DOŠLIĆ: CANDLEMAS THE BEGINNING OF LIBERATION AND CREATION OF STATEHOOD

BANJA LUKA, FEBRUARY 14 /SRNA/ - Senior assistant at the Department of History at the Faculty of Philosophy, University of Banja Luka, Dejan Došlić tells SRNA that Candlemas/Sretenje for the Serb people represents the beginning of centuries-awaited liberation and the creation of modern Serb statehood.

Došlić has reminded that Candlemas is one of the greatest Christian holidays, which celebrates the day when the Virgin brought Christ to the Church for the first time, where he was welcomed by a righteous old man - Saint Simeon the God-receiver, to whom the Lord promised that he would not die until he saw the Savior. "In one sense, Candlemas signifies the meeting of the Lord the Savior with his people, his church, which is embodied in Saint Simeon the God-bearer. We can say that this symbolism can also be transferred to the history of the Serb people. The people has been waiting for centuries for liberation from Ottoman slavery, so it was on Candlemas in 1804 that the uprising began, the Serb revolution, which lasted in several stages," Došlić stated in SRNA podcast. Došlić stated that history has yet to show the results and significance of last year's Pan-Serbian Assembly, stating that the results depend on the concrete activities of the Serb people, but that throughout Serb history, the Assembly represents one of the basic foundations of statehood. "Assemblies apear early in historical sources, as early as the early Middle Ages, while from the time of the late Middle Ages and the coming to power of the Nemanjićs, the assemblies become one body in the history of the Serb people and the Serb state, where the most important decisions are made both on the internal and external level," said Došlić. He emphasized that attempts to revise history are very intense in the area of BiH where three constituent peoples and three histories, cultures of remembrance live, and that the determination of the Serb people to look at historical facts plays a key role in preventing the revision. "What we can do is to observe historical sources and what they say," said Došlić. Speaking about the symbol of the golden lily, Došlić explained that throughout history this symbol has been translated by the Serbian people as "The Virgin's flower", representing the symbol of the Blessed Virgin Mary in the Christian world. "That symbol is attracting a lot of attention today because it was used as a symbol of the so-called Army of BiH in the last war," said Došlić. The new episode of the SRNA podcast, whose guest is Dejan Došlić, senior assistant at the History Department at the Faculty of Philosophy, University of Banja Luka, will be available to users of our service on the YouTube channel and social networks as of tomorrow 10:00 a.m.