Artana Cathedral

The ruins of the cathedral church of St. Nicholas on Novo Brdo () are the remains of a medieval Serbian Orthodox church from the 14th century, which was the seat of the bishops of the Serbian Orthodox Church in Novo Brdo and Gracanica.
The temple was built in the middle of the 14th century and was extended during the time of the despot Stefan Lazarević and after 1455. It was built in the Romanesque style of the basilica and until the fall of Novi Brdo under Ottoman rule it was the main Orthodox place of worship. Later, under Ottoman rule, it was turned into a mosque, only to be destroyed in an earthquake and remain in ruins to this day, as well as the remains of the town of Novo Brdo, which was soon abandoned. 
In 1897, Serbian Consul General Todor P. Stankovic visited Novo Brdo, visiting Serbian antiquities. There he found a mosque about 140 years old, and on the south-eastern side of the ruins of Novi Brdo he came across the remains of the Orthodox Church of St. Nicholas. Until the middle of the 19th century, the Serbian population gathered in the church once a year. Near the church is the old toponym "Mark's Cross". 
Church of St. Nikola was researched in the 60s of the last century, and numerous inscriptions and elements of stone plastic were found there, which clearly indicate the origin of the temple and its style. Numerous Serbian graves were found within the temple. 
Not far from the remains of this temple are the remains of the city's Roman Catholic church, the so-called Saxon church, named after the Saxon miners (Sasim), who, in addition to Dubrovnik merchants and the local Serbian population, formed part of the rich and diverse cultural and religious mosaic of medieval Novi Brdo, as one of the most important cities in medieval Serbia. It is said that this "Saška church" was taken by the Turks in 1466, and the following year, 1467, the Nobobrds miners were displaced to Constantinople and the coastal areas. In 1466, the Turks turned the church into a mosque.
Attempts of Steal.
At the end of May, the Prime Minister of the so-called state of Kosovo, Ramush Haradinaj, and the German ambassador based in Pristina, Christian Helt, appeared on the foundations of the Church of St. Nicholas under the fortress in Novo Brdo. They came, as it is known from the scanty news, to mark the completion of the restoration of this destroyed temple. Germany provided the money, and Haradinaj later said on his Facebook profile: ""The Artan Cathedral as a cultural and religious heritage is a story in itself, it enriches our identity and is proof of coexistence in these areas, Germany is financing a project important for Kosovo culture and history - the Church of St. Nicholas in Novo Brdo"," which he claims is Roman Catholic, although it is an Orthodox medieval shrine, Belgrade has reacted only by the personal initiative of the work of the scientific public and the Serbian Orthodox Church.
According to official information from our paper, the value of German aid to the Pristina endeavors in Novo Brdo, where the medieval Orthodox Church was forcibly converted into a three-nave Roman Catholic church in the 21st century, amounts to several hundred thousand euros. The German ambassador to Pristina, Christian Helt, was allegedly informed about Haradinaj's fraud, who, as it is said, "promised" that nothing would be done in Novo Brdo without the consent of the Serbian Orthodox Church.
He conveyed the good feeling and friendship of a "friendly state in the identification and renewal of Kosovo's cultural heritage". But it is not clear in these words for the average connoisseur of local circumstances. What Artan Cathedral is, and how it is Kosovo's cultural heritage. It seems that this is a new form of communication and terminology that aims to genocide the Serbian character of Novi Brdo - Artana Cathedral is actually an orthodox church, and Artana is an Albanian name used in the "new reality" in Kosovo for this important medieval city and town.
The cathedral also means that the cathedral, the seat of the Novo Brdo metropolitans, was here. It is not a cathedral with the meaning of the Catholic Church, as those who performed the works wrote next to the restored foundations. This replacement of theses should indicate to the uninformed visitor and the "new reading of history" that it is a Catholic cathedral.
The murky play with names fits into the wording "Kosovo's cultural heritage". Serbian, Ottoman and Albanian cultural heritage should be integrated into it. Although this concept has been rejected, it lives on as a kind of ideology and a transitional period in which, with the support of the international community, Serbian, Ottoman and Albanian cultural identities would disappear, and everything would be subordinated to the Kosovo or Kosovo cultural model.
In a short announcement announcing a rainy outing to Novo Brdo, the German embassy in Pristina also spoke in a general tone about "K"osovo's diverse cultural and religious heritage." It is said that the goal of the renovation is to show its "turbulent history", it is stated that it was built in the 14th century, that it had "transformations, including an attempt to turn it into a mosque", and then it is added that the cathedral was primarily built as a Catholic church located in the immediate vicinity of the medieval Novo Brdo fortress" ”.
However, is it about the Catholic Church and did the Archaeological Institute of Kosovo and the experts of this institution consult anyone about all this? Old reddish pillars were erected on the remains of the capitals that once carried the vaults of the church of St. Nicholas, and new rough hewn stones of white marble were added to them. The narthex and the central part of the temple are filled with crushed stone. The altar space, otherwise composed of three altars, is only excavated and not filled with stone.
The history of Novi Brdo is continuously exposed to falsification, so that ten years ago on the boards around this locality it was written how its development was influenced by the Venetians, Jews and citizens of Dubrovnik. These texts do not mention Serbs in a single word, and the Great Migration of 1690 is presented as: “mass emigration to other places such as Turkey, Macedonia, and also to other cities in Kosovo (Gjilan, Pristina, Prizren, Vushtrri, Mitrovica) ”. The main reasons for the migration are difficult economic conditions, various political reasons and long cold winters.
