In Belgrade, on Terazije, a girl from Trebinje is holding a white book on which my name and the title "Let's go to the field" are written in Cyrillic. He says: "Didn't you have a problem with this title?".
I got confused. In 1988, no one asked such questions anymore. An indirect biblical quotation could no longer satisfy even a single censor. It was the end of the last decade of Yugoslavia, the communists were no longer able to direct the writing, and the chauvinists had not yet fully taken over that role. It turned out that Trebinjka, who studied literature in Belgrade, thought that the verb "to leave" was less regular than the verb "to leave".
I told her that the shapes are equal. After all, it is a quote from the song "The Letter of Love".
A word of love
Despot Stevan Lazarević, in his glorification of love, also reminded of the fratricide recorded in the Old Testament - the jealous farmer Cain kills his brother, the shepherd Abelj, luring him into the field. Despot Stefan wrote at the beginning of the 15th century:
Because Cain, lover of others, said to Abel:
"Let's go out into the field".
Of course, he recorded it in the language from the beginning of the 15th century, later it was modernized by various "translators", among whom Momčilo Nastasijević is the most famous. But I used another translation that used the word "let's go out". And I named the book after that. As usual, the semi-knowledge of the acquaintance from Trebinje was rude. She couldn't imagine what language was like sometimes - freedom of choice.
I didn't care about such remarks then. For me, language was the reservoir of human memory. The history contained in it seemed to me to be a constant struggle between fragile love and mass fratricide, an eternal repetition of the story of Abel and Cain. That was also the story of the 20th century. Unfortunately, a few years after the publication of my first book, the Yugoslav peoples were once again led into Cain's field, repeating the painful Old Testament-historical matrix.
I was drawn to Despot Stefan Lazarević, son of Prince Lazar, who fell in the Battle of Boje in Kosovo, in the late eighties by his poetic message. I imagined him as a solitary ruler who silently translated from Greek and Latin, in times when he was not forced to draw his sword. I did not know much about his political role and importance. He was destined to be a tragic figure, caught between the swelling Ottoman East and the weakened Catholic West. And he left a mark that is remembered.
Despot's version of "non-alignment"
If the sources tell the truth, Stefan was born in 1377 in Kruševac. He lost his father in Kosovo when he was 12 years old. Nominally, he became a prince, but affairs were managed by his mother, Princess Milica. According to the state he inherited, he was a vassal of the Ottoman Empire. This meant that he was obliged to send auxiliary detachments to the Ottoman Sultan and to pay a tribute of 50.000 gold coins. Once a year, he, his younger brother Vuk and other nobles went to Sultan Bayazit in Bursa to pay their respects. Stefan personally had to take the Sultan's youngest sister Olivera for his harem.
As soon as he was fit for the sword, battles awaited him on the side of the sultan. In the one in Rovinj, in which the official heir to the Serbian crown Marko Kraljević and Konstantin Dragaš died on the Ottoman side, Stefan Lazarević remains alive - this makes him one of the rare Serbian noblemen who can develop into rulers. The Battle of Nicopolis, in which the sultan destroys the last crusader army, brings Stefan Lazarević glory - his 15.000 armored men attack the crusaders at the crucial moment and they retreat. Among those crusaders was the German Johann Schiltberger, who left a detailed record of the color.
Stefan Lazarević showed the same courage in 1402, in the battle of Angora - today's Ankara, where Bayazit was defeated and captured by the Tatar ruler Tamerlane. The winner personally allowed Stefan Lazarevic's sister, Olivera, to follow her brother from the sultan's harem without ransom because he was impressed by the war skills of the Serbian cavalry.
Stefanova's marriage
The Sultan's defeat was significant for Stefan in many ways. On his way back to Constantinople, he got a bride: Jelena Gatiluzio was the daughter of the Lord of Lesbos, Francesco II Gatiluzio, originally from Genoa and by her mother's side the nephew of the Byzantine emperor Manoilo II Paleologus. With this, Stefan was born with the imperial family and received the right to the title of despot, which ranks just below the emperor. That title had been awarded by the Byzantine emperors for almost two and a half centuries.
Upon his return to Serbia, he sided with his former enemy on the battlefield - the Hungarian king Sigismund. Stefan Lazarević is described in German sources as a ruler with a distinctly chivalrous streak. It is emphasized that as an Orthodox Christian he participated in the Council in Constanta and that he belonged to the Order of the Dragon. That order was founded by the Hungarian king Sigismund of Luxembourg, in order to "defend the cross from the enemy". The coat of arms of Stefan Lazarevic will feature a dragon wrapping its tail around its own neck.
At the same time, the despot skillfully chooses a side in the Ottoman struggle for the sultan's inheritance, supports Mehmed and Celebi, and when he becomes sultan, he is rewarded with the territories around Niš and Srebrenica. From Zygmund he received territories north of the Sava and Danube: Zemun - as well as other Srem and Banat properties. It consolidates the country from the Banat to the Adriatic, from Srebrenica to Novi Brdo. He was successful in local wars with the Branković rivals, with his renegade brother Vuk, and with the Bosnian king Tvrtko.
