Semandron

DIMITRI CONOMOS

A struck instrument used on Mount Athos and in many other Orthodox monasteries. Its rhythmic percussions call worshippers to a service or to a meal. On important occasions its resonating claps lead an out­side litanical procession. Semandra are made of wood or metal. If wooden, it is either a long plank, grasped by the player’s left hand and struck by the right with a wooden mallet, or a larger and heavier timber block suspended by chains and struck by one or two mallets. The metallic semandron is not portable, but often horse­shoe shaped and struck by a metal mallet.

Serbia, Patriarchal Orthodox Church of

GORDON N. BARDOS

In the ecclesiastical hierarchy of the Ortho­dox Church, the autocephalous Patriarchal Church of Serbia ranks sixth in terms of primacy (behind the patriarchates of Con­stantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, Jerusalem, and Russia). Since the Middle Ages, the Serbian Church has been spread territorially across many parts of the Balkan peninsula, from southern Dalmatia on the Adriatic coast, to parts of present-day Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo and Meto­hija, Macedonia, and Serbia.

Today, as a result of centuries of migrations and emigrations, the Orthodox Church of Ser­bia consists of approximately thirty dioceses worldwide, governed by a standing holy synod of bishops representing the highest executive and judicial body within the church. The holy synod of bishops is composed of the patriarch (ex officio) and four bishops who are elected bi-annually by the holy assembly of bishops of the Serbian Orthodox Church. The holy assembly of bishops, in turn, is a body which represents all of the metro­politans and bishops in the church.

Throughout its history, the Serbian Orthodox Church has portrayed itself, and has been widely perceived by the Serbian public, as being the most consistent, stron­gest, and sometimes the sole, defender of the Serbian people. This has on occasion led to charges that the Serbian Orthodox Church is overly nationalistic, yet it is a phenomenon common to most of the religious organizations in Southeastern

Europe. Because of a variety of historical and cultural circumstances, religion and ethnicity have become strongly intertwined in the Balkans; in this sense, the relationship between the Serbian Orthodox Church and the Serbian people follows the general Balkan rule, rather than being an exception.

CONVERSION OF THE SERBS TO CHRISTIANITY

Along with other Slavic tribes, the Serbs migrated to the Balkan Peninsula in the 7th century. In the 10th century, followers of Sts. Cyril and Methodios converted the pagan Serb tribes to Christianity. In the late 12th century a powerful Serb state emerged during the rule of Stefan Nemanja (1109–99), centered on the mountainous regions straddling the borders of modern- day Kosovo and Metohija. Serbs commonly refer to Kosovo as “Kosovo and Metohij.” The word Metohija is derived from the Greek meaning “land of the monasteries.” It specifically refers to the many monaster­ies spread throughout northern and western Kosovo, Serbia, and Montenegro. Under Nemanja and his heirs, the Serbian state grew and expanded territorially until the mid-14th century, largely at the Byzantine Empire’s expense. The history of medieval Serbia and, by extension, the medieval Serbian Church, is intimately connected with the Nemanjic dynasty, so much so that most of the rulers from the Nemanjic dynasty were canonized as saints by the Serbian Church. The most important and venerated figure in Serbian history is Stefan Nemanja’s son, Ratsko (1175–1235), who left his father’s court for Mount Athos, became a monk, and adopted the monastic name of Sava. After his death he was canonized by the Serbian Church, thereafter becoming known as St. Sava the Enlightener.

St. Sava played a crucial role in forming the Serbs’ religious and national identities. Given the Balkan Peninsula’s geographical location between East and West, for several centuries it remained unclear whether the Serbs as a people would ultimately fall under the fold of the Western Church, with all of the political and cultural implications that entailed, or accept Orthodox Christian­ity, and thereby draw their spiritual and cultural inspiration from Constantinople and the Byzantine world. St. Sava was a determined proponent of the latter. A few years after moving to Mount Athos, Sava was joined there by his father, Stefan Nemanja, who also became a monk and adopted the monastic name ofSimeon. Together, Simeon and Sava founded one ofthe most important religious and cultural centers of the Serbian people, the Monastery of Hilandar on Mount Athos. Hilandar’s (and, by extension, Mount Athos’) influence on Serbia’s subse­quent development would be of tremendous importance, as many of Sava’s Serb contem­poraries and successors would spend their spiritually and intellectually formative years there.

