After this long excursion into troubled waters we will go back to the
Serbian States of Ra[vs]ka and Zeta. In the year 1168 the former of
these was under the rule of Stephen Nemania (1168-1196), who bore the
title of "Grand [vZ]upan," which means chief of a province. He was on
friendly terms with the "Ban," or governor, of Bosnia, and with his
assistance he added Zeta to his possessions. It was in his beneficial
reign that the Bogomile heresy was propagated in Serbia--later on to
spread through Bosnia and thence, under the name of Albigensian
heresy, to France. Nemania summoned an assembly to decide on a plan of
action; they resolved that this heresy should be exterminated by force
of arms, seeing that most of the population belonged to the Orthodox
religion. But Nemania was tolerant towards the Catholic Church, which
had a considerable following in the Serbian provinces of the Adriatic
coast, and this attitude became him well, for although he was the son
of Orthodox parents he was born in a western part of the country where
there was no Orthodox priest, so that he was baptized according to the
Catholic rite and only joined the Orthodox Church at a considerably
later date. A suggestive incident occurred in the year 1189, when
Frederick Barbarossa, on his way to Constantinople and Jerusalem, was
met at Ni[vs] by the Grand [vZ]upan, who presented him with corn,
wine, oxen and various other commodities, placed the Serbs under his
protection, and concluded with him and with the Bulgars a military
convention for the taking of Constantinople. When at last Nemania was
tired of fighting and administration he withdrew to the splendid
monastery of Studenica, which he had built, and afterwards to the
promontory of Mt. Athos, where his younger son, who called himself
Sava and was to become the great St. Sava, had from his seventeenth
year embraced the monastic life.