LIVES OF THE SERBIAN SAINTS

Contents

INTRODUCTION ; 3

A NOTE ON SERBIAN HISTORY . :

SAINT JOHN VLADIMIR, SERBIAN PRINCE

Introduction

THis collection of lives is taken from what we should call the martyrology of the Church in Serbia. There were, at one time, a number of these martyrologies in use in Europe containing different lists of saints, together with their lives. In the West these tended to give place to a calendar and lives of a more or less official character ; but in the East the monasteries in particular seem to have kept their own calendars and their own special traditions about their saints and special offices in their memory. This was the case in Serbia, where many monasteries preserved their own separate collection until the middle of the last century. In all these old office books certain great national saints would be sure of a place. No Serbian martyrology would be complete without a life of St. Sava, for instance. But the stories of their lives, affected by local tradition or by some contact of the saints with the monastery in his lifetime, would often show considerable variety. Other saints would be included only in the commemoration of churches of a particular district because their fame had never sufficiently penetrated beyond it. Two classes of difference thus arose in these various collections. There was the variety in the list of saints included ; and there was sometimes considerable variety in the stories of their lives.

In the middle of the last century, however, there was issued one martyrology for the use of the Church

vu vill INTRODUCTION throughout Serbia. A certain list of national saints thus obtained recognition, and the stories of their lives received a fixed form. It is a translation of the lives included in this book which is here presented.

The result of this treatment of the old office books may be compared with the outcome of the work of the various writers who edited the original documents of the Hexateuch. Sometimes a selection has been made from a choice of stories. Sometimes one detects that the paste and scissors have been at work. Sometimes part of a story seems to have been rewritten because edification is more important than a close adherence to tradition. And just as the student of the Hexateuch would like to be able to see the original documents, untouched by the hand of the redactor, so it is probable that the reader of these lives will wish at times that he could compare them with an earlier version, or could read the other stories from which this particular one was selected. The work of harmonizing the different accounts has not been perfectly done in every case, and it is possible to observe in the narratives the remains of a double tradition. In the case of several of the lives, those of the less national saints, it is probable that not more than one history of them has survived and that this has been incorporated almost, if not wholly, as it stood.

Such is, in outline, the history of this collection. What is its importance? Any list of national saints, with some account of their lives, however jejune, has importance for the historian. If we know the sort of men and women whom a nation delights to honour in this way, we know something of that people. And that particular ‘‘ something” is very difficult to discover in any other way. At first glance, a nation’s saints will often appear to have been selected in a haphazard way.

INTRODUCTION 1X

The list will be found to contain names which we feel have no place in such exalted company. There is a bewildering variety of type. Yet these men and women have shown themselves possessed of spiritual qualities to which their countrymen have specially aspired. To people of another century and another civilization the general impression created by the life of some national saint may be fantastic or crude, or commonplace or even immoral. The nation itself, however, has seen in him only those qualities which it most urgently desires for itself. And to know a nation’s ideals is to know something of the roots of its vitality. It is not easy to discover the ideals of one’s own day with precision ; the task of the historian is far more difficult. Will he not be wise to pay more attention than he bas done in the past to what is rather contemptuously known as hagiography ?

In the collection before us we find a large proportion of kings and great churchmen. They are the men who made of the Serbians an independent people and built up the short-lived Serbian Empire. Of some of them that is about all that can be said. But to the Serbian whose freedom was his life—whose liberty was threatened from the north or the south for decade after decade—that was enough. And _ later generations, living under the Turk, looked with love and reverence on the men who had once made their people free ; and when he could, he saw to it that their relics lay in a country which was at least free from the infidel. This type is represented in almost all national calendars. Our Edward the Confessor has much in common with these church-building kings of the early Serbian state. St. Dunstan and St. Thomas of Canterbury played parts in our history which have parallels in that of Serbia.

x INTRODUCTION

A second type is less fully represented. But the recluse, the follower of the “angel way of life,” has also his place in his countrymen’s affection. For, however “national” his conception of religion was and is, the Serbian could recognize that ‘‘something better” and reverence the austerity and detachment by which alone it could be attained. This, again, is not peculiar to the Serbian calendar.

