The Making of the St. Jovan Vladimir Cults

Figures

Figure 1: Icon of Jovan Vladimir and his wife Korsara

Figure 2: Map of Southeastern Europe (960)

Figure 3: Reconstruction of the historical lord Vladimir of Duklja

Figure 4: Map of Duklja (1693)

Figure 5: Map of Southern Montenegro and Northern Albania

Figure 6: Page From Lucic’s Regnum Dalmatiae et Croatiae Gesta

Figure 7: Piccini’s engraving of St Vladimir in the first Greek Prayerbook (1690)

Figure 8: St Vladimir’s vision and founding of his monastery

Figure 9: Vladimir and Korsara in the dungeon

Figure 10: Žefarović’s St Jovan Vladimir image (1741)

Figure 11: The Andrović family with a banner and the cross

Figure 12: Nikolai Pavlovich’s illustration of Raina fainting (1874)

Figure 13: St Vladimir riding headless to St Naum monestary at Ohrid lake

Figure 14: Locals in Bar raising a concrete cross (1995)

Figure 15: Night Virgil at St John Vladimir Monestary near Elbasan (2023)

Figure 16: Map of identified sites in the former Ohrid archbishopric.

Figure 17: Pesočani village (2022)

Figure 18: Fresco of St Vladimir at St Naum (2022)

Figure 19: St Vladimir with angels returning to punish Tsar Ivan Vladislav

Figure 20: Montenegrin and Macedonian presidents in Bar (2022)

Foreword

Among Southeastern European Orthodoxy, it is a tradition that a person or family has a slava – a sort of patron saint that guards the family and gives names to most of the family members. In many ways, Jovan Vladimir has been my own slava for as long as I have studied church history in Southeastern Europe. My first encounter with the saint was on the Montenegrin littoral more than ten years ago. The saint’s legend quite quickly became an integral part of my perception of Southeastern European history. His love story with Kosara, the daughter of Tsar Samuel, is a theme at the very heart of European romances. It came to sit at the crossroads between the Byzantine and Slavic-speaking worlds and its theme entangled with Western imagery. It opened my eyes to what these legends are beyond mere historical sources – they are gateways to humankind’s dreams, hopes and imaginations about the future.

For more than a decade, I have slowly gathered all the pieces of material, stories, love songs and icons related to Saint Jovan Vladimir in order to write this book. The saint might not be the most well-known in the Slavic world, and has clearly been surpassed by his contemporary name-brother, Volodymir (Rus. Vladimir) of Kyiv. However, Jovan Vladimir’s story is just as fascinating, intrinsic and riddled with political, national and clerical ambitions. The long story of the saint makes him a roadmap to all the corners of Southeastern European state- and church-making. The saint is, like so many other saints across Europe, the building block for the dynasties of the nation-states and the pillar of churches to come. These stories and symbols of the saint contains much hope, love and loss, as they have become sources to lost glory, bloody rebellions and dreams of independence. This book is a departure into Southeastern European history viewed through the saint’s many cults. The study is structured as a longue durée – one that stretches across more than 1000 years and focuses on how nations and churches take form, from memories, stories and symbols attached to the saint.

I am deeply thankful to the Centre for Theology and Religious Studies at Lund University, which hosted me while I worked on this project. A more warm, welcoming and thriving milieu is hard to find in academia. There is so much in this book I owe to colleagues there, whose sharp eyes and comments have helped me to turn my thoughts into a comprehensive book. In particular, thanks to Thomas Arentzen, Aron Engberg, Samuel Rubenson, Erik Sidenvall, Andreas Westergren and Ryszard Bobrowicz for comments and discussions – and Blaženka Scheuer, Alexander Maurits and Johanna Gustafsson Lundberg for providing room and support to my project.

I owe much as well to colleagues abroad, who have discussed theory, method, material and even helped me locate sources. I am deeply grateful to my colleagues Wawrzyniec Kowalski, Mitko B. Panov, Dieter Stern, Stefan Trajković Filipović, Veneta Savova, Andi Rembeci and Mihai Dragnea.

The project was funded by the Danish Independent Research Foundation, and the funds for fieldwork and visit abroad came from the same foundation’s Elite Research prize, which I was awarded for my PhD. A thanks to the foundation and its trust in the realization of my project amidst the pandemic, where the idea of fieldwork abroad seemed impossible.

A final thanks to my father, whose interest in history and Eastern Europe is the source of my own. I am thankful that he has been able to accompany me on some of the travels – and has taken my frustration with ease when we were passing through a deep, almost impregnable, mountain pass and were stuck on destroyed roads on our way to locate sites in Southeastern Europe. This book would also not have been possible if my wife had not continually supported the work and if she and our kids had not travelled with me across Southeastern Europe. I owe them much, for the time I dragged all of us through the swamplands of Lake Skadar in 40 degrees to find the ruins and monasteries – or when we were stuck in the disturbingly heavy traffic in the city of Shkodër in Albania during rush hour in a heatwave.

