Serbs far from European civilization

It was not only the church that would fight against the old Serbian god Davor and the cultural customs of the old faith. However, others, especially those in Serbia, were far removed in spirit from European civilization. Abandoned by their high priests during the migration of Serbs from Turkey to Austria in the 1690s and 1739s, they increasingly distanced themselves from Christianity and returned to the faith of their ancestors. However, in the wake of the uprising, for a moment, both groups found themselves together in the fight against the Turks.

The purpose and meaning of mythification

To fully understand the meaning of the mythicism of the “Kosovo Songs” and its significance on a socio-historical level, it is necessary to become better acquainted with the circumstances that led to the mythicization of the Kosovo knights in heroic folk songs.

In the 18th century, the Serbs were divided into two different groups, geographically, culturally and also on the class level. One group consisted of the clerical-civil elite in Austria, which accepted European culture and became an integral part of the modern civilized world. The other group of Serbs consisted of the broad border masses in Austria and the Serbs in Turkey. The former were religiously educated Christians, since in their support in Austria a fight was waged against superstitions and other remnants of paganism among the broad peasant masses. In addition, not only the church, but also Dositej Obradović would fight against the old Serbian god Davor and the cultural customs of the old faith.

Unity around the idea of ​​an independent Serbian state

However, others, especially those in Serbia, were far removed in spirit from European civilization. Abandoned by their high priests during the migration of Serbs from Turkey to Austria in the 1690s and 1739s, they increasingly distanced themselves from Christianity and returned to the faith of their ancestors. However, in the wake of the uprising, for a moment, both groups found themselves together in the fight against the Turks. The groups were united by the idea of ​​an independent Serbian state. In their efforts to achieve it, both sides praised and exalted Prince Lazar and Kosovo. However, even then, each of them, depending on the nature and level of consciousness, from narrow class interests, had Prince Lazar, Kosovo and, Miloš Obiliq, his own.

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"...they cut off heads, they kill weak Turks"

From the writings of Dositi and other literary works of Serbian writers of the 18th century, it is clear that the Serbian bourgeoisie in Austria was already Europeanizing at this time. According to Vuk's “Srpski riječnik” from 1818, it turns out that the situation in the Ottoman Empire was completely different. As a spiritual image of the Serbian people at the beginning of the 18th century, the dictionary reveals that the Serbs there, that is, the majority of the Serbian people, were far from true Christianity. Although they officially respected churches and monasteries, their consciousness was dominated by ancient customs, which is why even then they adhered to some Christian rites only out of inertia. In many places in “Srpski riječnik” it is clear that the inhabitants of Serbia at the time of Vuk lived and behaved like archaic people. They believed in witches, vampires, fairies, dragons, evil powers, magic and so on. They preserved old cults and cured themselves of diseases in a mythical way: with herbs and magic. In the spring, near the hearths, they light huge pagan bonfires. Their festivals only formally bear the names of Christian saints (St. George, St. Nicholas, St. John, St. Archangel), and in fact these saints are substitutes for the cult of the household idol – the protectors of the ancestors.

Even the very behavior of the Serbian insurgents, both during the rebellion and before, does not speak much about the Christian nature of Vuk's compatriots. In the face of the Turks, they are savage, cruel, beheading, killing weak Turks. The vojdovda of Karagjorge, Plakić, burns witches, almost like an ancient mythical man. The high priest Mateja, like his ancient ancestors, believes that God should be served by offering someone else's blood as a gift, as a sacrifice.

Between paganism and mythification

If we go back to the 18th century, we will find many documents that say similar things about the Serbian warriors who migrated to Christian and civilized Austria. Without a sufficiently developed sense of private property, prone to debauchery and susceptible to superstition, the Serbian warriors are in constant conflict not only with the laws of their new environment, but also with true Christian views. In church, their priests, similar to pagan magicians, perform some strange movements during the service, they shake their heads and howl like wolves. As Lady Montague reported from Belgrade, on the way to Constantinople, in 1717 in a letter to her friend the English writer Pope, our border guards (Serbian – SL) “look more like robbers than soldiers”.

“Since they have no salary from the emperor,” she writes, “and are obliged to provide their own weapons and horses, they are more like wandering gypsies or beggars than an organized army.” Only in war did they know how to be extremely brave. In peace, they were humble before their Orthodox priests as before pagan gods, while the Serbian masses on the other hand had difficulty adapting to the new civilized Christian environment.