Despot's Belgrade
He decides to move the capital to Belgrade, which has been the capital of the Serbian state for the first time since 1405. The Belgrade fortress increased tenfold in terms of defended area. The city is decorated with five churches and the despot's court. To his new capital, the despot brings relics, the right hand of Constantine the Great, Petka Paraskeva from Veliko Trnovo - the holy Friday revered by the people to this day. Scholars from failed Christian states flee to his monasteries. One of them is Konstantin Filosof from Bulgaria, who is writing a biography of the despot Stefan Lazarevic. He glorifies him as "a despot with enigmatic eyes". A completely different historical source from Germany describes the Serbian despot as a tall and handsome man: when Sigismund (actually born Sigismund in Nuremberg) was crowned in Aachen in 1411 as Holy Roman Emperor, the Serbian despot was among the guests. He looked "like the moon among the stars." Eyewitness from Mainz, Eberhart Vindeke, left testimony that Stefan was "an unusually beautiful man, honest, just and peaceful."
Puritan discipline reigned in the despot's court itself. Loud laughter and music were forbidden. The despot determined the way the courtiers dressed and the fashion. A knight's school of martial arts worked at the court. German knights, among others, have served in it, as well as in the elite armored cavalry units, ever since Emperor Dušan. At that time, a sword was in use that would later be called "Skijavoneska" in Venice - a Slavic sword, which some claim was forged for the first time in Serbia. Probably the knights were girding him.
Contemporaries talk about the economic prosperity of the despotism based on mining and the centralist organization of the country. According to data from the Dubrovnik archives, the amount of silver exported from what was then Serbia and Bosnia in 1422 - and the greater part, according to the chronicles, came from Serbia - amounted to 5.67 tons, which is more than a fifth of the total European production. It should come as no surprise why the Serbian despot reacted with draconian punishments to the rebellion of the Srebrenica miners who threw his governor out of the palace window and thus killed him. Srebrenica was a gift from his friend, Sultan Mehmed, and together with Novi Brdo was the financial key to the rise of Serbia.
Resava school and death in the hunt
The despot builds his endowment - the Manasija or Resava monastery. This is where the third type of spelling of the Serbian redaction of the Old Slavic language was created, which will be used until the 18th century. Resava's copying school, the scriptorium, becomes the most important in Serbia and one of the most important in Europe.
Then comes the fateful year 1427. It's Saturday, July 19. The despot returns from Šumadija to Belgrade. Not far from today's Kragujevac, they rest and have lunch. After that, he goes hunting. Legend has it that he released a falcon from his hand, and that a small hawk landed on it. At that moment he had a heart attack. He soon died in his tent. His successor was Đurađ Branković, since he had no children, and it is believed that his wife died after several years of marriage. Đurađ was appointed as the heir probably as early as 1426 at the assembly in Srebrenica.
The image of the despot was not only imprinted on the walls of his endowments, but also intertwined in folk traditions. One of them says that he is the fruit of the love of a dragon and his mother Milica. This story was especially cherished in Bosnia, Herzegovina and the littoral. The people believed that the epic Sibinjan Janko - and the historical Janoš Hunjadi - was his illegitimate son.
Scholars argue whether the despot was buried in Manasija or the Koporin monastery. Manasi seems to be winning the dispute because DNA analysis has determined that the tall man buried at the entrance is most likely a direct descendant of Prince Lazar.
Despot's Song
I think about all this in the despot's capital, where none of his churches are left, but two streets are named after him. Folklore connects Nebojša's tower with the despot, because it was supposedly the "donjon" tower - the last defense within the despot's walls. Admittedly, the real despot's tower was destroyed in the 17th century in a gunpowder explosion, and it was located somewhere between Defterdar's Gate and Pobjednik.
I like to believe in the tradition that the despot's tower, when the Turks penetrated the city, flew up and landed down by the river, remaining impregnable - Nebojša's tower.
I pass by the monument to the despot Stefan erected about forty years ago. I can't help but remember that the city authorities erected another monument, in the great city, far from the despot's court and fortress. I sit next to the Despot's tower, the only original part of the fortress from that time. I am collecting the impressions of my dealings with the despot Stefan Lazarevic.
The book "Let's go to the field" ended in 1992 in a shelled apartment in Bosnia. A neighbor saved several copies of the book from the torn apart apartment. One of those copies is now in my lap. The book was published in 1988 in Sarajevo Svjetlosta in the "Nada" library. I named the despot Stefan Lazarevic after the biblically intoned verse.
As I said - we went out into the field, other people's love, again. Someone like Abel, and someone like his brother. By the way, Cain is the image of our envy and narcissism, theologians say. Few are those who, like Charles Baudelaire, saw Prometheus in Cain.
Now, in July 2021, the heat is not letting up. Where is that girl from Trebinje, has life taught her that sometimes there is more than one correct answer? Dusk over the Belgrade rivers. Despot could describe it:
Summer and spring, Lord, now,
as the psalmist said,
and many are beautiful in them.
Bonus video:
