King Milutin and His Many Marriages:
(*1254, †November 21, 1321, r. 1282−1321)
Vlada Stanković
Image Caption
The Donor’s composition from the St. Achilles Monastery in Arilje [NW Serbia], around 1290 [probably 1290–5]: The Founder, King Dragutin (named as the “Stephen, First King, The Ktetor/Founder) flanked by his wife, Queen Catherine and his younger brother King Milutin (entitled: Stephen, King of All Serbian Lands and the Coast, Uroš). Photo by Vlada StankovićBarely two years after his death on November 21, 1321, Stephen Uroš II Milutin, king of Serbia, was proclaimed a saint. Unlike his ancestors who obtained sainthood, his great-grandfather and the founder of the Nemanjić dynasty Stephen Nemanja-St. Simeon, and his grandfather Stephen the First-Crowned, or his brother Dragutin, Milutin had not taken monastic vows and was married no less than four times during his sixty-six-year-long life, four decades of which he spent as the first king of Serbia. Yet his cult spread swiftly, well beyond the borders of medieval Serbia. Milutin’s royal sanctity comprised two distinctive elements: a strictly speaking religious aspect and cult; and its strongly pronounced political and ideological side, especially during the reign of his grandson, King, and from 1345 Tsar, Stephen Dušan (1331−55).
This portrait will look at these apparent contradictions in the life and legacy of the longest-ruling monarch of medieval Serbia, tracing the political rationale behind Milutin’s four marriages, which may serve as a peculiar but accurate map for following and understanding the geopolitical changes in the volatile region of southeastern Europe in the second half of the thirteenth and the opening decades of the fourteenth century. Our main guides through Milutin’s turbulent life will be his biographer and later Archbishop of Serbia, Danilo II (1327−34), and two Byzantine historians, George Pachymeres and Nicephore Gregoras, with many interesting contemporary details provided by the report of chief Byzantine negotiator in the years 1298−9, Theodore Metochites, numerous edicts of Byzantine emperors and Serbian king, as well as visual representations (fresco portraits) in the latter’s many church foundations. All of which have been woven together to present the life and times of Milutin from his perspective.
Further Reading
Actes de Chilandar I. Des origins à 1319. Edited by Mirjana Živojinović, Vassiliki Kravari, and Christophe Giros. Paris: Editiones du CNRS: P. Lethielleux, 1998.
Daničić Dj., ed. Životi kraljeva i arhiepiskopa srpskih, napisao arhiepiskop Danilo i drugi, Zagreb 1866 (reprint with Introduction by Dj. Trifunović, London: Variorum reprints, 1972).
Georges Pachymérès Relations historiques I-IV (V Indices). Edited byA. Failler [CFHB 24/1–5]. Paris, vols. 1–2, 1984; vols. 3–4, 1999; vol. 5, 2000.
Mavromatis, Leonidas. La fondation de l’Empire serbe. Le kralj Milutin, Thessalonica: Kentron Vyzanrinōn Ereunōn, 1978.
Nicephori Gregorae Byzantina historia I-III. Edited by Ludwig Schopen (vols. 1–2), and Immanuel Bekker (vol. 3), Bonn: Weber, 1829, 1830, 1855.
Stanković, Vlada. “The Character and Nature of Byzantine Influence in Serbia: Policy – Reality – Ideology (11th−End of the 13th Century).”In Mabi Angar and Claudia Sode, eds. Serbia and Byzantium. Proceedings of the International Conference Held on 15 December 2008 at the University of Cologne. Frankurt am Main: PL Academic Research, 2013, pp. 75−93.
Stanković, Vlada. “Rethinking the Position of Serbia within Byzantine Oikoumene in the Thirteenth Century.” In Vlada Stanković, ed. The Balkans and Byzantine World before and after the Captures of Constantinople, 1204 and 1453. Latham-Boulder-New York-London: Lexington Books, 2016, pp. 91–102.