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Perhaps the most celebrated Serb of the 20th century is St. Nikolaij of Ohrid, the central theological mind of the Serbian church in contemporary times. With a Ph.D. in philosophy and travels that brought him all over the world, Bishop Nikolaij saw both the evils of the papist Ustashe sect in Croatia as well as the Titoite sect that ruled Yugoslavia into recent times. We must thank God that he was spared the vision of what has happened to Serbia since 1995.

This chapter will deal with his famous, but little read book, The Serbian People as the Servant of God. It is the major work of modern Serbian nationalism as well as a vision of history and the Serb’s place in God’s revelation. Little has been written on it. Given the realities of modern life, there has been an active attempt to suppress it, with only one small website (www.sv-luka.org) bothering to run a very good translation by Fr. Theodore Micka and Dr. Steven Scott. This work will be discussed within the framework of this book, that is, the vision of Christian truth through the medium of nationalism and ethnic custom.

St. Nikolaij begins his discourse on Serbia by speaking of history not as the manifestation of “social forces” (though these have a place) but rather of something more profound, called in Serbian sudba, or, loosely translated,“destiny.” Further, this concept is central to the Serbian self-image, and has little roots elsewhere in Europe.

St. Nikolaij makes a very simple distinction absent from modern tracts on theology. The manifestation of God, His truth the way He wants it known to men, has largely been delivered in “national” packages. Christ ordered his disciples to “teach all nations.” More significantly, both Christ and the prophets spoke of the time when the Jews will no longer be the chosen people, but the goyim, or the “other nations.” The Old Testament had one purpose, that is, to show, in various ways, the manifestation of God to His people, Israel. Israel is a concept, not a nation. However, the clear manifestation of God’s will to Israel was a definitely ethnic affair. All aspects of cultural life were legislated in the book of Leviticus according to the manifestation of God. Israel understood itself to be a Holy and Chosen nation above all others because of this chosenness.

In modern times, nothing has changed. God still has chosen peoples, the Orthodox, and those ethnic groups that God has chosen to manifest that truth. Among them, and bearing a special place, are the Serbs. Bishop Nikolaij writes: “For the Serbs, the last 800 years represent an unparalleled epic poem of the crystallization of an individual and national character, an epic poem of toil, struggle, suffering and glory–all in the sign of the cross and in freedom.” The Turks were the Egyptians for Nikolaij, a long enslavement finally thrown off after severe trials and struggles. The same might be said of the connection between the Austrians and the Canaanites.

For Nikolaij, and for Serbian nationalism in general, these parallels are extremely significant, and the forging of the Serbian nation was largely done through suffering, the quintessentially Orthodox manner of living. In the 20th century, there have been no fewer than four attempts to eradicate the Serbian population, the Turks, Hungarians, Germans and the Croats. All had concentration camps and all slaughtered Serbs. Yet this tiny people remained, maintained their traditions and continued to fight. There are no parallels in history here.

Serbia was forged in suffering, and specifically, thought the suffering and pain of St. Stepan Nemanjia. For Nikolaij, Nemanjia was the archetypal Serb: on the one hand, fighting for the freedom of his people from foreign aggression and internecine warfare, and, on the other, living the life as an extreme ascetic. The two are far closer than one might think, in that both–warrior and monk–require the renunciation of one’s own life and the serving of the greater good, or the manifestation of God in His One Church and chosen people. In both cases the monk and the warrior must lay down their life for their people, albeit in different ways.

Contemporary historians are a sorry lot: alienated, affected and cynical, they can never see true devotion and love in history; only crass self interest, a lifestyle mirroring the ladder climbing and back stabbing of academia. Nemanjia was a refutation of their cynical utilitarianism. He built his famous churches, not for some economic or political reason, but rather, according to St. Nikolaij, to fulfill oaths he made to the saints in times of great trial. He built The Pillars of St. George to honor a promise he made to him, and St. Mary’s for a promise he made to the Mother of God. Both promises were made under the threat of extreme peril, warfare and strife. Therefore, those churches represent the physical manifestation of the suffering of Nemanjia and the Serbian nation as a whole.

