Moses as a role model in the Serbia charters after 1371 changing patterns

The aspects of the Old Testament figure of Moses highlighted in the charters of post-Nemanji Serbia, or under the Lazarevi and Brankovi dynasties (1371-1459), testify to a changed attitude towards Old Testament role models. While members of the Nemanji house such as the archbishop Sava I and the rulers Stefan of De ani and Du an look up to Moses as a "religious leader", a prayerful intercessor before God and a victorious warrior, all of that for the sake of the "chosen" people, the role he is assigned in the arengae of the charters issued by prince Lazar and despots Stefan Lazarevi and ura Brankovi is completely different. In the universal Christian context of the post-1371 arengae Moses figures as a "prophet" and the builder of the Tabernacle - a prefiguration of the Church, thereby epitomizing a major stage in the salvation history of humankind. The role of Moses, as well as that of David, the only other Old Testament figure still referred to in the charters of the period, has a universal ecclesiologically interpreted, significance. This new pattern of interpreting Moses implies that the ruler’s main virtue now becomes his concern for the "true faith" and the houses of God. The practice of the Nemanji s as regards selection and interpretation of Old Testament themes is reestablished by the titular despots of the Brankovi dynasty. In their charters, the first part of the Bible with Moses as a popular leader reassumes a "national" character and becomes part of the ideological apparatus intended to posit the Serbs as a "New Israel".