But there is a third type which is by far the most characteristic. There are lives of men and women in this book which contain no deed of heroism or voluntary denial. Their stories are not of a struggle against external forces or the enemy within them. The only sense in which their lives may be said to be a struggle is in that sense in which the word is used of the outcast and poor, the broken man and the beaten woman. Their nobility has only one chance of showing itself, and that is in the patient endurance of unmerited and unavoidable suffering. Such saints as Stephen and his wife Angelina, and the later members of the Nemanya dynasty, received no hero-worship. They were always failures—conscious and hopeless failures—failures who made no heroic effort to change their lot. Yet it is these lives which are written with the most touching affection and understanding. We may account for this in part by the singular tenderness which the Slav is so quick to feel'not merely for the unfortunate, but for the material or moral failure. But it is probable that its significance lies far more in the circumstances of the lives of Serbians when they lived unfree under the Turks. It has, in fact, somewhat the same meaning as the observance of the anniversary of their great national disaster, Kossovo, as the national day of honour. In those miserable years the patience of a blind prince, the faithfulness of a widowed queen, the misfortunes of

INTRODUCTION xl rulers with no one to rule, made a special appeal and had a special lesson. That patient faithfulness among indignities and sufferings which has been such a marked characteristic of this people up to our own times is here described increasing in those who were first called upon to exhibit it. No western people could treat so tenderly of those who were so conspicuously unsuccessful. No western historian will understand this people unless he remembers that the luckless King Stephen is numbered among its saints.

A NOTE ON SERBIAN: HISTORY

THE Serbian Saints have been for the most part the national heroes and their lives are the history of Serbia for the period during which they flourished—the period, that is, during the Middle Ages when Serbia became a free nation and for a time an empire. Any attempt, therefore, to give in this place a complete historical survey would merely result in repetition of much that follows in the lives themselves. The purpose of this note is rather to provide a setting into which the biographies may be fitted, and to fill up some of the gaps caused by -the fact that some of Serbia’s greatest heroes could not well find a place in the list of her saints owing to certain unfortunate incidents in their early lives.

We may begin, then, with the point in history when the Serbians became the northern neighbours of the Greek Empire somewhere in the seventh century, and had accepted, nominally at least, the Christian religion. In reality they seem to have clung closely to their old pagan nature worship and the new religion took little hold upon them until the ninth century, when Cyril and Methodius came among them as missionaries and gave them a Liturgy in their own tongue. By the tenth century we find the country divided up among a number of small princes, who in turn subdivided their territory among their zhupanes, or petty chiefs. Their principal enemies were their powerful neighbours, the Bulgarians, who frequently invaded the land and sometimes occupied large parts of it. To this period belongs the story of .S¢.

A NOTE ON SERBIAN HISTORY XI

Vladimir and his martyrdom at the hands of the Bulgarian king, Vladislav. “During the following century the Bul. garian power rapidly declined, however, and the Greek Emperor found himself in a position to extend his authority northward, so that by the middle of the twelfth century most of the Serbian provinces recognized him as their suzerain.

THE NemMAnya Dynasty

It is from this time that the authentic history contained in these lives of the saints begins, for in 1169 Stephen, afterwards known as the monk St. Simeon, founded the Nemanya dynasty and the Christian state began to be established. The story of his early struggles in the province of Rascia against his brothers, and his victories over them and his suzerain the Greek Emperor, is told in his life. He succeeded in forming an independent kingdom for himself in Rascia and along the coast of the Adriatic, but when he pressed southward in league with the Bulgarians, and occupied the land round Uskub and Prizren, he met with reverses and finally abdicated in favour of his second son, and became a monk.

