Learning from Bosnia: Approaching Tradition

Introduction: The Achievement of Bosnia

Introduction: The Achievement of Bosnia It is difficult to find any book on contemporary issues published in the last decade of the second Christian millennium that does not also deal with Bosnia and Herzegovina.1 Unfortunately, this is not the result of any interest in the distinctive nature of Bosnia and its history, although there has long existed sufficient justification for that. Addressing Bosnia has been prompted, rather, by the war that devastated this country as the world looked on, its contemplation of events recast into a ritual of shame. Yet, despite the many books written about the war, and read and interpreted according to various ideological matrixes, both the country and the war against it remain, for the most part, misunderstood. Bosnia is the only European country that throughout its history has been entirely based upon a unity of religious differences, the very differences that are central to the peace and stability of the world of the coming millennium. This tendency can be illustrated with three paradigmatic accounts from the history of Bosnia. In the year 1203, in the presence of their head of state, the Ban Kulin, and before the papal chaplain and ambassador, Johannis de Casamaris , Bosnia’s religious leaders were encouraged to renounce those elements of their Christian faith and rituals that did not conform to the regulations of the Roman Church. In doing so, they were required to change their attitude toward the Other, as the following abjuration makes plain: ‘‘and no one of whom we would be certain that he is a Manichaean or any other sort of heretic shall we accept to live among us.’’2 6 / Learning from Bosnia It should be pointed out that the term ‘‘Manichaean or any other sort of heretic’’ is the equivalent of the term ‘‘the Other’’ in the discourse of today. This abjuration was the result of the will and demands of external , non-Bosnian authorities, and what was publicly foresworn was the authentic will and way of life of the Bosnian people. Their land, both before and after this event, had been and would be the home of different religions and rituals—Roman Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, Islam, and Judaism; the unity of these different sacred teachings and ways represents the principle of its continuity. In the year 1463, toward the end of the Bosnian kingdom, when the country was riven with discord among the elements of this unity, a meeting took place between the friar Andeo Zvizdović, the custodian of the community of Bosnian Franciscan monks, and the Sultan Mehmed al-Fatih, the head of the Ottoman Empire, which had expanded that same year to include parts of Bosnia. The meeting produced a letter of covenant in which these two leaders acknowledged one another on the basis of the sanctity of their paths to God: Let no man hinder or obstruct either the above-mentioned [Christians ] or their churches. Let them live in my dominion. And for those who have fled, let them be free and secure; let them return and live without fear in the lands of my dominion within their monasteries.3 These selected examples from Bosnian history are an indication of the general tendency of Bosnians to secure their right to different sacred paths. Such attempts were always connected with the presence and power of outside actors. This was to be reflected in the country’s changing legal status, while its sum total continued to be constituted by religious diversity as its essential feature. Throughout most of its history, in nearly every Bosnian town, Christians—both Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox—Muslims, and Jews have lived side by side. Indeed, the typical panorama of a Bosnian town is defined by its churches, mosques, and synagogues—a focus of diverse discourses on the one truth that is apprehended emotionally rather than intellectually. Moreover , this Bosnian totality has survived in spite of frequent external actions directed against it. From these diverse religious languages, then, a pattern of tolerance necessarily emerged. These differences were maintained over long periods , their origins to be found neither in apathy nor in the contemporary Introduction / 7 right of ‘‘choice’’ (based, in this case, on the notion of the autonomous self and the sufficiency of reason for any judgment on good and evil). Rather, the origins must lie in the roots themselves of religious singularities . This Bosnian orientation toward tolerance over the...