LIFE OF ST. SABBAS, ARCHBISHOP OF SERBIA,
By John Tomco Marnavitius.
Thirteenth century.
CommentarySabas, Archbishop of Serbia (S.)
By Tomco Marnavitius.
CHAPTER I.
The royal lineage and monasticism of St. Sabbas.
[1] The Catholic Church venerates three men of this name, illustrious for sanctity, who have hitherto been received into heaven. The first and most famous of these, Sabbas, a Cappadocian by nation, Father of many monks in Palestine, Three Saints named Sabbas. was illustrious for his holy end in the fifth Christian century, after defending the Council of Chalcedon against the heretics. The second, a Goth toward the end of the same century, magnificently triumphed through the martyrdom inflicted on him by Athanoric, King of the Goths. The third is our Sabbas, the illustrious offspring of Simeon Stephen, King of Rascia, who in the thirteenth century distinguished the royal lineage of his family by the sanctity of his character. Since the kingdom of Rascia—apart from a very few of our own countrymen who have mentioned it—has been touched upon by scarcely any foreign writer, we shall briefly sketch some details about it and its kings here. The origin of Rascia, This kingdom comprised precisely the same territory that before the Roman Empire was called Dardania, then Upper Moesia; under the Emperors, in the part touching the Danube, Aurelian's and Riparian Dacia; when Roman majesty declined, it recovered the ancient name of Dardania; Its ancient names, and finally, as the Empire tottered and nearly expired, it was called Sirbia, Serbia, and Servia, from the Sirbi peoples who migrated thither en masse from the river Tanais; and lastly, under the princes of the Nemania family who reigned there, Rascia—either from the Russians or Ruthenians who had crossed the Danube with the Sirbi, or from the ancient Taurisci known to Justinus, Pliny, and Ptolemy in the same region and described in the same location, or finally from the Rasca, a not particularly notable river flowing through that same land. The name Rascia prevailed toward the end of the twelfth Christian century, when the Nemania stock held power.
[2] The founder of this nation, Stephen, born in the Bosnian town of Tuglo, Its princes, left behind his son Ljubimir, a young man of great spirit, who transmitted the territory of Trnovo—won by his valor, on the river Drina which pours its waters into the Sava—to his son Vroš, together with the dignity of the title conceded by the Princes of Bosnia. This Vroš left his son Dessa as heir, and Dessa left three sons—Miroslav, Kresimir, and Nemania, called Great Counts—the dynasty always expanding. The last of these, having rendered outstanding service to neighboring Princes and having deposed or expelled lesser rulers—especially those who traced their origin to the posterity of the most holy Prince, the Great Constantine—and having held the city of Niš with its adjacent territory under the guardianship of the Constantinopolitan Emperors with the title of Archon, acquired great authority among his countrymen. At that time Frederick, Emperor of the Romans, while making his way through the Illyrian provinces to the sacred war in Palestine, was received with royal magnificence by Nemania in the city of Niš— Kings: the grandfather of St. Sabbas, not only entertained with hospitality but also augmented with the greatest gifts, and escorted with great pomp to the Thracian coast. The Emperor, thinking it unworthy to dismiss so magnanimous a host without some token of gratitude, honored him with the title of King of Serbia and declared him a perpetual friend of the Roman Empire together with his posterity.
