WELCOMING HOME THE DEAD: EXHUMATION AND REBURIAL OF FAMOUS DECEASED IN SERBIA 1 ALEKSANDRA PAVIĆEVIĆ Abstract: The history of civilization is marked heavily by death. This point would hardly deserve attention, except that such a great part of history has been built around the idea of celebrating death and the deceased. Throughout Serbian history, the “migration” of the dead has been a significant method of expressing and constructing conflicting or evolving ideologies. Even as the Ottoman Turks burnt holy relics of Serb saints in order to crush the associated national and religious ideologies, Serbs cared for and protected the sacred objects more stubbornly. This was done not only to prevent the relics’ destruction, but also in order to sanctify time and space and to commemorate the deeds of these revered people for the nation. Thus, the holy relics of Saint Simeon, Saint Sava, Saint,Tsar Lazar , Tsar Uroš , Despot Stefan Štiljanović and many others were moved from monastery to monastery and from one area to another. Modern Serbian history has also been marked by such relocations and reburials, although the practice has no longer been reserved for saints in the narrow sense of the term. In the last fifty years, Serbia has welcomed the remains of Nicola Tesla, the pioneering U.S. electrical engineer (1957); Rastko Petrovic, poet and novelist (1986); Bishop Nikolaj Velimirović (1991), the embalmed body of Jovan Dučić author and diplomat (2000). This paper attempts to address three main questions: Why and how were these famous deceased were brought to Serbia? What was the social and 1 This paper is the result of working on Project No. 177028, “Identity Strategies: Contemporary Culture and Religiosity”, financed by the Ministry of Education and Science of the Republic of Serbia.