Serbia’s recent history: more than half a million people have paid homage to the Holy Girdle of the Most Holy Theotokos so far. The relic arrived at the Church of Saint Sava on 20 May from the Vatopedi Monastery on Mount Athos, and due to overwhelming public interest, it will remain in Belgrade until Saturday, 6 June. Such a remarkable turnout goes beyond the significance of the relic itself and raises broader questions about the place of religion, tradition and collective identity in contemporary Serbian society.
For Orthodox Christians, the Holy Girdle of the Most Holy Theotokos is one of the most venerated relics. According to Church tradition, it is the only surviving relic originating from the earthly life of the Mother of God. For the Serbian people, it also holds particular historical significance. Tradition holds that during the fourteenth century, the Holy Girdle came into the possession of Prince Lazar, who subsequently donated it to the Vatopedi Monastery on Mount Athos, where it remains to this day.
Yet the overnight queues and hours spent waiting in the sun transcend individual piety and historical memory, prompting questions about the significance of religious rituals and their power to bring people together within the context of modern Serbian society.
The Holy Girdle as a collective ritual
The arrival of the Holy Girdle of the Most Holy Theotokos is an example of how religion, tradition, and politics intersect in contemporary Serbia. Between deep personal faith and mass ritual emerges a space of popular religiosity, in which the relic simultaneously functions as an object of veneration, a source of personal hope and prayer, a historical symbol, and a marker of collective identity.
The French sociologist Émile Durkheim would have described this social phenomenon as collective effervescence – those rare moments when large numbers of people share the same ritual and experience a sense of belonging to something greater than themselves.
Many of those present emphasised that the time spent waiting in line posed no hardship, given the sacred nature of the object they had come to venerate and the rarity of such an encounter. In the queues, where the oldest and youngest share the same moment, strangers become fellow believers, and personal faith takes the form of a communal act.
According to Durkheim’s theory of the sacred, holiness is not an inherent property of an object; rather, it is created through collective belief and the rituals that a community builds around it. The Holy Girdle serves as living proof that, despite the emphasis on individualism in contemporary society, the need for shared rituals and a sense of belonging has not disappeared. On the contrary, it appears more vibrant than ever.
Touching the sacred
Unlike the traditional pattern of pilgrimage more commonly associated with Catholic practice, the arrival of the Holy Girdle in Belgrade was a rare occasion on which the sacred object came to the faithful, rather than the faithful travelling to it. The Church stresses that faith and prayer are the essence of veneration, yet among ordinary people, the relic is also perceived as a source of concrete and tangible hope. Those who paid homage to the Holy Girdle were able to take home a blessed ribbon as a physical reminder of their encounter with the relic.
But who are the people waiting in these queues? The answer is far from straightforward, and those present cannot be placed into a single category. Among them are undoubtedly deeply religious believers, but also individuals motivated by family tradition, as well as those drawn by cultural and historical fascination.
It is precisely this diversity of motivations that reveals the social power of ritual. For some, it is an expression of profound faith; for others, an act of tradition, curiosity, or perhaps a desire to belong. Yet the act of veneration itself unites everyone within a shared experience. Durkheim would argue that ritual makes no distinction between theologian and curious observer; it draws everyone in equally.
The Holy Girdle in the age of reels and stories
The phenomenon of venerating the Holy Girdle has also acquired a digital dimension. On social media, you have almost certainly seen at least one post from friends standing in line outside the Church, even if you had never previously regarded them as particularly religious. Photographs from the queue, accompanied by cross emojis, appeared alongside pictures of cheesecake from fashionable restaurants. In this way, the Holy Girdle confronts us with a dilemma: is faith still primarily an intimate act, or has it become part of a public performance of identity – something displayed in the digital world as much as it is experienced inwardly?
A second dimension is represented by posts from public figures, particularly those from the entertainment industry, as well as individuals most commonly associated with reality television aesthetics or influencer culture. Recording Instagram stories in a nightclub and waiting in line before a sacred relic are not necessarily contradictory acts; rather, they reflect the layered nature of individuals in contemporary society, whose identities cannot be confined to a single category. In that sense, this is not necessarily hypocrisy, but simply the reality of being a twenty-first-century person.
It seems, however, that the desire for visibility within the sacred sphere is not limited to influencers and ordinary citizens. The President of Serbia, who welcomed the relic at the airport, stated that Serbia would be “less exposed to attacks by great powers” thanks to the arrival of the Girdle. In a single sentence, a relic nearly two thousand years old was transformed into an argument of foreign policy.
Perhaps the reactions to the Holy Girdle, both in the virtual world and in everyday life, tell us more about contemporary Serbia than about the relic itself.