“Tsars are replaced, countries are ruined, but language and people remain, and make possible for a territory to be returned, whenever, to its origins and its native people.”

Stefan Nemanja (1113 – 1199) was the Great District Prefect and the founder of the glorious Nemanjic dynasty which ruled Serbia for over two hundred years. During this period Serbia was transformed from a small disintegrated principality into an empire and the most powerful country on the Balkans.

Stefan Nemanja, the Great District Prefect of Rascia, situated in the centre of the western Balkans, ruled from 1166 to 1196 and during his rule he managed to control the neighbouring countries, including Zeta, and finally united them into a unique independent medieval Serbia. He managed to expel heresy and introduced Orthodox Christianity.

He established very good relationships with Byzantium, with tsar Manojlo I Komnin and his inheritors.

In 1186 Stefan Nemanja signed the first trade contract with the town of Dubrovnik (Ragusa). He made his oldest son Vukan Nemanjic the ruler of the provinces Zeta and Duklja, which included the towns of Bar (Antivari) and Kotor (Cattaro). Both territories are parts of Serbia and Montenegro today.

In 1196, at the State Congress in Ras, Stefan Nemanja resigned and his son Stefan First-Crowned was enthroned. Stefan Nemanja went to Studenica monastery and became a monk named Simeon. Then he joined his younger son Rastko (the monk Sava) in Atos peninsula where the two of them founded Hilandar monastery.

Having become the monk Simeon, Great District Prefect whose words were obeyed without question and who was respected by peoples and tsars, was an example of sobriety, goodness and faith to Atos monks.

Stefan Nemanja died on 13^th February according to Julian, or 26^th February according to Gregorian calendar, in 1199.

He called his son Sava, laid down his hands on him and blessed him, saying:

“My dearest child, the light of my eyes, my comfort and the keeper of my light, the time has come for us to depart!  God lets me go in peace. But don’t you, my child, be sad because of our farewell. This glass awaits everyone to empty it; here we say farewell, but we will meet there where farewell does not exist.”

Sava took Simeon’s relics to Studenica monastery. The monk Simeon was canonised as Saint Simeon Chrismatic.

The founder of the Namanjics’ Christian Serbia, Stefan Nemanja, left his posterity a great speech about language as an irreplaceable goal of Serbian people. Here is a part of it:

“Dear child, take care of the language just like you take care of the country of. A word can be lost like a city, like a country, like soul. And what is a nation without language, country or soul?

Don’t put a foreign word into your mouth. If you take a foreign word, be aware that you haven’t conquered it, but you have made yourself a foreigner. It is better to lose the biggest city of your country than the smallest and the least significant word of your language.

Countries and territories are not conquered only by swords and languages. Be aware  that your enemy has conquered you compared to how many words of yours he has taken away and how many of them he has replaced.

A nation which loses all its words ceases to be so.

There is, my child, an illness which corrupts the language just like a disease infects the body. I can remember such language disease and plagues. It usually happens when a language of a nation meets a language of another, when languages rub against each other.”