June 28, 1389! THE KOSOVO BATTLE DAY! St. VID'S DAY!

Kosovo battle spiritual significance

Ethic Codex of Saint Vid’s day

28. June 1389.

(…) It should be emphasized that the Vidovdan (St. Vid's Day) commemorations are not celebrations of a Serbian military victory over the Turks, for the Serbs (officially) were not victorious in the Kosovo Battle.

However, it is incorrect, and even malicious, to claim that at Vidovdan commemorations the Serbs “celebrate their defeat in the Kosovo Battle.” Such a statement has no logical or historical support. According to the historical documents, the Turks had not won a victory in the Battle of Kosovo. Neither a military victory nor a military defeat are not and could not have been either the reason or the meaning of Vidovdan commemorations.

On those occasions the Serbs honor and commemorate the heroes of Kosovo who laid down their lives defending their faith, freedom, nation, and country. At the same time, Vidovdan commemorations are the annual reviews of the post-Kosovo Serbian generations. They are evaluated in terms of Vidovdan-Kosovo ethics and on the basis of their reconfirmation of the Pledge of Kosovo. On Vidovdan, June 15, 1389, on the Kosovo Field, the Serbs chose once and for all their religious, cultural, ethical, and national identity. Their choice, in the form of an unwritten pledge, was handed down to all post-Kosovo Serbian generations and, through 600 years, Serbs have lived by that pledge.

Fortunately, Serbian Kosovo ethics remain unchanged and those values will always endure for all future Serbian generations. Those values, briefly defined, are as follows:

-Uncompromising faith in God, without which there is no genuine philanthropy; 

-Philanthropy, as a confirmation of the professed faith in God; 

-Firm dedication to Christianity as it is confessed by the Orthodox Church; 

-Priority of the spiritual over the material; 

-Faithfulness to God, nation, and motherland; 

-Freedom as a precious value for which everything should be sacrificed, whereas it should not be sacrificed for anything in the world; 

-Honesty, righteousness, and love for peace – virtues to be practiced by individuals as a basis for healthy social relationships; 

-Placing common interest above personal interests and readiness to sacrifice for those interests; -Compassion to be extended even to enemies; 

-National unity as a condition for national existence. 

This testament, this set of ethics of Kosovo, represents the greatest importance of Kosovo and Vidovdan. 

Inseparable through six centuries, it is the reason we celebrate Vidovdan today.

What old history books say about Kosovo

I recently came across the book published in London 1916, with title Kosovo Day (1389-1916) ; For Cross and Freedom – Serbian Motto; I browsed the Library university of California, L.A. It tells the true story of Kosovo, before the bribed politicans and dishonest geopolitical trade ”adjusted” the history according to their present day interests.

Here are several smaller paragraphs; but they speak a lot. Their streinght is not in the number lines, but it the sparkling truth within:

(note that Islam here means Turkey since the most common expression for converting to Islam the Serbs use could roughly be translated as: To – Become – a – Turk (po -Turc -hiti se)

The Kossovo Day, London 1916, 

(https://www.scribd.com/doc/27940730/Kosovo-Day-1389-1916-For-Cross-and-Freedom-Serbian-Motto), p. 4 -6 quote:

… The Serbian crusade against Islam neither began nor finished with the battle of Kossovo. It began under Tsar Dushan (in the time of the Black Prince in England), whose ally was John Kantakusen, and it has continued since with fluctuating results. 

In 1371. the Serbian king, Vukashin of Macedonia, lost his life with 60,000 fighters on Maricza river (near Adrianople) resisting Murad’s invasion. 