Simeon and Sava returned to Serbia in approximately 1196–7 to develop spiritual and religious life in the Serbian lands. Coinciding with the Latin conquest of Constantinople in 1204, the subsequent weakness of the Byzantine Empire at this time allowed Sava to build a strong, indige­nous church organization. In 1219, during the Byzantine court’s exile in Nicea, Sava convinced the patriarch of Constantinople, Manuel I, to grant the Serbian Church autocephaly. In granting his assent, Patriarch Manuel also consecrated Sava the first archbishop of the autocephalous Serbian Church.

Upon his return to Serbia, Sava reorganized Orthodoxy in the Serbian lands, consecrating new bishops, creating new dioceses, and founding new monasteries to serve as episcopal seats. Many of the monasteries built during the NemanjiC period, such as Studenica, GraCanica, Visoki DeCani, the PeC Patri­archate, SopoCani, and ZiCa, are considered to be the most important cultural, spiritual, and historical landmarks of the Serbian people. Sava was also careful at this time to give the newly autocephalous church a distinctively Serbian national character; thus, for instance, he ordered that the abbots of the leading monasteries be Serb rather than Greek, and also that inscrip­tions on church buildings or frescoes be in Slavonic rather than Greek. St. Sava the Enlightener’s legacy would prove to be profound. Largely thanks to his efforts and personality, both the Serbian state and the Serbs as a people became firmly anchored in the Orthodox world, and would in subse­quent centuries come to represent the westernmost frontier of Orthodoxy.

A century after Sava’s death, during the reign of Serbia’s most powerful medieval ruler, Stefan Dusan NemanjiC (the “Mighty”), the Serbian state expanded to the point of becoming an empire that included most of the southern Balkans, and Dusan’s ambitions had grown to include capturing Constantinople itself. Towards this end, he had the Serbian archbishopric elevated to the status of a patriarchate (without, however, the blessings of the ecumenical patriarch in Con­stantinople), which was given the name of the patriarchate of PeC. In 1346 in Skopje, the newly installed Serbian patriarch, Joanikije II, crowned Dussan “Emperor andAutocrat ofthe Serbs and Greeks.” Dussan also had the new patriarchate assume jurisdictional authority over several traditionally Greek metropolitan sees throughout the southern Balkans, further alienating and deepening the hostilities between him and his Byzantine rivals. In 1353 Ecumenical Patriarch Kallistos excommunicated Dussan, Joanikije, and the Serbian Church as a whole.

Dussan’s empire, however, was short-lived. Upon his death in 1355, his successors began to compete for different parts of his realm, while the simultaneous Ottoman advance into southeastern Serbia proved unstoppa­ble. Some degree of reconciliation between the Serbian Church and the ecumenical patriarchate was achieved under Dussan’s eventual successor, Prince (popularly called Tsar) Lazar HrebljanoviC, although the pre­cise details of this reconciliation remain unclear. The Serbian state gradually col­lapsed between the Battle of the Maritsa in 1371, the famous Kosovo battle of 1389, and the final fall of the last Serbian capital, Smederevo, in 1459. The patriarchate of PeC itself became vacant with the death of Patriarch Arsenije II in 1463.

CULTURAL HERITAGE OF SERBIAN ORTHODOXY

Although the medieval Serbian state drew most of its spiritual and cultural inspiration from the Byzantine Empire and the Orthodox East, Serbia’s geographical loca­tion ensured that it would also be signifi­cantly affected by intellectual and artistic influences from the West. In the late 9th and early 10th centuries the Serbs had already adopted a modified version of the Glagolithic script devised by Sts. Cyril and Methodios. The new version, known as Cyrillic, was created by St. Clement of Ohrid. Many of the earliest written works produced in Serbia in the medieval period were based on translations ofvarious Greek (or in some cases, Bulgar) biblical, patristic, and liturgical texts.

In later centuries, influences from the Latin West and Old Muscovy became more apparent. Monasteries built during the 12th and 13th centuries, such as Studenica (founded in 1190), represent a particul­arly Serbian blend of both Byzantine and

Romanesque architectural styles which became known as the Raska School, described as a style linking “Latin rational­ism with Greek mysticism” (Peic 1994: 29). Thus, Serbian monasteries during this period were frequently built by Adriatic stonemasons, while the frescoes inside the churches were drawn by Greek painters. The frescoes of this period, most especially in monasteries such as Studenica and Sopocani, are frequently described as “mon­umental,” in the sense that themes such as the crucifixion are often 8–10 feet tall.

