The Life of the Holy and Right-Believing Stefan the Tall, Despot of Serbia

the Christ-named flock (i.e. the Serbian people) might be saved from the wolves that were slaughtering it." And Olivera went to Bayezid "for the deliverance of her fatherland, as a mediatrix according to God, like that Esther of old,"11 but under one single condition: that she should not change her Christian faith for the Muslim one. This, with God's help, she kept, and therefore later, after the downfall of Bayezid, her brother Stefan delivered her and brought her back to her fatherland. Sultan Bayezid demanded also this: that the young Prince Stefan and his still younger brother Vuk must go with Olivera to Adrianople before the sultan to declare to him their submission and obedience. Of this Constantine the Philosopher speaks thus: "And from then on (from Kosovo) the Serbian land was enslaved, so that Stefan himself with his brother Vuk and with his nobles and with the others had to go every year to Bayezid for service." But God, Who in His goodness provides for all things, softened the heart of Bayezid, so that he, seeing in this noble boy a future ruler, capable and wise, behaved toward him with love and benevolence, as will soon be shown. Namely, when the Serbian army had perished at Kosovo and the Serbian land found itself unprotected, so-called "Christians" from Hungary immediately attacked it from the north and seized some Serbian regions. When then Princess Milica and the underage Stefan were compelled, for the salvation of their people, to conclude peace with the mighty Turk Bayezid, the Hungarians proclaimed themselves self-appointed "crusaders" who were to punish the "schismatic" Serbs for their alliance with the unbelievers.12 Bayezid then came to the aid of young Stefan and with his army helped him defend the land from the Hungarians. The right-believing Princess Milica then decided, in 1393, to withdraw from the world into a monastery, and therefore handed over all the duties of rule to her son Stefan, then already sixteen years old. She went to her endowment, the Monastery of Ljubostinja, and with many widows of Kosovo there consecrated herself to God and took the monastic tonsure, receiving in monasticism the name Jevgenija. Stefan then receives full authority over the Serbian land: "he is clothed with his mother's prayers and inherits his father's dignity, and appears as the most radiant ruler of the world." But the Serbian tragedy of Kosovo at once set its seal also upon this first period of Stefan's rule. Therefore his biographer Constantine says this: "But not all was then perfect, for the devil, who from the beginning sows tares, raised against Stefan a great struggle of certain magnates, whom his father had at first subdued under his feet, and they sought to make themselves his equals and to slip out from under his authority. They therefore invented many and grave charges against him and accused him before Amurat," that is, before Bayezid. These rebellious and disobedient magnates were of those who had not gone with Lazar to Kosovo, but had treacherously withdrawn, and now they rose up also against Lazar's son and with Bayezid