The Kosovo battle, Serbian hero Milosh
 Obilic

In 1387. Lazar’s army, under the Voivode Milosh Obilich, at Plocnik, near Nish, crushed another Murad’s army in such a measure that scarcely a fifth of it escaped.
Soon afterwards the Turks suffered a complete deroute on the frontier of Montenegro. Then, in 1389, supreme efforts were made on both sides to settle the conflict definitely. The battle of Kossovo was fatal for the Serbs, but still the victors were themselves so exhausted that they only succeeded wholly in conquering Serbia seventy years later (1459).The Serbian resistance practically never ceased, even during the slavery under the Turkish yoke. It glowed, like a fire under theashes,during centuries in the form of local rebellions, which were cruelly suffocated in blood, till 1804, when it, under Karageorge, grew into a liberating Revolution, which was a success.
Finally, the Serbian crusade against Islam finished under the King Peter and King Nicholas in 1912. Today Serbia is downtrodden and enchained by the powerful allies of the fierce Turk: Germans, Magyars, and Bulgars.
The Christian Kaisers from Berlin and Vienna started a brutal and merciless crusade against the Serbs, who have been,with all their Slavbrothers settled in Croatia and Slovenia, protecting barrier for them during centuries.
Now it is a question which is really the Christian nation:
the Serbs, who unsupported fought and suffered horribly for Christianity during five hundred years, or the Germans, who made their glory, allied with Ottoman Islam, in crushing the little Serbian nation?
There is a Serbian proverb, “The sword in the hand of the Turk is less dangerous than the pen in the hand of the Shvaba’ (German).“
It is so.
Never has Serbia suffered KOSSOVO DAY in history as she suffers today.
The Turks conquered Serbia by their real personal heroism; the Germans conquered Serbia recently not by their heroism at all, but by their industry. As a matter of fact Krupp, and not Siegfried, conquered Serbia.
While the conquest of Serbia will remain forever a shame for Germany and their barbaric allies, it will remain forever in the same degree a new glory for Serbia.
In their lucid hours the Germans called Serbia, der Leuchtthurm des Ostens* (the shining tower of the East}. Yet pushed merely by their rough and materialistic instincts, they despised all the ideals with which their ancestors, from Barbarossa the Crusader to Hegel the Philosopher, made so much noise and annoyance in the world.
They declared war on Russia and France, and in two years they succeeded in conquering Belgium and Serbia. Is it not like Tartaren, who went to hunt the lions in the forest and killed two cats, and boasted, boasted?
However, suffering Serbia smiles ironically and looks forward hopefully. In her present hour of supreme misery she is inspired by the memory of Kossovo. During 500 years under a criminal Turkish regime Serbia found always In this memory of Kossovo an immense source of force, virtues, and life.
She celebrated Kossovo Day both in the time of darkness, and in the time of light and freedom.
Well, at the present moment, suffocated and abased by the Christian Sultans, Serbia will look back towards her greatest day in history, towards Kossovo Day, and will live. The killers of Serbia can find a source for their life and glory only in their iron factories, but Serbia’s sources of life will be God’s justice and her allies; God’s justice for which the saint Tsar Lazar sacrificed his life, and her true and great allies, among whom Kossovo is the oldest and most inspiring one. ”
– END QUOTE
The next chapter mentiones Serbian Emperor Dusan the Mighty:
TSAR STEPHEN DUSHAN
S. Dushan was the greatest Serbian king. He ruled in the time of Edward III and the famous Black Prince. He routed the Turks wherever he met them. Seeing how incapable Byzance was of resisting the Asiatic invaders, Dushan planned to conquer Constantinople, to stop the Turkish invasion, and to save the Christian Balkans, But he died suddenly in the midst of his successful action. C. Oman says:
”Dushan ‘s death produced in Byzance not joy but fear. Who will henceforth victoriously resist the Turks ? A delegation was sent to Dushan ‘s wife not only to condole, but to arrange a common action against a common enemy.” ” It would, perhaps, have been well for Christendom if Stephen Dushan had actually conquered Constantinople and made an end of the Empire. In that case there would have been a single great Power in the Balkan Peninsula, ready to meet the oncoming assault of the Turks. But Dushan was not strong enough to take the great city, and to the misfortune of Europe he died in 1355, leaving a realm extending from the Danube to the pass of Thermopylae.”
C. W. C. OMAN, Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford. The Byzantine Empire. London, 1892. p. 327-328.
Serbian king Vukashin and Heroic Battle on the Maritza river: 
On September 25, 1371, the Serbian King, Vukashin of Macedonia, with 60,000 fighters, perished in heroic resistance against the Turks on the river of Maritza, Cernomen, near Adrianople.”
The victorious Turks now ranged freely over the field of battle, henceforth called the Srb-siindighi (‘The Defeat of the Serbians’ )” – FELIX KANITZ, Das Konigreich Serbien, Leipzig, 1914.
About the Kosovo field: 
“The battle which was to decide for five centuries the fate of the Balkan Peninsula was fought on the plain of Kossovo, the ‘field of blackbirds,’ as it is called in Serb, from the flocks of those creatures which frequent it.”
Shut in by a chain of mountains, and of vast extent, the plain seemed intended by Nature for an Armageddon of nations. Around this spot, the Waterloo of Balkan freedom, clusters a whole literature of patriotic ballads, from which it is no easy task to discern the true story of that fatal day”, etc…
Read the old books, people. Read the history before it became a part of political and imperialist PR business. Those who forget their history are doomed to repeat it.

