Balkanologie VII (2) / 2003

8/13/2019 Balkanologie VII (2) / 2003

1/26

Balkanologie VII 2), dcembre 2003, p. 47-72 \ 47

NATIONALISM IN CONSTRU CTION :T H E M E M O R I A L C H U R C HOF ST. SAVA ON VRAAR H ILLIN BELGRADEoj nAleksov

During the combat we all saw St. Sava, robed in white, and seated ina white char iot draw n by white horses , leading us on to victory.1

The role of St. Sava, whom the late Serbian Patriarch German praised asth e Sun of Serbian heav en in Serbian oral tradition du ring m edieval andOttom an p eriod wa s to always w atch over Serbian people 2. In m any pop ular legend s an d folk tales he is th e creator of m iraculou s sp rings, a mas ter of the forces of na tur e wi th all features of a God w ho blesses and pu nis he s. Often cruelin pu nishin g and horre ndo us in his rage, St. Sava, has th e features of a prim itive pag an god and, tho ug h a Christian saint, in the eyes of pop ular cu lture heem bodied a pre-Christian pag an divinity or th e ancien t Serbian god of th e u n-derworkRIn the age of nationalism however, the Serbian cult of St. Sava acquireddifferent tasks representing and reproducing, depending on circumstances,powerful images of national golden age, national reconciliation and unification an d/o r ma rtyrdo m for the C hurch and the n ation. For mo re th an a cen tury' Central Europea n U niversity.1The reply of a Serbian schoo lmaster wh o wa s serving as a private in the Serbian a rm y in th e ba tt le ofKumanovo, wage d on the23rd and 24t hof October1912,on being asked w ha t i t wa s that gave th e soldierssuch t remendous elan, after the severe grueling they received during the first day's fight (Price(Crawfurd), Balkan Cockpit,London,1915, p . 154). It wa s the batt le t ha t decided t he outco me of the FirstBalkan W ar.2 Patriarch German in a statement to a special edit ion of Intervju, en titled Rastko, Sv Sava, Vra ar01/04/88, p.51.3 ajkan ovi (Veselin),O srpskom vrhovnom bogu (On Serbian Suprem e God), Beograd : Srpska kral-jevska akademija, 1941.


2/26

48 / BalkanologieVII[2 ] dcembre 2003 p 772

no w, a chu rch d edica ted to this sain t is bein g built in Belgrade, aim ed to epitomize and mo num ental ize these images. In my paper I will interpret the construction of St. Sava Church as an architectural illustration of Serbian nationalism encountering numerous political and ideological shifts of Serbia'stroublesome twentieth century.Todo soIwill attem pt to unpack the narrativean d im ages invoked by the Church and oth er protago nists in the co nstruction.Fu rthe rm ore , I in ten d to investigate and reveal political an d ideological underpinnings of the institutions and personalities behind the construction, andfinally, expose the distance between their objectives and realization.

Tho ugh env isage d as a place of wo rship, I will consider the M emo rialChurch of St. Sava as a natio nal m o n u m en t p ar excellence for several reaso ns.Firstly, i t was initiated in line with the nineteenth century urge to erect monu m en ts to co mm em orate impo rtant personages or patriotic events. I ts protracted b uilding co ntinued to share the features of the erection of national monu m en ts, wh ich typically involve produ ction / reproduction / m anipu lation oftheir meanings over time. Secondly, national protagonists involved in theconstruction wrap the motivation behind the project in religious symbolism,wh ich is in line w ith B enedict Anderson's defining th e co ntent of nationalismby d om ina nt cultural system s preceding it, religion being in this case the obvious precedent4 . However, a closer historical scrutiny and contextualizationunveil pragmatic politics aimed at mobilizing popular support behind religious symbolism. This is related to yet another similarity of St. Sava Churchbuilding to th at of other modem national m on um ents and that is the involvem en t of person s an d institutions for w ho m it is a purely secular m atter, or them atte r of m od ern secular nationalism . Finally,St Sava Church achieved a placein the repertoire of national symbols and a status of a focus of not only religious bu t na tion al rites and rituals.

In order to analyze the motives behind endorsing a church as a nationalm on um en t I wil l draw on a wide array of m onu m ent studies as well si tuateand relate the construction ofSt Sava Church to other nation al m on um enta li-zation projects in Europe5. Despite some obvious similarities, especially withMoscow's Church of Christ the Savior, the story of the St. Sava MemorialChurch in Belgrade displays many unique features. They stem from this mo-4Ande rson Benedict),Imagined Communities : Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism,London :Verso,1983,p. 12.5 Sidorov Dm itiri). Natio nal M onum ental izat ion and the Poli tics of Scale: The Resurrection of Christthe Savior in Moscow ,Annals of the Association of American Geographers AAAG),90 (3), 200 0 ;Atk inso n David), Cosgrove Den is), Urban Rhetoric and Embodied Identities:City,Nation, and Empireat the Vittorio Emanuele II Monument in Rome, 1870-1945 , AAAG, 88 (1), 1998 ; Harv ey David),Monument and Myth : The Building oftheBasilica of the Sacred Heart,Oxford :Blackwell, 985 ;KoselleckReinhart), Jeis ma nn Michael) , eds., er Politische Totenkult, M nc hen : Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 1994 ;Denkmale und kulturelles Geddchtnis nach dem Ende der Ost-West-Konfrontation, Berlin:Akademie derKnste , 200 0;M ichalsk i Sergiusz),PublicMonuments, London:R eaktion books, 1998.


3/26

Bojan A leksov Nationalism in Construction: the Memorial Church of St Sava in Belgrade \ 49

nument's peculiar context in the Serbian / Yugoslav history. More significantly, th e co nstruc tion ofSt.Sava Church stan ds o ut as an o n-going process, awork-in-progress still open for insertion of ne w m ea ning s.The symbolism of St. Sava Church transformed from the visual emblemfor th e drive at unification of all Serbs at the tu rn of th e tw en tie th c en tury tothe inter-w ar stress on the Serbian (pre)eminence in mu ltiethn ic Yugoslavia topost World War Two Comm unist sup pression of its construction as th e symbolof Serbian n ationalism , whose revival it indeed repre sented in the 1980s, onlyto be ab and one d in th e 199 0s as the nationalist project fell to disarray. In th efollowing pagesIwill first look at ho w th e cu lt ofSt.Sava evolved an d th e ideato construct a church as th e natio nal m on um en t cam e into being . This decisionrequired a thor ou gh nationa lization and sacralization of th e cho sen site. I willfurther focus on th e debate s about the design for the chu rch th at m irrore d political divisions am on g th e Serbian artistic an d political elites. In th e last par t Iwill describe the vicissitudes tha t followed th e neve r-endin g co nstruction andexamine how they affected the building ofSt.Sava Church as a mo nu m en t inreality and discourse.

R IS IN G U P FR O M T H E A S H E SSt. Sava wa s b orn in1169as Rastko, th e th ird son to N em anja, r uler of Ras,the fo rerunner of th e m edieval Serbian S tate. As a you ng prince h e ran awayfrom the royal court to becom e a mon k Sava on Mo unt A thos, a tale often toldamong the Serbs as the greatest example of self-sacrifice 6. There he founded

the first S erbian mo nas tery and bega n his endeavors for w hich he later acquired th e title of th e first Serbian Illuminator / Enlightener 7.With the rem ains ofhis father, the fo unde r of th e holy dynasty, Sava later re tur ne d to Serbia to reconcile an ong oing feud a m on gst h is bro ther s. Conflicting sources speak of hisinfluence in obta ining th e crow n for his brothe r Step han from Pope H onoriusIIIin 1217. Wh at is historically m ore c ertain is th at Sava secured au toc eph aly forthe Serbian na tion al Church from t he enfeebled a nd exiled Byza ntine Em peror5 For a hagiographic account in English see Velimiiovi (Bishop Nikolaj), The Prologue from OchridBirmingham :Lazarica P ress, 1985 ;J.Matl sum ma rizes t he findings on St. Sava's life a nd influence, list ing all major historiograp hic w orks on St. Sava(Matl (Josef), Der heilige Sawa als Begrn der d er ser-bischen N ationalkirche. Seine Leistung un d B edeutun g fur de n Kulturaufbau Europas , in Matl (Josef),Sdslawische Studien, M n c h e n :Sdosteuro pische Arbeiten, 63,1965).7The Slavic w ordprosvetitelj is derived from a verbprosvetiti m eanin g to sanct ify ra ther th an to enl ighten. Obolenski translates i t as Il luminator (in Obolenski, The Byzantine Commonw ealth, London :W eidenfeld a nd N icolson, 1971). The Serbian O rthodox C hurch uses the w ord E nlig hten er in its Eng lishlanguag e publ ica t ions .


