i.

The word “Israel” means two things. Literally, it means “He who strives for God,” making reference to struggle. It also means, less literally, “Those who have been chosen,” which still denotes a life of struggle. “Israel,” in its true sense, does not refer to the ministate in the Middle East, but rather those who “strive after God,” those who God has chosen from among the nations to do His holy will.

The Jews ceased to be God’s chosen once they rejected Christ as the incarnation of God. To follow the words of the Psalmist: “A New people shall serve the lord.” Christ attacked the Pharisees without mercy as “following the traditions of men,” a clear reference to what is now called the Talmud, the teachings of the elders of Jewry that nullified the Old Testament. The Old Testament is part of revealed Scripture, it is an early manifestation of God to his people. The Talmud is the collections of teachings of the Rabbis throughout the centuries, revolving around the idea of race and blood rather than of service to God. The Talmud is not of God, the Old Testament is.

The “Chosen People” refer to those “chosen from among the nations” to be God’s new people. The chosen people are the Orthodox nations who have maintained Christ’s teachings intact, those who have not deviated into of the myriad heresies that the proud can fall into. The only way that the notion of a “Chosen People” can make any sense is if the people in question faithfully follow the laws and traditions of God and His manifestation on earth, the Church. Therefore, it has always been the position of the Orthodox Church that she is the Chosen of God, that she and she alone has been charged with the task of receiving and protecting the Deposit of Faith laid out by the prophets, apostles and church fathers. It is no accident that St. Nikolaij of Ohrid’s commentary on the Creed is entitled, “The Faith of the Chosen People.”

The Serbs have taken this charge very seriously. Her leaders, from St. Vastimir to St. Lazar, have directly understood their mission in the world as to be the defender of the True Faith in the Balkans against a laundry list of enemies that would have destroyed a lesser people. Serbs have viewed themselves as a chosen people not out of arrogance, but as a tremendous responsibility, a heavy burden of maintaining the true faith, which automatically earned the enmity of the Turk and the papist.

The main thesis of this book is that the Serbs, due to their manifest position as part of the chosen (that is, as one nation among a group of Orthodox peoples, albeit the one that was charged to suffer most), have developed an idea of the “warrior monk,” or the true fighter for the faith who was also an ascetic. Nearly all the medieval rulers of Serbia became monks later in life, and all spent a massive amount of money in establishing churches and monasteries throughout Serbia and as far as Jerusalem. The Serbian self-image then, forged in the fires of foreign invasion and forced conversion, is precisely at the intersection of the ascetic ideal and that of the warrior.

The reality is that the warrior ethic and that of the monk are one and the same. They both are charged with the giving up of their lives according to their own will in service to God and his chosen. It is a testament to the vicious corruption of what passes for “Christianity” in the west that many of the more effete among them believe warfare to be unchristian. Nothing can be further from the truth. Never mind the pages upon pages of holy warriors in the Old Testament (including Moses himself), but Christ never told the Roman soldiers he dealt with to give up their jobs, nor did Peter or Paul. Christ commanded his followers to be armed, even if it meant they should sell their clothes to buy swords. Many of the early saints were soldiers, among whom were St. George, St. Theodore and St. Demetrius. And though these men died for their faith, they never gave up their commissions because of it.

Christ said to love one’s enemies; ultimately, this means to pray and work for their conversion. He never said to love the enemies of God. These are two different things. Without the warrior ethic, Orthodoxy would have died out, destroyed by wave after wave of Islamic, pagan or communist barbarians. Orthodoxy grew and prospered only because of the protection the Byzantine, Serbian, Bulgarian or Russian empires that protected it. These empires were the creation of God himself to protect his people. This is not to nullify the tremendous personalities that forged these empires, whether it be St. Constantine, St. Vladimir or Dusan, but rather to say that God provided for the protection of His people so that His Church could grow and prosper. It might be noted that during the days of Byzantium, a Byzantine soldier returning from battle was required to abstain from communion for two years for the spilling of human blood.

As is all too common, the effeminate pseudo-Christians who preach peace at any price do not know their history. It might do well to note that such absurd ideologies grow only in stable societies, among academics and yuppies in comfortable offices in the suburbs. They never faced the Turks, they never lived under the communists. Christians can never be “conscientious objectors” during just wars, for Christianity is as much a warrior code as it is an ascetic one.

ii.

Serbia’s reputation throughout the twentieth century has ranged from the “brave little Serbia” of World War I to the “axis of evil” at the dawn of the 21st century. Today, Serbia is the most lied about country on the globe, where non-existent massacres are commemorated by world leaders and the country is policed by foreign troops. Today, Bosnia is a direct protectorate of the United Nations and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). It is ruled directly by western capitalists and exploiters. Albanians burn and rape at will in Kosovo, under the nose of the already illegitimate KFOR troops. Bought and paid for political whores such as Rep. Chris Smith of New Jersey and Senator Joseph Biden of Delaware support the rampages of the Islamic terrorists in Bosnia, who have been funded and trained by the United States, which is certainly a novel interpretation of the phony “war on terror.”

