Written by. Jusuf BUXHOVI. Translation Petrit Latifi.

The rise of the Serbian hegemonic state from autonomy in 1830 (to the extent of the Belgrade pasha) and statehood at the Congress of Berlin in 1878 to the expansion with Albanian lands during the Balkan Wars of 1912-1913, in which case Kosovo and Macedonia would be recognized by Serbia, was done on the “spiritual carpets” of the Serbian Orthodox Church and its deceptions as “part of the Serbian spiritual and cultural identity from the Middle Ages onwards”.

Russian vassal states: Serbia and Montenegro

This deception, which was part of the Slavic-Russian concept of creating vassal states (Montenegro, Serbia, Bulgaria) in the European part of the Ottoman Empire, had to be accompanied by the factor of the Serbian Orthodox Church and its autocephaly from the 13th century onwards, which, as will be seen, was only a temporary autonomy from the Bishopric of Ohrid (from 1219-1274).

The discourse of this deception will continue for eight centuries, since the autocephaly of the Serbian Orthodox Church will be gained in 1922, after the formation of the Serbian-Croatian-Slovenian Kingdom. Since ecclesiastical autocephaly was always linked to statehood, the Serbian Orthodox Church gained this “right” only after the decisions of the Paris Conference in 1919 when the Serbian-Croatian-Slovenian Kingdom was recognized.

Serbian Orthodox Church was formed in 19120

In August 1920, the Serbian Orthodox Church, through a state delegation, addressed the Holy Synod of the Patriarchate of Constantinople for the unification of the three churches (of Karlovci, Montenegro and the Metropolitanate of Belgrade) into a common church, which under the influence of the Karađogjovićs would be called the Serbian Orthodox Church.

The Holy Synod, in accordance with the state realities to which the ecclesiastical ones were also subject (autocephaly), decided to approve the request of the Serbian Orthodox Church on condition that it pay 1.5 million French francs to allow the churches of Kosovo and Macedonia (until then under the jurisdiction of the Patriarchate of Constantinople) to be included within the hierarchy of the united Serbian Orthodox Church. The final act of this agreement would be signed in 1922 by the Patriarch of Constantinople.

Assimilation of Albanians and Macedonians

So, according to this documented agreement, it was not about the continuation of the “Serbian ecclesiastical autocephaly” from the Middle Ages, but that the military occupation of Kosovo and Macedonia, recognized internationally, would first legitimize the assimilation of the Orthodox population (Albanian and Macedonian) into Serbs, and secondly, legitimize the appropriation of Orthodox Christianity from the Middle Ages onwards along with the cult objects (monasteries and churches) that were common cult objects.

Since this eight-century-old deception continues to produce political consequences for the state of Kosovo, because with the Ahtisaari package, Orthodox Christianity and objects of church worship are treated as the property of the Serbian Orthodox Church, in which case the Albanians, who have belonged to Christianity since its officialization in the 4th century, when there were no Slavs in Illyricum, are deprived of an important part of their spiritual and historical heritage.

It is appropriate to clarify the history of this deception, so that the state of Kosovo can also maintain the right to spiritual, cultural heritage and objects of worship, as common in the circumstances when this issue is becoming increasingly internationalized, while the Serbian state and the Orthodox Church continue their well-known propaganda about “historical and cultural rights in Kosovo for eight centuries”!

Of course, this deception, which aims to exclude Albanians from the most important part of their historical-cultural identity – from the Middle Ages, as its center in Illyricum, also opens up another issue, that of the Nemanjana Raša Dynasty (from many ancient sources with tribal origins) as part of this cultural-political dichotomy to which the deceptive formula of the “medieval Serbian state” is also linked.

Rascia was called “Iliricum Magna” and not “Serbian”

That is, another factor, which is the inclusion of this despotate from the historical Dardanian core in the European Catholic Crusades and their exploitation for a powerful rise in Illyricum with the claim to become a power of the time to replace the collapsing Byzantine Empire, which is not coincidental, Raša during the time of the great župan Stefan Dušan, from many reputable sources of the time was called Rasa, Rasien, rex Rasien or even “Iliricum Magna” and nowhere “Serbian Kingdom”.

