1380 or 1381
Dubravnica, 1381
By 1379 Prince Lazar is the strongest of the Serbian lords. His principality covers the valleys of the Great, West and South Morava, and that year he takes Kučevo and Braničevo by the Danube. In his charters he calls himself Stefan Lazar, autocrat of all the Serbs. The Serbian Church, which he helped to reconcile with the Patriarchate of Constantinople in 1375, supports him. In his capital Kruševac he builds the church of St Stephen, and in 1381 he completes the monastery of Ravanica. The Balšići in Zeta, Vuk Branković in Kosovo and the lords in Macedonia rule their own lands.
Prince Lazar in a medieval frescoWikimedia Commons, unknown painter, Public domain (BMM-LazarHrebeljanović1.JPG)
An Ottoman raiding party passes through the lands of the Ottoman vassals and enters Lazar’s principality, the first such raid on record. On the Dubravnica river near Paraćin, Lazar’s nobles Crep Vukoslavić and Vitomir rout it. A Serbian chronicle dates the battle to the summer of 1380, and other accounts give December 1381. Little more is known of it.
The church of St Stephen, the Lazarica, which Lazar built in his capital KruševacWikimedia Commons, BrankaVV, CC BY-SA 4.0 (Crkva Svetog Prvomucenika Stefana - Lazarica, Krusevac (1).jpg)
Sources
- John V. A. Fine, The Late Medieval Balkans (1987).
- Istorija srpskog naroda, vol. 2 (1982).
- Rade Mihaljčić, The Battle of Kosovo in History and in Popular Tradition (1989).
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