In the 14th century, partly under the influ­ence of the Palaeologue Revival in Constan­tinople, Serbian art and architecture evolved into a more purely Byzantine/Orthodox form. Monasteries such as Gracanica (built 1313) were constructed using the standard Greek cross floor plan, with anywhere from one to five domes. The years before and after the famous Battle of Kosovo in 1389 saw a final flourishing of Serbian art exhibiting many indigenous qualities in which Roman and Byzantine influences were less obvious. This new style came to be known as the Morava School. Examples of the Morava School include Ravanica (built 1375), Kalenic (ca. 1407), and Manasija (also known as Resava, ca. 1407).

As throughout medieval Europe, monaster­ies in the Serbian lands served both as spiritual centers and as centers of great learning and artistic creativity. Thus, Serbian monasteries were frequently multipurpose enterprises, incorporating icon studios, woodworking shops, scriptoria for producing and reproducing Bibles, liturgical texts, and biog­raphies of the saints, and medical centers.

SERBIAN CHURCH UNDER OTTOMAN AND HABSBURG RULE

The demise of the medieval Serbian state in the 14th and 15th centuries, and the imposition of Ottoman rule in the Balkans, significantly changed the position and role of the Orthodox Church in Serbian society. The Ottoman millet system was a form of indirect rule and corporate self-government by ethno-confessional groups first estab­lished in 1454 by Sultan Mehmet II after the fall of Constantinople. The millet system has been described by Sugar (1977: 44) as “basically a minority home-rule policy based on religious affiliation,” whose roots can be found in Ottoman rule in Sassanid Iran, and even in some of Justinian’s edicts concerning Jews in the Byzantine Empire. Sugar notes that under the millet system:

Besides full ecclesiastical powers and jurisdic­tion, the patriarch acquired legal powers in those cases, such as marriage, divorce, and inheritance, that were regulated by canon law.... certain police powers that even included a patriarchal jail in Istanbul. Naturally, the church was also permitted to collect the usual ecclesiastical dues, but it was also made responsible and was often consulted in the assessing and collecting of taxes due the state. Finally, ecclesiastical courts had the right to hear and decide cases in which all litigants were Christians, provided they voluntarily submitted their cases to church courts rather than to the kadi. (Sugar 1977: 46)

In the Serbian case, somewhat paradoxi­cally, the practical result of the millet system was that the church became a more power­ful institution among the Serbian people under the Ottomans than it had been while the Serbs had their own native rulers, with the Serbian people’s ecclesiastical leaders henceforth becoming their secular leaders as well.

Historical records of this period in Serbian Church history are scarce. Soon after the fall of Smederevo, in 1463 the Ottoman state abolished the patriarchate of Pec and ecclesi­astical authority over the Serbs was turned over to the archbishop of Ohrid. Some one hundred years later, however, the rise to power of a Bosnian Serb boy, Mehmet Pa§a Sokollu (in Serbian, Mehmet Pasa SokoloviC, 1506–79) to the position of grand vizier of the empire would lead to the reestablishment of the patriarchate of PeC in 1557, when Sokollu installed his relative Makarije SokoloviC as Orthodox Serbian patriarch. Territorially, the reestablished patriarchate of PeC stretched from southern Hungary in the north to Macedonia in the south, and from the Dal­matian coast (as far north as Sibenik) to parts of western Bulgaria in the east.

The existence of the Pec patriarchate pro­vided the Serbs with a symbolic reminder of their lost medieval state, and was conse­quently a natural focal point for Serb insurrections against the Ottoman Empire. During this period, monasteries frequently served as natural places for insurrections to be planned and proclaimed. In April 1594, to discourage further Serb revolts, Turkish troops removed the relics of St. Sava from Milessevo Monastery and burned the remains on the site of Vracar, one of Belgrade’s most prominent hills. The Serbian Orthodox Church since the 19th century had plans to build a monumental memorial temple to St. Sava on the site. Construction began after World War I, but completion was delayed by World War II and then by the communist government. In the late 1980s work resumed in earnest, and today construction on the Temple of Saint Sava (Hram Svetog Save) has been completed. It is one of the largest Orthodox Churches in the world.

