362 BYZANTIUM AND THE SLAVS
works to be translated from the Greek, such as the Historical
Synopsis of Manasses; this translation is now in the Vatican
Library, illustrated in the somewhat crude but no longer
vigorous style of fourteenth-century Bulgaria. Architecture,
too, flourished, but again with neither new inspiration nor
improved technique.
In 1361 John Alexander died, dividing his inheritance.
His elder son, John Sracimir, was left the family fortress of
Vidin; his favourite, John Shishman, inherited the kingdom:
while a usurper, Duvrotik, took the district called the
Dobrudja after him. The division only led to trouble. Five
years earlier the Ottoman Turks had established themselves
in Europe intending to stay.
Meanwhile the hegemony had passed to Serbia. The
Serbian monarchy founded by Stephen Nemanya had been
put on a firmer basis by his sons, Stephen 'the First-Crowned'
and St* Sava. Stephen was crowned first by a papal legate in
1217, then more popularly by St. Sava as Archbishop of
Serbia in 1222. Before his death in 1228 he had reasserted
once more the authority of his line over the other Serbian
princes. St. Sava's work was even more valuable. His
diplomacy and the respect accorded to his high personal
qualities not only made him of great international use to his
brother but also enabled him to reorganize the Serbian
Church and win recognition of its autonomy from Byzan-
tium. St. Sava was a man of wide experience, a traveller and
a scholar. The Serbian Church had hitherto been ruled
from Constantinople or Ochrida with little care or sympathy,
with the result that the Bogomils had vastly increased in
number. Sava understood the essential spirit of Cyrillism
and made Christianity more real to the Serbs by absorbing
many of their national beliefs and customs, and produced a
Church that was popular, linked to the new nationalist
dynasty but still in touch with the higher civilization of
Constantinople. In consequence the Bogomil faith soon
faded out from Serbia. His more political work in favour of
a Balkan entente was less permanently successful.
During the reigns of Stephen the First-Crowned's elder
sons, Radoslav and Vladislav, Serbia was overshadowed by
Bulgaria. But in 1243 the youngest, Stephen Uros I, sue-