Битеф

Tvrtkovo shvatanje da se on borio sa je izdao V. Makušev, »Prilozi k Muratom. Firentinski odgovor srpskoj istoriji«, Glasnik 32 (1871) sastavio je Kolučo Salutati, poznati 173-177; Исторические памлтншш humanis'ticki pisac, slavan medu ГОжнихт, Славлнг извлеченние savremenicima.upravo po svojim изт> италглнскихт, архивовл. и epistolama. Povodom njegove smrti библиотекл. I, ... Varsava 1874. 1406. jedan savremenik je zabeležio Reprodukovan je prevod M. kako su se ljudi sirom sveta trudili da Flašara, »Zadužbine Kosova, pribave kopije njegovih poslanica Spomenid i znamenja srpskog zbog njihove lepote i majstorstva naroda«, Prizren-Beoerad 1987, kojima su bile sastavljene. Poslanicu 562-563. □

The Battle of Kosovo Tuesday, 18 June 1389 (Lecture delivered in the great hall of the University of Ljubljana on St Vitus Day 1921) The Battle of Kosovo was the most important event in the earlier history of Serbia and one the crucial turning-poins in the history of Europe as a whole. It opened to the Turks the gates of Central Europe, it marked the end of the development of the powerful Serbian state of the Nemanjić dynasty, and owe of its consequences was the enslavement of the heartlands of Serbia by the Turks, which was to last for centuries. The Serbia of the Nemanjić rulers had been created by the strenuous efforts of its people, it had been sustained by great sacrifices of its subjects, and, consequently, it was completely united with the entire being of the Serbian nation. The interpenetration of these two was such that no distinction was made between the Serbian state and the Serbian people. They ceased acting as one only when Dušan’s conquests incorporated so many alien elements into the Serbian state that the subjects of the state and the state were no longer identical. That was one handicap of Dušan’s empire, and another was the growing independence and disobedience of provincial lords, whose power undermined the authority and dignity of the state. In such condition it might have been expected that the Serbian people would become estranged from the state, w'hich was no longer entirely its own, and in w hich the power of the nobles was growing so rapidly that no room

was left for the state authority or for the rights of the people. But this estrangement was noticeable only in the south, outside the boundaries of old Serbia of the Nemanjič rulers, where state traditions were not strong and deeply rooted, and where the purely Serbian lands bordered on regions with a mixed or foreign population. In those recently conquered lands the provincial noblemen was much greater than in the central Serbian regions. Besides, the influence of foreign populations, antagonistic to the Serbian state, was much stronger, so that the local subjects were in general much more indifferent to the state and its well-being. As a result of this pattern of relations in the south, Dušan’s empire began to fall into two parts: one was the Serbian ethnical region, with a serious concern for the state and its independence, and the other was a mixed and alien ethnical region, where the attitude to the state was not determined by love and loyalty, but by short-sighted interests of provincial lords, which could not be ruled, much less curbed, by the dull indifference and concealed disaffection of those directly subjected to them. The inhabitants of these lands and their ancestors had made no sacrifice for the making of Nemanjić Serbia. It was completely alien to them, and the majority of them had become accustomed to regard it as an unfriendly state. The Serbian rule after the conquests was exercised through a system of delegated personal government conducted on behalf of the nobility by an imperial deputy, so that the assimilation of the newly won lands and their adjustment to the Serbian state ideals must have progressed very slowly. The necessary an even longer period of time, until the independent state of Serbia was completely overthrown. □ Nikola Radojčić