By Biagio Carrano
In the tenth tale of the sixth day of the Decameron, Giovanni Boccaccio recounts the prank that Giovanni and Biagio play on Friar Onion (Frate Cipolla), who had promised the gullible peasants of the Certaldo countryside that, provided they made sufficiently generous offerings, he would show them none other than: “one of the feathers of the Archangel Gabriel, which was left in the chamber of the Virgin Mary when he came to announce the Incarnation to her in Nazareth.”
The two pranksters manage to enter the room where Friar Onion is staying and swap the box containing the feather (actually a parrot’s feather) with one filled with charcoal. Thus, when the moment comes to display the relic in church, Friar Onion opens the box of charcoal. Faced with the bewilderment of the peasants, however, he launches into an impassioned speech, declaring that by divine miracle the box containing the feather had been exchanged for the one in which he kept some charcoal used to roast Saint Lawrence – another relic of equal importance.
In the end, Giovanni and Biagio, recognising in Friar Onion a man cut from the same cloth as themselves, congratulate him on his quick wit and return the parrot’s feather – or rather, the Archangel Gabriel’s feather.
Those were the days, when people in the supposedly dark Middle Ages mocked the way clergymen exploited popular credulity. And today, when we no longer believe in miracles but in the answers of Artificial Intelligence, do we still believe in relics or not? The answer can only be yes.
At least 400,000 Serbs have already queued up to contemplate a fragment of the Virgin’s Girdle, brought to Belgrade from the Monastery of Vatopedi and placed on display in the Church of Saint Sava. Such has been the devotion – queues stretching for hundreds of metres day and night – that the exhibition has been extended by a further seven days, until 5 June.
This represents an impressive demonstration of the Serbian Orthodox Church’s capacity for mobilisation and influence over public consciousness. It is as though the decades of rationalist and secularist indoctrination in the former Yugoslavia had never happened. When more than one-tenth of an entire nation queues up to admire – or, in their own understanding, venerate – a piece of fabric woven from camel hair, believed to possess miraculous healing powers, sociologists and psychologists may apply whatever theories and interpretations they wish, but one objective fact remains: for a substantial portion of the population, religious faith is a central element of existence, an identity-defining factor (as in every Orthodox Church), complete with pre-modern elements of superstition. To view such phenomena with condescension or disdain only widens the already considerable gap between different segments of Serbian society.
The country’s rationalist, secular and often educated circles frequently end up astonished, and sometimes outraged, by the scale of this phenomenon, which in Catholic countries is known as popular piety and is quite widespread. Indeed, scarcely a year passes in Italy without the remains of some saint, ancient or recently canonised, being displayed: Padre Pio, Saint Francis, even the teenage saint Carlo Acutis, whose face has been reconstructed in silicone and presented as though the miraculous preservation of his original features had occurred.
Such forms of popular devotion are not regarded as indicators of cultural or social backwardness, let alone of primitivism – a word so beloved of certain Serbian elites who proclaim themselves modern.
In a complex society, individuals harbour conflicting aspirations and impulses. The heavily cosmetically enhanced mistress may be a sincere believer; the young man firmly opposed to the government may feel protected by the icon of his family saint; transgender pilgrims travel to Montevergine every February. To judge certain manifestations of popular spirituality negatively, to define them as forms of fetishism or magical-pagan thinking (as was heard on the opposition’s flagship television programme Utisak Nedelje), or to regard them as expressions of sectarianism, are themselves attitudes characteristic of the sectarianism found among certain strata of Serbian society who describe themselves as educated, integrated, modern, European and socially conscious, yet constantly emphasise their distance from the common outlook of their fellow citizens. In doing so, they condemn themselves – consciously or otherwise – to remain a minority that always believes itself to be on the side of what is right, good and rational, as though human lives were perfectly rational algorithms.
This massive expression of religious sentiment has, however, been well understood by the parties currently in power. When the next elections come around, there will be no shortage of statements and slogans invoking this phenomenon, praising it and defending it against the condescension of certain intellectuals. And it is not difficult to predict how the many Serbs who waited for hours to see the Virgin’s Girdle are likely to vote.