Of his three sons, the second, Stephen (S4. Simon) succeeded his father as Grand Zhupan, the eldest, Vukan, being given only the title of king and the lands along the Adriatic; while the third, Rastko, had already become the monk Sava. The position of Stephen was far from being secure. Vukan, disappointed in his hope of succeeding his father, was prepared to serve the interests of the Hungarian king, who was being encouraged by the Pope to take forcible possession of these Orthodox lands. It was at this juncture that St. Sava, the youngest brother, returned from his monastery in Mt, Athos to support Stephen, and Vukan contented himself with holding xiv A NOTE ON SERBIAN HISTORY

Rascia as the vassal of Hungary. Vukan died in 1204, and the troubles which occurred in Hungary about this time freed Stephen from the northern peril. Meanwhile, in the south the fourth Crusade had captured Constantinople, and the Latin state which it established began to menace the small Balkan nations. St. Sava now showed the qualities of a statesman by turning the collapse of the Greek Empire to good account. He approached the Emperor and the Patriarch of Niczea, and in 1219 obtained from them ecclesiastical autonomy for Serbia and the archbishopric for himself—they were in no position to refuse him these important and far-reaching privileges. Not content with this, he proceeded in the following year to get the imperial sanction for the coronation of his brother as King of Serbia, and himself placed the crown on his head. The remainder of his active years he devoted to establishing order in the independent kingdom, travelling through the country on foot, teaching the people and organizing the spiritual and temporal government of the land.

The result of his labours is to be seen in the years that followed. Not one of the next four rulers died in possession of the throne, each of them being driven out owing to rebellions led by their brothers or sons; yet in spite of these divisions, the state held together owing to the strong foundations that had been laid by St. Sava. Rodoslav, Stephen’s son, who succeeded him in 1227, was dethroned by his brother Vladislav in 1233, and Vladislav by his younger brother Stephen Urosh I in 1242. Stephen Urosh I reigned till 1276, and was then defeated by his son Dragutin on the Plain of Gatsko, while — Dragutin had himself to abdicate in favour of his brother Urosh II Milutin five years later. With the accession of Milutin came peace at home and considerable progress. The wealth of the country increased owing to the commer-

A NOTE ON SERBIAN HISTORY XV cial relations established with Venice and Ragusa, and this increased prosperity showed itself in the great number of churches built at this time. Unlike the church at Studenitza, built by the first Stephen, and most of the ecclesiastical buildings of that day, these churches of Milutin are purely Byzantine in their architecture, a fact probably due to the Greek influence at the court through the marriage of the king with Simonide, the daughter of the Emperor Andronicus. Milutin was also successful in withstanding the Tartar invasion, which destroyed Bulgaria during his reign, and reduced the Tartar prince, Shishman of Widin, to a position of vassalage.

Stephen Dechanskt, his son, who succeeded him in 1321, received his second name from the monastery of Dechani which he built as a thankoffering for his great victory over the Bulgarians at Kustendil. He did not long survive this victory. As happened so frequently at this period, the fact that he had taken to himself, as second wife, a Greek princess, Mary, led to his downfall. For a Greek party was formed at court and an attempt was made to declare the son of this second marriage heir to the throne in the place of Dushan, the son of the first marriage. Dushan and his adherents raised a rebellion, and the king “was captured and _ strangled ik) £3 3E.

The reign of Stephen Dushan (1331-55) marks the summit of Serbian power and glory. Dushan, who does not appear among his country’s saints owing to the death of his father, was a military genius. It was his ambition to found an empire which should include the Serbians, Greeks and Bulgarians, and to rule all these lands as Tzar. We cannot follow him through the series of brilliant campaigns by which he overran, and added to his dominions, Macedonia, Albania and Epirus. In 1345 he proclaimed himself Tzar of the Serbians and xvi A NOTE ON SERBIAN HISTORY

