Introduction

Roof and Foundation

”On your knees, Master! You are on the roof of Motherland!”
That is what Holy Nikolai of Serbia ordered Aleksandar the Liberator on September 21, 1925, at the entrance of the just renovated Njegoš’s covenant church and sepulcher on Lovćen. The king knelt down, kissed the stone reliquary, took off his medal from the Great War and placed it next to the relics of the Bishop and Poet, and lay down his supreme commander’s sword on its cover. Three gifts, three scepters, ”three mother’s hearts”, merged into a triune shrine. Into ”a motherland greater than the one we have got”.
The year 2022 was the fiftieth year after the aggression of the Titoists government destroyed the shrine on Jezerski Vrh. A pharaoh-like mausoleum was imposed in its place, a temple of a sinister foreign faith. A cold seal on the forehead of Motherland. Matica Srpska – the Association of Members in Montenegro published a reprint of ”The Fate of Lovćen” this year, a thematic double issue of the Belgrade Art magazine from 1971. It was edited back then, wisely and courageously, by Dejan Medaković, Živorad Stojković and Lazar Trifunović. The text lists all the great men of Serbian and South Slavic culture who signed a request not to touch the Chapel. We can read how Popa, Kulenović, Raičković, Kostić, Pavlović, Isaković, Ćosić, Selimović, Srbinović, Bećković, Kašanin, Rakitić, Mihiz, Lalić, Hristić, Brančiko. Komnenić, Simović… lamented over Lovćen and over us.
Supporting contemporary requests to rebuild Negoš’s little church in Lovćen, to overcome tragedy and stop the history of forgery, National Review is dedicating it the cover page of its last issue for 2022.