SERBIAN ORTHODOX FUNDAMENTALS: THE QUEST FOR AN ETERNAL IDENTITY Christos Mylonas Submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy School of Slavonic and East European Studies University College London August 2001 ProQuest Number: U 144915 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. uest. ProQuest U144915 Published by ProQuest LLC(2016). Copyright of the Dissertation is held by the Author. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC. ProQuest LLC 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 Abstract This study addresses the following research questions: what makes a Serb? What particular properties” or **fundamentals ” could and should be attributed to this identity? Are meaningful assumptions possible by introducing Serbian Orthodoxy as the primal point of reference? Why does religion appear to have an especially strong appeal? Does this “appeal” originate in the nature of the Orthodox faith, or rather arise from the societal framework, within which the Serbian identity is articulated? These issues have been principally explored by means of an analytical appraisal of bibliographical material -regional sources and additional treatises on Orthodoxy (doctrinal and functional). Orthodoxy is identified as the sacralisation of the Serbian national identity (the primary hypothesis of this thesis): upon which perceptions of collective belonging are forged; moral preferences and principles of social conduct are delineated; a mythopoeic content -the national imaginary- is constructed; and a sense of historical, diachronic, continuity is established, A notional thread of a primordial existence nurtures the lives of the Serbian being and his society, sanctified within the Orthodox cosmology of venerated patriots, good and evil, liturgical cycles and worshipping practices. In this context, the fundamentalist discourse is used to decipher the depth and scope of the processes by which, the Serbian individual establishes a mode of national belonging and reinforces a differentiation between himself and his diverse ethno-religious periphery. It should be noted that the concept of fundamentalism is applied, as an evaluative perspective of religion and not for the derogatory purposes, customarily associated with its excessive and uncritical usage. Contents T itle 1 A b stra ct 2 C ontents 3 Preface 7 1. In tro d u c tio n : Nation, Religion and Fundamentalism 14 Synopsis 14 The Basic Argumen t 14 "And the earth was without form and void” 22 Wha t is religion ? A synop tic appraisal 3 5 " I f God does not exist, He would have to be invented” 39 A communio in sacris 45 Defining the “national” within the “Serbian” 51 The “Fundamentalist” discourse 55 Accounting for “fundamentalism” in Serbia 62 Conclusion 68 2. Orthodoxy and Serbian national identity 69 Synopsis 69 Introduction 70 The “doctrinal” con ten t o f Orthodoxy 71 The creation of Man in “the image and likeness of God” 75 The Triune God -Father, Son and the Holy Spirit 79 The “functional” - “cultus”- content of Orthodoxy 84 The role o f the Orthodox litu rg y 85 The ''normative'' expressions o f Orthodoxy 87 Baptism and Chrismation 89 The Eucharist 91 Repentance or Confession 94 Holy Orders 94 The Holy Ma trimony o f Marriage 95 Anoin ting o f the sick 96 Orthodox Iconography 96 Serbian Orthodoxy 98 The founda tions o f the Serbian Orthodoxy 104 Orthodoxy as the sacralisation o f the Serbian identity 115 Krsna Slava 119 The religious (non) a ffin ity o f the Serbs 122 Conclusion 128 3. Homo-Femina Serbicus 131 Synopsis 131 The moral and ethical construction o f the Serbian Cosmology 131 Homo-Femina Serbicus 143 The "love ethic" 151 Honour 155 The concept o f heroism 160 The concept o f freedom 162 The concepts o f justice and vengeance 164 Unity in diversity 166 The Zadruga 175 Kumstvo 178 Homo-femina Serbicus (Balkan men tali ty of) 181 Homo-femina Serbicus (mere stereotypes?) 186 Conclusion 190 4. The pursuit of “secular” salvation 191 Synopsis 191 “ Vox populi or vox Dei?” 192 Serbian Orthodoxy and Yugoslav communism 204 Josip Broz Tito 215 The Serbian Monarchy 221 The Chetnik movemen t 225 Slobodan Milosevic 229 Orthodoxy and the culture o f power in Serbia 233 Serbian Orthodoxy and democracy 241 Conclusion 248 5. The pursuit of “sacrlflclar salvation 250 Synopsis 250 Na tional myth(s) and mythogenesis 251 The Kosovo Battle (1389): A historical account 262 The legend o f Kosovo 267 Kosovo: the continuous dialogue between the present and the past 285 The Kosovo ''sacrifice” 292 Conclusion 298 6. “To love your neighbour as yourself 301 Synopsis 301 Homo homini lupus 302 (Instrumental) Violence and Orthodoxy 314 The Serbian warrior 325 The ""distortion o f brotherhood and unity 338 God o f life and death 347 Homo and femlna nervls laborans (pslchosls)? 