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Military Pilgrimage to Bobovac – A Bosnian ‘Sacred Place’

The process of re-establishing the political and a symbolic value of the medieval city of Bobovac began in 2002 when Cardinal Puljić started a ‘prayer hike’ (molitveni pohod) to Bobovac that later developed into a military pilgrimage for Bosnian Croat members of the contemporary Armed Forces of Bosnian and Herzegovina (Oružane snage Bosne i Hercegovine). Every year since then, on the Saturday closest to the 25th of October, the Bosnian Croat religious and political elite, military officials and soldiers, civilians from around Bosnia and Herezgovina, and re-enactors, gather at Bobovac to pray for the ‘fatherland’ (domovina). The date was chosen to commemorate the last Bosnian queen, Katarina, who died in exile in Rome on that day in 1478. Military pilgrimage to Bobovac has multiple meanings at multiple levels for different agents: it is cultural heritage and identity symbol, but for local Bosnian Croats it also means security and hope. It is a practice that evokes nostalgia for the ‘good old days’ at a personal and/or national level. On the other hand, for others, this pilgrimage is a provocation and a threat. For Bosniaks, who are also in search for their identity, Bobovac has different meanings and in response to the Bosnian Croat pilgrimage and ‘claim’ to Bobovac, they have started to organise their own performance, thereby presenting their own version of Bosnia and Herzegovina’s past and present. This is actually not a dispute over the past but over the present. Bobovac is a material and tangible remnant of the medieval Bosnian kingdom, but it is also a contemporary marker of identity and the object of competing claims to represent contemporary Bosnia and Herzegovina. It is an attempt to answer the eternal question: who was here first?!

Bobovac ; Bosnian Croats ; Military Pilgrimage

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