Written By: Archpriest Jovan Plamenac
This is the first day of 2025. in Cetinje, committed by Aco Martinovic, killing twelve people, aroused a feeling of deep sympathy in the Montenegrin people, but also stirred up a constantly stirring spirit of Montenegrin intolerance. As the people lit candles for the rest of the souls of those killed, social networks flared with accusations and hatred. Very quickly, from the political, generally pragmatic reasons of this crime, it moved to the mystical, even spiritual ones.
New Year 2025. the year began with another crime that stunned the world. Cetinian ACO Martinovic killed two children and ten more of his fellow citizens, including his close relatives.
This event, naturally, aroused a feeling of deep sympathy in the Montenegrin people, but also among many outside the borders of Montenegro. That feeling, in fact, continued on him very similar after, also on Cetinje, Vuk Borilovic 2. August 2022. he killed ten people, including two children. But this event-unnaturally-stirred up the constantly stirring spirit of Montenegrin, to put it mildly, intolerance.
Some have placed responsibility for this crime on the current government, its police, but also on the Serbian Orthodox Church. Others hold responsible the regime of Milo Djukanovic, which for three decades survived on divisions in Montenegrin society, primarily national, mostly Montenegrin-Serbian, but also religious.
THE SIEGE MENTALITY
Three days of mourning were declared in Montenegro, the remaining New Year's concerts and other public gatherings were cancelled. Montenegrin officials issued a list of condolences. The people lit candles. At the same time, social networks flared with accusations of "those of others", and hatred.
Even Milo Djukanovic said: "an event that, in a frightening way, unfortunately, once again confirms that Montenegrin society is in conditions of deep crisis and threatened security of every citizen, every child.“
The deputy of democratic Montenegro Momcilo Lekovic immediately responded to him, calling him a "pathological hater and a political vulture": "in these saddest days, while silence dominated the streets of Montenegro and while sympathizing with every benevolent man, the greatest gravedigger of our country announced himself – a man who has been merciless for more than three decades.he buried the Justice, security and dignity of every Montenegrin House. In his distinctive manner, he demands responsibility from the state and institutions, while his traces of guilt are deeply etched in every corner of this country.“
On Djukanovic's side of the ramparts of the Montenegrin division into Montenegrins and Serbs, the "greater Serbian Third Reich", that is, "ideological children of genocide", was accused on social networks of the crime of Cetinje. On the other hand, it was heard: "there is something called 'siege mentality'. It's when a group of people live in the belief that they are under constant attack, that someone is haunting them, are you, and that they are trying to harm them. In such an environment, a kind of collective psychosis is created, which individuals feed on each other, and become collectively more abnormal. ( ... ) How pronounced the mentality of the siege in that city has been for decades can be seen from their mythological battles with the so-called. With the Seventh Battalion (literally it did not happen), the hunting guards н (.) for example, even when they are literally besieging the church, they think that they are the ones who are under siege, when they are beating numerically and physically weaker children according to the seminary, they think that they are defending themselves. Their collective state of consciousness is distorted and they are constantly on the edge. Or do you think it's accidental that such monstrous massacres happen so easily in such a small environment? (Наравно) of course, apart from the Tsetas themselves who have allowed themselves to be brought into this position (.), the biggest blame lies with those who actively radicalize and abandon them because their business model depends on it.“
Very quickly, from political, in general pragmatic reasons, crimes on Cetinje, shifted to mystical, even spiritual ones. Some claimed that they were the result of the enthronement of Metropolitan Joanikije 5 of Montenegro and the littoral. September 2021. the year in which the Montenegrin national organizations and movements, led by the Democratic Party of socialists and with the support of the president of Montenegro Milo đukanović, brutally resisted Cetinje, for which Metropolitan and Patriarch Porfirije reached the throne of the Metropolitans of Cetinje in the Cetinje monastery, which was under siege, by helicopter, with a strong special police force and under a bulletproof blanket. Others, concluding inversely with the former, believe that the Cetinje crimes are the consequence not of the enthronement, but of this attempt to prevent it, unreal in the history of Montenegro.
CALLED MEMORIES
It also brought back memories of earlier crimes in Cetinje. One is 21. November 1823. in the "Epistle to Njegusim", Metropolitan Peter I, the later Saint Peter of Cetinje:
"I have long seen that I cannot live here, and here comes the time to flee from the power of Cetinje under old age from Cetinje. Yesterday they struck Fairy Tales against the children of donjekraj, before the monastery, which carried grain into the mill; my men jumped up and did not let them take the grain. The guns were used to kill us. Behind this, there was a battle among the fairy tales and Donjekrajci for the whole day, some Donjekrajci in the Wallachian Church, and the fairy tales around the church and on each side around the lower end. The children who had gone to the mill must not return home, they invited our boys to take them to the houses, and they first went, took out their faith in Bajicah so that they could freely translate them, then they took the children to follow, and when they came by the church on velja meadow, they met them with fairy tales and killed in their hands one of Spadier's maidens, which panned dead on their feet and stained their clothes with blood. They tell me that they also took the spikes and goats of the church, which we handed over to the winter in the lower part. Now think if this is possible. If I lived among the Turks, I would not suffer as much zulum as I suffer from the Montenegrins.“
From the ashes of his forgetfulness, the curses of St. Peter of Cetinje were broken, which he pronounced to those who shed fraternal blood, but also to those who took church property. Also, the destruction of the church dedicated to him in 1972. in the year, when a Muslim from Bistrica near Bijelo Polje, ISO Mahmutovic refused to demolish a Christian shrine and left his job, and it was destroyed by people bearing Christian names. They recalled that Rade Radoman, the director of the Cetinje Enterprise "gradnja", the main organizer of the immediate demolition of the Church of St. Peter of Cetinje on Lovcen, drowned in Skadar Lake a few years later, with his son and comrade Šaković, and how this event was perceived as – "the punishment of God came upon him". Then, the early death of Bob Bogdanovic, a great Cetinje fighter for the Montenegrin self against the Serbian and a fighter against the church, and the death of his son…
In an effort to understand the fate of Cetinje, the late historian of the state archives, Peđa Vukić, was summoned, who in an interview with Mišo Vujović, published in 2000. years in "Duga", and later in his book "Crnja I Gora", besides many more, he said:
"I have lived in Cetinje almost since birth, for 35 years. So to say, from a young age, I have been showered with the cult of Cetinje, stories about how Cetinje is a place with a great and glorious history and tradition, how it represents a symbol of self, morality and ethics. ( ... ) The role of Cetinje in recent history deserves a deeper analysis. With the arrival of King Alexander, they shout and reject King Nicholas. When the Italians came to Cetinje, they were welcomed as liberators. As they shouted to the Italians in 1941, so they did in 1945. call the communists. The same people did it all. (К) The Cult of aggression, the cult of violence was immanent to my generation. This means that he who did not know how to play football, who did not know how to fight, was in fact regarded as strange, abnormal, not quite pure. However, one thing must be admitted: although this cult of violence ‘terrorized’ people, although everyone was not comfortable living in Cetinje, before 1990. it was snotty. There was no chauvinism. (.) In these ten years, Phantom ideological processes of far-reaching importance have taken place in Cetinje, not only for Cetinje but also for Montenegro. The people formally broke with the Serbian consciousness of their ancestors. This break is more drastic on Cetinje than in any other environment in Montenegro. If you tell the Chetniks today that, if not Serbs, they are at least Serbs of Origin, the overwhelming majority will consider it the greatest insult. (.) The people believe that the Serbs, as a people and serbdom as an ideology, are the root of all the troubles that Cetinje has been following for sixty years.“
Just as when a doctor, poking through the depths of a man's soul in search of the cause of his difficulty, reaches the prenatal age of his life, so in search of the cause of the Cetinje cottage comes to the founder of Cetinje. When Mehmed II conquered in 1478. the Ruler of Zeta Ivan Crnojevic fled to Italy. There, in the Church of the Virgin in Lorraine, not far from Ancona, he swore that if he ever returned to Zeta, he would build a church dedicated to the Most Holy Theotokos. After returning to Zeta, 1482. in the Cetinje field he built a palace, and two years later a church dedicated to the birth of the Most Holy Theotokos. There he found the descendants of Ivan Borojevic, who with his sons Boroj, Vladislav, Vushur and Dragoslav in the first half of the 15th century. he came from Zlatibor, from the old Vlach.
Ivan The Black is 4. January 1495. he issued a charter on the establishment of the Cetinje monastery, with which he annexed almost all his property in the Cetinje field, its surroundings and Lovcen, and in other parts of the state he governed. He transferred the seat of the Metropolitanate of Zeta to the Cetinje monastery.
Today we celebrate 4. January as the foundation day of its city, referring to the "Charter of the foundation of Cetinje" that does not exist.
Prince and Lord of Montenegro Nikola and Petrović by decree of 17. June 1895. he said: "most solemnly, we confirm to the monastery the right of ownership of the land, on which the town of Cetinje, our capital, is erected, and let everyone know that this land remains for all subsequent times in the exclusive property of the Cetinje monastery holy and inviolable.“
REMEMBERING THE TERRIBLE CURSE OF IVAN CRNOJEVIC
Cetinje was largely built on the land that Ivan Crnojevic left in the ownership of the Cetinje monastery by his Charter. Many, until not so long ago, brought a contribution to the monastery, as compensation for the use of the church land on which their houses are located. They had the fear of God derived from living memory of the terrible curse of Ivan Crnojevic, which he pronounced in the Charter on the establishment of the Cetinje monastery:
"If anyone is taught by the sower of evil and our adversary the devil, to take away or change anything from what we have written, such is that he is cursed by The Mighty right hand of our Bishop, the creator of heaven and earth, and by the power of the holy and life-creating cross, by the 12 great apostles and the 70 others, and by the 318 Holy Fathers of Nicaea, and by all the Saints of the ages to God let him be like Judas the traitor and those who said," Take, Take crucify him, his blood be upon us and upon our children, " and so that the most pure mother of God may be a rival in a terrible and immoral judgment.“
Photo from the monastery (Cetinje Monastery-Guardian Of Relics)
Source: IN4S
12. January 2025.
