From the Local Sanctuary to the “Ostrog of the Djerdap”: The Role of Monasticism in Creating the Most Visited Pilgrimage Destination in Serbia

Abstract

The attractiveness or significance of each Serbian Orthodox Church monastery is determined by the space in which the monastery is located, its history, architecture or artistic value of its frescoes, but also by the monastics that resides in it. The paper starts from the fact that monastics is often the main factor that determines the extent to which a monastery will become an important and recognizable pilgrimage destination. Their openness to the pilgrims and the outside world, cooperation with the media, recognizability in public space and the way in which they promote the relics significantly affect the pilgrims’ perception of the monastery. Therefore, this paper is an attempt to examine, through a concrete and recent example, the circumstances and processes involved. The Tuman Monastery has been chosen as an example. From a small and unknown monastery in eastern Serbia, in the recent years, it has become one of the most visited monasteries of the Serbian Orthodox Church. Until five years ago, this monastery, built in the Middle Ages, was poorly visited, mostly by the locals. After the arrival of the new brotherhood in the monastery at the end of 2014, the Tuman monastery became known as the ”Ostrog of the Djerdap”. This short syntagma, which contains both a territorial and a symbolic determinant, is an attempt to enter the public sphere with a label that brings the appropriate classification in a few words, using a well-understood and accepted cultural code. The connection of the little-known monastery with practically the most famous and most visited healing monastery of the Serbian Orthodox Church stems from the need to present a monastery to the public by comparing it with something that has a clear and recognized meaning. The aim of the paper is to examine the role of the monastery’s hegumens and monks in that process, their role in promoting the miraculous remains of Saint Zosimus Sinait and Saint Jacob (newly canonized saint of the Serbian Orthodox Church) and (hyper)production of miraculous healings, which largely contributed to the Tuman monastery becoming the most visited pilgrimage destination of the Serbian Orthodox Church at this time.