Society consisted of
ecclesiastics, nobles, knights, gentlemen, and peasants. A citizen
class seldom or never figures on the scene. Its merchants were
foreigners, Byzantines, Venetians, or Ragusans, and history speaks of
no Bruges or Augsburg in Servia, Bosnia, or Albania.
The religion of the state was that of the oriental church; the secular
head of which was not the patriarch of Constantinople; but, as is now
the case in Russia, the emperor himself, assisted by a synod, at the
head of which was the patriarch of Servia and its dependencies.
The first article of the code of Stephan Dushan runs thus: "Care must
be taken of the Christian religion, the holy churches, the convents,
and the ecclesiastics." And elsewhere, with reference to the Latin
heresy, as it was called, "the Orthodox Czar" was bound to use the
most vigorous means for its extirpation; those who resisted were to be
put to death.
At the death of a noble, his arms belonged by right to the Czar; but
his dresses, gold and silver plate, precious stones, and gilt girdles
fell to his male children, whom failing, to the daughters.
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