The thousand plus pages of this book constitute a thorough examination of the Serbian Church's official attitude towards Kosovo. Edited by Bishop Maxim Vasiljevic and based on The endowments of Kosovo: monuments and testimonies of the Serbian people,Footnote ¹ this substantial volume allows non-Serbian speakers to gain an insight into the connection between Serbian culture, religion and folklore, and Kosovo, the geographical area whose status as Serbia's southernmost province or as an independent country in its own right is still under much dispute.

Through transcripts of folk songs, paintings, frescos, photography, poetry, prose and scholarly texts, with contributors as varied as Rebecca West, Ivo Andric and G. K. Chesterton, as well as numerous high-ranking representatives of the Serbian Orthodox Church, including the late Patriarch Pavle, Metropolitan Amfilohije Radovic and Bishop Atanasije Jevtic, the book ‘aims to nourish the reader's personal reflection and seeks to stand as a verbal and pictorial monument to the martyrs of the great Kosovo Covenant, bringing the wealth of this covenant before the public worldwide’ (p. 15). In doing so, it seeks to explain Serbia's claim to a piece of land whose population has not been more than 10 per cent Serbian since the 1980s (in 1981 the population was 13.2 per cent Serb; by 1991 the population of Serbs had fallen to 9.9 per cent).Footnote ²

The Christian heritage of Kosovo and Metohija is organised into eight sections that give the reader a comprehensive understanding of the major aspects of the Serbian Church's relationship to Kosovo. Beginning with the ‘Spiritual endowments and aesthetic insignia of Kosovo and Metohija’, it explores the physical remains of the Serbian medieval state that flourished in the region from the end of the eleventh until the late fourteenth century. Alex Dragnich and Slavko Todorovich's ‘Serbia's monuments in Kosovo and Rascia’ (pp. 33–50) is a useful starting point for those interested in the development of the Serbian architectural style and the political events that helped to shape it.Footnote ³ Building upon the political influence on medieval Serbia's architecture, Slobodan Curic contributes an insightful piece on the reign of the Serbian king Milutin (1282–1321) and its influence on the building of Gracanica monastery (pp. 131–44), one of the primary architectural monuments in the region. A worthwhile read, this chapter introduces both the political events and the major architectural trends of the central Balkans at the turn of the fourteenth century.

The rest of the book is structured chronologically. Chapters of note include ‘Kosovo covenant and Serbia's historic destiny’, an exploration of the myths that align the catastrophic Battle of Kosovo in 1389 with the betrayal of Christ in the New Testament. Milica Babic-Hayden's ‘De-mythologising “The Kosovo myth”’ (pp. 313–22) details the centuries of myth-making that made Kosovo and its historic battle central to Serbian identity throughout the centuries of Ottoman rule. Subsequent chapters include ‘Serbian Christian cities and holy shrines of Kosovo and Metohija’, which documents the monuments that are used by some as proof of Serbia's historic claim to the land, before entering into ‘History, identity, legacy’, a collection of historical texts and contemporary reviews, ‘Serbia after the 1389 Battle of Kosovo’, combining ‘sources and testimonies’ listing atrocities committed against Serbs with poems and prose, and ‘Contemporary accounts of the renewed martyrdom’. In general, the more the book progresses, the more emotive the language becomes and the further it strays from an unbiased study of the Christian monuments in this part of the Western Balkans.

While the numerous sections of this book give a great deal of space to airing and explaining the opinions of those Serbs who feel emotionally connected to Kosovo, it goes into disappointingly little depth about the actual artistic and architectural details that made the medieval Serbian state an important part of Balkan, and indeed European, history. Important artistic schools and trends are mentioned in the text with little supporting detail: for instance, the seminal Raska style is described as superior to other schools at pp. 32–5, but it is never actually explained or examined in any great depth. However, the edition's excellent colour reproductions of frescos and other artwork do somewhat make up for the lack of specific details.

Of course, the highly emotive subject of Kosovo is plagued by polarised opinions on the part of both Serbs and Albanians. It is promising that Bishop Maxim states in his introduction that he intends the book to help the area's inhabitants to discuss their situation ‘not from what divides them but from what unites them’. However, the volume's treatment of Albanians in Kosovo seems to have the opposite aim. In a book that refers to Albanians as ‘rabid’ (p. 447), and to Islam as a ‘cult’ (p. 124), which includes a thirteen-page chronicle of crimes committed by Albanians against Serbs between 1904 and 1905 while not referencing any equivalent action from the side of the Serbs (pp. 680–3), the well-furrowed path of hatred is allowed to flourish. The list of oversights and misinformation prevalent in this book goes directly against Bishop Maxim's stated wish, while tragically reinforcing the perception of Serbia as an angry aggressor. For instance, unfounded claims such as there being no historical Albanian monuments in Kosovo (p. 40) do little to redeem Serbia's tarnished reputation in the eyes of much of the international community. This is a great shame.

Overall, this book is certainly a worthwhile read. It allows an international audience to access a great range of material regarding an important part of south-eastern European history, with many articles and memoranda appearing here in English for the first time. However, while it does explain the multiple reasons behind Serbia's prolonged attachment to Kosovo, its genuine academic value is obscured by the varying quality of its contributions and the authors’ political agenda.