The Ottoman conquest of Southeastern Europe had another important effect on the Serbian Orthodox Church, inasmuch as large numbers of Serbs fleeing Ottoman rule spread the Serbian Church territorially and jurisdictionally to many parts of the Habsburg Empire as well. From the 15th century onwards, large-scale migrations pushed the Serbs from their historic reli­gious and cultural homelands in Kosovo, Montenegro, and the Sandzak, northwards to the Krajina in central and western Croa­tia, and the Vojvodina region north of Belgrade, bounded by the Danube and Tisa rivers.

One of the most important of the Serb revolts under Turkish rule occurred in 1690, when Patriarch Arsenije (Crnojvevic), see­ing a strategic opportunity arise after the Habsburgs went to war with the Ottoman Empire, decided to support the Austrians in a bid to liberate the Serbs from Ottoman rule. The Ottomans, however, ultimately proved successful in the conflict, as a result of which Arsenije led a legendary “Great Migration” of several tens of thou­sands of Serbs from present-day Kosovo and Metohija northwards into Habsburg territory.

As a result of centuries of Ottoman per­secution and out-migrations, by the 18th century the Serbian Church under Turkish rule had become a very weak institution. In 1766 the patriarchate of Pec was again abolished, whereupon the Serbian Church in the Ottoman Empire again fell under the jurisdiction of the ecumenical patriarch, beginning a period of attempted Helleniza- tion of the Serbian Church led by Greek Phanariot bishops. Ultimately, however, these efforts made little headway because of the social and cultural distance between the Greek hierarchy and lower-ranking Serb clerics and laity.

In the Habsburg Empire during this same period, the Serbs populated what became known as the “Military Frontier” (vojna krajina) of the Habsburg territories, where they enjoyed special forms of self­government in return for serving as full-time soldiers protecting the imperial borders. Importantly, the Habsburgs adopted many features of the millet system, insofar as the Serbs’ spiritual and ecclesiastical authorities again became intermediaries between the Habsburg mon­arch and their own people in secular mat­ters. The Serbian Church organization in the Habsburg monarchy was centered on the metropolitan of (Sremski) Karlovac, which in 1710 the patriarch of Pec, Kalinik I, recognized as autonomous. In 1848, during the general uprisings against abso­lutism in the Habsburg monarchy, a Serb revolt against Magyar rule proclaimed the metropolitan of Karlovci, Josif Rajacic, as “patriarch» His successors continued to use that title until 1913, although the met­ropolitans of Karlovci are not generally con­sidered to be successors to the patriarchs of Pec.

The Serbian Church in Montenegro developed along somewhat different lines. Given Montenegro’s forbidding geography, after the Battle of Kosovo in 1389 Serbian religious and even political life was able to continue in somewhat freer circum­stances, and with considerable autonomy. Although in the 18th century Montenegro was essentially composed of a collection of extended mountain clans formed into “tribes,” a rudimentary form of state, led by the metropolitan of Montenegro, con­tinued the Serbian state traditions from the Nemanjic period and drew its legitimacy and inspiration from them. By the 18th century, Montenegro had evolved into a form of theocracy in which secular power was passed down from the metropol­itan (who, by tradition, came from the Petrovic-Njegusi clan) to his nephew. By tradition, the Montenegrin prince-bishops went to Moscow for their consecration. The greatest of these religious-secular rulers, Bishop Petar II Petrovic Njegos, became one of the greatest poets of the South Slavs. By the mid-19th century, however, Montenegro’s hereditary theocracy died out, and a more formal secular government was formed.

LIBERATION AND REUNIFICATION

As the Ottoman Empire began a slow but steady decline in the latter part of the 17th century, the Balkan Christian peoples again began to contemplate their liberation from Turkish rule. In 1804 the Serbs began the first Balkan Christian revolt under the leadership of Djordje “Karadjordje” Petrovic. Although Karadjordje’s insurrection was defeated after a few years, in 1815, the Serbs launched a second, ultimately more successful insur­rection under the leadership of Miloss Obrenovic. By 1830 the sultan was forced to recognize Serbian autonomy, and with it reli­gious autonomy; henceforth, the Serbs would be allowed to elect their own metro­politans and bishops, who were only required to go to Constantinople for their consecra­tion by the ecumenical patriarch.

