Below are images of the monastery and Serbian Orthodox nuns, and bishop, and monk at the door of the monastery church. After the two images shown, we present a brief overview by Michael Sells of the situation that led to the destruction of Zitomislici, and an essay on the history, significance, and destruction of Zitomislici by András Riedlmayer of the Fine Arts Library at Harvard.

These photos make up part of the exhibit entitled The Thin Veneer. They have been taken from the catalogue: The Thin Veneer: The Peoples of Bosnia and their Disappearing Cultural Heritage (ISBN 0-929597-11-7) with the permission of Professor Halpern, who holds the copyright, and with the permission of University Gallery at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, which hosted the original exhibit from April 13-June 7, 1997.

From The Thin Veneer, p. 12:

The Serbian Orthodox monastery of Zitomislici in Herzegovina, south of Mostar, was reconstructed on the site of an earlier complex during the Ottoman period. It was dynamited into fragments in 1993. Because of land mines throughout the area the site has been almost inaccessible to photographers in recent times. A late 19th-century painting by the Viennese painter Rieffenstein shows the monastery in the background and its abbot, Seraphim, in the foreground.

From The Thin Veneer, p. 8:

Serb Orthodox Bishop Vladisav with monk and nuns at the 15th century monastery of the Annunciation at Zitomislici in 1961. This Serbian villge was located on the east bank of the Neretva River Between Mostar and Capljina. The village and monastery have been destroyed by Croat forces and the Serbs driven out. Photo by Andrei Simic:

In May, 1992, Bosnian Serb nationalist Radovan Karadzic and Bosnian Croat nationalist Mate Boban met in Graz, Austria and agreed to cooperate with one another in dividing Bosnia between Croatian and Serbian control, and to collaborate in destroying the Bosnian Muslim community. Subsequent events suggest that "Herceg-Bosna" President Boban gave Serbian forces a green light to expel or kill all Croats and Muslims in Serbian designated areas, and "Republika Srpska" President Karadzic allowed Boban to expel or kill the Serbs and Muslims in the self-declared Croatian entity of "Herzeg-Bosnia" in western Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Two months later, in July, 1992, an expedition of the Croatian Defense Union (HVO) set out from the town of Medjugorje, the popular pilgrimate site for visions of the Virgin Mary. The force was allegedly accompanied by Dr. Vlado Palameto, an art historian from Stolac, one of the inner circle of Boban's Herceg-Bosna mini-state. The HVO attacked the ancient Serbian monastery of Zitomislici, killing the monks, and systematically annihilated this ancient and priceless sacral site. As this text is being written, the HVO refuses to allow public access to the remains of the Zitomislici monastery complex.

The Zitomislici complex had no military significance and the HVO attack was part of the policy of cultural genocide that was carried out in accordance with the Boban-Karadzic agreement and collaboration.

I have been trying for some time to get a hold of photos showing the current condition of the Zitomislici monastery, in the aftermath of its destruction by the HVO in the early summer of 1992. A friend who works for a humanitarian aid NGO in the area tried to take some shots for me in August 1996, but when he consulted the Spanish SFOR batallion in charge of patrolling the area, he was told the site and the side-road leading to it were mined and overgrown, as were the ruins of a nearby village from which Serbs had been "ethnically cleansed" by the HVO (also in the early summer of 1992). The Spaniards told him they had no immediate plans to clear the mines, as they had other priorities, and they advised him in no uncertain terms to keep away from the place.

Even though the ruins of the monastery are just a few hundred yards from the busy highway that connects the Dalmatian coast with Mostar, the site remains inaccessible, both because of the mines and because of the close watch kept on it by Bosnian Croat authorities. On April 17, 1997, an Australian free-lance reporter was arrested and detained by West Mostar police for trying to take pictures of the destruction in Zitomislici.

Through inquiries with Mr. Slobodan Mileusnic, the director of the Museum of the Serbian Orthodox Church in Belgrade, I have recently managed to obtain some photos of the ruins of Zitomislici, taken in the summer of 1993. The latter was a time when the HVO and the Bosnian Serb Army had an informal alliance against the Sarajevo government forces -- during that period a Serbian Orthodox Church delegation, led by Bishop Atanasije, who heads the diocese that encompasses Herzegovina and adjacent parts of Dalmatia, was allowed by the Croat nationalist authorities to visit several Orthodox sites in the areas under HVO control. Bishop Atanasije's report of his tour, cited several times in Mileusnic's book _Duhovni genocid = Spiritual Genocide_, makes for sad reading. It appears from several sources that in all of Bosnia-Herzegovina it was in the Neretva valley region that Orthodox religious heritage suffered some of its most serious losses (especially the Zitomislici monastery and Mostar's two Orthodox churches).

At the same time it should be noted for the record that Bishop Atanasije, who so movingly laments the fate of Orthodox churches and monasteries in his diocese, has himself been an enthusiastic proponent of the destruction of houses of worship belonging to other denominations. He has publicly applauded the actions of Serb extremists involved in the burning of ancient mosques and Catholic churches and the mass expulsions of non-Serb civilians from eastern Herzegovina. Bishop Atanasije has denounced Dobrica Cosic and Vuk Draskovic for having made statements deploring the destruction of mosques; he has even engaged in personal attacks against Patriarch Pavle for having made conciliatory remarks on this subject [see the article by Milan Milosevic, "Conflict within the Serbian Church: Pavle versus Atanasije," Vreme Daily Digest 221 (25 Dec.1995)].