The center of the Orthodox faith was in Ohër

Thus, when in Constantinople the Catholic crusaders would culturally and politically destroy Byzantium, proclaiming the Catholic Empire in 1204, while the center of Byzantium together with the Orthodox Church would move to Nicaea, the church of Rasha in its center in Žiča, with the direct assistance of the Holy See, would be helped, through actions contrary to church canons, to unilaterally secede from the Bishopric of Ohër, in which it had been located since the time of Simeon along with others in the western part of Illyricum.

This situation was also confirmed by the Byzantine emperor Basil II in 1018. From the rewritten and processed documents of the Serbian Orthodox Church from the workshop of the Chilandar monastery, especially through the “zhitiv” (biographies of church monks) that represent nothing more than a form of hagiography (religious biographies), many of them processed and rewritten in the 17th-19th centuries in Chilandar, Odessa, Karlovci, Vienna and elsewhere.

Serbian Orthodox Church was not autocephalous

This in accordance with certain political goals, one gains the conviction that the so-called Serbian Orthodox Church is “recognized as independent” from the Patriarchate of Constantinople, thus gaining autocephaly, although what had happened in Nicaea, based on the meritorious documents, represents only an independence of the Bishopric of Žiča from the Archbishopric of Ohrid and in no way autocephaly.

So, in Nicaea, in the circumstances when Constantinople was ruled by the Latin Empire at that time, only a temporary ecclesiastical reorganization had taken place in the central part of Byzantium, as a response to the new realities created when the Catholic Church had gained significant space in these parts and sought to factor in the Western allies and vassals: the Nemanjis of Rasha and the Bulgarians. In this regard, the Vatican worked hard to ensure that the Rasha Church, headquartered in Zhicha, and the Bulgarian Church were separated from Constantinople.

While Rasha turned into a powerful dynasty in Illyricum (Iliricum Magnum) to take the crown of the crumbling Byzantium. The Orthodox Church of Constantinople, expelled from its capital in Nicaea, did not oppose the “adoption” of the church of Rasa with its headquarters in Žiča by the one in Ohrid at that time, since it was interested in not becoming a prey to the Vatican, especially after the ecclesiastical coronation of Stefan Nemanja in 1217 by the Papacy.

On the contrary, as can be seen, the Patriarch of Nicaea, Manojlo, would crown Nemanja “king of Rascia” by formally tolerating the creation of the Bishopric of Žiča, as separated from that of Ohrid, but this was not proven by any document that it also gained ecclesiastical autocephaly. In this regard, we also have the meritorious testimony of Dr. Dimitrije Ruvarac, archimandrite, manager of the church printing house and the Patriarchal Library of Karlovci in Srem and editor of “Srpski Zion”.

Ruvarac claims that “there is no doubt that Sava received some privileges for the Rasian ecclesiastical hierarchy in Nicaea, but it is impossible to identify all of them with the blessing for such a major canonical event as the creation of the autocephalous church. In other words, Sava could have received a certain self-government from Constantinople for the ecclesiastical hierarchy, with a clearly defined list of privileges – but not autocephaly.

However, after the fall of the Latin Empire in 1261 and the return of Byzantium to Constantinople, the decisions of Nicaea regarding the separation of the Rasian Bishopric from the Ohrid Bishopric were annulled and it would return to the situation it was in 1219. Moreover, on the occasion of the return under the administration of the Ohrid Bishopric, together with the Bulgarian one, at the Council of Lyons in 1274, forgiveness was sought for this “unseemly behavior of the Rasian church”.

The earliest news of Sava’s success in gaining autonomy – not autocephaly – came from his biographers (higiographers). And with a great delay. Domentian writes about this (around 1253, so his writings were “reworked” by another author after 1290); and then, at least a century later (between 1320 and 1330) and Theodosius. Domentian and Theodosius leave a confusion in the meeting in their writings.

One of them writes about the 14 years that Sava spent as archbishop; this would mean, with the proviso that in 1233 (or 1234) for some reason Sava resigned from the throne of the Archbishopric of Žiča, that he could have been ordained in 1219, and then Patriarch Manojlo Sarantin (νοανουήλ Α΄ Σαραντητός ή Харитопоулос).

