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

when Mehmed and the other rulers came to the Despot, and so a mighty Serbian, Bosnian, Hungarian, and Turkish army set out against Musa under the supreme command of the Despot. Meanwhile, Musa had already moved against the Despot and taken his city of Bovan near Aleksinac. Then he struck at the stronghold of Stalać, but the Despot’s brave hero, the voivode Prijezda, did not surrender the city to Musa, but set it on fire and himself burned within it. But right there came the end of the hateful Musa, for the Despot’s army attacked him and he was at once routed. As he fled from the Despot, he was pursued by the voivode Radič the čelnik and Đurađ, until they caught him and at once put him to death. Having in this way defeated the Turks, the Despot concluded peace with the new sultan Mehmed I (1413–21), and the sultan returned to the Despot all the Serbian cities that Musa had conquered, and some others in the east as well. Thus the Despot’s Serbia now extended to near the city of Sofia. This peace with the Turks lasted a full ten years, so that “from then on the inhabitants and all things attained a peaceful state, and one could say with the prophet, as once to Jerusalem: ‘Keep thy feasts, O Judah, in thy joy, for the Lord hath taken away thy iniquities, and hath delivered thee out of the hand of thine enemies. The Lord shall reign in the midst of thee, and thou shalt not see evil any more’ (Nahum 1:15; Zeph. 3:15).” In this time of such peace the holy Despot again devoted himself to raising and building throughout his land cities (“city-building”), mines, churches, and monasteries. When at this time he was once staying at the monastery of Resava, the abbot of the monastery of Vatopedi on Mount Athos came to him and asked him for material help for his monastery. The monk-loving Despot of Serbia ordained that from then on this Athonite monastery should be given a fixed yearly gift of 60 litrae of silver, and he also bestowed on it the village of Koprivnica near Novo Brdo, and confirmed all this with his imperial charter (of July 2, 1417). Since at this time he had received from the Hungarian king as a gift the mine of Srebrenica in Bosnia, and since there was no Orthodox church there but only Roman Catholic churches, the holy Despot at once summoned builders from Dubrovnik and built an Orthodox church there. Thus the Christ-loving Despot Stefan throughout his whole earthly life and reign unceasingly helped monasteries and built churches of God, and he even died “going about the land (with the aim) of raising yet another divine temple.” Likewise the God-wise Despot greatly loved and unceasingly read divine books and strove to have them copied for his people. Precisely at this time (around 1416), by the Despot’s wish and command, a learned monk-translator in the “mučalnica” (hermitage of silence) near Ljubostinja translated from the Greek the four Books of Kingdoms, writing upon them this: “These four Books of Kingdoms I translated from Greek books into the Serbian tongue for the pious and Christ-loving autocrat of the Serbs, my lord Despot Stefan, in generosity and mercy a new Cyrus, in sweetness of speech a second Manasseh, and in love of learning a most wise Solomon.” And truly, this man of God was more generous than Cyrus and wiser than Solomon, for, as his biographer Constantine says, “from day to day he struggled ever more, thanking God for all that He had done in all the days of his life. And his work was unceasing almsgiving and the frequent reading of divine words. And he gave himself so much to the needy and the poor that he himself went out at night along the roads and fences to distribute alms with his own hand. And only one of his men, who carried for him gold or silver or something else, only this most faithful one did he take with him, though many times he did it himself as well. On one occasion a needy man (a beggar) came up to him, and the Despot gave him alms. And he, running ahead of him again, asked him for alms. The blessed one recognized him, but gave him still