As to Zitomislici, it has a fascinating history. According to several sources I've consulted, the monastery church was erected around 1566 on the site of an earlier foundation fallen into ruin. Within the church was a portrait of the donor, spahija Milislav Hrabren (Miloradovic); in fact, the whole monastery appears to have been an endowment for the souls of the Hrabren family. The interior of the monastery church was decorated with wall paintings in 1609. Its iconostasis, painted in 1710 by the icon painter Mihailo, was of exceptional artistic value. The monastery treasury held a collection of illuminated manuscripts from the 16th-18th centuries, mementos of a time when Zitomislici had one of the most active Orthodox monastic scriptoria in all of Ottoman Bosnia and Herzegovina.

A monograph by Ljubinka Kojic, _Manastir Zitomislic_ (Sarajevo: Veselin Maslesa, 1983), reproduces the text of a 16th-century Ottoman document concerning the building of the monastery church:

"In 1566, the kadi of Nevesinje issued a decree to the vojvodas Petar and Jovan with the following content: 'Since the Orthodox church has fallen down in the village of Zitomislici, in the township of Dubrava of the Nevesinje district, permission was sought from this shariat court; seeing that the repair of Orthodox churches is permitted according to the shariat (Islamic law), therefore with this document issued to the vojvodas Petar and Jovan, the construction of the aforesaid house of worship is permitted, so that no one shall hinder or obstruct them, because the Sultan himself has permitted them to pray according to their own law and custom.'"

Petar and Jovan were also members of the Hrabren family. They are termed vojvoda, a title used in Ottoman times for Christian notables who performed administrative and security functions at the local level for the Ottoman government; Milislav Hrabren (the donor depicted in the founder's portrait in the church) is termed a spahija, sipahi in Turkish, meaning he held a land-grant from the Sultan in exchange for regular military service in the Ottoman army's campaigns. While by the 1600s most spahis in Bosnia were Muslims, Christian spahis are frequently encountered in documents dating from the first century of Ottoman rule.

In short, while the founder of the monastery was a pious member of the Orthodox Church (and certainly not a Muslim), he and his family were part of the local Ottoman establishment. Far from being powerless subjects groaning under the "Turkish yoke" and biding their time for the distant day of liberation (as goes the nationalist historical myth), these were people integrated into a culture and society where religious boundaries did not necessarily constitute an impermeable barrier. The Hrabren family were able to amass wealth, hold official positions, serve the Sultan in military and administrative capacities ... at the same time that they were patrons of an important Orthodox religious foundation. Zitomislici in its heyday (16th-18th c.) was not only an impressive work of religious art and architecture, but also a leading center of the Orthodox religious and cultural tradition in this region.

Five centuries in the life of any locality cannot really be termed an "occupation" -- as if it were just a passing phase. Over this long a period, cultures are formed and transformed and act on each other in profound ways. Abdulah Skaljic's dictionary of Turkish loanwords in Serbo-Croatian runs to over 600 pages and is nearly two inches thick -- acculturation of this level cannot be dismissed as a mere byproduct of oppression. The fact that Orthodox Christian culture not only persisted but (at least in some cases) flourished during this period is at once testimony to the vitality of the Orthodox tradition and a challenge to the received view of Bosnia's Ottoman centuries as 500 years of unrelieved oppression and cultural stagnation. Zitomislici is (or was) one piece of evidence suggesting a more nuanced interpretation.

The destruction of Zitomislici was begun in June 1941, when an Ustasha detachment murdered the monks, looted the church and the monastery treasury and burned down the large refectory building. The church was restored and the monastery buildings partially rebuilt after World War II.

In early July 1992, after the HVO had seized military control of the lower Neretva valley, an organized group of Croat militants from nearby Capljina and Medjugorje descended upon the monastery, set fire to it, systematically dynamited and razed the burned-out church and monastery buildings (using a bulldozer), blew up the tomb of the Serb priests and vandalized other graves in the adjacent cemetery. The small Serb village just to the north of the monastery was also completely burned out around this time (June-July 1992).

Among those present at the destruction of Zitomislici -- according to some accounts -- was Dr. Vlado Palameta, a Bosnian Croat art historian from Stolac, living in Medjugorje at the time and part of the inner circle of Mate Boban's "Herceg-Bosna" government. In the wake of the Dayton Accords, Dr Palameta has been appointed as the designated Croat member of the Commission for the Preservation of National Monuments, established under Annex 8 of the peace agreement.

Andras Riedlmayer

The destruction of Zitomislici failed in its aim. The HVO forces that dynamited the shrine and killed its priests, monks, and residents not only failed to destroy its memory, but the efforts of local and international people of good will, from all faiths, have come together to reconstruct the site and revitalize the heritage it represents. The effort to efface Zitomislici has led to a widening and deepening of interest in the site and its heritage. For this extraordinary example of the reslience of spirit in the face of hate and destruction and for the power of heritage to help create bonds across tradition, see:

Zitomislici, Images of Renewal

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