4/26

50 / BalkanologieV 2), dcembre 2003,p.47-72

and Patriarch in Nicaea, and became its first Archbishop. Moreover, St. Savahelped to restore Serbs, exposed both to Roman Catholicism and the Bogomilheresy, to th e boso m of th e O rthodox Church8. Upon h is d ea th, St. Sava was canon ized to ge the r w ith his father in an act th at, as histo rian Blagojevi arg ues,gave the Serbian people saints who had come from among their ranks andwould in heaven be tireless protectors of the Serbian State, Serbian rulers,Serbian people and th e entire patrimony 9 .During the four centuries long period of Ottoman domination, whichbe ga n in the fifteenth century,St.Sava was ce ntra l for both form al religion a ndtraditio nal, oral culture, th e two forces g enerally held respon sible for keepingalive the na tion al sp irit of the Serbs. His m iracle work ing body in the m ona ste ry of Mileeva wa s vener atedbypilgrims wh o came from ne ar and far to implore his intercession. When Serbs began a rebellion against the Turks at theend of sixteenth century, carrying banners with images of St. Sava, SinanPasha, an Alban ian convert in Ottoman ranks, as some contemp orary reportsan d subseq uent tradit io n have it, decided to remove wh at w as in his opinionthe source of their inspiration. In 1594 or 1595, Sinan Pasha brought St. Sava'srelics to Belgrade and according St. Sava's hagiographies, burned them onVraar hill, its highest point, so that the rebellious Serbs in the Banat, acrossth e Danube, could see the smoke and flames 10. The exact circum stances ho wever are less clear an d th e wh ole issue divided Serbian historiograph y over thelast hu nd red years, w ith som e even claiming th at St. Sava's relics we re not burned at all. For the Serbian Church and St. Sava cult promoters on the otherhan d, the burn ing ofSt.Sava relics acquired the outm ost imp ortance , thro ug hwhich the Saint gained a posthumous martyrdom, partaking symbolically inhi s peop le's suffering un de r the bit ter Turkish yoke .

In fact, St. Sava po sthu m ou s cult w hen t ran sm ute d into legend and poetrydu ring th e O ttom an period figured h im only in a stereotypical dichotom y of asaint-p rotec tor of Christian people versus th e infidel M uslim-Turk, epitomizedin th e im age of Sinan Pasha11 . Among those respo nsible for bolstering th e m odern cult of St. Sava as a national hero, not least was the Catholic HabsburgEm press Maria T heresa, w hos e Empire beca m e a refuge for m an y Serbs fleeingfrom the Ottomans. In 1776, she ordered the Synod of Serbian Bishops to pro-8 Se e Cirkovic (Sima), et al. Istorija srpskog naroda vol. II (History of the Serbian People), Beograd :Srpska knj ievna zad ruga,1981,pp . 297-315,315-328.9 Blagojevi (Milo), O n th e Nat ion al Identity of Serbs in M iddle Ages , in Sam ardi (Radovan),D ukov (Milan), eds.,Serbs in European Civilisation,Beograd, 1993.10 Samardi (Radovan),Istorija srpskog naroda (vol III/1), Beograd :SKZ,1993,pp. 248-285.11 Deteli (Mirjana), O mo gu n os tim a rekonstrukcije m itsko g lika Sv. Save u srpskoj dese terakojepici (On the Possibilities of Reconstruction of St. Sava's Mythical Personality in Serbian Deca-syllableEpic),Balcanica, 25(1),199 4, p. 260.


5/26


claim St. Sava th e sole pat ron of Serbian people , in an effort to redu ce th enumber of feast days in the Serbian Church Calendar12 .The cult of St. Sava, as w e kn ow it today, finally b eg an to e m erge only atthe beginning of the nineteenth century, at the dawn of the age of nationalism, parallel to the liberation struggles of th e Serbs, w h en it, according to th eChurch historian, assu m ed the ne w role tonou rish nation al pride and f lameth e patrio tism and read ines s for sacrifice 13.Over the course of the ni ne tee nt hcentury, secular con tents interm ingled w ith religious celebration and natio nalrom anti cism shifted th e focus from ecclesiastical and religious rites to enligh ten m en t ideas, th e glorious Slav past a nd resistance to foreign culture and oppression. The feast ofSt.Sava left th e ch urches wh ere it originated to b ecom ea national school holiday, a celebration of the Serbian language, the Slav ideaand a plea for the unification and liberation of Serbs from foreign do m ina tion .The cult wa s continuou sly enriched w ith ne w con tents as St. Sava's preservedhagiog raphies w ere un eart he d and reinterpreted . After Arsenije Teodorovi in1807,depicted St. Sava reconciling his two b rot he rs over thei r father's relics, St.Sava's role as unifier became the single most exploited image in the narrativesurrounding the cult14 . National romanticism soon added the first figurativerep res en tatio ns of th e b urn in g of St. Sava's relics by th e T urks. The origins ofthe hym nUskliknim o s ljubavlju (Let us s ing ou t w it h our love to St. Sava),whose verses emphasize Serbian unity and renewal are less clear but by themiddle of the century it became an unofficial national anthem. Other elements such as processions from churches to schools, performances whereschoolchildren recited patriotic p oem s, an d sp ecial St. Sava's serm on followed.In 1867, Vladan ordevi, a medicine student in Vienna and a future SerbianPrime m inis ter repo rted : from Pest to Pe [the seat of th e SerbianPatriarchate], from Ni and Timok to the Adriatic sea, in all four countrieswhere Serbian people live thorn apart from each other, and even in all countries an d cities of Europe w here only few Serbs gather, everyw here is celebrated St. Sava15 .

12 The Church calendar featured 13 Serbian, besides the a lready great n um be r of universa l Christiansaints,tur nin g th e good part of the year into feast an d leisure days. In a similar fashion St. Constan tineand Helene were proclaimed Greek and Saint Parasceva Romanian patron saints. See Gruji (Radoslav) Kult Sv. Save u Karlovakoj mitropo liji XVIII i XIX veka (The Cult of St. Sava in the M etro po lita na teof Karlovci in 18 th and 19t hC entury),Bogoslovlje,10(2-3),1935,p. 143.13 Grujic (Radoslav),art.cit.14 The image appeared on the fresco in the Church of the Assumption of Virgin Mary in Zemun. SeeMedakovi (Dejan), Istorijske o snove ikonografije sv. Save u XVIII vek u (Historical Fo un da tion s ofthe Iconography of St. Sava in the 18 th Century), in Babi (Jovan), Blagojevi (Dimitrije) et al, SavaNemanji - Sveti Sava - istorija ipredanje, Beog rad : SANU, 1979, p. 40 0.15 M atica, 2,1867, p. 495 , cited in Gruji (Radoslav), art.cit.


6/26

52 / BalkanologieV 2) , dcembre 2003,p.47-72

In th e late nin ete en th century, the vene ration ofSt.Sava acquired a dditional significance under the direct influence of Russophiles and Slavophiles,whose chief proponent in Serbia was Belgrade Metropolitan Mihailo. Whereasthe HolySeefea ture d Cyril an d M ethodius, Apostles ofSlavs ,to strengthen thereligiou s a nd ecclesiastical ad here nce of Catholic Slavs and, hopefully, w in overthose Slavs of the Byzantine rite,th e Serbian Church raised the flag ofSt.Savato aw ake n an d ass em ble Serbs scattered in four countries and u nd er diverse ecclesiastical jurisdic tions 16. The campaign for ecclesiastical and national adherence w aged in Ottom an Kosovo an d M acedonia engaged fully both the Churchand the State and one of the most importance auspices under which it wascon ducted w as t h e Association of St. Sava, form ed in 1886 in Belgrade17 . At th esa m e time, studen ts of Prizren seminary, the first Serbian sem inary found ed inthe area under the Ottomans, christened their association with St. Sava's secular na m e Rastko , emb lematically blurring and sup erceding the division betw ee n the religious and secular und er national imperatives.In such an overwhelmingly nationalist polit ical atmosphere in Serbia,M etrop olitan M ihailo was charged, in1895,to head the Com mittee m ade up ofSerbia's forem ost citizens for the co nstr uctio n of a church on B elgrade's VraarHill , dedicated to the memory of the greatest Serbian saint, Enlightener andUnifier. The idea to build the church on that very spot, where three hundredyears earlier Sinan Pasha scattered the ashes of Saint Sava finally became areality. The Construction Com mittee sent out a rousing ap peal to the Serbianpeople for funds describing the building of the church on the hill where thesaintly ashes were scattered as paying due respect to St. Sava and coming toter m s with ancestors, w ithou t which the present and future com mu nity of St.Sava's descendants could not l ive in harmony and prosper 18. In her study onThePolitical Livesof Dead Bodies,Verdery,th ou gh focusing on Serbia, overlooksthe greatest Serbian cult ofall,in w hic h th e need of a dead body to get a proper burial acquires a n ew dimension19 The sacralization of space or its tran sform ation from t he profan e to th e other-worldly is, as Philip Aries hasshown, closely linked to the presence of the dead, burial grounds or cemete-1 6Dartel (Geert van ),irilometodska ideja iSvetosavlje (Cyrillo-Methodian Idea and Svetosavlje), Zagreb :Kranska sadanjost , 1984, i s the pioneering at t em pt to describe the interact ions of these tw o competing ideologies.17 For the activities of St. Sava Association in Kosovo and Macedonia, see Miki (orde), DelatnostDrutva Sv. Save na Kosovu (1886-1912) , Naa prolost, 1975, pp. 61-87 ; Hadi-Vasiljevi (Jovan),Spomenica Drutva Sv. Save1886-1936 Beograd, 1936.18 The Appeal to the S erbian people sent ou t by th e Co mm ittee for Construction in1895,republ ishedin Pei (Branko),Spomen hram Sv. Save na Vraaru u Beogradu 1895 1988 (St. Sava Memorial Church onVra ar Hill in Belgrad e 1895 -1988), Beograd : Sveti arhijerejski sinod SPC,19 88, p p. 17-22.19 Veidery (Katherine),The Po litical Lives of Dead Bodies, Columbia :Columbia Universi ty Press, 1999 .


