Page 420 - Kosovo Metohija Heritage

Bishop atanasije (jevtić)
Icon of the Holy Healers Cosmas and Damianos, with scenes from their lives, 1674, painted by Radul, the Treasury of the Patriarchate of Peć
a long inscription at the feet of the Saints informs us that the icon was commissioned by monk Visarion, a nephew of Patriarch Mak- sim, and made in 1674. The decorative and narrative icon of the two Holy Healers, in a nicely painted and carved wooden frame, ranks among the best achievements of zoograph Radul and among the most attractive icons of the second half of the 17th century.
ans,” the very mention of history provokes haughty denial, derision and scorn. This anti-historicism, however, espe- cially by the americans, is nothing more than anti-histori- cal pragmatism, as the late academician Dimitrije Bogda- nović7 pointed out, frequently hiding a guilty conscience or a conscious intent to reject a priori any opposing or dif- ferent human and historical experience.8
7 Knjiga o Kosovu (Book on Kosovo), Belgrade, 1986. There are newer editions, as well as editions in english and French.
8 Such anti-historicism is actually anti-human, anti-biblical and anti-Christian. Christianity brought a new, truly historical concept of humanity, the world and life—because it is in history that God was incarnated and born in the body of a man and it is in history that He founded His Church—and thus the Christian, true understanding of history gives history its full meaning and significance because it as- sesses its true worth. Hence, the battle against history—which is not just the past but also we ourselves, the living people and nations, our life and work, our deeds and misdeeds, our culture and civilization— is actually a war against humanity, the war against living persons and
The Serbian people has a developed historical sense and purpose, and this Orthodox Christian, biblical historicism of ours is no “nationalism” but a deeply human sense of our worth, identity and dignity before God and humanity. it also means the conscious striving to preserve and renew authentic and intransigent values, which in turn includes in it an interest in and creative endeavor for further devel- opment of true culture and compassionate, Christian civi- lization.
Since Karadjordje’s uprising against the Turks (1804) to this day, for two centuries now, we Serbs have been forbid- den and even denied the right to self-renewal and re-estab- lishment of what we historically have been and what we can be in the Balkans, in the eastern Mediterranean re- gion, in europe and in the world. Only those individuals and peoples whose own totalitarian mentality demands that they impose upon all others exclusively their own view of the world and life have no tolerance for any other culture or civilization but their own, as Solzhenytsin has accurate- ly noted. This has, unfortunately, often been and remains today the attitude of a significant number of people, intel- lectuals and rulers from the West, who publicly advocate and support intolerance toward Orthodox Byzantium and peoples and states, which developed their history and cul- ture in continuity with the Byzantine Orthodox tradition of culture and civilization. This is largely the prevalent at- titude today of a part of the international community to- ward the real, historical and current, problem of Kosovo and Metohija.
endowments-Holy Shrines of Kosovo and Metohija show the Serbian character of Kosovo
Despite all the present-day tragedy of Serbian Kosovo and Metohija, for which Nazis and Fascists, Serbian Commu- nists and neo-Communists, albanian neo-Fascists and cer- tain Western neo-colonialists are to blame, the clearest and fullest testimonials about us and our Serbian Orthodox Kosovo and Metohija still remain our HOLY eNDOW- MeNTS—the Churches and Monasteries of Kosovo and Metohija, which have been located here in uninterrupted continuity from the 12th to the 21st century. Consequently, it was with a peaceful conscience that His Holiness Serbian Patriarch Pavle could tell the european and american pol- iticians and NaTO generals in Kosovo, upon their arrival in the Serbian Province, on june 18, 1999 in Gračanica: “All that we Serbs are here is represented by our Holy Shrines” The Patriarch repeated this many times during the horri- ble summer of 1999, when the infernal hatred of the alba-
nations, the repression and eradication of our human and all-human historical memory and identity. Only individuals and nations who have no history or who would like to forget history because of their own guilty conscience can be against history.
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