Blood and mortar

Saint Tsar Lazar fresco from Curtea de Arges Monastery, Romania. Pic from the paper: "Medieval name and ethnicity: Serbs and Vlachs" by Ştefan Stareţu, University of Bucharest.

This beautiful monastery church was built in the early 16th c. by Princess Milica Despina Branković, wife of the Duke Neagoe Basarab, Ruler of Wallachia... Milica was of Serbian origin, and closely related to Serbian noble houses of Branković and Lazarević...

Now there is an interesting legend about the building of the church. For some reason, the builders were not able to keep the church walls standing up. Whatever they build during the day, collapsed during the night...

Finally, the architect in charge of the build, certain Master Manole, was threatened with death by his employers if he didn't finish the church...

After much deliberation with his masons about what to do,  Manole remembered an ancient custom of placing a living woman into the foundations of buildings in order to insure they don't collapse...

So he suggested that the first woman who came to the building site the following day, with the food for her husband, should be the one used as the sacrificial victim...

All the other masons, of course, warned their wives not to come to the building site then next day, except Manole. And so Manole was forced to sacrifice his own wife Ana. And that is how the church was built...

Interestingly, there is an identical legend about the building of the Fortress of Deva, also in Romania...

In this legend, a stonemason named Kőműves Kelemen – finds that the castle he’s trying to build keeps falling down, and is forced to sacrifice his beloved wife and mix her remains into the mortar in order to make the castle stand...

Another legend with the same plot is the legend about the building of the Bridge of Arta, a stone bridge that crosses the Arachthos river in the west of the city of Arta (Άρτα) in Greece...

According to the legend, the builders could not build the bridge, because, the foundations they built during the day, would collapse and were swept by the river during the night...

Finally "a bird with a human voice" informed the Head Builder (or in another version he was informed in a dream) that, in order for the bridge to remain standing, he should sacrifice his wife...He did, and this is how the bridge was built...

Identical (Greek) legend exists about the building of the Bridge of Tricha in today Turkey.

According to the legend, builders were attempting to construct a bridge over a tumultuous river— historically associated with the Değirmendere (Pyxitis) river near Trabzon (Maçka) in modern-day Turkey. But again, everything they built during the day would mysteriously collapse into the river overnight. No matter how skilled the engineering or how sturdy the stone, the foundation would not hold. Just as the builders were driven to despair, a small bird with a human voice whispered a chilling secret into the master builder's ear. The bird revealed that the river spirits would never allow the structure to stand unless it was anchored by a soul. Specifically, the bridge required the ultimate human sacrifice: the master builder’s own wife had to be buried alive within its foundations. Bound by his duty to finish the monumental task, the devastated master builder tricked his beloved wife into coming down to the construction site. Once there, she was sealed alive inside the heavy stone foundations. With her spirit integrated into the stone, the Bridge of Tricha finally stood firm...

Another similar legend is found in Bulgaria about the building of the Kadin Most (Kada's Bridge) at Nevestino. 

There, three brothers from the nearby village were building a bridge over the river Struma, but during the night the waters of the river destroyed and swept away what had already been built during the day. The brothers did not want to be mocked and made a very difficult decision to sacrifice the wife who first brought breakfast to her husband. This was for the sake of making the bridge solid. The first wife to come was Manol’s wife. The young woman carried with one hand her first baby and with the other the breakfast and had hardly managed to say “God help” when the brothers caught her and walled her in the middle vault. While they were walling her up, she asked them to leave out her breast and make a vent for her eyes so that he could breastfeed and watch her child. The local people say that even today when the river rises; the misfortune mother can be heard crying...

In Macedonia, the same kind of legend is linked to the building of the Radin Most (Rada's bridge) over the Mantseva River. 

According to the local tale, nine brothers tried to build the bridge over the Mantseva River. However, whatever they built during the day would mysteriously collapse by the next morning. After repeated failures, the builders were told, or decided themselves, that the foundations would only hold if they sacrificed a human life. They agreed that whichever sister-in-law brought lunch to the brothers the next day would be walled up alive in the bridge's foundations. The older brothers warned their wives in secret, but the youngest brother failed to warn his wife, lovely Rada. When Rada arrived with their midday meal, she sealed her fate and was built into the bridge foundation. Accepting her destiny, Rada reportedly asked only that an opening be left for her breasts so she could still nurse her infant baby...

There is also an identical Serbian legend about the building of the Skadar fortress. The legend, in a form of an epic poem, was published for the first time in 1815 in a version recorded by Vuk Karadžić from the singing of a Herzegovinian storyteller named Old Rashko...

In 1824, Vuk Karadžić sent a copy of his folksong collection to Jacob Grimm, who was particularly enthralled by "The Building of Skadar" epic poem. Grimm translated it into German, and described it as "one of the most touching poems of all nations and all times"...

The poem describes the building of a fortress on the Bojana river at Skadar, today in Albania, in the 14th c. by the Serbian Mrnjavčević brothers (King Vukašin and his brothers Uglješa and Gojko)...

Whatever the brothers built during the day, was pushed into the river during the night by Vila (a mountain fairy). 

Eventually, vila said to the king Vukašin, that if he wanted his fortress to stand, he would have to build a living person into the fortress foundations...

And, the Vila said, it will have to be one of the brothers' wives. Whichever one comes to the building site first the next day, with the food for the builders, will have to be sacrificed...

Vukašin and Uglješa both warn their wives, and so Gojko, the youngest brother, had to wall up his young wife alive within the walls of the fortress...

As his wife just gave birth to the twins, boy and girl, called Stojko and Stoja (Stoj means stand, be upright), she begged the builders to leave her breasts exposed, so she can feed her babies...

This relief, currently in Vienna, made in 1906 by Croatian sculptor Ivan Meštrović, depicts the scene of the sacrifice...

You can find the full English translation of the poem (in a somewhat archaic English) here...

Anyway, I believe that this legend could be of Serbian in origin. The reason for that is that the custom of making blood sacrifices on the foundations of buildings, in order to make them stand, is still common among Serbs...

Not only that, According to Vuk Karadžić, there was a belief still strong during the 19th c. that it was impossible to build a large building without a human sacrifice...

Because, of course, you could't build people alive into buildings any more, builders "stole people's shadows and built them into the foundations or the walls"...

Vuk Karadžić claimed that people even avoided the building sites because they were afraid their shadow could be walled-up and they could die without it...

This belief and custom were recorded by ethnographers in many parts of the Balkans inhabited by Serbs. I talked about this belief and practice in my post "New house"...

But to me, very interesting thing about these legends is that the sacrificial victim is always a woman, the wife of one of the builders...

This gives a completely new meaning to the Serbian proverb: "Ne stoji kuća na zemlji nego na ženi" - The house doesn't stand on the ground but on the woman...I talked about this proverb in my post "Baba - the main beam that supports the house"...