The Charter of Despot Stefan to the Monasteries of Tismana and Vodița

the Great at Vodița were built through the contribution of the Serbian prince. Despot Stefan restored freedom and standing to these monasteries and confirmed their former estates, including nine villages in Serbia, near the lower course of the Pek River. Some of those places, such as Tribrod, Ponikve, Bikinje and Barič, have kept their names to this day.

In the charter Despot Stefan further permits all church people who had fled because of the unrest and the Turkish raids to return freely, with the promise that no one will prevent them from doing so. In the charter he also mentions “the priest lord Nikodim,” and he obliges the successors of the monk Nikodim, as well as his own successors, to respect the provisions of the charter.

The charter of Despot Stefan of 1406, intended for the monasteries of Tismana and Vodița in present-day Romania, has been preserved in the original manuscript. The document, which is today kept in the National Archives of Romania in Bucharest, contains a total of 32 lines of text.

The text of the charter was first published and translated into Romanian in Bucharest in 1864; the charter was published in Romania several times during the 20th century as well. The text of this charter has been studied and analyzed by, among others, the Serbian historian and writer Čedomilj Mijatović (1842–1932), who prepared the first Serbian edition of the text of the charter, and then by Stojan Novaković (1842–1915), Sima Ćirković (1929–2009), Đorđe Trifunović, Gordana Jovanović, Aleksandar Mladenović (1930–2010), Andrija Veselinović, Vladimir Polomac... There are several translations of this charter into modern Serbian - by Đ. Trifunović, Ljubomir Kotarčić and A. Mladenović, and the most recent is the translation by Andrija Veselinović (translation edited by Tatjana Subotin-Golubović).

This is the only preserved charter of Despot Stefan that was addressed to monasteries in Romania. In the context of the Holy Despot's care for the monasteries in Wallachia, we may assume that his care for Manasija Monastery - his principal endowment and burial church - was without equal, which is also confirmed in the Life of Despot Stefan by Despot Stefan's biographer, Constantine the Philosopher [ŽDS 52].

The Charter to Tismana and Vodița (1406)