And always we hear that those in the Banat and those in the still more
fertile province of Ba[vc]ka, to the west of it, or those who had gone
even farther west, into the wine-growing hills of Baranja, had no
reason to regret their enterprise. King Matthew Corvinus of Hungary
writes to the Pope on the 12th of January 1483, informing him that
200,000 Serbs have come into the Banat and Ba[vc]ka since 1479. He
adds that he is favourably disposed towards them, as they are a
fighting race of the first order, so that he can trust them to defend
those provinces against the Turk.... Not only, therefore, did he
bestow upon them exceptional privileges, but in 1471 he appointed Vuk,
the grandson of George Brankovi['c], to be Serbian despot of southern
Hungary. This newly organized dominion on the left bank of the Danube
and the Save was much more important than those of Transylvania or of
Szekeliek, which were held by Hungarian magnates and which, in the
event of war, had to furnish, each of them, four hundred horsemen,
whereas the Serbian despot undertook to furnish a thousand.
The earliest Serbian settlement in Baranja appears to have consisted
of natives of the Morava valley who came in 1508 to a district near
Ciklos. The king made over the castle of Ciklos to their leader,
Stephen Stiljanovi['c], called the Just, and when the Turks broke into
Baranja they murdered him. History[25] relates that some years after
this on the 14th of August the pasha, a man of Serbian origin,
commanded that the corpse be exhumed; whereupon a ring on the dead
man's finger proved that he was related to the pasha. According to the
Turkish rules of that period it was illegal to celebrate the Mass
except at night, and in the open air. Now every year on the night of
the 14th of August a Mass is sung, with the congregation holding
torches and candles, out on the side of a hill. Afterwards they dance,
and so forth.
However, it was the Banat to which the Serbs chiefly rallied, and
after the fall of the fortress of Belgrade in 1521 they came in such
multitudes that large portions of it had an exclusively Serbian
character. And they were given the sole charge of defending it, while
the Hungarians retired to the north. But Hungary herself went down at
the terrific battle of Mohacs--10,000 Serbs under their voivoda, Paul,
fought in the Hungarian ranks--and after the fall of Buda-Pest the
political organization of the Serbs, with a despot as their ruler,
came to an end, being replaced by a religious organization, at the
head of which was the restored Patriarchate of Pe['c]. The diocese
which the Patriarchs from their not very accessible monastery were
supposed to administrate included all the Serbs between Monastir and
Buda-Pest, and from the Adriatic to the Struma River. It was at this
time that in the other Yugoslav lands, to the west and north, there
came a breath of wind from the Reformation.