At the Congress of Berlin in 1875 the Serbian principality was recognized as an independent state, and consequently, in 1879, the ecumenical patriarch granted the church in Serbia proper full autocephaly. Nevertheless, the various branches of the Serbian Church still found themselves disunited during this period. The Serbs in Bosnia and Herzegovina were still under the spiritual authority of the ecumenical patri­arch in Constantinople, while the Serbian Church organizations in Austria-Hungary and Montenegro had de facto (although not canonical) autocephaly.

The full reunification of the Serbian Orthodox Church only became possible after World War I, with the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman Empires, and the creation of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (renamed the King­dom of Yugoslavia in 1929). In 1919 the ecumenical patriarch recognized the will of the Serbian Orthodox jurisdictions within the new kingdom to unite in one church organization, and in 1920 the modern patriarchate of Serbia was proclaimed. The first modern Serbian patriarch, Dimitrije, assumed the title “Archbishop of Pec, Metropolitan of Belgrade-Karlovci, and Serbian Patriarch»

WORLD WAR II

The Axis invasion and dismemberment of Yugoslavia in April 1941 led to one of the most difficult periods in the history of the Serbian Orthodox Church. Under Nazi sponsorship, a political puppet Nezavisna DrZava Hrvatska (“Independent State of Croatia,” hereafter, NDH) was created which incorporated most of present-day Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and parts of Vojvodina. An extreme fascist group, the Ustasa, were brought to power in the NDH, and initiated what proved to be one of World War II’s most horrific reigns of terror. Tens of thousands of Serbs, Jews, Roma, and anti-fascist Croats were liquidated in the NDH during World War II, with the Serbian Church becoming a special target of the Ustasa. The Ustasa-led NDH was a criminal regime of almost incomprehensible brutality, mainly tar­geted against the Orthodox population of Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina. The Roman Catholic bishop of Mostar, Monsignor Alojzije Misic, communicated some of these crimes against the Serb pop­ulation of Herzegovina to the archbishop of Zagreb, Alojzije Stepinac, in a letter in August 1941:

Men are captured like animals. They are slaughtered, murdered; living men are thrown off cliffs.... From Mostar and Capljina a train took six carloads of mothers, young girls, and children ten years of age to the station of Surmanci. There they were made to get off the train, were led up to the mountains, and the mothers together with the children were thrown alive off steep precipices. In the parish of Klepci 700 schismatics from the sur­rounding villages were murdered. Must I continue this enumeration? In the town of Mostar itself, they have been bound by the hundreds, taken in wagons outside the town, and there shot down like animals. (Tomasevich 2001: 57)

Together with the general Serb Orthodox population of the NDH, Serb hierarchs and clerics were also especially targeted by the Ustasa regime. The ferocity of the Ustasa attack on the Serbian Orthodox Church can be seen in the following figures: in April 1941 the Serbian Orthodox Church had eight bishops and 577 priests in the terri­tories which comprised the NDH. By the end of 1941, three bishops and 154 priests had been killed outright, while three bishops and some 340 priests were expelled from the NDH or fled of their own accord. It is esti­mated that only approximately eighty-five Serbian Orthodox priests remained on NDH territory by the end of 1941. Nor did the Ustassa spare the physical and material infrastructure of the church. For instance, in the Orthodox diocese of Plasski-Karlovac alone, of the 189 Orthodox churches in that bishopric, the Ustassa destroyed eighty-eight and badly damaged a further sixty-seven.

Serbia itself was divided and occupied by Nazi Germany and its fascist allies, Hungary and Bulgaria. To further weaken popular resistance to Nazi rule, the Nazis deported the Serbian Patriarch Gavrilo (Dozic) and interned him in the Dachau concentration camp during the war, along with Bishop Nikolai (Velimirovic), generally considered the most important Serbian theologian of the 20th century.

The Serbian Orthodox Church in Bulgarian-occupied southeast Serbia, Kosovo, and Macedonia was also persecuted. The Bulgarian occupying forces in these regions expelled Orthodox clerics considered to be Serbs, including the metropolitan of

Skopje, Josif. In the parts of Kosovo and Macedonia annexed to the Nazi-sponsored “Greater Albania,” the church adminis­tration was incorporated into the expanded Albanian Orthodox Church. Many of these changes were reversed after the war, however, as with the victory of Tito’s communist movement, Yugoslavia was re­established in its prewar borders, and some attempt was made to go back to the official status quo ante in these areas.

