Abstract
The Wars of Yugoslav Succession reintroduced the practice of cultural degradation of the defeated party—in this case the Serbs—not only by stripping them of any notion of humanity, but also of their cultural and religious heritage on the territory affected by military operations. By analysing the four UNESCO monuments in Kosovo and Metohija, this paper examines how the phenomenon of reinterpretation of meaning and significance of the Serbian Mediaeval monastic heritage, followed by its cultural appropriation by the new Albanian authorities, contributes further to deepening the already severe inter-ethnic distrust between the Serbs and Albanians who share the same territory. The paper juxtaposes modern attempts to rewrite the meaning of religious heritage in Serbia against historical and political background in situ. It argues that the politically enforced reinterpretation, so generously helped by the state and academic institutions from outside of the Balkans, aiming at cultural alienation of its Serbian roots does not provide permanent protection of historical religious heritage, so clearly evidenced by its inclusion on the List of World Heritage in Danger by UNESCO. The paper concludes that the attempts of the cultural re-appropriation have little to do with scientific endeavours, but with the political aims of the victorious parties.
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Notes
- 1.
http://balkans.aljazeera.net/vijesti/kosovo-nije-primljeno-u-unesco—The then-Kosovo Prime Minister, Isa Mustafa, in an interview given to the Al Jazeera Balkans immediately after the vote took place on 9 November 2015—Accessed on 1 March 2019.
- 2.
http://www.rts.rs/page/stories/sr/story/9/politika/2098204/kosovo-nije-primljeno-u-unesko-spiskovi-kako-su-glasale-drzave-clanice.html—The then-Serbian Prime Minister, Ivica Dačić in an interview to the Serbian national broadcaster on the same day—Accessed on 1 March 2019.
- 3.
How divisive the problem of the monuments in Kosovo and Metohija were within UNESCO voting process was best evidenced in the result of the vote, which the Albanian side lost with only three votes of difference.
- 4.
Since June 1999, a large number of Serbs and other non-Albanians left province under coercion by the Albanian authorities. The UNHCR cited 252,523 persons of concern for the territory of Serbia, including Kosovo at the end of 2017, of which IDPs were counting to 217,453, predominantly from Kosovo and Metohija. See official web-page of the UNHCR: http://popstats.unhcr.org/en/overview#_ga=2.267661582.1431272768.1552401925-809441953.1552401925—Accessed on 1 March 2019.
- 5.
Former Serbian ambassador at UNESCO HQ, Darko Tanasković, in an interview „Насиље над српским светињама неће стати“ to the Magazine „Православље“, 19 February 2019.
- 6.
Huntington (1996), pp. 207–238.
- 7.
Ibid., p. 209.
- 8.
Todorova (1997), p. 185.
- 9.
Ibid., p. 185.
- 10.
Ibid., p. 188.
- 11.
Petiffer and Vickers (2009), Preface.
- 12.
The term “pet-nation” was first introduced by Rebecca West in her travelogue Black Lamb and Grey Falcon: A Journey through Yugoslavia, published in 1941 in London. The term is self-explanatory and denotes the small nation favoured by one of the big powers.
- 13.
It began with pervasively biased international journalist reports from Yugoslavia when the wars broke out in 1991 and continued with “academic” presentation of the situation. In 1994, Noel Malcolm (b.1956), a British historian working as a journalist, wrote a short history of Bosnia which set the course of revisionism of Serbian history. See further discussion.
- 14.
Malcolm (1994), cover page.
- 15.
Malcolm (1994), Acknowledgements.
- 16.
Ković (2011), p. 403.
- 17.
For a non-specialist, the book reads like a genuine work of scholarship. One problem was a total absence of references to any primary source and some mistranslations of the Serbian/Croatian words. Needless to say, Malcolm’s books were highly praised by the Muslim scholars of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Albanian scholars in both Albania and in those neighbouring states where the Albanian minority currently asserts territorial claims (Montenegro, North Macedonia and Greece). Subsequently, the Bosnian Muslim scholars of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Albanian scholars in both Albania and Kosovo and Metohija adopted Malcolm’s initial postulates as the basis of their newly established national narratives.
- 18.
Malcolm (1998), p. 26.
- 19.
Zulfikarpašić (1998), pp. 23–24. "In accordance with the principle cuius regio eius religio Serbia had been cleansed of Muslims, and even of those Serbs who had converted to Islam and who lived around Užice and Valjevo. In negotiations between Turkey and Serbia they had been declared Turks and forced to move, and so they had resettled in Bosnia. There are still hundreds of families in Tuzla, Šamac, Sarajevo and Foča who are descendants of these immigrants from Užice — Serbian speaking Muslims. This was all a repeat of what had happened a few centuries before in Slavonia and Lika.” Zulfikarpašić greatly respected Malcolm’s work. Also, Müller (2009), p. 70. Both Zulfikrapašić and Müller drew heavily on Malcolm, who even claimed that the “spread of Orthodoxy was favoured by the Ottoman authorities” and that the Serbian Orthodox monasteries in Bosnia were built as a result of Serbian expansionism. Malcolm (1994), p. 71.