Documents prove that the peasant and warrior masses of Serbs in Austria were reluctant to abandon their old faith during the 18th century. The extent of their resistance to Christian civilization can be seen from the following information: when Maria Theresa forbade the burial of the dead according to the previous rite for sanitary reasons, the Serbs rebelled in 1770 in the Vršac region against their priests and the Austrian authorities. There is information that at the beginning of the 19th century the Orthodox priests also used force in the fight against pagan customs. Noting the disappearance of cults and folk games among the Serbs in Srem, Banat and Baçka, in 1852 in his dictionary Vuk wrote: “Women who were in the bride’s dress indicate that the priests chased them with sticks and scattered them throughout the village.”

As among other peoples, Christianity did not eradicate the archaic rites of the cult among the Serbs. There was only a certain compromise between the old and the new faith, a kind of religious syncretism. This mixture of beliefs, which was not permanent, settled, was characterized by constant changes in internal relations within itself, with frequent ebbs and flows of one faith or another. In the Middle Ages, especially during the time of Stefan Lazarević, paganism was on the defensive. Under Turkish rule, things were different: the declining power of the Serbian Orthodox Church led to the gradual strengthening of the old religious consciousness at the expense of purely Christian meanings.

This historical fate of the Serbian people, which led to their departure from the true Christian faith, undoubtedly played a role in the new interpretation of the myth of Lazar and the Legend of Kosovo in the ten-line poems. The church tradition with its numerous works about Prince Lazar, in which the events in Kosovo were presented in a different way, by its very existence resisted the new interpretation of the myth of Lazar.

"The Honest Cross"

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In the poem "Tsar Lazar and Empress Milica" we will find the lines:

      I'm going to flat Kosovo,

       for the Honest Cross I shed my blood

       and to die for the faith with my brothers.

If we look at the collections of Vuk's folk songs, we will see that there are other poems in which the “Honorable Cross” appears. Nothing is more natural than to interpret this relatively frequent appearance of the “Honorable Cross” in folk poetry by taking it from church literature. However, difficulties arise from the very beginning of such an interpretation. The ambiguity arises because of the Serbo-Slavic glories and letters addressed to Prince Lazar. In them, instead of dying for the “Honorable Cross”, Prince Lazar calls on his Christian knights to fight for faith and homeland, for the crown of heavenly glory, for Christ, for eternal life.

The expression “Honest Cross” is not found in any of the aforementioned Kosovo writings. It appears only in “The Life of Prince Lazar” (1392-1398) and “Praise to Prince Lazar” (1403-1404); these works do not belong to the most well-known Kosovo writings.

We will not find the “Honorable Cross” as a symbol of suffering in the works of the 16th and 17th centuries on the theme of Kosovo. There is no Italian adaptation of it in the “Chronicle” of the Duke from the beginning of the 16th century. The same applies to Orbino in the “Kingdom of the Slavs”, where Prince Lazar addresses the heroes in the name of the sword and justice. In Stojan Novakovic’s publication, “Stories of the Battle of Kosovo”, and there he calls on the warriors to show their heroism on the Kosovo Field “for the Orthodox faith, the Christian faith of the Church of God and for our homeland.”

As can be seen, the warrior's "Honest Cross" is not found in any Christian source about the Battle of Kosovo, not even where it would be logical to have it. Therefore, the question rightly arises as to "where did the 'Honest Cross' suddenly appear as one of the main images in the mythical poems of Kosovo?!"

The matter, of course, is not simple. Mythologists proved in the 19th century that the cross is not of Christian origin, but has existed since ancient times. Even in prehistoric times, the cross was a visual representation of man around himself. In science, it is also accepted as an archetypal symbol. An early drawing of a man in the shape of a cross is preserved on the walls of caves. In our country, in the Lipci cave near Risan, a crossbow from prehistoric times was found, which archaeologists (M. Garashanin, P. Mijovic) believe to originate from the Illyrian era, approximately one thousand years before our era. A drawing of a crossbow was also found in Tren, near Korça in Albania.

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Miodrag Popović (1920 - 2005) was a historian of Serbian literature and the author of many studies. He published the book “Vidovdan and the Honest Cross: A Summary of Literary Archaeology” (Видовдан и часни крст: огде из књижевне археологије) in 1976 in Belgrade. As can be seen from the title, the book deals with the birth, development and consequences of the “Kosovo Myth”. Considering that this myth, together with other accompanying components, in fact transformed into the “Serbian Tapi of Kosovo” and such a tapi was perceived by a part of the international opinion, after reading the book it can be rightly said that the author Miodrag Popović has successfully managed to transform the “Serbian tapi on Kosovo”. This article is the third part of the fragments from the book. The title and subtitles are by Skënder Latif

To be continued in the next issue of the Culture Supplement