Nevertheless, the war and the communist takeover of Yugoslavia did have long-lasting repercussions for the Serbian Orthodox Church. In Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia, the Ustasa persecution of the Serbs and the Serbian Orthodox Church poi­soned interethnic relations in ways that would become all too apparent two genera­tions later. But World War II also had reper­cussions in places such as Macedonia. In October 1943, in the middle of World War II, a communist-sponsored organizing committee for church affairs in Macedonia was held which marked the first move by Macedonian clerics to break with the Serbian Orthodox Church. This meeting was followed by a National Church Assembly held in Skopje in March 1945, which, among other things, called for reestablishing the ancient archbishopric of Ohrid, making the Macedonian Church autocephalous, and insisted that only Macedonian nationals be allowed to serve as bishops and clerics in Macedonia.

COMMUNIST RULE

Due to its immense human and material losses during World War II, and the oppo­sition many church hierarchs exhibited to the Nazi occupation, the Serbian Orthodox Church emerged from World War II with considerable prestige. Yugoslavia’s postwar communist regime, led by Josip Broz Tito, however, came to power with the intent of severely limiting the role of religious organizations in the state. Toward this end, various proscriptions were placed on the activities of the Serbian Orthodox Church, as well as on other religious communities in the country. These included placing limits on the construction of new church build­ings (or limiting the reconstruction of churches destroyed during the war). The most famous example of such legal and bureaucratic persecution and harassment was the placing of various obstacles in the way of completing the construction of the Temple of St. Sava in Belgrade.

The church’s life in communist Yugoslavia was also affected by such things as a ban on religious education in schools and limitations on the ability of refugees to return to their prewar homes. This was particularly the case with respect to Kosovo and Metohija, where the communist government prevented tens of thousands of Serbs who had lived in Kosovo before 1941 from returning, effec­tively shifting the demographic balance in the province decisively in favor of the Alba­nian (Muslim) population.

Tito’s communist government also attempted to weaken the Serbian Orthodox Church by promoting various schisms within it. In this it was somewhat successful. The most important example of such efforts was government pressure and support for the creation of the Macedonian Orthodox Church. In the general exhaustion and confusion of the immediate postwar years, relations between the Serbian Orthodox Church and the church in Macedonia were tenuous, but in 1957 Macedonian clerics recognized the Serbian patriarch as their head. The reconciliation was only nominal, however, and in July 1967 church leaders in Macedonia formally broke with the Serbian patriarchate, declared their church auto­cephalous, and elected the archbishop of Ohrid and metropolitan of Macedonia as the leader of the “Macedonian Orthodox Church» Neither the Serbian patriarchate nor other Orthodox Churches around the world, however, recognized this as a move that was canonically valid.

In the 1960s the Serbian Orthodox Church was also afflicted by a schism in its overseas dioceses, primarily those in West­ern Europe and the United States, the basis of which could largely be found in postwar anti-communist emigre politics. Although only a minority of the Serbian churches abroad supported the clergy who accepted the break with the Serbian patriarchate, the schism nevertheless proved to be a long, costly, and painful problem for the church.

AFTER COMMUNISM AND THE YUGOSLAV WARS

The fall of communism throughout Eastern Europe marked the beginning of the Serbian Orthodox Church’s reemergence as a major social, cultural, and even political force in Serbia. Unfortunately, this was also the precise historical moment at which the former Yugoslavia began to collapse amid widespread interethnic violence. The Serbian Church found itself in an especially challenging situation, most especially be­cause it had adherents and churches in all of Yugoslavia’s republics and provinces.

The most difficult situation confronting the church was in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina. As noted above, these two Yugoslav republics had together comprised most of the World War II “Independent State of Croatia,” and the survivors of the NDH genocide against the Serbs were particularly alarmed that the political and security guarantees they enjoyed in Yugo­slavia would be eliminated or reduced in the newly independent states, where Serbs would constitute a distinct minority vis-a-vis the Croats in Croatia and the Muslims in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

During the wars in Bosnia and Herzego­vina, Croatia, and Kosovo, the Serbian Orthodox Church and its hierarchs had to walk a fine line between defending the legit­imate interests of their flock while at the same time avoiding dangers of becoming an overtly nationalist organization that engaged in dealings with actual or perceived war criminals. Some members of the clergy managed to navigate successfully and honorably through those times; the behav­ior of others was more questionable. Undoubtedly, however, the most famous denunciation of the wars in Bosnia and Croatia, and of the nationalistic excesses that accompanied them, was made by Patri­arch Pavle, who said during this period:

If a “Greater Serbia” has to be maintained through crime, I would never accept that. Let Greater Serbia disappear, but to maintain it through crime, never. If it would be necessary and needed for Little Serbia to be maintained through crime, I would not accept that either. Let Little Serbia disappear as well, rather than having it exist through crime. And if we would have to maintain the last Serb, and I was that Serb, but to do it through crime, I do not accept that, let us cease to exist, but let us cease to exist as human beings, because then we will not cease to exist, we will as living beings go into the arms of the living God.

