The Belief and Hopes of the Serbian Kings

The belief and hopes of the Serbian kings represented almost throughout our history the model of the true religious spirit and of the hopeful optimism of the nation. That can be said especially for the kings since Saint Sava’s time until the definite conquest of Serbia by the Sultans, i.e. since Richard and John’s time until the time of the Black Prince and Wycliffe, and from the Black Prince and Wycliffe till the end of the Wars of the Roses in England. Our kings did what all the kings in the world do; they fought and ruled, they ate and drank, and danced and played, and still the majority of them took monastic vows and died in solitude and asceticism, and a great part of them were recognised by the people as saints and invoked by the oppressed in the dark times as the advocates of national justice, before God. They built beautiful churches and monasteries in the towns and forests. They strove always to build the “Houses of God” more solid and more costly than their own houses. Their castles and palaces they built to their own glory, and their pleasures no longer exist, but the churches they built to the glory of God still exist. In these churches our pious kings of old prayed; in these churches afterwards our hard oppressed people wept during the time of slavery; in these “Houses of God” the fanatic Turks enclosed their cattle, their goats and sheep, their horses and donkeys, thus abasing and ridiculing our sanctuaries. But the more these sanctuaries have been abased and ridiculed by the enemy, the more they have been respected and adored by the people.

We Serbs cannot complain that our Middle Ages were as dark as the people in Europe are accustomed to represent their own. During the three hundred years of the reign of Neniania’s dynasty not one of our kings was killed. The importance of this fact only the historian can understand who knows well the history of our neighbours, the Byzantines and Venetians of that time, who in many other respects had been our teachers. We learnt many useful as well as perilous things from them, but we did not learn their art of poisoning kings, of torturing them, suffocating them, making them blind, cutting out their tongues, etc. It is only in modern times that we committed the great sins of the Middle Ages, namely, killing our kings and making civil wars. During the last hundred years we killed only three of our kings: Karageorge, Michael and Alexander. In modern times three have been killed in a hundred years, and in the Middle Ages not one in three hundred years!—a fact as unusual as curious. But you should remember that our modern times in Serbia began after five hundred years of a bloody slavery and dark education under Turkish tyranny.

I mention our great sins not in order to excuse but to accuse my people. I will not even accuse the Turks, our rulers and educators during five hundred years. Our ancestors were accustomed to see human blood spilt every day. They were accustomed to hear about strangled sultans and viziers and pashas. And, besides, they lived through the record of all the crimes ever written in history; the Turks arranged a horrible bloody bath in executing their plan of killing all the leaders and priests among the Serbs! It happened only a hundred years ago, in the lifetime of Chateaubriand and Wordsworth, in the time of Pitt and Burke, in the time of your strenuous mission work among the cannibals. Our ancestors lived in blood and walked in blood. Our five hundred years’ long slavery had only two colours—red and black.

And yet I will not accuse the Turks but ourselves. Neither our kings of old, nor our ancestors before the enslavement set us the example of killing kings. Rather the strangers that conquered and ruled our country set us such an example. But it is our fault for having followed an abominable example like that. I confess our sins before you, and pray: Forgive us, good brothers! Forgive us, if you can. God will not forgive us. That is the belief of our people. God is merciful, but still He does not forgive without punishment. God is righteous and sinless, and therefore He has right to punish every sin of man. But it were a monstrous pretension for men to punish every sin, being themselves sinful, very sinful. We will forgive all your mediaeval, if you will forgive us our modern sins. Remember! God will begin to “forgive us our trespasses” only at the moment when we all forgive the trespasses of all those that have sinned against us. He will forgive us then, because He will not have anything more to punish. God’s mercilessness begins when our mercifulness ends. God will rule the world by justice as long as we rule it by our mercilessness. He will rule the world by mercifulness when we forgive each other, but not before.

To forgive the sins of men means for us nothing more than to confess our own sins. To forgive the sins of men means for God nothing less than to let the events be without consequences. And it contradicts human experiences or science.

It contradicts also the experiences of our kings of old. They saw and heard of the sins punished, and they feared sin. They regarded humility and mercifulness as the greatest virtues. On the day of the “Slava,” which means a special Serbian festival of the saint patron of the family (every Serbian family has its patron among the saints or angels which it celebrates solemnly every year, instead of celebrating their own birthdays), on this day our kings themselves served their guests at the table. It was a visible sign of their humility before the divine powers that rule human life. Besides, on every festive occasion in the royal court was placed a bountiful table with meat and drink for beggars and the most abject poor. The king was obliged by his Christian conscience and even by national tradition to be merciful. How the people regarded the kings is clear from popular sayings like these:

Every king is from God. If a king is generous he is from God, as a king should be from God. If a king is narrow and selfish he is from God, as a monkey is from God.

A wise king speaks three times to God and only once to the people. A foolish king speaks three times to the people and only once to God.

Speaking to God a wise king thinks always of his people, and speaking to the people he always thinks of God. A foolish king thinks of himself always, whether he speaks to God or to the people.

Every king has a crown, but every kingly crown stands not on a kingly head.

A gipsy asked a king: Of how much value are your riches? The king replied: Not more than your freedom.

The smile of the king is medicine for a poor man, the laugh of the king is an offence for the mourning one.

A king who fears God has pity for the people, but a king who fears the people has pity for himself.

The face of a good king lends splendour to his crown, and the crown of a bad king lends splendour to his face.

The sins of the people can only sooner bring the king before God, but the sins of the king can push the people to Satan’s house.

The belief of our kings was the same belief which Saint Sava preached, their hopes were his hopes. God is the eternal and powerful king of the world; Christ is the way of salvation from sin; good must be in the end victorious over evil. That was the belief and hope of our kings. Was it not likewise the belief and hope of King Ethelbert, of Saint Oswald and Edward the Confessor? Did not Richard the Lion-hearted struggle for the same belief and hope in Palestine, which was at his time as far as a voyage around this planet to-day? Is not this same belief and hope the corner stone of Westminster Abbey and Saint Paul’s, of this church and of every church on this island, and of every great and beautiful deed that you inherited from your ancestors?

Yet the belief and hopes of our kings were never different from the