Stefan Uroš I.

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King Stefan Uroš I with his son Dragutin, Sopoćani Monastery , around 1273

Stefan Uroš I , also Uroš the Great (* around 1220 ; † May 1, 1277 in Sopoćani ) was the youngest son of Stefan Nemanjić and Anna Dandolo and from 1243 to 1276 King of Rascia , the coastal countries and all Serbs .

Both his older brothers, Stefan Radoslav and Stefan Vladislav , were deposed as kings by the Serbian Imperial Assembly. Uroš was far more talented in governing the state than his brothers. In 1254 he was able to establish an alliance between Bulgaria and the Republic of Dubrovnik (Ragusa) and Hungary , waged wars against Byzantium and conquered large areas in Macedonia , was able to successfully counter papal interference in the predominantly Roman Catholic coastal areas, and worked on the unity of his kingdom, which is why he humbly called himself the Serbian king. During his time the mining industry developed , which became Raszia's main economic source of income and whose seeds covered up to a third of the silver market in Europe at that time .

For this company, Uroš invited Saxon miners to his kingdom. The Saxons , who enjoyed many special rights, settled in the newly developed mines in and around Novo Brdo (in Saxon Nyenberghe ) in what is now Kosovo . Novo Brdo or Nyenberghe was one of the largest cities in Europe with 40,000 inhabitants and was called the city ​​of silver and gold . The Serbian mining industry founded by Uroš and with the help of German Saxons thus became one of the foundations for the subsequent development of power by the state in Southeastern Europe .

Uroš was married to Hélène d'Anjou . During a campaign against Hungary, Uroš was defeated and had to share his throne with his eldest son Stefan Dragutin , who overthrew him in 1276 at the instigation of his royal Hungarian relatives. Uroš retired as a monk to the Sopoćani monastery he founded , where he died in 1277.

Trivia

Stefan Uroš I was considered the king of the people among the Nemanjids . His popularity among the common people contributed to the fact that most of his descendants named themselves after him. Although Raszien experienced a tremendous economic boom under his rule, Uroš stayed with a modest standard of living. In his modest lifestyle he was supported by his wife Hélène, who was also not into pomp and luxury. A Byzantine mission, which was supposed to investigate the living conditions in Raszien, went down in the historical annals when negotiations about a marriage of Uroš's younger son Milutin with the Byzantine princess Eudokia, the daughter of Emperor Michael VIII. , Were conducted. The Byzantine ambassadors praised the courtly life in Constantinople , whereupon Uroš took them into a small room and showed them the Hungarian princess Katalina, the wife of his older son Dragutin, how she sat on a loom dressed in simple linen. In response to his words: “And this is how the princesses live with us”, the Byzantine ambassadors left Uroš's court in a fright, which meant that Milutin's marriage with Eudokia did not materialize.

Uroš tried particularly hard to overcome regional and ecclesiastical differences in his state. Here, too, Hélène was a support. He supported the autonomy of the predominantly Roman Catholic coastal cities and maintained the independence of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Bar , whose archbishop was Johannes Carpini at the time, from the ambitions of the Dubrovnik Archdiocese. The latter could count on the support of the Pope. It so happened that when two Dubrovnik bishops were hanged by Benedictines , a papal embassy arrived in Kotor to exhort the Roman Catholics in the coastal cities to obey. The papal envoys were greeted with the words: “Who is the Pope? King Uroš is our Pope! ”.

literature

  • Frank Kämper: Uroš I. , in: Biographical Lexicon for the History of Southeast Europe . Vol. 4. Munich 1981, p. 372 f.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Ivan Ivanji , Yugoslavia, APA Guides, Munich 1991, Serbian Middle Ages (author: Srđan Pirivatrić), p. 38
  2. ↑ literature cited there: S. Ljubic, Opis jugoslavenskih novaca (1875) plate 4 no. 13; M. Jovanovic, Serbia Medieval Coins (2002) 21 No. 2
predecessor Office successor
Stefan Vladislav King of Serbia
1243–1276 		Stefan Dragutin
personal data
SURNAME Stefan Uroš I.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Stefan Uroš the Great
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Serbian king (1243–1276)
DATE OF BIRTH around 1220
DATE OF DEATH May 1, 1277
Place of death Sopoćani