352 Conclusion 356 7. The Balkan Orthodox Commonwealth 358 Synopsis 358 Orthodoxy as the sacralisation o f Serblanhood 359 The Greek Orthodoxy 361 The Bulgarian Orthodoxy 379 The Romanian Orthodoxy 392 Conclusion 403 Conclusion 404 Bibliography 415 Preface Simone Weil in her depiction of human roots-renracinement^- had placed an emphasis on the significance of the past, as a measure of psychological security, experience and knowledge, necessary for the elucidation and construction of the future. In an almost reciprocal manner, prospective incidents seem to notionally emanate from the accumulated wisdom of inherent, ancestral convictions, -assimilated and remodelled- underlined by the most profound and vital need of the human psyche, the compulsion for a past. Without an exaltation of ancestoritis^, I am similarly intrigued by the cognitive and referential properties of historical genealogies, which in spite of assumptions about the progress of society toward a universal, modern form, they remain a prevalent source of authority and allegiance. It is precisely the role of the past as a social constant and a lineage of thought in the life of the Serbian individual and his community -the context of the national imaginary- that this analysis addresses. The subject of spatial, temporal and notional continuity is not confined into a single, cataclysmic event, although the Serbian mind is permeated by the moral persuasions of the Kosovo parable, but rather pertains to a holistic signifier, a manifest and observable referent of a society persisting over time. Religion, as a “prim ordial” given factor of culture unites the psychic and physical hypostases of 1 See W eil, Simone, V Enracinement, (Paris: Folio essais, 1990). 2 This interesting concept is coined by Clogg, Richard, A Concise History of Greece, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), p. 2. 7 the human being and irons out the inconsistencies and incoherences of its transient existence. For this reason, Orthodoxy -the professed faith of Serbianhood- provides an invaluable exegetic and evaluative perspective in the decipherment of an intricatemodus vivendiy and is the thematical core of the present study. Stated in a more concise fashion, it is the main hypothesis of my work that Orthodoxy is the sacralisation of the Serbian national identity. By identifying the Serbian confessional dispositions, as the primal investigative axis of my research, I do not aspire to “essentialise” the ensuing notions of identity. Instead I am introducing a multi-faceted medium, consisting of doctrinal and functional (cultus) assumptions and precepts of the profane and sacred realm -to use Mircea Eliade’s distinction^- in the search for a “stipulative” paradigm. This analysis arose out of a concern for the possible actuality of a shared thread, a unifying principle, within which diversity -the dinaric warrior, the Habsburg and Ottoman heritage, the communist and the reformer, the worshipper and the sceptic- and conformity coalesce. Orthodoxy ^ Mircea Eliade drew upon the Durkheimean distinction of the sacred and the profane and argued that religious values are imprinted as distinctions in space and time. The sacred manifests itself as “hierophanies,” as acts of creation and orientation, resulting into the identification of a sanctified place, a territory that is qualitatively different from its surroundings. The events of sacred time and the actions of the gods distinguish the meaningful from the meaningless and the real from the chaotic. See Mircea, Eliade, The sacred and the profane: the nature of religion. The significance of religious myth, symbolism, and ritual within life and culture, tr. from the French by William R. Trask, (San Diego: Harcourt Brace & Company, 1987). 8 in the form of popular belief/ -shared among people who know very little about official theological axioms but liturgically practice and adhere to it- affords a shared denominator, upon which a concept of Serbian identity could be forged. It is my intention to create a broad reference that advances the existing bibliography on the subject and contributes to a better comprehension of past, current and future developments in the context of Serbia. In the course of my analysis, I do not approach Orthodoxy in terms of an exonerative social factor and a substitute for human agency, reason and responsibility, but as a concrete content, worthy of a thorough appraisal 5. Methodologically, the study is centred upon the review of diverse published material from the region, including specific journals, -N in and Pravoslavlje- in conjunction with Western sources on the theme of religion-Sobornosty Archives de Sciences Sociales des Religions, and Social Compass, In the Serbian culture, the subject of Orthodoxy ^ Doctrinal and functional precepts of the sacred are culturally incorporated in the life of homo and femina Serbicus either as a genealogy of faith -sharing pre-existing ancestral beliefs and the wisdom of the old- or as an expression of divine providence and wrath.