7/26


8/26


9/26


bed in the list of Great Benefactors, right after the members of Royal familyand senior Church dignitaries 3 0 . Finally, to paraphrase Antony Smith, Vraarlandscape became a sacredscape and ethnoscape 3 1.In1895,th e Com mittee first built a sm all church ne ar the spot of th e futureM em orial Church - th e so-called Forerun ner C hurch - and on ly collected fundsuntil 1904, when it initiated the first competition for the future church, marking one hundredth anniversary of the First Serbian Uprising against theTurks. Most of Serbs still lived outside of Serbia's borders, and many of themstill lived und er Turks. Thus th e choice wh en to start the construc tion, its prom ine nt location and env isaged exten sive physical layout of th e Church indicated from the begin ning inten tions beyond th e religious ; i ts dom inance andimmensity was to impress and accentuate the Piedmontian role of Serbia inthe unification ofSerbs.This coupling of the secular an d religious dim ens ionsset irreversibly the future position of the Vraar Hill Church in the visions ofnational monumentalization advanced by ecclesiastic and State hierarchy aswell as lay builders of the nation. At that time, other European capitals hadlarge churches inherited from the past or built in the second half of the ninetee nth century w he n the y also acquired the function of a nation al shrine. Theerect ion of nat ional mon um ents and the comm emorative events surroundingthem became an established factor in stimulating loyalty to existing institutions a nd th e State. But belate d a t its start, the pace and profile of th e nev er ending construction on Vraar Hill was throughout the twentieth century disturbed by tragic historical events and even more so by contesting politicalvisions of its sym bolism for Serbia.

BYZANTIUM LOSTAfter years of we ak respo nse from both th e people and S tate institu tionsin collecting funds a nd tu rbu len t events tha t included a bloody dynastic coup,the Construction Committee finally announced a competition for church design in 1905. Given that there was a lack of competent experts in Serbia tojudge the architectural submissions for the new church, the Committee en

gaged th e Art Academy ofSt.Pete rsbu rg for this task . Article Two of the com peti t ion annou nce m ent clearly stated tha t the church should be a respecta-3 Palairet (Michael), ovek koji je izgradio Englezovac - Fransis Mekenzi u Beogradu (1876-1895) (The M an w ho Built Englishto wn - Francis Ma ckenzie in Belgrade 1876-1895), Istorijski asopis, 39,1992,p.160.31 Smith (Antony D.), Myths and Memories of the Nation, Oxford : Oxford Univ ersity Press, 199 9,pp. 149-159-


10/26

56 / Balkanologie VII 2) , dcembre 2003,p. 4?-?2

ble monument of Serbian gratitude, paying a due respect to this great andcherish ed saint a nd p atro n of Serbian schools ; it should be m on um en tal insize and in the Serbo-Byzantine style 32. Agreeing to the notion of a freecompetit ion for the project , the committee imposed one major condit ion onthe style, although Church dogma does not envisage a single style but onlydemands a dist inct posit ion and spatial direction of church 3 3 . Why was thi sstyle so important ?Serbian Church architecture and painting in the eighteenth centuryabandoned i ts tradit ional Byzantine style and leaned towards contemporaryEuropean or more precisely Central European artistic trends found in theHabsburg monarchy 3 4 The Cathedral of Belgrade built in 1841 w ith its neo classical style facades an d a Baroque bell-tower be cam e the chief a chiev em entan d symbol of this ne w architectural style. It w as n ot un til the historicism ofth e R omantic era brou ght to the fore th e search for the m edieval heritage . Thistask befell the disciples of Viennese Professor Teophil Hansen, who in the1880s launched a so-called neo-Byzantine style, which represented a trendyhistoricist eclecticism based rather artificially on elements of Byzantine,Islamic and medieval Romanic architecture 3 5 . Though they introduced aByz antine ordering of space, their designs had little to do wi th Serbian m edieval churches.At the same time, the nationalist campaign in the still Ottoman Kosovoan d M acedonia, carried o ut by th e St. Sava association am ong others, bro ugh tabout the (re)discovery of Serbian medieval churches in these areas, notablyth e church of m on as ter y G raanica ne ar P ristina. The desire to revive th e glorious me dieva l past a nd furnish Serbia wi th its ow n nation al style in art, w asfurther misled by the misconceptions of th e French art historian M illet ascribing Graanica to the Serbian national genius and characterizing it as the nat ional monument of Serbian architecture under Byzantine influence 3 6 . Thusth e notion of Serbo-Byzantine style arose, a style of architecture do m inan t inSerbia dur ing th e reign ofKingM ilutin at th e begin ning of the four teenth cen-

3 2 The compet i t ion announcement was publ ished inSrbske novine on 13/05/05.3 3 Mirkovi (Lazar), Pravoslavna Liturgika (The Orthod ox Liturgics), Beograd : Sveti arhijerejski sinodSPC, 1982,p .81.3 4Se eJovanov i (Miodrag),Srpsko crkven o graditeljstvo i slikarstvo novijeg dob a(M odern Serbian ChurchAr chi tectu re an d Painti ng) , Beograd / Kragujevac, 1987, p. 53.35 V a s i ( P a v l e ) , C r k v e n a u m e t n o s t k o d S r b a u X V II I a n d X IX v e k u ( S e r b i a n C h u r c h A r t i n 1 8t h a n d1 9 t h c e n t u r y ) i n Srpska Pravoslavna Crkva 1219 - 1 9 6 9 ,Be og rad : Sve t i Ar i je re jsk i S ino d SPC, 19 69 , p . 34 9 .O n H a n s e n a n d i t s s c h o o l s e e J o v a no v i ( M i o dr a g ) , Srpsko crkveno graditeljstvo i slikarstvo novijeg doba,Beograd :D rutvo istoria ra u m et. Srbije,1987,pp. 109-130.3 6 Millet (Gabriel),L Ancien art serbe : lesglises Paris :E. de Boccard, 1919.


11/26

Bojan Aleksov Nationalism in Construction : the Memorial Church of St Sava in Belgrade \ 5?

tury w ith the Graanica as its archetype 3 7 . Out of all spheres of art, the ecclesiastical architecture made the most radical break with European trends,wh ich it aban do ne d for th e sake of a revived Serbian-By zantine style, regardedas a pure manifestation of the Serbian national spirit. The ascension of thisstyle to the level of undisp uted architectural genre wa s clearly und erp inn ed bya dual imperative to celebrate simultaneously both an ancient and an emerging State3 8. The ideology of national regeneration translated into the language of architecture rejected European influences and proclaimed a return tomedieval Serbian golden age.

However, in w hat w as only th e first of m an y difficulties t o characterize future construction, the Russian jury informed the Committee that none of thefive projects submitted had satisfied the conditions set forth, and consideringthe importance of the Church it could not suggest any to be put forward forexecution 3 9 . Although the Orthodox hierarchy in Russia at that time still supported the historicist designs of the n ine tee nth century, the jury w as probablylooking for som eth ing innovative. W ithin semiofficial artistic circles, the ne edto revive church architecture was seriously discussed 40 . Still, despite the factthat the projects submitted by Serbian architects were far from the envisagedcriteria and that ultimately the jury failed to select a plan, the architecturalstyle and scale, important symbolic and ideological steps in building thechurch as a Na tional M on um en t w ere set. The Serbo-Byzantine style deployedrepresentations of the past aimed to justify the nationalist expansionism ofthe present.However, the Balkan wars and the Great War brought the project to astand still for m an y years. It w as on ly in1919,tha t the w ork of the Com mitteewas reinitiated under the presidency of the newly elected Patriarch DimitrijeDespite all the glorification in Serbia, this view has a negative consequence, as the Graanica wasviewe d outsid e of Serbia only as a high ac hiev em ent of a provincial school, wh ile it is in fact th e g reate stexample of the Late Byzantine architecture as shown by the work of u r i c ,wh ich shows Serbia's complete turn toward the Byzantine spiritual world and civilization during the reign of King Milutin.Seeur (Slobodan), Graanica :King M ilutin s Church and Its Place in Late Byzantine Architecture,University Park :Pennsylvania State University Press,1979.In the inter-wa r per iod ano ther great churchwas b uilt in Belgrade (St. Marko), wh ich w as a ba re enla rged replica of Graanica.

