TERRITORIAL DIVISION OF SERBIAN CHURCH AT THE BEGINNING OF XIII CENTURY

Abstract

This paper deals with the issue of the territorial division of the Serbian Archbishopric established in 1219/1221. Namely, its territory has been divided into eleven separate church units to improve the spiritual life of the flock. The names of these episcopacies were: Žiča, Zeta, Humska, Dabar, Budimlja, Moravice, Toplica, Hvosno, Ras, Lipljan, and Prizren. The first one was the seat of the Serbian Archiepiscopacy at the same time. Only the three last mentioned above had existed as the part of the previous church structure before they became the part of the new ecclesiastical system. All other was established in the process of the creation of the new „national“ church. It was a tremendous task because of the sparse settlement structure and the undeveloped economy in many parts of Serbia at that time. Considering the almost critical absence of the contemporary sources, it has been no attempts so far to reconstruct the contour of the territorial division of the Serbian Archbishopric in its early stage of development. Only in the cases of the diocese of Moravice and Žiča, it has been possible to outline the approximate borderlines of these two dioceses. For all other, there is only the uncertain idea about their geographical position. However, the fruitful research of the secular state structure of the medieval Kingdome of Bosnia and the Serbian State under the Nemanyd dynasty has brought new results in last few decades. It is now more evident that there were more complex ways to cluster the lover units of the territorial division into the larger systems. Namely, many villages were summoned together, and they formed the districts called župas following the patterns which were mostly influenced by the character of the local landscape and demographic situation. Besides, there were two other types of territories: city districts of the few significant towns such were Prizren and Niš, and particular border areas, so-called krajinas. However, they are less important for our research. At least two or more župas, together with neighbouring uninhabited areas, such as are mountain ranges or heavily forested hilly terrain, formed the so-called lands. Each of them had its prehistory, and therefore they had the various time of creation. It is mention worthy that all of them were long-lasting geographical configurations which were only partially influenced by the numerous political shifts or gradual social and economic development. One more striking feature is the fact that the vast majority of lands share the same name with the abovementioned church units. In case of the Land of Moravice the geographical space of this administrative unit almost entirely coincides with the territory of the bishoprics of the same name. This feature suggests that this similarity was the result of the planned strategy. It is most probable that King Stephan the First-Crowned and his younger brother Sava Nemanjić, who became the first Archbishop of Serbian Episcopacy, adjusted the newly formed ecclesiastical infrastructure to the existing civil and military territorial division presented in Serbia at the beginning of the XIII century as much as it was possible. Based on this idea, it has been possible to reconstruct the territory of each of eleven episcopacies approximately. This task was very challenging because of the many obstacles, as follows. Uninhabited parts of medieval Serbia, as mentioned before, were not covered with the župa organisation. Therefore, in many cases, it is doubtful where to allocate some mountain ranges or scarcely populated valleys and tablelands situated between two joining lands. Furthermore, in some cases, župas were not grouped into lands, as it was the case with the regions of Ibar and Zapadna Morava Rivers or in the historical area of Kosovo. It was here where the organisational structure was the most changeable due to the creation of new church
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units (Žiča, Hvosno). As the result of our research, it has become clear that the even the territories of two ancient lands may have been unified under the church jurisdiction of one prelate. It may have been precisely the situation with the diocese of Zeta, which included the historical lands of the same name, previously called Duklja, and most probably the whole region of the historical Land of Travunija. Moreover, there were the cases when the recent conquest portions of the Byzantine Empire became the part of the closest diocese, although they have not belonged to the land of the same name. For example, the Župas of Morava and Dubravnica, which were situated in the Morava Valley, may have been merged to the Land of Toplica. One may notice, that the creation of the new Archbishopric significantly contributed to the corroboration of the existing territorial division of the Kingdome of Serbia. Furthermore, as the consequence of the above-described practice, i. e. of merging several smaller territorial units into more spacious assemblies, the new lands were created covering almost the entire territory of the state in the following centuries. Thanks to these processes the management structure was significantly upgraded.