Regardless, Serbia is facing a future of poverty, degradation and international slander. The recent electoral victories of the Radical Party were simply nullified by the occupation troops in the name of “democracy,” believe it or not. It was common to read western headlines that read: “Radical Party Wins Election: Democracy Endangered.” To call this Orwellian is to be too cliche. It has gone far beyond that.

Serious scholars of the region known one thing: the entire Serb mentality was forged in resistance. Under the vicious rule of the Turk, Serbia was left with a handful of dirt poor farmers and few churches. Who was left in Serbia proper was forced to celebrate his slava and read the scriptures for his sustenance. In the words of St. Nikolaij, his home “became a little monastery.” For Serbs, Christianity is a family affair, and the suffering under the Turk forged this. The slava is all he had left. On cannot understand that institution without understanding its role under the Turks. The Serbs are ethnic nationalists in their Orthodoxy because, primarily, that is how Orthodoxy was forged in the Slavic world, but more importantly, because it was because of these structures of survival that Orthodoxy survived at all. Serbs should view the rantings of the Antiochean Metropolitan Phillip Saliba concerning the “de-ethnicization” of the church as the direct attack on the Serbs. Serbian Orthodoxy was forged in the fires of genocide and forced conversion; Salibaism was forged in his office in New Jersey.

Of course, Orthodoxy is ethnic. Among the Slavs, the brothers Sts. Cyril and Methodius created a proto-Cyrillic alphabet and vocabulary so the divine services could be sung in the native Slavic languages. Churches were granted autocephalicity (canonical independence) on the basis of ethnic identity so the rules, as well as the services, of the church could always remain in the hands of those who understood them and were closest to them. Without ethnic nationalism, Orthodoxy loses its roots in the past, roots that grew in the fires of death, destruction and pain, as well as the resistance that this engendered. A-ethnic Orthodoxy becomes just another bourgeois, western denomination, complete with female readers, pews and plenty of Volvos in the parking lot.

iii.

The Serbian warrior ethic, as well as the royal check on oligarchy, are the subjects of this book. It is my contention that these two related but separate ideas undergird the entire life of medieval Serbia.

First, it makes sense to spell out the major personages and events in medieval Serbian history. The remaining chapters then make sense once the major issues of medieval history are explained and understood. I have tried to make the straight “history” chapter as brief as possible, choosing events and rulers that had a direct affect on the development of the Serbian idea. However, I do not spend much time on St. Sava, who will be the subject of a later chapter.

Secondly, I will deal with the specific institutions medieval Serbian life. The point here is to show the extraordinary reign of Christian justice that reigned in Serbia. This chapter was resarched from very rare documents at one time belonging to Prince Lazarovic-Hrebellianovic. Some of these notes were published in 1910, in a book called The Servian People.

Thirdly, I will deal with the more specific issue of Tsar Dusan’s Law Code. Here, the institutions and customs of medieval Serbia find their rationalization in a single code. The few items I have translated (using the translation provided at http://www.dusanov-zakonik.co.yu/ as a baseline) I have chosen for their profundity and justice. Serbia was likely the most literate and just state of the high middle ages (as the west calls them). Quite possibly the only match for Serbia was Kiev Rus at a slightly earlier time.

Fourth, I will provide a commentary on St. Nikolaij of Ohrid’s The Serbian People as the Servant of God. It is rare that this work from Serbia’s foremost saint of modern times, is even mentioned in the literature. St. Nikolaij was a Ph.D. in philosophy and a world traveler, and so his work cannot be dismissed as the writings of an “obscurantist.” His work needs to be taken seriously by the field. The significance here is that St. Nikolaij has provided a succinct understanding of th Serbian mind, largely from medieval sources, sources that he know intimately. The poor state of Balkan studies in the west is proven by the complete ignorance of this world-historical work.

Fifth, I will deal with the cycle of epic poetry. For us in the west, this is likely the most thorough means to immerse oneself into the self-identification of Serbs. Like many important sources, these poems are not taken seriously. They are often derided as “mythical” from historical dilettantes. One must be fully immersed into Orthodox tradition to understand the symbolism within the poetry. There is much there is great subtlety, and it has not been dealt with in English competently.

Lastly, I will deal with St. Sava and the history of Serbian Orthodoxy. Primarily, the attacks on Orthodoxy are dealt with, specifically the attempts of the Latins to impose their popery by force. St. Sava’s greatness lies, among other things, in creating an infrastructure of Orthodoxy that could withstand even prolonged national occupation. People who have read Mylonas’ awful book should start with this chapter first, as it corrects, rather abruptly, some of that conga-line of errors that make up his work.

My conclusion will deal with Serbia as a subject of “end-times” studies. It is my personal opinion that Orthodoxy is now entering the era of the remnant, the time where antiChrist himself will being to rule without his earthly stooges, almost fully revealed as antiChrist. He will be worshiped by nearly the entire population of the globe, led most likely by the modernist Orthodox clergy. The remnant alone will quietly guard the deposit of faith until Christ returns.