St. Sava carried on the traditions of his father, “smoothing them out,” as the saint says, and bringing them to new heights. Sava created the physio-Christian backbone to medieval Serbia, a conception that lasts to this very day. The monastic establishments Sava founded were designed to create an infrastructure of the nation, to serve as the meeting places for various important roads or to physically face certain enemies.

Nikolaij is impressed with the fact that Sava fought off both the pan-Hellenism of Constantinople on the one hand, and the predatory nature of the Church of Rome on the other, not with warfare, but by the creation of an independent Serbian church. Of course, for St. Sava, his primary reason for this was spiritual, as an Athonite, there could be no other reason. However, it was not lost on him that there was a world-historical nature to this as well, in that the independent Serbian church would carve out, once in for all, a place in the Christian world for Serbia as a distinct people with a distinct sudba. St. Sava was victorious not though the sword, but through creation. The sword has a place, and a central place, but, as Bishop Nikolaij says, the “sword is nothing without the cross.”

It is amazing that the life of Athos was made manifest in a state system. Not only were the original monastic establishments in Serbia Athonite, but the patriarchs of the Serbian church were also overwhelmingly Athonite. The life of the world’s only monastic theocracy was transferred to Serbia. No other government could boast of this. St. Sava’s centrality to the founding of the Serbian state could only mean that many cynical and self-interested motives of the monarchs was superseded. It was not that they were absent, but, in most cases, were overwhelmed with the monastic presence. What else could explain how so many kings went to Athos, to live as simple novices? Why did the kings of Serbia sign their letters “slave of Christ God?” For St. Sava, the purpose of bringing in Athonites was to maintain the purity of the faith agaisnt any possible Latin incursion. Athos knew many martyrs to the Roman church, and she could always be trusted–then and now–to uphold the pure traditions of Orthodoxy.

Even the worst enemies of Serbia (and there are many) often say very little negative about Sava. How rare this is in history. Sava was, in no historical record, ever a dominator, regardless of his princely birth, but he was primarily an Athonite and an ascetic. Therefore, the state and society founded and nurtured by two monks, Sava and Simeon (Stepan Nemanjia’s monastic name) can not but be radically different from others. In Russia too, her beginnings in medieval times were though the self-sacrificial giving of Sts. Boris and Gleb, murdered without resistance by their brother Svatipolk, so as to avert a larger war. Orthodox nationhood begins with a very different set of priorities than the western.

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It needs to be mentioned that Serbia never knew any battles between Church and state. The symphony, so desired by the Byzantines, was truly achieved in Serbia. Again this is the result of th Athonite and severely ascetic tradition the state was founded on. In the west, popes fought kings and popes fought other bishops. Bloody wars resulted while Serbia, in that regard, remained placid. To suggest that church and state should be separated, as in the Leninist dictum (derived directly from 18th century Freemasonry) is to claim, first, that somehow, the state and government should be outside of God’s saving power; and second, that the state and church then should serve two masters. This can’t be done and still maintain civil peace. If one force is serving the crass utility calculus (the central tenet of modern academic historiography ; and the other, serving God, eventually society will be divided into two hostile camps, listening to two diametrically opposed voices and serving radically different ends. Eventually, of course, the purpose of separation of church and state is to enslave the church and eventually render her irrelevant. It has never been about “freedom,” but about separating the people from God and his laws. Today, true Orthodox are relegated to the fringes of society without their pious kings and warriors, assaulted daily from the forces of anti-Christ presently in control of all global institutions.

A simple question suggests itself: why did the Serbian kings not live as others did, in luxury, in huge palaces with massive entourages? Serbian princes spent their money on hugely expensive monasteries and churches (many even outside Serbia, in such places as Jerusalem, Greece and Romania), frescoed by some of the greatest artists of the time, both native and foreign, Greek and Italian. It was because they were sincere Christians who worried about their soul.

