Public monuments in sacred space memorial tombs as national monuments in nineteenth century Serbia

Abstract

One of the most common forms of public monument in the nineteenth-century Serbian memorial culture was the memorial tomb. Marking the graves of prominent people is one of the oldest forms of memorialization. In the nineteenth century, memorial tombs were erected on sacred ground, something that was made possible by the fact that the church in Serbia was not only a religious institution but a national, public one as well. In the nineteenth-century culture of remembrance, memorial tombs placed in sacred spaces were erected for wa heroes, and heroes of cultural, political and religious life. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, the graves of prominent members of the nation were, according to the national ideology, promoted into public national monuments and thus functioned as an important place of remembrance and active agents in the construction of national identity. During the second half of the nineteenth century, the strengthening of nationalism raised the need for the erection of national monuments. This led to the adoption of contemporary European monument forms, which could be found among numerous examples of memorial tombs erected in sacred spaces during the nineteenth century. The aim of this paper is to give a survey of public monuments in sacred spaces in nineteenth-century Serbia, to analyse the reasons for the erection of national monuments in sacred spaces, and to consider their place within that space, as well as differentiating the practices of their erection.