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

with whom you were openly sealed in baptism.”

We were together and near to one another, whether in body or in spirit; but if mountains, if rivers have parted us, let David say: “Mountains of Gilboa, let no rain come down upon you, nor dew, for you did not preserve Saul, nor Jonathan!” O the guilelessness of David, hear, O kings, hear! Do you lament Saul, O you who were found? For I have found, says God, a man after my own heart.

Let the winds clash with the rivers and dry them up, as the sea for Moses, as for Joshua the judge, for the sake of the Ark, the Jordan.

That we might be joined together again, and see one another again, and by love be united again in Christ our God Himself, to Whom be glory with the Father and with the Holy Spirit unto endless ages, AMEN.

This wondrous “Homily on Love” of the Despot to his brother, nephews, and magnates, who had broken away and risen against him, bore fruit only in part, for a certain truce followed and the shedding of brotherly blood ceased. O, had his brother Vuk then heeded him and been “united again in Christ” with him as a brother, as the Despot desired and prayed to God, he would not soon have suffered what he suffered: to be slain, as a twofold traitor, by the hand of a Turkish executioner. For the following year, 1410, when struggles arose among the sons of Bayezid over the throne and the rule, and when his brother Musa came from Asia Minor into Europe against Süleyman, then the Despot’s unhappy brother Vuk was slain, together with his youngest nephew Lazar. This Turk Musa was the most cunning and most wicked among his brothers, and having come to the Balkans he committed many evils and acts of violence, “coming like a hail-bearing cloud upon the pious,” that is, upon