Belgrade Trip – Stefan Lazarevic the Despot Statue

Many things in this world puzzle me, and one of these conundrums is why a man known as a despot is revered within the Serbian Orthodox Church and has a rather nice little statue of him within Belgrade Fortress. This mystery was solved when I discovered that in many parts of the Balkans, the word ‘despot’ used to be bestowed on the sons of reigning emperors. The word meaning has changed somewhat since the eighteenth century, but this has also happened with the words ‘dictator’ and ‘tyrant’ which now have negative connotations.

Back to Stefan (1377-1427), who we (well, I) now discover is something of a hero to many Serbians. To them, he used the periods of peace to help build Belgrade up militarily, economically, politically and socially, so he’s seen as something of a reformer. He was also something of a supporter of the arts and a writer himself, he sounds quite the modern man. Interestingly, on the Serbian Wikipedia, he’s known as Stefan the Despot, but on the English version he’s known as Stefan the Tall. I can see why I might have got the wrong first impression here.

Anyway, if either of my two loyal blog readers are interested, there’s lots more about him on Wikipedia.