conditions in the Balkans," this meeting of the Serbian Despot Stefan Lazarević and the Roman Emperor John VIII Palaiologos, outside the Serbian lands, far from Constantinople, at the Hungarian court, was one in a series of attempts to halt the decline of the Christian states and to offer resistance to the conquerors from the East. But the negotiations with the Hungarian King Sigismund - conducted from June 22 to August 24, 1424 - on the creation of a broader anti-Ottoman coalition brought no results, for that very summer the sultan's representative concluded a truce with the Hungarian ruler.
The Europe of that time looked to its own advantage. Thus at the same negotiations a church union was proposed to the Orthodox dignitaries. The interests of the Western powers - first of all those of Venice and Hungary - were placed above those of Christendom as a whole. But the Serbian ruler rose above divisions, while at the same time carefully preserving his faith and the tradition in which he had grown up. Somewhat earlier, during his stay in Hungary, on St. Vitus' Day (Vidovdan), June 15, 1424 - "on the feast of the holy martyrs Vitus and Modestus, in the year of the Lord one thousand four hundred and twenty-four" - Despot Stefan sent a letter to his Hungarian officials (the Despot was also a Hungarian baron), asking them to respect the rights of the monks of the Pauline monastery of Saint Lawrence near Buda, to whom the Hungarian King Sigismund had promised freedom of movement and of trade in salt. This letter is kept today in the Hungarian National Archives in Budapest (it was translated from Latin into modern Serbian by Aleksandar Krstić).
The Serbian statesman who cared even for the rights of Roman Catholic monks cared still more for his compatriots and for his land. Above all he took care of the Church of Christ, of which he was a member, a patron and a protector. The memory of this God-loving ruler, who "like Moses the God-seer led his people for forty years and defended them from Turkish bondage" (as stated in the Akathist to the Holy Despot composed by Mirko Nanić), has not faded. The Orthodox Church recognized him as a holy saint of God not long after his departure into the bosom of Abraham. Constantine the Philosopher wrote his Life a few years after the repose of the Holy Despot. Stefan Lazarević has been venerated as a Saint in Serbia; in Russia since as early as the 15th century; and from the 17th century he is mentioned as a Saint in some Czech menologia as well.