It is no accident that the Albanian savages who are currently waging a genocidal war against Serbs in Kosovo have targeted churches and monasteries. They realize that these institutions serve, as has been said, the very national and religious infrastructure of Serbia. One cannot be harmed without the other.

Furthermore, as St. Nikolaij says, these institutions were not just pretty shrines, but, in medieval times, served as hospitals and poor houses. There were few class divisions in Serbia (compared with modern America, for example), but poor did exist. In fact, laws were passed (as we have already seen in the last two chapters) that monasteries had to serve the poor or their charters were revoked. They needed a minimum of 12 beds for the hospital to maintain their charter. Again, no crass political purpose was served here; God alone was served.

It is also noteworthy the extent to which rulers who grievously sinned performed acts of public repentance. It is often unfair to rulers because their sins are proportionate to their power. Private persons sin, but because they are private, their sin remains so. Powerful rulers sin, though at the same level of moral blame, have a far greater reach and thus seem more vivid. Regardless, tsar Dusan, Milutin and Grorge Brankovic all made public acts of repentance against rival political powers they had wronged. Dusan murdered his father, but spent the rest of his life making up for the horrid guilt he felt, with numerous monasteries and churches, as well as massive donations to poor relief. This also is unique in history.

How could one forget St. Lazar? Assaulted today by the court historians of modern academia, Lazar gave up his life for the freedom of Serbia, knowing full well that he would lose the fight. Martyrdom was more appealing to him than making a deal with the Turk, and thus he gave his life. The epic poetry about his sacrifice is based on fact, though using poetic license to create a more vivid imagery. The next chapter will be devoted to uncovering these truths.

St. Nikolaij concisely defines Serbian nationalism, proving it is not for nothing that his works are actively suppressed in the historical literature:

Serbian patriotism is universally Christian, never narrow and crass. Thus could one describe the Serb patriotism of St. Sava; to place his own household in order and with the rest of his strength and resources help every people to put its house in order or to serve Christ his God in his own land and in theland of his fathers, and insofar as he ws able with the remainder to serve Christ in other lands as well, both near and far, all the way to Russia and Mount Saini, and even to the ends of the inhabitd world. Christian nationalism is universality, and universality is Christian natinoalism. The Serbs alone are bearers of this ideal, and to this day in large part, and along with the Serbs only the Russians among the members of th Orthodox familky of peoples on earth.

Literally hundreds of Serbian noblemen and women became monastics later in life. One must consider the radical form of humility necessary to make this move: one must leave all material possessions (or more accurately, place them at the service of the abbot), one must place himself under a spiritual guide and obey him in everything, and must begin as a novice or beginner. Could one, for example, consider Warren Buffet doing this? Yet it was the normal state of affairs in Serbia, for the rulers of the realm nearly all retreated to monasteries as their reigns came to an end.

Not surprisingly, St. Nikolaij turns to Europe, or rather, to that which many Serb intellectuals turned to in the 19th century. Half-digested liberalism served little more than the self-interest of the upper classes, for it demanded the destruction of the local zadruga and commune, and sought industrialization and urbanization, or rather, an alienated urban proletariat that they could manipulate. Europe for the Serbian peasant meant debt, foreign takeover of land and the destruction of family ties. All of this came true. “The Enlightenment” in all its fury came upon Serbia in the time of Milan Obrenovic, sending the peasants into debt and forcing the growth of cities and this the existence of a rootless proletariat ripe for trendy ideologies cooked up by the new elites in the Progressive or Conservative parties. The Radical party, the true Serbian party, was created to counter the rule of the west and to return the people back to the land and the traditions of their fathers. They represented a localized and ethnic anarchism that typified the pre-modern rural commune and the prosperity and equality of the Serb peasantry before the advent of westernization. During the celebration of the slava, the family would invite beggars to the slava table and feed them as if they were royalty. This is a well known custom that has curiously been left out of modern treatments of Serbian history.