[3] On this occasion the kingdom was most widely expanded. On his death he left it to his sons Tihomil and Simeon, His father, called Stephen, but the elder son soon following his father's fate, the entire power devolved upon Simeon, who, expanding the kingdom through the borders of Bulgaria, Macedonia, Epirus, and Dalmatia—while retaining the name of Stephen—acquired new titles for himself therefrom. From him the custom was introduced that when the firstborn succeeded to the throne, the next brother should be called the Grand Župan of Serbia. He is reported to have reigned with such skill that he had won the favor and friendship of all the Princes of his age. To Constantine—surnamed Strašimir—whose ancestors his father King Nemania had stripped of the principality of Niš, he not only restored the richer territories taken together with the principality, but also took his sister Geliza as his wife, His mother. from whom he received the most noble triad of sons, as we shall soon say—though after her death he later married Eudocia, daughter of the Emperor Alexius, as the torch of his house. Nevertheless, he held the Roman Pontiff in the highest esteem and regarded him as a father in all things, as can be seen from the letters of his son Stephen, Grand Župan of Serbia, to Pope Innocent III, in which, after saluting him as his spiritual Father, he says: "We have always looked to follow in the footsteps of the holy Roman Church, just as our father of blessed memory did." His brothers. And so this pious Prince, dying, left three sons by his wife Geliza: Vuksan, Vencian, and Rasko. Vuksan, called Vulcanus by the Latins, as firstborn, received the kingdom of Dalmatia and Dioclea; to his brother Vencian, interpreted as Stephen in Greek, he conceded the principality of Serbia and Rascia with the title of Grand Župan, with fraternal as well as Christian charity. Between them and the aforesaid Pope Innocent, many letters passed, as can be seen in the Decretal book of the same Pontiff.
[4] Rasko, born in third place, while his father was still living, having from infancy inclined his mind to piety and being loved by his father above the other brothers on that account, St. Sabbas becomes a monk on Mount Athos, as soon as he began to grow up, weary of the tumults of court life, he slipped away from home without his parents' knowledge and betook himself to the holy men who inhabited the heights of Mount Athos, which from Macedonia juts into the Aegean Sea on its further side. This place at that time recalled the sacred solitudes of the Thebaid and Syria, with lovers of the solitary life flocking to that truly sacrosanct mountain—called ἅγιον ὄρος, "Holy Mountain," by the Greeks on that account—from the entire East and not from the East alone but from the West as well; While the Latins ruled at Constantinople: especially since at that time the helm of the Constantinopolitan Empire, as well as the governance of the same Church, was in the hands of the Latins. For at the beginning of the thirteenth Christian century, Baldwin, Count of Flanders, having set out for Palestine, having first assisted the Venetians in the Zadar war in Dalmatia, then joining forces with them—after restoring to his ancestral kingdom Alexius, son of Isaac Angelus, who had been cast down from his father's throne by the tyrant Alexius Comnenus, and shortly afterward when the same Prince, having barely tasted the firstfruits of the kingdom, was deprived of both throne and life by Murzuphlus, one of the Greek magnates—had snatched the Constantinopolitan Empire from the impious parricide and divided it with his allies. Thus the sovereign power remained with him; the Venetian nation filled the Patriarchal throne; the islands of the Aegean Sea were conceded to the same nation; to Boniface, Marquis of Montferrat, the Kingdom of Thessaly together with the island of Crete; to Godfrey, a French lord, the principality of Athens and Achaia. So that all of European Greece passed to the obedience of the Roman Pontiff, whose supreme authority flourished in those parts for a period of sixty years, while after Baldwin, his brother Henry, then Peter of Auxerre and his son Robert, and finally another Baldwin held the reins of the Greek kingdom. His father, from King, becomes a monk. The pious father, moved by the example of his son, having left the kingdom to his two sons and bidden farewell to Eudocia, daughter of Alexius, King of the Greeks, whom he had married after the death of his first wife, embraced the monastic life on Mount Papicium, as Nicetas attests. Book 3, on Alexius Angelus.
Annotationsa He published this Life in a book entitled "The Fecundity of Illyrian Royal Sanctity," published at Rome in the year of Christ 1630, dedicated to Ferdinand III, then King of Hungary and now August Caesar, and to the most eminent Cardinal Francesco Barberini. Tomcus himself was later created Bishop of Bosnia. We have divided the life into chapters and added annotations.
b Indeed there are more, as will be shown in this our work. For besides Julian surnamed Sabbas, which signifies Old Man or Ancient—of whom we shall treat on October 18—we have already given another Sabbas on this very January 14, a Sinaite monk and Martyr.
