03 — The Unifier

Nemanja’s three decades on the throne: the welding of the Serbian lands into a single realm, the long and shifting contest with Byzantium that ran from vassalage through rebellion to a negotiated peace, and the state-church council against the Bogomil heresy — a persecution that the collection reports plainly, as the honest portrait of a ruler-saint requires.

Tradition: Serbian Orthodox

Contents

• Unification and Byzantium — the expansion of the realm, the absorption of Zeta and the coastal cities, and the arc of Serbian-Byzantine relations from the submission of 1172 to the defeat on the Morava and the peace of 1190/1191.
• The Council Against the Bogomils — the assembly against the dualist heretics and the punishments it decreed; the both-sides king-saint honesty the repository requires, with the sources named and the persecution not whitewashed.

See Also

• The Rise of Nemanja — how he came to the throne
• The Founder of Churches — the monasteries that expressed his rule
• Byzantium and the West — the powers his statecraft worked between