Before
they accepted Christianity the Serbs had a unified culture
with a long tradition whose strength was based on its equality
and similarity with the culture of numerous other Slavic tribes.
There was one language and one poetic system, through which
all needs of tribal life were expressed. During the migrations
and settlement in the Balkans, a historical consciousness
arose which gave birth to the oral epic, both in prose and
in poetry.
The
encounter with Christian culture introduced a completely different
system of poetry, which had developed over hundreds of years
on the basis of Hebraism-Hellenism, and which was expressed
in a language considered to be holy. A cultural type came
into being which had two aspects: the older, traditional and
oral, and the tradition of the new Christian civilization
which was written. Various forms of contact, mixing and permeation
arose between those two aspects, until a new cultural structure
came about which rested on both aspects of culture and their
productive relationship. They did not come into conflict because
each had clearly distinct functions in society.
Archbishop Danilo II with the Prophet, a composition of the
founder in the church of the Holy Virgin at the Patriarchate
of Pec
Written
Serbian literature in the Middle Ages was a special literary
system, in terms of typology, poetics and literary genres.
That system was the continuation and further development of
the Old Church Slavonic heritage, created for newly christianized
Slavs on early Byzantine models, in the sacral Slavonic language
- Old Church Slavonic. Old Church Slavonic was not confined
to a national group nor was the literature written in it,
and thus it spread quickly and easily among the Slavs. The
church services and Biblical texts were translated first and
soon after the other works necessary for a well- developed
Christian life were as well, among them the great works of
Christian poetry, rhetoric and dogmatics. Likewise, all the
other knowledge from the science, history, geography, and
medicine of the times found its place in this general Slavonic
fund of knowledge, along with the meditative and entertaining
literature of the Mediterranean and Asian worlds, such as
the famous Book of Barlaam and Joasaphat, Stephanites and
Ichnelates, and Physiologos. Here also were found the legends
about Alexios the Man of God, about St. George, the story
of the man who sold his soul to the devil, the story of wise
Achiros, a cycle of stories about Solomon along with numerous
other stories and a well-developed body of apocryphal literature.
It included all the works, therefore, that were spreading
throughout Europe in the common language - Latin. This introduced
the Serbs and the other Orthodox Slavs into the broad spectrum
of European- Mediterranean culture, and from this literature
they were trained in Christian religiosity and attained all
necessary knowledge in various fields at the time. This literature
was "mediating literature" (as it is called by D.S.
Lihachev) in the fullest sense.
However,
this literature, which broadened the education of the Slavs
and served as their reading material, did not have an overwhelming
influence on their own original works. When they began working
on their own Slavic themes, they used only a more narrow aspect
of this literature, those genres and that poetics with which
the cult of the saints could be celebrated, because the first
heroes of Slav literature were those responsible for Slav
literacy and for standard language, Cyril and Methodius and
their Slav disciples, whom the young Slavonic church considered
to be saints. Thus, the ritual genres are: hagiographies,
homiletics, and hymnography, or according to their Slavic
names: zitije (vita), pohvala (eulogy), sluzbe (church services).
Effectively they are prose, rhetoric and poetry. The fact
that the first works by Slavs were done in the canonical forms
of ritual literature, and also the fact that the language
of literature was the ritual, holy language of the Slavs,
both defined the character of the further development of literature.
It was spiritual literature, serious, abstract, ethical, and
it asked essential questions about human existence. On the
other hand, in treating actual events, that literature was
responsible in a historical sense. Old Church Slavonic literature
became the classics of the Slavs with a rich world of ideas,
worked out in poetry and poetic language. It would be the
model for Slavic national literature in the Middle Ages, especially
in Serbian literature. Everything which was created originally
in written Serbian literature remained in that system: within
the context of ritual genres - extra-ritual subject matter,
all new themes were created within the system created for
religious use.
Through
this system of literary genres, it was not possible to express
individual human feelings or secular themes, so the genres
of oral poetry, lyric and epic, along with oral narration,
stories and legends all supplemented the system of written
genres. Thus, in medieval written literature, love poetry
did not emerge, in spite of the relations to western European
literature where this genre was highly developed.
