Српске земље у житијима Светог Симеона и Светог Саве

Abstract

Рад се бави начинима на које су српски животописци XIII века схватали и у житијима Светог Симеона и Светог Саве приказивали целину српске државе свог и времена које им је претходило. Питање именовања српске државе у средњем веку до сада је најчешће сагледавано из угла документарних извора, док су наводи из наративних извора углавном служили као поткрепљење онога што је налажено у исправама. У раду су анализирани наводи из појединачних житија, угледање млађих на старије животописце, али и питање њиховог односа према именовању државе у владарским исправама које су им могле бити познате.

There are several lives dedicated to St. Simeon and St. Sava written in the 13th century by Sava Nemanjić, Stefan Nemanjić, Domentijan and Teodosije. This paper analyzes how in these lives the Serbian medieval state is named. The authors of the 13th century Serbian lives had a somewhat established, exept in some particulars, terminology when it comes to naming the Serbian state. Sava Nemanjić was the first to write his Life of St. Simeon, in which he names the Serbian state as Entire Serbian Land and Serbian Land. In The Studenica Typikon, of which the Life of St. Simeon is an integral part, the Serbian state is called Entire Serbian land, just as in the Letter to the Abbot of Studenica, Spiridon. The name Serbian Land is found in the charter of the monk Simeon to the Hilandar monastery, in which establishing Sava was involved.

Stefan Nemanjić in his Life of St. Simeon also uses the names Serbian Land and Entire Serbian Land. In his work, however, Stefan introduces a new, more extensive name that reads Serbian Land and Dioclitia and Dalmatia and Travunia, in the presentation of history of the period two generations before his own. The name of the Serbian state, in which the names of the historical coastal areas are added to the Serbian Land, was widely disseminated over time, through the documents of Stefan Nemanjić from the period after his coronation as king and through the documents of his sons from the period of their reign. In a broad overview of the issue of naming the Serbian state, it is important fact that the developed name, which includes the enumeration of historical areas, appears for the first time precisely in Stefan's Life of St. Simeon, before it appears in any known documentary source.

Domentijan also uses the common name Serbian Land, both in Life of St. Sava and Life of St. Simeon. At the end of both works, Domentijan left a note stating that the lives were written during the reign of King Stefan Uroš I, who ruled over All Serbian Lands and Maritime Lands, as the latter is often titled in official documents. Domentijan uses the same name for the Serbian state (All Serbian Lands and Maritime Lands) in the text of his life, projecting it to the time of the great župan Stefan Nemanjić. In Domentijan's work, however, one finds the most extensive name for the Serbian state in the lives analyzed at this time, and possibly in Serbian medieval literature in general. Domentijan refers to the time of the great župan Stefan Nemanja, who, as he writes, ruled over the Entire Serbian Land and Maritime Land and Dioclitia and Dalmatia and Travunia, which certainly was not and could not be the official name of the Serbian medieval state in any period. The reason is that the listed historical areas belong to the Maritime Land. This name was probably created by Domentijan by combining the name of the Serbian state closest to him (Whole Serbian Land and Maritime land/All Serbian Lands and Maritime Lands) with the enumeration of historical areas he could read in Stefan Nemanjić's Life of Saint Simeon. In the title of Life of St. Simeon, Domentijan speaks of the Serbian fatherland.

In his Life of St. Sava, Teodosije wrote about the Serbian Land, Serbian Lands, and when describing particularly significant events from the history of the Serbian State and Church, he also wrote about the Entire Serbian Land. It is noticeable that when Teodosije began to enumerate the historical areas on the coast, like Domentian, he did it in an unusual way that does not correspond to what is found in other sources. He writes that the great župan Stefan Nemanja ruled over All Serbian lands which are called: Dioclitia, Dalmatia, Travunia, and these are certainly not all Serbian lands he ruled. Teodosije introduces a new way of naming by using the term The Serbian State.

The enumeration of historical areas in the littoral was carried out consistently only in the Life of St. Simeon, written by Stefan Nemanjić, the Serbian great župan, at the time of writing his work. The enumeration of the historical coastal areas later entered the Serbian royal title, and 277 Zahumlje was added to the areas enumerated in the Life. The later Domentijan and Teodosije imitate the manner of enumerating historical coastal areas, but the way they do it indicates that these areas have lost the great political-ideological importance they had in the past, and that the knowledge about them has been lost in the course of time. The examination of the possibility that Domentijan and Teodosije followed the enumeration of the coastal areas in the known documents showed that they did not follow the statements of these documents, which is also evidenced by their inaccuracy. The interdependence of the names of Serbian states in narrative and documentary sources is most striking in the works of the first generation of Serbian biographers and documents of that period, which comes from the fact that the first patterns were developed by Sava and Stefan Nemanjić, both of them writing both biographies and documents. The later biographers Domentijan and Teodosije followed these initial patterns, which certainly had something to do with the oral speech of several generations, but they included in their works the names established in their time, as well as those expressions that were not built around the word land, but clearly indicated the national character of the Nemanjić state.