One ofthe most delicate balancing acts ofall concerned the Serbian Orthodox Church’s position vis-a-vis the regime of Slobodan Milosevic, president of Serbia. As early as 1992, many Serbian Church officials, most prominently the bishop of Zahumlje- Hercegovina, Atanasije (Jevtic), had pub­licly called on Milosevic to resign. Other members of the church hierarchy, however, were more sympathetic to Milosevic and his regime (Bardos 1992). Nevertheless, most of the church opposed Milosevic, and during the 1990s many opposition leaders in Serbia sought the church’s support for their efforts.

PERSECUTION IN KOSOVO AND METOHIJA

Throughout the 20th century the Serbian Orthodox Church’s position in Kosovo had been especially threatened. Albanian-Serb relations have been exceptionally hostile, with the two groups taking turns at being the oppressor and the oppressed as histori­cal circumstances have varied. The rise in Albanian nationalism after Tito’s death in 1980 marked the start of a new period of persecution for the Serbian Orthodox Church and Serbian Orthodox Christians in Kosovo. Throughout the 1980s, extrem­ists engaged in various forms of harassment and intimidation against the Serbs in Kosovo, such as stealing livestock or engag­ing in various forms of verbal and physical harassment. In 1981 arsonists set part of the patriarchate of Pec on fire, and a few years later the bishop of Raska-Prizren, Pavle (later to become patriarch of the Serbian Church), was beaten on the streets so severely by youths that he had to spend several weeks in hospital.

Albanian-Serb tensions finally exploded into full-scale violence in 1998, and in March 1999 the North Atlantic Treaty Orga­nization (NATO) initiated a three-month bombing campaign of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia to wrest control of the province of Kosovo from Serbia. During the conflict, Serb government and paramilitary forces expelled tens of thousands of Albanians from the province and destroyed or damaged dozens of mosques. Under the terms of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1244, in June 1999 the conflict came to an end, and the UN, together with NATO, assumed responsibility for governing Kosovo.

During the UN-NATO occupation of Kosovo, some 200,000 Serb Orthodox Christians have been driven from Kosovo by ethnic extremists. Most of the remaining Serb Orthodox population in Kosovo lives in what are essentially ethnic ghettoes. During this time, over 130 Serbian Ortho­dox monasteries and churches have been destroyed, along with numerous cemeteries and other church properties. In just one outburst of anti-Serb pogroms in March 2004, extremists destroyed approximately thirty Orthodox churches, including price­less monuments of Byzantine culture in the Balkans, such as the Church of the Virgin Mother in Prizren. In February 2008, Albanian authorities in Kosovo unilaterally declared independence according to the terms of a plan drawn up by former Finnish president Marti Ahtisaari. The so-called “Ahtisaari Plan” provides for significant self-government of the Serb population in Kosovo and includes various protections for the Orthodox religious and cultural sites in Kosovo, but it remains to be seen whether and how these protections will be implemented in practice.

FUTURE CHALLENGES AND PROSPECTS

In November 2009 the highly respected and much beloved patriarch of Serbia, His Holiness Pavle, died after a long illness. In January 2010 the holy assembly of bishops of the Serbian Orthodox Church elected the bishop of Niss, Irinej, as Pavle’s successor to the throne of the Orthodox Archbishopric of Pec, Metropolitan of Belgrade-Karlovci, and Serbian Patriarch.

