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

holy Apostle and Evangelist Luke.20 The Metropolitan of Belgrade at that time was the Despot's well-known collaborator Isidor; and he, with the Despot's holy mother, the Venerable Jevgenija, translated and laid in this renewed church the wonderworking relics of Saint Petka - Paraskeva, which the holy princess had brought from Tarnovo. A little later, around 1417, the Despot would build for Saint Petka a new church in the lower city and would translate into it her holy and wonderworking relics.21 Besides these churches there was in Belgrade also the church of Ružica, and a small chapel in the Despot's palace itself, where the pious Serbian ruler regularly prayed before the icons of Christ the Savior and the Most Pure Mother of God. In the city there were also Roman Catholic inhabitants, and they had their own church in the lower city, while outside the city walls there was the church of the Dubrovnik merchants. The Orthodox Despot of Serbia, although he was "a pillar of Orthodoxy" and "shone forth greatly with Orthodoxy," did not, like the popes and the Latin rulers, persecute in his land those who were not of his faith. He only kept watch over the activity of the Roman Catholics in his Orthodox Serbian land and strictly forbade them to spread the Latin faith and the union, as we saw in his aforementioned Novo Brdo law. Besides this, in the Despot's new capital Belgrade there was created also a center of culture and literacy for the Serbian people. To the Despot's land there gathered at this time the most learned men, monks and laymen, from the Greek, Bulgarian and Serbian regions which had been conquered by the Turks, and this not only because of the freedom in the Despot's land, but also because of the high education and spiritual enlightenment of the Despot himself. In Belgrade, under the Despot's supervision, the best school of the Slavonic and Serbian language and letters was created, and together with it a school of translators and copyists of ecclesiastical, theological, historical and philosophical works. But outside his capital Belgrade as well, the Despot would soon create another new spiritual and cultural center in his land, namely the Monastery of Manasija in Resava, as we shall see a little further on. But besides Belgrade and Resava there were other similar spiritual centers "in the days of this pious and right-believing and God-crowned lord of all the Serbian and Coastal land and of many parts of the Hungarian and Bosnian land, the wise and gracious and glorious Despot Stefan."22 This wise, justice-loving and God-loving Serbian ruler Stefan set in order life not only in his capital Belgrade, but also in the other cities and regions of his land. We have already mentioned how his biographer says that, when the Despot was freed from the Turkish yoke and returned free to his land, then in the Despotate "all impiety was trampled down" and "justice blossomed and bore fruit" everywhere and in every place. For the holy Despot

20 Before this wonderworking icon of the Most Holy Theotokos Queen Simonida, wife of the Holy King Milutin, prayed and venerated it, when in 1315 she came to Belgrade as a guest of her brother-in-law King Dragutin.