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

body his chief voivode took great care. O the honorable soldiery of this honorable lord! At this sorrowful burial, from exceeding grief, the women did not look to their children, nor to their homes, nor to anything else of their own. Likewise, those who were carrying the Despot paid no heed to the fact that somewhere near there was an Ishmaelite army, for they counted their lives as nothing, if only they might lay their lamented lord in the place where he had commanded. And what sorrowful and mournful cries could not then be heard by those present at that burial! Men from pain tore their faces and plucked out their hair, and all changed their bright garments for dark ones. For instead of many-shining raiment they clothed themselves in sackcloth, and moreover, taking some worn-out monastic garment, they tore it into pieces and put them upon themselves, so that everything might be unusual, in an altered form and appearance. And men cut the manes of their horses, and did many other things. And the Despot’s servants, the Hungarian knights, cried out with distraught voices: To whom will you now send us? How have we sinned against your realm, that you thus suddenly drive us away? Where shall we find your glory, and splendor, and many gifts? From now on we are deprived of the sweetness and splendor of this world! And the most honorable and illustrious lords, whom he had until then esteemed extraordinarily, each of them personally showed his pain and bitterness. When the funeral service was then performed, and when the priest or the deacon proclaimed: ‘Again we pray for the blessed memory of the unforgettable lord Stefan the Despot,’ then all fell as into a kind of distraction. And some of the grandees present there, plucking out the hair of their beards, cried out: Not so! By no means must it be said that he has died! At this all together, from the depths of their hearts, roared like lions and made truly a great lamentation, new Israelites for a new Israel. Then, because of the shortness of time, they quickly prepared him and laid him there in the church in Resava, on the right side of the entrance into the church. And at the same time they returned to the city of Belgrade, and many others came as well, since what had happened had been announced on all sides, so that all fled into the cities and to the islands.” “And among those who were in Belgrade a strange change was suddenly seen. All exchanged their bright garments for black ones, and so too the women and children, and forming as it were choirs, they came before the wondrous palace of the pious Despot. Others of these choirs waited in the city, and some again before the city. Then came the Despot’s companions, the servants with the horses, and the doorkeepers, and all the others in order. And who can express all those moving cries, when each of these choirs approached, or when it entered the city and came into the interior of the city to those who were bearing the sorrowful tidings to the pious lady and all-beloved sister of the Despot, Olivera (she who had dwelt in a foreign land for the deliverance of her fatherland and had been, according to God, a mediatrix like the Esther of old). And from grief for the Despot many here in the city, even of his chosen ones, were as though out of their minds, and stunned they gazed toward heaven, utterly exhausted from grief, so that those around them poured water over them. And above the city and within the seven-peaked city itself, the air was filled with the unceasing funeral songs of those going and coming. And so it was likewise in all the cities and regions. Which of the moving lamentations of old shall we compare with this present one here? ‘For God shall turn thy feasts into mourning,’ said the prophet Amos (Amos 8:10). ‘I have heard,’ says Jeremiah, ‘Ephraim bemoaning himself: God hath chastised me, and I was chastised’ (38:18). We may also cite that weeping and cry for Moses, when all the peoples returned with great weeping, and the elders returned from Mount Nebo with great lamentation, and Eleazar with sobbing. And then all together lamented unceasingly for thirty days (Deut. 34:8). And they said: You have left us, O servant of God! Why have you