Serbian KOSOVO and METOHIJA

by William Dorich

author of the 1992 book “Kosovo”

The magnitude of Kosovo reverberates across the centuries. It has survived 609 years and throughout the succeeding generations Kosovo has become the inspiration of an entire nation. And through its grandeur and its religious example it has influenced other nations to seek freedom. Kosovo permanently changed the face of Europe and altered history. Kosovo, 100 years before Columbus sailed for the New World, was a statement for religious freedom and the belief that no man had a right to rule another. Rather than to consent to become slaves to tyranny, the Serbs willingly gave their lives for their religious belief. Seldom in history have we witnessed such a commitment. The Serbs on the Kosovo Field not only paid with the staggering loss of 77,000 lives in one day of battle, but the Serbian nation suffered 500 years of Ottoman slavery as the consequence. Historians have never spoken of Kosovo as though it were an event in the past that will never happen again. Through the centuries, Serbian sacrifice and Kosovo have become synonymous.

The Serbian people have continually assumed that in every century they would again find it necessary to defend their rights to their land, self-determination, and freedom of worship. History in the Balkans continuously repeats itself! In 1690, more than 180,000 Serbs were forced from Kosovo and, again, an equal number were exiled in 1737. After the Congress of Berlin, in 1878, another 150,000 Serbs were expelled. This ongoing trend took on tragic proportions following the war in Crete between Turkey and Greece in 1897. Diplomatic efforts to stem the tide of atrocities against Serbs were useless, but documentation remains to testify to the crimes committed against the Serbian population. The Balkan war of 1912 was fought not only by Serbs but by Montenegrins, Bulgarians, and Greeks to liberate their people from centuries of uninterrupted Islamic aggression. The situation is little changed today.

To understand Kosovo, the American people need to compare the current Balkan crisis with its own American Civil War in which just 4% of the population lost their lives compared to Serbia who lost 52% of her adult male population in WWI and another 26% of her overall population in WWII. Readers of this forum need reminding that during the American Civil War it was the loyal Virginia citizens who refused to secede from the union and formed the state of West Virginia in 1863. Certainly Serbs deserve the same rights to remain in their union, a union which was internationally recognized as a nation in 1878 at the Congress of Berlin.

Not a single head of state, nor any American president, senator, or humanitarian group raised their voices as 200,000 Serbs were “ethnically cleansed” from Kosovo in the last 2 decades. People should be asking, why are the Serbs destined to suffer and be persecuted?

In September 1992, Jehoshua Porat, reporting in the Israeli daily Ha’Artz, claimed: “It seems we have caught the same syndrome as the Russians — fear that we shall lose billions of dollars from the United States and the West if we say something good about Serbs.” Serbs are perplex when the media proclaims Kosovo as Serbian territory, then encourages the Albanians who comprise a majority in just the last 40 years, to secede and seek self-determination while denying the Serbs that same right in Croatia in 1991 in areas where Serbs were the majority and in Bosnia in 1992 where Serbs represented 31% of the population and owned 62% of the land. It was arrogant that the world awarded the Bosnian Muslims for gaining their majority population through their genocide of the Serbs in WWII. Awarding the Albanians for the same disgusting deeds in Kosovo would make a mockery of democratic principles.

During King Milutin’s reign of 40 years (1281-1321), he built 40 churches in Kosovo. There are more than 140 Serbian churches and monasteries in Kosovo, a significant number having been built before 1459. More than 75 were built after 1459. There are also more than 80 church ruins that date prior to 1459. The actual seat of the Serbian Orthodox Church was first established in Kosovo at the Pec Patriarchate in 1346 (pictured at the top of this page). The Patriarchate remained in Pec until 1939, when in fear of WWII it was moved to Belgrade. The surviving Monasteries of Pec, Decani, The Virgin of Ljeviska, and Gracanica are monuments to the Serbian people, their dedication to their faith, and a testimony to their cultural achievements.

The time has come for a more balanced and fair assessment of the situation and a review of the facts, not hysterical propaganda. As the Very Rev. Mateja Matejic has observed, “Serbs were the first to anticipate the grave peril coming at one time from Islam and then from Nazism and finally Communism. They were the first to resist … making the victories of others possible, even if they themselves were defeated.”

The pages above are intended to provide the discerning American reader with historical facts unethically withheld from them by the partisan press and American politicians with a hidden agenda in the Balkans.

Source: There Must be Justice| Thank you from the bottom of my heart Grey Carter