Last weekend, the crew of the Foundation “Heritage Guardians – Bassania” stayed in the area of the Pale Municipality, where we visited several interesting locations. Led by our friend Vladimir, we first visited the Crkvište site – the place where a church used to be, which is associated with many stories.
Crkvište is located in the village of Gornji Pribanj/Brdo. It is located on a levelled elevation surrounded by a drystone wall, which resembles an Illyrian fortr, while the remains of the former building are located on the plateau itself.
Even today, Orthodox people come to this location and light candles, believing that the Orthodox Church of St. Peter’s, which was demolished by the Ottomans during the conquest of Bosnia, and the Bey Mosque in Sarajevo were built from its stone. According to a legend, the door from this church was also removed and installed in the mosque.
On the other hand, the Catholic Church claims that the Catholic Church of St. Peter was there. Allegedly, it was one of the first or the very first in the parish of Vrhbosna. We also heard a story from local residents that at a certain period, a priest from Pale took a stone from this location and installed it in the Catholic church in Pale.
However, Crkvište is an ancient, Illyrian fortification and an early Christian Arian and medieval Bosnian church. It was researched by Đoko Mazalić, Šefik Bešlagić, and Lidija Fekeža. Marko Vego wrongly located the church of St. Peter without any archaeological evidence, although he hedged by putting a question mark next to the toponym Brda.
Crkvište is certainly part of the complex of the old town of Hodidjed. The question of the exact location of this important town has still not been resolved in our historiography, because there are several theses about where it could be located. Its importance was also determined by geography, by connecting the Paljanska and Mokranjska Miljacka rivers, at a place high above the canyon. The toponyms Stari grad Dragulje, which is at the very estuary of the Miljacka and on the Lipnica Hill, and Hodidjed, which is actually at the location Brdo and Crkvište, have often been mixed up in historiography.
Having visited this location several times and recorded the drystone and plastered walls, there is an assumption that this is the location of the old town of Hodidjed, and not the one above the canyon itself, which was actually an Ottoman prison and observation post. The nearby necropolis of medieval tombstones, which we can connect with the seat of the did, the head of the Bosnian Church, also supports this.
Translated by Prijevodi.ba
