Stega of St. Peter of Cetinje

Etymology of the name of the historical document from 1796. called "Stega" is not completely clear, but its meaning has survived to this day in the sense of tightening, strengthening the community of our ancestors, through the efforts of metropolitans and leaders. This political, legal and historical term is similar in meaning to "constitution" and indicates the imperative force that state legislation must have. Such a foundation of positive regulations acts as a constitution or barrier to the instinctive arbitrariness of groups and individuals. He must tighten and confirm the obligation to observe such regulations.

The prototype of our first state constitution is the Montenegrin and Mountain Code of six articles, adopted, it will appear, as an introduction to the much more detailed (33 articles) General Montenegrin and Mountain Code, which will be written a few years later. Steg has such monumental properties not only because of its legal intentions and hints, but also because of those constitutive orientations towards the unity of Montenegrins and the people of the mountains in a common political framework.

Learned lawyers emphasize that the content of Stega does not have a legal character in the formal sense, that it does not contain elementary conditions under which a text could be called a legal norm (namely, there is neither disposition nor sanction), but rather it is a matter of a "written obligation" or a kind of "moral law" ” which is cited in the literature as a legal text more because of the context of the time in which it was created and because of its intentions and the consequences it produced, and not because of the nature of the text itself. E.g. the specific provision from Stega that, if someone betrays - he will be damned, does not imply a positive legal sanction, nor the coercion of state institutions, but a spiritual threat.

But I mention Stega not out of ambition to talk about legal issues, but out of a desire to give an overview of the personality of Saint Peter, Metropolitan of Cetinje, whose memory the Church celebrates on October 31, and to whom we have the most to thank (along with other national leaders of the time) for this to the civilizational fact of our history. More than the legal content of this embryo of our modern statehood, I am interested in the spiritual starting point of the mentioned document. I know that many people's hair is standing on end from the new venture "pop about politics again", but I can do nothing but recommend that they stop reading right now, because what follows will be unbearable for their sophisticated secularist hearing.

Namely, this Montenegrin, conditionally speaking, proto-constitution, Montenegrin i Brdska Stega, had its basis in the invocation of God's name and was literally enacted "in the name of the holy, one and only, one glorious, indivisible into three persons of the life-giving Trinity, the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, to whom we always worship" (my free translation from Church Slavonic which is in the preamble of the text). This means that the modern state in these regions had its foundation in a clear confession of faith in God, which is not a museum rarity, but an unequivocal fact that the future civil society and the secular social contract are preceded by an age-old worldview, of which Saint Peter of Cetinje and his associates are not the leaders. cut off from themselves, nor did they run away from him, but relied on him as the only solid and safe stone for the building they intended to build in this way. And that building is precisely: the state of Montenegro.

This fits nicely with contemporary theories of political society that say we must be aware of the pre-political identities of citizens; we must count on such beliefs and emotional-spiritual connections between people; to integrate them into public life, and not to run away from them like Nepomenik from the Cross of the Lord. The term "pre-political" mainly refers to the priority that spiritual (and other) topics have in the minds of citizens before (in the sense: more, more strongly) than the newer civil regulations. However, in the case of this review of the importance of Stega, we can really talk about the temporal predecessor of what will later crystallize as a glossary of citizenship. Beckenferde's paradox (Wolfgang Beckenferde, German lawyer, member of the Constitutional Court) to put it mildly - it raises the question whether a modern, liberal state can base itself on its own positive legal regulations, or is it necessarily preceded by a foundation on something "older" than itself, and what she wants to give up? The Stega phenomenon seemed to answer his question.

In the same year 1796, not long before Stega, the Montenegrin and hill chieftains passed the so-called Decision, which documented the motives of their struggle for freedom, and where they swear by "healing the honorable and life-giving Cross of Christ our Lord and Savior, and the Holy Gospel". In the text of the Decision, these ancestors of ours say that they will fight against the "general Christian enemy" and for the "Orthodox faith and for the holy law" (then they mean God's law revealed and written in the Bible)... "for their churches and monasteries"...etc.