c Most famous, not the most ancient. He was born in the seventeenth consulship of the Emperor Theodosius, in the year of Christ 439; he died in the year 531, on December 5, as was briefly stated on January 20 in the Life of St. Euthymius, nos. 12 and 15, in the prolegomena.
d We shall give his Acts on April 12; in them he is said to have been crowned with martyrdom on the fifth day of the week after Easter, that is, on the day before the Ides of April, during the reign of the Emperors Valentinian and Valens, in the consulship of Modestus and Arinthaeus, in the year of Christ 372, when Easter fell on April 8. He died therefore in the fourth century, not toward the end of the fifth, and is older than the Great Sabbas.
e Some call it Mysia. Ptolemy, book 3, chapter 9, writes that the part of Upper Mysia nearest to Macedonia is inhabited by the Dardani. Others say differently, and we have not thought it worthwhile to bring their opinions forward.
f Leunclavius writes similar things about the Serbians and Rascians in his Pandects of Turkish History, chapter 37. The location of the more celebrated cities is discussed in the epitome of Hungarian affairs by Peter Ranzano, index 2.
g From this founder of the family perhaps the name Stephen became common to all kings of that nation thereafter, as elsewhere the names Caesar, Pharaoh, Ptolemy, etc.—as Basil John Herold reports in the genealogical table appended to Nicetas, Gregoras, and Chalcondyles.
h Ternowitza to modern geographers, near the sources of the river Drina, where Serbia borders on Dalmatia, within whose former boundaries it was included.
i Drinus to Ptolemy, book 2, Geography, chapter 17: "From the same mountain of Dalmatia," he says, "another river flows down, called Drinus, which empties into the river Savus."
k Thuroczy, in the Chronicle of the Hungarians, part 2, chapter 63, calls Uroš a Great Count, whose daughter around the year of Christ 1130 married Bela II the Blind, King of Hungary, and bore him Geza II, who was later King.
l Therefore the Emperor Manuel declared war on him. In Nicetas, book 5: "Manuel had heard," he says, "that the Prince of the Serbians, a man of restless and insatiable temperament, Stephen Neeman, having grown bolder than was just, was invading everything in the vicinity, and was oppressing his own people with heavy-handed violence, and, forgetful of his fortune, was claiming Croatia and the lordship of the Cattarini for himself," etc. Manuel died in the year of Christ 1180, having waged war against Nemania a few years earlier and having forced him to keep faith.
m Ptolemy calls it Nesus, a city of Dardania; Antoninus and Cedrenus, Naissos; modern geographers, Niš, on the river Ibar, which is absorbed by the Morava and flows into the Danube.
n After Saladin captured Jerusalem on October 4, 1187, Frederick undertook the journey to the East in the following spring.
o Arnold, Abbot of Lübeck, book 3 of the Chronicle of the Slavs, chapter 29, after describing the Emperor's route beyond the river Sava, adds: "Five hundred servants going out to forage were killed with arrows by the men of that region, who are called Serbians. On the next day, the Duke of the same nation came and did homage to the Lord Emperor, receiving from him his land by feudal right."
p The royal seat having been transferred from Niš to Bodon, or Budonium, a town situated on the Danube, which Thuroczy mentions, part 3, chapter 33.
q She was the third daughter of Alexius Angelus, whom, while he wandered in Palestine, his uncle Isaac betrothed to Stephen, son of Nemania, Prince of the Triballi. Nicetas, book 3, on Alexius.
r She was later married to another Stephen, his son; on which incest and its punishment, Nicetas may be consulted.
s He governed the Church from January 8, 1198, to July 17, 1216.
t In Nicetas he is called Βόλκος, Volcus.
v Ptolemy calls it Doclea; the Latins generally Dioclea, the birthplace of Diocletian. The region of which it was the capital seems to have been called by the same name, whence also the Docleatae as a people in Ptolemy.