3 8T h e S e r b i a n K i n g P e t a r a l s o o p t e d f o r t h e S e r b o - B y z a n t i n e s t y l e i n t h e c o m p e t i t i o n f o r t h e R o y a l F a m i l yM a u s o l e u m c h u r c h t h a t r a n p a r a l l e l t o t h a t f o r St. S a v a C h u r c h . S e e J o v a n o v i ( M i o d r a g ) , Oplenac, T o p o l a ,1 9 8 9 , p .27.39 P e i ( B r an k o) , op. cit. , p. 27.4 T h e c o m m i s s i o n s b y in d i v i d u a l o f p r i v a t e g r o u p s ( s u c h a s O l d B e l i e ve r s ) i n R u s s i a n u r t u r e d f r e e d o m i nt h e e x p r e s s i o n o f st y l e . A g r e a t s t a r o f R u s s i a n c h u r c h a r c h i t e c t u r e o f t h e p e r i o d , A l e ks e i S c h us e v , w h ol a t e r d e s i g n e d t h e L e n i n M a u s o l e u m a n d o t h e r s y m b o l s of S o v i e t p o w e r , p r e a c h e d a g a i n s t t h e t a s t e l e s sb r i l l i a n c e of o f fi c ia l O r t h o d o x c h u r c h d e s i g n b u t f or a p l a c e of w o r s h i p w h o s e i n t e r i o r a n d e x t e r i o rw o u l d e x e m p l i f y t h a t e n d e a r i n g , n a i v e a n d a t t h e s a m e t i m e d i v e r s e s e n s e o f a r t i s t r y of t h e O r t h o d o xc h u r c h . Q u o t e d i n B r u m f i e l d ( W i l l i a m C r a ft ),A History of Russian Architecture, C a m b r i d g e : C a m b r i d g eU n i v e r s i t y P r e s s , 1 9 9 3 , p . 432 .


12/26

58 / Balkanologie VII 2) , dcembre 2003,p. 47-72

and the protection of King Aleksandar, of newly created Kingdom of Serbs,Croats a nd Slovenes (Yugoslavia from 1929).The Patriarch insisted that the oldplans were irrelevant and that a plan should be developed to reflect thecontemporary situation of the Serbian people and State, and to commemorateSerbian achievements of the period. After years of debate, the Committee decided to lau nch a new comp etition in 1926, wh ich reiterated some of th e previous conditions : th e church should be elevated ; it should be of monumental propo rtions a nd accom mod ate 6 00 0 people , wh ile th e style was againun-p recisely d efined as in the spirit of old Serbian arch itectu re 41. This tim ehow ever, th e local jury, comprised of th e most pro m inen t public figures andren ow ne d arch itects and civil engineers, deem ed the s ubm itted projects as unsatisfactory. Nevertheless, th e intellectual an d political atm osph ere of the periodsoon determ ined w ha t th e jury could not.In th e n ew YugoslavState,th e S erbian C hurch lost mu ch of its p rivilegedposition and had to accommodate to religious pluralism. Even though allOrthodox Serbs finally rallied in one State headed by their Monarch, theneed for an integrative and bonding nationalist ideology had not receded.The Serbian Church had to assemble dioceses, which were under five different jurisdictions, each claiming a well-established and distinct tradition,modes of administration and political ideas. No less difficult was the integration of Serbs of different cultural and historical backgrounds that foundthem selve s in th e n ew State. For m an y of the m , nam ely th e Serbs fromSerbia, it was the first experience of living in a multiethnic country andmoreover a multiethnic country where they actually constituted less than ahalf of its population. Finally, there was the issue of binding the Serbian intell igentsia to the Church with which it was confronted almost from its inception at the end of the eighteenth century, a conflict increasingly perceived as destructive bo th for the Church an d the natio n.It w as exactly in this challenging tim e th at th e Serbian Church's p oten tialw as boo sted by the arrival of many prom inen t R ussian clerics and theologians,who together with thousands of their compatriots found solace in the brotherly Yugoslav nation after the October Revolution 42 . Under the influence ofthe conservative branch of Russian emigration personified in the KarlovciSynod established in Yugoslavia, Serbian theologians and philosophers beganto se arch for different social and State mo dels, for aut he nt ic Orthodo x an sw er4 1Pei (Branko),op. cit, p. 37.42 SeeRaeff(Marc),Russia Abroad Oxford :Oxford Univ ersity Press, 199 0, pp .118-155.N .Zernov, wh o wa son e of th e Russian em igres in Belgrade, testifies ab out thi s intellectual at mo sph ere (in Zernov (Nicolas),The Russian Religious Renaissance of the Twentieth Century, London : Darton, Longman & Todd, 1963,p p . 210-249).


13/26

Bojan Aleksov Nationalism in Construction: the Memorial C hurch of St Sava in Belgrade \ 59

to what Spengler defined at the dusk of WWI as Decline of the W est43 .The solutions to problems of democracy and capitalism were sought in pre-Modempatriarchal forms of Balkan society, in Byzantine models of harmony inChurch and State relations. St. Sava's nam e w as borrow ed to label Serbian national ontology - Svetosavlje 44 . Thus, came the new reinterpretation of St.Sava's he ritag e, in the form of newly-coined no tion ofSvetosavlje45.It sough t toreplace St. Sava the Enlightener an d p atron of children an d edu cation, wh omone of the Svetosavljefounding fathers described as having no muscles an dblood cells, being like a shadow with a soul made of cobweb 46 . InsteadSvetosavljestood for an integra l national principle throu gh w hichCh ristianethos transform ed into Slav ethno s .Taking th e obvious Christianization th atMedieval Serbia experienced with St. Sava as a base, Svetosavlje or SaintSavaian ethno soph ia becam e for its prom oterssanctification of the national,the lifting up of national in Christian .Only nation al Svetosavljewa s the w ayto co-national, supra nation al and u niversal Christianity.In the newly-founded journal of theology students carrying its name,Svetosavljereceived its pro gra m m atic ex hibition by Russian theo log ian TeodorTitov. For Titov,Svetosavljewa s Christianity perm eated w ith greatest Christianvirtues of love, aspiration to perfectionism, self-denial, asceticism togetherw ith th e n ew elem ents such as Pan-Slavism, pan-orthodoxy, and religious tolerance, necessary for the rapprochement wi th the Yugoslav RomanCatholics47 . Another Russian emigre, Sergej Troicki, insisted that Svetosavljewas a Pan-Slavic national ideology of rapprochement and unification of allSlavs. In light of intensification of conflicts with the Catholic Church, youngtheologian, Danilo Medan, proposed Svetosavlje as a solution, which did notsee an enemy in Catholicism, a brotherly Christian religion. Instead, in hisview,Svetosavljeobjects to the politics of Catholicism w hich aim ed atenslavement and oppression of Slav peoples, their awakening and development ;absorption of their racial and cultural individuality 48. Du ring 1930s, the au-43 T h e s t u d y o n t h e i n f l u e n c e o f R u s s i a n e m i g r e s o n S e r b i a n r e l i g i o u s a n d s e c u l a r t h o u g h t i s y e t t o b ew r i t t e n . T h e t r a n s l a t i o n o f S p e n g l e r ' s b o o k t o S e r b i a n a p p e a r e d o n l y i n 1 9 37 , b u t w a s w i d e l y d i s c u s s e de a r l i e r . p e n g l e r ( O sv a l d ),Propast Zapada, Be ogr ad : Gec a Kon , 1937 .44 T h e r e w e r e v a r i o u s a t t e m p t s t o t r a n s l a t e t h e t e r m Svetosavlje r a n g i n g fr o m S a i n t s a v a i s m t o S t. S a v a ' sh e r i t a g e . I t s o r i g i n s a n d d e v e l o p m e n t a r e d i s c u s s e d l a t e r i n t h e p a p e r . T h e Ch u r c h of S t. Sa v a o n V ra a rH i l l i s i n S e r b i a n c a l l e d H r a m Sv. Sa v e ( T e mp l e o f S t. Sa v a ) . I n E n g l i s h t r a n s l a t i o n i t is r e f e r r e d t o a s t h eCh u r c h o r Me mo r i a l Ch u r c h o f S t . Sa v a .45 Se e B u c h e n a u ( K l a u s ) , S v e t o s a vl j e u n d P r a v o sl a v lj e . N a t i o n a l e s u n d U n i v e r s a l e s i n d e r S e r b i s c h e nO r t h o d o x i e ( f o r t h c o m i n g ) . I t i s t h e f i rs t w o r k o n t h e i n t e r - w a r i n v e n t i o n o f Svetosavlje.4 6 Najdanovi (Dimitrije), Svetosavska para lipo me na , Svetosavlje,1 (2),1932,p. 63.4 7 Ti tov (Teodor) , Sv etosav l j e ,Svetosavlje, 2 (3,4 ,5) , 1933 , p p. 97-1 04.4 8 M e d a n ( D a n i l o R . ) , K o n t u r e Sv e t o s a v s k e i d e o l o g i j e i n j e n z n a a j u p r o l o s t i i s a d a n j o s t i ( C o n t o u r so f Sa i n t Sa v a i a n I d e o l o g y a n d i t s S i g n i f i c a n c e i n t h e Pa s t a n d P r e s e n t ) , Svetosavlje, 6 (2-3), 1937, p. 9 2.


