Stefan the First-Crowned

Stefan Nemanjić, known as Stefan the First-Crowned (Stefan Prvovenčani), was a medieval Serbian ruler of the Nemanjić dynasty who governed as grand prince from 1196 and as the first king of Serbia from 1217 until his death in 1228. He was a son of Grand Prince Stefan Nemanja, founder of the dynasty, and of Ana, later the nun Anastasia. His brothers included Vukan, who held the coastal region of Zeta (Duklja), and Rastko, who became the monk Sava and, in 1219, the first archbishop of the autocephalous Serbian Church. Contemporary sources do not record Stefan’s exact year or place of birth; he was born in the Serbian lands of his father, and modern historians usually place his birth around the mid-1160s. In the 1190s he married Eudokia Angelina, daughter of the Byzantine emperor Alexios III Angelos. The marriage brought him the imperial court title of sebastokrator and bound the Nemanjić house to Constantinople.

In 1196 Nemanja abdicated in Stefan’s favour rather than that of the eldest son Vukan, took monastic vows under the name Simeon, and withdrew first to Studenica and then to Mount Athos. The arrangement provoked a succession war. Around 1202 Vukan, backed by Hungary, drove Stefan from Raška; Stefan obtained refuge and military support in Bulgaria and recovered the throne within a few years. His marriage to Eudokia collapsed in a public scandal about the turn of the thirteenth century, amid accusations of adultery, and she left Serbia. The Byzantine connection weakened just as Constantinople fell to the Fourth Crusade in 1204. In 1216 or 1217 Stefan married Anna Dandolo, granddaughter of the Venetian doge Enrico Dandolo, aligning Serbia with Venice in the altered politics of the Balkans. He had several children who dominated the next generation of the dynasty, among them the future kings Stefan Radoslav, Stefan Vladislav, and Stefan Uroš I, and Predislav, who became Archbishop Sava II of Serbia.

Stefan’s elevation to kingship in 1217, the source of his epithet the First-Crowned, followed the grant of a royal crown by Pope Honorius III and raised Serbia to the rank of kingdom in Western eyes. His brother Sava, negotiating at Nicaea, obtained autocephaly for the Serbian Church in 1219 and was consecrated its first archbishop. Later Serbian tradition holds that Sava also performed an Orthodox coronation or anointing of Stefan, often associated with the monastery of Žiča, which Stefan founded and which became both coronation church and first archiepiscopal seat. Stefan was a major ktetor of churches and monasteries and the author of a Life of his father, Saint Simeon, among the earliest works of Serbian literature. His reign consolidated the state assembled by Nemanja and required constant balancing among Hungary, Bulgaria, the Latin Empire, Epirus, Nicaea, and Venice.

Toward the end of his life Stefan fell ill, received the monastic tonsure under the name Simon, and died on 24 September 1228. He was succeeded by his son Stefan Radoslav. He was buried at Studenica Monastery, the principal dynastic foundation of his father; his son Radoslav later built the King’s Church there. The Serbian Orthodox Church glorified him as a saint, and his feast is kept on 24 September. Together with his parents and his brother Sava he belongs to the group of Nemanjić saints who became central to medieval Serbian royal ideology and Orthodox commemoration.