An essay in universal history from an Orthodox Christian Point ofView part the age of revolution

faction. But in 1858 the Obrenovi

es returned to power. Then in 1868 Prince Michael and his family were murdered...
In 1844 Ilija Garašanin, Minister of Internal Affairs under Prince Alexander of Serbia, published his Na

ertanije, or "Blueprint". This was in effect a blueprint for a Greater Serbia that would include the Bosnian Croats, since they were considered to be Catholicized Serbs.
“Garašanin's project,” writes Misha Glenny, “was informed by a historicist approach, recalling the supposed halcyon days of Tsar Dušan's medieval Serbian empire, and by a linguistic-cultural criterion. The sentiment underlying the Na

ertanije seemed to imply that where there was any doubt, it could be assumed that a south Slav was a Serb, whether he knew it or not.”⁴⁵⁰
The Na

ertanije, according to John Etty, “was the main development in Serbian nationalism. Though concerned about upsetting them, this secret document identified Turkey and Austria-Hungary as obstacles to Serbian greatness and detailed, in order of ease of acquisition, the annexation of all Serbian-speaking regions. Although implementation was delayed by domestic disruption, such expansionist aspirations were significant. Before 1890, Nikolai Paši

(future Prime Minister) referred to the Na

ertanije when he explained ‘the Serbs strive for the unification of all Serb tribes on the basis of tradition, memory and the historical past of the Serb race.’”⁴⁵¹
Garašanin looked to Russia as a likely patron of Greater Serbia; but Nicholas I's foreign minister Nesselrode was not interested in the idea of a Greater Serbia, which would inevitably drag Russia into yet another war with the Ottoman empire...
Serbian nationalism flourished especially in Montenegro, a tiny but completely independent Serbian principality on the Adriatic coat. It had a peculiar system of Church-State relations, as Adrian Fortescue writes: "In 1516, Prince George, fearing lest quarrels should weaken his people (it was an elective princedom), made them swear always to elect the bishop as their civil ruler as well. These prince-bishops were called Vladikas... In the 18th century the Vladika Daniel I (1697-1737) succeeded in securing the succession for his own family. As Orthodox bishops have to be celibate, the line passed (by an election whose conclusion was foregone) from uncle to nephew, or from cousin to cousin. At last, in 1852, Danilo, who succeeded his uncle as Vladika, wanted to marry, so he refused to be ordained bishop and turned the prince-bishopric into an ordinary secular princedom."⁴⁵²
Danilo's predecessor was Bishop-Prince Petar Petrovic Njegoš⁴⁵³. In view of the Serbian wars of the 1990s, it is important to note the long-term influence of his poem, The Mountain Wreath, which glorifies the mass slaughter of Muslims who refuse to convert to Christianity. The principal character, Vladyka Danilo, says:

The blasphemers of Christ's Name
We will baptize with water or with blood!
We'll drive the plague out of the pen!
Let the son of horror ring forth,
A true altar on a blood-stained rock!
In another poem Njegoš writes that "God's dearest sacrifice is a boiling stream of tyrant's blood".⁴⁵⁴ A defensive armed struggle against the infidel for the sake of Christ can be a good deed. But there is little that is Christian here. Even Bishop Nikolai Velimirovi

, an admirer of Njegoš, had to admit: "Njegoš's Christology is almost rudimentary. No Christian priest has ever said less about Christ than this metropolitan from Cetinje."⁴⁵⁵

This bloodthirsty and only superficially Christian tradition was continued by such figures as the poet Vuk Karadji

, who called the Serbs "the greatest people on the planet" and boosted the nation's self-esteem "by describing a culture 5,000 years old and claiming that Jesus Christ and His apostles had been Serbs."⁴⁵⁶ This perverted tradition was to have profoundly damaging effects on the future of Serbia. But it must be remembered that the truly Christian tradition of St. Savva also continued to exist in Serbia…