14/26

60 / BalkanologieV 2), dcembre 2003,p. 47-72

thors around Svetosavlje journal developed the polemical attitude towardsIslam, Catholicism as well as western culture and atheism in general, whichwere all perceived as enemies of the Serbian Church and people. All of themhowever, besides Catholicism, refer to contem porary issues a nd have noth ingto do wi th t h e life a nd wo rk of Saint Sava.Naturally, the proponents of Svetosavljefostered the im po rtanc e of theMemorial Church construction throughout the following period propagatingtheir ideas of national monumentalization. Whereas the idea to build the St.Sava's shrin e at the end of th e nine teen th c entury w as mo tivated by his role asa national Enlightener and unifier, the inter-war period transformed it in thesymbol of absolute identification of the religion and nation that took place,theoretically with the ideology of Svetosavljean d practically wit h intensifieddistancing and animosity between Catholic and Orthodox Churches in theKingdom of Yugoslavia49 . The revived intere st in Byza ntium, w hic h also arose,w as different t h a n th e previous rom antic ist glorification of th e golden medieval age 5 0 . The new claim was that the medieval Byzantine identification ofChurch, Kingdom and people was absolute, their relationship har m onio us andprosperous, exemplified with the numerous great churches buil t throughoutSerbia by kings a nd t he nobility, m ost of w ho m still rem ain as testim on ies tothe present day.In 1930, the Construction Committee received a new chairman, the recently enthroned Patriarch Varnava, with whom the Serbian Church entered aperiod of its grea test construction work, building h und red s of churches throu ghout the country, twelve in Belgrade alone, all of which still occupy an important position in the city landscape 5 1. Recuperating th e great and sacredend eav or of bu ildi ng the Cathedral of Serbian Orthodoxy , Pa triarch Varnavainsisted it shouldreflect in its deco rations, mosaics an d frescoes th e w hole ofSerbian history 52. Eventually after ye ars of un ce rta in ty h e cut th e Gordi'sknot of contested architectural and political visions and decided to alter theplan. The Committee commissioned two architects, Nestorovi and Deroko,whose works ranked high in the second competit ion and whose design was4 9 The Serbian Orthodox Church exercised previously unseen clericalism during the so-called Concordatcrisis in 1937, w he n it opposed and finally preve nted t he adoption of Concordat wi th t he Holy See. TheSerbian Church complained that the Catholic minority was granted a more favorable position than thatenjoyed by the Orthodox majority. Pavlowitch (Stevan K.),Yugoslavia,London:Ernest Benn,1971,p. 95.5 0 Under generous royal sponsorship, the second congress of Byzantologists took place in Belgrade in1927, with a variety of events and art exhibitions, receiving high media coverage. See Jovanovi(Miodrag), Srpsko crkveno grad iteljstvo i slikarstvo novijeg doba (op. cit), p. 200.51 Lei (Momir), Izgradnja i obnova crkava i manastra od 1920-1941 (The Construction andReconstruction of Churches and Monasteries from 1920-1941), in Srpska Pravoslavna Crkva 1920-1970,Beograd:Sveti arhijerejski sino d SPC,1971,p p. 65-125.5 2 Q u o t e d i n P e i ( Br a nko ) , op. cit, p . 41.


15/26

Bojan A leksov Nationalism in Construction: the Memorial C hurch of St Sava in Belgrade \ 6 1

reshaped to embody the current ideological leanings, where church's scale andByza ntine look we re central. Deroko's concept im itated Con stantinople's SaintSophia's cruciform model with a large dome that replaced the previous idealm ode l of G raanica's large nave w ith five cup olas. The idea b ehin d Belgrade'smost ambitiously conceived architectural project was clearly to replicate them ost exceptional magnificence and g rand eur of the church in C onstantinople.The size and design were combined to anticipate the Serbian Church's successin overcoming the deep polarization of the Serbian society and to show thatSerbs could unite and grow only with their Orthodox Church.

This decision however instigated the greatest ever controversy amongBelgrade's architects and artists5 3 . The transformation of architectural designw rou gh t by th e M odernist style already expressed in Russia, Germany, Hollandand elsewhere acquired many advocates in Belgrade as well. New materials,particularly steel and reinforced concrete, enabled the architect to break fromthe tra ditiona l church form. In th e debate th at ensued, prolific m odernist architects Zlokovi, Dubavi, Braovan an d sculptor M etrovi rejected th e idea ofimitating Graanica or St. Sophia, exclaiming that bonding with the past, rather than with contemporary needs, does not mean artistically creating.Others raised the issue tha t the R oman Catholic Church launched a n interna t ional competi t ion, an idea rejected by the Orthodox Church, whichackn ow ledged the righ t to com pete only to Yugoslav citizens an d Russian em igres.To this Patriarch Varnava an sw ered tha t he preferred th e co m petition tobe ope n only to Serbian a rchitects, even if th ey w ere inferior to foreign architects,on the grou nds tha t they could mo re easily reach the conscience an d soulof th e Serbian pe ople. The defende rs of th e C om m ittee's position relied on th eideological app eal of newly founded ideology ofSvetosavlje :w ha t othe r style could we im agin e for th e Me mo rial Church ofSt.Sava th an Serbo-Byzantine, which would not even exist as a special offshoot of Byzantine style,had not St . Sava laid foundations of our medieval Church and culture, so that wecould justly call this style Saintsavaian. (...) It is not the matter of copying or imitat ing one or another church, but of opening further space for the [Saintsavaian]spirit, whi ch is still alive.The critics on the other hand insisted that the plan was looking backwa rds, poin ting to th e long time span th at h ad elapsed since Justinian. Under

the Ottoman Empire, these opponents claimed, the Orthodox Church was notallowed to expand and instead of looking forward, it turned inwards and to itsglorious me dieval past. A prom inent art critic, Kaanin, joined the barrag eagainst imitating medieval constructions comparing it with writing contem-53Excerpts from th e debate waged in the 1930s in various Belgrade newspapers and journa ls were republished inPei (Branko),op.cit. pp.42-57,whichIused in th e following pages.


16/26

62 / Balkanologie VII 2), dcembre 2003,p.42-72

porary historyin thestyleofMiddle Age chro nicles5 4. Summing these arguments, architect Bokovi points out that eveninmed ieval t im es there werevar iou s styles or va riatio ns on a style so th at Graanica or any ch urch could n otbe takenas agiven m odel5 5 . Furthermo re, no ne of th e propo sed m odels offeredasolution to the stipulation ofamon um ental contemporary bui lding :theinterior room arra ng em en t w as dispropo rt ionate ; too decorativeacomposit ion of m inor o rna m en ts was incongruous to the m on um ental s izin g; the s tr iv ings and needsofcontem porary life an d the u seofne w building techniq uesalso demandedathe ne w solution. St. Sophia, Bokovi tho ug ht, wa sfarfromSerbia.Itw as con structed before theSerbs m ovedtoth e Balkans,and in theepoch of their great construction activity,itceased to beamodel : St.Sophiais foreign to us in its type, spirit, evenin its total psychological conception,whichisaimedatpom p a nd flash .Thus,heclaimed ,ifthe com mit tee w aslooking for a n origina l creation it h ad to be new .Asfor th e lack of ad eq ua te architectsorth e Church's traditional standonart,heproposeda new competitio n w ith only sketches subm itted, as this w ould solicitcontribu tions in linew i t h the contemporary spirit , using completely newform, th at the Churchcould th en acceptif itpsychologically responded to religious needs.

Other arguments not strictly related to style were also raised. ArchitectDobrovi insisted that there were other needs than raising a monument a lsized church. He propo sed b uilding a mem orial b uilding to St. Sava th at wo uldho use different edu cation al institutions and the n separately build sma ll churche s in various Belgrade neighborho ods, w hich did not have them , as m ore appropria te to the m e m o r y of St. Sava. He also praised the Roman CatholicChurch for its modernization efforts, for owning a radio station, building churches accordingto modern construction methods,andad justing itsliturgytonew spatial forms. By doing this, Dobrovi believed the Catholic Church resp on ded to the challen ge of socialism an d beg an to create its ow n socialism,neutralizing material arguments and advantages preached by Bolshevism .The polem ic reach ed its peak wh en t h e Belgrade section of th e A ssociationof Yugoslav eng inee rs an d architects on Feb ruary11,1932,dem anded from theConstruction Committee, the MinistryofPublic W orks, th e Patriarc h an dtheKing th e re-o pe nin g of the com petition. Previously, th e King's decision to illustrate the Royal Mausoleum Church with mosaic copiesofm edieval iconsinstea d of optin g for origina l artistic con tributions w as also widely criticized bu tinvain56.But this ti m e K ing Aleksandar vetoed the decision of th e Com mittee5 4 K a a n i n ( M i l a n ) , Sk i ce zah r a m S v e to g S a ve ( S k e t c h e s for S t. Sav a C h u r ch ) , Srpski knjievni glas-nik, 21,1927,p.32.5 5T h e a r t i c l e f r o m Srpski knjievni glasnik 3 5 (5 ), 1 93 2 , r e p r i n t e d inIntervju, 0 1 / 0 4 / 8 8 , p p . 6 6 - 6 8 .5 6Jovanovi Miodrag),Oplenac op. cit), pp. 236-238.


