АРБАНАШКЕ ВОЈВОДЕ СРПСКИХ СРЕДЊЕВЕКОВНИХ МАНАСТИРА
ALBANIAN VOIVODES OF SERBIAN MEDIEVAL MONASTERIES

Summary/Abstract: In the Middle Ages Serbian churches and monasteries were not only shrines dedicated to prayer and religious service. They were also military meeting place and assembly place for enacting most important decisions concerning State and regions, including legislating. Thus, at the Skoplje Assembly in fourteenth century the Code of Tsar Stephan Dushan has been promulgated. Churches and monasteries were economic, educational, cultural and healt care institutions, too, namely places effecting control over the entire activity of population. This is why they had to be protected since the moment of their building. If deserted, they were abandoned by the clergy, which meant disaster. Medieval Serbian rulers have appointed guardians to churches and monasteries. They were preserved even by Turkish occupational forces. Since the great migration of Serbs by the end of seventeenth and the beginning of eighteenth centuries, there began massive invasion of anarchic tribes from the North-Albanian mountains. It became possible that churches and monasteries be deserted by monks in the Kosovo and Metohija region, as the Turkish military government was unable to protect them. After the advice of Turkish authorities, monasteries have sought a compromise with the leaders of Albanian tribes (fis - in Albanian language). There were agreements according to which Albanian voivodes became protector and guardinas of the monasteries. These voivodes were the subject of many romantic texts, and the motives for such writing were of various origin. The present article therefore attempts to picture the issue from the viewpoint of historical and social realism. It is a description and an analysis of real difficulties in circumstances of monasterial life of the time. The monasteries, namely, were forced, in fact, to accept Albanian voivodes and to grant them feudal privileges.

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