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

the land with Vuk. And from then on his brother Vuk, with the region allotted to him (below the Western and Southern Morava) and with the nobility who were with him, served Süleyman together with his nephews (the Brankovići), who also now held their paternal land (in Kosovo). And Despot Stefan moved to the part of the land allotted to him (from the Western and Great Morava to the Danube and Belgrade). Thus, when the land was divided, there came as it were some relief in the shedding of blood.” In this unjust fratricidal struggle forced upon him (which took place around 1409), the Despot could have relied on his friend and ally, the Hungarian King Sigismund. This mighty Western ruler had come to love Stefan greatly for his chivalry and wisdom, and for this reason, as we saw, had concluded a friendship with him and given him the city of Belgrade. Sigismund greatly esteemed and loved Stefan and showed him many honors, and gave him other cities as well in the Hungarian and Bosnian lands. He had also given Stefan the title of “Hungarian baron,” and so the two of them were mutually bound and pledged to help each other militarily against their enemies. Stefan could have made use of military help from Sigismund now as well, but in his heart he grieved and shunned a fratricidal war. The holy Despot was especially saddened when he saw how his brother, with flattering letters, as with the kisses of Judas, was separating from him the nobles and magnates, those who instead of love had come to love betrayal. To the lack of love and the betrayal of his brother and of these men, the Christ-loving and love-abounding soul of the Despot answered thus: to all of them, his brother, his nephews, and the fallen-away magnates, he wrote and sent his most sincere “Homily on Love” (“Slovo ljubve”). In it he poured out all his pain over the loss of brotherly and Christian love, and again his prayerful longing for a renewed union in the love of Christ God.

THE HOMILY ON LOVE (Slovo ljubve) OF DESPOT STEFAN

Stefan the Despot, to the sweetest and most beloved, and inseparable from my heart, and much, doubly longed for, and abounding in wisdom, sincere to my realm, (naming the name): in the Lord a loving embrace, and together with it the unstinting bestowal of our favor.

Summer and spring the Lord created, as the Psalmist also said, and in them many beauties: for the birds, swift flight full of gladness, and for the mountains, their peaks,