Patriarch Irinej’s early pronouncements suggest that the Serbian Church is ready to take some decisive steps on two issues of some debate within the church over the past several years. The first concerns promoting a rapprochement with the Roman Catholic Church. The late Pope John Paul II had been keenly interested in making a pilgrim­age to Serbia, but many Serbian Church hierarchs opposed such a visit until the Vatican issued some form of acknowledg­ment or apology to the Serbian Orthodox Church for the role played by Catholic clerical officials in the genocide committed against the Serbs in the NDH during World War II. Upon assuming office, Patriarch Irinej suggested the possibility that John Paul II’s successor, Pope Benedict XVI, might be invited to Serbia in 2013 to attend the commemoration of the 1,700th anniversary of Constantine the Great’s proclamation of the Edict of Milan in Constantine’s birthplace, the Serbian city of Nis. While it remains to be seen whether an official invitation to Pope Benedict will ultimately be issued, the fact that senior church officials are now suggesting such an invitation would be possible indicates that resistance to such a papal visit to Serbia is eroding.

Patriarch Irinej is also believed to be eager to resolve the long-running dispute with the Macedonian Orthodox Church. As bishop of Nis, Irinej had been personally involved in the near-successful negotiations in that city with Macedonian Church offi­cials in 2002 to resolve the uncanonical status of the Macedonian Church and bring it back into communion with the Serbian Church and the rest of the Ortho­dox world. Patriarch Irinej’s initial public statements suggest that the Serbian Church is ready to devote more effort to the prob­lem of relations with the Macedonian Church than had been possible during Patriarch Pavle’s illness. The persistent persecution by Macedonian authorities of Archbishop Jovan of Ohrid, who has remained in canonical unity with the Serbian Church, nevertheless suggests that finding a compromise solution will remain difficult. Because of the Macedonian gov­ernment’s persistent attacks on him, Arch­bishop Jovan has been named a prisoner of conscience by Amnesty International.

Patriarch Irinej is also firmly committed to defending the Serbian Orthodox Church’s existence and position on Kosovo and Metohija. In recent years, church hierarchs in Kosovo have been fiercely divided among themselves over how best to deal with both international officials in Kosovo and with the Albanian authori­ties there. More focused leadership on the part of the patriarch and the holy synod in Belgrade may help the church develop a more coherent policy on these issues.

The Serbian Orthodox Church also has to deal with a minor schism in Montenegro, where a so-called “Montenegrin Orthodox Church” has been proclaimed by a few defrocked clergy. The schismatic Montene­grin organization has no canonical standing and little popular acceptance. Even after Montenegro declared its independence in June 2006, for instance, the Serbian Ortho­dox Church in Montenegro, represented by the metropolitanate of Montenegro and the Littoral, continues to be one of the most widely respected institutions in Montenegro. Nevertheless, extremists within the schis­matic organization regularly try to occupy churches and other properties belonging to the Serbian Church.

In many ways, the 20th century has proved to be one of the most turbulent and traumatic episodes in the history of the Serbian Orthodox Church. During the first decade of the 21st century the church entered somewhat calmer waters, but it still faces numerous challenges. It does so, however, with its reputation as the most trusted institution among the Serbian people largely intact.

SEE ALSO: Constantinople, Patriarchate of; Mount Athos; Russia, Patriarchal Orthodox

Church of; Sts. Constantine (Cyril) (ca. 826–869) and Methodios (815–885)

REFERENCES AND SUGGESTED READINGS

Alexander, S. (1979) Church and State in Yugoslavia since 1945. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Bardos, G. N. (1992) “The Serbian Church Against Milosevic,” RFE/RL Research Report 1, 31 (July 31).

Mileusnic, S. (1996) Duhovni genocide, 1991–95.

Belgrade: Muzej Srpske Pravoslavne Crkve. Pavlovich, P. (1989) The History of the Serbian Orthodox Church. Toronto: Serbian Heritage Books.

Peic, S. (1994) Medieval Serbian Culture. London: Alpine Fine Arts Collection.

Perica, V. (2002) Balkan Idols: Religion and Nationalism in Yugoslav States. New York: Oxford University Press.

Slijepcevic, D. (1962) Istorija Srpske Pravoslavne Crkve, vols. 1–3. Belgrade: Bigz.

Slijepcevic, D. (1969) Srpska Pravoslavna Crkva, 1219–1969. Belgrade: Sveti Arhijerejski Sabor Srpske Pravoslavne Crkve.

Sugar, P. (1977) Southeastern Europe under Ottoman Rule, 1354–1804. Seattle: University of

Washington Press.

Tomasevich, J. (2001) War and Revolution in Yugoslavia: Occupation and Collaboration, 1941–45. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Velimirovic, N. (1989) The Life of St. Sava. Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press.