Lazar of Serbia

Life events

1. Born

   Lazar Hrebeljanović was born around 1329 at the Fortress of Prilepac, 13 kilometres southeast of Novo Brdo in medieval Serbia. His father Pribac served as logothete (chancellor) at the court of Stefan Dušan and was elevated to that office after supporting Dušan's seizure of the throne.

2. Other — 1353

   Around 1353 Lazar, serving as stavilac (ceremonial court officer) to Tsar Stefan Uroš V, married Princess Milica Nemanjić, whose genealogical connection to the founding Nemanjić dynasty would later underpin his legitimacy claims as ruler of Serbia.

3. Other — 1375

   Through Lazar's sustained diplomacy and the mediation of the Athonite monk Isaija, the Serbian Patriarchate of Peć—which had been in schism with the Patriarchate of Constantinople since 1350—was readmitted to full Orthodox communion in 1375. Lazar personally convened the synod at Peć in October of that year that selected the new Patriarch Jefrem.

4. Other — 1381

   Lazar completed his greatest monastic foundation, the Monastery of Ravanica, in 1381 in the basin of the Great Morava. He also built the Church of St Stephen (Lazarica) in his capital Kruševac, funded the Gornjak Monastery in Braničevo, and contributed to construction works at the Serbian Hilandar and Russian St Panteleimon monasteries on Mount Athos.

5. Other — 1386

   In 1386 Ottoman Sultan Murad I led forces that captured Niš from Lazar's domain; Lazar subsequently repulsed Murad at the engagement at Pločnik, southwest of Niš, making clear to both sides that a decisive confrontation was approaching.

6. Martyred — 1389

   On 15 June 1389 Lazar commanded a Christian coalition—his own forces, troops of Vuk Branković, and a contingent from King Tvrtko of Bosnia—against Sultan Murad I's army of an estimated 27,000 to 30,000 men on the Kosovo Field near Priština. Both Lazar and Murad died in the battle; according to contemporary Serbian sources Lazar was captured and beheaded. The battle ended without a clear victor but exhausted Serbian fighting strength irreversibly.

7. Translated

   In 1390 or 1391 Lazar's relics were transferred from the Church of the Ascension in Priština—where he had been interred immediately after the battle—to the Ravanica Monastery, the foundation he had intended as his burial place. Patriarch Danilo III presided over the ceremonial interment; it is most likely at this occasion that Lazar was canonized as a martyr by the Serbian Church.

8. Other — 1989

   On the 600th anniversary of the Battle of Kosovo in 1989, Lazar's relics—which had been removed from Ravanica during the Second World War for safekeeping, transported to Belgrade in 1942, and held at the Belgrade Cathedral Church—were returned to Ravanica Monastery.

Relationships

Documented claims

• Lazar negotiated the end of the 25-year schism between the Serbian Patriarchate of Peć and the Patriarchate of Constantinople in 1375, making him the primary lay agent of Orthodox ecclesiastical reunion in 14th-century Serbia. (likely)
• Nun Jefimija (secular name Jelena, widow of Jovan Uglješa Mrnjavčević) embroidered her Encomium of Prince Lazar in gilded thread on the silken shroud covering his relics; it is regarded as the highest literary achievement among ten Serbian cultic writings composed between 1389 and 1420. (likely)
• Lazar was among only four non-Russian figures depicted in the 1565 frescoes painted on the walls of the Cathedral of the Archangel in the Moscow Kremlin—the burial church of Russian rulers—reflecting his veneration at the court of Ivan the Terrible. (likely)
• After the Great Serb Migration of 1690, the Ravanica monks at Szentendre produced a woodcut showing Lazar as a cephalophore—holding his severed head in his hand—an iconographic type that recurred in subsequent Serbian imagery and reflected the tradition that he was beheaded after the Battle of Kosovo. (likely)
• Lazar was the first lay person canonized by the Serbian Church after two centuries of Nemanjić rule during which most dynasty members had been canonized; his sanctification was simultaneously an ecclesiastical and a political act, affirming his status as legitimate heir to the Nemanjić legacy. (likely)