The
poetic view of the past through the epic characters of folk
heroes must have been quite well developed in the oral tradition,
there must have been a great desire for the poetization of
history, when written literature also took up such a notion.
Saint Sava began a series of Serb biographies. He wrote about
his father Stefan Nemanja, as the father of the nation, sketching
the patriarchal relationship between the ruler and his subjects.
Original Serbian literature dealt mostly with describing life
and with the feats of famous people: they are given a saintly
crown, and they became the model for moral living which did
not exist to such an extent nor with such systematic consistency
among other peoples. Thus, Serbian biography became the important
characteristic and unique trait of Serbian medieval literature.
The
formation of Serbian biographical literature was a process
which took a long time. It began with the need of the dynasty
for a holy lineage, which was meant to confirm their legitimacy
in the Christian world. As among the other European peoples,
the saintly ancestor was thereby established and a cult for
him would be celebrated. The first such Serbian saint was,
in fact, Prince Vladimir of Zeta, the ideal Christian ruler,
who unjustly died in the dynastic struggle for the throne
(1016). He can be classed as a "martyr prince",
a type which appeared in the early Christian states of feudal
Europe, during the conflicts between the old tribal way of
life and the new Christian one. Among the Slavs, the other
such princes were the Czech Prince V?av (killed 922) and the
Russian Princes Boris and Gleb (killed in 1015). The legend
of Saint Vladimir, which has its origins in the mid- twelfth
century, has been preserved only in the Latin translation.
The story has been embellished with an episode about the love
between the imprisoned Vladimir and the noble daughter of
the emperor, Kosara, which was undoubtedly extracted from
oral poetry.
The
martyr prince model was used to construct the character of
the prince victor. In the history of the monastery of Djurdjevi
Stupovi, the character of its founder, Stefan Nemanja, is
presented; he is shown as tormented by his evil and unjust
brothers because of his activities as a founder of monasteries.
However, the patron saint of the monastery, Saint George,
saves him and helps him to rise to the throne. This hagiographical
war story was given in Nemanja's proclamation of 1171 as proof
of the legality of his usurpation of the throne as the Great
Zupan of the Serbian lands and coast lands.
The Typicon of Kareja with the authentic signature of Saint
Sava from 1199
A
different portrait of the ruler is given in Nemanja's proclamation
of abdication from 1196, which later entered the Charter of
Hilandar (1198), where Nemanja's biography is presented. Here
Nemanja primarily presents his theory of government as his
God-given right and that of his predecessors to protect the
Serbian nation. Thus, Nemanja's successors were ensured the
throne, and this theory remained the dominant conception of
the state for all rulers in the Nemanjic dynasty. In this
dual composition, Nemanja lays out his achievements as a ruler
by enumerating his successes in battle and his care of the
church; he presents his moral achievements through a highly
nuanced confession of his soul, and of his decision to become
a monk under the name of Simeon. Thereby, the character of
the ruler was presented as an indivisible composite of a successful
warrior and a highly spiritual person, and from then on the
accomplishments of the ruler were recorded as such.
Nemanja's
autobiography is the basis for the literary presentation of
his character by his two sons and biographers, Sava and Stefan,
who attempted to establish the saintly cult of their father,
each in his own way, as the central pillar of the nation and
state. As ruler and Nemanja's successor, Stefan quickly proclaimed
his father a saint and also received international recognition
and the royal crown; he also reworked his father's autobiography
into a biography and proclaimed him to be sacred (The Second
Charter of Hilandar, 1200-1202). Meanwhile, Sava followed
the monkish orders and slowly prepared the saintly cult of
his father, first by writing a liturgy dedicated to him and
then by working on all the other necessary documents. In Sava's
great work, The Life of Lord Simeon (1208), Simeon-Nemanja
is understood as a wise ruler, a noble father, a gentle man
in his old age, but his saintliness is only hinted at. Sava
was thus free in his choice of genres with which he described
his hero, while Stefan wrote his The Life of Saint Simeon
(1216) according to all the regulations of the hagiographic
genre, the canonical form of a saintly vita.