- 20.
Petiffer and Vickers (2009), Preface.
- 21.
The university activities were supported by vivid publishing activities. During and after the conflict, IB Tauris Publishing of London, now part of the influential Bloomsbury Publishing was particularly active in advertising revisionist historical narratives.
- 22.
Malcolm 1998, p. 54.
- 23.
See works Margaret McMillan and Christopher Clark related to the outbreak of the First World War, for example.
- 24.
In Europe, the political question of Crimea raises tensions between Russia, Ukraine and the EU.
- 25.
In 1854 German diplomat Georg von Hahn (1811–1869) published in Jena three volumes of Albanian Studies (Albanesische studien) on Albanian history, language and culture, focusing on the Indo-European origins of the Albanian language. After Hahn’s pioneering endeavour, there were no new attempts to write about Albania or the Albanians prior to decade leading to the establishment of the independent Albanian state in 1913.
- 26.
The Dardani were an ancient Thraco-Illyrian tribe, first mentioned in the fourth century BC and which Albanian scholars claim to be the true ancestors of the modern-day Albanians. The evidence of this link is, however, difficult to establish, as there are no archaeological links between the Dardanians and Albanians. The written sources are also non-existent.
- 27.
Daily Zëri Ditor, published in Priština in Albanian language. The quote in question appeared on 12th March 2003, quoted in Herscher (2010), p. 132. The famous Tower of London was built on the foundations of an old Roman castrum, albeit several centuries after the Romans left Britain. If the interpretative methods similar to those applied in the case of Serbian mediaeval monuments in Kosovo and Metohija are applied in the case of English history, it would be equally valid to value William the Conqueror (1028–1087), the founder of the English Regnal order, as the originator of genocidal tendencies later displayed by the English in the American colonies and in India.
- 28.
The churches did not disappear until their systematic destruction began during the Ottoman period. Their sheer presence in the province should have been the reason enough for the maintenance of the Christian faith among the Albanians, had they been present in the Kosovo and Metohija prior to the Ottoman conquest.
- 29.
Malcolm (1998), p. 55. Malcolm conveniently never mentions this in his writings. However, he indicates “Serbian ethnic segregation of the Albanians and Vlachs” by selectively quoting the early twentieth-century Romanian author Silviu Dragomir who, actually argued that Vlachs were Romanian and as such, different from the Albanians, and as such came into collision with Albanian narrative of the “Albanian Vlachs”.
- 30.
Di Lellio (2009), p. 32.
- 31.
Petiffer and Vickers (2009), Preface. Petiffer openly argues in the same book—and elsewhere in his public speeches—that North Macedonia should be divided and its Western part given to Albania.
- 32.
The Great Mosque in Kairouan comes to mind with its free usage of older Roman, Byzantine and Early Christian edifices from nearby.
- 33.
Those giants of research studies of nationalism frequently challenged each other and had their disagreements. However, all of them agree that within modern societies political elites often deliberately impose their own views of the past on the populations they rule. Thus, the argument of mediaeval intention of destroying what Albanian scholars see as their own ethnic territories falls within the framework of anachronistic approach. Hobsbawm and Ranger (1983), p. 6, Gellner (1983), p. 50 and Smith (1991), p. 119.
- 34.
Overlooking the Raška valley, the mighty fortress of Ras was the capital of Serbia. Its importance was such that it influenced the creation of the exonym Rascians, used by Hungarian and German authors for the Serbs.
- 35.
Mango (2002), pp. 248–307.
- 36.
Кoвиjaнић (2016), p. 56.
- 37.
https://arhiva.nedeljnik.rs/nedeljnik/portalnews/vita-kotoranin-neimar-decana/—Accessed on 2 April 2019. An article by Nikola Malović, Vita Kotoranin, neimar Dečana, dated 25 November 2016, disputed this assertion in the press in Serbia and Montenegro.
- 38.
Now the capital of North Macedonia, which concurrently develops its own new national narrative, separate from Serbian and Bulagarian and in collision with Albanian.
- 39.
Fine (1994), p. 223. Another argument for Milutin’s acquisition of the Byzantine ethics was that he saw the attempted rapprochement between Rome and Constantinople at the Council of Lyon in 1274, as a threat to Orthodoxy, which resulted in styling himself as a true defender of the faith. Ćirković (1969), p. 41.
