VISUAL ASPECTS OF THE SERBIAN ENTRANCE IN A NEW WORLD BRANKO BEŠLIN If we wished to select several key words related to the entire history of south-eastern Pannonia, today's province of Vojvodina, one of them would undoubtedly be “migration”. As far back as the prehistoric times, the plain was frequently exposed to waves of immigrants coming from the mountainous areas that surround it – the Carpathians and the western Balkans. During the Migration Period, many tribes from the steppes beyond the Carpathians crossed this area as they advanced towards the West. Similar processes were taking place in other parts of Europe as well, but in this part of Pannonia large-scale migrations continued from the 16th century until today, bringing about, among other things, several profound changes in respect to the population's ethnic, religious, linguistic and cultural identity. From the beginning of the 16th and until the end of the 17th century, the Ottoman conquest and rule resulted in a drastic diminution of the Hungarian population. The demographic catastrophe was only partially mitigated by new arrivals from the Balkans, among which the Christians, mostly Serbs, outnumbered the Muslims. After the instatement of Habsburg rule in the 18th century, these lands, devastated by war, were settled by Serbs, Germans, Hungarians, Slovaks, Rusyns, Romanians, and others, both spontaneously and as a result of systematic colonisation by the state. The region thus became remarkably multi-ethnic and it would remain as such for the following 200 years. Minor changes in that respect emerged after the First World War when it was integrated as part of Serbia, i.e. Yugoslavia, and major ones after 1945. At that time, the state colonised the former settlements of exiled and escaped Germans, who constituted about a third of Vojvodina's population, by the dwellers of the mountainous regions of Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, and, in smaller numbers, of Serbia and Macedonia. Continual migration in this direction, albeit of significantly lesser intensity, persisted until the 1990s, when they assumed dramatic proportions once more. During the armed conflict that followed the breakup of Yugoslavia, the greatest number of Serbian refugees from the war-torn areas settled in Vojvodina. The province remained multi-ethnic, but with a notably Serbian majority. In any case, a considerable portion of today's inhabitants of Vojvodina belong to the first, second or third generation of immigrants. Among the Serbians themselves, the “natives” have become a minority in comparison to the newcomers (“dođoši”).1 Even 1 A not very pejorative name referring to those who arrived after 1945 (more diehard “natives” push that boundary to 1918). 73 those who hold their ties to Vojvodina dear will not claim autochthony, which is indicative of an awareness that “at some time or other, we all came from somewhere”. When, however, seems to be an important question. A moderately educated “native” will proudly emphasise that their ancestors “came as early as Čarnojević”, i.e. during the so-called Great Migration of the Serbs, led by the Patriarch Arsenije III Crnojević in 1690. That claim should (in a bold comparison) carry the same weight as when an American state that they are a descendent of the Mayflower settlers. Relying on "family lore", many of "Čarnojević's Serbs" have said that they trace their ancestry to Kosovo (the seat of the Patriarchate was in Peć).2 It would be truly miraculous if these stories could have been orally transmitted and preserved in so many families over three centuries, all the more if one has in mind that most “natives” are actually not descendants from those who came in 1690. Namely, numerous Serbs moved to these areas as early as the 15th and 16th century, and intense migration from the Ottoman to the Habsburg Empire continued throughout the 18th century. Nevertheless, these facts have been, to this day, known only to historians and those who take a greater interest in the past. In today's public discourse, the story about “arriving with Čarnojević” sounds entirely convincing. That could be explained by the fact that the “Great Migration” was truly one of the crucial events in the entire Serbian history. As such, it was made official through different historical narratives and the educational system until mid-19th century. Based on what they had learnt in school, read or heard from more educated contemporaries, many constructed an idea of their ancestry and passed it down to children and grandchildren. Regional amateur researchers recorded these “voices from the past” without any critical thought. This is how “family narratives” persisted and sounded even more convincing because their credibility could be verified in books. Nowadays, the same ideas can be found on internet forums, where those with some superficial knowledge lecture the uninformed. Another great, perhaps even crucial, contribution to the deep-rootedness of the “Great Migration” in the collective memory, as a drama of both national and numerous family histories, was the monumental composition The 1690 Migration of the Serbs under Patriarch Arsenije Čarnojević by Paja Jovanović, the most popular historical piece in Serbian painting. In what follows, we will offer an analysis of the scene depicted in the painting, along with a more detailed account of its creation, as they are both indicative of the people's perceptions of the event that, for them, marks the beginning of the 18th century. 