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

the city and cast them to the ground; and it also demolished many other houses, even the house of the Despot’s sister Olivera. And in the days a little after Easter, the Hungarian priests from the other side of the river, at the time when in our (Orthodox) churches the liturgical gatherings were taking place, came as if by stealth, according to their rite, with the people, and carried their icons through the city. The pious Despot rebuked them for this, for they were his servants. Likewise, they had brought from the west certain icons on paper, which represented as it were the Father crucified on the cross together with the Son, and other similar things. These icons they sent to the Despot, and he, as though he were in a dream, without looking at them, ordered that a mark be placed on each icon and that they be distributed among the churches of the city. (By this the passing of Belgrade into Hungarian Roman Catholic hands was foreshadowed.) And this too happened. There had come someone from the Moesian regions, and he made himself out to be mad, but his deeds bore witness that he was some hidden servant of God (a fool for Christ). He went about the city day and night and bitterly bewailed himself, crying out: O woe is me! O alas for me! Meanwhile the Despot came home, and gave him alms. And the fool for Christ, according to his custom, handed these over to the poor. And lest anyone should doubt this prophetic foreshadowing of the city’s ruin, I will remind him of that Jesus who, before the destruction of Jerusalem by the Roman commander Titus (in the year 70), went about Jerusalem day and night crying out: A voice from the east, a voice from the west, a voice from the four winds, a voice against Jerusalem and against the temple, a voice against the wives and the brides, a voice against all the people! And they handed him over to the governor, and when he was beaten for this, he cried out: Jerusalem, Jerusalem! Besides all this, let me mention also the great star, a comet, that flew then like a sword over Belgrade. And likewise the doors of the Great Church (the Metropolis), which opened of themselves, and which otherwise twenty men could hardly close. All this truly was so, and so it came to pass. And his people were scattered (from Belgrade), and went to the west and the east and to the north and south, away from the bloody events.” “All this,” the Despot’s biographer Constantine concludes at the end, “we have written as his Life, but also as a chronicle with all the other things and events. And we have also set down the following acrostic: To him who ruled on earth in an unusual and extraordinary manner, a foreign servant offers this to the glorious Despot Stefan, the translator Constantine. The acrostic of the verses is: A stranger in a foreign land, I bewail (the Despot’s) death. ‘Stefan poured forth words sweeter than honey and the honeycomb, as from an abundant spring, and at once fragrant and nourishing, if used in measure. And the pious Despot was like a new David, most meek and most generous. He showed himself also as the wondrous all-wise Solomon before the thousands who came to him from all sides. As the head of his race he too was hospitable like Abraham, for with great desire and love he received strangers. He always longed for the ascent of the Prophet Elijah into heaven, and like Elijah he himself proclaimed the second coming of Christ. Stefan in beauty was a second Joseph of Egypt, and instead of wheat he gave gold. He was a warrior in victorious battles like that mighty Samson, and among these brave descendants of Adam (that is, the Serbs) he was from the beginning the finest example. He was also a second Job, for he gave richly and distributed to all without envy. He was known to his race by the mystery of his eyes, for they were like the sun: the rays of light reached all, but not its whole essence. But then all at once we were deprived of both Stefan and the sun. We no longer have him as the head that governs, the head of the elect of light, for that head died at the place called Glavica. Weep, bewail again, O White City (Belgrade), your darkening, for the leader of your people has faded like a flower