x Cantacuzenus, on account of the multitude of monasteries, everywhere calls the Holy Mountain a "celestial city," book 2, chapter 39; the monks themselves he calls "holy men," book 2, chapter 40; "inspired by God," book 4, chapter 24; "surpassing others in holiness," book 3, chapter 34. Even at this time, under the Turks, as Leunclavius testifies in the Pandects of Turkish History, chapter 17, twenty-three monasteries survive, each of which was formerly inhabited by 200 or 300 monks, and even now their number is not small.
y In the year of Christ 1204, on April 12, Monday of the sixth week of Lent, Constantinople was captured by the Latins, as Nicetas testifies; the change of empire is described in him, as well as in Nicephorus Gregoras, George Logothetes, and several Latin authors.
z Nicetas maintains that Crete was occupied by the Genoese. Blondus, Decade 2, book 6, says by the Venetians.
aa Indeed only 58 years, since Constantinople was recovered by the Greeks in the year 1261.
CHAPTER II.
The Archbishopric of Serbia. Death in the monastery of Mileševo.
[5] At the time when the royal youth Rasko, called Sabbas among the monks, having after great advances in virtue progressed to mature age, was—upon the death of Theodore, Bishop of Serbia—appointed Sabbas becomes Archbishop of Serbia, to fill his place, even against his will. Lest anyone take the city of Serbia for the whole kingdom, the Emperor John Cantacuzenus describes it thus: "Serbia is a not inconsiderable city, situated at the borders of Botiaea and Thessaly; it is built upon the steep prominence of a mountain and from the very beginning appears to the approaching visitor higher than it actually is. On the very ridge of the mountain it terminates, divided by a triple wall and intersected, so that from the outside you would think there are three towns, one behind another; on both sides it is surrounded by deep valleys." So he writes, and more, in chapter 19 of book 4. The care of this Church, after the most earnest prayers of the peoples and of the King and Grand Župan, his brothers, having at last been undertaken, And Vicar of the Patriarch of Constantinople, he so fulfilled his pastoral office that the Patriarch of Constantinople delegated to him his own authority with the fullest powers in all the areas under his care wherever the Illyrian language was in use; whence he was commonly regarded as a second Patriarch. His chief care, however, was for the Church of Serbia, which, on account of the proximity of the schismatics, he had found to be a wild field growing over rather than a well-cultivated vineyard. Therefore he applied himself with all his might to restoring it, once purged of errors, to the practice of Catholic piety. In this endeavor his pastoral solicitude was greatly aided by the authority of his royal blood and the favor of his reigning brothers, He celebrates a national council. joined with the most conspicuous piety—especially since, not long before, through the Christian diligence of both Princes, a national council had been celebrated in those parts by the authority of the Roman Pontiff Innocent, presided over by the Apostolic Legates John, Chaplain of the Apostolic See, and Simon the Subdeacon; and in it the most salutary constitutions for the reform of the Clergy of both Dalmatia and Serbia and Dioclea had been issued, with the subscriptions of John, Archbishop of Dioclea and Antivari, Dominic, Archpriest of Antivari, and the Bishops Peter of Shkodra, John of Polat, Peter of Drivast, Dominic of Svač, Natalis of Dulcigno, and Theodore of Serbia, amid great applause from King Vuksan and Prince Vencian. In that council it was confirmed how much strength piety joined with royal authority possesses in cultivating the overgrown fields of the Churches; since in a short time not only his spouse the Church of Serbia, but all the Christian communities situated round about flourished again in their ancient splendor of piety.
[6] He is moderate and industrious in peacefully governing various nations, To his untiring pastoral solicitude, fortified by royal blood, another quality—most necessary for the highest prelates—was closely joined: namely, discretion. For since the peoples committed to his care from time to time through the Constantinopolitan throne consisted of Greeks, Latins, and Illyrians, differing in rite and knowledge, and for the most part lived intermingled among one another, he conducted himself in promoting their salvation and reconciling peace among them with such Christian dexterity and prudence that, having drawn the love and respect of all from the most diverse peoples, manners, and dispositions, he made them, as the little flock of one family, united by mutual charity. Diligent in visiting his diocese: The rare virtue of affability in those of noble birth enhanced the excellence of his discretion; by which, as he excluded no one who approached him, so he allowed no one to depart except cheerful. In traveling through and visiting the flocks of the pious, no distance of places, roughness of terrain, or ferocity of peoples could ever deter him from approaching everyone and opening his fatherly ears and heart to all.