17/26

Bojan A leksov Nationalism in Construction: the Memo rial Church ofSt Sava in Belgrade \ 63

to commence construction 5 7. It was only then that one of the chief designers,Deroko, finally entered the debate defending the expertise of the Committeeand rejecting a M odern form for a sacral construc tion : St. Sava Church is inextricably linked to an old Church and its religion, which draws its strengthfrom such a rich past and architectural tradition so tha t even a contem poraryruler did not h esitate to build his palace except in the style of his dista nt predecessors 58.After pressure from the Patriarch, the King eventually withdrew his objection and the preparations could proceed. The works commenced in 1935,with a spectacular procession led by the Patriarch Varnava and more than1 000 priests. The Assembly of Bishops dedicated the whole year to St. Savaand m uch w as don e to intensify th e collection of funds for th e con struction ofthe Vraar Church. Still, the reply was weak and the best explanation comesfrom the Construction Co m m ittee report :insufficient or nonexistent preparation of the society for such effort , disputesabout the true location where the rel ics were burned, no clear vision about thegrea tness of the task a nd the a m ou nt of mo ne y nec essary to build i t, poverty, poorperformance of the fund raising committees, Bishops who focused on the more

needy tasks , d isputes among pol i t ical par t ies which prevented any common act ions.The Church itself w as no t spa red from the se d ispu tes. (...) There wa s no interest of State, government and local authorit ies ei ther, which further contributedto the general lack of response among the people. 5 9The colossal dim ensio ns of the St. Sava Church rem aine d an idealized pictur e of the State tho rn ap art by ethnic grievances and region al differences an dof the society having recently abandoned its egalitarian principles to encounter serious class and power divisions. By 1941, only the base was constructedand th e whole church raised to th e heigh t of around te n m eters.

T H E S E C ON D T R YThe Second World War halted construction for many years. During thewar, the Wehrmacht used the construction site as a garage and in 1944, turned it into a fortified defense against the advancing Russian and Partisan

57 Pei (Branko),op. cit, p. 57.5 8 The Palace fo rKing Aleksan dar was i n fact built i n t h et w e n t i e t h c e n t u r y a c a d e m i c s t yl e w i t h t h e o rn a m e n t s r e i n t e r p r e t i n g t h em e d i e v a l c h u r c h e s i nSerbia ofth e so-cal led Morava style.5 9 Izvetaj Drutva za podizanje hrama Sv. Save u Beogradu-na Vraaru za 1938 godinu (Repor t o f t h eSociety f o rt h e C o n s t r u c t i o n ofSt . Sava C hu rch o n Vraar Hill i nBelg rade f o r1938) , Beog rad : Pr iv redn ik,1939,p p. XXIX-XXX.


18/26

64 / BalkanologieV 2) , dcembre 2003,p.47-72

t roops 6 0 . The Serbian Orthodox Church as a who le suffered a savage assault durin g the war, an d the after-war com m unist takeover reinforced this assault. Thenew communist authorities expropriated the construction site and closed it.Years of tens e Church an d State relations precluded any possibility of buildingsuch a monumental church in the capital of socialist and federativeYugoslavia61 . The sixties and seventies brought some stability in Church andState relations, but th e num erous appe als of Patriarch Germ an, who he aded theSerbian Church throu gh theseyears,for the re tur n of th e land an d continuationof works were nevertheless repeatedly repelled62. The issue provoked bitterdisputes within the Church as well as some clergy criticized the Patriarch forbeing too cautious and circumspect in his dealings with the gove rnm ent63 .Asking for the renewal of construction, it was argued that so many monu m en ts w ere being b uilt to recent heroes [Partisan fighters from th e WWII orcommunist ideologues], while the Orthodox flock was prevented to commemorate a great personality from the distant past, who also inspired people'sfight for freedom, justice and honesty. It was also claimed that the Churchw an ted to give the city a remarkable architectural mon um ent th at would w ith its size an d spectac ular dome become a crown of Belgrade, connecting its numerous buildings, which were scattered like Babylonian towers, creating asense of unity and fullness, giving a beautiful silhouette and great appearance 6 4 . The ologian Vlad an Popovi in a series of texts in the late sixties placed the issue within the contemporary international debate and criticism ofmodernist architecture and urbanist concepts, defining the Church ofSt.Savaas a retu rn to an essential aesthetic and hu m an values as opposed to the dehu m an izin g and auto m atize d m odern city. The Church, he stressed, wish ed tofoster internal growth of personality, one's freedom, choice, beauty and valuesof life as we ll th e prim itive sense of roots, w hic h directly conditions m an 'sopenness to the world 65 . Still, arguments describing the church as a means of6 0 Pei (Branko), op.cit., p. 9.6 1S ee Alexander (Stella), Church and State in Yugoslavia since 1945, Cam bridge : Cambridge UniversityPress, 1979 ; and t he c hap ter on Serbian Orthodox C hurch in Ramet (Sabrina Petra), Balkan Babel,Boulder :W estv iew Press, 1996, pp. 165-184.6 2 Perica (Vjekoslav). Balkan Idols. Religion and N ationalism in Yugoslav States, Oxford : OxfordUniversity Press, 2002, pp. 125-126.6 3 S tankov i (Slobodan), The LCY (Co mm unist Pa rty of Yug oslavia) Fears a Religious Revival ,RadioFree Europe Report, 28/03/85 . On the Patriarch 's appeals ,Pei (Branko),op. cit, p. 83.64 Stefanovi (Miodrag D.), H ra m Sv. Save , in Srpska pravoslavna crkva 1920-1970 (op. cit.), p. 132.6 5 Teoloki pogledi, 1968 and 19 69. Similar arg um ents were p ut forward by the propo nents for bui ld ingth e K ocatepe Mosque in A nkara (Turkey) in the context of th e Atatrk M emoria l and M odem architecture. See Meeker (Michael E.), Once There Was, Once There Wasn't . National Monuments andInterperson al Exchange , in Bozdoan Sibel), Ka saba Resat),eds. Rethinking Modernity and NationalIdentity in Turkey Seattle Univ ersity of W ashin gton Press, 1997.


19/26


hum anization, open ness to the world, a symbol of people's com m on strugglefor good and h u m an prosperity, in the late sixties an d seve nties could not bu tfall on the deaf ears of the inim ical a utho rities. Popovi's texts, w hich referredto the global debate on modernity in architecture from religious angle alsowent unnoticed by the Serbian intelligentsia completely disassociated withthe Church at th e tim e.The wa lls ofSt.Sava Church erected before th e w ar rem ained, resem blinga ruin, which constantly awakened the memory and, as Patriarch said in oneof his epistles, recalled the no tion of an open wo un d 6 6 . Another cleric calledth em wee ping walls . The suffering of th e Church tog eth er wit h he r peopleduring and after the World War Two only deepened the identification ofSerbdom and Orthodoxy.The w ar a nd th e period after , wrote MetropolitanAmfilohije, were like the new burning of St. Sava's relics, the renewed attempt to destroy, humiliate and frighten the spirit of the Orthodox Serbs asonce was the aim of Sinan Pasha. The crucifixion of St. Sava's people becamethe crucifixion of St. Sava's Church. 67 For Serbian dissident nationalists, theopen w ou nd of th e Church of St. Sava also stood to illus trate Serbian grievances over their be ing pers ecu ted in Kosovo or the co nstitu tion al discrim ination ag ainst Serbia wi th in Yugoslav federation.Asthe dead body of a saintsuffered, now the Church to his memory suffered, evoking the most suitableimage for the dominant national ideology of suffering and martyrdom inEastern Europe, of w hich t he Serbs we re not least rep res en tativ e6 8 .During the years of repression, the com m unist regime in Yugoslavia w asth e m ost sensitive to churche s ac ting as outlets of national(ist) feeling. W hat itcouldn't promote at home the Serbian Church insisted on abroad where mostof the churches built for the Serbian Diaspora during this period were dedicated to St. Sava, testifying to the un ab ate d resolve to the principles of identification of nation and religion as forged in the inter-war Svetosavljeideology69 .The revival of religion in the eighties further intensified this imag ery. This revival was also a manifestation of the deep crisis of the communist ruledYugoslav federation in the early nin ete en eighties. Before, th e re gim e w as divided as to the d em and s for the c ontinuation of the construction of th e churchwith majority perceiving it as a bare display of Serbian nationalism. Now the6 6Pei (Branko),op. cit, p.142.6 7Radovi (Amfilohije),art. cit.,p.185.6 8 Verdery (Katherine),op . cit, p. 114.69 For other churches dedicated to St. Sava see Pavlovi (Leontije),Kultovi lica kod Srba i Makedonaca(Personal Cults by Serbs and Macedonians), Smederevo, 1965, pp. 63-65 ; and Jankovi (Milan D.), Hram ovi Svetoga Save u Srpskoj pravoslavn oj crkvi (Churches Dedicated to St. Sava in th e SerbianOrthodox Church) in Spaljivanje motiju Svetitelja Save(The Bu rnin g of H oly Relics ofSt.Sava), Beo grad :Sveti arhijerski sinod SPC,1997.