2 A curator in one museum in Banat recently stated, invoking the fact that the lastname Putin existed in the area, that perhaps the ancestors of the Russian president Vladimir Putin, along with several other thousand Banat frontiersmen, arrived in Russia in mid-18h century, and that there was hence a possibility that he, too, originated in Kosovo. 74 Paja Jovanović, Migration of the Serbs 1896 (Pančevo Museum). Historians concur in that the significance of the “Great Migration” lies not only in the number of emigrants, but also in the fact that they included almost everyone who made up the social elite: church dignitaries, heads of patriarchal communities, rich merchants. Most important religious and political functionaries relocated from the South, where they had been for centuries, to the North, into the Habsburg Monarchy. The people who had been, ever since first mentioned in written records, principally under the influence of Byzantine culture, now found themselves living in distinct governmental, legal and social circumstances; they adapted to them during the 18th century, and thus entered the modern age. Nonetheless, many issues have remained disputable. How many emigrants were there? How many, apart from the Serbs, belonged to Balkan nations? Yet, the question of all questions, which had a direct political impact in the 18th and 19th century, and without which it is impossible to discuss Jovanović's painting is: was it a spontaneous mass escape or an organised exodus at the invitation of the Viennese Court? During the Great Turkish War, larger-scale migrations of Serbs began as early as 1686 – after the fall of Buda a great many relocated from Banat into the territory that had been taken by the Austrian army. During the 1688 Siege of Belgrade and the further advancement of the Imperial Army towards the South, Serbs followed in great numbers. However, their ecclesiastic and political leader, Patriarch Arsenije III, would not express his opinions about Austria. Only in 1689, after open threats from Enea Piccolomini, a general in the Imperial Army, he left the safety of Montenegro, and came to Peć. Merely weeks later, the Ottoman Army began suppressing the Austrians, and the Patriarch joined the crowds of people who were making their way towards the North. In April 1690, Emperor Leopold I issued an edict inviting the Balkan Christians (not only Serbs) to come under his protection, i.e. to take his side. The Patriarch received the edict in Belgrade, which was already swarming with refugees. It was unclear whether the Austrian Army would be able to contain the Turks, and he was counting on moving forward with the afflicted people across the Danube and Sava rivers. Before a potential exodus, he and 75 other prelates wanted to safeguard the same autonomy that the Orthodox Church had enjoyed under the Ottoman Empire, where the Patriarchate of Peć had been the de facto representative of the Serbian people. With this in mind, Bishop Isaija Đaković was dispatched to Vienna. On 21st August 1690, the overwhelmed Emperor Leopold I issued a Diploma in which he granted and promised to uphold most Serbian requests. Isaija would not present it to the Patriarch until his arrival in Komoran in November, by which time the “Great Migration” would have already ended. The Invitatoria was the first in a series of documents that Serbians in Hungary would later use to defend their religious and educational autonomy, and more general national concerns. Although the document explicitly called upon the people not to leave their homes, Serbian politicians, legal experts, and historians claimed, for the following two centuries, that this section of the document had to be interpreted interdependently with the promised protection and subsequently granted privileges. There were also those who simply turned a blind eye to the not part. This means that Serbs did not, as was originally claimed by the Hungarian nobility, and later by historians, arrive as refugees. Rather, they came as war allies - an organised people headed by their Patriarch and other leaders. The Emperor Leopold invited them to move because he needed them as warriors to defend the borders of the Western world against the Ottoman threat, and because of that he granted them special status. At the time when Jovanović produced his painting, the question of when and how people came to Pannonia returned to the forefront because the period marked a thousand years since the Hungarian arrival.