[7] Sometimes, both from the memory of his earlier upbringing and from the duty of fulfilling his office, He visits the monasteries on Mount Athos: when he had gone to the monasteries of the holy mountain which, as we said, extends from Macedonia into the Aegean Sea, and was visiting that sacred multitude distributed among many Lauras—that is, dwellings—according to the characteristics of diverse languages, he entered a distinguished monastery among the chief ones of the place, in which a great number of youths, according to the custom of those times, were being educated among men consecrated to God, destined later to lead a secular life. When he had inquired of the Superior about their condition and prospects, and the Superior complained He advises a Superior who is too severe in educating youth. that in educating such youth—who would yield nothing of their innate ferocity either to threats or to beatings—oil and labor were being wasted, the holy man, taking the Superior aside but in the presence of the seniors, asked the man whether it was expedient to keep tender seedlings of trees so sheltered from the injuries of the weather that, rooted within enclosures and the narrow defenses of walls, they would know nothing of the severity of sun and wind; and whether he could ever hope for the growth of a mature tree from such a plant. When the Superior replied that nothing less than such a thing could be expected from that kind of precaution, then Sabbas said: "Shall offspring born of noble parents and illustrious blood, then, be educated more harshly than the cheapest tree destined to serve its master? And what wonder that children of the noblest birth make no progress in virtue, when, like the most savage beasts, they are driven by imprisonment, flogging, and every kind of inhuman severity among men consecrated to God to despise things both divine and human alike? And how will it be possible," he asked, "that they will ever be captivated by affection either for you or for the things you propose, while they find you more cruel than the harshest taskmasters?" He said that the tender plant of youth must indeed be preserved from the harsher storms of the seasons, yet with such moderation of temperament that the gentler breezes of wholesome winds and the more pleasant rays of the sun should by no means be denied them at the appropriate time. If this were done, both the young plants would not disappoint the hope of the most beneficent farmers, and they would cause those same farmers no annoyance whatsoever. He said that statuaries and metalworkers do not insult the figure they are shaping with perpetual blows, but sometimes after the hammers they apply files, and from those they move to oilings and gentler extensions. Indeed, lest the filings make it too stiff or the oilings make it stick to dust, it should sometimes be exposed to breezes and the rays of the sun. Not all foods suit all human bodies alike, but nourishment should be provided according to the diversity of their natures. The same principle should be applied in shaping and forming souls to virtue. Otherwise, to the universal detriment of the commonwealth, men become beasts—and through the fault of those who form young people in their likeness by bestial methods. Let them reflect again and again whether they had ever heard anywhere in the world of plants that, as soon as they fix their tender roots in the soil, bring forth ripe fruit. Let them recall the earlier years of their age and examine whether in their first adolescence they had flourished with that gravity of judgment and excellence of character by which now, heavy with years, they shine as an example to others. The very seeds of grain cannot rise into a blade of grass unless they first rot in the moist earth beneath; and the blade in turn does not coalesce into a stalk, an ear, and finally the nourishing grains themselves except after the alternating vicissitudes of the year's storms, and the combined favor of winds, rains, and the sun's rays. By these and very many other fatherly admonitions he both lightened the yoke of pious youth, which up to that day had been scarcely tolerable if not downright harmful, and made the burden of a most troublesome care most pleasant for the moderators themselves.