20/26

66 / BalkanologieV 2) , dcemb re 2003, p. 47-72

change was inevitable or desirable. The President of the Serbian Republic with in the Yugoslav Federation, Duankrebi,wh o on June19,1984,received th eSerbian Patriarch G erm an to finally grant h im th e approval for the resum ptionofworks,recently testified :

with no difficulties I got the approval from all the leading people in the republicto lif t the ban on the church's construction. There was no one against it . ( . . .) Theolder Serbian political leaders, w h o ha d been in office w h en t he decision to banthe c onstru ct ion w as taken , did no t mak e any diff icult ies , manifest in g in tha t w aythe ir s i lent so l idar i ty wi th us, youn ger ones, but a lso redeem ing for one poli tica ldec is ion mad e long t ime ago,which insulted th e Serbian people for years .7 0This major shift happened before Milosevic rose to prominence and wasemployed by the pa rty elite that he replaced few years later accusing th em ofbetray ing t he Serbian national interests. It marked a gradu al shift in th e ideological focus of Yugoslav com m unis ts. After Tito's de ath , it was jus t a m atte r oftim e wh en and w hich of th e ruling comm un ist elites in the Yugoslav republicswould embark on a new track. How quickly the Serbian communists becameardent supporters of the construction effort is illustrated by the words ofD ragan D ragojlovi, th e Serbian M inister for Religious Affairs in the m id-nin e-teen eighties :a historic time and collective misfortune over centuries of yoke have made thishistoric personality (St. Sava) a spiritual founder of Serbian identity. (...) Thechu rch ded icate d to St. Sava, wh ich is being built on Vraar, wit h its current dimensions obviously exceeds the usual needs of a church. However, with its size,th e ch urch prob ably strives to cover th e life a nd deeds of St. Sava, or historic spaces of his perso na lity an d in a wa y to brin g th e m t o life, as well as th e legen ds, realand desired, historic and irrational, which is all part of one consciousness, ready

to ,in i ts t im e an d according to i ts t radi t ion, com me mo rate a par t of i ts history andthus commemorates i tse lf as well .71Endowing the Serbian Church with the task of commemorating the nation and virtually representing it, the Serbian Communists initiated a reordering of meaningful worlds that ensued in Eastern Europe after 1989, whichVerdery described as reinserting expressly sacred values into political discourse72. The continuation of works was supposed to remedy the havocwrought on the social, cultural and political tissue of the nation during theprevious forty years. Together with the carrying of the bones of Prince Lazaracross th e co un try as a pa rt of th e co m m em ora tion of th e Battle of Kosovo, th econstruction of th e church was th e major symbolic attem pt at reordering,reaf-70 kiebi(Duan), Zidanje hrama (The Building of the Mem orial Church),Vreme,(557),24/01/02.71Dragan Dragojlovi in a special statement toIntervju,01/04/88,p.51.72Verdery (K atherine), op.cit. p.37.


21/26


firming and bonding the nation 73 . Metropolitan Amfilohije, one of the mostactive Church hierarchs, spoke of the St. Sava Church being resurrected afterma ny years of being crucified w ith a deeper me an ing t ha t i t had at th e beginningelaborat ing:from the initially conceived monument of deep gratitude to the first SerbianEnlightener , this church is acquir ing an a l l- encom passing essence and me anin g.( . . .) Overcoming its crucifixion and resurrection and turning into an all-encompassin g sign of not only regiona l, Serbian but a univ ersal ch aracter, th e Church ofSt. Sava beco mes a ch allenge an d call to all, to a radical chang e a nd transfo rma

tion of thought, knowledge and ability, or the ways of living and thinking in general .7 4The Church commissioned a renowned architect Branko Pei as ChiefArchitect (Proto-Master) and consecrated the grou nd for a second tim e on May12,1985.More th an a hund red thou san d people gathered for yet another pompous open-air ceremony radiating tw o visible m essages. The beginn ing of th ework on the site, where it was so abruptly halted almost fifty years before,symbolically excised the time in between, breaking off with the recent rejected pa st and adjoining the distan t idealized one. Secondly, the reports from th ecelebration projected an image of a vast throng of believers coming from allover the nation and assembling and uniting in front of the church. The presence of an im m en se crowd wa s in itself to justify th e im m en sity of th e ch urchand its significance.In his speech the Patriarch recalled how the spirit and legacy of St. Savahelped i ts fatherland to overcome huge tem ptatio ns th rou gh the centuries,to resist and survive Marica's catastrophe and the Kosovo tragedy, theAlb ania n Golgotha a nd Jasenovac (...) gu ard ing its na tio na l nam e, religion, lan guage, customs, its Christian, Orthodox and the spirit of St. Sava 75 . In thisexemp lary t ime compression, am ong the four tem ptatio ns m entioned , two arefrom th e fourteenth and two from the twe ntie th century. The two former werebattles that resulted in the loss of the Serbian medieval Kingdom to theOttoman invaders while the lat ter refer to the immense human losses Serbsexperienced d uring th e course of two world wa rs 7 6 . By rem em bering the deadan d de ath itself on the site of th e future M em orial Church, th e Patriarch called73Prince Lazar, killed as the leader of the Serbian forces in the Kosovo battle in which the Serbs lost the irindependence to the Ottomans, was also proclaimed as saint and his cult is second to th at ofSt. Sava.Verdery sees in the ritual carrying of Prince Lazar's bones also an attempt to set the boundaries of greater Serbia (ibid.,p.18).74 Radovi (Amfilohije),a rt. cit.,p.185.75Pei (Branko),op. cit,p.80.76 Albanian golgotha was the retreat in front of united Austro-Hungarian and German forces in1915-1916tha t cost Serbia's army and people manylifes.Jasenovac was the b iggest concentrationcampin fascist Croatia during WWII, where the Serbs were the principal victims.


22/26

68 / BalkanologieV 2) , dcembre 2003, p. 47-72

upon th e m ean ing of th e m onum ent, s imilar to the one proposed by Vernan inhis study of th e a nc ient Greek colossus, w he reb y the colossus, wh ile substitutin g the corpse in th e d ep ths of th e grave, emb odies and im m ortalizes not thedead, but life beyond death 77 . The Patriarch's speech uses death and glorifiesthe self-sacrifice of the dead to awaken and nourish the spirit of the peopleafter forty yea rs of co m m un ist rule in ligh t of th e pro blem s of Serbs in Kosovoand economic crisis across the whole country. There was no better myth foraw ak en ing , for th e cult of St. Sava's emb odies and im m orta lizes self-sacrificefor the sake of the peop le. The M em orial Church provided th e visual imag eryfor Christian notions of the suffering and resurrection, easily translatable toth e political rhe toric of th e revival of th e str en gt h an d spirit of th e Serbian people,after years of hu m iliation a nd defeat.In a fund raising speech given in Los Angeles, poet Matija Bekovi alsosa w in th e St. Sava Church a n em bo dim en t of all Serbs and all of Serbia : w eare not gathering [funds] for the Church - we are gathering ourselves. (...) St.Sava Church does n ot b elon g to anyo ne, we belong t o it. It is bu ilt by all tim esa n d by all ge ne ratio ns, by our Patriarchs, ancestors, forebears an d fathe rs. (...)St. Sava Church is all of Serbia 78 .

The fea tur ing of dea d an cestors is a crucial po int of reference for the livingin modern nationalism. The past had to win over the present through theMemorial Church, whose victory was already accomplished, as MetropolitanAm filohije professed, in th e victory of th e scattered a nd in des truc tible a she s ofSt. Sava on w hic h it wa s to b e built. M atija Bekovi coined a m ot to - We areno t building th e Church, th e Church is build ing us . Few rem em bere d th atsome forty years earl ier communist propagandists used the same motto inmobilizing the youth to volunteer their labor in the reconstruction and industrialization of th e country. Their version wa s : we are not b uilding t h e railwa y, th e railw ay is build ing us .The works were ambitiously conceived. Donations were collected all overth e world and forecasts w ere made that , with n ew technology m eans, in a fewyears the greatest Orthodox Church in the world could be built despite allearthly obstacles and in order to prolong the life of tradition and myth of St.Sava . The chief architect envisaged the building of a crypt chapel dedicatedto the Kosovo m art yr St. Lazar, a tre as ur y to h old all th e nation 's cultura l treasures, a cinema and big concert and lecture hall and library where the addedfunctions obviously expressed the new role of the Serbian Church in societyand the al l-encompassing importance of the national monument under cons-77 Vernan (Jean-Pierre),Mythe et pense chez lesGrecsII Paris: Maspero,1971,p.67 (cf. no ta m m en t le cha-p i t re Figuration de l ' invisible et catgorie psychologique du double :le colossos ).7 8B ekov i (Matija),a rt. cit., p.11.


23/26

Bojan Aleksov - Nationalism in Construction: the Memorial C hurch of St Sava in Belgrade \ 69

t ruct ion7 9 . The original project w as modified an d no w it w as expected th at th echurch w ould be cap able of receiving up to15thous and people which is mo reth an any othe r Orthodox Church in the world can receive 80.Fifty years after the famous polemic among Belgrade's architects, therewere considerably fewer debates and certainly less fury over the church's design. The architectural reversion corresponded to the intended symbolism ofth e reversal of the c om m unist practice accused of eradicating Serbian religiousan d natio na l consciousness. The opting for the old design as a powerful im ageof the presum ed break w ith the com m unist past and the beg inning of the ne wepoch will be later repeated with Moscow's Church of Christ the Saviour81 .Astonishingly, little criticism was raised even though the construction followed the same project under drastically different conditions of the site and itsvisual and spatial arra nge m ent in a new setting. The church's architect BrankoPei could proudly declare : the Constantinople church definitely marks abeg inning of great Byzantine architecture, wh ich we are en ding fourteen centurie s later 82.Few, like Dobrovi before t he w ar, questio ned th e idea of building such acolossal church, its sheer size being a modern and Church's most notable feature, and protested to the immoderate calling for the church to become thebiggest Orthodox church in the world. An article in the Church journal warnsthat the monumentality and architectural features of St. Peter's in Rome arefully enslaved to its representational function, almost disabling the discreetspiritual reintegration of a Christian pilgrim but provides only obscure argum en ts w hy th e sam e should no t apply to St. Sava Church83 . In the m ean tim e,hu ndr eds of new neighborhoods arose all over the country, w itho ut places ofwo rship, such as New Belgrade with over 200 0 00 inh ab itan ts. In the only protracted discussion on this matter, Metropolitan Amfilohije acknowledged themagnitude of the church as its largest challenge : external monumentalityw as always ma n's conscious or unco nsciou s att em pt to cover w ith ex terna l effect and force his internal fear, helplessness, misery and spiritual poverty 84.The Metropolitan's major objections however, concerned the application ofm ode rn building techniqu es and m aterials such as concrete and prefabricatedblocks. Most of his remarks remained unanswered as Serbian Church hierarchy and contractors rushed to complete the con struction and sought to see the7 9All of thes e am bit ious plan s were la ter aban done d.Pei (Branko),op. cit.,p .115.8 0 Pei (Branko),Godine hrama Svetog Save,Beograd :M. komun ikaci je , 1995,p. 60.81 Sidorov (Dm itiri),a rt. cit., p. 548.8 2Intervju, 01/04/88, p. 77.83 Mojovi (Dragan), St. Sava's Church as th e Oath of Re turn to the C enter ,Teoloki pogledi,1999.84 R a d o v i ( A m f i l o h i j e ) , art . ci t . , p .186.