Greeks, and raised the archbishopric of Pech to the dignity of a patriarchate, for which latter act the country was laid under an anathema by the Patriarch of Constantinople and was not freed from it till Tzar Lazar secured the recognition of the nationa patriarchate thirty years later. In 1347 Dushan continued his victorious campaigns, and brought Epirus, Etolia, Acornania and Thessaly within his dominions. During the next few years his astonishing activities were devoted to the codification of the laws, customs, and ordinances of his predecessors and their solemn promulgation as the law of his empire. But when the complete realization of his dream seemed practically assured, the storm which had been threatening the East so long broke out with fury, and at the very moment when the military genius of Dushan was most needed by his country and by Europe to stem the Turkish invasions, he suddenly died (December 1355).

By the untimely death of Dushan, not only was the empire he had founded doomed to fall to pieces, but the only hope of his own country’s independence disappeared. The weakness of the Greek Empire, which had given him his chance, meant that there was one barrier the less between Serbia and the Turkish invaders. Moreover, the Hungarians chose this moment of calamity for their southern neighbours to attack them, and both Bulgaria and Serbia were overrun and in part annexed, many of the inhabitants, especially in the former country, being forcibly made Catholics. The reign of Dushan’s son and successor, St. Uvosh (1356-72), a weak man in a position requiring exceptional strength of character, is pitiful reading. In such distracting times he ceased to be noticed, and it is the rebel, Vukashin, who had taken most of his empire from him, who meets the Turks and dies in battle against them on the river Maritza in 1371,

A NOTE ON SERBIAN HISTORY © xvii

With this defeat all the Serbian provinces in the south around Uskub were lost. Tzar Urosh himself died childless and forgotten in the same year, and with him the great Nemanya dynasty became extinct.

THE STRUGGLE FOR INDEPENDENCE AGAINST THE TuRKS

Such of the Serbian land as still remained to them was now divided between two rulers—Tvrtko, who governed in Bosnia, and Lazar Grebelyanovich. These two princes united their forces and inflicted a defeat on the Turks in 1387, but two years later Sultan Murat returned with a large army, and on the Plain of Kossovo the Serbian army of Lazar was defeated and Lazar himself taken prisoner and beheaded on the 15th of June, 1389. This famous battle and the causes which led to the defeat is sufficiently described in the life of St. Lazar, and need not detain us here. It is characteristic of the Serbian people that they should regard it as the greatest moment in their history, for though overcome they fought and fell in defence of the Cross menaced by the Crescent.

Henceforth their rulers reigned with the title of despot only as vassals of the Turks, paying them tribute in money and men, and on these terms Lazar’s son, Stephen Lazarevich, continued to govern the land from 1389 to 1427. At the beginning of the fifteenth century they were able to improve their lot a little by becoming vassals of Hungary instead of the Sultan, and received from that country the province of Machva, with Belgrade, in order that they might act as a buffer state between their new suzerains and the Turks, This arrangement continued through the reigns of George Brankovich (1427-56) and his son Lazar, But after the death of the latter in

B xvii A NOTE ON SERBIAN HISTORY

1458 the Sultan again invaded the land and converted it into a Pashalik, so that Serbian despots who owned anything “beside their title ceased to exist. The stories of the unhappy lot of the despot Stephen, his wife Angelina, and his two sons, will sufficiently illustrate the misery of the last days of the Serbian rulers. Their brethren in the north, amongst whom they sought refuge, the relics of the kingdom which Tvrtko founded in Bosnia, shared the same fate a few years later, and Serbian independence was wholly at an end.

We need not dwell upon the history of the next three hundred years. Thousands of the people were enslaved and sold in the markets of the East. Thousands emigrated to Hungary rather than live under the hated rule of the Turks. Those who were left did not lightly accept their fate, many of them forming themselves into bands of outlaws which spent their time in wreaking vengeance on the oppressors whenever the chance occurred. The exploits of these Haiduks, as they were called, are the favourite subject of the well-known national songs, and they served to keep alive something of the national spirit during these terrible centuries. These songs and their religion were the only means of expression left to the people, so that it is not surprising to find that the Serbian Church has the character of a national rather than a religious institution. But whatever their pains and misery their watchword continued to be, “ Za krst tchasni 1 slobodu zlatnu”—‘ For the venerated Cross and for golden Freedom.”