[8] Having excellently trained the Church of Serbia and other congregations with these gifts, He leaves the archbishopric and becomes a monk: after many years usefully spent in his pastoral office, at last yielding to the desire for his former solitude and for devoting himself to himself alone, he obtained release from the bond of his Church and returned to the ancient retreats of Mount Athos—yet in such a way that he would sometimes not deny his presence to those living the monastic life elsewhere as well. Hence, full of days and merits, at last in the monastery of Mileševo, He dies on January 14. situated within his ancestral domains, having laid down his earthly burden, he flew to heaven on the fourteenth of January, around the fiftieth year of the thirteenth century.
Annotationsa Botiaea is a region of Macedonia, midway between modern Albania and Thessaly. Hence in Cantacuzenus, book 2, chapter 32, one comes from Albania through Botiaea and Thessaly to Thessalonica. Its great city, according to the same author, chapter 24, is Castoria, which in book 1, chapter 54, is called most fortified on account of the lake that surrounds it—as it is shown by modern geographers. From the lake the river Castor flows into the Thermaic, now Thessalonican, Gulf, and that coast of Botiaea is without harbors according to Cantacuzenus, book 3, chapter 63.
b The same Cantacuzenus, book 3, chapter 58: "The city of Serbia, at the borders of Thessaly." And book 2, chapter 28: "Thessaly borders on Botiaea." Thessaly in his usage is therefore the part of Macedonia near the city of Thessalonica, where above in no. 4 Boniface, Marquis of Montferrat, established the kingdom of Thessaly.
c Hence perhaps his successors usurped the title of Patriarch. A bull of Innocent VI addressed to Joannicius, Patriarch of Serbia, is found in Wadding, volume 4 of the Annals of the Minors, at the year of Christ 1354, as will be said more fully in the Life of St. Peter Thomas on January 29.
d This is Innocent IV, who held office from June 24, 1243, to December 13, 1254.
e Peter, Bishop of Dioclea and Archbishop of Antivari, received the pallium from Alexander II in the year of Christ 1062, as Baronius reports at that year, volume 11, no. 113. Miraeus, book 4 of the Notitia Episcopatuum, writes that he was the Primate of Serbia, and subjects to him the Bishops here enumerated, but calls almost every one of the individual Sees by a different name, as can be seen in his work.
f Miraeus calls him the Bishop of Sierbia. Is this see different from the one of Serbia over which St. Sabbas presided?
g Cantacuzenus locates Lauras on Athos, book 1, chapter 31, book 3, chapter 34, etc. We shall discuss the difference between a Laura and a monastery on January 20, in the Life of St. Euthymius, section 1, in the prolegomena.
CHAPTER III.
Public veneration.
[9] There has been no lack of occasion for writing a fuller account of his life from those records collected by the solitary men inhabiting Athos and transmitted for the memory of posterity. The body of St. Sabbas remained intact for 350 years, But since we do not doubt that these labor under Greek credibility—having been composed in later times when, with the Latin empire in Greece extinguished, the purity of Latin sincerity also vanished under the Palaeologan Princes who then reigned—I shall briefly append those things that have occurred in our own times as admirable confirmation of his sanctity. And indeed that remarkable phenomenon, Honored with great concourse, proper to men of the most celebrated holiness—namely the integrity of his little body—was celebrated for three hundred and fifty years with a great concourse of pilgrims, with such consistency of all its limbs that it appeared to be the corpse of a man recently deceased: an indication without doubt of his angelic purity, the violation of whose sacred relics—at what cost to the sacrilegious—has been witnessed in our own age with admirable result.