Even more, the Serbian home became a mini-monastery, with its own patron saints, abbreviated typicon and regular services and fasting. Serbia became one large monastery in service to God, a state of affairs that baffle the most ardent modernists in the historical establishment. The monastery and its dependent sketes was the very repository of Serb tradition, the Serbian zadruga was a branch office of the monastic one, and acted as the real to the ideal. The zadruga had an “abbot,” the male head who voted at assemblies of the selo and rod, and a hierarchy of sons and cousins. The hierarchy was not rigid of despotic, but one based on age and experience. The natural egalitarianism of the Serbian peasant admitted not of the typical feudal arrangement, in fact, as we have seen, the Serbian peasantry never knew feudalism, serfdom or slavery.

Part of the manifestation of holiness that was the ruler-monastic alliance was the transmission tradition. What the great monastic establishments and their skete dependencies on the one hand, and the zadruga, on the other, had in common was the transmission of Serbian tradition, patron saints and festal customs. Again, the NATO bombing brought more than just depleted uranium, but also was executed with the identical attack on the Serbian church through the tightly controlled American news media. The attack on one, to repeat, is an attack on the other. St. Nikolaij says this about Serbian suffering:

The cross of the Romanians and Bulgarians was incomparably lighter than that of the Serbs. In the Turkish empire the Serb-Millet was the most despised; likewise in Austria-Hungary. Why? Because the Serbs stood steadfastly for Christ and fought for the venerable cross; because they gave their masters no peace either alive or dead. For even the blood of dead Serbs used to cry out to God an torment the conscience of their oppressors. How often are the dead a more terrifying enemy than the living

The significance of the phrase “Heavenly Serbia” simply refers to the reality of Heaven and the repose of the saints. This is another transmission belt for tradition. The Serbian home celebrates the krsna slava, and in so doing remembers all the dead, whether of their own family, or in the case of converts, those of Serbia who have died the martyrs death, continuing right up to this writing. The reason that the frescoes of the monarchs who built monasteries and churches are so prominent is not some sort of ego-stroking, but rather that the rule of saintly men, even repentant sinners, continues after their death, and that Serbia has it own choir of saints who continually make supplication to God for their people. The other world is very close to the Serbian home, and there are far more of them than there are of us. Any other interpretation is sheer academic mythmaking.

The righteous anger that rises up in every Serb when the phrase “Heavenly Serbia” is mocked and belittled is based on the fact that it was precisely this idea, this moral notion of the other world, that maintained Serbian identity during the long years of Turkish and Titoite oppression. From the comfort of posh academic offices, pseudo-scholars of Yugoslav history have mocked the Christianity of the Serbs, having not an inkling of the suffering and genocide that brought the Serbian people to look to heaven as their final homeland. From the air-conditioned lives of American policymakers, the suffering of the Serbian people remains a mystery.

Finally, St. Nikolaij speaks of the future, one intertwined with that of medieval Serbia. An Orthodox kingdom headed by Russia, the vision of Karageorge. Nowhere is that needed more than now, as the United States all but declares war on the Serbian and Russian peoples. Keep in mind that Serbian nationalists throughout the 19th and 20th century were opposed to a creation of a “kingdom of south Slavs.” What was needed was an Orthodox federation in an alliance with Russia, with the proper and necessary gathering of the Serb irredenta from south Hungary, Croatia and Slovenia. Yugoslavia was cobbled together largely by western peoples such as the Croats and Slovenes, who were worried about Italian aggression along their coastlines. As a result, the Yugoslav idea after the Balkan wars was little more than building a large confederation to fight the Italians. However, it was almost immediately after the founding of that federation that Italians and Hungarians began plotting against the Serbs, creating and financing Macedonian terrorist organizations and Croat nationalist groups. There has never been a time in Serb history where outside powers have not been plotting against her and her interests, and it is this, most of all that has shaped the Serb character of Holy Resistance.