In
sculpting Nemanja's literary image as a ruler and monk, Sava
used a large number of narrative models and literary types
beside the images which Nemanja gave himself. Yet, it is Sava's
sincere love and fascination for his father which makes Nemanja's
image convincing and creates a vivid relationship to it, which
is experienced even by the modern reader. The commandment
of the father to his sons not to fight over the throne or
for authority, but rather to live in brotherly love and harmony,
seems like the testament of a prophet. In the final scene
Sava comforts his brothers, Vukan and Stefan, over the holy
relics of their father, and thus brings the fratricidal war
in Serbia to an end, and this seems quite natural and calming.
Sava
used various forms of then existent Serbian literacy, official
documents, royal court and war stories, and the history of
monasteries, including narrative genres which had not appeared
in Serbian literature before then - journal entries, the moving
of the holy relics, instructions for his sons. He introduced
various forms of rhetoric, such as prayers, sermons, eulogies,
citations and parallels from the Bible, and thus enriched
his narration with rhetoric: in doing so he combined the vita
and the eulogy, which remains one of the important characteristics
of Serbian biographical literature. Sava formed this text
as the combination of the history of two of Nemanja's monasteries,
Studenica and Hilandar and, with his original conception of
compositional structure as a succession of narrative and dramatic
passages, he achieved depth of historical reflection and explicitness
in emotional expression. Shaded as a hagiography and faithful
as a historical account at the same time, coloured by the
personality of the writer as well, Sava's work is a direct
and unrepeatable autobiographical account of the most highly
reputed Serbian intellectual of the Middle Ages, the founder
of the independent Serbian church.
Stefan,
the first crowned Serbian king, was assigned the task of presenting
all of Nemanja's life and his posthumous deeds, according
to the genre he was writing in. He was forced to seek for
a variety of sources. For the account about Nemanja's rise
to power, he took the history of Djurdjevi Stupovi. He added
other characteristics to that one. He believed the apex of
his father's activities to be in the establishment of the
"true" faith in the lands of Serbia, thus shifting
the historical significance of Nemanja's religious policy
- Serbia had long been Christian, and Nemanja had been right
to persecute the heretics. He is shown in his full glory at
the state council which is discussing heretics, precisely
following the example of Byzantine emperors who presided over
ecumenical councils, giving the last word on the polemics
of the faith. Thus, according to Stefan, Nemanja became an
"isapostolic" ruler, who introduced Christianity
into his country. This type of ruler is shaped after the model
of Constantine the Great. The type also includes Rastislav
the Moravian prince (ninth century), the Bulgarian prince
Boris (ninth century) and Russian prince Vladimir (tenth century)
among the Slavs.
Stefan
attributed the role of saintly protector of the country to
Simeon-Nemanja, according to the model of the cult of St.
Dimitrios of Salonica. In an autobiographical account, appearing
both as a witness and as a participant in the events, Stefan
describes his own wars in great detail, in which he defeats
his enemies thanks to Nemanja's miraculous intervention. Appearing
in front of the Serb army on the occasion of war, Saint Simeon
protects not only his country (as he had done while still
living), but also his chosen heir, his son Stefan, supporting
him in the struggle for the throne. Stefan created a new typology
of religious fantasy, introducing war stories from the oral,
and probably written, literature of the royal court. A well-educated
man, Stefan enriched his harmoniously composed work with a
refined rhetorical quality. He concluded it with a solemn
eulogy which summed up the significance of Nemanja's life
in a poetic way, and lifted him from the real-historical level
to a higher spiritual sphere.