[10] For Sinan, the supreme dignitary of the Ottoman court, considered a second Pompey or Belisarius—inasmuch as he had wrested the kingdom of Tunis in Africa from the hands of the Spaniards, had reduced the Persian kingdom in Asia to the utmost straits with his great victories, and finally in Europe, by capturing the most strongly fortified city of Győr in Hungary—the bulwark of Germany, Italy, and indeed the entire Christian world—together with many other fortresses and towns throughout Hungary— On account of the defection and victories of the Christians who venerated him, when after so many victories and triumphs he had learned that the Christians pressed under the Turkish yoke, invoking the aid of St. Sabbas, had in the ninety-fifth year of the sixteenth Christian century reclaimed the city of Esztergom—the metropolis of Hungary—as well as Visegrád, the former seat of the Pannonian kings, and likewise Vác and Csanád, episcopal cities, together with many others throughout Hungary, Transylvania, Slavonia, and Croatia, for Christian liberty—the Prince of Transylvania Sigismund and Michael of the Wallachians withdrawing from the friendship of the Turks, and the Bulgarians and Serbians, with the image of St. Sabbas adorning their military standards, agreeing with the aforesaid Princes and hatching secret plans—he burst into Serbia with an army of one hundred thousand soldiers, and having declared war against the relics of the holy Bishop, His body is burned in the year 1595 by a Turkish general; swooped down upon the town of Mileševo, where they were held in great veneration, and extracting the sacred body from the tomb, burned it with sacrilegious flames. A steadfast report, corroborated by the testimony of Turks and Christians alike, persists that as soon as the flames invaded the holy man's body, from the very pyre a small cloud, lasting for a long time and appearing in a thousand colors like a rainbow, persisted to the great confusion of the barbarians all the way up to heaven—uncertain whether it was a sign of heavenly protection around the sacred relics, or a portent of the most wretched disaster of the Turks which immediately followed the sacrilegious deed, together with the ignominious death of the impious general himself after the defeat. Whom divine vengeance soon crushed. For by a few Hungarians and Wallachians, the commander of a most powerful army—up to that day victorious everywhere—was routed in battle, thrown into a swamp by the bites of his own horse, and forced into shameful flight. When after his flight he had again rebuilt his forces and wished to try his fortune by engaging with Sigismund of Transylvania, who was attended by far inferior forces, he was again routed and put to flight. Retreating to Byzantium—he whose military valor had won triumphs from Asia, Africa, and Europe—once that same valor was infected by the impious burning of sacred relics, with God, who wills that the hairs of the head of His servants be kept untouched by a most holy count, avenging the barbarous sacrilege, he ended his life in perpetual disgrace and a disastrous end.
[11] How pleasing to God the worship and honor shown to the relics of His servant was, The Cossacio patrician family of Venice and with what gifts of His beneficence He heaped those who showed such worship, a noble monument in the Cossacio family—most illustrious among the Venetian Patricians—may be seen. For this family, though it had obtained—by the favor of the Kings of Bosnia and Serbia— Once held the Duchy of St. Sabbas. a most ample principality, extending from the interior of Dalmatia to Mediterranean Dardania, a ten-day journey in length, it nevertheless called it by no other name than the Duchy of St. Sabbas; and wished the reigning Dukes to be called and to be Called Custodians of the sepulchre of St. Sabbas. "Custodians of the sepulchre of St. Sabbas," so that in the very ornament of their family crest they bear a lion raising a key placed above it. Hence, although more than a hundred years ago the principality was seized by the savage enemy and they were compelled to change their homeland, by the patronage of so great a Saint—most eminent through the ties of the greatest Princes—retaining their place among the Venetian Patricians, they maintain their life from the remnants of those same revenues which the Venetian Republic, under the agreed terms for the ownership of the city of Kotor, was bound to pay to the Dukes of St. Sabbas. So greatly is the service rendered to the servants of God never abandoned by divine kindness through any passage of time.
