Photo: archive Vita App
Slavic Legislation
The Serbian tribes took a long time to unite. They lived in valleys separated by high mountains and only broke free from Byzantine rule in the late 12th century. Most of the Serbian tribes in the Drina basin and Montenegro were united by Stephen Nemanja into a state, which consolidated its position in the 13th and 14th centuries. Stephen IV. Dušan added southern Macedonia, Albania, Thessaly, the Belgrade area, and other places to Serbia. He thus created a large empire that stretched from the Danube to the Gulf of Corinth. In 1349, he issued a code of laws codifying the rights of the Serbian feudal lords, while the serfs were freed and even the free peasants had their rights reduced.
In 1346, at Easter, Stephen IV. Dušan was crowned Tsar of the Serbs and Romanians (Greeks) in Skopje. The painting represents the moments immediately after the coronation. The procession is opened by the grandees carrying the Tsar's helmet, shield and sword, and the chancellor with the state seal. The Tsar, dressed in his splendid coronation robes, holds the sceptre, the emblem of his power. Girls with branches strew flowers in his and the Tsarina's path. Stephen V follows. Uroš, the Tsar's son, who on this day was granted the title of King of all Serbian and coastal territories. Behind him follows the Serbian Patriarch, and the procession is rounded off by priests, ambassadors from all the important courts of Europe and the nobility. He is greeted and saluted by ladies and gentlemen in splendid attire on raised platforms, and on the sides of the temple they pay homage to the new Tsar Knight.
In the procession is also the envoy of the Czech and Roman King Charles IV, who ended his written congratulations to Tsar Dusan with the words: "I am happy to see that at this time the whole of Europe is in the hands of two Slavs."
The painting ends with the figure of a girl with a headdress and a long braid in the centre of the canvas, typical of Mucha's richly elaborate Art Nouveau work.
Vita App/gnews.cz-Jana Černá_07
https://mk-epopej-pruvodce.netlify.app/dospely/6
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