The Poetic Works of Despina Jelena from 1368-1371, an expression
of her sadness for her child; carved into a small silver diptych
Serbian
biography, constituted by the works of Saint Sava and Stefan
Prvovencani, as a poetization of history and its ideological
interpreter, took its most complete form in the Life of Saint
Sava by the hieromonk of Hilandar, Domentian (1243). Although
he was writing by order of the royal court, Domentian was
kept his distance from the authorities of the time and from
the events which he was describing. He was thus able to approach
many things as an objective historian who was in search of
documentation and who wrote a comprehensive work on that basis.
Almost everything that is known about Saint Sava is based
on Domentian's account: dedicating himself from his youth
to his holy calling, the young prince Rastko - the monk Sava
- climbed all the ladders of moral edification and of a career
in the church, and he became a significant person in the Orthodox
East at a time when it was most endangered by the Catholic
West. Above all, Domentian was an outstanding interpreter
of history as higher, heavenly providence. Thus, history was
more important than the individual even when that individual,
like his own Saint Sava, is sent from God. Sava was predestined
from birth to serve his homeland. In edifying himself, he
edified his homeland to a greater state of spirituality: his
raison d'etre was in fact to be a patriot. The basis of Domentian's
view of Saint Sava basically expressed the relationship of
a man to his homeland, probably unique in the European literature
of the mid- thirteenth century.
The
hero's predestination was a powerful medium for introducing
numerous and varied poetic and rhetorical forms. In writing
about Serbian history, Domentian unified all three basic genres
of the Serbian literary system: poetry in the form of prayers
serves as the motivation for certain actions; prose, both
factual and fictional, was the basis for the narration as
a whole; rhetorical eulogies sublimate the events and analyze
the phenomena and people. The highly developed composition
is unified by its anticipation of the events as a tie which
binds the story together, organized on the basis of the symbolism
of numbers in Christianity. Thus creating a grandiose history
of the period of Nemanja, Stefan and Sava, Domentian expanded
Nemanja's idea of the divine origin of his lineage to include
the whole Serbian nation, edifying it to the level of the
chosen people of God, the New Israel.
As
a counterpart to this volume on the founder of the Serbian
church, Domentian (again by order of the royal court) wrote
his Life of Saint Simeon (1264), compiling his own earlier
work and that of Stefan Prvovencani, and developing the rhetorical
elements by borrowing from A Eulogy to Prince Vladimir by
Ilarion of Kiev (from 1049). He thus authenticated his hero
as a chosen "isapostolic" Serbian ruler.
Only
when it ceased to be the ideological interpreter of events
just passed could Serbian biography become an imaginative
romanesque story which aroused sympathy in the reader. The
Life of Saint Sava from the end of the thirteenth century
is precisely that, written by a monk named Theodosius (Teodosije).
In his conception of Saint Sava, he made a radical reversal.
Everything which was abstract in Domentian's presentation
of Sava's character, Theodosius transformed into something
concrete. His writing is an example of medieval realism. However,
Saint Sava is no less a saint because of that, rather he is
somehow more approachable, closer to the reader who can thus
sympathize with him and follow his example. Theodosius borrowed
all of the compositional material from Domentian and did not
have to solve difficult historical problems. This allowed
him to masterfully develop the art of presenting the same
materials in a different kind of language, a poetic one. He
subordinated Domentian's rhetoric and poetry to pure narration
and thus achieved unity of genre and stylistic uniformity.
He created a broad narrative stream and vividly portrayed
the life, the times, the people and their relationships. His
work is a dynamic fresco of thirteenth century Serbia. It
is the first real Serbian novel.
Theodosius'
heroes are always in a state of heightened sensitivity, which
is carried over to the readers. Theodosius exposes the souls
of his heroes to refined psychological analysis. Because of
that, the anchorite Petar of Mt. Korisa was perhaps even more
suitable as a hero to Theodosius' writing talents. Theodosius'
The Life of Petar of Korisa, a real Serbian hagiography (1310),
offers a rich repertory of the plastically illustrated surreal
life of the hermit's imagination; it also offers the possibility
of penetrating deeply into the touching world of the anchorite's
inner life. This is the best of psychological novels, surpassing
medieval ideas and poetics. Theodosius unravelled Domentian's
interweaving of all three literary genres. Apart from these
narrative works, Theodosius also dedicated numerous works
of religious poetry and a single rhetorical eulogy to his
heroes, with all due respect to the model of ritual literary
types.
