The Four Lives

St. Simeon is one of the best-documented figures of early Serbian history precisely because he stood at the fountainhead of Serbian literature: his cult generated four medieval Lives in barely a century, two of them by his own sons. St. Sava’s Life of St. Symeon (c. 1208) is the earliest and an eyewitness’s; Stefan the First-Crowned’s Life (c. 1216) is the fullest for the reign; Domentijan (1264) and Teodosije (c. 1290–1320) are the later, elaborated Hilandar Lives. This file sets out the four, their dates, and what each can bear — the same source-family the St. Sava collection reads.

Tradition: Serbian Orthodox

Why the Sources Are Rich — and Why That Is a Problem

Unlike most saints of his era, Simeon is documented by a whole cluster of near-contemporary texts, because he was the founder of a dynasty and a church that made the writing of his Life a founding act of its own literature. This abundance is a gift to the historian and also a trap: two of the four Lives were written by his own sons, and all four in a doxological, cult-serving register. The sources are close, but they are not disinterested; to read Simeon well is to read his hagiographers and to know where each is a witness and where each is an advocate (Obolensky, Six Byzantine Portraits, ch. 4; see Hagiography Weighed, and the parallel analysis in St. Sava: The Sources).

(1) St. Sava, Life of St. Symeon (c. 1208)

The earliest and in some ways the most important source is the Life of St. Symeon (Žitije svetog Simeona) written by Simeon’s youngest son, St. Sava, and prefaced to the Studenica Typikon around 1208 (Obolensky, Six Byzantine Portraits, ch. 4; see St. Sava: The Sources). Its value is unique: Sava was an eyewitness to the events he most cared about — the abdication’s aftermath, the Athonite years, and above all his father’s death, at which he was present (see Hilandar and the Death Before the Hodegetria). It is also the founding document of the cult of Simeon and the first work of Serbian royal hagiography, the seed of the whole tradition of Nemanjić saints’ Lives (see St. Sava: The Cult of Symeon). Its limitation is inseparable from its value: it is written by a devoted son to establish his father’s holiness, and its account of the death, the myrrh, and the sanctity is testimony pinned to Sava’s own pen (per METHODOLOGY §3.5). Sava’s Life is focused on the monastic end of the story; it is not a full biography of the reign.

(2) Stefan the First-Crowned, Life of St. Symeon (c. 1216)

The fullest source for Simeon’s whole career is the Life of St. Symeon written by his second son and successor, Stefan the First-Crowned (Stefan Prvovenčani), the reigning Grand Prince and future king, composed around 1216 (the Serbian hagiographic tradition; Stefan the First-Crowned, English Wikipedia). Where Sava’s Life dwells on the monastic death, Stefan’s covers the reign — the rise, the wars, the double baptism, the anti-Bogomil assembly, the building and the abdication — and it is the principal narrative source for the political Nemanja (Stefan the First-Crowned, Life of St. Symeon, c. 1216; Fine, The Late Medieval Balkans, pp. 3–10). It is here that the “second baptism” at Ras (see Birth and the Two Baptisms) and the persecution of the heretics (see The Council Against the Bogomils) are recorded and praised. Its register is again that of a son honoring a holy father — and, additionally, of a reigning ruler legitimating his own throne by magnifying its founder — so its praise of the reign, including the hard measures, must be read as the interested testimony it is.

(3) Domentijan (1264)

A generation later, the Hilandar monk Domentijan — a disciple, the tradition holds, of Sava or his circle — wrote a Life of St. Symeon in 1264, alongside his earlier Life of St. Sava (1253/54) (see St. Sava: The Sources, on Domentijan’s dates and register). Domentijan’s register is theological and panegyrical: he is less interested in narrative fact than in presenting the saints as new apostles and enlighteners, woven through with scriptural typology and rhetorical praise (Obolensky, Six Byzantine Portraits, ch. 4). His value is his closeness to the first generation of the cult and to living memory of Sava; his limitation is that he subordinates fact to edification, and where he adds to the earlier account he is elaborating an established veneration rather than recovering new evidence.

(4) Teodosije the Hilandarian (c. 1290–1320)

The latest of the four principal Lives is that of the Hilandar monk Teodosije, written roughly c. 1290–1320, who reworked Domentijan into a far more readable, vivid, and humanly detailed narrative (see St. Sava: The Sources). It is to Teodosije that much of the popular color of the tradition is owed — the dramatic scenes, the affecting dialogue, the memorable detail — and precisely because he is the most vivid he is also the most elaborated: where he diverges from the earlier witnesses, the modern scholarship treats the earlier as the more reliable (Obolensky, Six Byzantine Portraits, ch. 4). Teodosije stands two full generations from the events; his Life is a masterpiece of the genre and a poor place to look for facts unattested earlier.

The Documentary Controls

Against the four Lives stand the documents in the family’s own hand, which anchor the chronology independently of the hagiographers: Simeon’s son Stefan’s founding charter of Hilandar (1198/99), among the oldest Serbian state documents; Sava’s Karyes Typikon (1199), Hilandar Typikon (c. 1200), and Studenica Typikon (c. 1208); and the imperial chrysobull of Alexios III (1198) (see Hilandar and the Death Before the Hodegetria; and St. Sava: The Sources). These datable texts fix the foundations, the grant, and the death within a firm frame and let the historian test the Lives at the points where they overlap. Where such controls exist, the modern account follows them; where they are silent, the Lives are reported as what they are — the testimony of named, mostly related, hagiographers.

The Same Source-Family as the Sava Collection

It is worth marking that these are, substantially, the same sources the St. Sava of Serbia collection reads — Sava, Stefan the First-Crowned, Domentijan, Teodosije, and the typika and charters — read now for the father instead of the son. This is why the two collections agree in their dates and dispositions: they draw on one interlocking body of early Serbian hagiography and diplomatics, and the figure of Simeon in one is the figure of “Symeon the father” in the other. Reading the two together is reading a single source-tradition from both ends (Obolensky, Six Byzantine Portraits, ch. 4).

See Also

References

  • Sava (Rastko Nemanjić). Life of St. Symeon (prefaced to the Studenica Typikon, c. 1208). The earliest, eyewitness Life.
  • Stefan the First-Crowned (Stefan Prvovenčani). Life of St. Symeon (Žitije svetog Simeona), c. 1216. The fullest source for the reign.
  • Domentijan. Life of St. Symeon (1264) and Life of St. Sava (1253/54). Panegyrical register.
  • Teodosije the Hilandarian. Lives, c. 1290–1320. The vivid, elaborated later narrative.
  • Obolensky, Dimitri. Six Byzantine Portraits. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988, chapter 4. On the source situation, registers, and dependence of the Lives.
  • Fine, John V. A., Jr. The Late Medieval Balkans. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1987, pp. 3–10, 116–117. On the documentary and political controls.
  • Stefan the First-Crowned. English Wikipedia (used to locate the date and authorship of his Life of St. Symeon).
  • METHODOLOGY.md §3.5, this repository.