Original scientific paper
MEMORIALS OF AN ERA: THE POLITICS OF CHURCH REBUILDING IN THE FORMER YUGOSLAVIA. THE CASE OF CONSTRUCTIONS OF AN ORTHODOX CHURCH AND CATHOLIC CATHEDRAL IN SPLIT, CROATIA, DURING LATE COMMUNISM AND PRE-WAR CRISIS, 1971-1991
Vjekoslav Perica
; Rockville, Maryland, United States of America
Abstract
This article is built on primary sources that include the author's research in the offices of stale commissions for relations with religious communities with numerous interviews carried out between 1985-1991. It examines church stale relations and interconfessional rivalry under communism in the former Yugoslav federation of six republics.
Construction of new religious facilities, especially in case of building of significant edifices symbols of religious and ethnic identity, was a popular practice by which religious institutions animated the faithful, sought to break the isolation imposed upon them by the regime, and symbolically expressed resistance against the communist system, and finally, competed with one another in a society with three major religious institutions and over forty minor religious groups. The analysis tracks down coinciding processes of rebuilding of two significant churches symbols.
One is a Serbian Orthodox memorial church dedicated to the chief Serb national saint Sava, built in neo-Byzantine style, and installed amidst a historic Romanesque block in the predominantly Croatian Catholic town of Split. The other church under construction was the city's co-Cathedral of St. Peter the Apostle damaged in World War II.
The two construction ventures mirrored political currents and were affected by politics while themselves making politics. In the aftermath of the regime's backlash following the Croatian quest for more autonomy within the Yugoslav federation, the Cathedral was reduced in size and relocated to an inappropriate site. Builders of the St. Sava's church, meanwhile, defied recommendations by experts to adjust its style to the surroundings or change the location. Even though the authorities offered financial assistance with the construction permit the Serb church in Split remained unfinished. In the late 1980s as ethnic tensions grew and the multiethnic country was on the brink of war and disintegration, leaders of the Serbian Orthodox church and propaganda in the capital of Serbia Belgrade exploited the Split case as an evidence of discrimination against the Serbian ethnic minority in predominantly Catholic Croatia. The Serbian church, utilizing the unfinished temple, also attempted to revive symbolically the ancient Byzantine/Roman disputes over the church community in the ancient city in order to imply that there existed a long tradition and "continuity" of religious disputes in this region. Yet, both the Croatian authorities and the Catholic church sought to appease the Serbian church, rather than to accept the challenges. This case demonstrates that the Serbian Orthodox church followed the militant course of the regime in Serbia, which was the principal firebrand of the 1991-95 Balkan war.
Keywords
Hrčak ID:
212176
URI
Publication date:
1.7.1999.
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