The South Slavs are the third great branch of the Slavic world. The Serbs show exemplarily how a people moved from the north across the Carpathians to the Balkans – and there found a new homeland and a new faith.
With the Serbs we enter the third great branch of the Slavic world: the South Slavs. While the West Slavs (Sorbs, Abodrites, Poles) sat on the Elbe, Oder and Vistula and the East Slavs (Rus, Krivichs) ruled the Russian rivers, the South Slavs moved onto the Balkan peninsula – into the old land of the Romans and Byzantines. The history of the Serbs is a model of this great migration.
The most important source on the origin of the Serbs is surprising: the Byzantine emperor Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus, who around 950 described the peoples of his empire in his work De administrando imperio. He reports that the Serbs came from a land he calls "White Serbia" and which lay north of the Carpathians – in the area of today's Saxony, Bohemia or Lesser Poland. From there they moved south under their princes. "White" here, by old Slavic colour symbolism, probably denoted a point of the compass (north or west).
According to Constantine's account, the Serbs moved to the Balkans in the 7th century, in the time of Emperor Heraclius, and settled in the mountain lands of the western Balkans – in the area of today's Serbia, Bosnia, Montenegro and Croatia. There they met a thinned-out Romance and Byzantine population. As with almost all Slavic migrations: the account is written some 250 years after the events and heavily simplified. That Slavic groups pushed massively into the Balkans in the 6th and 7th centuries is, however, secured by many sources and by archaeology.
The new homeland of the Serbs was a land of mountains and valleys – hard to rule, ideal for small, independent lordships. The early Serbs lived in kin-groups under chieftains (župani) who ruled small valley communities (župa). This fragmented structure shaped Serbian history for a long time: only gradually did larger principalities arise, balancing between the great powers of Byzantium, Bulgaria and later Hungary.
The Serbs lived on one of the most important cultural frontiers of Europe: the line between the Latin West and the Greek East. This position decided their faith. In the 9th century the Serbs were Christianised – and turned, unlike the Croats for example, predominantly to the Orthodox Christianity of Byzantium. The mission of the Slavic apostles Cyril and Methodius and their disciples brought the South Slavs at the same time the Church Slavonic language and the Glagolitic and later Cyrillic script. Thus the Serbs henceforth belonged to the Orthodox world.
That we know anything at all about the early origin of the Serbs we owe almost solely to Constantine VII. His work De administrando imperio was a handbook for his son – a kind of secret foreign-policy manual describing which peoples lived on the borders of the empire and how to deal with them. For the early history of the South Slavs it is the most important source there is. But it must be read with caution: Constantine wrote from a Byzantine viewpoint, at second hand and with political interest.
Scholarship has long debated how literally Constantine's account of the migration from "White Serbia" should be taken. Some see in it the memory of a real elite migration, others rather a learned construction meant to give a people an honourable origin. The core is secure: Slavic groups came to the Balkans in the 6th/7th centuries, and out of them the South Slavic peoples formed over the centuries. The exact route, the princely names and "White Serbia" remain matters of interpretation.
A fascinating detail is Slavic colour symbolism. Besides "White Serbia", Constantine also knows a "White Croatia". "White", "black" and other colours evidently denoted points of the compass among the Slavs – similar to other peoples of Eurasia. The same idea appears in "White Russia" (Belarus). The colour names are thus no fantasy but follow an old ordering system – even if its exact meaning remains disputed in individual cases.
The Serbs are the key to understanding the South Slavs. Their history shows the great Slavic migration of the early Middle Ages, the emergence of new peoples on an old cultural frontier and the importance of the choice of faith between East and West. For our picture of the Slavic world they complete the triangle of West, East and South Slavs – three branches of one stem that spread across half of Europe and yet have a common root.
The central source is Constantine VII, De administrando imperio (around 950), supplemented by Byzantine chronicles and the accounts of the Slavic mission (Cyril and Methodius). All these sources are Byzantine and see the Serbs from outside. The counterweight is provided by the archaeology of the Slavic settlement of the Balkans (settlements, pottery, cemeteries). The secure core – Slavic immigration into the Balkans, early lordship formation, Christianisation by the Orthodox rite – we separate here from the legendary origin tale from "White Serbia".
A common error: the Balkan Serbs and the West Slavic Sorbs in Lusatia bear the same old tribal name (*Sŕbi) but are today two different peoples. Both probably go back to a common early-Slavic self-designation that split during the great migration: one part moved south to the Balkans, another stayed in the north between Elbe and Saale. The identity of names is real, but there is no direct political connection between the two peoples today – a fine example of how a people's name branches during a migration.
After the land-taking, larger lordships gradually formed out of the Serbian valley communities. Constantine VII names a series of early princes, foremost the dynasty of Vlastimir in the 9th century, which held its own against the expanding Bulgarian empire. These early principalities were still small, changeable and strongly influenced by Byzantium and Bulgaria. But out of them grew, over the centuries, medieval Serbia – further proof that the fragmented initial structure of the South Slavs led slowly but steadily to firmer states.
"The Serbs are descended from the unbaptised Serbs, also called White, who dwell beyond Hungary."after Constantine VII, De administrando imperio 32 (public domain, own translation)
The Sorbs · The Abodrites · The Rus (Kiev).
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