- 40.
Ibid., p. 257.
- 41.
Curcic (1979), pp. 6–7. Among others, Milutin founded monasteries in Atos, Sinai and Jerusalem, which still exist.
- 42.
Nikola and Djordje (George) are Biblical names used by the Orthodox Christians and can be attributed to the Greeks or Serbs or Albanians. Dobrosav, on the other hand is a Slavic/Serbian name which the Greeks or Albanians did not use.
- 43.
The seat of the Serbian Archbishopric was transferred from the Monastery of Žiča (Raška Style) to Peć in 1253, following the disturbance of peace. Thus, the Holy Apostles were already built prior to 1253.
- 44.
Herscher (2010), p. 15.
- 45.
Ibid., p. 100.
- 46.
The number corresponds to that given by the UNHCR. See footnote 4, above.
- 47.
Ćurčić (2000), p. 129.
- 48.
Herscher 2010, p. 15.
- 49.
Ibid., p. 87.
- 50.
Ibid., p. 136, Herscher’s number refers to the period 1999–2003 and is similar to that given by the Serbian authorities. However, since 2003, Serbian heritage institutions count over 151 churches, 5.261 tombstones, 60 graveyards and over 10.000 smaller artistic and religious objects, such as icons, paintings, and other church decorations. Source: Serbian Orthodox church, Raško-Prizrenska Eparchy, http://www.eparhija-prizren.org/?p=26657—Accessed 17 April 2019.
- 51.
Ćurčić 2000, p. 129.
- 52.
Cormack (2000), p. 131.
- 53.
Fryde (2000) is completely dedicated to this cause, arguing that from the onset, the Palaeologues were dedicated to the union with Rome.
- 54.
https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/724/—Accessed on 10 April 2019.
- 55.
https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/456/documents/—Accessed on 10 April 2019—The document produced by ICOMOS in 1987 for the inscription of the Thessaloniki monuments on the UNESCO World Heritage List does mention the term “Palaeologian Renaissance”, but it does not refer to it as the architectural style. The wording implies that the term is used for the historical period. Similarly, all the searches related to the term on the web-pages of the Greek Ministry of Culture concerned with the architectural heritage produced no results. https://www.culture.gr/en/SitePages/searchresults.aspx?#k=palaeologan%20renaissance—Accessed 10 April 2019.
- 56.
Mango (2002), pp. 248–307.
- 57.
Crowley (2005), p. 35.
- 58.
Norwich (1997), p. 366.
- 59.
Curcic (2005), p. 23.
- 60.
http://odysseus.culture.gr/h/2/gh251.jsp?obj_id=1682—Accessed 10 April 2019—The date is adopted by the Greek Ministry of Culture on their official web-page. Some scholars date the Holy Apostles as late as 1329.
- 61.
North Macedonian scholar A. Serafimova holds that monuments built in this period were made by “those close to the imperial workshop of the Emperor Andronicus II (1282–1328)”—Čausidis et al. (1995), pp. 112–114.
- 62.
https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/724/—Accessed 10 April 2019.
- 63.
Interestingly enough, when Studenica was inscribed on the World Heritage List in 1986, it was described as being built in the Raška Style of architecture. The designation still stands on the World Heritage List. https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/389—Accessed on 10 April 2019.
- 64.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b9pxDTfsN6k&t=4s&fbclid=IwAR3O5fmRPRISLeTtsGa7yuG8uIAtIGVbxzbeVXHoRWcigV62ackaxhputTs—Interview with Dr Tanasković given to the Srpska RTV, on 22 February 2019—Accessed 12 April 2019.
- 65.
Di Lellio (2009), p. 8.
- 66.
Di Lellio (2009), p. 34.
- 67.
Thus, the 2015 unfounded claim by the Albanian popular press that Fra Vito of Kotor, the builder of Dečani was ethnic Albanian. For those interested in the subject, the press sources related to the subject are abundant, although frequently unnamed.
- 68.
The notion of “forged mediaeval documents” against the non-existing documents and twenty-first century claims represent juxtaposition of events distant 600–800 years. As such, it cannot be taken as serious scholarship. See works of Nasim Feri.
- 69.
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/kv.html—Accessed on 12 April 2019.
- 70.
Cvijić (2011).
- 71.
Herscher (2010), p. 151.
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Lazarević, D. (2021). Changing the History of Architectural Heritage Palaeologian Renaissance—The Style that Never Was?. In: Gambardella, C., Cennamo, C., Germanà, M.L., Shahidan, M.F., Bougdah, H. (eds) Advances in Utopian Studies and Sacred Architecture. Advances in Science, Technology & Innovation. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-50765-7_9
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