Jovan Vladimir

Jovan Vladimir ( Serbian: Јован Владимир; Bulg Иван Владимир Ivan Vladimir, German and John Vladimir, 10th century *, † May 22, 1016 ) was ruler of Duklja, the most important Serbian Principality of his time. He is venerated by the Serbian Orthodox Church as a martyr and national figurehead.

Life

Jovan Vladimir joined by 990 the reign of Duklja (today mostly on the territory of Montenegro). For supremacy in the region fought at that time Byzantium and the First Bulgarian Empire under Tsar Samuil († 1014). Since the Bulgarian Empire was closer and therefore more threatening, Jovan Vladimir sympathized with Byzantium. As Samuil won a victory over the Byzantine Empire, he took him as a prisoner of war with his capital. An oral tradition that was written down in the 12th century, relates that Samuel's daughter Kosara fell there into Jovan Vladimir and her father asked her to marry him. He agreed and gave his nunmehrigen son back his principality, to the city of Trebinje.

In the following years Jovan Vladimir was Bulgarian vassal and should have been neutral in the Bulgarian- Byzantine confrontation, what his principality gave a time of peace and ecclesiastical- cultural flowering. After the defeat and death of his father, the first Bulgarian Empire was under his successor, the last Tsar Ivan Vladislav († 1018), battered by the Byzantines. Since Ivan Vladislav Jovan Vladimir distrusted, he made ​​him in 1016 in an ambush in the Presparegion (now northern Greece ) attract and beheaded.

The tomb Jovan Vladimir wants the Greek archaeologist Nikolaos Moutsopoulos have identified in the Basilica of Agios Achillios on the homonymous island in the Small Prespa Lake. The relics of the saints were venerated for centuries in the eponymous monastery near Elbasan in central Albania. In 1995 she was transferred to the Orthodox Cathedral of Tirana.

In the iconography Jovan Vladimir is shown with crown and cross and with the severed head in his hand.