24/26

70 / BalkanologieV 2), dcembre 2003,p.47-72

en d of Serbian m isfortune s with the comp letion of their M emorial Church. Theide a to build a Me m orial Church to St. Sava, according to the sam e project an don very spot where it was halted by communist authorities was simply overwhe lm ing 8 5 .In an exemplary act that illustrates the nationalist strive to demonstratesymbolically the Serbian national unity and resurgence, the Episcopal Synodin 1988 approved a cross, specially designed to be placed on the dome of St.Sava Church by sculptor Neboja Mitri 8 6 . The cross tha t th e Synod describedas the Cross of Saint Sava wa s th e Greek cross dec orate d w ith four Cyrillic lette rs -s- (c), sta nd in g for th e trad ition al Serbian slogan sam o sloga Srbinaspa ava (only un ity saves th e Serbs). This decision no t only reitera ted th e political intentions behind the church's construction, present from its very inception, but brought it to the extreme since, as some critics had it, the designwas clearly non-canonical and thus indicated the Synod's preference for therallying effects of th e natio nal mo nu m en t rath er than th e traditionally conceived church building.The construction work continued paralleled with the deepening of political and ec onom ic crisis in Yugoslavia, w it h conflicting i nte rests of lead ersh ipsof its con stitu tive pa rts be ing the gre ates t d ang er for its survival. Serbia led byMilosevic spearheaded the nationalist hysteria that even rose some eyebrowsin the Serbian Church. In their annual epistle on St. Sava's day in 1988,Patriarch an d th e Bishops wa rned :the Sta te mu st n ot be an Empire , wh ile wh ere Em pire begins Father land ceases toexist. Therefore, it is a big misfortune to oppress other peoples, just as it is to beopp ressed from t h e oth ers. (...) Saintsa vaian p atrio tism w as born in silence and joyof creat ion w ith ou t chau vinist se lf ishness and blood spil l ing. Along with i t arose

the sense of the need to share i ts people 's her i tage with other peoples and thewis h for accepting othe r peoples ' cul tura l wea lth. 87Soon, serious inflatio n and an econom ic crisis slowed the pa ce of th e constru cti on wo rk on St. Sava Church. In 199 0, th e econ om ic crisis yielded as a prim ary con cern t o th at of th e very existen ce of th e Yugoslav State. The next y ear,the State collapsed into a bloody war for the second time in fifty years, onlythis time without foreign occupation to precede it. At the same time, seriousaffairs w recked t h e build ing efforts. Once th e cupola w as lifted a nd th e chu rchroofed, the nex t task envisaged wa s to cover it in marb le. M ost of th e re m ai-85 Certain revisions of the plan were undertaken but only in relation to the technical feasibility or detailssuch as lighting, acoustics etc. Pei (Branko), Spomen hram Sv. Save na Vraaru u Beogradu 1895-1988( o p .cit.), p p . 114 -117.8 6 Pei (Branko), Spom en hr am Svetoga Save na Vraaru , in Spaljivanje motiju Svetitelja Save(op.cit.), p. 36 6.87 Intervju, 01/04/88 , p . 97.


25/26

Bojan Aleksov Nationalismin Con struction :the Memorial ChurchofSt Sava in elgrade\ 71

ning money was spent on purchasing the marble plaques, which soon werediscovered to be radioactive. Other rum ors he ld th at th e struc ture w as sin king.The works we re stopped, Chief Architect Pei resigned and nu m ero us accusations resounde d in the p ress.The tragic circumstances and the results of wars waged from 1991,haveshifted people's attention from the Vraar Church as the source of their unityand revival. The aspiration for lavishness vanished as the ideological constructs of national reaffirmation and resurrection did not materialize. A newcommon myth appeared suggesting that the church must not be completedbecause by the time this hap pen s th ere will be no Serbs left. The m yth's justification argu m ent com bines the senselessness of the last wars, wh ich claimedthe lives of so m any Serbs along w ith others, w ith th e u natta inab le ideals e mbodied in th e co nstruction of the Church ofSt.Sava.

EPILOGUEAfter years of oblivion the Serbian Church in mid-1990s drew attentionback to the St. Sava Church and be ga n ho lding services on th e p late au in frontof the construction site or recently even inside the unfinished church. TheChief Arch itect Pei app eale d :let us get out of this war and hell with the biggest ever victory, with the fulfillm en t of th e S erbian people's oath to erect the c hurch to i ts Enlightener St. Sava onthe very spot where four hundred years ago his holy rel ics were burned with theaim to destroy what was the holiest and best in the Serbian people. Let us finishth e church as a proof th at w e can no t be defeated, let us prove th at t h e ash es of St.Sava were not in vain Everything else wo uld m ea n th e victory of Sinan Pasha, ofall our occupiers, old and new enemies. 8 8In the atmosphere of the complete breakdown of the Serbian society,w he re basic economic and political security could not be provided, no t to m en tion spiritual or cultural revival, Serbian Na tional Cathedral w as aga in hailedas a celebration of victory over th e ene m y and th e segm ent of its role as theact of societal repentance for the communist era was lost 8 9 . In the y ear 2 000 ,after the overthrow of Milosevic and almost a ten-years break, the works hasbe gu n again. In a striking contrad iction to th e proclaime d vision of th eSt.SavaChurch as the endowment of the nation, the new Serbian Prime Minister -

8 8B ordevi (Duka), Zvona zvone, hra m n e tone (Bells are ringin g, the Ch urch is not sinking ),Oko,2000,p . 4.89 See Merick (Rade), T he Serbian National C athedral , in 1998 Calendar of the Serbian OrthodoxChurch in the Unided States of America and Canada.


26/26

72 / BalkanologieV 2), dcembre 2003,p. 47-72

Bindic urged a few profitable State and private banks and companies to don at e in order to comp lete the church by 2004. The Royal family wh ich cam e tosettle in th e coun try, after Miloevi w as ou sted, also joined th e effort9 0.But th e ne w b egi nn ing was aga in m arred by controversy, this tim e regardin g the bells bou gh t from the A ustrian bell-maker Grossmayer. Their recentinstallation an d ceremo nial r inging was supposed to announc e the continuatio n of th e co nstru ctio n efforts and m oreover a n ap peal to all for prayer an d repentance, so needed after the most recent troubled events 9 1. State ministerssponsored some of the forty-nine expensive bells delivered from Innsbruck,w hich w ere m ad e to play in four octaves and to perform the hy m n of St. Savaevery day at noon. The critics immediately pronounced this Glockenspiel-likedevice against Orthodox canons and described it as a manifestation ofOrthodox kitsch and nationalist hysteria 9 2 . Others protested that the bellsw ere m ad e in Au stria by a Catholic Church bell-maker. But the largest d isappointment came with their f irst performance, when even those standing infront of th e church could not hear th em ring, despite prom ises th at th e soun dsho uld reach t w en ty kilometers. Because of either acoustics, position or quality of th e bells, fiery discussions e rup ted once again reflecting th e cen tral roleof St. Sava Church in the contest of visions of how the nation should be commemorated. More than a century after its construction was initiated, theChurch on Vraar Hill is still awaiting completion and to assume the monum en tal and m em oria l role it was assigned . M anifesting Serbian un ity and resurrection seems to be as hard now as it had b een anytim e over the last century.

9 Miki (Verica), Hra m c em o ipak zavriti (We Will Eventually Finish the Church),Glas Javnosti,14/11/00.9 1Jo vi (Rev. Savo B.), Osveena zvona za Spomen-hram Svetog Save na Vraaru (The Bells for theMe mo rial Church ofSt.Sava on Vraar Hill Consecrated) o n Serbian O rthodox Church News Inte rnet Page26/11/01 (available from http://www.spc.org.yu/Vesti/11/26-11-01_14.html).92 Panovi (Zoran), Glokenpil kao pravoslavne orgulje (Glockenspiel as Orthodox Organ), Danas,
http://www.spc.org.yu/Vesti/11/26-11-01_l4.htmlhttp://www.spc.org.yu/Vesti/11/26-11-01_l4.htmlhttp://www.spc.org.yu/Vesti/11/26-11-01_l4.html

Documents

Balkanologie VII (2) / 2003