О спољнополитичким мотивима у делима Даниловог зборника
On the Motives of Foreign Policy in the Works of Danilo's Anthology

Summary/Abstract: In attempting to establish the motives of foreign policy in medieval Serbian society and, consequently, contribute to the better understanding of that society's values and ideas, one can well turn to Danilo's Anthology - the 14th century compilation of biographical works on Serbian monarchs and heads of church, covering the period 1233-1375, during which Serbia, ruled by the Nemanjid dynasty, reached its political and in many ways cultural heyday. Written by clergymen possessing very good insight into political events, the Anthology is also illustrative of the contemporary ideological climate, dictated, like elsewhere in the Middle Ages, by the rulers' court and, especially, the church hierarchy. As the only official decision-making authority in matters of foreign policy, the subject of the process of motivation were the Nemanjid monarchs. Their motives presented in the Anthology can be divided into three groups. First, there were motives originating from the supernatural forces of good and evil, personified by God and the devil. Although at best metaphorical to the modern eye, in medieval times these motives were as real as was the belief in the forces that generated them. The second group were personal feelings, primarily love, vengefulness, hate, and envy, which again had a much greater significance than today, due to the personal character of medieval government. Finally, the largest group of motives came from the field of politics itself. Practically all of these were in some way connected with what the Anthology termed as "wealth", the material basis of political power, and "glory", the recognition necessary for a potential power to become real. Individual political motives usually also bore such specific designations, but at times the authors of the Anthology departed from this somewhat misty jargon, describing the processes of motivation with the approach of a political analyst. Still, the specific terminology was there for a purpose. The writers of the Anthology were not trying to produce an objective history, but to celebrate the individuals they wrote about as both Serbian and Christian heroes, and the Nemanjid dynasty itself as a "tree of holiness", transmitting Christian virtue from generation to generation. For them, the motives were only good, characteristic of the Nemanjid rulers, and bad, reserved for their foreign opponents. Thus, among supernatural and personal motives, God and love moved the Nemanjids, the devil, hate and envy worked on the other side. Only vengefulness was something of a surprise, being ascribed to the Nemanjid rulers much in the vein of the sin-smiting God of the Old Testament. The reason for this lay in the treatment of political motives. Their basic concepts of temporal wealth and glory were not approved by Christian teaching and while the motive of defending them was tolerated, their enlargement through conquest bordered on devil's work. As a result, the motive of defense was recognized in principle and ascribed to both Nemanjid and hostile rulers, with fine differences to favor the Nemanjids, such as dubbing their defense motive "ache for the fatherland". The motive of conquest, however, when attributed to enemies was sharply condemned as "insatiability", "wrongdoing" and "robbing of inheritance". But when the numerous Serbian conquests of the time were described, there was no political motive at all. Instead, the Nemanjid rulers, after being wronged, responded with justified vengeance, acquiring the wealth and glory of their wrongdoers as God's reward. In spite of numerous hints pointing to true political motives, this Christian-patriotic mold dominated the Anthology as long as Nemanjid Serbia seemed to enjoy God's favor. However, only two decades after reaching the high point of power in the mid-14th century, the state collapsed and the dynasty became extinct. In such circumstances the last author of the Anthology finally broke the mold, confessing that Du{an, the greatest conqueror among the Nemanjids, had been motivated by the taking of "cities and titles" and that he had been "ensnared by the devil". What this confession really meant was that Du{an, just like his enemies and other contemporaries on European thrones, and even his "holy" Nemanjid predecessors, was in fact a politician in the imperfect world of the Middle Ages.

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