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In the fourteenth century,
as England and France fought
the Hundred Years’ War, the
Balkan states were at war with
the Ottoman Empire. With the
Byzantine Empire still weak
due to the Fourth Crusade and
the dividing up of most of its
territory among Catholic rulers,
the Kingdom of Serbia rose to
prominence. After King Dušan,
the ruler of Serbia, led a series
of successful military cam-
paigns against his neighbours
that vastly expanded his realm
and turned Serbia into the
dominant regional power, he
crowned himself Tsar in 1346,
creating the Serbian Empire.
Mindful of the threat
posed to European monarchies
by the Ottomans in the east,
Dušan started preparing for a
crusade, planning to rally the
Christian kings of Europe to
stop the Muslim invaders and
take Constantinople for himself.
He unexpectedly fell ill and
died before realising his grand
ambitions, and the Empire col-
lapsed into feudal states after a
crushing defeat at the hands of
the Ottomans and the death of
his son. Of the successor states,
Moravian Serbia, ruled by Prince
Lazar, was the largest and most
influential, and Lazar’s army
fought the Ottomans at Kosovo
Polje, a battle that would later
become a key part of Serbian
culture. Both nations lost their
rulers in battle on that day, and
while the Ottoman advance was
halted, their superior numbers
and the near-annihilation of the
Serbian army meant that one
by one, Serbian principalities
became Ottoman vassals.
Following the Battle of
Kosovo and Lazar’s death, his
son Stefan Lazarević, still a
minor, inherited rule over Ser-
bia. After a Hungarian raid on
Serbia in late 1389, his mother,
acting as regent on his behalf,
accepted a vassal relationship
with the Turks to protect the
nation. In that capacity Stefan
later diligently fought at the
Ottomans’ side, and the sultan
– now his brother-in-law – duly
rewarded him for these services
with Vuk Brankovic’s posses-
sions, reuniting many of the Ser-
bian lands under a single ruler
for the first time in many years.
In 1402, he received the title of
Despot and the fifty-year down-
ward spiral Serbia had been on
since Dušan’s death, ended.
Despot Stefan Lazarević
strengthened Serbia politically,
economically, culturally and
militarily. He issued the Code
of Mines and doing so, turned
mining into the Serbian Des-
potate’s economic backbone: at
the time of his death, Serbia was
one of the largest silver produc-
ers in Europe and the Novo
Brdo Mine was the largest mine
in the Balkan peninsula. Thanks
to his diplomatic skill, he was
given control of Mačva and
Belgrade by his new ally, the
Hungarian king, and under Des-
pot Stefan’s rule, Belgrade was
greatly expanded and became
the capital of the Serbian state.
He was a great patron of the
arts and culture, and provided
shelter and support to scholars
from Serbia and refugees from
neighbouring countries that had
been taken by the Ottomans. He
was himself a writer and poet,
and his most important work
is the prose poem
Slovo ljubve
,
dedicated to his brother Vuk.
His reign saw the emergence of
the first signs of the Renais-
sance in Serbian culture.
However, his greatest artis-
tic contribution is the Mana-
sija monastery. Despot Stefan
built Manasija to serve as his
mausoleum; in its grandeur, his
resting place surpassed any-
thing ever built in the Pomorav-
lje region. Located about 130
kilometres south of Belgrade,
Manasija monastery is notable
because of an unusual feature
– its fortification. Designed to
capably defend and protect
the monastery settlement, this
characteristic makes it a unique
monastery-fortress hybrid. This
was a necessary precaution
due to the growth of Ottoman
power in the region and the
very real fear of a new war with
Serbia’s powerful southern
neighbour. The fortification has
eleven towers and a specially
protected section at its east
end within the twelfth tower.
The towers are connected by
defensive walls (ramparts), with
special passages on the fourth
floor of each tower and rampart
which allowed those defending
Kao deo ktitorske
uloge despota Stefana,
nekoliko godina po
završetku izgradnje
manastira Manasija, tu
je osnovana prepisivačka
radionica, poznata kao
resavska škola. Tako je
manastir postao važan
kulturni i obrazovni
centar Srbije u srednjem
veku.
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Several years after the
Manasija monastery was
built as part of Despot
Stefan’s patronage of
the arts, a manuscript
copying workshop, known
as the Resava School,
was opened. This meant
the monastery became
an important cultural
and educational centre
in medieval Serbia.