Notes on Language

The study incorporates material from quite an array of languages. I have tried to refer to the language in its most original form and the form the author might have known. This sometimes means that the language is referred to as the quite large category of “Slavic” or “Štokavian” to avoid any national interpretation of authors that were long dead before national categories came in place. The latinized and anglicized names are given preference, as is the case, for example, with Lake Skadar, which in Albanian is called Shkodër. Most names also use the Latin version of Slavic with š, ž or Đ, or the standard alliteration, whereby Lovćen becomes Lovchen. This also has some implication for the name of the saint, which most often will be just “Vladimir.” In a Serbian context (and chapter), the Serbian name, Jovan Vladimir, will sometimes be used and referred to; in an Albanian context, Shën Gjon will be used.

Introduction

Two young Montenegrin artists take the stage. In front of them, hundreds are gathered, including Serbian clergymen and local Montenegrins dressed in folk costumes in the Montenegrin city of Bar. At the front stands a particularly large golden cross and an icon of a Slavic prince, who holds his head in his hands. The two females, Danica Crnogorčević and Zorica Vučeljić, start to sing in Serbian with a fast pace:

When do you come, oh young champion?

Joyful they come, joyful they sing;

Who have given you that kind of joy?

Saint Jovan has given it to me, Saint Jovan of Elbasan

And may you also be full of life!

On the same day, hundreds are gathered in Elbasan in Albania. The crowd consists of Muslims, Christians and interested locals without affiliation. They carry the body of the same saint around their ancient monastery and sang the very same song – “Shën Gjon of Elbasan.”

These two celebrations of the saint in Bar, Montenegro and Elbasan, Albania are fairly new. They are a revival of older rituals that were in existence before the communist takeover in 1945. The current modern form reveals not only the extent of the revival of religion in Southeastern Europe but also how the stories, symbols and saints of the past play a renewed role for local communities, revived churches and national sentiments. These rituals are not only of a religious nature. They carry deeper political messages and a particular religious sense of identity attached to the nationhood of Serbs, Montenegrins, Albanians and other nations of Southeastern Europe.

At the centre of all this stands St Jovan Vladimir. A ruler of the past, whose virtuous deeds, martyr-like death, and the miracles that arose from his grave carved him a place amongst the local saints. Vladimir is one of the oldest of the Slavic saints of Southeastern Europe, murdered in 1016. He has become a particular symbol of both national delimitations but also transnational cooperation. Observing Serbian clergymen in Montenegro who sing of a saint that dwells in Elbasan in Albania is a rare occurrence. This book is a study of how this came to be. The continual shaping of St Jovan Vladimir reveals religious, political and nationalistic power at play through history. The saint has been put on the theatrical stage to defend the Serbian nation, Bulgarians have song folksongs about his love with their empress, Croats have made him sing an opera of how all people of Southeastern Europe should unite – a call also heard by the archbishop of Ohrid in present-day Macedonia, who crowned the saint as a martyr and stand next to the “teachers” of the Slavs, Saint Naum and Clement. Saint Jovan Vladimir, his cults and the memories attached to it are a crossroads of national and religious movements. Thus, the study of him provides insights into how religion, ideologies and institutions, and even nation-states, come into being in Southeastern Europe.

It is perhaps hard to imagine that the cleric who recorded the stories of the saint had all this in mind in the twelfth to thirteenth centuries. In the magnificent Greek tradition of the saint, Jovan Vladimir has a vision from God that tells him to find a monastery in Elbasan. The Greek-writing author calls him “a second Constantine,” as a second emperor to rule all Southeastern Europe, like Constantine the Great, who ruled the Roman world in the fourth century. The death of the saint at the hands of his heretical brother-in-law and scheming wife earned him this place, according to the Greeks. It was a place sanctioned by God, whose election of the saint in the Greek tradition becomes clear when the saint rode with his cut-off head in his hand along Lake Ohrid to pray one last time at a church, before he gave up his life. The similar Latin tradition has a longer and more dramatic narrative than the Greek. In the Latin text, the young Lord Vladimir defended his men at a mountain outpost. He and his men were surrounded. The saint finally gave himself over to his enemies to save his soldiers, as a shepherd sacrificing himself for his sheep, as the Latin author remarks. Vladimir was imprisoned by Tsar Samuel, but the daughter of the tsar, Kosara, fell in love with the saint. Samuel was, in the Latin text, touched by this love and so frees the prisoner. Vladimir and Kosara are then married. The following death of Samuel put his nephew, Vladislav, in the position of tsar. Vladislav soon controls the realm and fears Vladimir’s power. The new tsar, Vladislav, therefore tries to deceive Vladimir with a promise of safe passage on a cross and lures him to his capital. Vladimir is protected from ambush on the roads by God’s angels, but Vladislav finally manages to strike when Vladimir leaves a church after prayer. Vladimir is beheaded. Soon after, miracles and a whisper of Vladimir’s sanctity spread. The Latin tradition ends with a scene of revenge, when Vladimir and angels kill the wicked tsar in his tent during a siege. The Latin and Greek traditions stand as prime examples of the emerging literary traditions of the Slavs and the peoples of Southeastern Europe. It is perhaps also for that very reason that it became material to make and think about nations, states and institutions to come. The stories allowed authors and clergymen to dream of a lost pious ruler and a golden age of Slavic heroism free of Greek, Western and Ottoman rule. The story itself, the sources, the re-envision and re-enactment of the saint are the focus of this book.