Mirjana Djekic

Sacred Places

Chapels - "Vodice"

Sacred or esoteric places related to the healing and medicinal power of voter are called vodice (waters) by Serbs in Vojvodina. The oldest known vodice date back from mediaeval times and are connected with the origins of the Bodjani and Fenek monasteries.

Strengthening of the Virgin Mary cult, the source of life, and expressing her representation in the 17th and 18th centuries encouraged belief in the curative powers of water. During the baroque period in the Karlovac bishcopic the church aspired to appropriate these places. Vodice Christianized n that period are each dedicated to certain Virgin Mary holidays.

A "vodica" chapel in Mandjelos.

In the period of romanticism, throughout the 19th century, interest in mediaeval heritage grew, including fairy and dragon tales, folk myths, and everything about folk religion. Romanticism legitimized the right to folk belief in waters. Individuals built chapels in these sacred places and dedicated them to their family saints protectors: St. Paraskevi, St. Cosmas and Damian, St, Mother Angeline, St. Procopius, St. Mark, St. Ilija and St. Panteleimon.

Folk myths relate vodice to fairies, witches, dragons and other mythical beings, whereas the church interpretation is based on water as a source of ife with symbolic power to cleanse sins as spiritual illness.

At these places, around a water source or well, there would first be a sacred tree (oak, ash, elm) where people put icons. In time, when these places became christianized, there would be a cross. The simplest structure to mark the waters was a fountain. People who wished to make a contribution built chapels with porches around these curative wells, accessible to all. A more complex form of these folk built chapels are the enclosed borches characteristic to mountainous parts of Srem.

There used to be four hundred marked waters in Vojvodina, but only a part of this number is preserved today: that is, over fifty chapels, ten chapels with residential quarters and one enclosed porch. Vodice are sig-nificant to architectural heritage with their combination elements of sacral and folk building: in Aleksandrovo near Subotica, in Bavaniste, Backa Palanca, Backo Petrovo Selo, Bercasovo, Beska, Bukovacki Salasi (farms) near Sombor, in Voganj, Vrbas, Golubinci, Deronje, Dobrica, Jarkovac, Ki-kinda Kovilje, Kovin, Mandjelos, Mokrin, Novi Karlovci, Orlovat, Silbasa, Strobran, Stapar, Stara Pazova, Tomasevac, Uzdin, Crepaja, and in the monasteries of Kovilj and Fenek.

Waters as a part of architectural and spiritual tradition point to the complexity of the cult of water.

A "vodica" chapel in Kovilj.

© Mirjana Djekic, 2004.

A "vodica" chapel in the village of Vojka.