Serbia in Light and Darkness | Page 8

hardships and slavery, great pilgrimages took place to the grave of the Saint, which became the comforting and inspiring centre for the oppressed nation; the Turks destroyed the tomb, carried the body over to Belgrade and burnt it, in order to lessen the Serbian national and religious enthusiasm. The result was just the contrary. On the very same place where Saint Sava's body was burnt there is now a Saint Sava's chapel; close to this chapel a new Saint Sava's seminary is to be erected, and also Saint Sava's cathedral of Belgrade. And over all there is an acknowledged protection of Saint Sava by all the Serbian churches and schools, and a unifying spirit of Saint Sava for all the Serbian nation.
Saint Sava's belief was the same as the belief of Saint Patrick and Saint Augustine. His hopes were the same as theirs too. He believed in the one saving Gospel of Christ, as they did. He hoped men could be educated by this divine Gospel, to be heroic in suffering and pure and holy in the enjoyments of life, just as the great saints of this island doubtless hoped and worked.
THE BELIEF AND HOPES OF THE SERBIAN KINGS
represented almost throughout our history the model of the true religious spirit and of the hopeful optimism of the nation. That can be said especially for the kings since Saint Sava's time until the definite conquest of Serbia by the Sultans, i.e. since Richard and John's time until the time of the Black Prince and Wycliffe, and from the Black Prince and Wycliffe till the end of the Wars of the Roses in England. Our kings did what all the kings in the world do; they fought and ruled, they ate and drank, and danced and played, and still the majority of them took monastic vows and died in solitude and asceticism, and a great part of them were recognised by the people as saints and invoked by the oppressed in the dark times as the advocates of national justice, before God. They built beautiful churches and monasteries in the towns and forests. They strove always to build the "Houses of God" more solid and more costly than their own houses. Their castles and palaces they built to their own glory, and their pleasures no longer exist, but the churches they built to the glory of God still exist. In these churches our pious kings of old prayed; in these churches afterwards our hard oppressed people wept during the time of slavery; in these "Houses of God" the fanatic Turks enclosed their cattle, their goats and sheep, their horses and donkeys, thus abasing and ridiculing our sanctuaries. But the more these sanctuaries have been abased and ridiculed by the enemy, the more they have been respected and adored by the people.
We Serbs cannot complain that our Middle Ages were as dark as the people in Europe are accustomed to represent their own. During the three hundred years of the reign of Neniania's dynasty not one of our kings was killed. The importance of this fact only the historian can understand who knows well the history of our neighbours, the Byzantines and Venetians of that time, who in many other respects had been our teachers. We learnt many useful as well as perilous things from them, but we did not learn their art of poisoning kings, of torturing them, suffocating them, making them blind, cutting out their tongues, etc. It is only in modern times that we committed the great sins of the Middle Ages, namely, killing our kings and making civil wars. During the last hundred years we killed only three of our kings: Karageorge, Michael and Alexander. In modern times three have been killed in a hundred years, and in the Middle Ages not one in three hundred years!--a fact as unusual as curious. But you should remember that our modern times in Serbia began after five hundred years of a bloody slavery and dark education under Turkish tyranny.
I mention our great sins not in order to excuse but to accuse my people. I will not even accuse the Turks, our rulers and educators during five hundred years. Our ancestors were accustomed to see human blood spilt every day. They were accustomed to hear about strangled sultans and viziers and pashas. And, besides, they lived through the record of all the crimes ever written in history; the Turks arranged a horrible bloody bath in executing their plan of killing all the leaders and priests among the Serbs! It happened only a hundred years ago, in the lifetime of Chateaubriand and Wordsworth, in the time of Pitt and Burke, in the time of your strenuous mission work among the cannibals. Our ancestors lived in blood and walked in blood. Our five hundred