The Diplomat in Spain

Ricardo Ruiz de la Serna

Associate Researcher of the Institute of Historical Studies of CEU

It happened during a dinner in Niš in 1189. Back then, the Grand Prince of Serbia, Stefan Nemanja, invited Emperor Frederick Barbarossa to dinner. He intended to enter into an alliance with the Empire to confront Byzantium. When dinner was being served, Barbarossa started to eat with his hands as he used to do in his court. Then, Stefan Nemanja showed him a small trident that served to take food and put it in your mouth without getting your hands dirty: that is how the emperor found out about the use of forks.

Much before that, Serbia had been in the heart of Europe. Emperor Constantine, who went down in history as “The Great”, was born precisely in Niš, the old Naissus, in the year 272. The roads connecting the provinces of the Roman Empire went over most of its territory.

In “El viajero y su sombra” (The traveller and his shadow), Eugenio Montes wrote that “there are countries, such as Portugal, that were born to explore those worlds of God. Others, such as Belgium, seem to be born so that those worlds of God explore them. […] Portugal is a wayfarer. Belgium is just a path”. Well, in Serbia there is a double mysterious condition. Crossroads of invasions, pilgrimages and trade routes, the armies of the Christendom and the Ottoman Empire have ridden in the lands of Serbia. Wars that changed Europe’s destiny were fought in its territory and monasteries that are now among the greatest pieces of art of all times were raised there too. That is where we find the wonderful frescos by Dečani, whose saints and apostles are constantly singing the glory of God while the choral singing of monks resounds in the vaults.

A brother of those monks, Stefan Nemanja’s first-born, went, at the age of seventeen, to the Mount Athos, in Greece, and started a monastic life. It was the year 1192. He renounced his princely life and changed his first name, Rastko, to Sava. One of his biographers, the monk Theodosius, says that he was “kind to everyone, fond of poor people like no other and very respectful towards the monastic life”. According to tradition, his spiritual guide was a Russian monk. When his father Stefan Nemanja ordered to call him, Sava answered: “you have already achieved what every Christian sovereign must achieve; now come and join me in the real Christian life”. Maybe the most amazing thing is that his father ended up joining him, but that is a different story.

Saint Sava was not only religious. He went down in history as an important diplomat and one of the most brilliant men of his time. Very serious conflicts with the Hungarian, the Bulgarian and the Byzantine were solved thanks to him. We owe him the very famous letter to Irenaeus (13^th century) in which he formulates a certain idea of Serbia that maintains its topicality despite the centuries passed: “In the beginning, we were confused. The East thought that we were the West, whereas the West considered us the East. Some of us misunderstood our place in that clash of currents, so they screamed that we did not belong anywhere and some others that we exclusively belonged to one place or another. But I say to you, Irenaeus, that our destiny is to be the East in the West and the West in the East, to recognize only the celestial Jerusalem beyond us and, here on Earth, none”.

Here is a necessary reflection to understand Serbia’s history and art. All the European cultural trends of the last centuries have come to Serbia, and have been reformulated, transformed and enriched there. That is the case of Vuk Stefanović Karadžić (1787-1864). The Sava and the Drina run through Tršić, where he was born. He was a philologist, linguist and renovator of the Serbian language. Father of ethnological and folkloric studies of Serbia. He collected stories, songs, riddles and events all over the country. He was the author of the first modern Serbian dictionary. He translated the New Testament. Goethe praised his work and compared it with the Song of Songs. He corresponded with Jakob Grimm, one of the famous brothers. His stories and poems were translated into French by Merimé, Lamartine and Nerval, into Russian by Pushkin and into English by Walter Scott. He became member of nine European academies, among them those of Paris, Vienna, Saint Petersburg, Moscow and Krakow. He embodies that spirit of love of one’s country and opening to the world of the best romantic tradition. As Saint Sava, he also understood that Serbia was not a barrier but a bridge between cultures.

26/05/2017. © All rights reserved.