Data and history say completely different, and 80 years before the Great Migration, Bar Archbishop Marin Bici reported during his official visit to Novo Brdo that the Turks had turned a "beautiful and precious church of Serbian despots" into a mosque. Marko Popović and Igor Bjelić state this in the book "Church of Saint Nicholas, Cathedral of Novi Brdo". From the scientific point of view, they conclude that this information was confirmed during the archeological excavations and that it "enabled the remains of the Orthodox Church of St. Nicholas, the former cathedral church of Novi Brdo, to be recognized at the researched location". This extensive study indicates her fate, the cemetery in the complex, jewelry from the graves, remnants of cloth, ceramics, stone sculptures, the relationship with the Moravian school, money, but is basically based on research of architectural remains and masonry tomb structures, as well as available documentation.
Based on these researches, Popović and Bjelić single out five stages of construction from the 14th to the 17th century, including the last two periods, when the church was turned into a mosque. The development of the city and the influx of population conditioned the construction of temples, including the Orthodox Church of St. Nicholas, while believers of the Catholic faith - Saxons, Dubrovnik and merchants from the coast - had their main church known as the Saxon Church, which is not in the central urban zone.
For a time, the Church of St. Nicholas was also the seat of the bishops of Lipljan and Gracanica, who also appear with the title of Metropolitan of Novo Brdo, and one of them - Nikanor, founded a printing house in Gracanica in 1539. In the abundance of data and fragments, Professor Boža Zarković points out that the documents mention more Orthodox than Roman Catholic priests, and that today's name Artana is not mentioned anywhere. The answer of science is clear and unambiguous and threatens to be obscured by the new ideological basis of the local society. In this case, some of the basic laws that were included in the constitution of Kosovo from the Ahtisaari plan were violated. According to that law, Novo Brdo belongs to protected zones and it is not possible to do anything without consulting the Serbian Orthodox Church or the Serb community. This fact was completely ignored, no one asked the Serbian Orthodox Church and the Diocese of Raska and Prizren. The request of "Politika" sent to the German Embassy in Pristina to forward the speech of Ambassador Helt or some announcement from the remains of the Church of St. Nicholas was answered that they do not have the text of the speech because he does not prepare it, and that the event did not resonate in the media.
When asked if Ambassador Helt was at the end of the restoration work of the Catholic Church and after the question whether he was sure that it was a Catholic church, it was said that we would get that answer later. The answer did not reach the publication of this text. Stingy reports in the Albanian media say that the ambassador, who came to Pristina after serving in the Vatican, thanked the archaeologists on the foundations of the Cathedral Church of St. Nicholas, who he says do not work in good conditions, "but fight for what they believe in. and that is to preserve the diverse history of this beautiful country ", reports" Koha net ". In reality, the "faith of the archaeologist" seems to be a deceptive category and is in serious conflict with truth and science.
In the end, open questions remain: How will such interpretations, relativizations and appropriations affect Serbs, who are the majority in Novo Brdo? How will the Catholic Church react to this, do they have any knowledge about the works at all? Can the Kosovo authorities, the international community and Albanian professional institutions, without any consequences, falsify the history, material culture, spirituality and identity of the area in this way? 
The Church of St. Nicholas was built around 1370 as the city cathedral of the city of Novi Brdo, whose development was on the rise at the time thanks to its silver mine. The original architecture of the temple was exceptional and fit into the currents of Serbian medieval sacral architecture, which is why it is assumed that it is a royal endowment, especially since at that time the citizens of Novi Brdo were not yet economically strong enough to build such a temple. Later, during the time of the despot Stefan Lazarević, they expanded the first church on the east side, whose founders could be King Vukašin or Prince Lazar, which can be seen in the different architecture. Later, the Turks turned the Church of St. Nicholas into a mosque - explains for Danas archaeologist Marko Popović, co-author of the study "Church of St. Nicholas - Cathedral of the City of Novo Brdo" published in 2018 by the Republic Institute for the Protection of Cultural Monuments.
According to him, archeological excavations carried out between 1957 and 1960 "confirmed that St. Nicholas is indisputably an Orthodox church, but the results were not published, while the party committee in Pristina was against the continuation of the works." Popovic says that there was a Roman Catholic chapel dedicated to St. Nicholas in Novo Brdo, which was located in the suburbs, which has also been confirmed and scientifically clarified.
He notes that extensive archeological works have been carried out on Novo Brdo since 2015, and it seems that UNESCO approval is expected to continue. Popovic notes that for two years he tried to "animate the state, the Office for Kosovo and Metohija and the Institute for the Protection of Monuments to get involved and help the research continue."
I did not contact anyone because of Haradinaj's statement. I did what was up to me - I wrote a book with Igor Bjelic that no one is interested in, neither the competent state services, nor the profession, nor the media. The Republic Institute for the Protection of Monuments did not organize its presentation either. It is obvious that no one in the state or in the profession is interested in the fact that now in Novo Brdo, the Pristina authorities are falsifying the interpretation of our monumental heritage 
On the website of the Ministry of Culture, Youth and Sports of the Government of Kosovo, whose coalition partner is formally the Serbian List, although it is in a boycott, the Church of St. Nicholas in Novo Brdo says that it is a "facility with the largest dimensions in Novo Brdo, which is considered to be was a Catholic cathedral, belonging to the Roman style." 
News about the events in Novo Brdo came through the local clergy and historian Miloš Ković, who informed colleagues and students with whom he recently stayed in Kosovo and Metohija, the Diocese of Raska and Prizren and the public.