| Uroš the Weak Урош Нејаки |
|
|---|---|
| Emperor of the Serbs and Greeks | |
| Reign | King 1346–1355 emperor (tsar) 1355–1371. |
| Full name | Stefan Uroš V |
| Born | c. 1336 |
| Died | 4 December 1371 |
| Predecessor | Dušan the Mighty |
| Successor | Position abolished |
| Royal House | House of Nemanjić |
| Father | Dušan the Mighty |
| Mother | Helena of Bulgaria |
Saint Stefan Uroš V Nejaki ("The Weak"; Serbian: Свети Стефан Урош V Нејаки; 1336 – 2/4 December 1371) was king of the Serbian Empire (1346–1355) as co-regent of his father Stefan Uroš IV Dušan Silni ("The Mighty") and then Emperor (tsar) (1355–1371).
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Stefan Uroš V was the only son of Stefan Uroš IV Dušan by Helena of Bulgaria, the sister of Ivan Alexander of Bulgaria. He had been crowned as King (2nd highest title) in the capacity of co-ruler after Dušan had himself crowned emperor in 1346. Although by the time of his succession as sole ruler and emperor in 1355 Stefan Uroš V was no longer a minor, he remained heavily dependent on his mother and various members of the court.
Incompetent to sustain the great empire created by his father, Uroš could neither repel attacks of foreign enemies, nor combat the independence of his nobility. The Serbian Empire of Dušan fragmented into a conglomeration of principalities, some of which did not even nominally acknowledge his rule. The first major challenge to Stefan Uroš was posed by his uncle, Simeon Uroš Palaiologos, who attempted to seize the throne in 1356. Defeated, Simeon Uroš withdrew into Thessaly and Epirus, where he continued to rule with the title "emperor of Romans and Serbians". This effectively amputated much of Dušan's conquests from the area under his son's control.
Stefan Uroš's position was not helped by his mother Helena, who started to rule autonomously from Serres in alliance with Jovan Uglješa. A similarly autonomous posture was assumed by the Dejanovićs, the Balšićs, Nikola Altomanović, and Uglješa's brother Vukašin Mrnjavčević. By 1365 the latter had himself associated on the throne as king by Stefan Uroš. At the end of his reign the only lands under Stefan Uroš's direct control were those between the Šar Mountain and the Danube.
Stefan Uroš V died childless in December 1371, after much of the Serbian nobility had been destroyed by the Turks in the Battle of Maritsa earlier that year. The exact cause of his death at a relatively young age remains unknown. Vukašin's son Prince Marko inherited his father's royal title, but real power in northern Serbia was held by Lazar Hrebeljanović. The latter did not assume the imperial or royal titles (associated with the House of Nemanjići), and in 1377 accepted king Tvrtko I of Bosnia (a maternal grandson of Stefan Dragutin) as titular king of Serbia. Serbia proper became a vassal of the Ottomans in 1390 but remained effectively ruled by the Lazarevićs and then by their Brankovićs successors until the fall of Smederevo in 1459.
Following the great conquests of his father, emperor Uroš became victim of new nobles in a Serbia enriched by recent war and pillages. The maintaining of order and state instruments was impossible because of weak or nonexistent infrastructure between old and new territories. The exceptional modesty and tolerance of this ruler was the main reason he was called "the weak", and also the reason he was canonised 211 years after his death.
Stefan Uroš V was canonised by Serbian Orthodox Church. His body is kept in the Jazak monastery on Fruška Gora mountain.
Today, Stephen Uroš V is viewed mostly in contrast to his able and strong-willed father, as a lacking and indecisive ruler, unable to keep the Serbian nobility under his control, whose weak and unassertive personality greatly contributed to the fall of the Empire and the eventual destruction of the Serbian state by the Ottomans. In Serbian folklore and epic poems he is often described as a just, well-intentioned ruler of pleasant appearance but weak character. While this view is popular among historians as well, some argue that he was not especially incompetent in his role as Emperor of Serbia, and that the decline of the empire was much less spectacular and started much later into his rule than popular opinion suggests. For a long time, it was considered a historical fact that he was murdered by his co-ruler, Vukašin Mrnjavčević, but eventually Vukašin was proven to have died before the Emperor.
In 1825 Stefan Stefanović, a Serbian writer living in the Austrian Empire wrote a tragic play called "The Death of Uroš V", which drew inspiration from both facts and folk tradition about Uroš, including the aforementioned belief that he was killed by King Vukašin.
| Regnal titles | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by Stefan Uroš IV Dušan |
King of Serbia 1346–1355 |
Succeeded by Vukašin Mrnjavčević |
| Preceded by Stefan Uroš IV Dušan |
Emperor of the Serbs and the Greeks 1355–1371 |
Succeeded by Lazar Prince of Serbia |