The official signature of King Stefan Uros III Decanski at
the end of The Charter of Decani in a scroll from the year
1330
The
end of the thirteenth century brought a new kind of literature
to the Serbian public, opening up a view into the world of
knighthood and courtliness which was different from the one
that had been offered before. These were illustrious novels
about the Trojan War and about Alexander the Great, and they
were adapted creatively through the use of highly developed
epic poetry, which is a direct testimony to that poetry's
qualities. The appearance of these novels was exceptionally
productive, because they offered a model of a literary system
which Serb writers could not ignore thereafter. On the contrary,
the weak translations of novels about Tristan and Isolde,
about Lancelot and about Beuve d' Hanstone, which appeared
much later, did not leave a single trace on the literature
of the Serbs.
At
the time of the apex of the Serbian state, which included
frequent, violent overthrows of rulers on the throne, Archbishop
Danilo II wrote his works, relying heavily on Domentian's
poetics. Using the traditional Serbian biographical form,
he attempted to explain the complex destiny of people who
were predestined at birth to the difficult task of ruling,
a theme which had already been broached at the end of the
twelfth century. Therefore, in Danilo's work, man and his
relationship with good and evil is in the foreground, and
history is the foundation on which the questions of personality,
morals and ideas are answered. Danilo bore witness to his
time through the biographies of three characters from the
ruling family, all connected by emotive and conceptual ties.
This offered him the possibility of constructing three powerful
personalities and of making use of several points of view
at the same time.
Queen
Jelena was the ideal mother and ruler; in her declining years
she was also a model nun. She was the literary counterpart
of Nemanja (1316). Her elder son, King Dragutin, was not a
negative hero even though he desecrated the Serbian throne
through his transgression toward his father; he was truly
penitent and through the strength of his will he gained esteem
(1317). Danilo (after 1321) rewrote the autobiography of Dragutin's
younger brother King Milutin (1317) in which his numerous
successes on the battlefield are attributed to the heavenly
protection of the Serbian saints, Sava and Simeon. Danilo
liberated the biography of hagiographic additions and excessive
rhetoric, of miracles and pathos; he was thus able to present
Milutin's life as a real and coherent cycle of stories about
wars, and the success Milutin experienced on the battlefield
was attributed to his skill as a warrior. Danilo retained
the traditional conception of the dual accomplishments of
the ideal Serbian ruler, those of state and those of the faith,
but he does not insist on Milutin's personal spiritual accomplishments,
because the ideal man and ruler had come to be seen in Alexander
the Great, who Danilo used as a comparison to his own hero.
The Serbian ruler is no longer the loving father, like Nemanja,
but is rather the powerful sovereign of a mighty state on
the brink of becoming an empire. Gathered into one collection,
these three biographies present a sweeping version of the
history of Milutin's time, which was a significant step in
the spread of historical concepts in Serbian literature.
Danilo's
anonymous "Pupil" continued to write along the same
lines. The Pupil described the life of his teacher (after
1337), but presented only the spiritual life and ecclesiastical
career of Danilo. Danilo's profuse activity as a statesman
was presented by expanding the role he played in the biographies
of the rulers which Danilo himself had written, while in the
biographies of King Stefan Decanski (after 1331) and his son
Dusan as king (after 1335), of which the Pupil was the author
himself, he gave Danilo a leading role from the very start.
By uniting all these texts afterwards, adding to them a series
of biographies of leaders in the Serbian church, texts by
Danilo and other authors, the Pupil put together a great historical
codex entitled Danilo's Annals; this volume represents the
greatest degree of the development of narrative structure
in Serbian medieval literature.
