Rastko, known in the Church as Sava and afterwards canonized, was a man of active temperament--a statesman as well as a churchman. He used his wisdom and his learning to benefit his country.
Stephen, son of Nemanya, was the first crowned King of Serbia. He kept off foreign enemies, and Serbia, no longer dreading attacks, began to develop some of her mineral resources. She made a beginning, too, of educating her people. In the next two or three generations of rulers there were quarrels among members of the ruling family. Outside, too, the Magyars began to press upon the little kingdom. But on the whole Serbia was united,--mindful, perhaps, of St. Sava's motto: "Only Union is Serbia's Salvation."
Stephen the Sixth, or "The Great," won victories over the Greek Emperors, the Tartars, and the Bulgarians. He helped the Greek Emperor against the Turks, now becoming formidable, and as part of his reward had the Emperor's daughter given him in marriage. But this led to domestic unhappiness in his later years and some loss of territory. For his wife tried to keep his son Stephen from his inheritance. In turn, Stephen's party set upon the King and choked him to death. Though Stephen Dushan may have had no hand in it, this murder clouds his reputation. Stephen Dushan is a contradictory character--by some regarded as the murderer of his father, by others an idealist to be compared with King Arthur or with Roland. Stephen Dushan (Detchanski), great-grandson of Stephen Nemanya, came to the throne in 1331 and in ten years had gained Albania and Epirus and finally all Macedonia except Salonika. He was practically suzerain of Bulgaria. He freed the Church, which long since had drifted from Rome back to Byzance. Now he made it independent of the Greek Emperor, constituting the Archbishop of Petch, Archbishop, or rather Patriarch, of Serbia.
Noted both as a soldier and a statesman, Stephen had wider plans than Vlasimir or Nemanya. The Turks were now looming dangerously in the East. The Greek Empire was tottering. With it, the rest of Eastern Europe might fall, including little Serbia--one of the smallest of all the little principalities. But Serbia, if small, was brave, and Dushan hoped to proclaim a Serbo-Greek Empire to head off the Asiatic hordes. To accomplish this he took certain territory from the Greek Empire and, proclaiming himself Emperor of the Serbs and Greeks, was solemnly crowned at Uksub at Easter, 1346. Nine years later he tried to unite Bulgars and Serbs and Greeks against the Turks. With a large army of about one hundred thousand trained soldiers he was almost at the gates of Constantinople when a sudden illness overtook him and he died.