Немањићки успон на краљевство у светлости дипломатичких и дипломатских сведочанстава

Abstract

Рад истражује схватање краљевске титуле код српских владара из династије Немањића, на основу сведочанстава која о томе пружају дипломатичке форме њихових докумената и њихова дипломатска делатност. Анализа извора показује да је добијање краљевске титуле за немањићку средину значило успон у идеалној хијерархији земаљских власти који је омогућавао испољавање пуног суверенитета у владарској репрезентацији, али и искорак из оквира политичке идеологије својствене византијском свету у политичко-идеолошки склоп западног хришћанства. Пошто Немањићи нису показали спремност да у потпуности раскину са византијским обрасцима, репрезентативна слика српског краља претворила се у особену мешавину византијских и западних узора.

The paper uses diplomatic analysis of the documents of Serbian rulers belonging to the Nemanjić dynasty and evidence from their diplomatic contacts and activities to examine their understanding of the title of king, acquired for the Nemanjićs by Stefan, son of the dynasty’s founder, grand župan Nemanja, in 1217. The examination shows that acquisition of this title was understood as an upward move in the ideal hierarchy of earthly powers which signified the achievement of full sovereignty, but also as a lateral move from the politicalideological framework of the Byzantine world into that of Western Christendom. This is vividly demonstrated by the appearance of numerous representative signs of sovereignty in post-1217 Nemanjić documents: (1) large wax seals depicting the ruler with regalia seated on his throne; (2) the devotional formula by the grace of God; (3) the term grace for describing the ruler’s acts of favor toward his subjects, as well as toward international factors of lesser rank; (4) a tendency to accumulate geographic names in royal titulature; (5) metal (golden) seals with the image of a standing ruler with regalia on one side, and Saint Stephen, the dynastic patron, on the other; (6) royal signatures written in red ink; (7) the “royal pronoun” in the form my royal person; (8) the epithet faithful in Christ the God and (9) the epithet self-ruling. Only the first four of these can be said to have come from the representational patterns of Western kingship, whereas the rest reflect Byzantine practice. In fact, over time this balance increasingly tipped further in favor of Byzantine models, especially from the start of the 14th century, after the historic rapprochement between King Milutin and the Byzantine court. However, in contacts with the West, visible efforts were made to maintain a more “Western” appearance of Nemanjić kingship – thus, features (2) and (4) gradually disappeared from documents written in Serbian, but remained conspicuously present in those written in Latin. A similar attitude towards kingship can be discerned in the information on diplomatic relations and activities through which Stefan Nemanjić acquired the title. Firstly, it can be noted that Stefan apparently did not seek the title of king because of some perceived insufficiency of his original title of grand župan as a symbol of Serbia’s practical liberation from Byzantine supreme rule, which was achieved by his father Nemanja. Instead, he seems to have been prompted by international circumstances in which he had reason to feel threatened by factors belonging to the Western political-ideological sphere and often bearing the kingly title. This was evident during his first, unsuccessful attempt to achieve kingship around the year 1200, but it could easily have been the case in 1217 as well. Both attempts also demonstrate a familiarity with the procedure of acquiring the kingly crown – the requests were addressed to the Roman papacy as the spiritual, but at the time also political, leader of Western Christendom, and accompanied by due expressions of loyalty and subordination. This last item, however, was a major problem because the Serbian ruler and the country’s church organization belonged to the Byzantine, Orthodox branch of Christianity; in fact, almost immediately after the kingly title was acquired, Stefan and his brother, the Orthodox monk Sava, reconstituted the Serbian church as an autocephalous archbishopric in the Orthodox tradition, clearly turning away from any submission to Rome. Yet, thanks to the presence in the maritime provinces of the Nemanjić state of a fully developed Roman Catholic church organization subordinate to the Pope, even this element of Western kingship did not remain completely absent from the image of Serbian kings. Thus, by striving to display enough characteristics necessary to maintain the pretense of a “true” Western kingdom, while at the same time expressing their sovereign rank through many of the forms used to that effect in the Byzantine world, the Nemanjić kings shaped their own specific brand of kingship. As a measure of their success it is possible to note that throughout the existence of the Nemanjić kingdom Westerners addressed its ruler as rex, whereas the Byzantines favored that generic title in the 13th century (ρήξ), but then predominantly switched to κράλης, an imitation of the Serbs’ own word for king – kralj.