King Stefan Prvovencani, a fresco from the monastery of Mileseva
At
the same time, the Pupil's works represent the ultimate scope
of Serbian biography as an original form which presents poeticized
history in the form of hagiography. The Pupil's Stefan Decanski
is a negative character, so the positive characteristics of
the ruler's biography are assigned to the other heroes. Archbishop
Danilo, the church leader of the time, is destined for spiritual
accomplishments, while young King Dusan is destined for glory
on the battlefield. The hagiographic model had to be left
behind, and the main focus of the writer is dedicated to the
events of war. In the Pupil's works, they occupy the central
place. The model for this extensive war narration is to be
found in A Serbian Novel about Alexander, the Serbian version
of the famous novel, and with it the character of the ideal
Serbian sovereign grows into the character of a warrior and
knight. His unfinished biography suggests that he intended
Dusan to be this character. Serbian prose was slowly moving
toward the romance. However, the fall of the empire stopped
the process of secularization in Serbian literature, and his
successors did not have the time or ambition to elucidate
his greatness as a sovereign in their literature. That is
how the long stream of Serbian biographical literature came
to its end as the poeticised chronicles of Nemanja's heirs.
The
disintegration of the hagiographic form and the movement toward
the romance, toward belles lettres, left the historical component
of Serbian biography excluded. Already the last chapters of
Danilo's Annals are nothing more than short historical notes.
In the second half of the fourteenth century, the first Serbian
historical genres will appear, chronicles and genealogies,
and they became increasingly important with time. At the same
time new forms appeared, in the search for new literary forms,
liberated from the tasks of history, such as learned epistles,
poetic records, artistic verse and other forms as well.
Under
the auspices of the church, an enormous amount of literary
activity took place. Priority was given to religious poetry,
which accompanied the establishment of saintly cults. The
short vita was an essential element of this. With the Turkish
attacks in the second half of the fourteenth century, new
themes and new tones appeared in Serbian literature. In records
and other short genres, nostalgia and lamentation appeared,
both individual and collective. This mood set the basic tone,
and it produced the Kosovo cycle.
The
exploits of Prince Lazar, the hero of Kosovo (1389) produced
an entire cycle of poetic compositions. Lazar's heirs tried
to maintain the organization of the state in Serbia, relying
on the Nemanjic tradition. Thus, in the milieu of the court,
just as before, documents were written which elucidated the
position and conceptual foundations of the Lazarevic family
through the character of a single hero. The new dynasty was
creating its own saintly predecessor. Yet, he was a new kind
of hero, he is a sovereign with only one exploit, only one
battle. That battle is lost, but Prince Lazar fell as a true
knight, defending European Christian civilization from a horde
of barbarians of another race from another continent. He is
the moral victor, and he can thus be the hero of a Christian
epic. His theme is the identification of faith and patriotism,
unbounded dedication to the Christian ideal, leading ultimately
to conscious self-sacrifice, the theme of the importance of
the spiritual over the material, of the heavenly kingdom over
any earthly one. Yet, the prince is not the only hero. His
loyal knights do battle and die with him. Sacrifice for Christianity
is their choice as well. They are champions for the cause
of loyalty to a sovereign, to feelings of honour and duty.
The philosophy of duty is transferred from the sovereign to
all the other participants in the battle as well. Nemanja's
theory of sovereignty was thus extended - all those who belonged
to the military and feudal order were obliged to defend the
faith, their nation and their country.
These
are all reasons why Lazar's entire life was not described,
but just that one single exploit. The Christian accomplishment
of Prince Lazar and the heroes of Kosovo is enough for them
to be celebrated. A new form and a new model was being sought.
The Kosovo exploit is very close to those of the early Christian
martyrs, to the stories of the first martyrs, who were edified
among the chosen, becoming saints through their martyrdom.
The texts about Prince Lazar are written in the form of eulogies,
coloured with the spirit of the epic-lyric and of emotional
ecstasy. In place of the magnificence of the earlier biographies,
here sensitivity prevails and there is empathy instead of
enthralment; there is no glorification, all is sad and reserved,
a quiet peacefulness which arises from the deep conviction
that what had to be done was, in fact, done. This is noble
poetry of sacrifice and of moral victory.