It was not till the year 1804 that the fight for freedom could really be renewed. In that year they began their rebellion under Kara George and met with astonishing successes. They fought throughout the Napoleonic wars, Austria and Russia being each of them glad of such diversions as the Serbian peasants could make in their

A NOTE ON SERBIAN HISTORY XIX neighbourhood. But neither of these Powers was prepared to stand by her when she ceased to serve their purpose, and they infamously deserted the gallant men who had fought for them at the Treaty of Bucharest in 1812. The work of liberation had almost to be begun over again when Milosh Obrenovich raised the standard of revolt three years later. Then began a struggle for freedom which lasted nearly through a_ generation. Unable to drive the Turks from their lands altogether, they had to content themselves with obtaining their independence piecemeal, sometimes fighting alone, sometimes receiving the somewhat reluctant support of the diplomats of Russia. In 1830 Milosh Obrenovich was recognized by the Porte as hereditary Prince, and the national Church was restored, with its own native priests and metropolitan, but the fortresses were still held by the Turks and a tax was still paid to them. Finally, during the years 1876-8 the Turks were entirely driven out and, by the Treaty of Berlin in the latter year, Serbia recovered her complete independence and _ her territory was increased. In 1882 Milan Obrenovich was proclaimed King of Serbia—her first king since the fall of Lazar on the Plain of Kossovo. And the Balkan wars of 1912 restored to her those lands in the south which had formed a part of the fatherland of so many of her saints,

So Serbia lived again. That such a return to life should have been possible after so many years of maimed existence requires some explanation. There are, no doubt, more causes than one why the spirit of the nation was not killed, but there is no doubt as to which was the principal factor. It was their Church which kept alive in the heart of this people their love for their home and their national aspirations more than any other thing. It was their Church which preserved them from being

XX A NOTE ON SERBIAN HISTORY wholly merged into the Ottoman Empire. The pages that follow tell of the birth and early growth of this indomitable spirit, and reflect that devotion to God and His Church which was to be the salvation of this people and, please God, shall be again.

THE LIFE OF SAINT JOHN VLADIMIR, SERBIAN PRINCE}!

THE holy and glorious prince and martyr John Vladimir was sprung from a noble family of the town Alba, which town he-ruled together with Illyricum and Dalmatia. Hvalimir, his grandfather had three sons, Petrislav, Dragomir and Miroslav. Petrislav ruled over Zeta, Dragomir over Trebinje and Hlevna, Miroslav over Podgorye. When Hvalimir was dead, and Miroslav had died without children, the Serbian state fell to Petrislav, whose son and successor was the blessed Vladimir.

From his youth this prince was full of the gifts of the spirit, gentle, quiet, pious and pure in life; hating all evil pleasures, he kept himself from them and gave thought rather for his subjects, ruling them wisely. Wherefore he was beloved of all, And it happened that the Bulgarian king, Samuil, began to make war with a great host against the state of this blessed king. Vladimir, that the blood of his country might not be shed, went with his army into the mountains, where the host of Samuil soon encompassed him. Now, they were

1 The exact dates are uncertain, but he lived during the end of the ninth century and the beginning of the tenth, in the place called Kosogor, and the serpents were many in number and very poisonous, so that no little harm was done to the soldiers. But the saint prayed unto the Lord, and straightway the serpents ceased to bite; and from that time unto this day they will vex no man.

When Samuil saw that he could not take Vladimir by force of arms, he determined to do this by guile. And so he gave fair promises of safety to Vladimir, who came down then to this breaker of oaths. But the treacherous Samuil sent him to his capital and put him in prison and pillaged all his country, laying waste with fire Illyricum, Ragusa, Kotor, Bosnia and Rascia, returning with his army laden with spoil.

