodox Church, Croat
18 balkan idols