However, Domentian and Theodosius are skilled in ecclesiastical matters, so that, although they obviously embellish things – for example, it is erroneously stated that Sava came to Constantinople with the Byzantine emperor, although it is verifiable that Theodore I Lascaris reigned in Nicaea – they do not claim that it was a question of church autocephaly.

Even on this issue, the intervention of Dr. Ruvarac removes the obscurity created by his biographers and others who processed them. “So far, no letter has been printed anywhere, which would confirm who and when consecrated Saint Sava as archbishop and on what basis. Because, if this were the case, then such a letter had to be issued and such an important act could not be lost.

Therefore, it is not known exactly in which year, not to mention the month and day, Sava was ordained archbishop, as the name of the patriarch who did it is missing”. What Dr. Ruvarac says is supported by the positions of Dr. Janko Shafarik, who dealt extensively with this issue. Shafarik presented a report on the results of his research in the archives of Constantinople, published in 1855 in Belgrade. Regarding what he found in Constantinople, Shafarik writes:

“We cannot document any act by which Saint Sava became an independent archbishop. In fact, no other similar action has been found to this day!”.

Constantinople elected Serbian archbishops

Also, the historian of the Serbian church, Svetozar Niketić, since 1870, estimates that “Although the Serbian church was the one that Sava considered independent, its archbishops, elected by the assembly of hierarchs, were still designated in that title by the patriarch of Constantinople”. But Niketić says that, thanks to Sava, they gained the right to ordain their own bishops in the future, but they remained under the ophorion of Constantinople, a practice that would be temporarily discontinued by Stefan Dušan.

It goes without saying that the right to ordain their own bishops in the future, which was used as an experience during the next two centuries in the areas where Nemanjas extended his power, was used to “promote” autocephaly. The Serbian Orthodox Church retouched in this spirit almost all the church documents that came from the workshops of Hilandar. This documentable fact is important, since it frees Albanian historiography from the dictates of these frauds and forgeries, which continue to be cited by it.

In truth, this action is not overlooked even by some objective Serbian authors (among whom Ilarion Ruvarac should be distinguished). There, rightly, one can also see the backstage of the Vatican, which at that time was being played out at the expense of the Patriarchate of Constantinople on the occasion of the occupation of the capital of Byzantium by the Catholics, in 1204, which lasted until 1261, when the Emperor returned there with the suite of clergy from Nicaea.

Dimitrije Homatian stated that the Sava of Rascia does not have the right to seceede from the Bishopric of Ohër

In this veneration, however, the main role was played by the action of the Bishop of Ohër Dimitrije Homatian (Demetros Chomateros), who, as soon as the news from Nicaea spread, issued a curse directed at Archimandrite Sava of Rasa. In the letter to the Orthodox Patriarch in Nicaea, he states that Sava does not have the right to secede from the Ohër Bishopric, since this is not permitted by the canon of the Apostolic Rule.

The letters of the Bishop of Ohrid, Dimitrije Homatian, will remain a deaf voice for over half a century, until the fall of the Latin Empire of Constantinople in 1261. As soon as Byzantium became the capital and with it the center of the Orthodox Patriarchate, the former ecclesiastical order also returned. This action was also followed with “approval” by the Vatican, because “normality” had returned between the two world centers that were called to the same empire, which at that time was facing Ottoman threats.

In the context of these reports, the restoration of the lost ecclesiastical power of the Ohrid Bishopric, on the occasion of the unilateral secession from it of the Bishopric of Russia and the Bulgarian one, was of great interest to the Patriarchate of Constantinople, which acted autocephaly. In this respect, the letters of Homatian will be dusted off and even given a fair answer, with the fact that at the Council of Lyon it will be said that in Nicaea the apostolic canon was violated and that the Bishopric of Raša and the Bulgarian one were returned to the Ohrid Bishopric.

Of course, this decision was preceded by the decree of Emperor Michael VIII, by which the jurisdiction over the Bishopric of Raša and the Bulgarian one was returned to the Ohrid Bishopric in accordance with the decree that Emperor Basil II had proclaimed at the beginning of the 11th century. The annulment of the independence of the Bishopric of Raša, whose center had passed to the monastery of Žiče, which in the ecclesiastical history of the Serbian Orthodox Church was called autocephaly, also required the removal of Bishop Danilo from that position. This will be done in 1272.