[12] Not only of the Illyrian Church, but even of those under whose intolerable yoke the same Church is for the most part oppressed— St. Sabbas is venerated on January 14 by the Illyrians. the Turks—the noble annual celebration of St. Sabbas's memory flourishes on the nineteenth day before the Kalends of February; which celebration, when the tyrannical yoke is broken through the patronage of this same holy Father and of the other Saints of the Illyrian royal fecundity, we hope will always be auspicious. These things about the most holy Prelate, who is honored today not only by the enemies of the Christian name, the Turks, and the subverters of Catholic unity, the schismatics, but especially by our own Catholics; whose sacred relics, although burned by the impious Sinan, nevertheless the same honor that existed before continues at the sacred place and at the holy man's tomb in the same sacred place where he once rested—solemnly attested by the assiduous pilgrimage of the Illyrians. And indeed the wondrous devotion to solid piety of the Princes of the Nemania family, His body burned in 1595 by the Turkish general. down to their penultimate Stephen—a parricide, and also, through the influence of his Greek wife Helena (so perpetually have Helenas of this kind proved fatal to kingdoms), a deserter from the Catholic Roman unity most religiously cultivated by his ancestors, but otherwise a man of great spirit—was such that it can be seen from the innumerable sacred buildings dedicated to God from the foundations, or adorned with royal splendor, throughout all of Illyricum and even to the very places of the Holy Land, in good part still standing amid the fury of the Turks.
[13] Furthermore, that most pleasing of all the pious works of this family to God was that most precious icon of pure silver in the most ample form, The piety of the Kings of Rascia toward St. Nicholas: dedicated by King Uroš Stephen to St. Nicholas in the basilica of Bari. This is apparent from the fact that from the time this precious icon has been preserved in the penetralia of the venerable sanctuary of that basilica, no calamity of the times nor avenging wrath of an offended God has beset the city of Bari or the neighboring region that has not subsided or been calmed by the mere sight of that heaven-pleasing image borne through the streets of the city, as the most eloquent and learned writer and illustrator of the life of St. Nicholas and of the icon itself, Antonio Beatillo, the glory of the citizens of Bari—praised by us above, but never praised enough—testifies in his recently published grand volume. The noble description of this icon, which the reader may contemplate with great delight in his work, we have here expressed in its very words the epigram of the royal inscription engraved beneath the sacred icon itself.
[14] "In the year of the Lord 1319, in the month of June, second Indiction, Urosius, King of Rascia and Dioclea, Albania, Bulgaria, The inscription on the votive offering dedicated to him. and of all the maritime region from the Gulf of the Adriatic to the great river Danube, caused the present work of the altar to be made—namely, a great silver icon, lamps, and large silver candlesticks—in honor of God and of the most blessed Nicholas, with Obrad of Kotor, son of Desislav, a faithful and experienced man, standing by, deputed by the aforesaid King over the said work; and we, Rogerius de Invidia, Master Craftsman, and Robert of Barletta, Master, began the aforesaid work in the aforesaid month of June, and faithfully completed it throughout the entire month of March of the following year, the third Indiction."
[15] With this eulogy of piety by the greatest of the Nemania Kings—joined by various marriages in turn to my ancestors— Marnavitius was related to them by blood. we now set an end to the fecundity of Illyrian royal sanctity, and to the King of the ages, immortal and invisible, to God alone we render honor, power, glory, and blessing forever and ever. Amen.
Annotationsa In the year of Christ 1574.
b Spondanus writes that the Turks themselves were often routed by the Persians, and that Sinan was therefore banished in the year of Christ 1579.
c In the year of Christ 1594. The siege is described in book 28 of the Hungarian History by Nicholas Istuanffi. It was recovered by an outstanding stratagem of Count Schwarzenburg in the year 1598; the same author, book 31.
d The same Istuanffi, book 29, treats of these captured cities and the victories of the Christians against Sinan.
e Kotor, a city of Dalmatia situated in the Gulf of Risano, populous and with a large and well-inhabited territory. So Coriolanus Cepio the Dalmatian, book 3 of the Deeds of Peter Mocenigo, Commander of the Venetian Fleet against the Ottoman.
f To this Stephen was sent St. Peter Thomas, as will be related in his life on January 29, chapter 3, and in the Prolegomena, section 1. Papal bulls of Innocent VI to this Stephen, his wife Helena, and his son Orosius are found in Wadding after the life of St. Peter Thomas and in the Annals of the Minors, at the year of Christ 1354.
g Especially in the Life of St. Irene, Virgin and Martyr.
h Book 7, chapter 26, where more is related about these Kings.