The
basis of this poetry about Kosovo was the enchanting Historical
Narrative which was written immediately after the battle (1392)
by Patriarch Danilo the Third, in the cultivated style known
as "pletenije sloves". His work contains all the
elements of the Kosovo theme as found in the documents afterwards,
and of the myth of Kosovo in the oral poetry. The Kosovo theme
is the first preserved and completely clear example of the
symbiotic relationship between the written and oral poetic
systems of Serbia in the Middle Ages: the same theme with
all the essential elements is cultivated simultaneously in
both poetic forms. Among Danilo's followers, there were also
other people from the royal court. This is, therefore, the
literature of the royal court. Among them one finds Milica,
Lazar's learned widow and the first Serbian poetess of sadness
and suffering; Jefimija, the famous embroiderer, despina and
nun; Lazar's son and heir, young Despot Stefan Lazarevic,
statesman, soldier and poet of renaissance intoned love lyrics
which are revealed in his poetic tract about love, The Word
of Love, and elsewhere. Ten texts appeared in twenty years.
Despot Stefan Lazarevic, a fresco from the monastery of Manasija
from the year 1418
Refugees
from the Balkans, fleeing ahead of the Turkish invasion, brought
other literary trends into Serbia as well. Among them was
Grigorije Tsamblak, who wrote, during his short stay at Decani,
The Life of Stefan Decanski; he presented Stefan as a great
martyr, completely within the tradition of the Bulgarian school
of Trnovo, in a strict hagiographic style which was never
cultivated in Serbia. Tsamblak was interceding, with his work
and his life, on behalf of Slavic and Balkan spiritual unity
against the Turkish threat; meanwhile, his compatriot Konstantin
Filozof was searching for heroic warriors to take sword in
hand and oppose the infidel invasion. He found that ideal
in his protector, Despot Stefan Lazarevic, and he dedicated
his extensive biography The Life of Despot Stefan (1433) to
him. After many years and under quite different circumstances,
Konstantin created the same kind of literary character in
a sovereign as had Danilo's Pupil. To wit, the ideal sovereign
is a successful warrior and noble knight, a refined artist
and fearless fighter for Christian culture, a man of great
moral strength which he draws from his dedication to his land
and to the history of his nation. He is the hero of the new
era because of that, and not because of any kind of heavenly
protection. The new era is also seen through a different and
more objective view of people and events. The Despot himself
initiated the translation of the Byzantine chroniclers, the
compilation of a Serbian genealogy, and the expansion of the
chronicles. Apart from the interest in ancient history, the
rational spirit of the epoch also appeared in the textual
and linguistic studies of the Despot's court and its surroundings.
Stefan Lazarevic and Konstantin Filozof introduced humanistic
and renaissance trends in Serbian literary life, which had
been cut short and cast into darkness by the terrible tragedy
of the loss of Serbian national independence and the following
centuries of slavery.
Even
so, even under such conditions, the meagre literary activity
was still dealing with the ideal heroes of the type which
were created in the literature of the Middle Ages. The heroes
became the last representatives of Serbian statehood, the
Despots of Srem - the Brankovic family - to whom cultic texts,
liturgies and short vitae were dedicated in the first half
of the sixteenth century in the Krusedol school; this school
cultivated an artistic style which lacked nothing in comparison
to its excellent models in earlier epochs. Instead of developing
along the lines of the renaissance which had already begun,
Serbian literature remained where it had been when the foreign
invasion occurred. The written word found support in the oral,
traditional word, and thus Patriarch Pajsije did nothing other
than to fill the old hagiographic framework with new oral
tradition when he wrote The Life of Tsar Uros (1642). In the
period when European culture was undergoing great revival,
Serbian culture, separated from Europe by a cordon of Turkish
weapons, attempted to revive itself from its own resources.
Thus, written literature relied on oral poetry, which was
acutely vivid, drawing on its own inspiration, ethical principles
and a noble sensitivity taken from the testimonies of the
medieval epoch, safeguarded in the libraries of the aging
monasteries.
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