Cyprus. The Primates of Achrida and Ipek are occasionally called Patriarchs, though they were never considered the equals of the five great Patriarchs. We are now concerned with Ipek.[1] In this city (now a small village in Northern Albania) St. Sabbas, the national Saint of the Serbs, set up his throne as Metropolitan of Servia in 1218.[2] At that time the Latins held Constantinople, and the Orthodox Emperor and Patriarch had fled to Nicæa (p. 227). In the midst of their own troubles, the Byzantines did not care much about the affairs of Ipek, so in 1221 they agreed that the Serbs should elect their own metropolitan, and that he should be only confirmed by the Œcumenical Patriarch. During the troubles of the Eastern Empire in the 13th and 14th centuries, the Serbs managed to set up a great independent Power under King Stephen Dushan († 1355), which at one time stretched from the Danube to the Gulf of Corinth, and from the Adriatic to the Ægean Sea.[3] King Stephen Dushan, who was always at war with the Empire, would not let the Imperial Patriarch rule over his Church, so in a synod of the year 1347 the Serbs declared their Church autocephalous, and gave to the Metropolitan of Ipek the title of Patriarch. Constantinople, as usual, excommunicated them, but eventually, in 1376, had to recognize the Servian Church. In 1389 came the crushing defeat of Kossovo, in which the Turks utterly annihilated Dushan's great kingdom, and nothing more is heard of Servia
- ↑ For Achrida, see p. 317, and for Tirnovo, p. 328.
- ↑ St. Sabbas († 1237) was the son of Stephen II, Prince of Servia. He had been a monk at Mount Athos, He crowned his elder brother, Stephen III, with a crown given by Pope Honorius III. The Serbs keep his feast on January 14th; they call him Sava, Cf. Nilles: Kalend. i. p. 446, and p. 438 for the very complete acknowledgements of the Roman Primacy made by the Church and princes of Servia at this time. E.gr. Stephen II writes: "I always follow the footsteps of the holy Roman Church, as did my father of happy memory, and always obey the command of the Roman Church." In 1199, a Servian national Synod declares that: "The most holy Roman Church is the mother and mistress of all Churches" (ibid.). That the Serbs were also in communion with schismatical Constantinople shows once more how little simple people, living away from the centres of the quarrel, realized its importance.
- ↑ See e.gr. Freeman's Historical Geography, ed. J. Bury (1903), p. 392, seq. and map xli.