This reminder of the work of St. Peter of Cetinje, who was the greatest inspiration, if not the author himself, of both the Decision and the Constraint, is not presented for the reason that such texts are models of current civil political norms. In today's multi-confessional society of mutually equal citizens, this or similar wording of texts that would be generally binding would not be appropriate. However, in the same way that some ancient locomotive or the rest of the railway represent an indispensable reminder of the tradition and the beginnings of the modern railway, even if no one rides on them today, because they are no longer safe; or how modern medicine is bound by the principles but not by the literal contents of the writings of ancient doctors - so a review of these writings is a fitting reminder of the importance of texts, which are monuments to our identity. One should not chastise the one who revives the memory of irreplaceable beginnings, and who respects their spirit, - without the ambition to activate their way of acting today.

I know about ideological constructions that disparage the centuries-old and until recently living relationship between the Church and the state. Some of them try to be secularist principled and justify such negation with the fear that such conceptions will not revive today. In my opinion, this fear is unjustified, because it cannot have a basis in the conversation itself, nor in the public exchange of opinions. I don't see any serious initiative on the horizon to retroactively return today's principles of politics back 200 years, but I believe that the values ​​of today's social arrangements can be viewed on the basis of whether or not they are in conflict with the principles of one's own tradition. In this particular case, I recognize and name this interweaving of church and state themes as an authentic outgrowth of Montenegro. Something that developed here, although it was not entirely spontaneous, because it exists at the same time as the fruit of a wider spiritual heritage to which the medieval Zeta belonged and which our ancestors, led by the Saint, chose and preserved. At the time of the constitution of the Decision and the Constraint, we did not have anything similar in the environment. Everything is in the sea of ​​Ottoman occupation or Austrian organized institutions, and on the eve of Karađorđe's uprising in Serbia.

However, there are also those extremely unprincipled ideologies that would look favorably on adherence to this tradition, if only those topics were not initiated by the SPC, that is, the Church with a clear Serbian sign!? If there is anything that can be called a danger to our society, it could be that level of radicalism. Against it, we have several reasonable arguments and suggestions for thinking:

The Serbian Orthodox Church is an important and legal social factor, legally registered among the active churches and religious communities in Montenegro, with registered and legalized activities in every respect (I have written about this several times before). At the same time, it is also legitimate, because it gathers around itself the largest number of citizens - precisely in Montenegro. On those two grounds alone, the SPC has both the right and the obligation, neither less nor greater than the others, to communicate its position and reflections on the past, present and future of Montenegro, and that in exactly the way it speaks about its own identity. Of course, other religious communities have the same right to such public speech.

But in addition to those two quite sufficient arguments about the right of the SPC to reflect on topics from the Montenegrin past as its own, there is also an older and more obvious one, namely the Serbian recognition of such monuments of the culture and spirituality of Montenegro. Such an argument in no way implies the obligation of anyone today to identify with the Serbian identity of Saint Peter of Cetinje and his contemporaries. But also no obligation for someone to renounce it. In front of reasonable people, it is clear that adherents of such an identity must be freed from the wanton labeling that they are opponents of the state, serving the interests of political centers outside of Montenegro, etc. And that's only because they firmly stick to Montenegrin traditions.

The Montenegrin and Mountain Code in its third article describes potential traitors, and warns the Montenegrin who betrays that he will be handed over to eternal damnation like Judas who betrayed the Lord, and like Vuk Branković "who betrayed the Serbs to Kosovo". The story about the historical foundation of Vuk's betrayal is irrelevant here. What is relevant is the fact that this play, this conviction about the importance and horror of the Kosovo betrayal is a warning for Montenegrins, authoritative for them and obviously present in their consciousness before, that this document, created before 226, was put on paper. (Should we say: when Sima Milutinović was only 5 years old, and had just walked, outside of Montenegro?)

The content of Decision, like Stega, has similar motives and inspirations. In it, the Montenegrin leaders call their race "Slavic-Serbian" and say about their homeland that "they defended it with their own weapons from the time of the destruction of our Serbian empire, then from the time of the last prince and master of our Ivan Crnojević".

The essential intention of Stega was to bring brothers together in one thought, in one love, despite local and tribal differences. This was also the main pastoral concern of Saint Peter of Cetinje. Can we today, two centuries after his death, show that we are his collaborators in that work, and that, in that way, we are his?