Now Samuil had a daughter, Kossara by name, who had a great love for the poor and the prisoners, and went often to visit and comfort them. And when she saw Vladimir, who was young and wise, straightway she loved him. But he was always fasting and praying. One night, however, there appeared to him an angel of the Lord, who told him that the time of his deliverance from prison drew near, and that afterwards he would be martyred. But Kossara was praying her father that he would give to her this prisoner to be her husband ; and since he could not refuse this to his daughter, Samuil brought Vladimir from prison and gave him Kossara his daughter to be his wife. Moreover, he returned into his hand all his estates and sent him back with all. honourand many gifts. And when Vladimir came back to his people bringing his wife with him, he was received with great gladness. Then did he tell his wife that she must keep herself ever virgin, because that life is the life of the angels: and she was obedient to him, so that they lived in chastity and every virtue.

And it came to pass at this time that the autocrat, the Greek Emperor, Basil Porphyrogennatos, came with a

SAINT JOHN VLADIMIR 3 great host against Samuil, the Bulgarian tsar, and, vanquishing his army, pressed on even to Ochrida. Samuil died from sorrow of heart, and after him Radomir his son came to the throne. But after he had reigned one year he was killed by his brother, the son of his mother by a former marriage, Vladislav by name, through the counsel of the Emperor Basil. And so Basil, having overcome the whole Bulgarian state, came with his army against the Serbian country. But St. Vladimir gathered his army and defended himself with great might, so that the Emperor had to return again homewards.

Now it happened that the king, the holy Vladimir, was in the forest which was nigh unto the town, with three of his voievodes. And there came an eagle flying through the forest bearing a shining cross upon its back. And it let the cross fall to the ground and flew away leaving it lying upon the earth. They got down from their horses and bowed themselves before Jesus crucified upon the cross. Then St. Vladimir gave orders and built on that place a church. And when at great cost the church had been built, he kept there the hallowed cross and went to it by day and by night to pray. Then he understood that he was come near to the time when he should receive the crown of the martyr, which he himself desired with all his heart.

Now the Bulgarian king, Vladislav, doubted in his heart of the holy Vladimir, and he was counselled by the Greek Emperor to slay him by craft. Therefore Vladislav came to the capital of Vladimir and pitched his tents before the town, and called Vladimir to come out to him that they might speak together of the needs of their peoples. But Vladimir did. not will to go, and delayed. Then Vladislav sent unto him two bishops and made an oath on the Holy Gospels and the venerated

Cross. And Kossara, because she would not that her husband should go, went herself to speak with her brother: and he, like a second Judas, with kisses and soft words, lied unto her. Kossara then, believing the word of this murderer, went back again and sent her husband to him, for she-could not see “the sword dipped in honey.” When Vladislav saw Vladimir coming to him straightway he fell upon him and struck him with his sword. But he was not harmed, nor did he fear, but said to him, “It is your will to kill me, my brother, but you cannot.” Then he took his own sword and gave it to Vladislav, saying unto him, “Take it and kill me, for I am ready to die, as were Isaac and Abel.” And the murderer, blinded and terrible with fury, took the sword and cut off his head. Then did St. Vladimir take his head into his-hands and go quickly to that church where the eagle had come with the cross, and he sang as he went, “I was glad when they said unto me, we will go unto the house of the Lord.” And when he came to the church he said, “Into Thy hands, O my Lord, I commend my spirit.” Then the murderer, full of shame and afraid because of this glorious wonder, fled away with his men.

And so the blessed Vladimir received the crown of the martyr and passed from the kingdom of this world to the Kingdom of Heaven on the twenty-second day of May in the year 1015. Kossara his wife buried the body of the holy king in the church with great splendourin the presence of the bishops and all the clergy and the people: then, for the true love she bore her blessed husband, she shut herself up in his church and never left it again all the rest of her days, giving herself to fasting and prayers.